CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MINUTES OF
14 FEBRUARY 2012

NOTE;  Secretary PEGGY GARNER was absent tonight, but her recorder was in attendance.  Please bear with the following:

Meeting was held at the Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by ROMA WADE
Invocation by Representative Norman Sanderson

BOB apologized for the meeting starting late, because he and KEN LANG had been on the radio with Lockwood Phillips.  Wanted to know where HOWARD and PEGGY were tonight.  KEN said they were on a Valentine’s date.  BOB said why, they’ve only been married about 80 years, right?  DIANE said that is why they are still married.

BOB recognized our visiting dignitaries: House Representative Norman Sanderson, who is running for Jean Preston’s seat in the Senate.  Asked Mr. Sanderson if he was District 3 or District 1 right now, to which he replied House District 3, which is all of Pamlico, and about 75% of Craven.  He also recognized County Commissioner Chairman Robin Comer.  BOB asked about the protest tonight.  STEVE BEST said he understood it was at the Train Depot in the park.  BOB asked who were they protesting?  STEVE said they were protesting against the Marriage Amendment.  BOB wanted to know if there was a big crowd down there.  STEVE said probably 50 or so and he thought the newspaper and radio were there also.  BOB also introduced Doug Raymond, a former radio personality.  BOB asked, didn’t he have the talk station before Lockwood.  Mr. Raymond said he worked on the talk station, Lockwood has always had it.  BOB said you (Mr. Raymond)  also took over Frank Rouse’s TV operation and you are now soon to be senator Sanderson’s campaign chairman as I understand it.  Mr. Raymond said he was an advisor.  He did not like titles.  He was helping Norm in any way he could.

BOB asked if there were any new faces here tonight.  He asked who the lady was with STEVE tonight.  STEVE said it was his wife Susie and tonight was their anniversary.

BOB then talked about the little protest rally (some of the TEA Party folks showed up in Beaufort as well as some non-TEA Party folks) against Mr. Randy Ramsey who is running for Jean Preston’s seat under the Republican ticket.  He is a registered Republican.  BOB went back and checked the 2010 registration and party affiliation and he has been a registered Republican as far back as he checked.  But he has been a real heavy donor to the Democrat Party and Beverly Perdue, Mike Easley, and also Mark Basnight.  He said he did not want to pick a dog in this fight but the TEA Party is a very conservative organization and we have three basic principles that we are guided by.  To try to get those principals disseminated, that is our goal, to educate the voters.  It is one issue we thought was needed to bring to attention, and we hoped it would be a media event and we were led to believe that there would be TV and other media there.  But just three newspaper reporters showed up but that still will get the word out; along with KEN and I being on the radio tonight.  KEN spoke up and said they did have channel 14 stop by but without cameras.  He gave the reporter with channel 14 a copy of the fact sheet they had made up to pass out.  The reporter didn’t even have a notebook or anything to write on.  KEN said he thought he was just passing by and noticed the crowd.  BOB said he was surprised to hear that Ramsey was waiting until after we left to show up to register.  KEN said it was obvious that he got a phone call letting him know we had left.  BOB said anyway he hoped we shot a torpedo in the side of his submarine trying to sneak in under the public umbrella.  Someone in the audience said they were trying to take care of him.  They are trying to prove that there is a bus that leaves Havelock each morning loaded with illegals that goes to Jarrett’s Boat Works.  BOB said he heard that they were investigating that.  BOB said Jarrett has more than 25 employees too.  The member said Jarrett was not the only one using illegals, there were several more doing the same thing.  Where we have been getting that this bus leaves Havelock, they contracted with (Greenbar?) to haul bus loads to Jarrett Boat Works and he gets paid for all of them in cash.  If we can get them on camera, we can take care of Randy Ramsey.  BOB called on ROMA WADE who had his hand up.  ROMA said he just wanted to say, ’when that goes, every boat builder out there by Jarrett Bay is gone also.”  BOB said as a landscaper one of the things that really amazed him was when he retired from the Marine Corps was the lack of work ethic out here amongst our younger folks.  He was totally taken by surprise by that.  He had no idea how much power the youth uniform code of justice had over the young folks to make sure they worked.

BOB announced that he, KEN and FRED DECKER were going to have to leave early tonight and he believed our distinguished guests would be leaving early also.  They had the Court House Meeting.  He would be leaving the rest of the meeting in the hands of ERIC BROYLES, Vice Chairman. Before they had to leave he wanted to take this opportunity to ask Norman Sanderson to have the floor and speak to us about whatever he felt like.

Norman thanked BOB and said he just wanted to commend  him and KEN  for the outstanding job they did on the radio.  He had done interviews with Lockwood.  ‘They can be a little tricky at times.  Lockwood is a good man and he means well.  Anyway, I thank you for giving me a couple of minutes of your time tonight.  I want to just start out by giving you a little background on me.  I have lived in this area since 1972.’  Used to live right next door to Willie and since 1972 Norm has raised both of his children here.  They went to high school in Pamlico County, graduated from Wake Forest University.  His daughter, three grandsons and her husband live just ten miles down the road from them so that is a blessing to have them that close. But he wants to talk about himself a little bit.  He knows he could spend this whole ten minute period talking about his opposition and the people running against him but he wants to tell us where he is coming from).  From 2008, he believes, they started back up the Coastal Tax Payers Association which is his (and the Craven area) TEA Party version of what we do here in Carteret.  When they got the CTPA going again, he was the Vice President.  They used to have one years ago but it kind of died, he and the others lost interest, but when they began to see what was happening across our state and nation and even in our own county, a group got together and said we need to bring the CTPA back on line because we need someone out here that is a watch dog for the general public, because most of the public doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on.  If they hear it on the 6:00 news that is great but who can believe what you hear anymore.  And so they re-started that organization and he was really pleased to be a part of the first rally that they had.  They had about 1500 folks that marched from the court house to Union Park in New Bern and had a fantastic rally about bringing life to what was going on in our government.  He is just like those of us here tonight, he believes in the same three basic principals that BOB mentioned.  He believes in less government, less government intrusion in our lives; the government has far too many tentacles in our lives; believes our government costs us way too much money for what they do for us, and so he believes in lower taxes for everybody concerned.  He believes that we, the people/the citizens are the ones that have to rise up and take our state and country back because if we just let government go unchecked, it is just going to continue to get bigger and bigger.  It is like fire; as long as you keep giving it fuel, it is just going to grow and never satisfy itself.  So, what you do, when you talk about educating the voters, and that is what we have to do; we have to educate and let them know what is really going on.  When we have someone come along that says they are one thing but all the indicators are pointing that they are something else, then we as citizens have a right to really ask the hard questions.  We need to get answers to our questions.  We don’t need to take anything for granted just because somebody claims to be a good person and they claim to be on your side; I say let them show me the proof.  He will take the record that he has for the one term he has served.  They went through probably one of the hardest legislative terms that they have ever had to do.  It was the first time in one hundred years that the Republicans had control of the House and the Senate and they were left with a three billion dollar shortfall in their budget, which is required by law to be balanced.  They did it without raising taxes.  It took a lot of hard decisions;  they took a lot of hits; a lot of criticism; were demonized; and were told everything in the state is going to die because of what they had done and he is here to tell us that none of that is going to happen.  Our government had gotten so big that even government itself didn’t know how big it was.  We did those hard things.  We let the sales tax expire; and let the special taxes on couples who made over a certain amount of money, go away; and we did it without increasing….and he was proud of it.  He had the ninth most conservative rating in the North Carolina House on his voting record last year.  He will put his voting record up against anybody else’s.  Any time we could reduce the size of government, he voted for it.  Any time they could reduce taxes, he voted for it.  Anytime they could reduce regulatory forms that were killing small businesses, he voted for it.  That is the only thing that is going to turn our county and our state around is to get government out of the way.  As you have heard many times ‘let business take over, cause business knows how to do it’.
Now, he wanted to talk a little bit about this race…. There have been rumblings for the last few weeks.  He made up his mind several months ago because people came to him and said ‘you know there is a possibility that Senator Preston is not going to run again’.  He said he had had the pleasure of working with Sen. Preston this last year.  They would sit in each others office and talk about the things that affected Craven and Pamlico (which is part of her district) and also those things which affect Carteret, too.  So when she made the announcement that she was not going to run, after some prayer and talking to his family, he said he felt it was just a natural thing, and if he was ever going to do this, now is the time.  He already represents two of these counties and he will just envelop and bring in Carteret County because a lot of the same problems and difficulties that you all look at, they face the same thing in Craven and Pamlico.  They did not know about the recruiting that was taking place because they have some people in high positions that like to pick and choose who will come in and serve.  As far as he is concerned, nobody in Raleigh should pick and choose who will represent you in the state senate or house.  It is not their decision.  It is your decision and you are smart enough to look at a candidate and listen to that candidate, talk to that candidate and ask him questions and listen to his responses and ask him his vision and then you are smart enough to choose who it is you want to go up there and represent you.  He knows we are in a battle.  He has met Mr. Ken Jones over at Pine Knoll Shores.  He is a fine gentleman.  They had a conversation Saturday night at the Carteret Reagan Day luncheon.  A campaign ought to be about issues and how they as candidates will go about solving those issues.  That is what he and Mr. Jones came to in agreement.  That is what their campaign is going to be about.  After this is over, whoever comes out on top, we pledged each others total support that we would jump in and help the other person win this seat because we need to keep this seat in conservative hands.  We know we are in a battle, because of the very magnitude of the amount of money that this third party has.  Money means a lot, and it has always been in the past that he who spent the most money won the election.  That did not happen two years ago when he ran against a three term incumbent who outspent him almost three to one.  He took almost 70% of the vote and it was because of people out working hard and everybody played a part.  Everybody did what they could do, whether it was $10.00, 50.00 or $100.00; or whether it was putting on a teeshirt and marching in a parade; whether it was working at a poll outside handing out literature; whatever it took.  That’s what we did and we can do it again.  I don’t care how much money this man says he has.  All we would like is for him to stand up and tell us where he got it from.  We feel he has to be open to you the voter.  He does not need to come out here as a conservative and say we are going to Raleigh or Washington; we are going to be transparent and let you know everything we do and then go in the back room and do the same thing that has been done for the last one hundred years.  If that is the way it has got to be then we are all in trouble and I don’t know where our country is going to end up.  All of our victories, all of our freedoms, everything that we have worked hard for in 2010, it is on the line this year because if we lose this election in Washington; if we lose this election in Raleigh, if we don’t get a conservative governor; and if we don’t keep the conservative legislature so that we can finish those things that the governor vetoed on us, we are in trouble.  Not only are we going to suffer but our children are going to suffer also.  So, he said he is here tonight to ask for support, help, anyway that you can.  If  you would like to make a financial donation, he just happens to have some financial donation envelops.  Every bit helps.  Don’t think that what you can do is not going to make a difference because it will.  We have got to really dig this year and do everything we can folks, because you know what is going to come in here during the Presidential election.  We know what is going to happen when the Democrats come to Charlotte for their convention.  There is going to be more money spent in North Carolina because he thinks North Carolina will be a key state.  The people who have it now will not want to give it up and they will not give it up without an all out fight.  We are here and hopefully ready for that fight because our future’s at stake.  He said he would be glad to answer any questions.  ERIC BROYLES said “Norm, you say you are for the reduction of taxes.  What can you do about the gasoline tax?”  Norman said that is why he wants to go to the Senate.  The House voted to cap gasoline tax but they could not get it through the Senate.  The House were going to hold it where it was before this last forced increase and don’t think that it won’t go up January again unless we can do something with it.  One thing he has to say about the gas tax is ‘we have the highest one but most people don’t understand why’.  We have the highest gas tax in the southeast because North Carolina’s DOT does all the maintenance, all the repair work, and all the new construction in the state and we don’t charge the local county anything.  A lot of these states who have lower gas taxes makes the counties raise their property taxes so they can do the maintenance on local roads.  We don’t do that in NC.  It does level it out a little but it is still too high.  ERIC said ’when gasoline goes up a dollar, it is not fair.’  Norman agreed.  ERIC said going up in relationship with the cost of living that is a different issue.  Norman said they say it is based on cost of oil.  Asphalt is a petroleum product and so when oil goes up so does the cost of asphalt.  We have been looking for years for a different formula, but so far nobody has been smart enough to come up with one.  He knows there is one out there we just have to keep looking.  Our gasoline tax should not be tied to what foreign countries charge us for petroleum.  ERIC said we need to get an energy bill passed.
JEFFERY CRANE  said he was a little confused about the gas tax is for the DOT?   Norman said the DOT gets most of their money from our gas tax and from the fees that we pay for highways.  JEFF said he was driving down 101 the other day and there were some people on a curve and they were mowing the grass.  Usually they have people out there to slow you down and flag men, etc. because it was a dangerous situation.   They said they did not have enough money to have flaggers when they are doing projects like that.  He was curious as to what Norm thought about this.  BOB said his question was why were they mowing grass in February?  Norm said Tell you what we have to do,  and it is just as important as the presidential election or the election of a Republican governor.  When and only when we elect a Republican governor can we change the departments in NC from the top down and put people in there that are going to do better at running things.  Someone said ‘with common sense”?   Norm said right.
Someone (did not recognize the voice) said he would like to speak on Norman’s character.  He had known him for forty plus years.  He had lived across the ditch from him.  He is the most straight forward, honest, upright person you will ever meet in life.  He is a good Christian also.  They go way back.  Norm said thank you Will (so I presume the speaker was Willie Austin.)  ERIC said he would also like to give Norm a compliment on what he did January 5th?  They over road a governor veto to control the way monies are collected by the school’s unions/non-unions/teachers associations, (NCEA)  whatever you want to call them. ERIC wanted to commend them on that, because he didn’t think anyone should be compelled to pay fees.  Norm said we could spend a half day talking about that but we don’t have the time tonight.  It is an organization that the state does not need to be helping in any way what so ever.   Someone spoke up about the film industry in NC has gotten quite a bit of pull somehow.  They are getting millions of dollars off the state now.  Norm said he thinks it is an absolute waste.  He has not seen anything come out of Hollywood in the last 15 years that he thought was worth anything.  That was Gov. Perdue.  She has gone and courted the film industry to come to Wilmington and a couple of other areas and she has lured them here with a whole lot of tax payer incentives.  He doesn’t think anyone of them can show where it benefits…after we pay what we have to pay to get them here, he doesn’t see where it benefits the state.  They bring in their own people, their own equipment…..we get a little bit of stuff around when they are eating, sleeping and housing…but then they are gone and take everything with them and we have given them a lot of money to make junk.  Cause that is what comes out of it.  BOB said they are part of the union so they are forced to hire union employees and we are a right-to-work-state.

BOB said he was going to cut this short because some of us have to go to Beaufort to the court house.  He asked Norm to leave some of his donation envelopes with those who remain.  BOB told Robin Comer that he wasn’t running against anybody, but did he want to say a few words before they left. Robin thanked him but said not at this time.

BOB said the TEA Party Patriots, Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, have published a book and all the proceeds go to the TEA Party Patriots.  He had a free complimentary copy which he is putting in our library.  Anybody can check it out free of charge any time you want.  Someone asked if we also had a video library.  BOB said we have a video library and STEVEN BEST, President and CEO of the Best Productions Corp., also known as The Cave, operates his home movie theater that seats 45 with various videos he has purchased and found.  The next event will be this Saturday, February 18th at 3:00 pm at which time two movies will be shown,  “Iranium” and “Agenda, Grinding America Down”, about communism in America.  Call STEVE at 723-0493.  Hoping to have a pot luck meal also.  (So, if you would like to attend and bring something to eat, please fell free to do so.  It will be appreciated.)

