PHOTO: MSNBC's "Faces of the Teabaggers"...SEE if you can detect the common theme on these faces. [View All]

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Faces of the Tea Party - Team Cosgray

Kari Huus says:When we arrive, the smell of baking cookies pervades the Cosgrays’ ranch-style home in the countryside outside Monticello, Ind. Outside, it is clear and silent except for their chatter, and the crunch of our footfalls crossing the field covered by cut corn stalks.

The Cosgrays are a close family, knit together by conservative Christian beliefs. They work hard, study hard and live in a place where they have their own water and power supplies, and where they could plausibly be self-sufficient. Their oldest son Alex, 27, farms 20 acres of family land - refusing government subsidies, on principle.

To Sam and Laura Cosgray, massive government spending in the name of averting economic crisis has been an affront to their common sense, and their sense of fairness.

“We bust our backs every day going to work, teaching our children values and working, and that you don’t rely on the government... (you) make it on your own,” says Laura Cosgray, a 47-year-old mother of four. “Then the government has the audacity to come in and take our money... to prop up the banks that are failing because of corruption and greed.”



The Cosgray family on their farm outside of Monticello, Ind. From left, Nicole, 16, Rachel, 20, Laura, Sam, 48, Tyler and his baby, Bella, 4-months-old, Amanda, and her husband, Alex.