FRED said he wanted to tell Norm one thing…. during the primaries parties do not have people at the polls.  The TEA Party does.  Our plan is to work every one of them or at least as many as we can.

BOB called on EULA PARKIN.  EULA said she was not going to talk about Muslims this week.  She was going to talk about the owls.  She had bought copies of booklets and wanted to read a couple of clips from them.  If you are interested in the book, it costs $1.00, however, if you want to give more than $1.00 it will be appreciated.  On page 29, “the organizers for OWS worked hard to portray their movement as being composed of people who live next door to you and have been financially blindsided by the 1% who allegedly control America.  But New York magazine revealed a very different reality in a story published on October 2, 2011.  A poll it conducted with 100 protestors in Manhatten disclosed that half were in their 20’s and 35% were of the opinion that the US government is no better than Al Quida.  While 45% said Capitalism can’t be saved and is apparently immoral.  Another survey of 200 OWS protestors 65% said the government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education and a secure retirement regardless of the cost.  77% supported tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans…52% had participated in political movements before…98% endorsed breaking the law to achieve their goals….and 31% said they would support violence to promote their agenda.  Doug Shown(?) the Democratic pollster whose firm conducted the survey concluded that the OWS activists hold values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people and are bound by a big commitment to radical left wing policies.”  She then read from the last two pages of the book:  Barbarism vs. Civilization.  As a way of normalizing Occupy Wall Street, it’s supporters have tried to suggest that it is the opposite side of the coin to the TEA Party demonstrations.  President Obama has helped to propagate this view of observing that ‘in some ways the OWS demonstrations are not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the TEA Party.  According to Vice President Joe Biden, OWS and the TEA Party have a lot in common, since they both think the system is not fair.  But the TEA Party demonstrations resulted almost no arrests in contrast to the 4,800 that took place in the first two months of OWS and the TEA Party had no rapes, no deaths, no defecations and no $13 million dollar bill for police overtime and cleanup afterward.  The OWS can be said to be the opposite side of the coin to the TEA Party only in the sense that barbarism is the opposite side of the coin to civilization.  She bought 25 copies of the book and if you would like a copy just drop your dollar or whatever you wish to donate in the jar and pick up a copy.  One more thing, EULA asked, how many of you shop at Food Lion and use your card for discounts?  If you get on the internet, www.foodlioncentralnorthcarolina.orgdonate and enter the number on your card.  A portion of whatever you buy goes to the food bank of central and eastern North Carolina.  There are 500,000 people in this area that need help.  All you have to do is go to this web site and sign in with your card number (the number between the 0‘s) .

BOB turned the rest of the meeting over to ERIC (and my recorder  left with the group going to Beaufort to the Court House.  Thus the minutes end here.  Will have to talk to ERIC to find out what happened after we left.)

Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MINUTES OF
7 February 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:08pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by NANCY BOCK
Invocation by EULA PARKIN

BOB told the group about CATIE MCCABE’s event last Saturday night at Glad Tidings Church.  Reminded us that she had given us a presentation last week about the program she is interested in on sex trafficking/sex slave market.  He went to her presentation Saturday night and he said it blew him away.  The poor girl that got up there telling her story, (first time she had told it before an audience, and needed to do so because she is going to have to testify in court and needs the experience exposing the life she had been forced into), talk about heartbreaking, WOW!  BOB said if she had gone on about 2 more seconds he would probably have gotten up and gone on stage and hugged her.  Talk about being alone up there, WOW!  It was so obvious that her self esteem had been completely destroyed and she was fighting hard to get it back.   BOB said he was going to try to stay involved and would like to be kept informed of any more things like that coming up.  It really touched a cord with him.

BOB reminded everyone that we had our donation bucket here tonight (as opposed to having the 50/50 raffle).  People had already started throwing money in there so we will go that route.  Please help with whatever you can.  The Western Carteret group is having their meeting tonight so KEN and DIANE LANG, and ROMA and EDITH WADE are probably there.  He said he would be joining them after our meeting concludes.

BOB called on NANCY BOCK for our Treasurer’s report.  She said we have $1,164.00 and that KEN said that at their last meeting (Western group) they collected $162.00 but she hasn’t gotten that yet.

BOB asked HARRY THOMPSON if he had an update on the John Locke presentation.  HARRY said everything was a go for the workshop to be held on Saturday, March 17th in the Joslyn Hall at the Community College again this year.  You go on line to register (this is the address I used)
(http://johnlocke.org/events/event.html?id=966) and cost is $5.00 per person to help cover the cost of the room.  HARRY said he had written a letter to the editor Friday or Saturday, right after he had received the email from John Locke’s people about it being all set up to go.  Hopefully, it will be in tomorrow’s paper and will contain the website to use for registering.  It will be from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon with a lunch break like we did last year.  He is looking forward to it and thinks it will be another good informative session; if we can just get the word out.  We need at least 50 people to attend to help take care of the expenses.  However, all the more, the better.  It is a good presentation and he thinks everybody will enjoy it.  SCOTT CARPENTER wanted to know what the purpose of the workshop was.  HARRY said this was the second part of the workshop we held last year on the Constitution.  This will be on the original intent of the Federalist Papers, and what would our forefathers think about what is going on today.  TOM AUSTIN wanted to know if we had sent word to Beaufort County about this workshop because they had a lot of people come down here last year from their area.  BOB said he would send them an email with the details.  HARRY said we do need to get the word out, with the registration address.  STEVE BEST said he did not have computer access to register.  PEGGY GARNER said she felt sure that they would have someone available so he could pay at the door.  HOWARD said he thought he had seen a letter to the editor recently from HARRY.  He wasn’t sure whether he had seen it in the News Times or the Jacksonville paper.  HARRY said he had sent the letter to both, plus the Tideland News and New Bern paper also, he thought.  He also thought it would be good if everyone else would write a letter to the editor and plug the event. SUSAN RYNAS wanted to know about putting in on the public library site.   Don’t they have something there?  HARRY said if that were so, it would be good to have something like a notice there.  NANCY said she would put it in the ‘Community Events’ in the News Times.  Discussion on current events and the constitution.  Just what is going on right now should encourage people to come and listen and learn.

BOB introduced the new faces in the crowd:  ROSANNE THOMPSON,  Precinct Chair for Salter Path and Indian Beach.  (BOB jokingly said ERNIE GUTHRIE was going to be her Vice Chair…in charge of all the vice.)  Speaking of all the precinct chair positions, the Republican Party, is having precinct meetings this Saturday.  You need to go to wherever your precinct has their meeting and get involved so you can get on phone committees and help get the campaign going and get out the vote.  LYN BAKER said they were supposed to have sent her the registration lists but she had not gotten them yet.  BOB wanted to know who was supposed to have sent them.  LYN said JUDY WILGUS.  FRED DECKER wanted to know which precinct LYN was in.  She said North River.  She was asked if she was the chairman there and she said no, she was a judge.  She was asked where they voted and she said East Carteret High School.  Discussion on what comprised the North River Precinct with everyone talking at once.  BOB asked FRED if he had anything else he wanted to add about the Precinct meetings this Saturday.  Someone said it and the locations should have been posted in the county paper; and several said it had been. SCOTT CARPENTER said he was Precinct Chairman for the Wildwood/Brandy-wine Precinct area (where 24 and 70 link up, goes up to Hibbs Road and loops around back to start) and their meeting would be held right here at the Golden Corral.  They need some help.  Wanted to know if anyone here at the meeting lives in that loop he had just described.  VERNE THOMPSON said he did and would be glad to help out making calls or whatever was needed.  SCOTT said he would get up with him tomorrow and discuss it with him.  He just wanted to let everybody know it was his pleasure to have been asked to be the chair and with RUTH PARKER, being the Vice and helping him out, they had a good start to the team right here tonight.  Do need more battle buddies to help out if you know of anyone interested.  ROSANNE said if anyone knew of anyone interested in helping with the Salter Path/Indian Beach area to please let her know also.  FRED said BILL HODGE is having problems down there in District 2 of Newport.  He is having to work and just got custody of his 12 year old grandson.  It is just he and the boy and he is not being able to get away to work the precinct.  He had called on FRED to help him out.  FRED had told him he would try to get him some help here tonight, thinking of BELVA and RON MANNING, but they are not here tonight, nor is LUKE KUKULINSKI and his wife.  FRED said young people need to get involved, since they are the ones that are going to be paying all this money back, so they need to come to the meetings and see what they can do to help.  He also invited HOWARD and PEGGY and HOWARD said they were not registered Republican, but Unaffiliated.  FRED said he understood that, but he would like for us to attend if we could.  HOWARD said he didn’t want them to think, if we went, that we were going as spies.  FRED laughed and said he wasn’t worried about that.  He said he didn’t say anything that he didn’t want anyone to hear, so he wasn’t concerned about spies.  The meeting for Newport Precincts is Saturday at 10:00 am at the Town Hall.

BOB also recognized GLADYS and ED SUESSLE.  GLADYS said they were from New York, but they have a home in Beaufort; actually South River, really.  BOB asked if they were just down for the week, or have they moved here.  She said their plans are to eventually move here but right now they are only here until April.  But…if there is anything they can do to help while they are here, just call on them.  GLADYS asked PEGGY, Secretary, to please put her name on our email listing.

BOB called on EULA PARKIN for her ‘J’had Watch’.  She said a long time ago she had told us about the situation with the Muslims and it all started here in North Carolina in July 2009.  This was the wife of the man that was arrested.  (showed picture of Muslim woman whose eyes were all that you could see).  Her husband was 39 years old, had 2 sons and 4 others who were called J/hadies.  They lived in a rural area south of Raleigh. They were all US citizens.  He decided to take his sons and recruit them as war activists.  At the time of the arrests in 2009, the boys were between the ages of 21 to 24.  They had been being indoctrinated since 9-11 when they were only around 9 to 12 years old.  It is hard for her to think that this man was the only J/hadi instructor in our country…just the only one yet to be discovered.  He must have stuck out like a sore thumb for things he did over the years of preparing them.  They had purchased several hundred rounds of ammunition.  You would think that would have gotten someone’s attention.  When discovered they were charged with a J’hadi plot and a NC jury found them guilty of conspiring to provide support to Islamists military in foreign countries.  They were convicted and the terrorist mom, who’s picture she had shown, shouted out ’Prosecutors were racist vultures’.  Finally in January 2012, they received 15 to 45 years in prison for ’misunderstanding Islam’.  She asked did anyone know what happened after being sentence to prison.  They started recruiting someone to behead those who had testified against them.  This woman, the terrorist mom, actually came forward with money, over $4,000.00, went all the way to Wilmington, to meet this guy, which turned out to be a con man, but he took the $4,000.00.  So now this North Carolinian has been accused of trying to behead the witnesses and it turns out that several people were involved and one was a school teacher, so EULA thinks her career is probably ended.  It is pretty amazing to her that this person is in prison and still getting people to go out and get people to kill the witnesses.  He told them to be sure and keep the heads, because he wanted to make sure they had done as told and had the right people.  The NC Muslim is to stand trial as the hit man.  HOWARD said he believed that trial was held in New Bern.  EULA said yes, and she would have gone if she had known about it.  BOB wanted to know if anyone was in jail and she said not yet as far as she knew.  This all started In 2009 and is not over with yet.

HOWARD said he read an interesting article this week about Grover Norquist.  Did you all know his wife is Muslim.  That is kind of shocking.

EULA said the more she reads about Jimmy Carter (laughter).  There is a conspiracy there and Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State is right in the middle of it.  He (Jimmy) comes out in January and says he thinks the US should support Islamic world in Egypt.  EULA is surprised he doesn’t want it right here in America.

PEGGY asked that those in attendance, please only one talk at a time.  When she is playing back the recording for the minutes, and everyone is talking at once, it is impossible to understand what is being said.  It comes in as a big roar.  She would appreciate those who wished to talk to please wait their turn.  Thank you.

HOWARD reminded BOB about the Republican Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday Night at the Senior Center.

BOB called on DENNIS TOMASO for an update on our business cards.  He said the guy making them had been sick but would have them ready for us next week.  BOB said we are getting 1,000 cards for $60.00.  That is the double sided cards.  DENNIS said once he adds his charge of another $40.00, the price will run a little higher.  Much joking followed.

BOB asked SCOTT CARPENTER if he was going to run for Board of Education.  He said he was tied up with being Precinct Chairman right now.  BOB told him he needed to learn to multi-task.

TOM AUSTIN asked if anything had been said among the TEA Party groups about being down in Charlotte during the Democrat Convention.  Are we going to try to get hold of a couple of hundred motel rooms and have some buses or vans so we can go down there and march and protest. He said he would take a week off but he didn’t want to go by himself, because he would look kind of funny.  RUTH PARKER said she thought we should just take a tent, no soap, no shampoos, don’t get a permit, just occupy Charlotte.  Discussed the police finally going in and breaking up the OWS gang there.  HOWARD said he thought he had read that the Charlotte City Council has enacted a lot of new rules to try to prevent the protest groups being there during the Democrat convention.  He suspects it might be real easy to get locked up during that time especially.  BOB said he thought after the Chicago ‘67 convention they really lock down these political conventions now to keep the crowds out.  TOM said he had in mind just walking around out side carrying signs maybe single file or double file around the block, not mob action. Someone said then they would probably consider it a parade and we would need a permit   TOM said then you say, I don’t know this guy next to me, he just showed up.  He asked BOB if it had been brought up among the TEA party groups.  BOB said there had been some talk about it but nothing has gotten any traction.  TOM said ‘then what did he need to do‘.  BOB said maybe start an email campaign.  TOM said he would kick it off and start locating hotels outside of Charlotte because in Charlotte, being the highly Democratic mob owned, hotels are already booked.  BOB wanted to know how much the bus seats were going to be.  TOM said he didn’t know right now.  We may decided to go in vans, rather that buses.  They would work better transporting the people from hotels/motels to the convention center.  We could probably stick 16 people in a van.  BOB asked TOM what he was going to call his event, the TOM AUSTIN Road Show?  TOM said, maybe the ‘Let’s Get Arrested TEA Party Show’.  BOB recognized STEVE BEST, who asked what happened in ‘67, that he wasn’t born yet then.  BOB said there was a lot of rioting at the Democrat convention.  Pandemonium type rioting.  LYN said it was their people doing it too.  Several got arrested and there was a big long drawn out trial, monkey show.  One of those guys married Jane Fonda (Tom Hayden).  TOM said, Daley’s police went in and started beating the crap out of the protestors. Then the hippies decided that non-violence is not the way after all and they started going back after the cops; and the cops brought in reinforcements and while they were having the Democratic convention inside they were having massive fights outside in the streets…tear gas, clubs.  Discussion as to who was running in that election.  Decided it was McGovern.  BOB said, remember he wanted us to be on our knees and apologize to the North Vietnamese.  He wanted to give every taxpayer $3,000 refund, a lot of stupid stuff.

BOB then called on STEVE to report on when he planned to have his movies shown.  STEVE said we were supposed to vote on it tonight.  BOB asked what did he have coming up this weekend.  (The Republican primary meetings are this Saturday.)  STEVE said he had scheduled the move “C me dance’ on the 25th .  He said he had watched it and thought it was one of the most powerful movies he had ever seen.

HOWARD said he had received newsletter from the Civitas Capital Connection and they put on a workshop ‘A Free Market Academy‘ (he had given it to HARRY  to check in it to see what is involved.)  He is thinking maybe we can have it here, maybe even in the fall at the Community College.  HARRY is going to get the details on it and report back to us.  HOWARD said he thought it sounded interesting.

RUTH PARKER wanted to know what was the latest on the March 24th deal to Washington?  BOB said no further news.  He wanted to know if anyone had any friends or knew of anyone connected to the Americans for Prosperity.  If they are involved, maybe we will be able to get $25.00 bus seats and go with them.  RUTH wanted to know if we could call Lockwood and ask him.  BOB said if they are involved then there should be something on their web site.  NANCY said she did not see anything on their website.  RUTH asked if anyone said anything on the webcam last night.  BOB said it didn’t come up.  He said they were working on some kind of position paper on Agenda 21.  They have been talking about that for quite a while and February 20th there is a presentation in Kinston on Agenda 21 that he is going to.  TOM said he had been out of the loop for a while, what was Agenda 21?  BOB jokingly said if we told him, we would have to kill him; so TOM said, then just email him so he could hide.  BOB recommended TOM do a Google on Agenda 21.  BOB said we have an Agenda 21 chairperson, STEVE, who opened his case and drew out a massive stack of papers— a little light reading for TOM.  Discussion among the group on Agenda 21.  BOB said the long and short Agenda 21 stems from the Kyoto  Accords.  It is an environmental movement to save the planet with controlled development.  If you look at the videos out, it is setting aside lands and trying to force humans to live on smaller chunks of real estate.  He said he understood there were 21 wilderness areas scattered around the country, and they plan to interconnect all those with the National Forests and State Forests, and then put in green belts around them enabling the animals to be able to move back and forth.  In order to do this they are going to have to confiscate property and put limitations on the use of real estate and basically just allow smaller and smaller land areas that humans can have freedom of movement on.  He thinks this 100 year sea rise thing that NC is involved with is a part of it also.  The way this is going to come about is going to be little bits and pieces with environmental groups, that eventually over time we will build our own prison.  RUTH said a man on TV last night said each state would have to give up one half of the land in their state in order to connect these areas designated; and that boards will be appointed, not elected by the people, and they will tell you where you can live and where the animals can live.  TOM wanted to know who was pulling for this in the US.  BOB said many various groups, but they are not really aware of all the consequences of this program, like the UN is just supplying the money.  Anyway, February 20th is a meeting in Kinston where you can learn more about it in detail.  What he has been spouting off is from articles he has read on the subject.  HOWARD said there is a lot of these county, city and state planning boards involved in this and if you start seeing things about ‘sustainability’ (there are certain code words you need to watch for) ie ‘central planning‘, etc.  Raleigh’s city planners are very much into it, trying to get everybody living downtown in high rises but someone checked to see where the head man of the board lives.   He lives outside of town on a many acre lot.  BOB said the whole idea of an American citizen buying a half acre of land to live on is considered not wise use of the land.  You don’t need that much land.  TOM said a lot of gardens around here are that big.  BOB said the folks running this program, what they are trying to do—remember back in the 60’s the old projects they built, the great big high rise things.  They want to bring that back for just general habitation.  They call it Stack ‘em and Pack ‘em.  When he saw all those condos going up on Hwy 70 in and around Newport, man, the first thing he thought of was stack ‘em and pack ‘em.  MARIAN MERRILL said she heard they cost $900.00 a month.  Most said they thought that was cheap.  Someone else said they thought they were  a lot more than that.  MARIAN said she didn’t even get enough to pay the $900.  More discussion on Agenda 21 with input from the attendees.  ROSANNE THOMPSON said she thought that if the deer ate the turtles or the turtles ate the deer (on Emerald Isle) we would all be much better off.  Discussion on shooting the deer followed.  BOB said they were shooting the deer because the deer were trampling the turtle nests.  Actually there are too many deer on the island, for the island to support.  Deer are going hungry, eating things they shouldn’t, getting sick, etc.  BOB said the last time Frank Palombo was here, they left this meeting and drove down to Rucker John’s on Emerald Isle to catch the other meeting there and when he came off the big bridge there by Cape Carteret, making that round turn, a deer shot across the road right in front of him and he had to jerk the wheel back and forth to miss him.  Discussion followed on regulations to follow upon hitting a deer on the highway.  BOB said the sad thing about the animals getting hit —the ones that get killed are the lucky ones.  The ones to pity are those that just get mangled and  either crawl off and die a slow death or are unable to pull themselves off the highway and keep getting hit.  He told about seeing a deer that had been hit one morning on his way to work.  He said it appeared that its legs were broken and was on his back with his injured legs in the air thrashing around.  This was before cell phones, and he had no way of notifying authorities to come take care of it and he had to get to work or get fired.  It would have been dangerous for him, alone, to try to get the animal off the road.  He hoped some cops or someone with help, stopped and helped that poor animal, or even some red neck came by and shot him and put him out of his misery.  He said he worried about that deer all day long and still thinks about what happened to it to this day.  This past summer there was a deer laying on the 9 mile road outside of Newport and people were just riding around it and not paying any attention.  He stopped and picked it up (it was a fawn, still had little white spots on him).  He was all busted up (his legs and hips).  He took him to the Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter, gave them $50.00 and said if they could fix him, fine, otherwise put him down.  That is why we do need hunting to try to control the population because with all the development going on there is just less habitat for animals to roam.  Around Raleigh, as well as other areas, they are stripping off the land and building hundreds of homes.  They then landscape with non-native shrubbery and the deer eat that too.  HARRY said Agenda 21 will take care of that.

HARRY asked us to remember coming up in the May primary there will be a referendum for the Defense of Marriage Act on the ballot, an amendment to the constitution.  It will be good if you will keep that in mind and spread the word and make sure everyone in your churches and neighborhoods know about it and get out there and vote.  SUSAN said she guessed we had heard that out in California they had voted for that also, but the 9th District Court said it was unconstitutional.  It doesn’t seem fair that one man can undo what thousands of voters had voted for.

FRED said on the primaries coming up the parties do not work the primaries, so if we would work the polls during the primary, it would be a big help.  We (the TEA party people) need to be at all the polls and encourage the voters to do the right thing.  We need people outside the polls, passing out information.

HARRY said the other thing he wanted to mention— Queen Perdue has decide she is not going to try to reign another four years (cheers and clapping), the bad news is Bob Etheridge is now going to try to take her place.  It might not be a bad idea to think about this for the primary also —change your affiliation from Republican to Independent so that then you can vote either way (Republican or Democrat) in the primary.  He and his wife did that in 2009 (changed to Independent) and he got to vote for Hilary against Barrack Obama and he was hoping others would do that too.  This is why he was thinking it would be good the more people we could get of our political leanings to register as Independents and then get in there and vote somebody besides Bob Etheridge for governor.  TOM asked “Etheridge; was he the one that slammed that kid up”.  Several yeses in response.  TOM said all they have to do is show that and there is no way he can win.  He also wanted to know if the TEA Party was going to sit down at the primary (both Democrat and Republican) voting places with a list of their best choices.  Rather than just hitting the Republican, are we going to hit the Democrat primary also.  Are we going to say that these are the best choices?  BOB said he hadn’t even thought about the Democrat primary.  TOM said he was thinking like what we did with the judges, where we had come up with a ‘conservative’ list of judges and we did have some Democrat judges on that list he thought.  BOB said that was the main election, not the primary.  TOM said true, but if we affect the primaries we have a better chance.  HOWARD said TOM wasn’t here a few weeks ago but as he brought out ‘for years in Carteret County, whoever won the Democratic primary was going to get elected in the fall.  Well, things have changed, so now whoever wins the Republican primary in the spring is apparently the one going to get elected in the fall.  His suggestion was that we need to consider putting out a recommended list in the Republican primary if there are several running and work for those we  think would be the best for our ideals.  TOM said he still thought we should be doing it for both parties.  He said he was an Independent and was probably more conservative than most Republicans are, but if a Democrat gets elected, GOD forbid, at least it would be the best choice of the Democrats or at least the lesser of the evils.  HOWARD said he refers to that as negative voting, which he does quite frequently.  BOB said the problem for us is trying to vet so many candidates in the primary process.  Right now we don’t even know who is filing/running until the end of the month.  There could be 20 people running for an office so how are we going to get around to so many to vet.  We can’t.  TOM said the former mayor of Charlotte is going to be running for governor; is anyone else running on the Republican ticket.  BOB said he didn’t think McCory would be challenged by another Republican.  Greg Lewis, county commissioner, who came in late, said there would be a contested governor’s race on the Republican side.  All indications for the last six months there is a gentleman from the western part of the state who, according to his opinion, has no shot in h—, but he is continuing, so far, to state that he is going to enter his name.  Greg did not answer when asked who.

FRED said we need to replace some members on the school board.  He said he had talked to Bob Hardin, who was an investment banker for Merrill Lynch, and they have changed his commission to having to make over $250,000.  It used to be $50,000 to $200,000 and he said he could not continue on that job because he would be working for nothing.  So he got another job and he is in charge of six different financial institutions between Morehead and Kill Devils Hill and he said he would be gone a lot and he could not do the job required of a school board member.  FRED said he did not know anybody else from Newport.  BOB said that’s the biggest problem, finding people who have the time to run and serve.

BOB introduced our latest attendee, Greg Lewis, Republican Party Chairman for Carteret County and one of our County Commissioners.  (Applause)  Mr. Lewis apologized for being late.  They had had an all day meeting (and he was a firm believer that if it takes a 4 hour meeting, then you are not accomplishing anything.)  He said BOB has been asking him to come out and he has been busy getting ready for elections for the last two weeks, and after getting home tonight from the long meeting he was sitting reading the paper when he realized it was Tuesday night.  He said if he thought he was too busy now, what was it going to be a little more down the road, so he decided to show up tonight, even if he was late.  BOB asked if there was anything going on in the county he wanted to share with us, or if there was anything we could help him with, or anything else we need to know about.  Mr. Lewis said not at this time.

DENNIS TOMASO said Hillsdale College has something going on about the constitution also.  He didn’t know if everyone was aware of that—-on the web.  He is not sure exactly when it starts, but it is running something each month.  HOWARD said he thought it was on the 20th.  They are pretty good about sharing stuff and if you miss something you can go on line and get it.  Second thing he wanted to mention was — were we aware that Senator Burr voted against the Insider Trading bill.  Several said they saw the email today.  BOB said he guessed Burr had some investments he wanted to look out for.  DENNIS said Burr said they were wasting their time talking about this since they had insider traders all over the place, so he voted against it.  That sucker doesn’t deserve to be there.  He really doesn’t.  TOM said but he is still safe for the next few years.  DENNIS said true, but he needs to go as soon as we can get rid of him.  RUTH PARKER said Senator Coburn said they already had rules against insider trading.  That is the problem – they don’t enforce what they pass.  BOB said true, they had rules against what Bernie Madeoff was doing, but it didn’t stop him – nobody is enforcing them.  RUTH said nobody is watching the store.

BOB recognized STEVE BEST.  STEVE said he would be showing ‘C Me Dance’ (a Christian movie) on Saturday, February 25 at 4:00pm.  He has converted his garage into a movie theater with seating for 45 and would love to have everyone come and see this impressive movie.  BOB said STEVE had gotten two more movies just for the TEA Party,  ‘Agenda 210 and Iranium’.  KEN LANG has watched them both and said they both are really good and we would be interested in watching them.  It boils down to when we want to watch them.  It probably will have to be on a Saturday, since most folks work.  This Saturday is tied up with Republican Precinct Meetings plus the Republican Dinner, so that day is pretty much tied up.  So that leaves the 18th of this month available.  Decision was made to show those movies on the 18th at 3:00pm.
GLADYS wanted to know if it would be alright if we made it a pot luck dinner ’party’.  STEVE said he thought that would be nice.  ANYONE WISHING TO ATTEND THE MOVIE AT STEVE’S ON THE 18TH  THAT WOULD LIKE TO BRING SOMETHING TO EAT, PLEASE DO SO.  GREAT TIME FOR A GET TOGETHER PARTY and bring your friends!!!!!!  He said he does have a fire place, but he is running out of wood, so if you would like to have a fire, bring your own wood and you can sit by the fire until your log is gone and then you have to give your seat up to the next log bringer.
To get to STEVE’s from Morehead:  go pass the stop light by First Citizens Bank and Food Lion, take the next paved right…. Then an immediate left at the “Y”.  His home is the first trailer on the left.  SEE YOU THERE!!!!

BOB said he had forgotten to get a ticket for the Republican Dinner Saturday night.  Greg Lewis informed him they were completely sold out to seating capacity.  Fire marshal will not let anybody else in the building.

FRED said we all knew Terry Frank is running in Morehead, who do we have running over in Beaufort for Doug Harris and Pat Joyce’s seats.  Mr. Lewis said filing doesn’t start until this Monday and right now he doesn’t know who has announced they are running yet or not.  But we will have a full complement of candidates and we will probably have some primaries in several races.  Hold off a couple of days and that information will be forthcoming.  BOB asked what was the county website.  Mr. Lewis said to Google ‘Carteret County Republican Party.org‘.   FRED said, if you have given your email address to the TEA Party, they email out just about everything they get.  If you haven’t and would like to be included in our listing, then please include your email address on the check in sheet you signed when you arrived tonight.  BOB said you could sign up on the Republican Party web site also.

Meeting adjourned at 7:14pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
Meeting of
31 January 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:08pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by DIANE LANG
Invocation by HARRY THOMPSON

BOB introduced the new faces….BARBARA RAWLS (who had attended a meetings in the past.  She said there hadn’t been very many people at the meeting that night.)
He then introduced DON HOLLISTER.  He said he and Don go all the way back to the very beginnings of his career in the Marine Corps.  Neither was 21 yet when they met.  They spent a good part of their time trying to find ways to skate out of work.  He welcomed both and said he hoped to see both of them on a regular basis.

He welcomed WAYNE WILLIS back (from exile or wherever he had been)  /WAYNE said he had had to hire a body guard, and Santa Claus (CLAYTON GILLIKIN) qualified.  He said he was glad to be there tonight though.

BOB said there was a little news on the local coordinator’s internet call last night.  Tea Party Patriots is organizing a DC rally on March 24th.  It will be on the East Lawn of the Capitol Building, directly across the street from the Supreme Court.  They are still lining up speakers.  He wanted to know if we wanted to participate in this, if so then we need to organize a bus to take folks up there.  More that half those in attendance raised their hands as interested in going.  Question was raised if we knew anything for sure yet.  BOB said it was still all in the planning stage, but he would let us know more as it became available and they started publishing the speakers.  LOU KUKULINSI wanted to know if we were to take the tar and pitchforks.  BOB said if you like, but you can’t take them over to the Supreme Court, though.  If you want to go and stand in front of the Supreme Court you can not have any yelling or shouting, no cheers; you can have some signs and that is it.  KEN wanted to know if we could bring our tents, like the OWS crew did.  They were more welcome than we have been.  ERIC said that’s good “TEA PARTY OCCUPIES”. Good slogan.  KEN said the Occupy group in DC was ordered out a couple of days ago, but are still there.  The Park Service said they were going to take a measured approach.  Which means they are not going to do anything.  LOU said ‘Speaking about tar and feathers, did you all see what Allen West said about Pelosi and Harry?’  He thought he would send West a couple of hundred bucks just for kicks.  KEN said ‘it really ticked Bob Beckle off.’  BOB said if we are going to DC, then he thinks the smallest bus we can get is 45 seats.  He will talk to the gal we normally deal with try to get that locked in…get us a price.  Need to maybe check with Americans for Prosperity to see if they are providing buses for $25.00 a seat again, which would be great.  WAYNE wanted to know if it would be over night.  BOB said the rally starts at noon and normally lasts until 2 or 3.  WAYNE wanted to know if it would be on a Saturday and BOB said yes.  BOB said there will be events all week up to Saturday, so if anyone wants to go up there and spend a week and take in all the events.  They are going to have different training seminars and training sessions, and they are going to block off a set of rooms and the Hyatt Regency right there in down town DC.  WAYNE asked if that would be within walking distance of where we want to be.  BOB said it was a little more expensive and then they hoped to get something out around Arlington a little cheaper for folks who can not afford down town DC hotels.  WAYNE asked if the bus would put us out right where the rally was and BOB said yes and pick us up right where he put us off.  BOB said ‘if you haven’t been on one of our bus trips before, he thinks they are a lot of fun.’  A lot of discussion followed.
BOB advised that you not take the seat next to the restroom as he had had to do last time. They cut the air conditioner off, because the driven was cold, and his seat was right over the heater and engine. He said it was miserable. Someone said we might bring a sweater for the bus driver.

BOB said, as you all know several county commissioners are not going to run for re-election.  He said he had entertained the idea of his running for Holt Faircloth’s seat, so he had called him today and Holt told him that Terry Frank (of Frank’s Doors in Newport) is planning to run and Holt gave him a solid endorsement; so BOB said there was no since in the two of them burning up money against each other.  If Frank is a good man in Holt’s opinion, it was good enough for him.  BOB went over and introduced himself to Frank in his office and told him about us (the TEA Party) and invited him to come down some Tuesday and introduce himself and let us throw some questions at him.  He said tonight is out, he had business things to take care of, but he wrote the time and dates of our meetings.  BOB said on the way to our meeting tonight Pam Hansom called him and started lobbying him about Terry Franks.  He told her not to worry, he had already talked to him and Holt.  Anyway, she said he was a very early supporter of hers and she thought he was a real stand up guy and very conservative.  BOB said he had seen him at some the Republican men’s club meeting occasionally.  HOWARD GARNER said there was another potential candidate that he had heard of.  BOB asked if he was talking about Larry Land?  HOWARD said yes.  BOB then recognized KEN LANG, since he had a whole list of possible candidates that he has been networking and trying to get information out of people.
KEN said some of these people, the names are kind of being thrown out, so he was not even sure if they were really interested, and some he didn’t even know who they are, nor whose seat they would be running for.  BOB said if anyone knows any of the people he mentions, please speak up.  He said Larry Land and Terry Frank were on his list for Holt’s seat.  BOB said Pam told him that Larry Land was a Republican of convenience.  KEN said that was kind of what he heard also.  However, we still may want to vet him.  Doug Harris’ seat, the name Jimmy Farrington’s name was thrown out.   Jimmy lives on Emerald Isle.  He runs Yard Works.  KEN said he knew him and he was a hard worker.  His mother is Beth Stone.  Both she and her husband are very active in the Republican party and they have been to some TEA party meetings.  In fact they were here this winter (early) at one of our meetings here.  She has not been as active lately because she had some heart surgery, but he thinks she is coming back.  BOB said he had known Jimmy about 20 years and he is a hard worker.  He does not know what his politics are.  KEN said he is a young man, conservative, can vouch that he is a hard worker.  He has built a company that has been around now for roughly 15 years or so (BOB said he thought more than 20 years because he and Brian Watson, who started Carolina Gardens, and they split up.  BOB said he knew because they had asked him to take care of the Surf Shop and he had encouraged them to start their own business and they did.)  Several people spoke up as knowing Jimmy and all spoke favorable.  KEN said he would work with Jimmy and try to get him to come in and talk with us also.  KEN said another name that he doesn’t know is Randy Ramsey.  ROMA WADE said he was the owner of Jarrett Bay Boat Works.  WAYNE said, Actually his daddy is.  His daddy is where the money comes from.  Roma said, It doesn’t make any difference, the Ramsey family is where the money comes from.  KEN wanted to know who’s seat would he run for.  Would that be Pat’s seat?  HOWARD said he thought it would be Doug Harris’ seat the way he understood that district went, but then again maybe it would be Pat’s seat.  Discussion on areas of Districts.  KEN said he didn’t what those districts looked like.   BOB said he did and gave the boundaries as he understood them.  HOWARD wanted to know if anyone knew where Randy Ramsey lived. HOWARD said when the Ramsey family first came here they lived on Harkers Island.  WAYNE said his daddy still lives on Harkers Island. He continued with a short history of the Ramsey family since they came to this area.  HOWARD asked where the money came from for the business since he had known Cab (Randy’s daddy) since the 60’s and he had gone bankrupt prior to coming to Carteret County.  KEN said the question he would have is what their politics are.  He also brought up that we have three Board of Education members up for re-election.  He did not have any name for those other than we have talked about previously.  He was kind of hoping that Scott Carpenter would be here tonight so we could continue to encourage him to run for one of those.  We do need to talk to him some more about running.  FRED DECKER said he was trying to get Bob Harden to run.  He is an investment banker for Merrill Lynch.  His office is in the Bank of America.  KEN said FRED had told us that last time, so has he (Fred) made any progress yet?  FRED said he would do it tomorrow.  KEN said ‘don’t let it slip too long because he has to file and his filing date is the 13th.  Not quite  two weeks.  LOU said he knew someone who was running for Pat Joyce’s seat …Randy Feagle. HOWARD said he works for the school system.  LOU said yeah, he’s a teacher out there at East Carteret High School.  KEN asked, Can’t he run for County Commissioner if he is a teacher?  HOWARD said he was just scared of him because he was connected too close to the Board of Education.  KEN said just because he works there doesn’t mean he isn’t a conservative.  LOU said all the principles around there hate him, so he must be a good guy.  PEGGY said she lived almost next door to and  went to school with his mother and she hopes he has changed since he was a kid.  LOU said he had retired as a Lt Col in the National Guard.  HOWARD said his mother and step-father used to run Walston’s Hardware in Cape Carteret.  CLAYTON asked how old is this lad.  LOU said he thought about 52 or 53, somewhere around that.  KEN said 20 years in the military will change you a little bit.  KEN said he would recommend anyone here that knows potential candidates to go talk to them and if they express and interest then we can broaden that out and talk a little bit more and see if there is someone we can recommend.  BOB said if we found anyone interested to invite them to come out and talk to us.  KEN said we need to replace the three people who are up for re-election on the BOE.  FRED said he had talked to Judy Wilgus about Scott being precinct chairman of Wildwood.  Since then he has asked him to run for School Board.  He is President of the Home Owners Assoc.  and a few other things over there in Brandywine.  Judy had called Scott back about being Precinct Chairman so he was going to take that.  FRED asked Judy what was more important Precinct Chairman or School Board.  She said School Board.  KEN said he agreed and was hoping Scott would be here tonight so we could talk to him about running.  There was some discussion on Linwood who lives on Hwy 101 running first for Pat Joyce’s seat and then for BOE.

BOB said he guessed we had all seen in the newspaper where the School Board is asking for more money…4.5 million dollars for construction/maintenance.  KEN said every week they have a little article where they are asking for money for something else.  They needed more money for bus drivers about 2 weeks ago.  They blamed the County Commissioners for that.  They said the County Commissioners didn’t give them enough money and they had to lay off all these teachers aids.  BOB said he had put in a call to Dave M (?) Finance Budget guy for the school system and as of yet he has not returned his call.  HOWARD told BOB if he would back up a few years the schools got into real bad shape because they spent the maintenance money for something other than maintenance.  This is a theory of his, it is kind of hard to turn down money for new roofs and windows, etc; but he has a feeling that they think the Commissioners won’t turn them down for maintenance, and once they get their hands on it they will spend it like they please.  BOB said he had seen that the school board can submit a budget and the county, state and feds all send them money, and once they get it they can move those piles of money all around the dang place and then yell well we need money for this and money for that.  HOWARD said he feels that is what is going to happen to this maintenance money if they get it.  BOB said they play games with the school budget and anybody we vet for county commissioner we really need to hone in on the education department in the county and how the money is being spent.  We need somebody who knows something about budgets.  That is why this Terry Frank may be good because he runs a pretty good size organization, so he should know money and budgets.  KEN said he thought we need in the Board of Commissioners to do that, but we need people on the Board of Education who are willing to do that; at least to be able to look into the budget and understand where the money is being spent and whether or not it is being spent wisely; because right now we have a rubber stamp in the Board of Education.  The County Commissioners is actually doing the job that the BOE should be doing.  He knows the commissioners that he has talked to would love to have a BOE assume that responsibility and do their job.  They are not.  They are playing politics and just asking for more money.  Part of the conversations that he had on the County Commissioners also overlapped into the school board and he has been working a little bit with someone else to help him try to understand what is going on in the budget and it was suggested that he ask the school board for the last 3 years of their end of year reports.  So he did.  This dates back over a month or two now.  He got an email back that said that their end of year reports were on the web site.  So KEN went on the web site and found them and they are the comprehensive annual financial report.  That is the report that is put together by the independent auditors and they only have two years on there 2008/2009 and 2009/2010.  They do not have 2010/2011 on there yet.  They do not approve that audit report until February 7th. That is when they have a BOE meeting and have an extended public comment session during the BOE meeting, usually it is like 30 minutes.  He thinks they have either an hour or maybe an hour and a half allocated for public comments at this meeting.  Of course it is going to be swamped with C4 people,  BOB asked what would the public comment session be about if the budget is already over and done with.  KEN said they are planning the new budget.  After the meeting on the 7th, they should have the 2010/2011 budget ready to be posted on the web site.  Anyway, he down loaded the first two reports and sent them to someone to look at and he said that was not exactly what we need.  We need the school system end of year report, not the auditors.  That is where you are going to find the information you need.  So, KEN went back to the school board official he had spoken to before and said ‘don’t you have an internal end of year report that you guys prepare and that the auditors use.  They said yes we do but that is an internal document.  KEN asked why he could not get a copy, hasn’t the BOE approved that document.  They said ’Oh, no, we just send that internal document to the auditors and that is what they prepare their report from’.  KEN said ’you mean that you send a fiscal report of what you have done the last year and the BOE hadn’t even looked at it!’  He said ’yeah’ that is what we do.  KEN told him he couldn’t even imagine that.  So right now it appears our only option is to wait until this other auditor report comes out and see if we can analyze it.  The auditors report is very complicated.  It may not contain all the numbers that would have been on the internal report.  Anyway, Commissioner Comer is going to be meeting with the school board in about a week and they are going to discuss this issue of the budget and he told KEN to send him whatever information that he had and the conversations that he had had with the school board, which he has already done.  He is going to ask those questions at that meeting.  Also at that meeting they are going to propose to have an open meeting that will be attended by school board and commissioners and he asked KEN to ask TEA Party members, who were interested in the budget, to come to that meeting.  No date or time has been set yet.  His rationale was that from his experience we (the TEA Party) are more likely to ask questions that may not be asked by other people.  He wants to have some input from the TEA Party as well.  KEN told him there was no doubt in his mind there definitely would be some people from the TEA Party there.  He will let us know when the meeting is set up.  Hopefully, he will have some additional information from Commissioner Comer that he will be able to disseminate before the meeting.  This will be a separate meeting from the previously mentioned Feb 7th meeting.  As you know when you go to one of those meetings they are very tightly controlled.  You get up and say your piece and they really don’t address what you have to say.  Then they conduct their own meeting and you are not allowed to speak.  Commissioner Comer’s meeting is during the week sometime off anybody’s agenda.  He is not sure how they will announce this meeting but KEN knows he plans to have other people there. PAT NALITZ asked if the budget figures was available.  KEN said yes, you could get it off the web site.  Go to the BOE web site menu and on the side, go to finance, it will bring up a screen and the very last item on the bottom right are the two comprehensive end of year audit reports.  Does it show the line items.  KEN said yes, but it is an extremely hard report to work with and to print it out is several inches thick.  That is why we want the internal documents it should be a lot smaller and a lot easier to understand.  He is going to try to keep working on getting the internal report.  He asked Commissioner Comer to see if he could get it for us.  He does not see why we can not have that document.  BOB said at one of the last Commissioners meeting Commission Harris did a power point presentation about how the schools were getting more money each year than they claimed they were getting (utilizing the BOE’s own figures).  There were some ugly things said in the newspaper anonymously condemning Commissioner Harris.  To BOB it was one of the most transparent, where you could see where the problems are, and the things the commissioners have to deal with.  Wish we had more government like that where you can see what is really going on behind the scene and how they play games with the numbers.  PAT asked has it gotten this way because over the years they have not had anyone overlooking and demanding these budgets; so they have just gotten to the point that they say no one is asking or interested so why bother.  HOWARD said as far back as he can remember, and he has been here all his life, t
he board of education has been a rubber stamp to the Superintendent.  They did not make decisions, just said yes sir.  He also wanted to point out on that power point presentation by Commissioner Harris, the school superintendent stated to Comm. Harris that those figures he had used were all wrong.  So Comm. Harris says ‘you show us where we are wrong and we will correct them.’ Two months later, they had never carried the commissioners any new figures.  They publicly stated they were wrong and that they would provide the correct figures but they didn’t.  KEN said today Commissioner Comer told him they still haven’t received any corrected figures.  HOWARD said then it’s been about three months now, right.  KEN said yes.  His guess is and Comm. Comer agrees with him, that they have no intention of ever giving him any explanation on last year’s budget.  They are already moving on toward their ‘smoke and mirrors’ next year’s budget.  HOWARD said they think it is all forgotten.  KEN said yes, so they just ignored that and are moving on.  DENNIS said he hated to beat a dead horse, but who is in charge.  Doesn’t someone have the authority to make decisions and follow through.  KEN said it is convoluted, really.  He doesn’t know why it was set up this way, but as he understands it, it is the same in every county.  The state board of education and the local board are somewhat independent of the county; however, they receive money from the federal government, the state government and the local government, so basically what the county government did last year and maybe they have done it on occasion in previous years but last year they said ‘before they approved our local tax payer dollars for education, we want to see the federal dollars, the state dollars, and what you intend to spend our money on.  They tried to get to the bottom of how all that money was being spent.  Well the BOE kept changing the numbers.  They gave them at least four sets of budget numbers.  Partially they claimed because, well, they didn’t have as much information as needed from the state and so with Gov. Perdue threatening…you know they put blame all over the place.  Each set of numbers went up every time—by about 3 million dollars each time.  So from beginning to end they had an increase of about 12 million dollars.  At the beginning they asked for 3 million more than what they had put in their first budget.  At the end they were still asking for 3 million more even though they had gotten increases all along, but they never explained what that 3 million was going to be used for.  BOB said ‘save teachers jobs’.  KEN said that was one of the explanations.  Several comments about no one ever really got fired that they had heard about.  If they had they had gotten hired back.  Someone said we seem to be dancing around the same pole trying to get answers and we will continue to dance around
the same pole.  We control the county government, we control the state government don’t we.  Why can’t we seem to get anything done.  KEN said the only thing he could see to fix this for Carteret County is to elect some school board members who will work in concert with what the county commissioners want.  Right now they are stonewalled.  That is why it is so important to find people right now who will replace the three that are up for re-election.  Someone asked who approves the budget?  KEN said both the BOE and County Commissioners approve the budget, however, the real kicker behind this is the county commissioners can approve the budget and the day afterwards the BOE can change where that money is going to be spent.  But that isn’t the real problem.  The real problem is trying to understand what the budget being submitted to the county is in the first place.  The county was very adamant this last time that they had to be given certain information in order to understand the budget and it ended with the presentation that Commissioner Harris did where he showed a chart and said all your numbers do not add up.  Chairman of the BOE, Al Hill, said yes it does, you don’t have the right numbers and Harris said give me the right numbers and we will work together to figure it out and the BOE three months later has never given any numbers.  They basically ignored them.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said there is only one way for the County Commissioners to get the numbers they need, and that is when the time comes to give them the money, they not give them one red cent.  Then they will have to come up with what the Commissioners need.  BOB said you remember they withheld $500,000.00 pending the school board providing some sort of quarterly statement and the quarter wasn’t even over yet and the County Commissioners released the funds.  BOB said he told Terry Frank that one of our objectives is get rid of  the current Superintendent of Schools and put a new one in there.  This guy is interested in nothing but building an empire.  ERIC said, unfortunately his contract has just been renewed.  HOWARD said we got a copy of a report put out by Civitas.  They got their figures from the State Department.  Perdue claims we have lost teachers.  North Carolina has more teachers on the payroll than they had last year, so Bev lied too.

BOB said talking about the school stuff, ERIC has been doing a little research on a slightly different angle.  ERIC said this coming year we are going to be up for another battle for our funds.  Last year they advised the county during one of these meetings with the county that there was going to be some major shortfalls in the following year.  He thinks a lot of it was capital expenditures.  We just all saw the article in the newspaper announcing that they were asked for 4.5 million.  Someone told him that our county ranked number 12 in support of our school system (how much money we the taxpayer give to the county per pupil).  Number 12 in the state.  Out of 115 school districts, one being the best, 115 being the worst, we ranked number 12 in the financial support we give per student in the state of NC.  He decided to do a little fact finding in all this and he found a wonderful website that is put out by the school government.  It is called schools.nc.gov.  Boy is there a ton of statistical information there.  It was a hay day.  Right now in the state Carteret County ranks 96 in the amount of funds we get per pupil from the state.  Remember 1 is good, 115 is bad.  So that means there is 95 counties that get more money than we do per student.  Currently our students get $4,992.00 per student from the state.  We all pay taxes and we would expect all of our children get an equal education, right?  In order to get an equal education you would have to spend equally on each child.  Right?  No?  Should but we don’t.  Logically you should OK?  Hyde County gets $13,000.00 per student.  $8,000.00 more than our students get.  Terrell County gets $11,108.00 per student.  Now to add insult to injury the same scenario exists with federal funds, which he believes is probably controlled by the state and how they distribute it.  Again Carteret County is 89 in ranking on that (funds from the federal government).  Hyde County is number 1 and Terrell County is number 2 in funds received from both the state and federal governments.  What also makes it painful for us is per capital income in this county we are number 12.  Per capital income is $37,000.00.  So we are paying more taxes but we are getting less of it back.  Our kids are being slighted by the state in the quality of education that they get.  Just think about this, if the state just increased our amount by $500.00, making it $5500.00 per student, we might move up to about middle way in the scale there.  That $500.00 equates to 4 million dollars because we have 8500 students.  On the federal funds, the same way, even if they just increased it by 2 or 3 hundred, then we would have another 3 million so the issue that the school board has is not with the county, it is with the state and federal governments and how those funds are distributed.  BOB said you said Hyde County got the most money for their schools per student.  What was their per capita rank?  ERIC said $28,251.00.  BOB asked which is where on the scale?  ERIC said 72.  ERIC said he tried to see if there was a correlation between per capita income and the amount each county got per student.  There isn’t.  There are some counties that have high per capita income and they get more than we do.  They are getting 6/7 thousand dollars per student.  He is now beginning to think it is more a political thing than based on capita income.  CLAYTON wanted to know if he could check to see if it was a Republican county or Democrat.  ERIC said he didn’t know that.  HOWARD said Hyde County was represented by Mark Basnight, he was pretty sure.  HOWARD said he was the head man in the Senate and probably the most powerful man in the state, running the show like he wanted it.  ERIC said well, that would explain why they are getting the money.  In the old days, the way teachers got appointed, so if you had a Democratic government in the county most of the teachers were going to be Democrats.  BARBARA RAWLS said students should be getting additional money for attending schools in those areas with military.   ERIC said OK, let’s check Craven County.  They get less than us.  They are ranked 101.  On the federal level they do rank 37.  Now you would think the Gov would take care of her own back yard.  VERNE THOMPSON said the only reason why it would be different from one county to another in educating the number of students, so there is not reason to expect that the amount per pupil should be the same in two different counties.  ERIC said he had thought that through himself and then he went and looked at Wake County.  They are 113.  Now you would think Wake County, one of the highest cost to live in, would be getting 8 or 9 thousand dollars per student.  No! They get $2,700.00 per student.  VERNE said that was sort of the point the was getting at.  A lot of factors go into the amount of what is to be spent to educate a given student.  For example: Using Hyde County.  Hyde County gets a lot because Hyde County area wise is very, very large, so on average the students are sparsely dispersed.  Which means they have higher per student busing costs, and fewer schools because they have less density.  On the other hand Wake or Mecklinburg County have dense population so they are able to have bigger schools.  They are able to have a lot more students in each of those schools and the transportation costs are also a lot less.  He is not saying that there is no element of politics involved, what he is saying is that there is a host of legitimate reasons why there will be quite a bit of difference in the educational costs from county to county and the per student cost.  ERIC said our county runs what 60/75 miles from one end to the other and how far does Hyde County run?  VERNE said he had no idea.  BOB asked if he had ever driven up to Manteo.  It is a long lonesome drive.  ERIC said the point that he was trying to make – VERNE said he suspected by what you had seen in Hyde County, you will also see in Perquimmons County and Pasquetank County because they are large areas and sparsely populated.  BOB said before you check them out and go any further, the money from the schools comes from the ad valorium tax  base.  The more prosperous and the more intensely built the county is the higher the revenue is going into the county so you will have x number of dollars available for the school system and will be based on how—-ERIC said he understood that—-BOB said Hyde County is probably 90% swamp and wilderness and very rural and there is no major towns up there.  They just don’t have the ad val tax base where the county can step up to the plate and contribute any significant amount to the schools so the state tries to level the playing field so that all the schools are the same… in other words the Chemistry Class that is taught in Hyde County is the same type of Chemistry Class taught in Carteret County with all the same equipment, microscopes, etc.  Items that Hyde County would not be able to afford on its own.  So the state steps up and tries to level the playing field.
Discussion among the members (all talking at once).   KEN said he still thinks you need to know how the formula works in distributing the funds.  HARRY THOMPSON’s wife wanted to know if free meals were considered.  If you get free meals, you get free dental care.  That sounds crazy, but it is the truth.  If your kids are going on a field trip and you are going to let them buy their lunch somewhere else they still want those free lunches so they can get the money for the lunches they don’t get.  It is ridiculous.  ERIC said the point he was trying to make here we are looking a maybe a 7 million dollar request by a school board this year and we want to harness as much of the money as we can get from the state, because the reality is we are going to need it.  Otherwise, everybody’s taxes are going to go sky high.  BOB said that is what our state legislatures are for.  ERIC said he had emailed Pat McElraft and Jean Preston on this issue, because he wanted and explanation as to why we are 96.  The other concern he has is we have about 1100 students that they classify impaired, blindness, deafness, mental, physical and all that.  You probably have a low teacher ratio in order to train these kids.  Probably 100 or more teachers are devoted to these kids.  LOU said what does it matter how much money we get as long as the school board has not accountability and we have no idea where the money is going.  WAYNE said in ERIC’s quest to find sanity in these figures remember this, one person’s name that has already been called, Mark Basnight.  He has been until very recently the most powerful man in NC and he still has a whole lot more influence than he has any business having.  That is why the money and it is not just for education.  They have been trying to do something that can’t be done with Oregon Inlet for 50 years.  You can not get there from here.  Hwy 64 was paved from Oklahoma or somewhere across NC so they could get there to Basnight’s hotels.  ERIC said he still thinks we need to look into this data he was presenting tonight.  It is worth pursuing.  We know our school board is going to be asking for a lot of money this year.  HOWARD asked to explain something on these special needs kids.  He doesn’t know how much it is now, but if they can get a kid on Ridlelan or some mind altering drug, the state gets extra money.  Several years ago it was $1,700.00 per student classed as special needs.  Catie’s mother is a Nurse Practitioner.  She worked for a Pediatric and Adolescent Practice.  Teachers will pressure parents to put kids on these mind altering drugs for the money (and make their job easier).  An example was this mother came in to Dawn just about begging to get her kid on this drug.  So Dawn put the kid on a small dosage and just a few days later the mother came back in saying the teacher had said another kid had acted just like hers and that kid was on twice the dosage her kid was and wanted her to get the doctor to increase it.  Dawn told the lady she did not practice cookie cutter medicine.  That is what is going on.  It is a financial advantage.  They won’t admit it.  He had a school teacher asking for donations and he questioned her.  She said she didn’t know they got extra money.  This has been 7 or 8 years ago and he dug into it and at that time they were getting $1,700.00 extra for every kid they could get on these drugs.  ERIC said he didn’t know about that, but if it were the case, he thought we would get more than $900.00 per student, because we’ve got 12% of our kids that are impaired in some fashion.  HOWARD said the County Commissioners do not find out about this extra money.  The BOE does not tell them about this.  ERIC said he was waiting for some answers from our representatives to see if they can tell us how they are calculating the distribution of our funds.  He thinks every one of our children are entitled to an equal opportunity in an education.  If that is not happening, then we need to stand up.  LOU said we still need to start with our School Board.  No matter how much we get from the government unless we get the school board squared away it is all for nothing.  BOB asked HOWARD didn’t he say the charter schools only spend something like $4,000 per student?  HOWARD said at Gramercy (a Christian School) it is a little over $3,000.00 per student per year, whereas Carteret County is right at $9,000.00.  Gramercy’s test scores exceed those of any public school in the county.  BOB wanted to know if Gramercy received state funds.  HOWARD said no.  ERIC said he could pull up charter schools and see how they are being treated.  We only have two in the county.  He is hoping we can get some of the attention of C4 and the school board because our argument is going to be if the state and federal distribution is not fair then why are you all beating up on our County Commissioners and county citizens when they have already paid the taxes.  It strengthens our position to say no, as a county, we are not going to give you any more money.  You have to go to the state and beat them up or take them to court or whatever you have to do to get your money.  BOB said let’s get our numbers so we can have the facts when we talk to them.  Someone in the meeting said until we get a good accountability of where the money is going we are spinning our wheels.  BOB said the problem is you don’t know how they misspent the money until the end of the year when you get the auditors report and then it is too late, and by then they are asking money for the new school year.  CLAYTON said the BOE was wanting to get away from the county setting the tax rate and let the schools set the tax rates as they see fit.  Some places have done that…..and they are in worse shape now than they were.

Meeting adjourned at 7:20pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
Minutes of
23 January 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by
Invocation by JERE GEURIN

BOB reminded us that tonight’s meeting would be a short one.  We will adjourn  not later that 6:40pm in order to get to the Train Depot before 7:00pm for the Meet and Greet with Frank Palombo (hosted by Captain Steve Miller).  We would like for as many, as can, to go (hopefully in your red shirts) to show our support for Palombo, who is running against Walter B. Jones for the Republican Congressional seat for the 3rd District which has grown by 5 counties, basically because the center part of the state’s population has grown so much.  BOB said he understood Frank was doing pretty well in raising money, however, he can always use more.  BOB said he had invited some of his friends who had deep pockets to attend and he hopes they will turn their pockets inside out.

BOB introduced Catherine (Catie) McCabe, who is with and will speak to us tonight on “Eagles Wings Ministries”:
Catie said she had passed around a brief overview of what Eagles Wings Ministries does.  She runs one of their programs which is called ‘Youth for Abolition’, but they have several different things going on.  She said she usually did a power point presentation, but was just going to give a brief overview of what her project was.  What they usually do is ‘combating human trafficking in North Carolina‘.  Usually when you hear of slavery, you think that was abolished back during the Civil War when in fact today there are more slaves in our world than there ever was during the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.  Human trafficking is modern day slavery.  In the United States the average age in forced prostitution is 13 years old.  It is estimated by the Youth Department of Justice that a minimum of 100 thousand United States children are being trafficked and exploited in the US each year.  Some estimate those averages to be more around 300 thousand.  The modern day slave auction is electronic whereas local (?) can examine and purchase via email. Women and girls from wholesalers in other countries where retail customers can order up the prostitute of their choice via email.  Whereas before it was kind of a long process, now it is very easy, almost immediate, and is constantly going on.  It is estimated that at least 27 million people are currently enslaved around the world according to the US Department of State.  The trafficking of humans is the second most lucrative crime in the world.  Approximately 80% of the people trafficked are female and of those ½ are minors.  So 40% of the people being trafficked are little girls.  There is a big market for trafficking of children.  At any given time 50 thousand predators are prowling for the children on the internet in the US.  One point two million children are estimated to be trafficked around the world each year.  That is two children every minute.  During the first three hours of being on the street one in three kids will be forced into trafficking.  When we run into a foreign victim of sex trafficking we instantaneously sympathize with her course into sex trafficking.  But when we encounter an American girl on the street, we think why did she make this choice.  Surely she can walk away anytime she wants.  One survivor says ‘I was 14 years old when I was forced into prostitution.  Like many teens at that age, finding my identity, and defying my parents were on the top of my list.  Consequently when a man came into my life and showered me with attention and listened to me when I complained about my parents, I did not think twice about the fact that he was 10 years my senior.’  That is what is going on.  Unfortunately I know several girls that will talk to anyone on Face Book and there are other guys, girls and other teens other than the ones I know, and that is how the predators are getting in touch with these kids.  They are talking to them on Face Book, they are talking to them through social media.  They are being their friend, they are listening to them when their parents and other adults are not.  They are showering them with the love they are hoping for and then sex happens.   Yes a lot of kids are directly kidnapped but a majority are being more coerced into sex trafficking.  The reality of the ’pimp’ game.  Pimps have a great marketing tool, the media.  You can turn on TV now and see pimps glamorized on TV shows, music and movies.  Now the term pimp is so commercialized where Americans do nothing.  It has become incorporated into our vocabulary.  Teens use the terminology every day with statements like being pimped out, or your clothes are pimping.  We do not understand the reality behind this term.  Pimps prey on women and children by finding out their weaknesses and attacking them. It is easier to manipulate children because by the time they become adults they are dependent on their pimp.  After the pimp gets into your mind it is easy for him to maintain control.  From that point you have to call him Daddy and he will punish you if he feels you have stepped out of line.  You are required to bring home between $500 and $2,000 every night.  If you do not want to follow the rules he may sell you at any time to another pimp or he may just kill you.  The pimp game is not anything like the drug game because it is not territorial.  With drugs you buy and sell it once, but with people you can buy and sell them over and over again.  This is why they move you around from city to city and state to state so you can have no one to run to.  That way they can keep making money off of you.  So, local slavery is happening in our own back yard.  This past year North Carolina was ranked number 6 in the nation for human trafficking.  That’s right out of 50 we ranked number 6.  It is not just in the large cities like Charlotte.   Less than 2 years ago there was a little boy, 5 years old, in New Bern, and his adopted father was selling him over the internet.  Men were flying into the New Bern airport; having sex with this little boy; and then flying out.  It is happening here in Carteret County.  She has talked with a lady that about 20 years ago was being sold right here in Carteret County for about 15 years.  It is happening here.  What Youth for Abolition does is we educate middle school, high school and college age students about what is going on because they are the ones being targeted.  We raise awareness among them so that it is like a peer to peer type of thing of ‘let’s stop this because this is why it is happening – people do not know.’  People are not educated.  She did not know until about a year ago.  She was like ‘human trafficking is something that happens in Tai Land?  And Europe, (?)… it doesn’t happen in America.  We also raise funds to support Eagles Wings Ministries.  There are less than 100 beds in the entire US for victims of sex trafficking once they have been rescued.  When we have over 100,000 kids being trafficked and there is less than 100 beds for them when they have gotten away from their pimps.  So often in the event they are rescued they go right back because that is all they know and there is nothing out there to help them.  We say, ‘you’re free!’.  ‘Now go support yourself’.  Since the only way they know how is what they have just been rescued from, they go right back to that life because that is all they know.  Also, in teaching teenagers that the messages that the media sends all the time is not right.  It is not a good thing.  Being a prostitute is not a good thing.  She has talked to a whole bunch of teenagers and they are like ’oh yeah you can just be a prostitute to make money and do whatever and it doesn’t matter.  That is what the teen culture says now.  That is not a good thing.  It is not OK.  And then they talk to people in your generation (adults) because you all are the ones raising us.  You are the ones taking care of my generation right now.  So, if you all don’t know, how can you protect her generation?  And that is why we come and talk to groups like you.  That is pretty much where they are at right now.  What she does with Youth four Abolition is she runs their state wide program.  They have groups all over the state.  They meet once a month or so and they are getting educated and educating their peers.  They are raising funds to go into other places.  They are working with other organizations to develop programs to take into schools.
ERIC BROYLES wanted to know what the local churches are doing and are they involved.  CATIE said yes, many churches help with the funding, since Y4A does not take any federal funding.  That is the biggest principle that this organization was founded upon.  So everything they do is through donations from individuals, churches, and organizations.  It is a lot of money to have home school and psychological care in taking care of these girls. For 4 girls it is about $100 thousand dollars a year.  By the time you have the facility, help and special needs they have it can become very costly.  ERIC wanted to know if they tried to recoup some of the costs from the kids parents.  Many of the parents are poor, or the kids come from broken homes, and the parents would not be able to afford to help. The kids would just be on their own, if the services were not available.  BOB asked if this was a North Carolina based organization.  CATIE said it was.  HOWARD asked if all the help was volunteers.  CATIE said no, they have one paid employee per home because by law they have to.  BOB wanted to know where the homes are located right now.  CATIE said right now there are two, one in Asheville, and one in Boone.  The long term goal is to have one here in eastern NC.  BOB wanted to know what the current plan was.  CATIE said they were looking at Greenville.  BOB asked what was the current bed situation between Asheville and Boone.  CATIE said 8. BOB asked if they were all filled right now.  CATIE said ‘as of last week all but one bed, because one girl just finished the program two weeks ago.  Last week they got a call from the FBI office in Charlotte and they have 3 girls that they need beds for.  So as of now they are filled to total capacity.  BOB said CATIE had mentioned one girl had completed the program…how long is the program.  CATIE said ‘about a year and then they continue to help these girls afterward but some do go home or to a relative that will take them in and in some cases they will go into the foster care system.  They have a lot of connections with Social Services in the areas so they try to keep the girls near by and are very careful with them.  HOWARD asked ’was not Glad Tiding Church here involved.’  CATIE said yes sir.  KEN asked how CATIE tried to get the word out.  She said ’multiple ways, either churches a lot of times will pass the word or individuals will contact them because there are not that many organizations doing what they are doing right now especially in NC.  They just reach out to the churches for like ’hey, here’s what is going on.  Can we come speak to your youth groups or speak to your congregation.  KEN wanted to know if they call like the minister or send them literature or what?  He knows that she has been on the radio talking about this project.  CATIE said ’in the beginning of December she was up in Charlotte speaking with elevation church.  KEN asked how many folks, besides herself, did they have talking to churches and such.  CATIE said there was her, Emily, and Kim.  There are three of them for the most part heading up the various parts of the organization.  KEN wanted to know if this was all teens, young adults.  CATIE said she was the only teenager right now; the other two are adults.  Emily has been doing this for about 20 years, working with survivors, working with getting girls off the street.  They have the prevention part, the rescue where they actually go out on the street and talk with girls.  They also basically look up the ad and call.  In the past year they have called almost 3000 times and have rescued 8 girls.  But that is 8 girls that are off the street.  BOB said what do they tell the other 2998 girls.  CATIE said you cannot rescue someone who does not want to be rescued.  BOB said ’you said they called’.  We call them.  LOU wanted to know why they could not rescue someone just because they didn’t want to be rescued.  CATIE said ’ if they are minors, that is one thing, but often they will not tell you that they are minors because they have been trained to not say anything unless a customer is specifically asking for say a girl that is 12 years old with blond hair.  Then it is ‘oh well, we just happen to have what you want.  Even if she looks like she is 9 she says she is 18.  She was talking to a lady in Charlotte about the detention center there.  They know there is a lot of girls in there that are in for prostituting and they know a lot of them are there because they are being trafficked.  But proving it, getting to trial, or getting the girls to trust anybody and get them to talk is a very long process.  Until 2000 in the US the fine for trafficking was $50.00 and 6 months in jail.  She thinks it is now something like $50,000 and 10 years in federal prison.  They just renewed that law last year.  BOB said he thought that came out of the illegal immigration and border control – with truck loads of dead Mexicans in the desert.  CATIE said in other countries one of the prime markets for people trafficking others is Americans.  Over 90% of people who buy in other countries have already bought in their own.  PEGGY asked CATIE if she wanted to tell them about the dinner they had planned; that is if she had any tickets left. She said that they are having a fund raising banquet not this weekend but next weekend, February 4th,  at the Glad Tidings Church.  She has about 8 tickets left.  They cost $10.00 and that includes a four course meal.  She is going to be speaking and the founder and president of this organization will also speak; as well as a survivor sharing her story.  Representative Pat McElraft will be there also.  BOB said if she had any tickets left to bring them next Tuesday, that he would like to have one but did not have his checkbook with him tonight.  PEGGY said if anyone would like to get a ticket next Tuesday, she will get that many tickets to bring next Tuesday.  BOB said put him down for one ticket – anyone else? KEN said he would have to check his calendar, but he thought he and DIANE would probably like to go.  He would call PEGGY or CATIE and let them know.  BOB wanted to know if this banquet was to raise funds to help build a house in this area.  CATIE said this would probably be going for education right now and have programs to implement.   KEN said it costs to provide councilors and other needed providers.  CATIE said most of the personal support received was donated but there was still a lot of costs involved.  BOB said a lot of sex slavery takes place in Asia.  Families sell their daughters mainly because they don’t want daughters.  HOWARD said one thing he found interesting was there are a whole lot of operations, but everyone is small, normally only no more that two working girls and they ARE in Carteret County.  Anywhere there is a military base and/or beach.  CATIE  said ’tourist areas’.  She said at the bottom of the sheet she had passed out were some Hope House statistics:  ie 1005 of Hope House residents have had PTSD; 20% have had personality disorder; 100% have been victims of childhood abuse; 40% have been involved in gang activity; 100% have struggled with substance abuse; 100% have been chronic runaways; 100% have been involved in the legal system; 80% have been referred by law enforcement; 20% have been trafficked by their own parent; and 80% have had at least one abortion.   One of these girls will be speaking at this banquet (many will be there) but they have worked with this girl to help guide and give her the strength to tell her story.  CATIE said the lady has been working with this young lady, encouraging her to tell what has happened to her because she is going to have to testify and if she can share her story with people outside of Hope House then hopefully she will be able to testify.  But we have to be careful – there can be no recordings or pictures while she speaks.  They have had to really work with her because you can not use the ’f’ word and many others not suitable for public use, and this is a big part of her vocabulary
.    CATIE said thank you for your time and interest.

BOB then called on KEN to tell us about NC20.  NC20 is an organization that is composed of the 20 eastern counties on the coast.  They have been doing some pretty decent work.  They’ve most recently over the last year, year and a half, there was an effort by the Governor and her ’quote’ science panel to establish some criteria on sea level rising that would have really devastated eastern NC from the standpoint of resale of property, being able to ensure property, etc.  NC20 was successful in having that panel basically disbanded and their report blocked because it was not scientific.  They were going in and talking about how global warming was going to cause flooding of the coast up to 3 foot level which would have devastated this area, but they had no scientific evidence.  Since they were successful on that, they decided another issue that is extremely important and hard to deal with right now on the coast is wind insurance.  Some of us went to a meeting with the Insurance Commissioner and 10 or 12 legislatures.  NC 20 gave a presentation and they had asked that citizens turn out to support them while at the meeting to let the legislatures know that we are interested in this down here on the coast.  He, Diane, Gus and Judy Wilgus, and Shirley went to the meeting and NC20 gave a really good presentation.  Pat McElraft and Norm Sanderson were there from our area but there were 10 or so other legislatures there besides.  Just to give you an example of the difference in rates it costs somebody who lives in Charlotte (Mecklinburg County) about $360.00 (+ or -) a year for their wind insurance.  People down here are paying anywhere from $1,700/$1.800 to $3,000.00 depending on the value of their home.  So we are paying 3 or 4 times more than what other parts of the state are paying.  But yet, the amount of money spent on repairing homes in the state is higher in the western and middle part of the state.  Wind damage includes tornadoes and thunder storms as well as hurricanes.  As you know we also have inland hurricanes that do a lot of damage inland.  Another statistic that was interesting was that the $300 and some dollars that they are paying in Mecklinburg County now is less than they paid in 1995.  Our rates have continued to go up while theirs have gone down.  There was a lot of discussion about the beach plan.  If you don’t know what the beach plan is; it is a plan that was created by the legislature that was supposed to actually supplement the insurance companies in case of a catastrophic hurricane like Katrina or something like that.  Anyone know how many category 5 hurricanes we have had on the coast of NC?  NONE!!  Zero.  Hazel was a 4.  We have never had a category 5 hurricane since records have been being kept and named.  We have only had 3 category 4’s and Hazel was the worst.  Most of the insurance companies will come along and tell you “well, one of the reasons why we are doing this is because we have to protect ourselves from a Katrina event when we have never had one in eastern NC.  The other thing he asked NC20 afterwards is ’wait a minute, Katrina was a bad hurricane but the insurance companies were down there telling people they could not cover them because they were only covered for flood insurance and not wind insurance or vice versa.  They were scooting away in trying to figure out a way in not paying anything.  The US tax payer paid most of the cost down there.  It wasn’t the insurance companies.  What is happening with the beach plan right now is all big insurance companies are dumping people into the beach plan and what is happening when you go to renew your insurance…a friend of his was with Nationwide at the time and they told him that they were not going to write him any wind insurance, he would have to go to the beach plan.  His insurance State Farm did the same thing to him last year.  What happens when they dump us in there (in that category) that means they are not responsible for paying insurance claims due to wind damage any more.  That means they get zero risk against wind damage claims; however they make 15% of all the premiums paid into the beach plan.  The idea behind it was the insurance companies were going to have to service those claims.  It is not the insurance agents, your local neighbors who are selling insurance and writing policies that are getting that 15%.  It is going to the big guys in the insurance companies.  Another statistic.  The insurance industry in the US has cash reserves, investments, and things like that …5 trillion dollars.  You have all these real rich companies now.  The other thing they do with the beach plan is it is common with insurance companies that when they insure a high risk type of event they do what is called ‘re-insurance’.  That means they’ll go to some company like Lloyds of London, (all are overseas), or some place like that and they will buy the insurance policy so that if they have a devastating event that causes so much damage that they get reimbursed out of this re-insurance plan.  That is our money paying for that re-insurance out of the beach plan.  They do no buy that insurance themselves they use our money to buy insurance to cover their loss in the case of some catastrophic event.  If you think that is bad .. They are investing in re-insurance companies, so they are buying insurance from companies that they have investments in using our money to make more money.  It is pretty sad.  In 1944 Congress passed a law in the US that absolves insurance companies from anti-trust suits.  They are the only company in the US that is not prohibited from anti-trust and that means that the Presidents from State Farm, Nationwide, etc can get in a room together and set prices for insurance.  It is a terrible story and very complicated.  There is a board (can’t remember the name) an insurance board in the state of NC.  The way it works (he should have brought the piece of paper where he had written all of it down)…you have insurance companies that sit together and decide what the risks are, what the rates are going to be based supposedly on risks.  Those risk assessments are determined by computer models.  Guess who writes the computer models?  The insurance companies write them.  Then they make a recommendation to a board, and NC is like one of three states that has one of these boards.  The board reviews what the insurance companies have proposed as a rate increase.  Guess who composes the board under NC law?  Over half of it is made up of insurance executives and then some other part of it is also made up of other people tied into the insurance industry one way or the other and then you may have a few normal, regular citizens.  They are appointed by the Governor.  They make a recommendation on the proposed rate increase to the Insurance Commissioner who is an elected official and right now he is a Democrat.  There is no prohibition in the state of NC that this guy can’t himself be a former executive.  However, this one is not.  He is a lawyer.  He could be a retired insurance executive and most of his friends and contacts are within this group.  Someone sent him a real nasty email, because he is posting some of this information on our web site.  You can read it on the web site.  Basically they said that our current insurance commissioner is a really nice guy and what Ken had said in his article he felt was an attack on him, which it wasn’t.  All he did was express the facts as they were presented at this meeting.  They basically said there is a statute that requires a public hearing for a rate increase.   Well, the current insurance commissioner has had one public hearing for a rate increase on insurance.  And he did disapprove the rate increase, so he gives him credit for that.  All previous insurance commissioners have never had a public hearing.  They ignored the statute.  He did not hear anyone at the NC20 hearing state that there was a statute but he is trying to find out whether on not he had heard right.  It is irrelevant since they never had one until
the current commissioner.  So the public had no input in these rate increases.  What NC20 is doing is they are trying to convince the legislature that we need to fix the beach plan.  And we need to do a scientific analyses of how insurance companies are setting rates in the state and why the rates are different on the coast.  Write your representative a letter, or if you have some friends in Pamlico, or Craven or Onslow Counties, get them to write letters to their representatives also.  Harry Brown had a representative there too.  That is what they need.  They need support from the people down here on the coast because we are outmanned.  The 20 counties down here are outmanned by 80 counties on the other side of I95.  It is going to be an uphill battle but he will give the legislature credit they are looking into this and hopefully, if we keep a Republican Legislature, maybe they will do something about it.

A member (Verne Thompson) I think, said they have a house in Pitt County.  His insurance there is 3 or 4 hundred dollars.  We have a smaller house down on the coast and the insurance there is 14 hundred dollars.  KEN said what the insurance companies are doing are beginning to move inland.  It is projected that more and more counties will be dumped into the beach plan because there is nothing prohibiting them from right now dumping other policy holders into the beach plan.  If it is east of I95 it is considered coastal.  Just because you have it now it doesn’t mean you are going to keep it unless something is done.

EULA PARKIN said she had some good news and some good news.  The good news is, remember when she first came here to the first meeting and told us ‘wow, between January and February $35.00 had disappeared out of her survivors benefits plan.  Well, she got a pay raise this month, and much more than the $35.00; plus if you look at your Social Security, she got a pay raise in that also.  Combined together was almost $100.00 a month.  As for insurance she doesn’t know how many of you are military but she has been with USAA for 57 years and they cover you everywhere, (Europe, Asia) everywhere but New Jersey.  They couldn’t get insurance there.

JERE GEURIN asked to speak a few minutes before we adjourn.  He said he had passed out information about the Marriage Protection Amendment which will be on the ballot in May Primary.  Of all times, they put it on the Primary ballot.  He doesn’t expect anyone to memorize the data he had handed out, and we did not have time to read it, but please read it in your own time and pick out the main points so you can be ready to tell others about what is in this handout.  He has some other information (4 other handouts) but will not be bringing them all at once because there is just too much to swallow all at one time.  HOWARD told JERE that he had been approached by a Community Baptist Church in Newport that is having an outside speaker come in to speak on this defense of marriage act.  He does not know the date yet.  It will be on why churches need to get involved in politics in this day and time.  The guy that told me about this meeting is going to tell me the day and time because he is planning to go to listen to him.  JERE asked if it was the Community Baptist Church up on 70?  HOWARD said yes it was across from the Oceanside Auto Sales.  JERE said he had been to their worship.  He asked HOWARD to let us all know as soon as he finds anything out.

BOB called on ERIC BROYLES.  He said he did not know if we had heard about it Iowa did vote for the ‘right to work’ state.  Much applause.

KEN said he had a lot more information to share because most people were not aware how much their insurance was going up.  Most are not aware of the increase, because they pay it in their escrow and only know the escrow went up.  People who are renting are also paying because the landlord is just passing it on to you.

BOB adjourned the meeting so all could get to the Train Depot down town to meet with Frank Palombo.  Capt. Steve Miller has rented the building to enable those who are interested in finding out where Palombo stands can have an opportunity to meet and talk with him tonight.  He had requested the TEA Party group to please attend and wear their red shirts, to make Palombo feel among friends.

Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
17 JANUARY 2012

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order 6:00 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by BOB CAVANAUGH
Invocation by NANCY BOCK

BOB announced that Catie McCabe, who was supposed to meet with us tonight, was unable to attend.  She caught some bug while in Atlanta and couldn’t make it tonight.

BOB introduced a new face in the crowd, CRAIG ELLYSON.  Craig said he had not been to one of our meetings before, but had attended a rally at the Newport Flea Mall a couple of years ago.  He is a life long Republican and the aims of the TEA Party certainly coincide with his and his wife’s.  He belongs to the Lion’s Club and having seen us meeting here when they had their meetings, decided to come out and see what we had going on prior to the Lion’s Club Meeting being called to order.  He is originally from Wisconsin and currently remains a resident of Wisconsin.  Scott Walker is his governor.  He has done what he said he would do, and the unions are trying to hop all over him.  He prays that God will protect Scott Walker.  A lot of Amens from the group.

BOB wanted to know if we all caught the debate last night.  Most said they caught part or most of it.  BOB said he thought Newt knocked it out of the ball park.  He hopes this does him well in the primary down there.

BOB announced that we have an unfortunate problem that we need to nip in the bud before it gets any worse.  It has been brought to management’s attention that some of the folks that come to the TEA Party meetings are helping themselves to the food bar and not paying for it.  The manager said that if we don’t stop this we will not be able to use the facilities any more.  He said HOWARD had taken the phone call and wanted to know if he wanted to add any more to that.  HOWARD said that was about it without going into the details.  BOB said no need to call names out or point fingers, you all know who you are, I know who you are and management knows who you are.  So, if you are going to the food bar, pay for it.  Luke said if you can not afford the chow, he would buy your supper.  BOB said, yeah, if you are hungry with no funds, we will chip in and buy you something to eat.

There is not enough people here tonight to have a 50-50 raffle.  We talked about it last week about having a raffle or a donation jar set up.  Since there is such a few (maybe 14 or 15), there is no sense in having a raffle.  NANCY brought us a donation bucket so we can use it tonight for donations in lieu of a raffle.

BOB said STEVE BEST has started a new production company.  As a start to the new entrepreneurship, if you have kids you want to throw a Christian oriented birthday party, give STEVE a call.  He asked STEVE what else he did – he didn’t do weddings, did he?  STEVE said no and BOB said ‘he’ll work his way up to that.”  BOB said we have two movies that STEVE has procured.  (He bought one and the other was free.)  One is the “Iranium” which is about an hour long.  STEVE reviewed it last night.  BOB said STEVE thought it was the best thing since ‘Gone with the Wind’ and STEVE said ‘better’.  BOB read the back of the cover ‘As long as the revolution of 1979 the Iranian regime has been following the principles installed by Itolla Komini, and Iran citizens of the west have been held hostage of the Iranian leadership who have spread the revolution beyond Iran’s borders.  Now the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism and brutal human rights stands on the threshold of acquiring nuclear weaponry.  Utilizing rare footage, archive news reports and interviews of leading experts, “Iranium” exposes actions and  intentions of Iran and Iran’s leaders, and America’s response over 31 years.  The film presents the dangers Iran now poses to America, the middle east and the rest of the free world, and the options currently being considered to combat those threats.  The other movie “The Agenda” (which STEVE had purchased for $18.00).  ‘Grinding America Down’.  BOB said we need to sometime decide when we are going to take a look at these movies, if we want to look at them at all.  Maybe watch them at STEVE’s theater ‘The Cave” (his garage that he has converted into a 45 seat movie theater.  It can be expanded, if need be.)  He has a popcorn machine, and a hotdog machine also.  BOB wanted to know what kind of hotdogs and STEVE informed him ’all beef’.  Discussion on various types of hotdogs.  LOU KUKULINSKI said, best kind, ’they’re free’!! and then went on to discuss the best hotdogs he had ever eaten.  BOB wanted to know if there was any interest in getting together and watching these films or would we prefer to check them out from STEVE to watch at home, assuming STEVE would allow us to do that.  Question was raised what night could we have the showing.  STEVE said any night we wanted.  BOB said he thought most folks had things to do on weekends; that maybe we might want to hold one of our Tuesday night meetings at STEVE’s to also watch the movie.  Can’t do it next week, because that’s the night we go to the Train Depot here in Morehead for the meeting with Frank Palombo who is running against Walter Jones in the Republican primary.  He will be speaking there and Steve Miller, the boat captain that comes to our meetings, rented the place and he asked us to show up in our red shirts, if possible.   HOWARD wanted to know if we were going to meet here first.  BOB said the event over there was from 7 to 9.  He wanted to do whatever was more convenient to the folks here.  If you prefer to come here and eat prior (since there would only be minor snacks, not heavy hors ’d oeuvres, just chips, pretzels, and such).  He had no problem coming here and holding a short meeting and then everybody leaving here and going over there.  SCOTT wanted to know if we could put a sign up in case some did not get the message….something like ‘TEA Party people are meeting at the Train Depot, Morehead City, at 7:00pm‘.   BOB said he planned to come here next week to eat prior to going to the Depot, so he would be here to inform anyone not knowing about the meeting at the Depot.  Several said they planned to come to the Golden Corral for supper anyway.  If you prefer to skip meeting here, then just show up at the Depot about 7:00.  Discussion on where the Depot is located – Morehead not Beaufort – downtown with a small park next to it.  It will be inside.  STEVE said there were not many seats in there.

BOB said he would like to make a decision on when we planned to watch the movies at STEVE’s.  He would like to talk to KEN LANG about when he could get his group together to attend also.  He planned to leave our meeting tonight and go to Emerald Isle and talk to them tonight about when we could all get together as a TEA Party thing and try to maximize attendance.  KEN normally has about 17 to 25 folks show up down there.  They just started up and the word is slowly filtering out.  It is kind of like us.  We see a new face or two every week.

The web-a-nar call for TEA Party committee coordinators was last night.  Topic of conversation was this 1.2 trillion increase in the spending authorization that Obama wants Congress to approve and the majority of the coordinators who were in on the call (he does not have any idea how many attend these conference calls, but there are 3500 TEA Party Patriot groups around the country so it is probably several hundred.  Any way, over 90% of the coordinators want Congress to hold the line with no increase on the national debt limit.  It sounds good, but he just doesn’t think that is workable.  They can’t cut enough spending in time to effect the obligations between now and the next time they pass a budget which, by the way, he thinks Thursday is 1000 days since the Senate has passed a budget.  They asked us to bombard our Senators with emails and phone calls; basically shame on you for not passing a budget in 1000 days, which he doesn’t think will have any effect, since Reid doesn’t care not one iota.  LOU asked if that was in addition to the Impeach Obama emails.  BOB said that was a subject of conversation last night, but he couldn’t remember the name of the fellow that was there, but he was emphasizing that the appointments just made while Congress was not in recess was totally, absolutely unconstitutional.  The Senate needs to stand up and do something about this, otherwise it really opens the door where Obama can appoint Supreme Court Justices on a weekend.  LOU said ’nationalizing the car companies was unconstitutional also…everything Obama did was unconstitutional.  BOB said it is specifically written in the Constitution about the appointments.  The President can make appointments when Congress is in recess but Congress determines when they are in recess.  They were not in recess…matter of fact the Democrats used this effectively against George Bush for his last two years once the Democrats took over Congress they kept the Senate in permanent session so Bush couldn’t make any recess appointments.  And Bush honored the rule of Congress and the Constitution and did not make any recess appointments.  And Obama has chosen to ignore that and the Republicans are trying to do the same thing to block Obama appointments during recess.  They don’t want to load up the court with a bunch of liberal judges and stuff, the smaller appellant courts that is.  RUTH PARKER said he still appointed someone the Congress had already voted against and turned him down.  BOB said the President still has the prerogative to name him again.  He can submit the same person over and over again.  LOU said he still didn’t think it was legal for the government to take over a private enterprise and give all the money to the unions.  BOB said the TEA Party had made a big issue of that but none of the politicians would grab that banner and run with it other than Michelle Bachman.  HOWARD said as long as Reid heads up the Senate they are not going to challenge him.  BOB said he agreed, but unfortunately we can not do a whole lot (us, our TEA Party) this coming election, because neither of our Senators are up for re-election.  Kay Hagan is not due until 2014 and then Burr is 2016.  So we are kind of out of the senatorial race.  All we can  look at is the President and Congress this coming up election, plus all the state slots.  LOU asked, what did we need, (five ?) to take over the Senate.  BOB said yes, we get five and they lose five.  LOU said 23 Democrats up for reelection.  We should be able to do that.  But if the presidency can’t turn the base out, and Romney is unable to motivate, then the voters are just not going to show.  LOU said, ‘contrary to belief, regardless who is nominated, we are going to win by a landslide.  People are disgusted with Obama.  BOB said he hoped he was right, that he would vote for Howdy Doody, if he was the only one on the ballot against Obama.

SCOTT CARPENTER wanted to know if they discussed the debate in Myrtle Beach last night.  BOB said, no, believe it or not, the TEA Party Patriots National coordinators do not take political sides and they encourage us not to also.  They leave it strickly up to the local TEA Parties as to how involved they want to get in the elections and if they want to throw their support behind candidates.  We are not organized as a non-profit; however if we get into advocating the people vote for a particular candidate then we fall under the campaign finance laws and we have to report all our income and all that stuff and we have to make quarterly state reports.  The way we get around that is we use the law.  The law says that you are supporting a candidate then you use words like vote for, or support, or endorse.  LOU asked then how could Valerie Jarrett get up in the pulpit in Atlanta and blame the Republicans; that that is why Obama can’t get anything done.   BOB said Atlanta is so thoroughly Democrat that you say anything.  FRED DECKER said we can say we recommend.  BOB said that is what we did in the last election in 2010, we had a voter recommendation list stating we recommend these certain people.  He thinks an even better way of wording it this time is ‘the following candidates support the TEA Party’s principles’.  That way they are supporting us, we are not supporting them type of deal.  That is a way to get around the campaign finance laws.  You have to be really careful what we write in any of our advertising and stuff like that.  He is sure Ken Humphries is aware of campaign finance laws and if he sees an opening he will dime us out just to cause hate and discontent.

DAVID R. BEARD and his son (a student at Croatan) arrived late.  BOB welcomed them to the meeting.

HOWARD said that we got something interesting today off the internet about Judge Newby, Supreme Court Justice.  It was covering basically a talk he made to a civic club in Raleigh.  He said it was hard to be a farmer and a gentleman.  Seems that he bought a farm near the Wake County line, and moved out there and raised animals, a big garden, and raised his kids to teach them what work is.  Of course now, as they have gotten a little older and gotten involved in so many things, they were running back and forth so they have left the farm and moved to town now.  He is a judge that we like.  BOB said he believed he is the only member of the supreme court that is up for election this time.  We certainly want to keep Judge Newby on the court.  What do we have…a 4 to 3 majority right now.  FRED said he did not think anyone had come out against him yet.  BOB said the judge election was in the primary he thought…not in November by in May.  HOWARD asked if anyone knew anything about this Kirby Smith, whose signs have just started popping up in our county.  Does anyone know what judge seat he is running for?  He had seen the signs over in Craven County a couple of weeks ago, and last week end there is some now up between Havelock and Newport.  FRED asked if he is the one that came to the reverse raffle?  No one was sure who he is.  FRED said he thinks he is a lawyer from Havelock.  BOB said PEGGY is in charge of remembering and wanted to know if she knew anything about him.   PEGGY said his name did not ring a bell as someone who had spoken at any of our meetings.  HOWARD said the other night on the way to New Bern, he had tried to get PEGGY to get out the car, after he had pulled over near one of the signs, and jump the ditch and read what was on the sign, but she had refused.  PEGGY said you all may think that is a joke, but he really did.  HOWARD said we need to find out more about him.  BOB said, ‘let’s track him down.  Is the office he is running for just in Craven County or what?’  Someone said they thought it was Carteret, Craven and Pamlico District Court Judge.  BOB said let’s get him down here and listen to what he has to say.  He asked FRED if he could track him down, tell him we meet on Tuesdays, (1st and 3rd Tuesdays is when the Emerald Isle group meets) and we would like to have him come and speak to us.  HOWARD said there was one of those fish doctors over at Pivers Island named Kirby Smith, but he did not think it was him.  The group told BOB we need a ‘meet and greet’ with Kirby Smith.  FRED said he would see what he could do.

HOWARD reminded the group that four of us have pre-registered for the Civitas Workshop to be held in Raleigh this weekend (Saturday).  Weather permitting.  They have had so many to register, they have had to change the place of the meeting from their headquarters to a hotel a couple of blocks away.

BOB wanted to know if anyone planned to go to Raleigh tomorrow for the coastal insurance session.  He planned on going to it.  It is going to be at the legislative building.  It starts at 1:00.  They are going to hold hearings on C20 (the twenty coastal counties).  They are trying to get Raleigh to ease up on the insurance rates that they are sticking the coast with.  We are paying like five times the amount of wind and hail insurance that those in Raleigh and Charlotte, Hickory; all the places that got slammed with Hugo and some of the other storms and we have never had a Class 5 here and we have only had one Class 4 in all the history of hurricane information keeping.

FRED said there are five or six people running for insurance commissioner.  One is from eastern North Carolina.  (can’t remember his name).  BOB said it would be nice if we had someone from the coast.  We are having people not from this area making decisions on what we pay for insurance.  BOB said same thing on the fishing industry.  Not the same people but the same area making the decisions.  FRED said we do not have the population, and BOB said that is why the third district has grown landwise because (he didn’t know whether we have lost people but the population has grown so much more on the interior counties and we have had to add three or four more counties – went from 17 counties in the third district to 22 counties.)  We run all the way from Virginia down to Wilmington and inland as far as Goldsboro.  We certainly do not have to votes to protect ourselves.

LOU announced that tomorrow Sam Sanford will he packaging boxes over behind the plaza to send over seas.  Starts at 9:00, guys will get there at 8:30 to set it up.  Come on down and help.

BOB asked HOWARD to tell us something about the Civitas seminar coming up this Saturday.  HOWARD said it was supposedly on training how to run a campaign, organizing, financing, etc.  It covers about 4 or 5 subjects.  Starts at 9:30 (he thinks) and runs until 4:00.  BOB wanted to know if he planned on running for something.  HOWARD said nope, we want to get educated to help some others that we like where they stand.  His running days are over, due to age and physical condition, but hopefully we can help someone else.  HOWARD said he could never win any election, he is too outspoken and he says what he thinks.  That does not help you get elected.

BOB announced that SCOTT CARPENTER is now precinct chairman for the Wildwood precinct.  Wanted to know if he has decided to run for school board (was actually thinking of county commissioner).  He said still in discussion.

BOB then called on DAVID BEARD who arrived late with his son.  Wanted to know if he had gone on the last bus trip with them to Washington.  He said no, where BOB remembers him from is a year or so ago he came to talk to us about REID coming to talk over at the community center.   He was the president of the foundation of economic education which is a free market group and so he had come there to speak.  DAVID gave a brief introduction of he and his family.  They have been living here about five years.  They are from Hertford County.  (Murfreesboro)  He had just been retiring up there after about 25 years as judge and 2 to 2 ½  years after that.  Then they moved down here to and home schooled his son for a couple of years.  He was in a Christian School for the other years and came down here and started in public school.  He has been to so many things that you all may be familiar with like Young Americas Foundation, (the group that brought out Ronald Reagan’s ranch).  He has been to seminar camps at different places (Hillsdale – he went to a science camp there recently that you hear about on Rush a lot) – Foundation for Economic Education which is a really good group – he has been to one of their events this past summer).  He wanted to bring his son here, especially tonight.  They both watched the debate last night.  In fact he watched it twice to be sure he had it exactly right.  They wanted to come by here and say hello.  They want to go to the Depot next week to hear Frank Palombo.  BOB asked where they live now.  DAVID said they live in Pine Knoll Shores.  They bought a place over in Beacon’s Reach.  They were coming down here once in a while and DAVID Jr. got interested in basketball and stuff like that, and got to know some of the local boys, so they decided to move here.  He plays on the Croatan basketball team.  HOWARD wanted to know if DAVID Jr. would tell us a little bit about Hillsdale College.  He reads Impris, a magazine published by them, and is interested.  He said he understood from DAVID Sr, that Jr. had attended a session there.  Sr. said he had heard a lot about it from the Rush Limbaugh show and you may not know but it is not federally funded.  They will not accept any federal funds for student loans or anything.  HOWARD said he thought Sean Hannity might be on the board.  HOWARD said he would be interested in Jr. telling us about the session he attended there.  DAVID Jr. said it was not a political session, it was more of a math seminar…ran about a week.  Got the opportunity to go around the campus, meet some new people, get in touch with the teachers, and kind of get a feel for the area there.  After that week he learned a lot, not only about math, but also about the politics.  It is really a conservative school.  And like was said, they do not accept federal money, and really you don’t see that today obviously in most places.  They put on seminars all around the country.   HOWARD said that Impris Newsletter has some very good articles in it.  SCOTT wanted to know where the location of this institution is.  Jr. said it was about two hours north of Detroit.  Someone said they thought it was south/southwest.  Jr. said he was picked up at the airport and was not sure in which direction they went.  PEGGY asked Jr. how old he was.  He said he was 17 but would be 18 in time to vote.  She said she had a great granddaughter who was about the same age and she was supposed to be here tonight to speak to the group, but she had been in Atlanta over the weekend and came back with an Atlanta Crud, throwing up so decided she didn’t need to be around this older group and pass it on to us.

BOB said if he, Sr,  knew anything about the law, while we are up here talking about legislative stuff, then jump right in.  He said the only thing he knew was criminal law.  Anything else, no.  SCOTT wanted to know if the Beard’s had any feel about the debate last night.  BOB said we will get to that in a second.  One other thing he wanted to remind everybody about HARRY THOMPSON briefing us last week on the John Locke presentation.  It is set for the 17th of March at the community college and it is going to be on a Saturday, four or five hour session on the Federalist Papers and the original intent.  He is not sure of the time.  We’ll have to find out later from HARRY.  STEVE BEST wanted to know if there was a fee for that.  BOB said not exactly a fee, but they would appreciate if everyone attending would donate $5.00.  It will be in the same place as the first session on the Constitution that this group put on for us and also same place as the Windmill lecture held recently put on by the Civitas.

BOB asked SCOTT if he wanted to talk about the debate last night and SCOTT said he was hoping the young man would give us his views.   DAVID Jr. said he thought Gingrich did a fabulous job.  He outdid everyone last night.  He thought when Juan Williams asked him the question about the work ethic of poor minorities, he thought Newt gave a great answer.  That was the hightlight of the whole debate the thought.  He also thought too much time was spent on the super pacs.  He was not very interested in the ads, he was more interested in the issue side.  He thought the foreign policy was interesting but he didn’t think Ron Paul did a very good job last night.  Unfortunately.  Overall he thought Gingrich did best.  SCOTT said, so if you were of the voting age who would you be inclined to vote for.  Jr. said he thought he would pay the highest admission to see Gingrich and Obama debate.  SCOTT and several others agreed on that.  HOWARD said if Gingrich could have an equal performance against Obama like he had last night he could bury him.

BOB said Rick Santorum said he is the real conservative.  Anybody buying that?  A lot of religious leaders in Texas apparently thought so.  LOU said Santorum did vote to allow convicted felons vote.  PEGGY said coming down tonight she was listening to the radio and she was surprised to hear ads from Michelle Bachman appearing to endorse Gingrich.  She had some really good ads talking about what a great person she thought he was.  That sounded good to PEGGY, because there are a lot of people who like Michelle Bachman.  BOB said he was waiting to see who Sarah Palin was going to throw her support behind.  HOWARD said Todd, her husband, had already announced that he is for Gingrich.  BOB said he doesn’t carry quite the clout that she does.  PEGGY said the only problem is Sarah can hurt or help, depending on who is listening.  HOWARD said he did not think he would come out in opposition of her.  BOB said he didn’t know, husbands and wives don’t always see eye to eye.  PEGGY was shocked and exclaimed “They don’t!!!”  HOWARD said really we fight it out, make a decision, prior to voting.  We are not going to cancel each others vote.  We decided at a young age that it was foolish for one to vote one way and the other another and kill one another’s vote.  BOB said he was tired of after every election his daughter telling him she had cancelled his vote out.  He sent her to UNC as a Reagan Republican and she came out a screaming liberal.  They have her convinced that Castro is the best thing that ever happened to Cuba.  GRACE and LOU both said he needed to send her down there to live for a while.  PEGGY wanted to know if she still wrote home for money and BOB said no, she got married and he cut her off.  If she needed gas money, see her husband.  HOWARD said we have a grandson that went to the University of South Carolina that they did the same thing to.  He thinks there is nothing like Obama now.

BOB asked DAVID Jr. how old he was and was told he was 17 but would be 18 in time to vote this year.  BOB wanted to know if he was naturally interested in politics and he replied, yes sir.  BOB said ’you are not just doing this to make the old man happy?’ He said he did try to make his dad happy, but in this case he had always been interested in politics.  BOB said he noticed in his comments earlier that he seemed to throw a couple of coins towards Ron Paul.  Are you a Libertarian, more than Republican.  What do you like about Ron Paul?  He loves his free market policies.  He really thinks that Ron Paul over all the other candidates could do the most in cutting government spending and getting rid of the debt.  He does not believe the other candidates, although they say they would, would effectively cut off the spending.  LOU asked him what he thought of Ron Paul’s foreign policy.  Jr. said he had some problems with that; however, Paul did say that military spending is not the same as defense spending.  We should cut out our military spending but keep our defense spending.  He thinks the question they asked him was since so many people there were military from South Carolina how would Ron Paul keep their job if they cut out the spending, so he said there was a difference.  BOB said he thought Ron Paul had a good response to all that.  HOWARD said Paul wants to get rid of all military bases throughout the world.  Jr. said Paul doesn’t believe in supplying the world with troops when they are in trouble.  HOWARD said we can no longer afford it.  BOB said he hadn’t really articulated/sold his foreign policies on international affairs views very effectively.  He comes off sounding like a crackpot.  Not sure if he has enough of the command of the English language to use the words that he intends.  Jr. said he hopes he (Paul) gets his fair share on the news channels, but he encourages anyone that wants to hear Paul talk to go on his web site or UTube.  BOB said they have videos going back decades.  BOB thinks Paul’s son is going to pick up his mantle and eventually run for president himself.  HOWARD said, previously the Fox reporters, most of them favored Romney, but today it appears that some of them are switching over and supporting Newt.  BOB said he thought Rush Limbaugh has always been a Newt supporter.  They haven’t come right out and said it but just the way the conversation runs about the candidates and their views, it seem like that’s who they are rooting for.  HOWARD said ’actions speak louder than words’.  Someone said they had gotten an email that said Obama’s people (Axlerod for one) are hoping to have Romney as the Republican candidate because they already have stuff lined up to make him out to be another Gordon Geikko and he will have to defend all that stuff from now to kingdom come.  They can then make the whole election about Romney.  They are telling everyone they don’t want Romney, because they are worried about him.  When they start that, you can be sure that is the one they really want.  BOB said they do want to have the whole election about Romney’s wall street doings.  With the media behind them, they can just keep that thing on the front burner and keep Romney defending his record instead of pushing his positions.  They were talking about the two companies and not having enough money for both of them so they merged, so the unions could come over here and work with this company.  He should have just finished it  with sometimes you have to go out of business or close down and consolidate to stay in business if you can.  That happens in real life.  He needed to say that and not apologize.
The other candidates were pushing against Romney the same way Obama will do.  Sometimes you have to lose some companies to make others bigger.  You don’t wait until you use all your money before you close them down.  Sometimes you have to cut your loses early.  BOB said he is glad that the other candidates are coming at Romney from the left because it gives him a chance to really fine tune his responses because the Democrats are not going to come at him from the right.  He needs this type of exposure if he winds up with the nomination.  But he is so praying for Newt Gingrich but then you get into the whole electability thing – well Romney’s more electable than Gingrich.  It is unfortunate that we live in a very conservative cocoon here in eastern NC.  He has no idea what the rest of middle America feels like out there.  HOWARD said speaking of Axlerod, he is the one that hatched up that deal to drive Cain out.  He has used the sexual harassment deal before for Obama in a Democrat primary and in a general election charging the opponent with sexual harassment (even where there is not one, but forces the candidate to defend his reputation rather than concentrate on the campaign issues.  He is an expert on doing such underhanded shenanigans.  PEGGY said South Carolina had a steel mill in Georgetown that Romney’s group put out of business, so a lot of South Carolinians were laid off and are still unhappy about his intrusion.  BOB thought Romney handled that well, because although they were trying to rescue that company, China was dumping steel on the market and taking an unfair advantage which Romney went on to say he wanted to correct the imbalance.  Six steel mills went under because China was dumping.  He went to buy bearings for his commercial lawn mower.  They were like 40 something dollars a piece.  He told the guy, my gosh these were like $18.00 the last time I bought them.  Kind of ripping us off.  The guy said blame it on the Chinese and BOB asked what the Chinese had to do with it.  The guy said the Chinese have been dumping steel on the market, our steel plants have been closing and they are buying the plants, dismantling them and shipping them back to China and they are trying to corner the steel market.  He feels Romney handled the steel mill thing effectively.  DAVID said he thought he should have highlighted the union and that the company’s problems were also caused by union demands.  BOB said that was a paper company he was talking about there.  FRED said Hostess Cupcakes have filed for bankruptcy again and it is because of the union and their excess demands.  LOU said, Lord knows, if you can’t sell a Twinkie we are in real trouble.   GRACE wanted to know if anyone paid any attention when they asked Romney about turning in his income tax papers like everybody else?  BOB said he said he was going to file them in April.  Discussion on Romney’s income and amount of taxes he supposedly paid followed.  And the fact he is no longer a part of Bain Capital and hasn‘t been for probably 20 years.  He is getting residuals but no hands on the company anymore.   HOWARD said Georgetown Steel has not been closed 20 years, so that doesn’t jibe.  We used to go to Charleston several times a year and you go right by Georgetown Steel on Hwy 17.  RUTH wanted to know why it is thought Romney is so much more electable.  Several said they didn’t think he was.  PEGGY said the establishment thinks he is, not necessarily the man on the street.  BOB said Karl Rove decided he was the next in line.  HOWARD said Romney is being pushed by Karl Rove and Rove is probably one of the sharpest political operators in the country and has plenty of money to back up his ideas.  BOB said this is the same crowd that gave us McCain.  ERNIE GUTHRIE McCain was a week candidate anyway and that is why Obama won.  He thinks the average Republican was so demoralized by McCain, many did not even turn out to vote.  That is partly why Obama won, he thinks.  FRED said one of the problems is Newt, Perry and Santorum are all vying for the same people and keep splitting the vote.  RUTH said she thought Perry would be out after Saturday.  BOB said he thought it would depend on how much money he has left.  When these campaign donors give you a wad of money they expect you to spend it.  HOWARD said he lost one of his big supporters over some remark he made (about  vultures in capitalism).  BOB thinks he has enough money to at least go into Florida.  He did do well in the debate last night though.
BOB said this thing about cutting tuition for illegal immigrants that hurt him.  And then he couldn’t even remember his own program to cut.  And he had been emphasizing Energy the whole time and couldn’t remember the Department of Energy.

BOB wanted to know what everybody thought about Obama’s idea to consolidate the Department of Commerce and elevate the Better Business Bureau to a cabinet level.  Anybody been following that at all?  RUTH said she thought there was something crooked about it.  HOWARD said he didn’t trust anything Obama tries.  Someone is going to benefit from it you can bet.  ERNIE said nothing happens in government without someone benefiting from it now.

BOB asked what did we think about Obama cutting a trillion dollars from the defense spending over the next ten years.  DAVID said he didn’t think anything Obama did can be trusted.  RUTH asked DAVID Jr, what did the people he went to school think about Obama.  There are some who agree and others who do not.  RUTH wanted to know if they realize that all this debt which is going to fall on you and your children.  DAVID said he really thinks that is why Ron Paul is kind of looked up to right now.  RUTH said her daughter is 28 and she realizes that this debt is hers, her nephews and his children.  BOB said he hoped they were all saving up their money so they can pay off this debt.  Discussion on the debt and the problems it is causing….. And all the taxes that are being placed on us.  Do away with the income tax and just pay sales tax.  Only pay income tax during war time.   ERNIE said that is why Paul is doing as well as he is because he wants to do away with taxes and go to a flat rate tax.  HOWARD said Connie Mack had a good plan also called the Penny tax.  He really didn’t know enough about it to explain it, but it sounded logical.   Also discussed things currently involving ethanol and the gas tax.

Meeting adjourned at 7:10.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary