CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
JANUARY 10, 2012

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

Chairman BOB started with a “Happy New Year” to all.  He is looking forward to some political changes in the local landscape this year.  ’I presume you all have seen the local paper where we have three county commissioners who are not going to run for reelection, so Fred is going to keep us up to speed on  what is what and who is who’.  He then asked for a report from FRED DECKER.  FRED said he thinks the biggest problem is Gregg Lewis.  He has been hearing that Mr. Lewis is going to back Renee Coles for County Commissioner.  If he does, then we are going to run Scott Carpenter against her.  He has already agreed to it.  FRED said Pat Joyce had told him about a year ago that being commissioner was interfering with his business and he was going to have to give it up (commissioner).  He guesses Holt Faircloth and Doug Harris just got tired.  Did anyone ever hear of a Larry Land (?) that ran for school board last time?  He ran against David Carr.  FRED is going to try to get hold of him (he lives in Beaufort) and see if he might be interested in running for commissioner.  As far as the school board goes, he is trying to talk ERIC BROYLES in running for the Morehead position.  He has been talking to a guy in Newport, Bob Harden (?).  He doesn’t know if anyone here has heard of him or not.  He is an investment banker for Merrill Lynch, office in Bank of America.  Everybody in Newport knows him and he is trying to get him to run.  As for County Commissioner, David Horton would be the same area as Scott would be.  KEN LANG asked FRED about the seat he was proposing for Scott; that would be which commissioner’s seat he would be running for?  FRED said the same one Rene Coles would be.  KEN said he thought we should encourage SCOTT to run for that seat regardless of who else would be running.  KEN said as far as he had been able to determine that other than the potential of Rene running, he had not heard of anyone else mentioned.  He said some of the commissioners had told him they did not think she was going to run.  He did not know if that was true or not, but only what he had been told.  Regardless of whether or not she does, he feels we should keep talking to SCOTT and encouraging him to run.  We definitely need someone, of the TEA Party persuasion, in that seat (either Pat Joyce’s or Doug Harris‘s).  FRED said he was not that familiar with people in Beaufort for who to encourage to run for Holt’s seat.  HOWARD GARNER said he had heard that Doug Harris might be encouraged to re-file, but he believes in term limits.  KEN said he believes we can probably encourage him to stay on  using the argument that to turn three commissioners over at one time, without some assurance we are going to have people running that will maintain that conservative voting block that we have.   This would be a bad time for him to leave.  BOB said we will not know for sure until the end of February (end of the filing period) who is definitely running.  BOB asked SCOTT what was his opinion on all this.  SCOTT said the bottom line is he is here for the younger generation.  That was why he got out of the Army and came back to Carteret County with his family.  After serving 26 years in the Army in combat, he saw where his life was at and he is here now to try to help out his community.  He has already served as President of the Home Owners Association where he lives in Brandywine.  He just put his name in today about serving on the big board there in Brandywine.  Bottom line is he is here to serve.  He has had three commands and gone the extra mile and he is here now to go that extra mile for his family (number one) and his community (number 2).  BOB asked SCOTT’s wife how she felt about this.  She said she supported him in any way he needed and with anything he wanted to do.  She knew he was capable of doing whatever was necessary.  BOB said to SCOTT that he had said he was here for the younger generation, but to us, he was the younger generation.  HOWARD said being here for the younger generation was fine but not to forget us old folks.  We have fought a lot of losing battles along the way.   FRED said he had one more thing.  We had talked about not backing Walter Jones, but unless we can find out his voting record for the last three or four years, we have no talking points.  We can’t just call someone and ask them to vote for someone else and not be able to explain why.  We need something he has done or voted on that will convince voters to vote our way.  The main thing he (FRED) had gotten upset with Jones on was he had voted with Charlie Rangle so many times.  He was the only Republican that campaigned for Rangle.  BOB said Lisa Marley (?) recently had written a good article on her blog, announcing her support for Frank Palombo and had a whole list of bills that Jones had voted for.  FRED said that is what he needs.  If we are going to make phone calls, he needs that type of information to pass out to our callers.  HOWARD wanted to know who Lisa was.  BOB said her blog was “Truth or Dare” and she was from Dare County.  She is also precinct chairman in one of the districts up there for the Republican Party.  She is also Frank Palombo’s Treasurer.  BOB had introduced them down in Wilmington at the Republican convention.  She has a lot of pull up there in Dare County.  FRED said if he could get a line on that type of information he could do a write up to pass out to our callers, so we will all be on the same wave length.
BOB said while we are talking about Frank, he wanted to know if we all remembered Captain Steve Miller who has attended several of our meetings and writes letters to the editor.  He is doing an in kind type of contribution and has rented the Train Depot here in downtown Morehead on the 24th of this month, which is on a Tuesday, two weeks from tonight,  and is going to have a rally there for Frank Palombo.  Frank’s campaign chairman called BOB today and wanted to know if we could get organized and get some TEA Party members down there.  BOB said he would be willing to convene our meeting there that night.  Because of all we need to cover, he is not going to be able to attend the Republican meeting tonight and asked FRED to pass on to them about Frank being down at the Train Depot on the 24th, from 7 to 9, and Lockwood is going to advertise it on his radio program.  Frank has a new press secretary, Ingrid Johannson, and she will be networking with her press cohorts to get  publicity also.  FRED said another thing he needed to mention…the Republican Party is having a Reagan Day Dinner down at the Senior Center he thinks on a Saturday evening (somewhere around the 20th of February).  The speaker is going to be a former Marine from Wilmington who ran against Mack McIntire.  KEN said it was on a Saturday  because precinct meetings are on Saturdays.  FRED said it might be on the 13th.  ( Secretary’s note: Saturdays in February fall on the 11th and 18th, not 13 and 20).  HOWARD said he thought the speakers name was Pantero.  KEN and FRED said yes that was the man’s name.  Belva wanted to know where the event was going to be held and was told at the Len Mann’s Center (Senior Center).  FRED said if anyone needed a ticket to please see him, he would have the tickets with him at our next meeting.  STEVE BEST asked how much the tickets were and FRED said $20.00 each.  While some may think this is high, we need to know this is the only fund raiser the party has.  Also, if he could get someone to take over the party leadership, he would like to do that and get rid of Gregg Lewis, but he hasn’t found anybody to take that on.  KEN asked when Gregg’s term was up that it seemed to him he was elected not that long ago.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said ’not long enough as far as he was concerned’.  KEN said he had been told they thought he had until 2014, but he wasn’t sure.  FRED said he wasn’t talking about county commissioner but Republican Party Chairman.  KEN said he thought we needed to find out what that time was, before we start looking for a replacement.   FRED told about a gentleman from Harkers Island that asked who did you have to talk to around here to volunteer.  FRED told him he’d better shut up before someone heard him. (Created several chuckles.)
BOB reported on the death of Walt Shaw who came to our TEA Party rallies, and was a real strong conservative.  BOB said it seemed to him that more people than usual died around the holidays.  HOWARD said he had always heard ‘a warm Christmas, a fat grave yard’.
HOWARD reported that on the 28th of January, the Civatas  is conducting a campaign training seminar/workshop in Raleigh.  The fee is $25 per person and lasts from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon.  Four of us, (Ken, Diane, Peggy and Howard) have already pre-registered.  KEN said he thought it was the 21st.   NANCY BOCK checked and said it was the 21st.  Howard had written it down on the wrong day in his calendar.  BOB said we need to come up with another voter recommendation list like we had last time.  We had such great success with that.  Maybe we can learn more ways of making a difference at this workshop.
BOB asked HARRY if he had gotten any more information on the John Locke thing.  It is supposed to be part two of the workshop we held last year.  Workshop #2 is ’What would the Federalists and Anti-federalists say about the current political and economic crises?’  They have several ways to deliver their workshops and would like to discuss the option that will work the best for us.  (1) A four or five hour workshop that takes place on a Saturday; (2) Two separate evening sessions of about 2 hours each and (3) an individualized schedule that works best for our organization.  Harry said he thought what we had last year worked good for us in the auditorium.  Everything they needed to make the presentation was available.
Plenty of room and comfortable seating.  Consensus was: option (1).   HOWARD told HARRY that he had done a good job organizing the workshop last time, he felt he should handle this one also.  HARRY said that Michael Sanera (the one he is corresponding with to set up the workshop here) told him they would provide the workshops free of charge to the hosting organizations, but donations to assist this effort would be gratefully appreciated.  Our organization will be responsible for any costs associated with the meeting room.  It is their experience that participants are more than willing to pay a reasonable amount for these expenses.  The John Locke Foundation has a secure online registration system for this purpose.  They also ask the local contact persons to work with like-minded groups in their area to ensure a regional outreach and an audience of at least 50 people for the workshop.  BOB said we had about 80 last year.  HARRY said yes we did; but we had a long time to work on that one.  This time we will not have as much time.  BOB asked how we publicized it last year…letters to the editor, radio interviews, (John Locke had some of their people available for the interviews on Lockwood’s show)…we had it pretty well covered.  He was going to try to set up the same thing this year.  Michael had told HARRY that dates in January will not provide enough time to organize and publicize a workshop.  They had the following dates available…February 11 or 25 or March 17.  BOB said he felt the further we could push it out the better attendance we will have.  HARRY said he would check to see if the 17th of March is still available.  PEGGY GARNER said the email he had sent to the officers stated that they had reserved February 25 for us.  HARRY said at the time he sorta  was looking at a tentative thing  and hopefully Michael hasn’t already made hard plans on that yet.  HARRY said he would get hold of him tonight and see if we can get it changed to March 17.  BOB said the 25th was his birthday.  HOWARD asked how much the room costs.  HARRY said he was not real sure.  He thought it was less than $100 last year.  He has a call in to the office over there and they were supposed to call him back, but haven’t yet.  BOB posed the question ‘As the TEA Party, do we want to go ahead and sponsor the event?   Reserve the hall and everything?’   HARRY said yes, that was what he had in mind.  BOB wanted to know from NANCY BOCK if we had the money in the bank.  HARRY said he couldn’t tell us what it was going to cost; that he had hoped to have all that information for the meeting tonight.  KEN said he thought we needed to find out what we spent last year and come back and say ‘this is what we estimate the cost will be’.  NANCY said right now we have $1100.00 in the bank and she said she thought it was $448.00 last year.   They had to have a minimum amount of people, remember?  And she thought it had costs something like $5.00 to attend, but that was to cover the hall and all.  BOB said he thought one of our failings about getting the word out for such things is, we are not taking advantage of the churches and the use of their church bulletins.  It would be nice if we had a master list of all the churches with their mailing addresses where we could contact them.  STEVE said he could get that for us.  BOB said good, that is yours for action.  All the churches in Carteret County mailing or email addresses that we can send a file or advertisement of what is going on for them to include in their Sunday bulletin.  He thinks that will really get the word out in a big way.  Probably hit more people than with the News Times.  BOB told HARRY to set it up and STEVE the addresses.
BOB said he wanted to take a brief moment to introduce VERNE THOMPSON.  He asked if VERNE had been to our meetings before, where was he from and how did he find out about us.  VERNE said he had been around for a while.  He had bought a place down on the sound in the late 80’s.  He still had his place up near Raleigh up until recently.  He had been dividing him time but finally managed to sell the place up there and move here full time.  BOB asked him if he had registered to vote here yet and he replied Oh, yes, he had been registered here for some time.  BOB told him we were glad to have him, that we meet here every Tuesday,  (5:00 dinner/social hour and meeting at 6:00).  He explained that KEN ran another group up at Emerald Isle.  The county is so long we decided to split it up so the members would not have so far to travel.  The Wild West Group meets the first and third Tuesdays at 7:00 pm.  Eventually we hope to get a third group organized in the eastern part of our county (the DownEasters).  He introduced all our officers…him as Chairman, PEGGY, our secretary (so be careful what you say, because she records every word into our minutes),  KEN, our communications director, (he runs the web site), NANCY, our Treasurer, and who else have we got!!!  Several said don’t forget ERIC BROYLES, the vice chairman.  BOB said Oh, yeah, ERIC.  CLAYTON told ERIC ‘now he knows how Biden feels’.
BOB showed his latest bumper sticker….picture of Obama with the words, ‘does this a– make my truck look fat?’  He plans to place it right below his ‘you lie’ sticker.  The man that runs the land fill on Hibbs Road saw BOB and his TEA party shirt the other day as he was dumping his trash and  gave it to him.  KEN said he had sent an email out to a half a dozen people with that bumper sticker plus several others that he had thought were really entertaining.  There are a few web sites that as we continue our meeting tonight he has a proposal that will involve that bumper sticker plus some others.
BOB reported that STEVE has a new movie coming up at the Cave Saturday 28 at 4:00 called the Paper Clips.  He said for those who do not know, STEVE has converted his garage into a “Christian movie theater”.    STEVE said he had not seen the movie yet so could not tell us what it is about.  He has heard it is a very good movie.  He is preparing (? Could not understand what he called it, but did determine it was a Greek food from a cook book he got in the mail and it sounded good so he had tried it.)  He is preparing it for those who come to see the movie.  LYN asked if everyone had heard of the movie ‘Fire Proof’.  This movie was about fire departments, and they now have another movie out about the Police Department.  They are showing it at the First Baptist church next Sunday at 7:00.  BOB said while we are talking about movies, STEVE has procured a free movie called ‘Iranium’.  It is all about Iran’s push to acquire nuclear weapons and their international threat.  BOB asked STEVE to let us know when he planned to show this ninety minute documentary.  BOB asked him to read the cover on what it is about.  STEVE said it is about how the government is trying to take over and run everybody’s life.  KEN said it is a really good movie, that he had screened it for STEVE and he had wanted to show it at his Emerald Isle meeting but the folks there thought it ought to be done at some other time rather than a meeting.  He recommended that STEVE show it over at his place.  It goes through the history of how various governments have taken over and draws parallels to what is happening in the US now.  It is kind of scary.  It is not just about Obama’s term in office, it also talks about both parties.  BOB said every president we have had has grown the government.  It even grew under Reagan.
BOB recognized KEN to speak on several issues (billboards, Spokesman for the Rally/Fund Raiser Committee etc.)  KEN said he had passed around a sheet of paper with a couple of ideas for the Billboard Project and wanted to know if everyone had seen  them and marked which they preferred.  Those are drafts of proposed ideas for the Billboard Project that he had brought up several months ago.  They are probably going, in the next three or four days, to decide which one to go with.  There is very little difference in the two, with the most obvious being the ‘enough’ that is coming out of the eagle’s mouth is white on one and yellow on the other.  Slight difference in the size of the eagle’s head also.  The billboard project started with the MooreTEAParty group in Moore County.   In 2008, they put out several billboards in the Moore County area that were pro-TEA Party messages.  There are probably 15 or so TEA Parties represented in the committee that is looking at selecting a billboard design that will be posted around North Carolina between July and the election.  Billboards cost on the border for discussion about $400 per month.  So right now they are looking at definitely 4, or maybe 6, plus a mobile billboard to be used around Charlotte during the Democratic National convention.  So they are trying to collect money from individuals and TEA Parties to build up enough money to be able to put these billboards up around the state.  On the website (nc4TEA.com or net or several other .’s which will all lead you to the same place)  will give you a little bit more of the background of the billboard project and where they are proposing to put them.  They currently believe they have enough  money, or soon will have enough, for four billboards.  Most of those are located in the middle part of the state (higher populated area and on highly traveled roads).  The next two on the list (if he is not mistaken) are around Jacksonville but they need additional money to be collected to be able to fund those.  One of them is down near Swansboro at the intersection of 24 and Belgrade Road and the other one is somewhere on the other side of Jacksonville on 17.  He is not sure exactly where.  VERNE said it appeared that this was just a ’get out the vote’ type of advertisement not endorsing any particular candidate, so what is the basis for the choices about the locations.  Raleigh has a very high turnout rate.  He did not see much need for a ’get out the vote’ campaign there.  KEN said it is advertising the website also, which promotes fiscally conservative candidates, limited government, and pro free market.  It is basically to stimulate awareness that we have had enough of our current government; that we want people to reclaim America and; we want people to get out and vote.  Implication in there is that we want people to vote conservative because it is sponsored by the TEA Party.  There is only so much you can say on a billboard that people can read when they are going down the road at 60 miles per hour.  So you have to make sure that the billboard is flashy enough to catch the eye  and the message is concise.  Believe me we have gone through a ton of slogans and stuff like that.  The purpose is not to endorse a particular candidate because we typically do not endorse, but do make recommendations in the local areas as far as this TEA Party is concerned.  We do not back any particular candidate, only suggest or recommend.  BOB brought up a situation in Onslow County with Americans for Progress (AFP) that explains why you do not pick a dog in a fight because that is what brought the AFP down.  They had backed a couple of candidates which created a fight among members, getting really nasty and totally split the group apart.  It disbanded.  We have at the Emerald Isle group a guy that is currently coming from the Hubert area, that was a member of that AFP group and that is how KEN knows what happened.  What happened to that group is a good example of what we should not be focusing on so that we don’t get split up.  Our message is to elect fiscally conservative candidates.  Anyway tonight when he gets home he will probably notify the billboard committee which sign we think is best.  They will cast their vote and probably by the end of the week they will have all the votes counted from the members of the committee and will have finally made a selection on what they are going to do.  What he would like to do is, for purposes of discussion, to make a motion that this TEA Party group fund a billboard for $400.00 which will cover a month for one billboard.  HOWARD seconded the motion.  BOB said we have a motion and a second so let’s vote on the motion.  Do we want to sponsor a billboard for one month?  Is anyone opposed to the motion?  No.  Motion carried.  BOB said he wanted to know if anyone had any ideas on how we are going to collect this money.   KEN said he suggests we write a check for the billboard project and then discuss how we are going to pay back what we had gotten from our treasury for the billboard project.
KEN said that kind of leads him into another topic.  About three or four months ago  BOB appointed a committee to look at fund raising.  That is especially important now since we really don’t have too long before the November big election and prior to that the May Primary.  NANCY had reported earlier that we had something like $1100 in the Treasury.  We just voted $400 for the Billboard Project; then we have the John Locke Workshop which is going to cost; and if we have a Tax Day Rally, as BOB suggested, that always costs us money because at the very least we have to have insurance.  Last time the insurance cost us $940.00.…so now our money is gone.  So it is important to have some mechanism to raise money to be able to have money to do stuff we have to do between now and the elections; cause we know none of that stuff is free.  I think we can take advantage of some free advertisements like with the John Locke thing we can  get on Lockwood’s show, public service announcements, the community calendar in the Carteret News Times; but when you start advertising in the paper or pay for advertising on the radio, we are talking about fairly good chunks of money.  So we need to take advantage of as much free stuff as we can to stretch the little bit of money we do have.   Anyway, the fund raising committee met (as well as discussed over the internet/email several times), we thought a good fund raiser might be like a barbecue dinner.  Then we got to talking about where, and when we would have it.  We discussed the park in Newport where we had our picnic last year or the Fort Benjamin Park.  KEN had suggested a few days ago that we have it on Tax Day, sort of with the rally.  Well, one of his esteemed colleagues, HOWARD, informed him that that was like 3 or 4 days (a couple of weeks actually) after the Newport Pig Cooking contest.  So it was decided by the committee that that was probably not a good idea to have a barbecue so close to the Newport fund raiser.   He said HOWARD thought a barbecue would likely be more successful in the fall rather than during warm weather.  However, that might be an idea for raising funds later but was not compatible with us raising funds now before the fall.  We’ve got to have some money earlier on, so he wanted to kind of throw out to you folks or you throw some out to us, on what we might do beforehand.  He knows BOB wants to do a rally, and that is a good thing but $900.00 for insurance, we will have to sell a lot of tee shirts to cover that.  BELVE MANNING said how about instead of  a barbecue dinner, have a chicken (barbecued or fried).  She said the alumni association does that a lot.  KEN said that’s a good idea.  Several of the fire departments have barbecue chicken dinners (or fish frys) to raise money.  (KEN checked to make sure PEGGY was taking notes and as HOWARD said  also recording).  BOB said he was not SET on having a rally, that he would like to have a rally or a fund raiser or both.  He was not totally set on the TAX Day Rally.  KEN said he understood that BOB was not demanding a rally, but he was just saying the pig barbecue would not work out to be held in conjunction with the TAX Day event.  A chicken dinner might work fine.  We could do something like that.  He asked the members if that sounded like a good idea?  And it could still be in conjunction with the TAX Day, since that is traditionally when we have our rally.  BOB said April 15 is on a Sunday, so did we want to think about Saturday, the 14th or Friday the 13th?  Several thought Saturday would probably work best, especially for the rally.  ERIC asked how many names did we currently have on our emailing list,  he figured somewhere around a thousand.  KEN said maybe close to that.  ERIC thinks we should come up with something  where they could send money in to help support our events and fund raisers when they are unable to attend.  KEN told ERIC he was getting ahead of him, that he hadn’t gotten to that yet.  Our list the committee had come up with was more than just a barbecue dinner fund raiser.  That was just one of the items.  KEN said what we will do then, at least for tax day or there about, is sort of formulate a little bit more about the menu and schedule and stuff like that.  He really likes the idea about the chicken cause that is not hard to handle.  The four of us (committee) will talk some more about plans and get something back as soon as we can  so we can make a decision on what we are going to do.
In addition to that, as ERIC led into, we have some other ideas also.  He is going to give an example, (not saying we are going to do it this way or whatever), but the Republican Women’s Club made a lot of money this year and they had a raffle for a couple of guns.  He can’t remember exactly what they made off of it but it was their biggest fund raiser that they have ever had.  (BOB said ‘we can raffle off the bullets for those guns).  KEN said his thought was that we ought to consider a raffle of something like a gun or something that will appeal to people in this area.  That is something  we don’t need to decide, but if you have some suggestions, please either give them to us now or at a later time.  He would like to suggest that we consider having a raffle as a fund raiser where we would presell tickets and then have a drawing, at sometime, didn’t have a time determined yet.  HOWARD suggested we hold the drawing at the Tax Day Rally on April 14th.  Most agreed.  KEN asked if anyone had any suggestions.  BOB said he had one, not necessarily Tax Day, but maybe sometime around Easter time frame.  A lot of organizations have Easter Egg Hunts and he was thinking that we do an Easter Egg Hunt and ever how many eggs their kid collected would pay a dollar an egg.  It not only would be a fund raiser but would get the family out.  HOWAR D said he wasn’t sure how that would go, since there are at least two big free ones here in Newport.  BOB said we could bill this as a fund raiser for the TEA Party.  It was just a crazy idea he had.  KEN asked that we stay with the raffle right now.  He asked if everyone thought a raffle was a reasonable thing to do?  Some minor discussion followed with most saying  they thought it would be OK.  Someone volunteered HARRY’s truck.  KEN said maybe BOB’s truck, but decided that might not sell too many tickets and BOB said no, he needed his truck to haul all the TEA Party stuff around since he had burned his shed down and had not other place to keep it.  PEGGY said since TOM HARMON was out of the country, maybe we could raffle his almost new truck off.  He wouldn’t miss it for a few months anyway.  HOWARD said TOM wasn’t to sure about this crowd and had carried his truck out of  the county.  KEN said we could knock it around a little bit more, he was just trying to find out if anyone had any experience with raffles.  The only one he has a first hand knowledge on was the gun raffle and he knew that was very successful.  LYN said some organizations that hold annual raffles will get a business to donate a motorcycle.  HOWARD said to raffle a motorcycle you are talking a whole lot of tickets you have to sell cause that Harley Davidson costs big money.  LYN said usually a dealer donates it.  CLAYTON asked ‘in this economy, they will donate a motorcycle?’  LYN said maybe they can’t sell them so they donate them and take a tax deduction.   KEN said we’ll knock that around a little bit more, but if you come up with any ideas, please let us know.
One of the other things that he thought of is kind of a combination of expanding the items that are available for sale from our store on the web site and that we sell at rallys and parades or anywhere we can set up a table.  Some ideas he has …right now we have tee shirts on our web site and that is really it.  Part of the reason behind that is we got hats now, but he doesn’t have them on the web site.  And the reason for that is he does not know how to work that into the web site, so he has to get up with the guy that does it, so he can find out how to do that.  We have short sleeve  and long sleeve tee shirts ,  and hats.  Some of these, from conversations with NANCY, we need to buy some more of different sizes.  We also have now that POP game that WAYNE WILLIS said we could sell on the web site and receive some revenue from that.  So that is another item to be added to the web site.   We have some bumper stickers “Crystal Coast TEA Party” bumper stickers.  And we have plenty of Cain bumper stickers at a very reasonable price!   Collector items.  BOB said he had gone on the web site and clicked on the store and there was nothing in it.  You can click on the home page and tee shirts and get an order form from there, but if you go to the store there is nothing there.  KEN said he knew it was kind of messed up but he figured if we add some things to the store (and get the store working properly) then maybe we could earn a little bit of money that way, but it also would give us a repository of supplies that we could take to put on a table and sell like we did at the 4th of July parade in Beaufort.  What he is suggesting is we pick out some bumper stickers, in addition to the Crystal Coast TEA Party stickers, maybe like the one BOB has and some others we think will attract attention and sell and put them on our web site also.  We need to look for someone local to make them.  These things are not copy writed.  There is no sense in us going and paying $3.00 a bumper sticker and then having to sell them for $6.00 (and not selling due to cost).  If we can have them printed locally and make up our own bumper stickers.  So if you see a good bumper sticker let us know about it.  Then we need to ask NANCY or somebody else to talk to some local people, because he would like to see our business stay here in the county/community for printing these things.  Someone mentioned coffee mugs.  KEN said some of the website TEA Party stores do sell coffee mugs.  If you go to TEA Party Patriots, they have all kinds of junk on there.  However they are pricy.  LYN said she had not followed through but had looked into ‘car fresheners’ maybe shaped like a flag, something inexpensive.  She thought they might cost something like 70 cents and maybe sell for $2.00.  KEN said he thought that would be a good idea.
Another things we thought about was ‘TEA Party Patriot’ buttons.  Some people like to wear buttons to meetings and rallys,   As an additional use for the buttons…  if we can get people interested this year in doing this, remember that workshop that we went to in Greenville on lobbying they talked about wearing a name tag when you go to the State House and meet your Senators and Representatives,  then we could wear our buttons.  They don’t want you running around with a whole bunch of signs, but a small button identifying who you are will look better than a paper name tag.  NANCY proposed including a pocket Constitution with every order for free.  We already give those out at the various events, so when somebody orders something we just put one in with their order.  LYN said we could also let them know they could pick their order up here every Tuesday night (which might bring them out to our meetings).  KEN said he would send out an email with some suggested thoughts for the bumper stickers (not to the whole list he has, but to maybe 30 or 40 people, mostly to the active members) and get their input and then you all will have his email address so you can keep him informed as to what you think.  Don’t treat it as SPAM.  It will say it is from Ken.  As he was saying, in addition to having these items for sale on the website, we will have them for sale on tables at various events also where we can promote the TEA Party.  Discussed the problems we had at the Morehead City parade and not being able to find out where we might could have a table.  LYN said the Pope’s would always let us set up in front of their restaurant.  KEN said we need to keep that in mind.  Some other venues that we might could use, but would probably cost us, would be like the St. Paddy’s Day at Emerald Isle, because they have a real good turnout there, but you do have to pay for you space.  Does anyone remember what that cost.  We have festivals, like SeaFood Festival, Mullet Festival, etc, but we have to commit to paying for the spot, and having people who are going to be there for an hour or two taking shifts.  PEGGY told KEN we could probably have a space at the Newport Pig Cookin’ also, but she thought it costs also.  ERNIE said we didn’t want to have anything there.  There were fights and everything else there and we didn’t need to be involved in something like that.  The majority of the members in attendance disagreed with ERNIE.  They had never heard of any problems like that at the Pig Cookin’.  It was watched too closely for any problems.
KEN asked if there want anything else he was supposed to bring up from the committee tonight.  PEGGY said yes ‘about the drawing and the 50-50’.  KEN said that some of the other TEA Party groups he had talked to always put out a donation jar at their meetings.  Anyone attending that would like to help out, can put whatever they would like into the jar to help raise needed funds.  HOWARD was going to get a big jar and PEGGY was going to print up a design with the TEA PARTY PATRIOTS Donation Jar.  NANCY said she already had several jars made up that we had used at the rallies.  KEN asked her to please bring two to the next meeting (one for here and one for the group in Emerald Isle).  We can give the one for here to BOB to put in his truck along with all the other TEA PARTY supplies he has in his truck shed.  Does that sound like a good reasonable idea to the group?  SCOTT said how about like the Republican Men have something where you buy tickets and they have a drawing and you get some money.  PEGGY said that is the 50-50 she had referred to when KEN had asked if he had forgotten anything.  HOWARD said he still had most of the box of tickets we bought for the rally in Newport.  He had such grand ideas for how much money we were going to make, he bought a whole case of tickets.  We have enough tickets to last a looooong time.  Some thought we should have the 50-50 every Tuesday.  BOB wanted to know how many would commit to buying 50-50 tickets every Tuesday.  Almost everyone there said they would.  BOB said do we want to decide if we want to have a donation jar or buy tickets for the 50-50 and how much would we sell the 50-50 tickets for.  One for $1.00, three for $2.00 was recommended by DIANE LANG and all thought that would work.  BOB said he was all for having a donation jar, and having a 50-50 raffle, but he did not want to discourage anyone from attending the meetings.  HOWARD said he did not think we needed both on the same night.  He said he had a certain amount of money that he is willing to throw in and he is going to throw it one place or the other.  KEN wanted to know if we wanted to do one or the other.  Discussion followed.  BOB said he wanted to make one hard and fast rule if we do the 50-50 and that was the winner cannot turn around and donate it back to the TEA Party.  A lot of people do that at these organization feeling like they have to or feel guilty for getting the money.  If you win it, you take it home.  DIANE said and then next week you can bring it back and put it into the jar.  KEN asked how many thought it should be a 50-50 raffle and how many a donation.  “Thanks a lot, it was split evenly”.  KEN told BOB that he would suggest if he didn’t think it was too complicated, a couple of nights a month we have a 50-50 and the other two nights we put out the donation jar.  SCOTT said we should keep a record of how they are working and after about 6 months whichever is doing the best for the group, then use that system.  KEN said he agreed that was a good idea.  BOB said as long as the donation jar did not cut into the tips we leave for the waitresses, he had no problem. CLAYTON wanted to know if we couldn’t send out to the other 900+ members who do not attend our meetings and ask them to please donate something to the TEA Party.  KEN said he could put that into the next email he sent out.  CLAYTON said a lot of people will send you 5 bucks or so, just to not have to spend all that money for gas just to get to the meetings.  HOWARD said just be sure to give them an address where to send the donations.  KEN said the money should go to NANCY because she is the Treasurer and she needs to keep up with how much money is coming in.  ERIC said he feels that all these people who consider themselves members of the TEA Party because they are on our mailing list, do need to get some skin in the game.  And the way they can do that is we just say look we need your help.  KEN said he agreed and he would include something in the next email he sent out.  BOB wanted to know if the ‘donate’ button on the web site works.  KEN said that was a real good question.  He would check it out tonight.  He did not know.  NANCY said didn’t we used to get PayPal payments  but KEN thought that was specifically set up for that particular purpose.   BOB said it said you could pay by PayPal or send in your check, but nowhere could he find an address to mail his check.  KEN said there is no where on there about shipping either.  He promised to fix all these problems as soon as he could.  ERIC said he thought we should take advantage of our 900+ email addresses.  KEN said something like that had come up at their Emerald Isle meeting where they had about 18 or 19 attendees, so he thought they were doing pretty good there.  Not gang busters, but OK.  Discussion about donations and stuff like that came up and he and DIANE had talked about it afterwards and you know like pushing too hard for donations scares people away.  He agrees you have to mention it and make it easy to donate, (the donate button has to work), but if you push too hard then you scare people away too.  You don’t want to make people feel they have to donate, because this is a pretty much a put your money where your mouth is, but you have to be delicate about how you do this and not push too hard.  You don’t do anything related to politics for free.  Unfortunately everything we talk about in here, rallies, fund raisers, work shops, costs money.  You got to pay for it if you are going to do it.  KEN asked if we had noticed his truck when we came it.  He has painted it up – on the back window he has TEA PARTY and the shortened web site www::cctpp.info.  On the two side windows, it says ‘November 6, 2012, The End of an Error!’.  He is getting a lot of thumbs up and a lot of positive comments.  ERIC said he thought KEN should include in his email about donations ‘Your support of your TEA Party in 2010 and the election of 24 conservatives made a difference and we need your help in 2012.’  DIANE said she did have some bumper stickers that are collectors items, (Cain) and if anyone is interested in them she will bring them to the next meeting she comes to and she will let them go for a small donation to the TEA Party.
PEGGY reminded KEN about the TEA Party business cards.  KEN said that is another expense.  We need to order some more business cards.  We are running low on those.  He thinks we should modify them and put the web site on the front instead of the back and that we include the Western Carteret meeting on the back of the card along with the Morehead City meeting data.  He would like to see us include the TEA Party principles of ‘Fiscal Responsibility’, ‘Limited Government’ and ‘Free Markets’.  He said he would talk to DENNIS later about printing.
BOB called on PEGGY to make an announcement about CATIE coming to speak to us.   PEGGY said first of all CATIE misses everybody but is so busy right now with school, the Sex Trafficking Program and working, she can not work us into her schedule right now.  BOB said for those who do not know CATIE, she is HOWARD and PEGGY’S granddaughter. PEGGY said no, she was our Great Granddaughter.  BOB said you’re older than I thought you were.  HOWARD said he would be 77 Thursday.  DIANE wanted to know if we were going to celebrate this year like we did last year.  PEGGY said no, CATIE did not have the time to plan something like that now.  HOWARD said he was going to the Newport Town Board Meeting Thursday night to stir up hate and discontent.  That for him would be fun too.  PEGGY said, to get back to CATIE, she has gotten interested in this Sex/Slavery Trafficking and is a state representative for the program.  They are hoping to build a home for the girls they rescue from the houses of prostitution they are held in.  When the police find them now they have no place to put them so as soon as they are free, they go right back to those houses and their pimps.  The organization that CATIE is associated with’s  goal is to help these girls learn about God and His love for them;  how to make a living in another occupation; and help build them self esteem so they can function in the real world.  CATIE drove all the way to Charlotte a couple of weeks ago to speak to a ‘mega church’ congregation (one than has over 2000 members) to raise money for this home.  She and another girl raised over $5,000.00 for this home  I’m not sure about all that she would like to talk with you about, but since she feels you are the inspiration for getting her started in trying to change the world to a better place for all, she would like to tell you all about what she is involved in today.  She would like to come next Tuesday, the 17th.  She wanted to come both the 17th and the 24th but since we have the Palombo event on the 24th,  I plan to bring her with us to that also, because she would like to see Palombo,  He asks about her every time we run into him.  HOWARD said her mother, Dawn, figured it up and in addition to her school she is working about 30 hours a week also.  She is also a member of the group that Lockwood has on Monday nights discussing various subjects of interest.  So she is kind of busy.  And we all need to remember our CATIE is only 17 and a Junior in High School.  To be able to drive to Charlotte and speak before that big crowd of people, the TEA Party can pat themselves on the back, because they gave her her start at the rallies that she spoke to for us.  HOWARD said he understood she had been invited to come and speak to this church.  He’s not sure how it came about but she actually had been looking forward to it.  As for me, I would have been terrified.  BOB said she is aware that we cannot compete with that church and come up with $5,000.00, right?  PEGGY said they are planning a dinner at Glad Tidings Church, that she is in charge of organizing, to raise money so she will probably tell us about that also.  CATIE is involved in their youth activities and HOWARD thinks that is how she got into this program.  PEGGY said she did not want to go into any more details, that she would leave that up to CATIE.  SCOTT’s wife asked if she was involved in the Atlanta program on slavery that raised so much money.  PEGGY said she thought that was a different program.
BOB called on EULA PARKIN for her report on J’Had Watch.  She said it boggles her mind that our government  is aware of the fact that there are 35 Terrorist Training Camps in the United States.  They know where they are, how big they are, how many are involved in it and nothing is being done.  A radical J’hadish group responsible for 50 attacks on American soil, is operating these camps.  The government refuses to recognize the organization as a terrorist group on the list of foreign terrorists they have compiled.
They have purchased hundreds of acres of land from New York to California in which the leader is conducting the training of the most horrific Islamic warfare.  In a recruitment video captured from them he states in English we are fighting to destroy the enemy.  We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.  And though he and his troops are suspected of committing assassinations and fire bombings inside the US, it is also suspected of the beheading murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakastan.  The terrorists camps spread through the country and they continue to expand in numbers and population.  Their goal is the purification of Islam.  She said this just boggles her mind that the Department of Justice knows all this and has done nothing to put a stop to it.   BOB said we have to get rid of that Muslim in the White House first.
PEGGY asked if everyone had seen the letter from Chris about fishing.  Anyone that has not, she would like for you to take a copy and read it and try to help Chris by voicing your opinion to your representatives if you will.  KEN said he would  post that on the website.   Also did you all read ERIC’s letter to Rep. Pat McElraft.  It was a very good well written letter.  BOB asked ERIC if he would like to say anything.  He said as you all know for this past year he has been paying close attention to all the editorials being written in the Carteret County News Times.  A lot of people have stood up for the TEA Party especially in reference to Ken Humphrey’s.  He has now come to the conclusion that Ken Humphrey is just trying to suck our energy off by getting us to respond to him and his radical views.  ERIC feels that now in this election year we need to focus our attention and articles on Gov Beverly Perdue and Obama.  We need to put Mr. Humphrey aside…if you have read any of his articles and letters you know he is a far left nut case.  So let’s just ignore his ranting and focus on Perdue and Obama.  If you prefer to attack Walter B. Jones, so be it, but those are the ones we need to get rid of, not Ken Humphrey.  He means nothing to us.
Question was raised on the gas tax increase.  Discussion as to how it worked followed.  How the tax  gets increased with the increase in gas prices and the fact that it was voted to be rescinded by the  House but  the Senate refused to consider it.  The increase for the designated period of time denoted an increase of 3.9 but as you know, it gets upped to 4 cents.  By the Senate refusing to rescind it was like voting for the increase.  GRACE GILLIKIN said we have one of the highest gas taxes in the country and our Republican Senate voted for the increase.  HOWARD said no they didn’t vote for, they just didn’t vote and let it go.  GRACE said a non vote was the same to her as a yes vote.  HOWARD said he guess in a way she was right.
KEN said before we close he would like to discuss more on Chris’s letter.  Lockwood Phillips had a show on last week about the proposed game fish ban on three species of fish for commercial fishermen.  They want to reserve those three species strickly for recreational fishermen only.  BOB said this whole thing is driven by those out in the western part of our state (Raleigh west) who come here on the weekend or vacation .  KEN wrote, even though he is not a commercial fisherman, it seems to him that whenever government gets involved in picking winners and losers and destroying an industry that is as old as …. There is something wrong with that.  People don’t realize it impacts us the consumer as well.  If those fish are banned from commercial fishing, you won’t be able to go to a fish market and buy those fish or go to a restaurant and order them either unless they come from China or some other foreign country that are not imposed with this ban.  This ban will affect 3 % of the fish that commercial fishermen in the state catch and will just multiply all the other regulations they are having to fight against.  Recreational fishermen claim that the amount of money that is brought in by these commercial fishermen is only a few millions of dollars whereas the amount of money brought in by the recreational fisherman will, based on this ban, will be in the trillions.  His question to Lockwood was how could just 3% of fish account for such huge amount of money/income on the recreational side.  He does not believe it.  He thinks their numbers are made up.  They are not based on actual scientific data.  He sent an email to Pat McElraft, Jean Preston and Senator Harry Brown because they are the three on that commission that represent this part of the state.  Pat wrote him back almost immediately, it was the day before the commission had their first hearing, and she said, Ken, you are the first recreational fisherman that has come to me and spoke on behalf of the commercial fishermen.  She said she had not heard from any recreational fishermen except those who are opposed to it.  Those who are opposed to it, Ken feels they have some skin in the game.  That means they are going to make some money either through boat sales, boat rentals, charters…they are going to make money somehow.  The recreational (quote) fishermen are not the guys like him that go out there and throw a line out in the water and feed the fish.  Also those guys from Raleigh that come down here and charter a boat from one of the captains and go out an catch fish.   He doesn’t believe that those people coming here from Raleigh and the western part of the state are going to benefit us in the billions of dollars that are cited with only 3% of industry that is curved and limited by the state government.  It does impact you so, he would urge us to look into this (go to McCaffity’s website …Ken will post the addresses on the website, he can’t remember them right now).  Please write an email to Senator Preston and Rep. McElraft and let them know what you think about  this, because it does affect you.  If you eat fish it is going to impact you because the only way you will be able to catch or enjoy one of those three species is you buy a boat, get a license, and get out in the water and catch it yourself.  GRACE said that she understand s that NC grows those little fish, especially the red drum and send them to Florida, and put them in rivers (their breeding grounds).  They are all tagged and if you catch one of those with a tag, you are to send that tag in and they will pay you for it.  So North Carolina is supplementing Florida’s income by two different ways.  Ken said Lockwood is going to have another show on this.  The show he already had had a guy from Harkers Island (actually from Rocky Mount originally) and he is associated with a recreational fishing organization called NCFish.  They are very pro this fishing ban.  This guy called in Lockwood’s show and filibustered.  Lockwood could not get a word in edgewise.  Ken contacted Lockwood and said what do you know about this guy and Lockwood said he had talked to him before but really did not know anything so Ken looked him up on the internet.   He is a life member in this organization called CCA, which has something to do with environmental groups who are anti-commercial fishing.  He is also on the board of this NCFish .org organization.  His daughter is a lifetime member of that organization.  Ken has found audio of him being interviewed on various radio programs where he was basically giving fishing reports.  He is tied into the money end of this somewhere.
HARRY wanted to know if KEN knew how much of the catch made here remains here.  KEN said he did not know.  When Chris came in and talked to us a few months ago, it just hit KEN wrong that government should not be getting involved in any industry.  BOB said Bill Hitchcock interviewed Chris a few weeks ago and Chris said basically everything he had in the letter.  GRACE said these recreational fishermen go out and catch these fish and if they don’t want them they will come back and sell them to the fish houses and make enough money to pay for the chartering of the boat they used.  KEN said from what he understands when these recreational fishermen go out and catch the fish, and release them, something like 80% of them die because of the way the fish were handled.  The fact that they are charging the commercial fishermen kill a lot of fish, doesn’t stand up to what they are doing to the fish either.  At least some of you that care, please drop an email to Pat and let her know how you feel about this.
One final note.  Don’t ever ask BOB directions to the rest rooms!!!!
Meeting adjourned at 7:50pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CCTPP Newsletter-12-1

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
Of
13 December 2011

Meeting was held at Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:07pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by RUTH PARKER
Invocation by JERE GEURIN

BOB announced that this would be our last meeting of the year.  Our next meeting will be on the second Tuesday of January (10th).
In the interim EULA PARKIN will be celebrating her 85th birthday on December 31st.  (Early Happy Birthday EULA!!!!)  BOB said she had told him she was born in a garage, and he wanted to know if they had garages back then and if so, for what?)  She did not get her birth certificate until she was 20 years old and it showed her mother and father’s correct names but the certificate was for a male born on January 1.  She finally got it straightened out around the time she was to get married.  BOB wished her 85 more, to which she said “Woo”, but she did just get her life time girl scout card, and it expires in 2091!  Are they trying to tell her something?  BOB wanted to know if she would be able to get it renewed.
BOB called on ERIC BROYLES to tell us about “Huba, Huba”.  ERIC had handed out business cards (or really informational cards).  He had also put up sign/s/posters he had made up to advertise his web site had had made up.  He had gotten tired of people telling him that we could not do anything about putting Americans back to work and about the illegal immigration situation.  Effective today, he is announcing the launching of “Huba-Huba-Huba”.  Even though it is just going official today, it has already had 7000 hits,  It is “Hire American, Buy American”.  It is time to put Americans to work.  (Or US citizens because you can also say Central Americans, South Americans, and even Canadian Americans are American citizens also.)  Besides being an informational web site, it has been designed to be very easy to use; it has a volunteer section where you can download graphics for signs, and postcards right now, but shortly a business card will also be covered.  We do not currently sell products on this site because he does not want to make it a non-profit organization.  He just wants it to be a grass roots movement.  The way we promote this is through word of mouth; just like ten or fifteen years ago we had a ‘buy America’ program in this country.  As a result of that ‘buy America’ program China opened plants here and now employ 371 thousand Americans, because they were afraid of being locked out of the market.  LOU KUKULINSKI asked “Didn’t 60 minutes just have a documentary on Buy America?  Someone had a website where they had all American companies producing all over the world?”  ERIC said he had not seen that website but had seen some others similar.  LOU said there was one website where the guy had you could buy anything you wanted made in America.  He did not have any nail companies; however there is one nail company someplace in Indiana.  LOU said it was on last Sunday night or the Sunday night before.  PEGGY said ABC news with Diane Sawyer had had a segment on where they had gone into homes and removed everything that was not made in America; which had surprised everyone  because, when they had finished, the rooms were almost totally bare. It had been almost impossible to refurnish the homes totally with made in America products.  ERIC said he had decided not to list companies that support hiring Americans, because he is afraid he may miss some and make them angry.  Wanted to avoid law suits.  The less you say about a company’s hiring practices the better off you are.  That does not mean the citizens should not be aware that there is a business in Florida or wherever, that is using illegal labor, that you can just boycott by word of mouth.  Just say, we are not going to buy your products until you change your business practices of hiring illegals.  LOU said he went to the website he was referring to right after the 60 minutes program and there were hundreds of people saying ’I’ll buy all my products from these companies (products made in America) even if I have to go out of my way for it, even if it costs me a couple of extra bucks to purchase it.  The night he logged on there was over 7000 hits.  WAYNE WILLIS asked ERIC if he could redo his calling cards with a different color.  The dark background made them hard to read for him, especially the web address being in red on the blue.  ERIC said he would see what he could come up with.  He had been trying to do ‘red, white and blue’ for America. ERIC had samples of postcards that you could call up when going on his website.  You can also run off copies of the posters he had printed up and had posted behind BOB tonight.  You can put them up in your yard or wherever you can find a suitable place.  The thing is to get the word out.  LOU said he goes for tee shirts.  ERIC said he was trying to get the price on having some of the cards made up at Staples, because he is also going to try to work a deal where you can buy business cards like these, at a cheap price, so as a volunteer you can just hand them out as you go through grocery stores, or wherever, just everywhere.  LOU said he thought he should put on the other side of the card “Abolish the EPA”.  ERIC laughed and said he was only going with the ‘Hire American’ thing.  The website is up and still going through some changes.  Right now he has decided not to list the people or businesses that support it.  He does not want a law suit over something he is trying to do as a private citizen.  He reminded us that he had some more cards for anyone wanting more to pass out.  ERIC said he had called Sen. Burr and Rep. Jones’ offices today and they both told him they had already received several inquiries even though he had not officially launched the website.  He had only been handing out the calling cards wherever he had gone with people being very receptive to taking them,.  His time grocery shopping had doubled for him with all the stopping and talking with interested people he met and gave the cards to.  We already know Congress is not going to do anything about it.  But now we can say ’do you support this?’  This way you are indirectly forcing their hand on it.  What are they going to say “No, I don’t support hiring Americans”.  This way they have to take a stand.  ERIC believes this thing is going to spread like wild fire.  NORMAN KENT asked ERIC if he had done his own website or had hired it out.  ERIC said “no, he had done it himself”.  BOB said “A made in America website”.  ERIC said ’Yep, American made by American labor.”
BOB said he had already been doing his part.  What has built this country is over decades of generations the US has been an exporting nation.  In other words we had a positive balance of trade going on, so the wealth of other nations kept coming in to our country in the form of profits and the taxes on those profits that built our infrastructure (our roads, bridges, sewers, canals, and all that).  Then sometime in the mid 70’s we became a net importer as opposed to an exporter.  Anyway back in February, he started an Ebay Store.  He has had a hobby of collecting butterflies since he was ten. He has collected all over the world; even as a Marine,  so in February he began selling his exotic/tropical butter-flies that he has mounted on driftwood under glass domes and he is selling these things all over the world and he sold $1,400.00 worth to a guy in Germany.  Therefore he is bringing the wealth of the world back into the US (and to Broad Creek).  FRED DECKER said we had so much oil in this country, we should be oil exporters.
BOB recognized WAYNE WILLIS for an update on his POP game.  WAYNE said the website that he had talked about is in the process of being developed by his IT girl from Harkers Island, because he does not have sense enough to do what ERIC did and develop his own.  She is in the same class room as the young man who helped with writing the software for the game.  She is going to set it up so she can put over versions in there.  He got her started this morning on getting the website up and it will be when she gets through with that, he is going to take it to the radio station and get him to polish it, because it may have some barnacles on it, since it was made in Harkers Island by an IT girl.  When he gets through with it, (come to think of it, he is from Harkers Island and he did the cover).  If anyone needs some of that kind of stuff done, he recommends Shane Willis at the Talk Station.   He does an excellent job, and is cheap (that is part of what excellent means to WAYNE).  Anyway that will be available and when it is done he is going to get with KEN LANG and he is going to put it on the TEA Party Patriot website.  Hopefully from there, it can spring on to the other TEA Party organizations that have websites for stuff like that.  Maybe we can pick up some loose change for the TEA Party treasury and keep him from losing his house.  He said he had not been back to the school board with it; not had the time because he had other business to take care of.  He does plan to go back to the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Charge of Curriculum and maybe they will start using it.  Wanted to know if anyone who bought a copy last week had any questions, criticize it or whatever?  The reason he wanted us to buy first, and use them and spread them around was to get us to ask why did you do this, or what was that for?
LOU said, ’speaking about making waves – did you all see Captain Steve Miller’s letter to the editor this week on Ken Humphrey’s letters?’  WAYNE said, ’he’s been good the last few weeks’.  LOU said Miller’s been kicking old Ken’s butt all over the county.
Discussion on Jerusalem, King Solomon’s Temple, Muslim religion, etc. (Too many talking at once to be able to get any semblance of order as to what was being said.)
BOB said ’Some of the things going on with the TEA Party Patriots – they are not sure if they have all the problems corrected or not, but they have a straw pole on presidential picks (he thinks it is this weekend).  Check teapartypatriots.org (Sunday night) and keeping in mind that the TEA Party is not going to endorse one candidate or another regardless who wins, but they will let it be known who won the straw pole.  The other thing is they are talking about a couple of rallies in the spring.  One is in March in front of the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court is going to be working on two very important issues – the Arizona Law and the Obamacare Law.  They are talking about having a big rally up there – and then they are already starting to talk about a tax day rally in DC.  Nothing is firmed up yet, just talk right now, but keep checking in on the website for any breaking news on that.  He will keep us up to speed on anything he finds out.  Nobody on any of the conference calls has seemed to be pro-Romney, or pro-Gingrich, or pro-anybody.  It is so far being pretty much left up to the folks to decide on their own.  The TEA Party is a bottoms up not a top down organization.
ERIC said he would like to bring up two subjects.  Since he had missed a couple of meetings, he did not know if we had already talked about it, but Bill 1867, he thinks it is a bill for the military.  The language in it seems to give the military a right to arrest US citizens and detain them without trial.  Several said that was the Defense Authorization Act.  NORMAN (I think it was) said he had heard something about it on the radio, that someone said the language was leaving it open to ’what is the definition of a terrorist?’ and he does not have anything in black and white but he has been told if you have seven days of food storage, you can be defined as a terrorist.  The thing is it does away with passe-comma-tat-us (please excuse the spelling, did not know enough about how to spell it to even look it up in the dictionary) (you know that is where US troops are not supposed to be used against US personnel.) That is the number one crime that the pro-illegal people would use.  You can’t put our troops on the borders, because that would violate that act.  It seems they are not worried about the illegal aliens.  They are worried about us and so not they define where like they said you got seven day of food storage, own guns, you can be considered a terrorist.  So they can detain you and not give you your Constitutional right to a speedy and fair trial.  BOB said ‘that ain’t going to become no law.  What is the other issue you have.”  NORMAN said the Defense Authorization Act has been passed in the House if he remembers right.  It went to the Senate.  RUTH PARKER said it had not been passed yet.  LOU said if it has been passed, then all those people up there know the people are really upset.  ERNIE GUTHRIE said they will not release the names of those who voted for it.  LOU said ‘imagine that!  That should be illegal in itself’.  BOB discussed the various websites you could go to to find that information.  ERNIE discussed the Home Grown Terrorist Act.
BOB asked ERIC what was the other bill he wanted to talk about?  ERIC said he had received an email from Walter B. Jones and the email was basically talking about a bill that was passed in 2009 when the Democrats were in control that could be used as  bailout funds.  As you all know it is melting down.  They are not looking at possibly using that 108 billion to rescue Europe.  Discussion on how far that 108 billion would go today with all the problems in Europe.  JERE GEURIN said we had already rescued Europe – it was called World War II.  PAT NALITZ said yeah and they didn’t appreciate that.  ERIC said they point is he would recommend that everyone call their congressman, senator and tell them that you are against that money being spent.  BOB said didn’t all the World Banks get together for that.  ERIC said that is why the market is up 200 points one day and down 200 points the next, because they can’t settle their differences over there.  NORMAN said there is so much debt, that no one wants to buy all that debt when you know it is going to be worthless.  Look at the unemployment situation going up.  Whoever gets stuck with the hot potato last – LOU said just look at the American economy.  BOB said it is one of these deals where everybody says I’ll buy your worthless papers as long as you keep buying mine.  At some point along the way someone is going to say ‘I’ve got enough toilet paper, I don’t need anymore of that’.
WAYNE asked ‘what did we think of this guy that has more money than Donald Trump?’  The one that is going to run against Putin of Russia.  PAT said she heard he was only running to take the heat of Putin.  In other words the people that are unhappy with Putin will have another choice.  NORMAN said it is all a ruse.  It has all been bought and paid for.  ERNIE asked if anyone had ever noticed how Putin walks with his hands by his side.  That is his training with the KGB.  His hands are always ready to grab his pistol if he needs it.  Like the cowboys of the west used to do
JERE asked how many were members of the NRA?  How many of you own guns?  In the latest issue of the American Rifleman is a very interesting article about Obama’s secret undercover campaign to take away our guns.  LOU said actually that was what that Fast & Furious really was all about.  Discussion on Fast & Furious.  JERE said Obama is after our guns and they are going to do us just like they did in England.  They go one step at a time and before you know it the only ones who will have guns are the criminals.  LOU asked if we had seen where all the major gun and ammunition makers and suppliers are being bought out by George Soros.  Much concern was displayed.  WAYNE said one thing you didn’t ask while ago is ‘how many in here have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?’  BOB said he didn’t want the cops or any law officer know he even had a gun.  If they pass a law, the first thing they’ll do is pull out that list of permits, and say ok let’s go this his, and his, and his.  I don’t want them to know I have a gun.  ERNIE said even if you don’t have a concealed weapon permit your name is still in the system for buying a gun.  Comments of ‘only if you bought it legally – and not on the black marker’.  LOU said as a retired Marine, BOB’s name would be on the list anyway.  ERIC said he looked at it this way – they are going to pick up 80 million people, the prisons are going to be overcrowded and so they are going to have to start releasing some of us again.  BOB said they would let the illegal aliens out first.  LOU said that all the sales of hunting licenses in all the states was more than the largest two armies in the whole world.  There are more hunters in the US than the two largest armies in the world.
WAYNE asked if we heard what they asked Hirohito after the war was over…how come they didn’t invade the US.  He said because you are talking about invading a place where everybody there has a gun.  BOB said the Supreme Court would have to overturn the Second Amendment first before they took our guns.  There will be enough people to rise up like the TEA Party.  Discussion on the Supreme Court and the recent appointments.  ERIC said you can tell where they are going with this – to a Nazi-type government.  NORMAN said in the late 1990’s they asked Military personnel, you know part of the interview process, ‘if called to, would you be able to arrest your parents, cousins, grandparents, family members, etc.  What they found out was that most of them would not.  They would have to form a totally different government controlled militia, because they could not rely on the current military.  LOU said yes because about 85% percent of the military is against Obama.   HOWARD said maybe that is why he has talked about establishing his own rather than the military.  ERNIE said he thought what we were going to see was a force put together, an anti-terrorist force.  But you are going to see that one day, you will look at them and say I’ve never seen a uniform like that before.  And they are going to have the power to do anything they want to.  The people we are up against are willing to do anything to anybody to maintain their power.  We say oh, we outnumber them, but our military is a killing machine if it is worked just right.  LOU said not just the military, Code Pink said they were coming down and desecrate the Viet Nam memorial on a Saturday, so all these idiots when they came, were met by 300,000 bikers.  Do you know how many bikers there are in this country.  You won’t be taking guns or nothing else away from them.  There’s over 150 motorcycle gangs just in NC.  NORM said you know what you made me think of….about the 2000 election.  He went down to Florida and they were talking about the proving grounds where they had all these wonderful tools that they had been using.  What it was they could make jet sounds (2 jet engines going off).  It was so deafening that all you wanted to do was cram your fingers in your ears.  They had hot laser, where you felt like all your skin had been burnt off and this was on the national news.  This was during that time you got Iraqi freedom (or a little after that)….he was thinking ‘what are you going to do…you’re after Osama Bin Laden….you’re going to drop these on the mountains there.  No!  This stuff was not made to go to combat, against a foreign opposition.  It had been made for here.  BOB said all this sounds like conspiracy to him and he does not believe any of it.  LOU said ‘one more thing, Code Pink did not desecrate the Viet Nam memorial.
HOWARD said RUTH had brought up something before the meeting started, that we may need to discuss and that is to try to stop DOT from desecrating this highway out here by taking out the turn lane.  Doug Harris was meeting with the Transportation Committee yesterday afternoon.  Sammy Turner, former police chief in Morehead told him Sunday, that Doug had figures that proved DOT wrong about the accident frequency here.  He had called Doug and left him a message on his answering machine for him to please use all the power he had to try to stop them from spoiling this highway, because those arrogant bureaucrats need stopping.  And he had also called Pat McElraft, and left a similar message on her answering machine, saying also that he hoped they had the power to do something about it.  He thought by telling them he hoped they had the power that maybe it would kind of put them on the spot and see if they wouldn’t exercise their power.  It is going to hurt every business along this road, he believes.  LOU said ‘look at Havelock, they’ve destroyed their road also’.  HOWARD said he thought it was the arrogant bureaucrats that had to show they were in power.  LOU said right there in front of that Tire Store just the other side of Bojangles there is a turn lane there and both arrows are pointed at each other.   Now how do you make any sense in that.  HOWARD said when they first put that traffic light at 70/24/and Bridges Street, he was there waiting for the light to turn green so he could make a turn from 70 onto Bridges Street.  When the light changed he almost had a head on with a car making a left turn from 70 onto 24.  The first time it happened, he thought he had screwed up; but when it happened again later, he discovered they had both left turns moving at the same time but with only one turn lane to travel in.  So he called Highway Patrol and in a day or so, they got it corrected.  PEGGY said there is still only one lane there but they changed the light to only let one left turn at a time go through.  BOB said he told RUTH before the meeting about being down there at the new cigar store next to the old Subway that closed, and was waiting to turn left to come towards the Golden Corral and letting the traffic clear.  And he is looking at a lady coming from the right and another lady coming from the left, both with left turn signals going, and both are in the turn lane.  They are looking at each other and ran slam into one another head on.  ERIC said well that is just dumb a– stupidity.  A change in the road can’t correct stupidity.  BOB said that’s true, but that is why they want to put a median in the road here, to keep them people out of the turn lanes.  BOB said neither wanted to give.  RUTH said it is going to hurt business.  HOWARD asked if anyone there remembered the jug handles that used to be there when they first built those highways?  You had to pull over into the right hand turnoff (jug handle) and then cross all four lanes to get to the jug handle on the other side of the road.  You pulled into that area and then pulled out onto the highway again, just to turn left.  HOWARD said it looked like to him that these traffic engineers are probably trained as morons.  You look at this new shopping center (where Michaels’ is), how screwed that design is in trying to get into the shopping area.  BOB said he is sure that this job out here is one of Obama’s shovel ready projects.  HOWARD said not it is some bureaucrat in Raleigh wanting to get him and his Raleigh buddies to the beach faster.  RUTH said she thought we should get up a petition, and she will go from business to business getting support opposing the change.  PEGGY said she would be glad to make up the petitions for her to get signed as soon as we decide what to put on the petition.  If you’ve got people sitting looking right at each other and still run smack into one another, why should the businesses along that portion of the highway suffer because of people’s stupidity.  NORMAN said the sickness that has overtaken DC has trickled down.  HOWARD said supposedly Doug Harris has got a study from somewhere, and he has not talked to him yet, that contradicts what DOT is claiming on 70.  BOB asked ‘where is the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce”?  Where are all these organizations that are supposed to be looking out for businesses.  He doesn’t think the TEA Party should take this problem on.  Obviously the business community is say “Oh well”.  LOU asked JIM NALITZ his opinion on the matter since he had been so quiet tonight.  JIM said it didn’t affect him, he lived in Cape Carteret.  He was told ‘you better, they may be coming after you next.’  The people in Havelock probably thought the same thing before it hit them right between the eyes.  HOWARD asked if anyone had ever been to a so called public hearing put on by bureaucrats.  What they do instead of asking you, some wheel gets up there and tells you what they are going to do.  That is considered a hearing.  The decision has been made and here is what we are going to do and they want you to amen it.  That’s the way it works.  He has been to some put on by the Corps of Engineers.  The Colonel steps up and (here’s the biggest lie in the country) says, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you!!!”.  BOB said ’being a state highway, he is sure they posted it on the public comments state website, just like they tried to ram that sulfur plant through.  They said it had been posted on the website.  People have got to plug in.  Who wants to monitor the state website everyday to keep us up to speed.  WAYNE said ’in case you didn’t know that bridge across Galant’s Channel, they’ve already started, and he has not seen anything about it in the paper or what have you.  Talking about redundancy in the government, the last time I got that ticket for passing that school bus that wasn’t there, Beaufort was trying to pay for that water line that went out there to East Carteret.  It was on the west side of the road, so the ticket he got three weeks ago for failing to yield right of way is to help Beaufort pay for another set of water lines that is going out there because they have to use the ones on the other side of the road to keep from using the ones they put there four years ago.  So that’s what is going on, they are doing that because the new road when the new bridge is built, it is going to take up there at Oak Wood Acres (5 miles or so, east of Beaufort).  So they are having to put in 5 miles of new water lines because the other one is on the wrong side of the road.  He hopes they hurry up and get through with it because he going to get another ticket before it is over.  WAYNE was asked what the difference was in a white pipe and a green pipe.   WAYNE said one was water and the other sewer.
BOB asked if anyone here belonged to the Chamber of Commerce?  LOU said ’indirectly’.  ‘The Republican Men’s Club does.’   It seems to him that to fight the highway thing there, the ones that are affected are all those businesses along there, so it has to be their battle.  And if they don’t want to fight that battle then we will all have to suffer the consequences of whatever it is.  This fight should have been fought a long time ago before it even got to this stage.  Apparently the money has already been appropriated and they had got their plans laid, so he doesn’t know what they are going to do.  WAYNE said they have already blocked off a place down where the old Sears used to be.  They just placed pipes blocking  the prior crossover and did away with it without anything ever being said.  No; ‘do you like it or don’t you‘.  They just did it.  BOB said the other thing he had seen out there was people using the turn lane to pass or accelerating.  BOB said he wouldn’t know how to address that.  You would have to look at the public safety study as to the number of accidents/fatalities occurring.  Like when the doctor’s daughter died there by Kittrell’s (Friendly Road), and they put in a stop light.  JERE said DOT’s answer to every traffic problem is more asphalt and concrete.  They will not be happy until the entire earth is covered with asphalt.
LOU told BOB he knew it was just going to devastate him, but this is probably his last meeting until the end of March.  He is going to Carteret Community College.  BOB said maybe he’d be back in time to help with the rally/fundraiser.  Said if we need him to call him.  (No parades between now and then)
HOWARD reminded all about the Board of Education seats becoming available in the next election.  Both seats in Morehead and one in Newport.  We need to be looking.
BOB announced that Richard Hunt’s father passed away and the memorial service would be tomorrow in Cape Carteret.
STEVE BEST said this coming Sunday he would be showing The Nativity Story at the Cave.  He would have chili and popcorn.  5:00pm.
BOB offered the advice that could save you a lot of time on the internet – if it has could, might, maybe, possibly, in the title, it is all just made up stuff, just trying to make a story;  ignore it.  HOWARD said ‘well with all these environmentalists, it is could, maybe, might, etc. That is their whole thing.
HOWARD said there is going to be another session on wind power and looking at who is conducting it, it is going to be a totally 100 degree slant from the one we saw.  Everyone agreed that the seminar put on by the John Locke Foundation was excellent.
The speakers were all well informed and held their own when challenged by some in the audience.  WAYNE said he had been unable to attend the seminar and it was not mentioned in the paper or in the letter that Fred Fulcher wrote about that meeting after it was over with.  Fred is a representative on the Carteret Craven Electric Board and he had a real good letter and WAYNE said he was going to tell us something that should have been said in that meeting – that a year and a half or two years ago Progress Energy and Duke went down here and did a study on the pros and cons of putting wind power, solar power or any other kind of power (renewal resources) one in the north end of Pamlico Sound or Currituck Sound and another study about putting wind mills off shore.  Close to the shore and off in the ocean just like all this stuff they were talking about over there last week.  When they got through doing the math, what it figured out to was no matter what they did or how good it was, or how cheap anything was installed, or maintained, serviced, it would cost 25 cent a kilowatt more for what electricity they got from it.  On the retailers’ end of the light bill.  250% of what you are paying right now. BOB said they did have charts that showed statistics relating to that.  He wasn’t exactly sure of the figures but those sounded about right.  BOB said one of the things he got out of it was not so much about making money, it is about getting government subsidies.  WAYNE said that is where the money came from to start with.  Just like Solendra.  BOB said when you start getting subsidies, you pay yourself a couple of million dollars a year or whatever, and if the thing goes bankrupt, it’s alright, you’ve got your golden parachute.  LOU said (a professor I think) said no matter how much energy you produce you can not get more than 25% of the needs.  You still need another 75% of fossil fuel to provide all the power we need.  HOWARD said one of those in opposition brought up how much fuel the windmills were going to save.  The speakers told them there was not electricity generated by petroleum (natural gas, yes).  So then one of the opposition said ’well, they cut the top of the mountain.  LOU said every time there is a hurricane, his electricity is furnished by fossil fuel, when he cranks up the generator.  HOWARD said one of the things that caught his attention was how many bats the windmills would kill.  He said he was sitting there thinking ’so what’.  Then the speakers brought out how the bats control the insect population and doing away with the bats how much more per year it would cost for chemicals to tend crops to control the insects.  It was a tremendous cost.  He could not remember the exact amount.  WAYNE said the next thing you are going to hear is not having windmills is the reason there is no skunks anymore.  If you have been around here a while there used to be a lot.  Now there is none.  HOWARD said ’they cycle’.  LOU said he had one under his house last year.  WAYNE said ’that was the last one there was, then’.  FRED said there used to be a lot of wild boar but there ain’t none now.  WAYNE said but we now have coyotes and wolves now.
BOB wanted to know if there was any more TEA Party to be brought up.  HOWARD reminded BOB to inform Golden Corral management that we would not be meeting for the next three weeks.
JERE said don’t forget the May primary and the Marriage Act Amendment.
BOB adjourned the meeting at 7:10 pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF 6 DECEMBER 2011

Meeting called to order at 5:10pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge led by WAYNE WILLIS
Invocation by Dr. Mark Creech
No. Attendees – 33

SURVEY POLITIAL CANDIDATES:
BOB said that a few weeks ago we discussed vetting the candidates for the upcoming primaries and CAPT STEVE MILLER has come up with a proposed/potential vetting questions.  He has brought copies for you to review.  Following is the survey Capt. Miller has presented:
2012 CARTERET COUNTY TEA PARTY SURVEY OF POLITICAL CANDIDATES
Energy:
1) Should the US artificially raise the cost of fossil fuel to stimulate and allow for
alternative fuels?
2) Do you support offshore drilling off of the North Carolina coast?
Health Care:
1) Do you support repealing Obamacare?
2) Should Insurance Companies be allowed to compete across state lines?
3) Do you support Tort Reform?
Spending:
1) Should a national sales tax be used to pay down the deficit?
2) Should Social Security be taxed at all levels of income?
3) Should we cut Foreign Aid?
4) If so, how much:, 10%, 20%, 30%, More than 30%, or Completely?
5) Would you support a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution?
Immigration:
1) Do the states have the right to enforce the federal immigration laws when the
Federal Government will not?
2) Should we build a fence and secure all of the borders of the US?
3) Should all illegal immigrants be deported or just the lawless ones?

Captain MILLER, asked us to look them over.  This is just a start and will appreciate any suggestions anyone may have.  The idea is to keep it to one page.
BOB said in the primary last time when he ran against Jones, he had not realized the number of questionnaires you get from organizations all over the place.  It was a full time job just filling out that stuff and getting it sent back.

POP:
BOB said we have heard about it for months now, but we finally have a finished product for sale.  WAYNE WILLIS finally has his History Game (Patriots or Potentate) ready for market.  WAYNE said it is on a CD ROM that you play on your computer, not on the TV.  He said it has been a year and change since he first proposed his idea to us.  It has taken him that long to find a ‘child’ (17 year old) that could write the software.  WAYNE said he had children a whole lot older, but that is what you have to deal with now; if you want to do something with the computer.  He has come up with retailing them for $15.00 each.  There will be discounts for volume purchases.  He plans to get in touch with the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, Republican Parties, and NANCY BOCK, he hopes will follow through with our agreement (that was made so long ago that we have probably forgotten) of… if we put an ad on our TEA Party web site, all sales produced, will mean 10% going into the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots treasury and if we can connect with a lot of TEA Parties, this TEA Party group will not have to worry about selling tee shirts and hats.  He hopes that’s the way it is going to work out.  He’s going to get with NANCY and work out the details about handling the money.  He sold several copies at the meeting.  He only had 50 made up and has already sold around 10 of those, not counting what he sold here tonight.  If you would like to have copies to give for Christmas presents, please contact him as soon as possible.  It will be a while before he can get another batch made up.  For those who were new to the group, he explained that this is a History Teaching Tool and went on to explain how it works.  Ten people can play it at the time.  It has patriotic music, one liners, pictures of the subject matter, etc.

NEW FACES:
BOB asked Catfish Williams what he was doing here tonight, and Catfish said he understood there was free food here tonight.  He introduced Ray Muns, former County Commissioner and asked what brought him out tonight.  He said ‘Catfish’ and a chance to see a lot of old friends. BOB requested anyone that we do not have their email address to please include it on the sign-in list, so we can put them on our mailing list.

GUEST SPEAKER DR. MARK CREECH:
Dr. Creech said he was honored to be asked to speak to this group tonight.  He has had the opportunity to speak to three or four TEA Party groups before but this is his first in this county.  He wanted to talk to us very briefly about the ministry of Christian public policy organization and the Christian Action League of North Carolina and then he will talk to us about the urgency of the Marriage Protection Amendment.  He has to confess he is a little apprehensive about giving the speech, after a recent experience he had where his car had broken down and he had taken it to the shop and the mechanic was bent over looking at the motor and he raised up, and with a very disturbed look on his face said to him, “Mark, it’s really bad, and it’s going to cost you.”  Dr. Creech said ‘Please don’t tell me that, I’m just a poor Baptist preacher’.  And do you know what that mechanic said to him?  He said “I know, I heard you last Sunday!”  (Laughter)  ‘I hope you won’t feel like that after I talk to you tonight.’  “For those of you who don’t know the Christian Action League of North Carolina is a Christian public policy organization that has been in existence in this state since the 1930’s and today represents conservative evangelicals from seventeen denominations in the Tar Heel State.  We are in the NC General Assembly with a full time presence promoting legislation that is consistent with Christian World views.   We advocate for those measures that strengthen the family and we oppose any legislation or public policy initiatives that would erode the family structure.  If you consider yourself a conservative evangelical Christian then I am your lobbyist.  I am there in the NC General Assembly whenever they are in session whether the long session or the short session or special sessions that they call.  I am there representing your Christian values in that political process.  The Christian Action League is on the front line combating the gambling industry and all of their highly paid lobbyists and their efforts to bring more legalized gambling to this state.  We discourage the promotion of alcohol beverages and other drugs, pornography, sexual immorality, and all the other evils that undermine our culture.  We also provide educational material as well as help communities like yours to form coalitions to battle such influences.  I want to take the opportunity to invite you tonight to personally become a part of our efforts.  One of the ways you can do this is simply by allowing us to put you on our email list.  If you have a personal computer our email will send to you every week a report about the latest and most significant culture war events and how they specifically relate to the state of NC.  Many times what we will do is suggest some action that you can take to make a positive impact for righteousness sake upon our legislators or some other situation.   Further more, I would like to encourage you to visit our web site that you can find at www.christianactionleague.org or christianactionleague.net.  If you go to either address you will get to our web site which will keep you updated on state wide concerns.” BOB asked could we sign up to be included on their email list.  Dr. Creech said yes, some of the handouts he has for us here tonight include a signup list.  He had neglected to put that one out that gives the option of signing up for that email service as well as getting on their email list but did so as he spoke.  He would very much like to get everyone here signed up tonight before you leave.  “You will forgive me if I boast a bit, but I am convinced that there is nobody in NC who is covering the social concerns better than we are.  I think that anytime you get our report you will find it to be a very thorough report.  We want you to be thoroughly informed.  Whether you have a personal computer or not we would also like to start sending other critical mailings to you via snail mail, so please give us your mailing address as well.  I would love to tell you more about this ministry, but I have so many things I want to talk about like what we have been doing in this year’s session of the NC General Assembly and then focusing my remarks for the remainder of our time together about what I believe to be the most important public policy matter before this state and that is the approval of a Constitutional Amendment that will protect marriage as one man and one woman.  The Christian Action League had high hopes heading into this last legislative session and we were not disappointed.  With the General Assembly under new leadership now and an aggressive agenda on the table, the League had innumerable opportunities to advocate for family values and help law makers understand proposed legislation from a Christian World view.  The passage of several vital pro-life measures, getting the marriage protection amendment on the ballot and stemming the tide of dangerous alcohol consumption rates, predatory gambling in the Tar Heel state made this one of the best years the Christian Action League has ever had.  The Woman’s Right to Know bill which ensures that women seeking an abortion gets an opportunity to view an ultrasound, to have a twenty-four hour waiting period to carefully weigh all of their options.  The passage of that legislation is expected to save hundreds, possibly as many as 3,000 or more unborn lives in this state every year.  Abortion forces feverously fought this measure as law makers voted to approve it.  And then voted again to override the governor’s veto.  Passage of that legislation in this state under those circumstances was no small matter.” (Applause).   FRED DECKER asked ‘wasn’t Pat McElraft one of those who introduced that bill.  Dr. Creech said she was and she did an excellent job arguing on the House Floor favoring that legislation.  “You can be proud of her, I can tell you.  One of the sad things that happened was a judge in court blocked the ultrasound provision of the bill which has been misrepresented.  Actually that provision in the bill simply requires that a women be availed of an opportunity, to see her unborn child and hear its heart beat.  But she is not forced to look at anything, not forced to listen to anything.  It only requires that that abortionist avail her of that opportunity.  The judge knocked that provision of the legislation down but it is in appeal and we are quite confident that in time the courts will re-establish that provision in the appeals process.”  BOB asked why did he think the judge ruled the way he did.  Dr. Creech said the judge had said he thought it was too invasive.  (A lot of ‘do what’s -taking a picture is invasive?)  Dr Creech said  “Yes, how is it invasive to simply avail someone an opportunity.  It would be an invasive matter if you were forcing her to look at it and if you were forcing her to hear it, but simply to avail her of the opportunity if she should choose to take it is another matter altogether.  So I don’t understand that ruling except to say we think that in time the appeals process will restore it.  This session of the Legislation also approved Ethan’s Law; that is legislation that establishes when a pregnant woman is murdered or injured seriously/maliciously/purposely enough to lose her baby; there are two victims and not just one.  That bill was modeled after the Federal Unborn Victim of Violence Act and I am happy to say that bill passed.  Further, a bill that would authorize the production of a choose life specialty license plate, which would benefit pregnancy life centers, was also passed.  That bill, too, unfortunately, is currently tied up in the courts.  A court case brought by our friends of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  I speak facetiously.  But once again we feel confident it too will prevail in the appeals process.  A banning of so called Spice Drugs (have any of you seen those in stores – that is synthetic marijuana – sold as incense – but smoked by users.)  Methroyl (?) sold as bath salts, but also used for a quick and d
angerous high – we wanted  approval from law makers for that to be banned.  That took effect in June of this year.  We also helped secure the passage of legislation that tightens controls on medications containing pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient used in the production of methamyphetamines for the meth industry.  The Christian Action League also successfully battled bills for legalized video sweepstakes, full fledged charity casino nights in hotels, as well as the push for Las Vegas- style gambling at Harrah’s Casino in Cherokee.  As for the issue of expanded gaming at Harrah’s Casino in “Cherokee, the Governor’s office and the Eastern Band of Cherokees reached an agreement that throws the door wide open for dealers and virtually any and all table games, allowing class three Las Vegas style gambling, something always previously been frowned upon in this state.  Those new games which will be allowed are also tied to another failed government policy like the lottery extending 8% of the profits to school districts.  I hate that mess.  That means that the carrot of gambling is going to now be attached to government – it is always going to be dangling before law makers, tempting them to loosen further the restrictions on gambling in the state with the hope of eventually garnering more revenue for the state.  Already the Christian Action League is urging folks to contact their law makers and ask them to oppose any expanded gambling on the Cherokee Reservation.  The governor has made this compact but the Legislature will have to seal the deal by voting for it if it is to become effective.  Finally after nearly a decade of unsuccessful attempts to get a marriage protection measure heard before an NC Legislature; law makers not only heard the proposed initiative in committee but they also passed it allowing Tar Heel voters to decide whether to amend the state’s Constitution to affirm the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.  The Christian Action League was in the very vanguard of garnering the 3/5th majority for the vote.  Now, until and unless voters approve this Constitutional Amendment which will be a ballot measure in May during the primaries, North Carolina, the only state in the southeast without such protection for traditional marriage, will remain a target for the legalization of same sex marriage.  You know some years ago I had just finished a sermon on the pleasures of married life and on the way out of the church that morning I overheard one man say, to the chagrin of his wife, I wish I knew as little about the subject of marriage as that preacher seems to know.  Well, I would argue that I know more than he contested that I do.  Listen carefully folks, I believe that I am discussing with you the most important subject perhaps, one of the most defining subjects, of our time.  The union between one man and one woman, marriage, is timeless, universal, and special.  Throughout history diverse cultures and faiths have upheld marriage as the ideal.  Marriage is the fundamental building block of all human civilization including our own state.  The life giving foundation of marriage is the very thing that creates and sustains our civilization.  Marriage benefits society, especially children, in ways that no other relationship possibly can.  The life long faithful union of a husband and wife promotes healthy natural families for the common good today and for future generations.  Sixty-three million Americans, thirty states, have voted on the definition of marriage.  Nearly two thirds of the electorate have affirmed and preserved marriage as a union between a husband and a wife.  And as we approach the Constitutional Referendum of the definition of marriage in our state, we can see that the public here largely agrees that marriage should remain as one man and one woman.  According to public policy polling, which is not known for espousing conservative principles, votes in a poll last October showed that 61% of likely primary voters in NC support a marriage protection amendment and only 34% are opposed.  The marriage protection amendment is also supported by a margin of 63% to 30% of voters who say that they think same sex marriage is something that ought to be illegal.  According to a Civitas poll, also provided in October of this year 61% of likely voters support and only 31% opposes the marriage protection amendment.  Protecting marriage is society’s time tested way to bless as many children as possible with both a mother and a father.  You know, people often argue that the opposition to same sex marriage is much like our culture’s opposition to inter-racial marriage was many years ago.  But that comparison, I would suggest to you, is untenable, because race is irrelevant to marriage while gender is essential to it.  Moms and Dads are both necessary.  Neither is replaceable by a generic adult.  Many men make good dads but no man, would you agree, would make a good Mom.  Many women can make good moms, but no woman could ever make a good dad.  Marriage sustains the great truth that children need both a mother and a father.   It discourages the establishment of good homes that purposely exclude one or the other.  But you say, Rev Creech, is there really a genuine threat for the potential of same sex marriage in the Tar Heel state?  The answer to that question is that same sex marriage is now legal in six states; Conn., Iowa, Mass., NH, NY, Vermont, as well as the District of Colombia.  Same sex couples that reside in our state could marry in anyone of the above states and then file suit in a NC court to have their same sex marriage recognized in this state.  But by placing an amendment in our state Constitution, it will protect marriage from being re-defined by a judge or by future Legislatures that might seek to legalize the union of same sex couples.  Should same sex marriage be legalized in this state the short and the long term effects would be devastating.  Allow me, if you will tonight, to list for you some of those consequences as mentioned in the testimony prepared for the NC House of Representatives in favor of the marriage protection amendment by Peter Sprig of the Family Research Council.  First some of the immediate effects would include:  Tax Payers, Consumers, and Businesses would arguably be forced to subsidize homosexual relationships.  Currently some employers already offer domestic partner benefits to same sex couples as a matter of choice.  But as homosexual couples are granted the full legal status of civil marriage then employers who do not want to grant spousal benefits to homosexual partners whether out of principle or simply because of a prudent economic judgment would be coerced by court orders to do so.  They would have to, because they would be considered discriminatory if they did not.  You as a tax payer, consumer, or a small business owner, would arguably be forced to bear the expense of subsidizing homosexual relationships, including their higher health care costs.  Second: Schools would teach that homosexual relationships are equal to or identical to heterosexual relationships.  Just months after same sexes were legal to marry in Mass. In 2004, National Public Radio interviewed D. Allen,(?) a lesbian, who teaches eighth grade sex education.  Allen now says she can boldly teach the gay curriculum.  According to NPR her lessons include descriptions of homosexual relations, thoroughly and explicitly with a chart.  Allen declared if somebody wants to challenge me, I’ll say ‘Give me a break, it’s legal now!’  Third:  Freedom of conscience and religious liberty would be threatened.  Religious liberty applies not only to formal houses of worship but to parent church ministries, religious educational and social service organizations and individual believers trying to do their work and live their lives in accordance with their faith.  For example: Charities in Boston who stayed true to principle and refused to place children for adoption with same sex couples, were told by the state of Mass that they could no longer do
adoptions at all.  When a faith based  organization  refused to rent for a same sex union ceremony, they were stripped of their tax exemption.  Religious positions, psycologists, marriage counselors, etc, could be denied licenses if they treated opposite sex couples different from same sex couples.  Religious educational institutions would be at risk.  A Jewish school in New York City was forced to allow same sex domestic partners to live in married student housing.  These are some of the more immediate effects that occur when same sex marriage is legalized.  How about some of the long term effects?  First:  Fewer children would be raised by a married mother and father.  Legalization of homosexual marriage would mean, for the first time in history, society would be placing its highest stamp of official government approval on the deliberate creation of permanently motherless or fatherless households for children.  It should be limited to a mother and a father who are committed to one another in marriage.  Children raised by their married mother and father, the evidence demonstrably shows the experience of lower rates of numerous social problems.  A closely related harm is that more children would grow up fatherless.   Most children that only live with only one biological parent will live with their mothers.  This is true both of single parent households, and of homosexual households of couples raising children.  Same sex marriage would thus result in an increase in the number of children who suffer the specific negative consequences of fatherlessness.   For example, researchers show that boys without fathers suffer higher risks of incarceration while girls without fathers are at elevated risks for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy.  Or as one scholar summed it up ‘Fatherlessness results in more boys with guns and more girls with babies.’  Some lesbians are deliberately creating fatherless children through artificial reproductive technology.  In a recent study of children conceived through artificial methods, it was found that they are more likely to struggle with delinquency, substance abuse and depression.  And then finally, birth rates will fall.  The most fundamental task of any culture is to reproduce itself.  And that is why virtually every human society until the present day, has given the privileged social status, that is called marriage, to male/female sexual relationships.  The only type capable of resulting in natural procreation.  Extending marriage to homosexual couples would eliminate any incentive to form life long potentially pro-created relationships.  The long term result would be that fewer such life long relationships would be formed.  Fewer such couples would choose to pro-create and fewer babies in the long term would be born.  There is already evidence, my friends, of at least a correlation between low birth rates and the legalization of same sex marriage.  Four of the five states that permit same sex marriage rank within the bottom eight of all fifty states in both birth rate and fertility rate.  We are now being warned that declining birth rates lead to an aging population with negative results such as threats to solvency of Social Security, Medicare, and other such important programs to the nation.  These are just a few of the many concerns that we can raise and I wish I had time to expound upon more.  Indulge me to mention just one more, one that has to do with the short term nature.  The vast majority of homosexual relationships and how that would impact marriage as an institution.  Homosexual partners are less likely to remain committed for a life time.  Laurence Kirk, a homosexual psychologist, a gay psychologist, has declared that after extensive research, and I quote, ’it is safe to conclude that gay and lesbian couples dissolve their relationships more frequently than heterosexual couples, especially heterosexual couples with children.’  A study of same sex couples in Mass found that after only a year, only one year or less, of marriage, more than a third of the male couples and nearly half of the female couples had seriously discussed ending their relationships.  A study in Sweden found that the divorce risk in partners of men is 50% higher than in heterosexual marriages and the divorce risk in partnerships of women is double that of men, thus making lesbian divorces almost three times as likely as heterosexual ones.  Now what do these factors mean?  Well the so called conservative argument for homosexual marriage suggests to us that granting marriage to homosexual couples would somehow make their relationships change to resemble heterosexual.  But jurisdictions that have recognized these relationships, that even the open declarations of many that say they are in, they can see just the opposite is what would occur.  If homosexual relationships are held up to society as a fully equal part of the social ideal that is called marriage then the value of commitment, sexual fidelity, and permanence in relationships will further erode, even among heterosexuals.   The long term result would be basically a threat to our society.  Fewer people would marry, fewer people would remain monogamous and sexually faithful to their partners, and fewer people would remain married for a lifetime.  Friends, this is not just the ravings of a Baptist preacher; it is the result of the research that has been done.  Make same sex marriage legal and over a matter of time the entire institution of marriage will largely become irrelevant.  Finally allow me to address one argument that is made against the marriage protection amendment that I think will be of great interest to the members of the TEA Party who I think are more often concerned with fiscal issues facing our state and our nation.  By the way, I would relish the opportunity to come and talk to you again about other issues, not just the marriage protection amendment.   The argument is sometimes made that the marriage protection amendment will somehow be bad for our state’s economy.  Well the truth of the matter is there is no study economic or otherwise that has ever shown that the protection of marriage has yielded negative economic consequences to even one state.  The fact that 30 states have already protected marriage in their Constitutions affirms that it does not hurt business.  The amendment will not prevent businesses that offer benefits to same sex couples from continuing to offer those benefits on a private level, including health insurance; because this amendment has no legal impact on private businesses in any way.  The amendment will not keep NC from attracting new businesses/corporations to the state.  North Carolina has consistently ranked as one of the top places in America to work, to do business and to live.  Our state marriage laws, which already limits marriage to one man and one woman, have not in anyway hampered those ratings in the least.  But are one of the very reasons that NC is currently ranked so high.  In fact, all of the top ten economically healthy states, identified in a report by the American Legislative Exchange Council in 2011 have laws affirming that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.  Nine of them in their state Constitutions.  By contrast the ten bottom ranked states for economic health, all undermine marriage in their laws.  This is no accident.  I hope that what I am about to say is emblazoned on your memory…Strong marriage laws lead to strong economies because marriage produces future workers, who are balanced, stable, healthy and good citizens.  According to Forbes magazine, eight of ten states ranked by that magazine as the best states for business have a Constitutional marriage amendment.  According to CNBC four out of the top five states for business rankings in 2011 have marriage protection amendments.  The National Chamber Foundation says that nine out of the ten top growth performers for 2011 recognized marriage as the union of one man and one woman, seven of them by a constitutional amendment; so this idea that protecting m
arriage of one man and one woman is somehow going to be bad for business is absolutely ludicrous.  You all know something, I’m convinced, and may I say this as an admonishment to my TEA Party friends, so many of your values of which I embrace and am with you on, I am convinced that we must, in this country, stop ignoring the elephant that is in the room.  We can have the best economic plans that could possibly be made but with the family in disarray, when the family structure is in serious decline, the strongest hope that we have for a good economy is lost accordingly.  Strong economies are built and sustained by strong families who produce strong citizens who contribute.  It is not all about the economy.
In the Huffington Post, published this fall, I quote, ‘marriage is quite literally the life blood of the economy.’  Citing a report from the National Marriage Project from the University of Virginia and its findings seven sectors of the economy experience tenable growth when people get married and have children and consequently suffer when marriage and fertility rates flounder.  The Brookings Institute, in a research study that it released in August, showed that, quote, ‘Women and Men who get and stay married are more likely to accrue substantial financial assets and enjoy good physical and mental health.  In fact married men enjoy a wage premium, compared to their single peers, that may exceed them by 10%.  I think that is significant.  The economic benefits of a strong marriage carry on to the next generation.  A skilled and educated work force flows most efficiently from the two parent state of family.  These families, as I have mentioned, raise good and responsible citizens who in turn drive our nation’s future productivity.  This is why any economic program must include policies that encourage and do not hinder family formation and marriage.  That is why I hope that many of you here who are so concerned about this issue, just as I am, join the Christian Action League as well as other groups, to campaign to protect marriage by helping us to educate the electorate on this issue and get out the vote between now and the May primary.  We are going to need your generous donations.  We are going to need for you to be a ‘ready, set, go’ volunteer as the campaign begins to ramp up.  I hope that you will take our information, get on our email list, and be prepared to be a part of this very critical campaign as it develops.  We are going to need your help and this is a battle, I suggest to you, that we can not afford to lose.  Thank you.”
BOB asked where their funding came from.  Rev. Creech said 85% of their funding comes from churches across NC who have written them into their annual budgets and supports them in that manner.  The other 15% comes from individual donations.  We have always had struggles for raising funds for our organization and I will tell you why…it is not because people do not believe in what we believe but because our lobbying activity in the NC General Assembly is considered too heavy under the IRS code to fall under a 501C3 Non-profit status.  We fall under the 501C4 Non-profit status.  We have greater leverage than a 501C3 would have.  We can be more involved in the political process than they can.  Our lobbying activities are unlimited and we can either support or oppose a candidate for election as long as such action is not a  substantial part of its ministry.  But what makes that difficult, the down side of all that is there have been occasions, few as they may be, where I may talk to a wonderful group like yours and someone comes up to me and says we really believe in what you are doing and my wife and I want to give you a $10,000 check right now.  But I have to be transparent to that donor and say we appreciate it so much, and you cannot realize how much we need that gift, but you must know that your gift will not be tax exempt.  Because of that we lose some of the larger donations that would normally be given to us.  I don’t know how to say it without boasting, but I want you folks to know that we are in the very vanguard of these social issues that are so critical to our time.  We are very strategic to the moral climate of this state.  And for those of you who hold dear to your heart Judeo Christian values.  We are your witness in the Legislative process bringing those principles to bear upon what law makers will do .  I know your law maker representative Pat McElraft.  I know everyone of them personally.  I have been with all of them in the House and in the Senate.  Many of them refer to me as their pastor.  I have a good relationship with them, whether they are Democrat or Republican.  I have good relationship on both sides of the aisle, because our focus is not on Democrat or Republican, but what we believe are biblical values, truly Christian values, and we try to keep that moral focus in front of us as they deliberate the legislative process.  I can’t tell you because I do not have the time how many bad bills we have stopped.  And I can’t tell you without sounding like bragging (and we really are bragging) how many good bills we have helped get passed.”  Someone in the group asked it there were any one person we could contact that would help you, who would that be?  Rev. Creech said ‘go back to your pastor and get your pastor to get your church engaged.  I believe it will be the churches that will pass this amendment.  And certainly we do want the TEA Party’s support.  We really do.  I would like to talk to you another time about what the Bible says about the role of Government.  You’d be surprised at how much what you believe in is supported by the Holy Scripture.  Because the values that you have embraced are not simply Republican, Democrat or even TEA Party values.  They are eternal values.  They come straight from the mouth of GOD.
BOB said we are in the process of planning an event in the spring.  We are not sure if it will be a rally, a fund raiser or both, but we normally get a pretty good size crowd.  Would you like to come and speak at that.  Rev. Creech said he appreciated the offer and would love to speak.  He thanked us again and said he was so honored to be invited.

Meeting adjourned at 6:30 pm so those interested could attend the Wind Power Workshop at Joslyn Hall at 7:00.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
29 NOVEMBER 2011

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

BOB told the members that next week we were going to convene the meeting and then adjourn and all go over to the Community College, Joslyn Hall.  The John Locke Foundation is hosting a wind power work shop and Dr. Droz will be speaking as well as Daren Bakst and David W. Schnare. He asked HARRY THOMPSON if it wasn’t Dr. John Droz that he had talked about going to Raleigh.  HARRY said Dr. Droz was local and had spoken to us a few meetings back.  His passion right now is the hoax about ‘wind power’ that they are talking about putting up here off the coast.  It is a very expensive thing to try to do.  It is not efficient at all and it will cost lots more than what it costs to receive our electricity like we do now.  It is not only wind, but solar as well.  He has some really good presentations on his web sites and if you ever had any doubt about it, just read through some of those articles he has written and look up on the web site that he has put out there.  He has a slide show presentation that will just absolutely convince you.  Anybody with a half way open mind will understand this mess being touted is just a big joke.  BOB asked “What was this meeting in Raleigh Dr. Droz attended with the Legislature?:  HARRY said “Yes, he met with the legislators.  He had been invited by the  Speaker of the House, who had been informed by a member of the House, who had a friend that knew Dr. Droz.  Dr. Droz said they had about 100 people in the audience. They said he put on a good presentation there and the John Locke Foundation is using him now in conjunction with one of their presentations to talk about this subject.  He is fairly well known around the country and is getting better so.  He has done a lot of studying on this stuff.  Anyway, it is on Tuesday, December 6, he will be at Joslyn Hall at 7:00pm for a workshop presentation by the John Locke Foundation.  So if we can work it out so we can attend, he thinks we will find it most interesting.  HOWARD asked if HARRY knew Dr. Droz’s web site address.  HARRY said he could not remember right off the top of his head but he would get it to us.  HOWARD said he thought we should get it and include it in tonight’s minutes.  BOB said ‘it might be in the old minutes back when he spoke to us’,  but no one was sure of the date.  NANCY said we may have a link to it from our web site if anyone wanted to check it out.
JERE GEURIN spoke up and said ‘apparently we had forgotten that, for next Tuesday’s meeting he had arranged to have Dr. Mark Creech, Executive Director of the Christian Action League of NC come and speak with us.’  He wanted to know if BOB wanted him to contact Dr. Creech and try to get a different date.  Dr. Creech is scheduled to meet with various groups next Tuesday on the work of the Christian Action League, present a Legislative Update, and most importantly discuss the Marriage Amendment, which is scheduled to be voted on in May; and he had included us in his agenda.  BOB, at first said ‘yes’, but after considering, he changed his mind.  NANCY BOCK wanted to know how long JERE thought he would need for his presentation.  Maybe we could meet early, like 5:00 or 5:30 and if we left by 6:45 we could still make it to the Convention Center by 7:00.  JERE said he needed to know so he could let Sarah Bowman know, so they could adjust their schedule if needed.  HOWARD asked JERE what he thought about starting early.  Did he think Dr. Creech would need more time than say an hour or an hour and a half?  He didn’t want to cut Dr. Creech short.  JERE said he frankly thought the Marriage Amendment to the NC Constitution was probably more important, and more exigent than the wind mill issue.  The Marriage Amendment is going to be on the ballot in May and we need to know about it so we can tell other people what it is about and support it.  He knows it is outside the purview of the TEA Party because it is not one of the three main values.  Never the less it ought to be important to anyone who is a Christian or Conservative.  It is an important issue.  HOWARD said ‘Let me make a suggestion that we meet next week at 5:30, if no one has any objections, and we can tell Dr. Creech that we are going to have to leave by 6:30, so we will only have about an hour.  BOB said we could be out by 6:45 at the latest and still make it to Joslyn Hall by 7:00.  NANCY said since a lot of people are here by 5:00, why not start the meeting at 5:15 (until 6:45)  and that would give him an hour and a half for his presentation. Would that be more acceptable?  JERE said he didn’t know how much there was to say about the topics Dr. Creech would be talking on, but he thought that was surely be enough time.  HOWARD said the only thing that bothered him on the time was not how long Dr. Creech would speak, but there probably would be a lot of questions asked; since most of us are very interested in the amendment.  JERE said his main question was ’what do we say to people when they ask us about the amendment?’  He hopes this is one answer he will be able to give us.  HOWARD said it appears to him now, and he is not up on it like JERE is, but it seems to him that Christianity is under attack from every direction.  All agreed.  JERE said we have been under attack for many years and HOWARD said it is getting worse he thinks, isn’t it, or is he just noticing it more?  All believe it is getting worse daily.  BOB said, ‘well are we meeting here at 5:00 or 5:30’?  All agreed on 5:00pm.  BOB asked PEGGY to get the word out to as many as she could.  JERE said he would call Sarah Bowman tomorrow and let her know of the start time.  BOB said we would meet here at the Golden Corral at 5:00 for Dr. Creech’s talk, adjourn no later than 6:45 and reconvene at Joslyn Hall by 7:00 for the second half of our night.  JERE said if he could not work it out with Dr. Creech, he would call BOB and let him know.  BOB said he was hoping it would work, because he would hate for Dr. Creech to be here in town and we not be able to get with him so he would have to make a return trip just for us.
BOB wanted to know if anyone here heard ’Saltwater Catch’ on the radio today?  Chris McCaffity, (our local fisherman member) was on maybe an hour (or maybe a little less) being interviewed and he, boy, he just really carried himself well on that program.  Covered all the issues, sharp as a whip, expounded on some good ideas, and the moderator, Hitchcock, BOB thinks was won over by Chris and his knowledge and expertise.  Hitchcock had said he would definitely have Chris back on again.  He was very excited about some of Chris’s ideas.  Remember the last time Chris was here, he was talking about Governor Perdue asking for ideas from the public about how better to use state facilities down there, and Chris proposed a co-op fish house on Radio Island.  The co-op idea really got Bill Hitchcock excited.  He thought it was one of the most worthwhile ideas he had heard for use of the facility.  Chris’s passion really comes through when discussing the commercial fishing industry.  He is totally dedicated to his cause.  He has been to Raleigh and to lots of federal industrial meetings.  He is really involved.  PEGGY said ‘remember he had all those cards already made up, ready for mailing, the night he was here.  All we had to do was include a short comment if we wished, sign our name and address, stamp ’em, and drop them in the mail.  He was very organized she thought.  NANCY told about the big “blue fin tuna” (I think it was) that was huge, and it was taken away from a commercial fisherman by a government official because it was supposed to have been caught on a hook and line and not a net.  When the fisherman said he had never been told that (although he had all his legal papers to fish, etc.) and the official told him he was supposed to know.  You are supposed to know all the fishing regulations, before you do any fishing. GRACE GILLIKIN said a fish the size of the one the fisherman had caught was probably worth several thousand dollars, so the official saw money signs when he saw that fish; which is why he took it from the fisherman.  They may have had someone report the catch and that was why they were there waiting for him when he came into dock.  NANCY said she wondered if there would have been a difference if the man had been a recreational fisherman?  Discussion on the policy of having to throw anything, considered illegal to catch, back overboard to die.  It makes more sense to keep everything caught and consider number of pounds caught rather than number of fish caught.  It seems stupid for example: if you catch, say a red drum that is over 27 inches, it is illegal to have it, so you have to throw it back overboard.  Chances are the fish has been injured (or dead) from being caught.  So you have now wasted a perfectly good fish that could have been used for food.  BOB said it was a shame what they were trying to do to the commercial fishermen.  They are trying to drive them out (and are doing a pretty good job, it appears).  Now it looks like they are going to try to make game fish out of speckled trout, striped bass, and red drum and stop the commercial fishermen from being able to catch them.  CLAYTON  GILLIKIN said he used to be a commercial fisherman but the regulations got so ridiculous he got disgusted and quit.  He would set swing nets for flounders and if a crab got in the net and ate the belly out of a too small or illegal fish, he would take the fish, clean it right there in the boat, put it in his cooler and take it home to eat for himself.  Every week they would stop him just to find out what was in that cooler.  He told them to go ahead and write him up, he didn’t care.  He did not believe in wasting what GOD had given us to eat and use.  BOB said one of Chris’s ideas that he really likes is, getting rid of the size limit, instead use weight limit.  Instead of throwing all the by-products away, weigh your catch, bring it in where it can be used, instead of letting it all die.  GRACE said another problem is our fishermen are supposed to stay within a certain limit of shore; whereas the Japanese, and other countries are just outside the limits assigned to American fishermen and they are catching anything and everything and never throwing anything back.  CLAYTON said and the sad part is they are selling their catches back to us…catches that would be illegal for us; and our fishermen are sitting here starving to death because of all the regulations placed upon them.  BOB said he could not understand why anyone would want to destroy the commercial fishing industry.  What is the advantage.  Several said the recreational fishermen have the money to get the rules like they want and could care less about the poor fishermen trying to make a living.  BOB said don’t they have to abide by the rules like others, ie you can only catch so many fish (per species) a day?  CLAYTON said where a commercial fisherman has to abide by the size, for example, of a flounder and is not allowed to keep it under a certain size; the recreational fisherman can come along behind him with his ‘stupid stick’ and gig him.  The government does not want the fisherman trying to make a living get him; they want that idiot with his ‘stupid stick’ to have the honor.  The officials will not go out and check the recreational fisherman, but they will sit on the shore and wait for the commercial fisherman to come in with his catch.  CLAYTON said you can sit and watch those game wardens watching the shrimpers with night binoculars checking out where you can and can’t shrimp.  You let one of those shrimpers cross over that imaginary line (even with their nets floating) and they are on them like you would not believe.  How in the world can the game warden tell exactly where that shrimper is when the game warden may be a half mile away; but it is the shrimpers’ word versus the official’s and you can bet that shrimper will get a several hundred dollar fine every time.
HARRY THOMPSON said he had gotten an email today from the John Locke Foundation about the next session on the Constitution.  They had presented the first portion a few months ago that many of us attended. When HARRY  sent the information requesting their coming back for the second workshop, he had asked about Troy Kickler getting something set up for us in January.  Mr. Kickler told HARRY in the email today that  they were currently trying to make arrangements for January.  HARRY will let us know as soon as he hears something.
BOB said the last time we met we talked about having a rally or a fund raiser or something in the spring.  He said PEGGY brought up an idea before the meeting, that he thought was a good one, of assigning a committee to research, organize and coordinate the effort.  So, he was going to appoint HOWARD and KEN LANG to get together and devise a game plan for us, because we can’t seem to reach any kind of decision during the meetings.  We are like the house of representatives, doing more talking than acting.  HOWARD said he hoped they could do better than the super committee did.  BOB said he went down and looked at that Fort Benjamin Park and he thought it was quite a facility.
BOB asked STEVEN BEST if he had some kind of extravaganza going on at the cave for Christmas.  STEVEN said, yep, on the 18th at 5:00 (after all attending eat soup and sandwiches) they were going to show the movie “Nativity”.  That is on a Sunday.  BOB asked how the attendance has been there.  STEVEN said the first time was pretty good but the second was not as great.  They will have plenty of popcorn available on the 18th.
BOB called on EULA PARKIN for her weekly report.  Once again she asked how many had watched J’Had Watch today.  Only one responded yes.  She wanted to suggest to all that when we go home tonight look up J’Had Watch for today and you will be surprised, because, it is one of the best programs she has seen yet.  As you open it up, it starts right in with a presentation by this fellow named Bosth Bostom??? Who is a Muslim that speaks perfect English.  He talks about 40 minutes and then there is someone from England that speaks about what is going on in all the countries, including Africa.  There are several speakers, and you just have to keep hitting up on the pictures to bring up all the different segments.  They each run 30 to 40 minutes each.  The one that really got her attention was about the voter fraud of Al Franken.  It was brought out that there had been voter fraud in his election.  He was the one vote they needed for Obamacare.  Discussion on number of recounts they had before finally getting the vote the way they wanted it.  It was pathetic.
HOWARD said he didn’t know how many had gotten the email, but KEN did some research and in the 2012 election there are two commissioners and three members of the Board of Education up for reelection.  So we need to be looking.  He had made one contact today.  He did not ask for an answer right then, since the man needed to talk it over with his family.  (He has run against Cathy Naegle twice in the past and lost. HOWARD feels with our support, he just might win this time).  HOWARD said he had not thought about it until this morning when PEGGY reminded him that he had said he would check into trying to get a map that outlined the Board of Education districts.  BOB asked what was the map he had last week, and HOWARD said that was the County Commissioners.  He feels that the Board of Education district map may change also, but he wanted to know what the boundaries were now, anyway.  BOB asked was there the same number of BOE members as there were county commissioners.  No one knew for sure.  BOB said it would make sense to have one map of the county for everything.  You’ve got your federal districting, state districting, county districting and a Board of Education districting; then fire districts, voting districts, etc.  HOWARD said he had made several calls, hoping to find someone who could help him get a copy of the map.  He had called the Board of Education office and the lady who answered said they were all out (and that was 9:00), but she would have someone call him when they came in.  She did and the lady who called gave him a number to call, (the tax office).  He then asked to talk with a friend who worked there that had helped him in the past.  The info had to come from the GIS Department at the tax office, and his friend was going to go over and try to get it for him, but PEGGY had checked prior to us leaving today and it had not come in yet.
BOB said he had been talking earlier with RUTH PARKER and she said the Iranians had taken over the British Embassy today.  BOB said does anyone know what brought this on?  Someone’s understanding was that the British were friends of the Americans and therefore they wanted the British out of there.  Discussion on whether or not we have an American Embassy there now.  Decision was that it was closed.
HOWARD asked if anyone was keeping up with what was happening in Richmond.  The TEA Party requested that (since they had had to post bond and pay for  permits, etc, to hold their rallies there, and the OWS had not had to pay) the money the TEA Party had been forced to pay be refunded.  Now the mayor is demanding the TEA Party be audited.  They have to provide documents on how much money they had received from food, lodging, etc. complete audit of books, anything to do with finances.  BOB asked were they going to audit the OWS group also.  No, just the TEA Party.  PEGGY said the reason they wanted to audit the TEA Party was because they had complained about them being charged and the OWS not being.  They were just retaliating against the TEA Party having the audacity to complain.
GRACE said apparently we have scared a lot of the Democrat politicians.  Did we see where a lot of them were not going to run again?  BOB said ’praise the Lord, Barney Frank is not going to run again’.  (Applause) His reason though is because his district apparently has been redrawn and this time he may have competition and that will mean he will have to get out and campaign and that is something he cannot really lower himself to do.  Someone said the only thing wrong there is when Barney retires, Maxine Waters is in line to take over his chair.  BOB said no need to worry about Maxine getting his chair, because if we can get the Republicans back in power, she can’t do anything anyway.  HOWARD said she doesn’t have the brain power, even Barney has, to do too much damage.  RUTH said ’she is an idiot’.  Just think about all the stupid things she has said recently about the TEA Party.
LOU KUKULINSKI said Sam Sanford will be packing boxes tomorrow morning.  Same time, same place.  If you want to help set up, come at 8:30.  JERE said they would probably do 100 boxes and he and Sam would take them to the Post Office Thursday, provided the weather is good.  BOB said last time we had over 40 people show up and they did the 100 boxes in 45 minutes.  The last time we talked about “We Care”, he didn’t know whether it was in a private conversation or not but the general idea was if we were going to support any charitable organization (we were considering Hope for the Warriors, Carolina Canines and We Care) the comment was we ought to do it locally and throw our support behind Sam Sanford’s “We Care”.  Was that at the last meeting?  Answer- yes.  BOB said he would like to go ahead and vote on that today unless someone thinks there is more to discuss.  HOWARD wanted to know if we had enough money in the bank at the present to start donating or do we need to raise more money first.  BOB said our money we donate comes from profits generated on the sale of tee shirts and hats.  Any other place we get monies, he asked NANCY?  NANCY said we got a lot of donations last year to help.  HOWARD told NANCY that we had 48 pounds of candy left from the Veteran’s Day Parade.  It is currently under lock and key and only he and PEGGY have keys.  Since he is diabetic he can’t eat candy anymore, so it now is safe from him, and PEGGY eats very little candy.  HOWARD recommended that if we could find somebody who is participating in a Christmas parade and would like to buy what candy we have, we can let them have it at a reasonable price, just to get rid of it.  He said we could offer it at a $1.00 a pound which is a lot cheaper than what they can buy it for in the store.  PEGGY said we should not take less than $1.00 a pound, though.  Discussion on who would be interested in using the candy in the upcoming Christmas parades.  PEGGY said RUTH had said something about donating part of the candy to Sam to put in the boxes.  What did others think of that idea.  JERE asked how many here tonight would be willing to donate on a monthly basis to ’We Care’…like maybe $5 or $10.  If we are willing to do that he will bring his mailing address to us and we can donate through the mail and he will send each of the donators a receipt for whatever you send and that receipt is tax deductible.  That money is tax deductible.  He is a 501 organization.  BOB asked him to get Sam’s address to PEGGY and she will get it out to all our members:  (WE CARE, c/o Sam Sanford, 1603 Fairfield Ct., Morehead City, NC 28557).   HOWARD said let’s settle this about what we want to do with the candy.  Do you want to donate the hard candy to We Care and then try to sell the chocolate and chewy type candy.  PEGGY said if we use the hard candy for We Care, then you will need it tomorrow morning, right?  JERE said if we want it to go in this week’s shipment, (this will be the last shipment of the year) then yes, they need it early in the morning.  PEGGY said she would go home and sort through all we have and have the usable candy to them for packaging in the morning (by 8:30).  (NOTE: Sam told Peggy Wednesday morning that he could use chocolate and chewy candy during the winter months while it was cold since it would not melt then.)  BOB asked ‘all in favor of donating the hard candy to Sam’s We Care, please raise your hand.  Carried.  For those who are interested, Sam sets up behind the new Furniture Distributor Store across from Trucker’s Toy Store on Hwy 70.  PEGGY said she would take care of sorting the candy and she and HOWARD would make sure the candy was at the location prior to 9:00 in the morning.  EULA wanted to know if we could just give JERE the money for mailing a package  – $12.95.  JERE said sure he would see to it that Sam gets the money before he gets to the Post Office.  A couple of members gave JERE enough to mail a couple of packages.  BOB asked GRACE what was the status of the candy they had.  GRACE said they probably had about 5 bags at least.  GRACE said another thing that was good to mail was ink pens and pencils.  BOB said when he was overseas, it was truly great to get a care package from the states.  It was like celebrating Christmas.  GRACE said when she went to stores that had stuff like that marked down, she would usually try to buy some for use later.  LOU said he liked getting those big old sticks of pepperoni,  nuts, and chocolate chip cookies.  GRACE said don’t send those little bottles of Tabasco Sauce, because she had tried that one year (making sure she thought that they were well cushioned) but by the time they got to their destination, every bottle was broken and mixed with all the other items enclosed.  BOB said he thinks Sam sends Tabasco Sauce, but he thinks it comes in plastic bottles now instead of glass.  BOB asked GRACE and CLAYTON to remove all the chocolate and soft chewies and get them to Sam by morning.  She said she would just drop the bags off in the morning since they had to go by anyway.  BOB wanted to know if Tootsie Rolls would be alright.  JERE said no, they melt.  PEGGY said we will save them just for BOB since he likes them so good.  JERE said the boxes will probably set out on the tarmac in the sun, so any candy that could melt it is best not to send.  EULA said she used to buy boxes of cross word puzzle books, but her problem was getting them to the troops.  She finally found some people in Havelock that could get them over there for her.  She said you could get like 60 cross word puzzle books for around $25.00.  She just recently bought a box of them.  JERE said he thought they would rather have something to read, because they could pass them around.  One magazine could possible reach 100 GI’s before it wears out and falls apart.
BOB asked NANCY what the treasury looked like.  She responded $995.00.      BOB asked if there was anything from the floor.  Discussion on Gov. Christy and his comments on Obama; and the fact that Obama had prayed a Thanksgiving prayer without mentioning GOD’s name.  Several said ‘what’s new’?.  MARIAN MERRILL said he sure could come up with some stupid remarks, like when he said we had 57 states.  PEGGY said wouldn’t it be something if the news media would have a field day over
Obama’s blunders like they did with Dan Quail‘s ‘potatoe‘.  BOB wanted to know if anyone still thought Herman Cain still had a chance at the presidency.  Most thought it was all over for him (innocent or not).  HOWARD said don’t count anyone out – it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
Don’t forget 5:00 next Tuesday, meeting early!!!!
BOB adjourned the meeting at 6:50pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
22 NOVEMBER 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by KEN LANG
Invocation by STEVEN BEST

BOB said he was listening to Glenn Beck this morning and he endorsed Michelle Bachman.  He said he had made his mind up and he would vote for Michelle and his second choice was Rick.  Someone in the audience said “he did not endorse her, he said he was going to support her.”  Bob asked “what was the difference?”  The reply was “he said he was going to vote for her but it was not an endorsement.”  Bob said “sounded like and endorsement to him.”  KEN LANG said it was kinda like splitting hairs to him.  Glenn thought she was the most Constitutional, conservative and had not changed in any way.  BOB said “true but she is probably the least electable”.  KEN said “Rush Limbaugh said today that she was the most consistent of all the candidates.  What she said ‘back there’ she says ‘right now’.  She has stayed the same pretty much all the way through.”  LOU said he thought she could save American in a heart beat.  She will definitely get in there and fight for the United States of America.  Some of the others said ‘let’s don’t count her out just yet’.  BOB said a couple of weeks ago he thought she would drop out and she and Sarah Palin would support Herman Cain, but now he didn’t know.  It is all up in the air now.  DAVID COX said “just curious, how many here tonight have already made up their mind how they plan to vote.”  RUTH PARKER asked “if we had to vote tomorrow”.  DAVID said yes.  LOU KUKULINSKI said “Newt, Newt Newt”.  Several agreed with LOU and said “I’m with you”.  KEN told us to go on the Web Site and it was probably further down now since it had been there a while, and there is an article about Newt Gingrich.  It raises a lot of questions about the various positions he has taken (something like 8 questions that are raised about these positions).  For instance he endorsed the individual mandate for health care and he hasn’t backed off on that.  He also supported, if you remember the famous commercial with Nancy Pelosi, global warming, renewal energy and green sources.  LOU said “he did say he wished he had never done that.”  KEN said he said he wished he had never appeared with Nancy Pelosi.  He didn’t say he had changed his mind on the position.  RUTH said she heard him say it was one of the dumbest things he had ever done.  BOB said Hannity asked him about that and Newt said he was just trying to show that conservatives do care about the earth and environment.  He said it didn’t go over well and was the biggest mistake of his political career and he definitely would not do it again.   BOB said he was still the smartest guy or candidate to debate Obama.  It appeared that everyone in attendance agreed with that statement.  DAVID asked how many would change their mind if at the end of the run just to defeat Obama.  ‘OH YES’ from all.  STEVE said “anybody but Obama”.  All in agreement.  LOU said he would even vote for “BOB”.
BOB said we have several items on the agenda for tonight: SCOTT with a recap of the Veteran’s Day Parade; EULA PARKIN on her ‘Publishers’ Clearing House’ request for readers interested in the list of books she has (buy 25 for a $1.00 each or $3.00 per book if can not reach 25 interested in any one book) and PEGGY GARNER with a fund raiser she would like to discuss.  He thinks it is overly generous of her, but he will let her tell us about it and then we can beat her up about it.  We want to discuss what we want to do in the spring time regarding either a fund raiser, rally or combination of the two.  Also we want to talk about the primary campaign and our involvement in that.  LOU asked “What is with the Ho Chi Minh shoes?”  BOB said he had been working hard today trying to get all his work done so he could leave town tomorrow to have Thanksgiving with the in-laws, so he had worked just as long as he could and prior to coming here, he had ducked into the pool room and changed him clothes and realized he had forgotten to bring any shoes.  These (showing his sandals) are $98.00 Ho Chi Minh shoes. HOWARD said “there must be good money in grass mowing.”  CLAYTON GILLIKING said ’either that or sheds’  (inside joke).
BOB asked EULA what she had.  EULA said she had a question.  She understood there had been 3 or 4 photographers filming the entire parade; but they had only shown just the very beginning of it.  BOB said he saw photographers all other the place videoing but had seen almost nil of the parade on TV news.  EULA said a female veteran told her that it had meant a great deal to her that they had been recognized finally.  BOB said he understood the feeling.  He had not had a very good homecoming in New Jersey when he got back.
BOB said he had tried to spare us from the following as long as he could but SCOTT could just not be held back any longer, so he entroduced SCOTT CARPENTER, asking him to man his DI hat and go over the pro and con report on the Veteran’s Day parade.  SCOTT said he always liked to go over a project and try to improve on what we do.  Always want to do better, that is what we like to do personally.  The purpose of this is go over these bullets.  Let’s look at them in the positive.  Hopefully no one will be offended.  That is not the purpose of this.  The next time we participate in a parade or event we will do better.  The first thing we want to talk about is a banner in front.  He didn’t remember us using a banner in the previous parade – 4th of July.  Do we need a new banner?  Maybe a generic banner or something like that?  BOB said for the 4th of July parade we had a couple of folks dressed in period costume carrying a banner.  This time we just had them on the float.  Either way, the crowd knew who we were when we went by, so he thinks the banner we have is sufficient to let the crowd know who we are.  He does not see any need to improve upon it or have a bigger one.  NORM KENT said he was new here, but he was curious did we have a motto or something like that.  BOB said we just use TEA PARTY PATRIOTS.  NORM said maybe something like Freedom Forever, Socialism Never?  He said each parade was for different causes.  PEGGY had made the signs we had used in the Veteran’s Day parade.  SCOTT said we would talk about that later on, but thanks for bringing that up.  KEN said on the banner, several folks suggested at the parade (NANCY BOCK was one) that we have a banner but not say TEA Party Patriots on it, but saying something like “Thank you to the Vets”.  If we are going to do a Veteran’s Day Parade again, we might consider this.  PEGGY said STEVEN had walked in front of our float carrying a poster that said “GOD Bless or Country and The Troops Who Have Defended It”.  BOB said that was true but you could only see it from one side.  STEVEN said no, he was walking straight and turning the poster from side to side.  KEN said that the suggestion by NANCY was the only comments he heard but to do this we will need a new banner for each theme of  the different parades.   SCOTT wanted to know if we shouldn’t get a banner just thanking the vets.  BOB said it would depend on what parades we get involved in.  A sign thanking the vets would only be used for a Veterans’ Day Parade.  If we decide to march in next year’s Veteran’s Day Parade, we should consider having one made then.   SCOTT said he had heard the same chatter that KEN had heard and that is why he had placed it on the discussion board.  SCOTT wanted to know if we couldn’t form a committee to decide what to put on the banners or signs prior to the next parade.  He wanted two people to volunteer to report back next week with suggestions.  Thanked ERIC BROYLES (who had just walked in) for volunteering and also TOM HARMON for (not raising his hand) volunteering.  TOM said, sorry he was not going to be here.  He was leaving to go to Thailand and would not be back until May.  Anything we wanted from him would have to wait until then.  SCOTT said, moving on to the next subject (bullet) Fliers.  He thought the flier we used in the Veterans’ Day Parade went over well.  However, next time we need to have them already placed in the Constitution rather than trying to place them during the  parade.  BOB agreed saying it was all NANCY could do to keep up with stuffing the flyers while walking in the parade.  SCOTT  wanted to know if anyone else had any comments about the flyers.  ROMA WADE said he thought the Constitutions went over better than the candy did.  So much candy was thrown from so many floats, that a big majority was left laying on the ground after the parade.  The kids wouldn’t even pick it up.  He said as he walked down the street, he saw all the candy left lying on the ground, but never saw the first Constitution that had been thrown away.  SCOTT said not only do we want to have the flyers printed and put in the Constitutions early but we needed pre-printed stickers to place on the backs of the Constitutions.  He said that was something we missed this time.  TOM, RUTH and EULA all informed SCOTT that the stickers were on the backs of the Constitutions we handed out.  TOM said he did about 300 prior to the parade.  (All that we had that had not been fixed previously.)  SCOTT said, Sorry, he did not know that.  LOU said “didn’t you do any research here Colonel?”  SCOTT said no he was getting ready to go to Thailand with TOM.  SCOTT asked if there was any more information on the Constitution, besides putting the flyer inside prior to the parade and having a sticker with TEA Party information on it stuck to the back.  BOB said we need to get some more prior to the next event.  SCOTT asked did he mean the booklet or the flyer.  BELVA MANNING said she had a small box of Constitutions in the back of her car.  BOB said a small box held about 200 copies.  Wanted to know if being the new fiscal year, could we get some from our congressmen like Jones, Burr, or Hagan.  Asked if anyone knew where DENNIS TOMASO  was, that he was the one that usually got us the Constitutions.  LOU said he thought NANCY got them last time.  BOB said ERIC got some from Jones and ERIC said they told him that it was too close to the end of the year and they were almost out of stock.  CLAYTON said maybe we should order them from the Democrats.  They should have tons of them, since they never read them.  Several recommendations were made.  LOU said he thought the last ones came from the Heritage Foundation.  SCOTT asked who would call the Heritage Foundation to try to get some Constitutions for us.  He needed a volunteer to call.  BOB said it was not a matter of calling, you had to order them and it was about $200.00 for 1,000.  All agreed that for us to order them we need to go through and authorized NANCY to order them.  She is the one to write the checks.  SCOTT said OK, then how many do we want to authorized NANCY to order for us.  Agreed on 1,000 at $200.00 but was not officially authorized to order.  No vote taken.  SCOTT wanted to know if there was any comments to be made on the trailer we used, positive or negative?  Everyone agreed it worked great.  KEN said only problem he saw was we needed to cut down some tree limbs along the route.  (streets of Morehead City)
HOWARD said NANCY and her husband had cleaned and painted it prior to our use for the 4th of July; it was handy; and we it looked like we could depend on them to furnish it for us.  FRED DECKER said he thought a big plus for our float was the guitar picker (Jeff from Havelock and was  retired Coast Guard.)  All agreed.  HOWARD said he added a whole lot and we all noticed that the viewers would join in singing GOD Bless America when we sang it going by.  SCOTT said one thing being on the left hand side was a safety concern.  There was a lot of movement around the trailer, with the double axle, and he was concerned that someone might get their toes run over.  TOM said there were some close calls a couple of times.  SCOTT said we need to be careful about throwing candy.  Make sure to throw it at a distance.  If you throw it too close to the trailer, some kids could come up to pick up the candy and get too close and get hurt.  His concern is about the safety around that moving vehicle.  We need to be extra careful.  BOB said a lot of kudos go to NANCY and Ken, her husband for painting that trailer, making it available to us, and Ken’s volunteering to pull it for us this time since BOB’s truck had been in a wreck.  TOM said he would volunteer the use of his truck next time if we needed it.  SCOTT said if we use TOM’s truck next time, what about the ball and trailer hitch.  TOM said he had one.  TOM asked if it was a 2”?   HOWARD said ‘no, it was more than 2”.  2 and 5/16 or as commonly known a mobile home hitch.  SCOTT then asked about the candy.  Did we have sufficient candy this time – enough to last the whole parade?  HOWARD said we have a lot of candy left.  We carried it home with us and it is in an air conditioned room.  Have not weighed it yet but there is lots left.  (We have since weighed it and there is about 48 pounds.)  If we could find someone that could give us a reasonable price, that might need it for the Christmas parade,  he thinks we should consider selling what we had left rather than hold it until the next parade, which could be July 4th.  All agreed.  We could put it into the refrigerator, but would prefer to get rid of it if we can.  EULA wanted to know how much money were we thinking about getting.  HOWARD said we needed to weigh it prior to deciding on a price.  EULA said she would contact someone she knows who may be interested.  HOWARD said if anyone gets a nibble to please call us or let us know and we will see what kind of offer we can get for it.  SCOTT said ‘moving right along – our posters.  Did we have sufficient posters?  Do we need to make new posters?  What about people’s comments on posters?  KEN said the ones we had that PEGGY had made were excellent.  DIANE LANG said we need to get them framed so they do not get messed up.  HOWARD said we had already bought two frames and if they work, we plan to frame the others.  PEGGY said WalMart carried the frames like we had discussed and they ran right around $12.00 each with plexiglass instead of real glass which could break in usage.  SCOTT wanted to know if there was any further discussion or suggestions on posters or examples.  TOM said posters need to be appropriate for the event and KEN said they were for this parade.  BOB said these were appropriate for the Veterans; maybe next time we will need anti-Obama posters.  Any further positive or negative comments on the posters we used. BOB said he didn’t know anyone that made prettier posters than PEGGY.  He was so impressed that he thought we should auction them off as a fund raiser.  Most disagreed.  Said we should keep them in our archives for later use. SCOTT said OK now let’s talk photos.  He understood we did have some good photos this time.  Are there any comments on photos?  Do we need more that one photographer?  Is one sufficient?  BOB said he noticed that he was barely visible in any of them.  TOM said there is a reason for that.  Lots of laughter.  TOM said when we got up to the reviewing stand he wanted to get on the other side and all of a sudden his lens went in and he realized his battery had died.  So he was standing there running along side of the trailer, moving the batteries around and he put the bad ones back in and by the time he realized it we had passed the viewing stand.  SCOTT said we need to talk about the photos being put on our web site.  KEN said he had not had time to get them posted yet.  He had not gotten around to it.  SCOTT said then let’s put a line in the sand to shoot for.  KEN said he would give it a shot by next week but did not want to promise.  SCOTT said he would give him two weeks then.  He would be lenient this time.  SCOTT wanted to know if the meetings times and locations were clear on our web site.  Do we need to tweak that?  Does everyone feel comfortable with the way it advertises our meetings.  He said NORMAN brought up last week that he had checked the web site and it said 7:00 but that was for the meeting in Cape Carteret and he was interested in the Morehead City group.  KEN said the very top of the page talks about the new group of Cape Carteret that was just organized.  You have to go below the picture of George Washington to see the information on the Morehead City group.  SCOTT said somehow we need to clarify that right up front.  KEN said he didn’t see how it could be more clear.  It did say Western Carteret County TEA Party right at the top as opposed to the one at the Golden Coral.  He didn’t know how he could clarify it further.  KEN said if he had any suggestions, please email him and he would try to make it more understandable.  SCOTT said he would take that upon himself to contact KEN.  PEGGY jokingly said “We need top billing”.  KEN said since it was a new group, he felt it needed to be at the top.  SCOTT said since we have the web master with us, is there any more comments or suggestions on the photos and meetings; write ups updated; or clarification on our web site.  LOU said he thought KEN was doing a d— good job.  Got a round of applause.  SCOTT wanted to know if we felt comfortable with our email mailing list.  BOB said aren’t we still supposed to be talking about the parade?  SCOTT said he felt this pertained to the parades.  Is our list updated sufficiently enough to notify everyone about the events upcoming.  Do we need to do anything with that?  KEN said every new email that is placed on our sign-in list, he adds to our list and we currently have somewhere around 950 addresses.  He would like to see it over a thousand.  One thing he does do at Western Carteret is a lot of the people there are new so he tells them if they have any friends who are interested in getting information on TEA Party activities, tell them to get him their email addresses.  Now a year or so ago we had some who felt like they were getting too many emails, and others not frequent enough.  He is a little uncomfortable about sending out everything to those too frequently.   He sends out a blast every now and then so people don’t just totally ignore us.  One of the TEA party groups that he is on their list, he gets 2 or 3 things a week.  Listed a couple of them.  So a lot of the time you see them and just delete them; so he prefers not to do that.  SCOTT said “Thank you for those comments, I appreciate them and other peoples’ feed back.  Back to discussing the parade.  Next is the booth.  We talked about it, but apparently we did not get the necessary paper work.  Is that something we need to write and push next time?  Having a booth set up and selling Tshirts, hats, stickers, free literature, etc.  BOB said we need to look into it a lot further ahead of time.  This time we never got a positive answer on whether we needed or did not need a permit.  As it turned out it was such a windy day, I would have hated to have to been sitting there at the table trying to hold on to everything to keep it from blowing away.  We would have had to have a sheltered area, and then you are out of the traffic flow.  If we were going to have
a table at the parade where would have been the most advantageous spot to have had it, because the crowd was pretty evenly distributed and they were static.  So the whole idea of having a booth there for the Veterans’ Day does not make a whole lot of sense, plus he did not think it would be appropriate for that parade any way.  That parade was to honor the vets, not for making money.  SCOTT said ’So what I heard then we don’t think we should have a booth for next year’s Veterans’ Day Parade.’  All agreed.  SCOTT said, ’moving right along, sale of Tshirts, hats, stickers, (ie bumper)’.  Any further comments.  TOM said “on our Tshirts, when we run out of these, we are going to have a new shirt with new logo.  Has anyone come up with any design or made a decision on what organization we plan to sponsor?”  BOB said no, we still have not decided on who we are going to donate a portion of our proceeds to.  We have heard from the Wounded Warriors (actually meant Hope for the Warriors), Carolina Canines, and Jere Geurin is working on getting Sam Sanford down here to speak about his program, “We Care”.  It is really between these three.  He does not know if we want to give to all three (which will not amount to a whole lot of money) or if we just want to pick one.  If we go with the one in Jacksonville – Hope for the Warriors – we can keep the same logo, because they have a logo very similar to the Wounded Warriors.  NORMAN asked what about the USO?  BOB said that is such a large organization already and he did not know what kind of funding they have.  One of the reasons why we have left the Wounded Warriors is because the guy that is running the thing is getting over a million dollars a year salary; so we felt that instead of donating money to the Wounded Warriors, we were actually helping pay his exorbitant salary.  35% is being sucked up in overhead in administration; whereas with Hope for the Warriors, the guy running that only gets $35,000.00 a year.  LOU said that is one reason he thinks we should support an at home project like Sam’s.  TOM said you look at Sam’s and it is grass roots, man.  Sam does not get a penny.  Everything he gets, he puts back into items to send to the troops.  LOU said just one thing, we definitely do not want to put a picture of Sam on the back of our tshirts.  BOB said if anyone wants to look at Sam’s operation, here is a whole bunch of pictures that TOM took during the last mailing.  About 40 people showed up to pack the boxes to ship overseas to service men.  TOM said they did 100 boxes in about 45 minutes.  LOU said that is great, he remembers when they only had 5 or 10 people to help.   RUTH PARKER said ’with all the troops leaving and coming home, she didn’t know what Sam was going to do.’  BOB said we will always have troops deployed overseas.  PEGGY asked “what he packs up to send, does it come from donations, or how does he come up with all that he sends.  LOU said most of it is donations.  PEGGY wanted to know if he had a list of items he wanted donated?  Maybe we can help him out that way.  LOU said anything that someone away from home would like to get in the mail; like chewing gum, deodorant, chapstick, magazines, hot sauce, pepperoni, etc.  BOB said to get with Jere and see what he recommends.  Asked PEGGY what she wanted to give “Collards”?  (Picking on me for sharing our collards with a lot of our members.)   SCOTT rapped and asked about the TEA Party hats and stickers (ie Don‘t Tread on Me), any comments on those.  BOB said as far as inventory right now we have 31 hats.  (listed our inventory).  BOB said we do need some Crystal Coast TEA Party stickers (like address labels) to go on the back of the Constitutions.  We probably need about 1000 of those.  HOWARD asked “Didn’t DENNIS make the last ones we got?”  TOM said DENNIS had made 600 and TOM had used 340 or so and gave the rest to NANCY.  LOU said the print shop would probably make some for us and it probably would not be too expensive.  Several said we could make them at home on our computers and it would not cost anything except for the box of labels.  TOM wanted to know if we wanted them any bigger.  Consensus was no.  Do we need any further information on them?  No.  BELVA MANNING said they worked just perfect on the back of the Constitutions.   SCOTT asked if he saw any hands go up to volunteer to make the stickers or at least procure the stickers?  BOB said he thought he saw SCOTT’s hand go up a few minutes ago.  SCOTT said let’s run back over what we have decided here tonight.  ERIC and TOM are going to come up with some suggestions on banners (TOM will mail us his input from Thailand or when he gets back).  NANCY is going to be ordering some more Constitutions (1000).  Also SCOTT is going to come up with a suggestion on how to write up the TEA Party meetings to be more coherent.  Also volunteers to make up the stickers to go on the backs of the Constitution.  Anything else he missed?  Any further questions or comments.  BOB wanted to know what he planned to put on the stickers.  SCOTT said he would show him (an example) next week.  BOB said just as long as it has our name and web site on it.  BOB thanked SCOTT for the presentation.
BOB introduced NORMAN KENT who spoke to us about the Council on Foreign Relations.  He said he had attended our rally that we had originally scheduled to have in the Kmart parking lot that got moved to the Flea Mall.  He had run across a book called Shadows of Power (author James Perloff) that describes in detail the CFR.  It came into being in New York.  It started with Woodrow Wilson, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, (Trilateral Commission which came later).  It had your industrialists, financiers, and bankers involved.  So many on Wall Street were tied to this.  What they decided to do was create a government within our constitutional government.  More or less power brokers.  In the past the whole thing was kind of clandestine.  They would meet in secret.  In order to become a member of the organization, you pretty much had to take an oath that whatever is said in the group, stays in the group.  There was one that kind of broke that oath.  His name was James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy (back in the Eisenhower days he thinks).  He was a member of the CFR and after being in the group a little while, he started to realize that it was a conspiracy.  This is not promoting our Constitution.  In fact it is taking us away from that.  What happened to him was “they found him kind of incoherent, possibly drugged, so they put him into a hospital.  Finally they got permission to get him out of the hospital, and the night before he was supposed to leave; around 2:00 in the morning, they found him dead, hanging outside his 16th floor window.  The official ruling was ‘suicide’.  When he was reading this book, he found everything was very well documented.  You can check it out elsewhere also.  In later years the CFR got involved with the media.  How many know who Rupert Murdoch is?  He owns Fox News.  He is one of the biggest Socialists on the face of this planet.  You know how it is today.  We don’t get mentioned because we are not part of their involvement.  Even though they say they are just there to help us with our foreign policies; so most of the world can understand America.  From what he has been reading, they are trying to lean towards ‘one world government’.  (Socialism)  You cannot ask to join and become a member.  They are the ones who do the picking.  They determine who is going to become a member of the organization.  Now some of our politicians, who want to get noticed, will write articles for publishing in behalf of the CFR and its agenda,  in the magazine called “Foreign Affairs”.  Examples of membership:  William Jefferson Clinton, (ERIC said he bet there was a teleprompter that was a member also; but Norman said he had heard that but when he checked Obama was not listed as a member), although George Herbert Walker Bush was.  (Commented that haven’t you ever noticed that whoever is in office, the same garbage runs downhill. Things do not get better, we get further in debt, lose more of our freedoms, sovereignty goes by the wayside, and we wake up and find illegal aliens have more rights than we do.)  The whole reason he is presenting this to us is for us to be more aware of the backgrounds and philosophy of our politicians (aka candidates for president).  You have heard of wolves in sheep’s clothing?  Well, you can draw parallels.  You can have sunshine patriots, who are not the right guy.  They are not going to protect your individual liberties, or the Constitution.  Look at the Vietnam War and  Lyndon B. Johnson…..Dean Achison (?)  and another man (but he could not remember his name) – they were considered the wise men.  Dean was the first one that wanted to get out, but Johnson didn’t want that so he increased the numbers deployed there.  When things started going a little sour and started to go wrong, the wise men told Johnson, you were right we need to get out of this.  Just drop it.  This was after Johnson had put his neck on the line and afterwards Johnson cited his famous words, “I will not seek the nomination for my party to run for president or seek reelection”.   So you have the CFR, not suggesting, but influencing.  Then you have the CFR in the media repeating what the CFR wants us, the public, to hear.   (Discussion of authenticity, and research of facts, the author, etc.)  This country was founded upon the ideals of ‘of, by and for the people’.  Before that you had feudalism, monarchy’s, ruling with iron fists.  When our forefathers seceded from England, somehow miraculously we got democracy.  We had not had that before.  Now some are trying to return us to the old system of feudalism.  Their perfect system is to have a ’one world unity, peace, feudalistic system’.  Some other members of the CFR: Collen Powell, Secretary of Defense under George Bush, Conga Lisa Rice, many of our ambassadors, senators, (John McCain, Newt Gingrich,) a ton of these folks that are all CFR members.  To belong to that organization and hold yourself to those goals and ideals, runs contrary to what our forefathers created for us in the Constitution.  To sit there and say I want to help you people, and belong to an organization like the CFR, he draws that equivalent to Barrack Obama sitting in Jerimia Wright’s church for 20 years and saying ‘gee, I didn’t know, that doesn’t affect me’.  Where do your loyalties lie?  Norman said he was not telling us who to vote for; personally he had like Michelle Bachman at first, and was now wavering and getting the fear ‘we don’t want Obama, but do we want to be manipulated by the power of the CFR?’  We had a choice between Obama and McCain.  All it was was a skid downhill, just one is not as fast as the other.  This brings him to Romney and he sees him wavering back and forth and kissing up to the CFR, even though according to the list he has, is not a member of the CFR.  But for whatever reason the CFR doesn’t like him, because what did they do in 2008?  They did not trust Romney enough so they strong-armed the delegates to get behind McCain to win.  That is the picture that lies before us.  If you know of a real good conservative candidate, now is the time to get behind him.  But the time may come when you realize ‘my candidate doesn’t have a chance’, so we don’t want to be manipulated in going ‘oh, yeah, I got a CFR man, and he’s got to be better than Obama.’  No, we lose on both ends.  His goal is to impress upon us that whomever you go for make sure that person is not a member of the CFR.  HOWARD GARNER asked ‘how can we confirm that he is or is not?’  Norman said we should go to the CFR membership list because they have it posted on their web site.  Other than that, if you do not see it, he would even suggest that we write and ask them about whomever you are interested.  (Other members on the list he has: Isner, Walt Disney, NBC, George Soros) Anybody associated with that group he doesn’t want to touch them.  Rupert Murdoch and George Soros have nothing against making a buck.  They are socialist capitalists and if you are willing to play the game with them, they will throw you a few crumbs and let you be in on the ballgame.  But if you are not, sorry, but you are too far beneath him.  Unfortunately our government is so deeply ingrained with this organization that now who cares what the people want,  they are going to do whatever they want.  That is why they liked Newt Gingrich.  He had the Contract with America, and whatever happened with that thing?  They worked on it supposedly, but when push came to shove, they shut down the government.  It was good for show, but what was the end result?  Nothing!  They all caved.  HOWARD said he was exposed to the CFR back in the 60’s or 70’s. This guy who was active in the John Birch Society,  gave him a couple of his little brochures, and since he was a federal employee, he was afraid of being caught with them, so he gave them back.  The brochures warned us against the CFR.  The John Birch Society was doing that way back then.  Here recently someone has put a couple of Robert Welch’s
speeches on the internet, and if you will listen to what he says in those speeches, everything he predicted has come to pass.  People thought he was a total crackpot.  At least the media tried to make him out that way.  Norman said, Exactly.  That is how the media deals with you today.  If you stand up and say something they disagree with, they just call you a right wing lunatic,  on the outer fringe, he’s got problems, etc.  You got that right.  By all means, investigate what he has brought up to us tonight.  He hopes he has given us enough motivation to do so.  BOB thanked him for his presentation.
STEVEN BEST said “A lot of this is on the video that we have not watched yet (Agenda 21)”.  BOB said, ’it will have to be after the holidays, but he wants to have one of our meetings at ’the cave’ (STEVE’s theater which will hold 45, but he can add more seats if needed) and show the movie, which is about the movement of Socialism/Communism into our way of life.
ERNIE gave a brief dissertation on what he knew about the CFR and the extent it has involved itself into our political lives.  Just about every Obama cabinet is headed up by a member of the CFR.  The CFR is the American branch.  You have the Royal Institute of International Affairs which is the British branch, which appeared after World War I.
EULA PARKIN said for us to go to ‘frontpagemag.com’ and key in ’George Soros’.  Ten pages long of the organizations that he supports.  He is the one that wants ’one world’.  Several spoke up and said he was not the only one in support of one world government.  EULA spoke up about the books she had available for us to order for $1.00 again.  BOB asked if anyone is interested, please sign your name next to the book we are interested in and as soon as we can get 25 requests for that book, we will order it.
BOB asked what are we going to do about the fund raiser and/or rally coming up in the spring.      FRED DECKER said he had mentioned last week about getting a phone committee set up.  If anyone wants to participate, please give him your name, precinct you are in and phone number and he will give you some other people to help you.  It is going to be up to us to cover the whole county.  This will be for the primary.  You do not have to be registered Republican to work on the phone committee.
BOB said HOWARD and KEN LANG have been discussing about our need to become involved in the upcoming Primary.  HOWARD said a few years ago in Carteret County whoever won the Democratic Primary was guaranteed the election in the fall.  Well now, Carteret County has shifted enough that he thinks whoever wins the Republican Primary is going to win in the fall.  So we need to decide who to get behind in the primary.  We won’t know who until filing is over, to decide where we stand.  Another thing they are going to elect members of the Board of Education in the spring.  Now here is where we need to work hard for our candidates.  There are enough employees in the school system that they can turn their families and friends out and they can elect whoever they want.  They are going to want to elect whoever will spend the most.  So we need to get involved in supporting people that believe in our philosophy or as close as possible.   We may need to recruit some members if we can to run as candidates for the Board of Education.  I’ll almost bet you, that Rene Coles will be a candidate for the Board of Education or County Commissioner.  Rumormill has it that Commissioner Greg Lewis will recruit her to run for Holt Faircloth’s position.  Holt told him that he didn’t care who ran, because he had had enough and he was not going to file.  We do not want Rene Coles in any seat in county government or anyone like her.  Not that he has anything against her personally, but against her personal philosophy in spending.  KEN said if he was not mistaken there was at least two people who were not going to refile for county commissioner.  One is Holt Faircloth and the other Pat Joyce.  There are three positions that will be open, the two above and Doug Harris.  Pretty sure Doug will run again.  We need to really think are about people who will serve in both of those positions.  Not just one.  He doesn’t know if that will involve talking to the other County Commissioners, but we need to make sure that the right candidates and certainly not someone like Rene Coles, who is a registered Republican.  They are big donors to the party but she is involved in C4 activity, wanting to spend a lot of money on education without knowing what is will be spent on.  That is his main objection to her.  BOB said he understands both her and her husband come from money, so to her money is not an issue.  FRED said he had talked to some of the County Commissioners and he understands that is why she was at the reverse raffle.  The other Commissioners know that Greg Lewis has been meeting with the school board and that he is supporting her for County Commissioner, from what he was told.  Evidently he thinks that will give him two votes on the board.  HOWARD said it looked like to him that Greg had his eye on a higher office.  Maybe Rene can funnel some money his way.  That may be his game.  FRED said if he is planning on running for State Senate, he may as well quit because as long as Jean Preston runs, she will win and if not then he plans to support the man from Craven County that has mentioned being interested but will not run as long as Jean does because they are friends.  He cannot support Greg Lewis, because he thinks Greg is in it for Greg and not the people in the county.  FRED said he was working on getting enough Republicans to run for offices in the party, that he can hopefully get Greg thrown out as Party Chairman.
He’s wanting enough candidates to attend the Republican convention to have the vote.  He’s not sure we can get enough votes to get him out as commissioner, but hopefully they can as Republican Party Chairman.
HOWARD said we were to the Commissioners meeting last night and this (showing the county map passed out at the meeting), is the proposed district plan now.  It has not been approved but was done up by the county manager and Rob Wheatly, county attorney.  The second page gives the numbers based on the recent census.  There was some discussion.  Part of them do not like it, but he suspects any plan you come up with will have disagreements.  Basically they have come up with about 9500 in each district.  They are pretty equal in representation.  BOB said it looked like they had not gerrymandered the lines, but had used highways, and rivers/streams as boundaries.  HOWARD said he may not completely understand the underlying concerns, but it looks like a pretty decent distribution to him.  He had told Rob they had done a pretty good job.
Another thing they had brought up last night was they had a lot of positions on the various committees in the county and were having trouble finding people to volunteer for them.  Bill Smith told us to go to the county web site and find out the vacancies, and they would like to have people to volunteer for nomination to these committees.  Most people today only want positions that are paid, the political plums.  Discussion on those positions and their bennies.  HOWARD announced that PEGGY had been asked by Bill Smith to volunteer and was appointed to the Senior Center Advisory Board last night.
BOB said getting back to the Primary…this coming May is when we elect the school board.  From the time of the filing until the election is about 10 weeks to vet the candidates and publish our recommendations.  If we are going to get everything done, we are going to have to bust our butts to get hold of these folks who are running for the offices and press them to come on down here.  It is going to take a lot of coordination on our part to get them here to answer our questions and make our decisions on who we want to recommend.  He asked FRED if he had any names in mind for the school board.  He said he had been talking to ERIC BROYLES and was trying to talk him into running.  We need to get someone from Newport.  HOWARD recommended Doc Westbrook.  He said he would contact him and see what he thought about running.  BOB said the first thing he would like to see the new school do is get rid of Novey.  We need a little more transparency with the school board and county commissioners than what we have had under Novey.  HOWARD said the board picks the superintendent, so we have got to pick a board that will pick a different superintendent.  It is that cut and dried.  Does anyone here know of anyone that will run for school board.  Maybe we should advertise on the web site. (Several recommendations were offered with reasons why not to support them).  Mainly we do not want someone who has been connected with the teaching profession involved on the school board.  They have already been corrupted by the system.  FRED said he did not think you should be on the school board and teach in Carteret County.  Even retired school employees had been brainwashed by the system.  That is all they know.  Bill Blair was a shining example of that.  KEN said he didn’t want to sound too negative about this but we have been talking about replacing some of the school board members and then we leave the meeting without making any real progress.  Maybe tonight we have made a little progress because some have learned about who is not going to run again or we think they may not run again.  We need to find out definitely what they plan to do.  We need to find candidates more than anything else.  Sitting here talking about who are not going to run and it would be nice to have someone else, just doesn’t get it.  If we do not have someone to go into the position that is like minded with our group then we are just spinning our wheels.  It is frustrating because I think we have people here who know a lot of people in the county.  To be sure we can come up with somebody who will be a candidate in some of these areas.  He agreed with BOB that we need to be looking for those without pre-vested interest in the school system, because they are already tainted.  You know how they are going to vote.  NORMAN asked what kind of candidate were we looking for.  What scrutiny is important.  BOB said he felt we needed someone who is retired and has time on his/her hands.  Probably newly retired, but not from the school system.  Maybe financially well off enough they don’t have to have a second job.  Working people are just too busy to devote the required time.  KEN said, ideally you want someone who knows something about budgets, because the problem with the school board that we have now is that they rubberstamp whatever the school superintendent presents to them.  They do not know how to critically evaluate a budget, so therefore when the superintendent comes in and they rubberstamp it and take it to the commissioners.  He thinks the commissioners this year have done an excellent job in examining what is in the budget, why it is there, and if they can do without it.  But there should be people on the school board who are doing that before it gets to the county commissioners.  CLAYTON said most of the stuff on the budget is coded so no one knows exactly what it is.  KEN said the superintendent does that intentionally.  That is why we need a new school board and then we need a new superintendent who will be more transparent with all.  KEN said he feels that the current school board does not put the amount of time actually needed to do a good job into it and just lets the superintendent do as he wants.  BOB said FRED had mentioned ERIC and he thought ERIC would be a good candidate.  He has a banking background and knows about budgeting etc.  HOWARD said Doc had run for school board years ago against Cathy Neagle and he was pretty sharp on figures.  Maybe he should go talk with him.  FRED said he had been talking to Richard Hunt about the school board.  BOB said he had just been elected on the town board at Cape Carteret.  FRED said but the one he would be replacing position does not run out until 2014.  HOWARD said by that time we will have a better understanding of how Richard thinks and handles things.  A track record is a good thing to go by.  KEN said he didn’t think Richard would be interested in leaving the Cape Carteret board since he had just won election there.  He thinks he will stick with the Cape Carteret seat based on what he had talked to him about.  If he had lost that election then he probably would have considered running for the board of education.   BOB wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions for Beaufort.  Since there is no one here tonight from Beaufort (other than EULA).  A few names were bandied about but no final recommendation was made.  Betty Bell’s name was mentioned, but no one knew if she would even consider getting back into the fray.  BOB said we only have about two months or two weeks to get everything done…basically from March 1st thru April 30th.
That is once we have the candidates in place, to vet, decide who to support and prepare our recommendations and line up our manning of the precinct voting booths, prior to the May primary.  We need to get to work and stop the talk.  He still thinks if we had gotten involved in the Morehead election for mayor that David Horton would have won.  HOWARD said he still thinks that Sunday advertisement from Jerry Jones with all the untruths in it that David did not get the opportunity to refute.  BOB said he still thought if we had had a couple of people sitting down at the Morehead precincts passing out TEA Party recommendation lists, that would have carried more weight than anything in the paper.
Last thing, real quick, do we want a rally or a fund raiser or a combination.  With a rally we need speakers, sound system, insurance, portajohns, tshirts, etc.  HOWARD said if we decide to use the Fort Benjamin Park, they have restrooms, so that would eliminate the portajohns.  They have a stage.  BOB asked HOWARD if he remembered how much the rent was.  HOWARD said $50.00 for the event (use of band shell) for a non-profit.  The county manager has to make the final decision whether we can use it or not.  We can talk to some of the county commissioners in advance and maybe they can support our usage.  BOB wanted to know if he meant the county or Newport manager.  HOWARD said, the county since Fort Benjamin is a county park, but we may want to contact the Newport manager as a courtesy type thing.  He doesn’t think Newport really has anything to do with it.  BOB said we were all familiar on what it takes to put on a rally.  It is no small thing, but neither is a fund raiser where we will be serving food.  There is a whole lot involved.  HOWARD said they have a kitchen there but there is an extra fee of $5.00 per use for non-profit.  BELVA MANNING said they also have a covered outside shelter that has picnic tables.  BOB said using the Flea Mall for the rallies has been nice, but it has been kind of limiting to some extent since we can not have food vendors there in competition with the Mall.  Also at the big rally we had there were over 700 cars just for the rally. So if we have a combo rally/food service fund raiser we are going to need plenty of parking.  Fort Benjamin can supply what we need.  (Discussion on the use of Pat Joyce’s open field without electricity and borrowing of generators.  Also discussed the possibility of getting Joyce to allow us to put up signs advertising our event near Hwy 70 even if we have it at Fort Benjamin)  BOB asked what do we want to do folks.  TOM wanted to know what time factor we are talking about.  BOB said he figured we were talking sometime in probably April.  TOM said he had the Don’t Trust the Media signs in his truck and since he would not be back until sometime in May he would like for someone else to hold them.  HOWARD said he would put them in his truck and store them for later use.  Discussion on date for the event.  HOWARD wants to do a little more checking things out and will get back with the group as soon as he can.  BOB said we need to start getting our ducks in a row and start making some decisions soon, before our time runs out.  We also need to be ready to announce our vetting of the candidates early.  For that we will also need a better venue than the Golden Corral.  FRED mentioned the Newport Town Hall, which he said would seat maybe 40 or 50.  BOB said apparently we need more time to put our thinking caps on, so let’s go back home and think about it some more.  BOB asked that we come better prepared next week with at least some firm propositions.

Meeting adjourned at 7:57 pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
November 15, 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:04pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by NANCY BOCK
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
No. in attendance: 28

Introduction of New Attendees:
JOHN and LEDA LARSON –  They found out about us through their son-in-law, who attended one of our meetings.  They live in Morehead City.  BOB asked if they voted last week and they assured him they did.
BLAKE BEADLE – Group creator of the Young Professionals, new title for the Young Republicans.  Officers not yet elected.  Age group is 18 to 40, so if you have children or grandchildren, neighbors or friends, that are interested in getting politically active, please have them get in touch with Greg Lewis or the Party and they will direct them to Blake or others now involved.  (Bob jokingly said “they cancelled the parade the other day for the Young Republicans; one got sick and the other one didn’t want to march alone.’ —- Boos from the audience.)
FRANK PALOMBO – Candidate for US House of Representatives – running against Walter B. Jones.
BRIAN MULLAS – Friend, supporter and Campaign Manager of Frank Palombo.
Late comer – NORMAN KENT – Apologized for being late.  He had read on the website about our meeting but had misread the time.  When he rechecked and discovered the time, he had gotten there as soon as he could.  He said he lived in Newport.  BOB explained that we (those who wish to) meet at 5:00 to eat and socialize and the meeting starts at 6:00 pm and runs until he gets a sore throat.  He explained about the Western end of the county recently starting another group for those who live in that end of the county.  They meet the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month.  We meet every week.

Budget Report –  Jan 1, 2011 – Nov. 15, 2011
Beginning Balance Jan 1, 2011                                                   $1,997.82
Income:
Donations:                    $1,090.00
Sale of Tees/hats                874.41
4/15 Rally                          694.50
Insurance Claim
(Bob’s Fire)                    610.00
7/4 Parade                           451.25
$3,720.16                             +        3,720.16
Expenses:
4/15 Rally                      $1,488.43*
Hats                    800.00
Banners                               549.53
Ad for JLF Seminar            447.84
T-Shirts                348.00
Flags, Buntings            270.91
Veterans Day Parade            231.26*
Pocket Constitutions            198.81
Bumper Stickers                  169.95
Business Cards                    113.13
Carteret Literacy                  100.00
Islamaphobia Booklets           25.00
$4,742.86                 –   $4,742.86

Ending Balance Nov. 15, 2011                                                                 975.12

*4/15 Rally Expenses:
Ad            $ 622.00
W. Montague           360.00 (plane ticket)
Sound System           323.25
PortAJohns           183.18
$1,488.43
(Does not include $940.00 special events insurance paid 2010 for 2 events in a calendar year.)

*Veterans Day Parade Expenses:
500 ea 4×6 flags    $  129.87
50’ Fringe              51.39
Candy                  50.00
$   231.26
(Gave out approximately 800 pocket Constitutions, 400 small flags, and 500 flyers.)

INVENTORY:
78   –   s/a t-shirts
11   –   l/s t-shirts
31   –   hats
100  –   4×6 flags
600  –   Pocket Constitutions

OBLIGATION:
$216.00 donation to Wounded Warrior Project
Candy purchased by Clayton Gillikin for Veterans Day Parade ($75.00?)

UPCOMING:
Ad for second session of JLF Seminar
Ad for 2012 Elections.  (The Voter Recommendation ad we ran in 2010
Cost $1,592.32 for 8 times.)

We feel it was well worth the money.  BOB said he had worked all election day at the polls in Broad Creek.  Many, coming to vote, came to his table and took a copy of the recommendation form or showed they had their copy, they had cut from the paper, as they arrived to vote. TOM HARMON, HOWARD GARNER, and several others who had worked the polls, reported the same results.  SCOTT wanted to know ‘if we do another Voter Recommendation, at what point do we need to start having it published in the paper.  BOB said he did not know when the early voting would begin this coming election, but in 2010 we had early voting for probably two months or so.  KEN LANG, who is at the Out West TEA Party tonight, worked the Stella or Cape Carteret Precinct every day they had the early voting and he found the same thing.  We certainly want to have it ready for next year by the beginning of  September at least.  LOU KUKULINSKI asked were we thinking about having one for the primary.   BOB said there are so many running in the primary that it is hard to vet them all.  Do we discriminate with just the Federal Elections?  Hard to vet these people in person.  State Elections….Jean Preston, Pat McElraft, and folks running against them.  Problems occur with trying to coordinate between all their schedules, and finding time to pencil us in to come and answer specific questions we have.   Discussion on methods of vetting….paper questionnaires, email questionnaires, face to face interviews, etc.  Think we should wait out the primary and wait to see who is left standing when they are over with and then we will make our recommendations for the election…Republican or Democrat based on which is most conservative and meets our core values best.  If anyone has a way to vet all those various candidates in the primary, you are in charge of that committee right now!!! And give us a report by next meeting!!!
HOWARD said we need to find out who files before we can do anything.  BOB said that’s one of the problems.  The filing date is in February and the primary is in May. That’s only about nine or ten weeks. Anyone think we can get it all coordinated and get them all down here so we can vet them and then publish the meaningful data in that time frame to have an impact on informing the public.  HOWARD said most of the time you pretty much have figured out who is going to run.  BOB said yes, most of the time, but he knows of a couple of occasions (like Craig Weber) – who filed during the last hour of filing.
BOB said any way we go, we are going to have to raise some money.  He had asked us at the last meeting to put our thinking caps on so when we met tonight we could talk about the Spring Rally, which has always been a good fund raiser for us.  He said he was talking to KEN LANG and KEN recommended that maybe we should have a pig picking or something like that.  BOB said he didn’t think we could do that at the Newport Flea Market, since they sold food and would not want our competition.  HOWARD said they have let several organizations hold barbecue or chicken dinners to raise funds for various things (especially for those with large medical expenses).  FRED DECKER said maybe we could use Gracelyn Park (meant Fort Benjamin Park).  STEVE BEST said he understood it would cost $75.00 an hour.  BOB said we need to decide are we going to do a Rally, or are we going to do some kind of fund raiser like a barbecue.. (roasting a pig) for example.  SCOTT wanted to know why we couldn’t do both.  Some others agreed.  BOB said it boils down to ’parking problems’ then.  When we had our Rally there in Newport year before last, we had 700 cars and 2000 people.  He didn’t know if there was that many parking spaces at the Fort Benjamin Park.  HOWARD and TOM both said they thought there was plenty of room to park by utilizing the road sides just on the perimeter of the park.  BOB said to do both it was going to take a lot of long term planning…cooking pigs (how many needed), hush puppies, coleslaw, baked beans, etc., are we going to need some kind of County Health Permit? We need to really look into are we really able to do both.  We usually have the same crew to plan, organize, coordinate, etc.  The day of the event we have a big turn out of members, but most of them are unable or do not show up for the planning stage.  There is never a problem of shortage of people on the day of the event, setting up and such.  Another thing with serving food is the need for more tables and chairs.  He can get some from the base but not sure how many we will need.  HOWARD said several of the fund raisers serving food at the Flea Mall were mostly drive through and you didn’t need tables.  Some that he knows about have gone well.  BOB said the drive through would be a whole different thing from the Rally/Meal combo because with the Rally going on you will want people to get out of their cars and listen to the speakers as well.  Everyone think about it and decide what we can pull off and what we can’t pull off.  We won’t make a decision tonight, but be prepared to discuss it further next week.  TOM said he hadn’t had such grand ideas, maybe something like the scouts have…sandwiches along side of the road.  No Rally or anything, maybe have a big yard sale and sell sandwiches, cookies, brownies, cakes, etc.  BOB said that sounded pretty good also.  Hopefully we can come up with some good ideas and firm plans for next week and make a decision as to how we are going to raise funds.  Other locations were mentioned to hold whatever we planned.  BOB said we need to also consider when talking location about availability of electricity, especially if we go with the rally.  SCOTT said he thought we needed to stay with Highway 70 venue where there is more traffic.
Next week BOB said he would like for us to do our review of the Veteran’s Day Parade, dids, didn’ts, and should haves.  SCOTT is going to put his drill instructors hat on and walk us through our paces.
BOB said he would love to see us do something for the primary, since Frank Palombo is running against Walter B. Jones and he would like to see us provide him support.  He is going to need a lot of help.  He is here tonight to talk to us.  BOB said he told him we had already drank the Koolaid so we didn’t need the whole stump speech.   Mainly we needed to know how we could help him with his campaign.  Also sometime maybe in the spring, he, BOB would like to have a fund raiser to help Frank get some last minute advertising money prior to the primary which is around May 15.
STEVE MILLER (I think it was) said he would like to come up with a vetting plan and present it to the members at our next meeting.  He thinks it can be done with today’s electronic devices.  You get the right questionnaire, put a strong letter together that says ’here is what we did last time, all those we recommended won.  It would behoove you to pay attention to our survey and tell where you stand.’  BOB said one of the things he found out when he ran for Congress in the primary season, no one told him to expect a dump truck to back up to his house and unload all those surveys and things from all these groups that are trying to vet you.  You spend hours filling these thing out.  Some of them are like essay tests.  STEVE said it may be two weeks or so before he gets everything worked out, but he would come up with something.

He then turned the floor over to Frank.
Frank said he wanted to tell us why he came here tonight.  It is the TEA Party’s fault that he is running.  Everyone that was here the last time when he said he was thinking about running, remember?  Several said ’vaguely’.  Frank said it was because of “you all” and the reception we gave him that day, and the encouragement he received then and since, gave him the determination to move on in this process; making him realize there is so many in this district that want good representation.  They want real leadership.  He said he didn’t know about us, but for himself, he had had politicians up to here.  He just can’t take it anymore.  People have told him, you know if you run and win, you are going to be a politician.  He said ’No, I am not’.  You can send him to Washington in November and you can send him back again and again but he will never be a politician, because he is already what he is going to be.  He is a leader.  He knows it from his years of experience.  He knows it from the skills that he learned from the military and from his years with his law enforcement career, to dealing with folks like those here tonight.  And he knows this.. career politicians are people who have spent their entire life in Washington, DC or Raleigh.  They have no idea what we are going through.  None.  Because they live in a world that doesn’t even exist for us.  And our world doesn’t exist for them.  We’ve got to change that.  We have to put people up there that actually know what is happening down here and care about what is happening here.  And are willing to do something about it.  And not worry about being there year after year getting  re-elected and re-elected.  He is only going there to do a job and then come home.  His wife has already imposed term limits on him, so we don’t need a Constitutional Amendment as far as he is concerned.  She has already told him how many terms he is allowed.  So that is that – the Supreme Court has ruled.  Understand when he says ‘It is your fault’, and when he wins and goes to Washington, ‘You all can blame yourself or take the credit, whichever you prefer’. ’If I don’t do a good job, then kick me out’.  ‘Make that, tell me first so I can fix it and then if you’re not happy, kick me out. Impose your own term limits.’ He said BOB had told him he should tell us what he needs.  It is so obvious what he needs,  ‘I need your help, and a couple of things from you.  I need you to not be afraid to talk to 10 of your friends, each one of you, and tell them about Frank Palombo and about this campaign and about how important it is to change the leadership in Washington, DC, who will make a positive impact and make things happen with real change to all the things we know are a real problem.  So I need you to talk to 10 of your friends, get them to go to our web site “palomboforcongress.com”.  Take a look at it and see what is on there.  Look at the position on different issues.  Look at the buttons that say volunteer and contribute.   If you want to help, click volunteer.  There are lots of things you can do.  Find sign locations for us – have a little fund raiser at your house – a little meet and greet type.  I’m not talking about 100 people, maybe 10 to 20 of your friends.  Bring them over and tell them to bring their check book.  If you like what you hear from Frank, then leave a check for him.  So talk to 10 of your friends and get them to talk to 10 of their friends.  Oh, and please write a check for us.  Doesn’t have to be a $100 check, or a $500 check, please let it be whatever you can afford and get your friends to do the same  thing.  If you get 10 and they get 10 and they get 10, we are talking some serious financial help for us.  And keep our message going.   We do not want to wind up broke at the end of the campaign.  So we are pushing hard for this.  If anyone here wants to have a little fund raiser at your house, let us know.  Brian will take your name and we will get our fund raising director to come and talk with you.  The two things we need most is your hard work, which I know you are capable of, and your resources, your finances.  We need your help.  I know times are tough, I know they are.  I’ve talk to a lot of people who got hit by the hurricane, besides the down economic times we are in, but if we are going to make it better you got to invest in good government.  You gotta invest in making a change up there in Washington, DC.  So, help me if you can…  palomboforcongress.com
Check it out as soon as you can.  Click on one of those two buttons.  Send me 10 bucks or whatever you can afford.  You have heard of 999, Cain’s plan; well, our plan is 10,10,10; one better than the Cain plan.  It is 10 of you, getting 10 of your friends, and all of you contribute $10 a piece.  That is the plan.  Thank you all very much for getting me into this, I think!   You all are great and I appreciate what you do.  Thanks for your time tonight and this guy here (BOB) – he works hard as any 10 guys I know, which fits into my 10,10,10 plan.’
BOB said he could iterate how important financing is to a campaign.  Them little stupid yard signs, like you stick in your front yard with the wire hoop, they are about $4.00 a piece.  When you are trying to blanket 22 counties, trying to use a 1000 signs even here in Carteret County they would be so stretched out you would hardly see one here or there.  So it runs into money real fast.  Just look at our advertising in the local paper for the Voter Registration data – 8 times was almost $1600.  These guys running for office, they have to get their message out and keep it out.  You can’t just run an ad one time and assume everybody in the County read the paper that day.
Frank asked if he could do a “Did you know kind of thing?”  We talk about my capabilities as a candidate and that is really important when we talk about my background and history and all that.  But one of the things we talk about too is a ‘did you know’.  When we talk about Walter Jones’ voting record – and we talk about did you know about this and that, sometimes even people who strongly support Walter didn’t know because they didn’t follow and the latest did you know is (and you have to hear this because I don’t think you are going to believe it).  Any of you heard of the Veterans Opportunity to Work Act?  It was passed by the House 418 to 6 – (6 no votes). A bi-partisan bill.  Went through the Senate, zinged right through and is going to be signed by the President.  No problem.  Know who voted against that bill?  Walter B. Jones.  This is strong on the military – there’s over a million GI’s out of work right now and this bill will do a lot to help those people get work and this is one of those did you knows.  The reason Jones voted against it is there is a provision in the bill that was supposed to reduce fees on home loans, (filing fees, and some other fees),  It wasn’t going to increase them – it was supposed to reduce them and because of the budget and because of financing, that fee stayed the same, it didn’t go up, it stayed the same.  His thought process was ’because that fee did not go down, he voted against the whole bill’.  That bill is going to put people back to work.  We can not worry about the minutia of some of these things.  This is ridiculous and I just wanted to give you another did you know.  Thanks.
JERE GEURIN wanted to know if anyone knew where Jones stood on the HR2 (Right to Carry Act – Concealed Weapon across state lines).  He said he emailed Jones today but had not heard back yet.  TOM HARMON asked ‘didn’t they vote on that today?’  JERE said it was on the floor, but he had not heard anything yet.

BOB asked if everyone had seen the latest edition of Crystal Magazine.  Maybe the guys hadn’t since it was a sexist magazine ‘for women only’.  Several comments were made jokingly.  Anyway HOWARD and PEGGY’s granddaughter (actually great granddaughter) Catie, is featured in an article.  He asked PEGGY to tell the group about why Catie has been honored by the magazine.
PEGGY said “CATIE McCABE” started out with us when we started with the TEA Party.  She pretty much grew up with the TEA Party.  She is now 16, has her drivers license, so you all don’t see her anymore.  As long as she was riding with us, she was here.  She started going to a Church here in Morehead and she went to a session in Atlanta where she got interested in ‘human trafficking/slavery’.  It sort of touched her and got her to really thinking about it so she started doing a lot of research on her own about the subject, (magazines, internet, etc) and really got involved in the subject. The lady at the Church has encouraged her a lot.  What she has found out is- they take these young girls and young women also, and turn them into prostitutes and that is all they know.  They are normally in small homes with usually no more than two girls, not big brothels like we usually think of, and keep them captive.  BOB asked if they were girls brought into this country, runaways, or what?  PEGGY said she imagined it would be anyone they could control.  Recently, a woman who was from the mountain area in North Carolina was enticed to come to this area, with the promise of a good paying job, cleaning homes, who was locked up in a trailer/home and used  to make her captors money.  So it is not just illegal girls who have come to the US, it is anybody they can control.  If they are found by the authorities, they are usually placed into foster type homes where as soon as they can get away, they go right back to the pimps who had had control over them; since that is all they know.  They have been brainwashed.  So, CATIE and some others are in the process of trying to raise enough funds to build a home where these girls can learn a trade and find out there is more to life than what they had known, make them feel good about themselves, so they can turn their lives around and become good productive citizens of the community.  CATIE has been named ‘State Coordinator’ for the project.  We are very proud of her and we thank the TEA Party for starting her off on the right track, because you are the ones that gave her her start.  I don’t believe she would have ever come this far without your encouragement.  Something you all do not know is – when she was born she was born with club feet and a speech impediment.  You could turn her feet from facing forward all the way around to facing backwards.  A doctor put her in casts and we were supposed to leave them on for three months.  We finally got her into the Shrine Hospital in South Carolina.  When they removed the casts, gangrene was just before setting in.  If we had not gotten her to that specialist when we did, the probability of her losing both legs was a very strong possibility.  They scrubbed her legs almost down to the bone and told her mother to not put anything on them and keep a close eye on her.  (CATIE’s mom is a Nurse Practitioner.)  As soon as we could we got her into dance lessons, which according to the doctors, was the best thing we could have done, since it strengthened her legs.  I’m sure not one of you here ever noticed anything different with the way she walks.  Right?  And the speech impediment was helped with a speech therapist.  They did a wonderful job – you all have heard her speak at almost every rally we have held.  Didn’t know she ever had a problem, did you?  We are so proud of her.  BOB said ’you should be, we are all very proud of her’.  We feel she belongs to us also.
BOB, speaking of leg problems, asked TOM HARMON  how his wife was doing.  TOM said she was on the mend.

BOB said he guessed we all have heard the news interview with Herman Cain, where he was asked if he thought President Obama had done a good job handling the war
in Libya.  Herman said he didn‘t think he handled it very well, and then he said ‘well wait a minute, let me back up there…rolled his eyes and said he had all this stuff jumbled in his head here…then a long pause, and BOB said he was thinking ‘holy geez‘..  He said Herman was a hell of a nice guy but it is now definite that he is not ready for prime time.  The problem is he is probably trying to remember all the practice and rehearsing of data and rehearsed answers rather than actually listening to the questions.  SUSAN RYNAS said no she thought he was listening to the questions, but just didn’t know the answers.  TOM said ’like Perry, he froze’.  BOB said yeah, it made Perry look intelligent.  It was really a soft ball question.  There was no real reason to screw it up.  BOB feels that put the final nail in the coffin for Cain, what with all the bad publicity (true or false) about the sexual harassment.  The media is going to show that clip over and over.  Everyone seemed to think Cain can not bounce back from this latest faux pas.  BOB said he is now back in the Newt Gingrich camp.  He had said from day one that Newt was the smartest one up there but carried a lot of baggage that the media would expound on as he moved up in the polls.  LOU said he had never left Newt’s camp.  BOB said he was curious who Newt would pick for his running mate… Rick Santorium or Michelle Bachman.  LOU said he would prefer Mark Rubio.  It didn’t have to be one of those running now.  BOB said Bachman had already been tainted badly by the press, so he thought Rick would be the next logical choice.  Several comments were made about the subject of who would be the best candidate.  There are three primary states you have to think about.  Ohio, Penn. And Florida.  From what he could find out, Obama had already lost Florida.  Ohio is going to be a toss up.  If someone gets the nod and puts Santorium (from Penn) in as VP, that could made the difference in carrying the state of Penn.  BOB said he had not thought about it from that angle, but that was a good point.  BOB said up north they do things differently.  They break a big city down into blocks and put someone in charge that knows everyone.  They meet with everyone regularly, give a lot of them like team captain jobs, etc,  and they know how everyone is leaning. They keep everyone in that block involved and on election day they knock on everyone‘s doors and, they will even carry them to the polls, just to make sure they vote. You don’t see that in the south.  Precincts up there are pretty small, not compared to the size of the counties here in the south.  For example Carteret County is like 75 miles across.  FRED said he knew a little about this precinct business, he had about 1400 Republicans in his.  BOB asked where he was hiding them.  LOU said that is because you try harder FRED.  FRED said he had been working on it since 1984.  He said he had told them they needed term limits on Precinct Chairmen.  BOB asked how many of them were dead and still voting.  LOU said you don’t want to go there.

BOB said he was really surprised that David Horton lost his bid for mayor of Morehead City.  He thought that the sulfur problem would work as a sure thing for him.  He wanted to know how the voter turnout was.  He was told it was very small.  BOB couldn’t believe it, as riled up as so many people were over that deal at the port.  HOWARD said Jerry Jones’ ad in the last paper before the election was kind of hard hitting and in his opinion there were some untruths in it.  But apparently people believed it.  BOB said Jones and Horton had been going back and forth for weeks with a newspaper war there.  He really thought in the final run the people would remember the sulfur smell and vote Jerry Jones out.  HOWARD said Jones claimed in the ad that if David  got elected, he, David, was going to resign, get Ballou installed as mayor and David take the job of Town Manager.  There were several things in the ad that he thought were down right untruthful.  NANCY BOCK said she understood David only lost by 80 votes.

BOB said while he was thinking about it, Frank Palombo was going to need a phone committee later on to make calls reminding people to get out and vote for Frank.  Frank told FRED he was going to need all 1400 of his people.

BOB asked STEVE how his movie thing went this past week.  STEVE said he was going to have a matinee this Saturday for young kids or even anyone young at heart.  It was going to be an animated movie ‘The Miracle Maker’.  PEGGY said she had heard that ‘Atlas Shrug’ was now out on DVD and she was thinking about buying it and wondered if everyone would go to STEVE’s to watch it; that is if STEVE would agree to show it.  He said he would.  NANCY said if you have not read the book, you need to.  The movie is nothing compared to the book.

BOB told us that on December 6, at our regular 6:00 pm Tuesday meeting, that Dr. Mark Creech, Executive Director of the Christian Action League of NC will be our guest speaker.  He also will be hosting a luncheon at the Golden Corral at noon that day for pastors and also will be available to meet with individuals from 2pm to 5pm.   This is a valuable opportunity to learn more about the work of the Christian Action League, receive a Legislative Update, and discuss the Marriage Amendment scheduled to be on the ballot May 2012.  RUTH PARKER wanted to know if we could get Lockwood to announce that on the radio.  BOB said yes.  That was another thing he had been thinking about – if we decided to do a pig pickin fund raiser, maybe have Lockwood do a live broadcast from there and interview people coming in.  All thought that was a good idea.
BOB said that would be a good way to get free advertising by getting Lockwood to push it for us.

BOB asked JOHN LARSON what he thought of our meeting tonight.  He said he had come to see what we were doing but he still was not quite sure exactly what we stand for.  He had not heard anyone say tonight.  He was going to go to the web site and see what else he could find out.  BOB said ‘before you go to the website, what do you think the TEA Party stands for?’  JOHN said ‘Smaller government’, ‘cutting spending so you do not have a debit’, ‘a balanced budget’, ‘more representation that represents the people’, than the ones that are in office now.  BOB said this whole primary process, you have seen a lot of people rise to the top only to get knocked down.  A primary is like a big boiling cauldron where everybody gets tested by fire.  Some can not take the heat and they get burned up.  Herman got chewed up, Michele Bachman (forgot what her early flubs were but she had John Wayne Gacey (the serial killer) and John Wayne the movie actor mixed up.  RUTH said she wished Elvis Presley a Happy Birthday on the anniversary of his death, which was an unpardonable sin.  Someone said he had been looking on the website for a national TEA Party association.  Are we like a subcomponent of it?  BOB said ‘good question’.  There are several umbrella groups that call themselves TEA Party.  You’ve got the TEA Party Express that has the bus going all around and Dick Army is the Chairman of that group.  They are more of a top down organization.  They have someone in charge that sends out the word to all the other ones.  Then we have the TEA Party.Net, another group.  We belong to a group called the TEA Party Patriots.  It is the largest TEA Party group in the country.  Right now there is about 3500 parties around the country organized under the TEA Party Patriot umbrella.  You can go to their web site (teapartypatriots.org) and it will have a link at the top that says groups, click on that and all the states will drop down and then you can go down and click on North Carolina and all the North Carolina groups will drop down and you will find us there.  If you click on our name it will go to our dedicated web page which we have never used because we have our own web site.  The TEA Party Patriots is an upward organization.  We do not have any leaders at the top.  BOB is a local coordinator.  The state coordinator is Russ Finchum and then we have national coordinators.  These are essentially the eleven people that first started the TEA Party Patriots the day after Rick Santori had his rant on wall street.  Every Monday night we have a call-in web-a-nar for all the local coordinators to call in and they get a legislative update.  They have different members that are tracking what is going through the House and Senate.  Someone else is tracking other things coming down the pike.  They have guest speakers that speak on different things like the Marriage Amendment, Immigration and things like that but one of the things he wanted to emphasize is the TEA Party Patriots have the three core elements; one is fiscal responsibility in the government.  (we understand that we have to pay taxes to the government, but we want the money spent in a fiscally responsible manner.  Don’t waste it.  He just heard today that in Obama’s stimulus package, something like 700 million dollars went to some university to create a computer software program with this intelligent machine that makes its own jokes.  It is a joke machine. (how apropos)).  The second tenant is limited Constitutionally endowed government.  (The Constitution sets up the framework of how we are supposed to be governed.  There is nothing in there about the Supreme Court legislating – they interpret the law, they do not make the law.  All these different agencies creating and over interpreting the law and Congress not doing anything about it.  This also goes into the government overreaching their Constitutional authority.   Health Care Mandate is one example)  The third tenant is promotion of  Free Market Capitalism.  (This is keeping government regulations of our free enterprise system to a minimum.  It is true we have to have some regulations, otherwise we would have 10 year olds still working on assembly lines and a lot of needless deaths because of worker accidents but OSHA has gone over and beyond; as has the EPA gone over and above their intent.  We are a free market capitalistic system and it works best with the least amount of government involvement.)  Those are the three things the TEA Party is based on.  We are not an anti-Mexican group; nor an anti-Gay group; nor an Islamic J’Had group nor an anti-abortion group.  We are a conservative group and most of those things are handled through meeting discussions, with some defending one side and some the other; but they are not what we truly get really involved with.  It is just a forum where we can actively vent what we feel or think on the issues.  Those are the things that will divide us; whereas the three core principles we can all unite around, and they will keep us together.  You are certainly free to bring up any issues that might be on your mind  when he, BOB asks if anyone has anything they wish to bring up from the floor.

Anyway, we meet every week and it has become sort of like a social event for most of us, giving us a reason to get out of the house (and not have to cook that night for some), have a little camaraderie and share an evening with like minds.  LOU – peace, justice and the American way.

TOM brought in a couple of signs and fans “Don’t Believe the Liberal Media”. web site StopTheBias.org.  We got them free of charge and they only ask if we use them maybe at a rally, or something similar,  to please take pictures for their website and promote the organization.  Now is the time to go around and find those campaign signs and “recycle” the wires.  FRED said he had a bunch.  TOM said he would need about 35 or 36.  He had gotten 10 of the big signs and 25 of the small ones.

Don’t forget Dr. Creech will be our guest on the 6th of December.  Everyone please try to attend.

Meeting adjourned at approximately 7:30 pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF 8 NOVEMBER 2011

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting was called to order at 6:03 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by ERNIE GUTHRIE
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
No. in attendance – 24

New attendees were:
THOMAS E. VASGAR, originally from Philly, but has been here since 1967.  His mother was from Newport.  Currently lives on the Nine Foot Road in Newport.
JIM AND SUSIE BENDER from Cary, NC.  They are here on vacation and heard about our meeting.  BOB asked it they had a TEA Party in Cary.  Jim said they probably do, but was not aware of one.

BOB said he appreciated everyone’s good wishes and thoughts concerning his absence last week while undergoing a colonoscopy.  He believes it went well, however, he does not remember any of the surgery.

BOB congratulated everyone on the parade.  He thought it went well.  Everyone agreed. (Round of applause)  He felt we were cheered as much or more that any of the other floats.  HOWARD GARNER said except for Ken Humphrey’s wife.  She just stood there and shook her head, refusing a copy of the Constitution or even a piece of candy.  EULA PARKIN wanted to know where the guitar player came from.  HOWARD said he added a whole lot to our float.   He even had those watching the parade join us in singing ‘God Bless America”.  Only thing anyone knew about him was his first name was ‘Jeff’ and he was from Havelock they thought.  HOWARD said he had heard him say something about being a part of some program in the next few weeks in the Havelock City Park, and Howard thought we should try to find out and support him in return.   TOM HARMON said he thought he had attended one of our meetings about 3 or 4 months ago.  (Secretary’s note:  Checked the minutes back to April this year – no Jeff signed in that I could recognize in the signatures.  Possibly, he did not sign in.  Sorry.  No help.)  TOM said he understood someone had invited him, but he didn’t know who.  HOWARD said ‘Jeff” had talked like he might be here tonight.  NANCY BOCK said she understood that ‘Jeff’ was getting married this coming Saturday.

BOB said he was surprised that SCOTT CARPENTER was not in attendance tonight.  He figured he would have a presentation and discussion on what we did right and wrong for the parade.  We missed SCOTT and his presentation.  Maybe he will be here next week to enlighten us.  Several talked about how SCOTT could take charge and keep things moving.  He could still bark orders and everyone jump.  HOWARD said he had not been out of service long enough to get ‘re-civilianized’.  It takes a while to get that military stance completely toned down.  Everyone agreed he was an excellent organizer.  TOM said he still holds staff meetings.  (Sorry, SCOTT, you have to be there to protect yourself).

BOB called on STEVE BEST for a report on his ‘Cave’.  STEVE said, ‘This coming weekend they are having a Prayer Rally in Detroit – a man named Lou Ingals.  He does it (according to STEVE) whenever the LORD tells him to.  It is a fasting and prayer rally and is going to be at the baseball stadium.  The stadium holds around 10,000 people and they are saying it will be full.  There will be various speakers and musicians.  They will fast, pray and worship for 24 hours.  Pray for the nation, the coming elections, and all kinds of stuff.  STEVE will be showing it in the Cave, through the internet service.  He has everything hooked up so he can show it live and everyone attending will be joining in the praying and fasting from Friday at 6:00 pm to Saturday at 6:00 pm.  BOB said he was cool until he got to the fasting part.  He said after that colonoscopy, he had to refill, couldn’t skip that many hours without eating.

JERE GEURIN said he had talked yesterday to a lady from the Morehead City Police Department and she said they will give a guided tour to any group that wants to get together and go through the new police station.  It is 22,000 square feet.  He thinks that ought to be something to see.  Discussion on size of station.  HOWARD said that would be a little over a ½ acre.

BOB called on EULA PARKIN to scare us again about something….  EULA said she was still wondering if we were reading J’Had Watch everyday.  She had a question she wanted to check us out on.  ‘Who was the top US General who was fired for telling the truth about the Afghan president Karside’s (?) regime’.  The answer was in yesterday’s J’had Watch.  Several members offered possible answers.  She read his comment.  “You might just as well poke me in the eye with a needle.  I’m sorry, but we just gave you eleven point six billion and now you are telling me I don’t really care.’  Here we have one official telling the truth about a leader who has openly said he will side with our enemies and has threatened to join the Taliban and the General gets fired.  Major General Peter Fuller, Deputy Commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan made the remarks in an interview with Politico that was published Thursday.  Fuller told Politico that major players in the Afghan government are isolated from reality.  Fuller acted angrily on claims from Karside that Afghanistan would side with Pakastan if we (the US) went to war with them.  Fuller called Karside’s statements irrational.  It was announced Friday that Fuller was to be released from his duties effective immediately, saying these comments are indicative of our current relationship with the government of Afghanistan.  The Afghan people are an honorable people and statements like these will prevent a peaceful and solid unity with our country.  The article ended with “Fuller will be proven right and we will be proven foolish – you can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish.  Fuller said we are giving them fish while they are learning and they want more fish; and now they say they like sword fish; how come you are giving me cod?  The point being there will never be peace in Afghanistan.  ERNIE GUTHRIE asked if anyone knew the meaning of Afghanistan – it is the ’land of the unruly’.  ERIC BROYLES said we are never going to solve their problems.    BOB said, well we are pulling out of there this year – TOM said that’s Iraq (December before the first of the year) and Afghanistan is 2014.  MARION MERRILL said the only reason Obama is bringing the boys home from Iraq is to help him get reelected.  TOM said they had already started closing up some of the bases  last month.  ERIC asked how many will be left to act as advisors or some other such name.  TOM said his understanding is the only ones who will be left there is the Black Water Group.  A group of 2000 who will be in charge of maintaining ’peace’.?   JIM BENDER said his son is in the Air Force and he trains people how to fuel aircraft and things of that nature.  He is now with a group in Kobal, Afghanistan training the Afghani how to do the same things.  In addition to that they are trying to train the Afghanis how to run their cities, and ultimately how to run their country.  That is part of the United Nations effort and he thinks they are going to be there for quite a while.  BOB said he really doubts we are really going to pull out.  He thinks they will just change names – they will no longer be combat troops.  Same folks, different title.

BOB asked NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, how we were holding out in funds.  NANCY said we have $1,260.00 and owed $230.00 for parade items we had gotten.  BOB asked HOWARD and PEGGY if they had given NANCY a bill for the candy.  NANCY said she had gotten a bill for a little over $69.00 and the GARNER’s would only accept $50.00.  They had paid the difference.  BOB said CLAYTON and GRACE GILLIKIN had bought some candy also.  NANCY said she had not gotten a bill for that candy yet and they are not with us tonight.  HOWARD said we had collected most of the candy that was left in the basket on the float and brought it home with us.  It is in an air-conditioned room and we plan to take all the chocolates out and put them in the refrigerator (over in the double wide trailer that had belonged to PEGGY’s mother).  It is perfectly safe, since HOWARD is diabetic and can’t eat candy.  BOB said he thought we should take the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Tootsie Rolls and bring them to the meeting next week.  He would help us take care of them.    BOB wanted to know how much candy was left.  HOWARD said that tub, we had put the candy in so we could mix it up, was probably half full.  Discussion on what to do with the remaining candy.  Some suggested using it in the Christmas Parade, while others didn’t think we should get involved in that parade; and others said maybe we should look into selling it to someone who planned to enter the Christmas Parade.  No decision was made.  HOWARD said if we needed to hold the candy for any length of time, we could store it in the refrigerator that was in the double wide and he thought it would be alright.

NANCY had found a metal coffee cup that had been left on the float and wanted to know if anyone recognized it.  No one did, so she took it back with her and asked us to let her know if we found out who it belonged to.  She also had a box of candy that had been left in her vehicle Saturday and would like for HOWARD to take and put it with the rest of the candy we had stored.  BOB wanted to know what kind of candy was it.  RUTH PARKER wanted to know if there were any Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in there – BOB would be glad to help us with them.  NANCY said she thought we had handed out about 800 pocket Constitutions and about 400 flags.  She has a box of Constitutions and labels in her car if anyone would like to take them and put the labels on them.  EULA said she would be glad to put the labels on.  She said ‘old teachers never die, they just cut and paste’.

TOM HARMON wanted to know if we plan to buy our own military flags (for each branch of service).  BOB said he thought we should.  HOWARD said there was a guy at the Flea Mall that sold flags for $5.00 a piece he thought.  TOM said he did not want to buy anything made in China, especially an American flag.  HOWARD said he imagined these were made in China, as cheap as they are.  TOM asked if anyone knew about flag depot.com.  He thinks those flags are made by veterans in the USA.  NANCY said she looked it up but she couldn’t remember how much they cost.  She knows of a site where they are $30.00 each plus $5.00 shipping and handling.  (3×5 – $65.00) She thought that was flagstaff.com.  BOB said maybe we should do a Google on flags, wholesalers.  BOB said the law on ‘Made in America’ is kinda crazy.  He thinks it really ought to be changed.  For example: you can have a shirt made overseas,  bring it back to the states and if you sew the label in the back of the shirt, here in the US, you can declare it ‘made in America’.  LYN BAKER said another example would be cotton fabrics  manufactured here and sent overseas to be cut and sewn – you are still getting American fabric.

EULA said changing the subject; she wanted to brag a little, that she had seen in the paper that the Morehead City Veteran’s Day Parade was the largest in the state, with the highest attendance.

BOB told us about being asked by a teacher to speak to a class at East Carteret on the Beruit bombing in Lebanon.  The 28th of October was the 28th anniversary of the bombing.  He said he put together a power point presentation over the weekend and by the time he got to the school (a little over a week ago), it had expanded into six classes.  Some of the other teachers had found out and he ended up giving six classes; two in the morning and in the afternoon they had combined four classes into two classes.; so they went to the visual center where he gave his talk.  He thought it went really well.  Couple of things that really amazed him was how big high school kids are now days.  They are huge.  The first class were freshmen and they were like ERNIE’s size.  BOB said he would ask questions like ‘who listen to the news every night regularly‘.  No hands went up.  ‘How many know where Beruit is?’  No hands went up.  Anyway the presentation started out with maps of the Mediterranean to show them where Lebanon is and where Beruit is and showed them where the airport is.  He told them, to understand, they needed to go back a little bit and learn about the history of the whole area and find out where they are now.  He went all the way back to the Roman Empire and brought them forward through World War I and everything since then.   About 15% to 20% of the students were really locked up, engaged in, and absorbing the data; but the other 80% to 85%….. some of them, before the presentation ever started were heads on the desks and snoring.  BOB said it may have been the same way when he was in high school.  Several said they doubted it.  BOB said even so, he still enjoyed doing it.  Maybe they’ll invite him back again next year.

HOWARD asked if we had read the letter to the editor criticizing the Chairman of the County Commissioners.  He said he and DENNIS TOMASO had been discussing it before the meeting and they wondered if the person who wrote that letter, who didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to sign their name, was at the same meeting we were; because neither of us had seen or heard it that way.  BOB said he re-watched the meeting when it was re-broadcasted again on Channel 10.  He watched the whole meeting again  and he remembered it the same as the night of the meeting he attended.  It put him to thinking ‘what meeting did these people (C4) go to.  He was kind of appalled that they didn’t put their name to the letter.  MARION said they do sign their names but they ask the editor not to use it.  The editor does know where the letter comes from.  BOB said he realized that but if you are ashamed to admit you wrote a letter then you should not have written it.  HOWARD said most of that letter was untrue; because we were there and heard something different than what they were stating.  He said ‘Ironically, on the way down to the parade Saturday morning, we stopped at Cox’s for breakfast and Doug Harris came in.  HOWARD went over and personally thanked him for the power point presentation and them taking up for the tax payers.  BOB said it was one of the best Commissioners meeting he had ever been to because it was very transparent in the communication between the Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools,  and County Commissioners.  Knowing the background behind it, because KEN LANG had worked a lot with Commissioner Robin Comer trying to get some facts and figures; and then them coming out in the paper about they didn’t have the right numbers.  How many budgets are the schools operating on.  He didn’t like the fact that the Commissioners had released the contingency funds (the $500,000.00).  It was to have been contingent upon the School Board providing them with quarterly financial information (how the money is getting spent).   He was kind of wondering why they released the money since we haven’t even gone through the first quarter of the school year.  He didn’t think the contingency for releasing the funds had been met yet.  HOWARD said Commissioner Holt Faircloth told PEGGY that night, before the meeting started, that they were going to approve it.  They had asked for pertinent information which the school (right or wrong) had provided them.  Thus they had no choice but to release the funds, since it would appear their requests had been met.  BOB said they had had to assume that the figures they had been provided by the Board of Education were the same figures Doug Harris had used in his power point presentation.  Then the school employees and board said they had used the wrong information.  So it goes back to how many dang budgets are they operating under.  Why can’t they get together the “right” numbers and get them to the County Commissioners the first time when they asked for them.  He thought Doug Harris made that front row of school wheels look absolutely stupid.  ERIC said he understood that the Commissioners had not given the school the total amount; that it was prorated throughout the year.  He didn’t think they got it all at once.  BOB said he wasn’t sure about that but according to the paper the $500,000.00 was for paying teacher overtime, sick leave, and school bus drivers‘ overtime.  The state had provided funds for three days of sick leave but the teachers were apparently entitled to 10 days.  His question is ‘surely they (with 700 teachers) have not already gone through 2100 days of sick leave already in the first month of school‘.  He didn’t think they should release the money until the funds already allocated were expended.  He says they got the money and now they will do whatever they want with it, because once the funds are released by the County, they no longer have any control.  The school can spend it anyway they want.  They do not have to stick to the budget, which he thinks is why they are floating around all these budgets, to confuse the issue.  A budget for this group, another for another group, etc.  BOB said Novey says he is trying to get the biggest bang for the buck they can get, but he feels Novey’s modus operandi is just wanting to get as much money as possible, spend all they get, so they can ask for more next time.  He is an empire builder.  We all agreed with that.  BOB said we have new school board elections coming up and we have three members of the board who, the last he heard, were not going to run for reelection, so we need to find some good conservative folks to put on the school board.  Once we can get enough on the board then we can fire Novey.  He said he and KEN were talking to Adele Collins and she said they never had these problems with the previous superintendent (who passed away).  Then they got Novey and since then they have all these problems with the money and where it is going.  Just mass confusion.  The current school board just amens and rubberstamps what Novey wants.  HOWARD said they are violating state law the way they are currently operating.  The Board of Education is supposed to set policy and it is the superintendent’s duty to carry it out.  It is not working that way here in Carteret.  ERIC said this is also being spun by C4.  It’s the same information they have been spinning all along.  BOB said he thought that letter to the editor was dictated and crafted between Al Hill and Novey and given to C4 to send to the editor.  Novey will stand up and make statements and when you go to a C4 meeting they use the same talking points.  HOWARD said he understands that one of the Commissioners is meeting secretly/privately with C4 also.  Others have heard the same thing, so we wonder who’s side he is on.  BOB said he is chairman of one of the parties, also.   HOWARD said he is not a member of that party but he hopes that party will get rid of him next time.  BOB said he thinks he will be un-elected next election.  He told WAYNE WILLIS that since he lost his last election then we might just put him up for Chairman of one of the parties.  WAYNE said ‘you’ll be sorry’.

HOWARD asked BOB if he saw Al Hill riding in the yellow convertible in the VA parade Saturday.  BOB said he didn’t.  HOWARD said he rode by us and shook hands with one of our TEA Party tee shirted Patriots.  PEGGY said she bet it did not register who he had just shook hands with or he would not have done it.

BOB called upon WAYNE to give us an update on the history of his game he had ongoing.  WAYNE said the software is written and he is playing it on his computer now and has been for a couple of weeks.  Why he has been playing it is to make sure that there are no typographical errors, spelling, punctuation or factual errors in it.  Even in the wrong answers he found some things that somehow got changed when they went to put in onto the software.   Somehow some things got changed a little bit and he is trying to make sure that it is 100% correct.  It is a little bit tricky to do because there is a correct answer; there is a almost correct answer, (he has to really check on some of these to make sure that it is not the correct answer – only the near ‘bout); the ridiculous answer and the funny answer.  He’s checking out the pictures (100 images that had to be found that were not copyrighted or have some kind of intellectual property claim to them and the music is another thing.  It had to be cleared to make sure it was all available in the public domain.  The most recent thing he had to do was to come up with a EULA contract.  End User License Agreement.  This is something in that real fine print when you buy software or some kind of product like that.  And when he says ‘fine’ print, he means it.  When you type it out so you can read it, it can be over three foot long.  He called his patent lawyer in Greensboro to ask him would he do the EULA.  He said he was not familiar with that and it will be expensive; which while talking to him, translated into ‘don’t get him to do it because he would have to pay the lawyer to go to night school’.   He charges $350 an hour just to talk to him on the telephone, so when he said it was going to be expensive, he believed him.  So what he did was, he stumbled onto one on a piece of software that happened to be left by Denise, that she had bought in ‘02, that was very similar to what he wanted so he reworded that one and that’s what took up a lot of last week.  He hopes to have something available between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  EULA (PARKIN not the contract) wanted to know how much the game was going to cost.  WAYNE said he did not know yet.  BOB explained about the game that WAYNE had just been talking about to the new attendees.   BOB asked what would entice a teenager to play this game.  Do they get something like a jelly bean every time they get a right answer.  What is the motivation for them to want to get past question number three.  WAYNE said he thought the type of people who would need this game were about like those 80 to 85% BOB referred to in that class he taught.  80% of them would go to sleep.  What WAYNE had done was go to the Board of Education, Matt Bottoms, Asst. Superintendent, about a year ago.  Matt was really enthused with the idea and wanted WAYNE to hurry up and get it ready, because they could use it for a history test.  For those of you who do not know, there are 100 questions and it is multiple choice, with 4 answers to each question.  BOB wanted to know if it was set up for different grade levels.  WAYNE said it was not that sophisticated yet.  BOB asked what period of time was covered.  WAYNE said it started with Plato and came right on up to Obama.  He thinks it will be easy to put other sets of questions in it later.  BOB said, didn’t he say that some nursing outfit was interested in adapting his idea for other purposes other than history.  WAYNE said yes, a nurse he knew was interested in using it to help people understand more about cancer for example.   He had lunch with the guy, that was here at our meeting a couple of weeks ago, that had the patch over his eye because he had had surgery for a brain tumor.  It was his girlfriend that had the connection with Duke University that wanted to use his idea and put cancer questions on it.  It looks like they may be doing that.  WAYNE said for 2 or 3 dollars a piece it won’t break anyone’s budget.  HOWARD said he would need to charge more than that.  At that price they wouldn’t want them.  WAYNE said we will have to talk about that then.  BOB said we are anxious to see this thing so we can start buying them for our kids for Christmas.  WAYNE said, yeah, and making some money for the TEA Party.  That was another thing about the price.  The higher the price the more the TEA Party is going to get, so we were going to have to talk him into charging a higher price.  BOB said he thought WAYNE was going to become a millionaire or billionaire.  WAYNE said no, he didn’t want to be rich.  JIM said with games like that you usually had a measurement on how well you are doing.  WAYNE said there is a scoring system.  You start out with 50 points and you earn 10 points when you answer correctly and you lose 10 when you miss.  The first one to get 100 wins the game.  Then you start all over.  It doesn’t take long to get 5 questions right – but it takes longer to miss 5.  He has left it up to the teachers to provide incentives to encourage participation.

BOB said Herman Cain is probably done with his news conference by now.  Curious as to what the fall out is going to be about that.  WAYNE said seeing as how Herman has been wounded and if mortally wounded from this ‘Anita Hill II accident’ or episode or whatever you want to call it, who do you all think is going to be in line to take his place?  Most in attendance said they hoped it would be Newt Gingrich.  WAYNE said he just wanted to know what we all think.  Discussion followed.  HOWARD said he has found out how he can run in the next election and get free advertising.  He has set up a deal with Christy (a waitress here at the Golden Corral) for her to charge him with sexual harassment.

BOB said our next project was going to be a rally in the spring.  We want to have it before the primary which will be sometime in mid May.  It will be one of those ‘get out the vote’ type things but also gearing up for the November elections also.  So, let’s put our thinking caps on and come back next week and decide when we want to have it, a theme, and all the other things connected.  DENNIS is concerned how we are going to afford a rally when we only have $1200.00 in the kitty.  BOB said that would be part of the discussion also.  We are going to have to have some type of fund raiser….a car wash, sell WAYNE’s games or something to make some money.  He asked NANCY if she had a ball park figure of what it cost for the last rally….insurance, porta johns, speaker system, etc.  We will need to buy insurance again for this rally,  won’t we?  NANCY said yes, she thought it cost us around $700 for the year last year, which was good for up to three rallys.  He asked her to compile all that information together and give a report next week.

JIM said he was kind of new at this and they came tonight to learn more about TEA Party groups.  He wanted to know if there was any place where they could learn more.  BOB said if they will go to TEA Party Patriots.com (or .org) you can order a packet with information on organization and all kinds of materials for getting started.  You can also send an email to them asking for a North Carolina coordinator to get in touch with you.  BOB offered to get in touch with Russ (?) and ask him to get in touch with JIM.   When he contacts you, just tell him you are interested in getting a group started up around the Cary area.  There may already be one up there.  JIM said he had seen our float in Saturday’s parade and thought it was very impressive.  In fact he thought the whole parade was impressive.  BOB said if they wanted to start a TEA Party and wanted a cohesive group, he would recommend they meet every week.  The TEA Parties that he is familiar with that have once a month meetings, unless there is some hot topic/burning item like health care, or something like that that gets everybody riled up, the group kinda drops by the wayside.  If you have weekly meetings…he thinks that is the secret that keeps us going…it sorta becomes like a social thing for us so we can get out of the house once a week and have dinner together and discuss topics of mutual interest.  ERIC said he thinks by meeting each week we become more involved in things going on around us.  BOB informed JIM and SUSIE that we have also started a second group here in the western part of Carteret County.  We refer to it as our Wild West Tea Party.  We are trying to get one started in the down east part of the county, but so far have not been successful.  They will all be under our umbrella.  When we have rallies, it will usually only be one rally, not one in each locale.  Our county is so long, a lot of people do not want to travel so far to attend our meetings here at the Golden Corral.  JIM said from what he has determined we were more inclined in keeping our Country more toward it’s charter, as opposed to a more liberal leaning.  BOB said our core values are Limited Government, Fiscal Responsibility and Promotion of Free Markets Enterprise.   JIM said those were similar to conservative ideals.  The TEA Party is basically trying to bring the Republican Party back to those principles.  BOB thinks we need to deny Democrats public office until they move back to at least center; because they currently are so far left they are totally unable to compromise.  HOWARD told them they could go to our website where our minutes are posted.  They are sort of like a newsletter detailing what goes on at our meetings and you can keep up with what we are trying to do.  BOB advised them to stick to the core values and not tackle subjects like abortion, gay marriage, Muslims, etc.  They are things you can talk about in your meetings, like we could stay here all night and talk about this Occupy Wall Street stuff, but there’d be no sense in it.  Someone pulled out one of our cards and gave it to them for our website address.  ERIC  wanted to know if we didn’t need some more business cards, since it would appear most of us were out.

TOM said, talking about elections, we need to watch out for Elaine Marshall, Secretary of State.  George Soros wants Democrats in the Secretary of State positions and he is paying out big money to get them that position; and then he will have control of them.  If Elaine Marshall gets back in there again Soros will have a big foothold there.  We have to do our best to keep her from getting elected.  BOB said we need to do like we did in 2010 and come up with our voter recommendation guide, articles in the paper, man the polls, and have those handouts.  He feels that was the best thing we came up with last time.  TOM said he had an article that he would send to KEN to get on our website that explains the Secretary of State, George Soros and how he is paying these people to run.  HOWARD said we are going to have some commissioners here in the county that are not going to run next time that we need to be thinking about.  TOM asked who and HOWARD said Holt Faircloth had told him he had no intention of running again.  BOB asked why….burned out or what.  HOWARD said probably, but he is disgusted with the way things have gone.  Rumor mill has it that Renee Coles, with the C4 group, is campaigning for the Board of Education but he has been told that Greg Lewis was trying to get her to challenge Holt.  Holt had told HOWARD he didn’t care because he was not going to run.  We definitely do not want her.  BOB said if Greg is pushing her, then we need to push him out too.  HOWARD said Greg was trying to straddle the fence and play all sides.

STEVE said he needed to set up a date to show the movie “Turning the US into a Socialist Country” about Agenda 21.  Maybe one Saturday evening or something.
The movie runs about an hour to an hour and a half.  With all that is going on now, Thanksgiving, Christmas holidays; maybe we should wait until after the first of the year.

EULA said, as we knew, she was in Charleston, SC a couple of weeks ago to an annual meeting of the Coast Guard Courier.  Her husband had been stationed aboard it.  She was surprised to find out, that as a widow of a service man, she was the only one there that knew about the new ribbon that has come out.   If you serve anywhere on the water (Atlantic/Pacific or anywhere) there is a new ribbon that you can send for and get.  Apparently, most do not read all the letters and papers sent out.  She said they all thanked her for keeping them informed.  She did not know how many of our members were retired military and got quarterlies, but she thought we should know of this new ribbon.  BOB said in his 21 years of military, he had managed to stay off a boat.  BOB asked how many here tonight were retired military, asking them to raise their hands.. A round of applause and thank yous followed.

BOB said he was going to adjourn the meeting and head down to Rib Eyes in Cape Carteret for the celebration (they hope).  KEN and DIANE are going to be there and Dave Fowler, Richard Hunt, Renna,  They are going to have an after the election get together.

WAYNE said he read where a town that an Occupy group was holed up in, the word got out that they had not had to get a permit to be there.  The TEA Party had been charged recently for a permit for them to protest, so they are suing to get their money back.  HOWARD said it was Richmond.  DENNIS said there were two issues on the ballot in Ohio we need to watch… one opting out of Obamacare and the other overturning the Governor’s ruling on the union dues.   Also they are going after Governor Walker for recall in Wisconsin.

BOB said he thought a letter to the editor thanking those who came out and cheered on the TEA Party float would be nice.  It really made us feel great.  It also gives us incentive to keep on keeping on.

TOM asked if anyone found his truck keys Saturday.  He had lost them somewhere during the parade.  HOWARD and PEGGY took him back to Newport so he could get his wife’s keys and then took him back to Morehead.  When we drove up to his truck he found someone had evidently found them and placed them in the door handle of his truck.  He would like to find out who did it so he could thank them.  If anyone hears who it was, please let TOM know.  He plans to write a letter to the Editor thanking them.  He said he had been praying that his truck would still be there when we got back.  He was going to cry if it were gone.  BOB said they must have walked around pushing the button until they found where they belonged or else it was someone who knew him and knew he had lost his keys.

NANCY said just an item of interest….Has anyone heard of the website ’I am the 53%’.  It is a response to the Occupiers who say they are the 99% who represent the people.  This is the 53% that say they pay their taxes.  She said it was very inspiring.  There are a lot of people with hand written notes who post pictures of themselves.  One of the articles …..   “I have lived through most poverty times.  My wife and I decided in ’96 that we were sick of poverty, so we went back to school and earned degrees and got three jobs.  No one handed that to us…we earned it, we did it.  I did not go through all that struggle while raising three children so that I could support lazy people who want nothing but government handouts.  You want to occupy something…occupy a job and start contributing….. There are a lot of comments like that.  You will enjoy this website. Google “I am the 53%”.   It is not just a website in itself but a lot of blogs.

BOB asked if anyone heard Neil Bortz today on the radio.  He had one of his folks down interviewing people at the Occupy group in the city he reports out of.  He had some maniac who could not carry on a complete sentence without throwing the “F” word in  so they had to edit that out in order to broadcast his remarks.  This guy said ‘I don’t care if we have a 9-11 another 9 hundred and 11 more times‘.  RUTH PARKER said she heard on Lockwood’s program on the way to the meeting that they were going to clean out Washington’s Occupy group tonight.  The police are going to make them move out.  BOB said the homeless in Sacremento want the Occupy crowd out because they want their home back.  Lockwood also said the ones in Raleigh were upset because they had no place to plug in their ipods, computers, etc.

PEGGY said everyone here remembers Catie, our great granddaughter, right?  Well, she had to brag a little tonight.  Catie was supposed to be on Lockwood’s program last night for two hours, but Lockwood had forgotten he had already scheduled a special Veterans Program, so he has postponed until next week his two hour session with her starting at 5:00.  It will be just Lockwood, Catie and people calling in.  BOB explained to our new comers that Catie, who is now 16, had been very active with our group until recently when she got her drivers license.  Catie has gotten interested in a subject most of don’t even think about ’human slavery’.  Young girls are held in captivity and made to serve as prostitutes.  If anyone is able to get them free, there is no place readily available for them or able to keep them for any length of time, so as soon as they are allowed to go, they run right back to their pimp, because that is all they know.  Several groups in the state are looking into getting together and building a home to house these young girls and help get them on the right path again.  Catie has been named State Coordinator for this project.  NANCY and BELVA MANNING both said they had seen a magazine in their doctors office in the last day or so with Catie’s picture and an article on her in it.  PEGGY said she knew about the article, but had not seen it.  Catie was supposed to get a copy for her.  PEGGY said she was quite proud of her granddaughter.  The others said she was like their granddaughter also.   HOWARD said he saw on TV last week where two males and a female recruited a woman, telling her they had a good job cleaning homes where she could make good money.  They brought her to Greenville and kept her locked up using her as a prostitute.  The reporter said it was suspected that the female that had helped get her here also operated several brothels just like that.  Catie had told him that from her research, they are all small with just a couple of girls in each brothel.  It is a big operation but done in small doses.

RUTH said Lockwood’s program last night with the high school and community college students (Catie was there for that) was on the ‘death of chivalry‘.  How boys do not open doors for girls anymore.  The girls said they didn’t want the boys to hold the doors…it embarrasses them.  PEGGY said we are training them wrong then.  RUTH said she was thinking ’what is wrong with you girls’.  ’Where is your mother?’  HOWARD said he was at the bank the other day and held the door for a young lady and she refused to walk through the doorway with him holding the door.  RUTH said well you should have promptly turned around and smacked her.  BOB said that would have been sexual harassment.  NANCY said kids today do not know how to date like we used to.  It is more of a hookup culture.  The boys do not know how to go to someone’s house, be introduced to the parents, and take the girl out to a movie, or pay for a meal.  They do not do that anymore.  It is really sad.  RUTH said she raised her boy…open the door, pullout the chair, hold her jacket.  NANCY said yes they do have to be taught.  TOM said he had had a guy come up to his house and honk the horn.  As his daughter was going out the door, he asked her where she was going?  She said her date was…TOM said oh no.  He went outside and asked the boy what he was doing.  He said he was waiting for his daughter.  TOM told him he could do that down on the street where the hookers were, not here.  If you want to date my daughter, then get your butt up to the door and introduce yourself.  PEGGY said something very similar happened to her years ago.  A boy, who was extremely shy and bashful, finally got up nerve enough to ask her for a date.  He drove up to her house and blew the horn.  Her mother like to have torn the front door off the hinges as she flew out of the house and walked up to the boy’s truck, shook her finger in his face and informed him we did not give curb service here.  If he wanted to see her daughter he was to come inside.  Well, he came in and about five minutes later, he got up, said he would see me at school and left.  He never asked me for another date, but I bet he never blew the horn in front of another girls home either.  BOB wanted to know if it was HOWARD.  HOWARD said no that was before his time.  BOB said he wished parents would raise their kids differently today.  They abrogate their responsibility to the school and others.  He doesn’t know how we can change that.  He said years ago (probably 25 or more) he was listening to the radio and Paul Harvey said the biggest problem we have nowadays is the government.  He said in the 1950’s the government took one out of every fifty dollars you made in taxes, on an average.  He said now they take one out of every five dollars you make in taxes.  He said this is causing a lot of problems.  The government has been the biggest drain on the family income overriding the electric bill, rent, etc.  We used to be able to get by with one wage earner households, where the father went out and worked and the mother stayed home and raised the kids.  Now the mothers have to go out and work too.  It is the mothers who pass on culture to the children.  They are the ones that tell the tales, teach the dances, stories, and traditions. BOB said it was like, WOW, I never thought about it in those terms but sure enough, he was right.  The only way he can ever see us getting back to where parents are parenting is somehow set it up so that women don’t have to work.  They can work if they want to but the way it is now many folks have to work to make ends meet and the kids are the ones losing out.  However, it is our own fault.  We have become so spoiled … have to have two cars, a TV in every room, dine out several nights a week, have to have this and that.  Another thing about the government causing us to live beyond our means…back before Jimmy Carter we were able to deduct interest paid on our homes, cars, credit cards, etc. off our taxes.  Jimmy Carter put the stop to that.  By then everyone was up to here in debt and once you got to there you could never recover.  In the meantime all the kids learned ’hey, just get the credit card out’.  THOMAS VASGAR said it was Ronald Reagan that did that, not Jimmy Carter.  BOB said he was going to have to check that out.  It didn’t sound like Reagan.  He was going to have to trust and verify.  ERNIE said those values that people used to hold dear and cherish are not there anymore.  That is part of the plan…Agenda 21…When socialism was first formulated they tried to sit down and figure out why communism did not materialize all over the world.  They found the answer was the values of western society were so deeply engrained that the middle class would never fall for it, so instead of coming at it from an economic angle, they needed to come at it from a cultural angle.   If we can change the culture of America we can rebuild it in a way that we will have the power.  BOB said he thought it didn’t catch on because most countries had a middle class and Russia did not.  ERNIE said they discovered you had to tear down those principles.  Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves if they saw what was happening today.

STEVE reminded us of the shut down of all communications for a test tomorrow.  BOB said that scared him to death.  He thinks they are testing out a weapons theory because back in the sixtys  they launched two A6 Prowlers, one from Florida and one from Maine and they flipped their jammers on and blacked out the whole east coast for radio and TV transmission.  They were checking to see if they could take out a whole area if they wanted to.  He feels they are testing out another system that covers a broader range.  Either that or it has something to do with the whales’ sonar system off the coast.  Thus ending the meeting.

Meeting adjourned at 7:25pm.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF 1 November 2011

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by Vice President ERIC BROYLES
Pledge of Allegiance was led by LOU KUKULINSKI
Invocation by EULA PARKIN
No. in Attendance – 23

ERIC reported that our president BOB CAVANAUGH had a medical procedure done today and was unable to be with us tonight .

No new attendees tonight.

Treasurer NANCY BOCK reported that we have $1,186.00 in the treasury.  She has paid Eula $25.00 for the Islamophobia Books BOB had asked her to order for the group since our last report.

ERIC asked NANCY  about how many of our tee shirts did we have currently in inventory; especially the long sleeve ones since it is starting to get cold.  The cost of the long sleeve is $20.00 each.  SCOTT CARPENTER said he had been looking at the results from our 4th of July parade and we had run out of the Xlarge and 2X sizes.  Did we ever procure anymore of the sizes we were short on?  NANCY said we have plenty of short sleeve with the exception of the mediums and 2XL.  We do not have a lot of the long sleeve shirts.  We do have some XL she believes.  She has them in her car tonight if anyone is interested.  She had emailed BOB wanting to know if he wanted her to order more but had not heard back.  Not knowing if we planned to sell shirts at the Veteran’s Day Memorial Parade, she had not restocked.  She did not want to take it upon herself to place an order without permission and approval.   Since we are planning to change our sponsorship, she figured we probably would not order anymore right now.  ERIC wanted to know if there was a minimum order size; like 25 or 50 an order.  NANCY said we usually order 50 at a time, but she did not think there was any minimum.  ERIC wanted to know if we order 50 how much it would cost us.  NANCY said for short sleeves about 6 or 7 dollars each or $300/$350.00.  ERIC wanted to know cost of long sleeves.  NANCY said it would probably run a couple of dollars per shirt more.  ERIC asked NANCY to take an inventory and report to our next meeting.  NANCY said she currently has all the tee shirts and hats we have in inventory in her car tonight to turn over to whoever is planning to set up a sales table at the parade.  TOM HARMON said he was hoping to sell what we have, so when we have to reorder it will be with the logo(s) of our new charity(s) we decide to sponsor.  Since we are changing from the Wounded Warrior Project to another(s), we really do not want to buy anymore right now.  ERIC asked NANCY and TOM to give us an account after this weekend as to what we have left.  SCOTT wanted to know if the hats came in various sizes or did one size fit all.  ‘One size fits all’, they are adjustable.  NANCY thinks we may have 30 to 35 hats in inventory.  SCOTT wanted to know if we thought that would be enough for this weekend.  ERIC said it would have to be since we do not have time to order now.  NANCY said we did not sell that many hats at the 4th of July parade, so she thought we would be good to go for this weekend on the hats.  TOM wanted to know if we had any bumper stickers to sell and NANCY said yes we do and if he thought we could sell them she would get them to TOM also.
TOM wanted to know if anyone had found out where they were supposed to set up our sales table.  ERIC said all he knew was someone said something about there was going to be a food sales area and they thought we might possibly be allowed to set up near that.  ERIC said he didn’t know whether we had to pay to get in there or what the setup was.  TOM said BOB said last week that he was going to let us know exactly where we were to set up.  ERIC said the best response he had for that was for us to pay close attention to our friendly website, because he thinks there is going to be a “couple” of pieces of information that hopefully will be published in the next day or two, finalizing this event.  SCOTT wanted to know if we had any of those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ stickers.  NANCY said she had a lot of yellow oval shaped about 4×6.  SCOTT asked her to bring those also to try to sell.  TOM said he would try to sell anything we could get.  NANCY wanted to know if it had been approved by Morehead City that we could sell stuff.  No one was absolutely sure, so SCOTT said “let’s go on the assumption that we do have permission and if not; ask for forgiveness afterward”.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said the worse thing that could happen would be for them to come and ask us to close up and go home.  Probably by then we could have possibly have made a couple of hundred dollars, so we would still be ahead.  LYN asked if it had been decided where we were going to meet.  FRED DECKER said he had called Barbara over at the VA office, and apparently had called her before the deadline of signing up for the parade had arrived.  He had asked for location information but they had not finalized the lineup yet.  She promised to call him back and give him the information.  She has not returned his call yet.  He would call again tomorrow and call PEGGY and KEN LANG and let them know what he found out.  He thought it might be on Evans Street about a block or two from the St. Egbert Church.    ERIC said for those attending, after finding out where our float is supposed to go in the lineup, we will meet at 9:00 to decorate and set up the float.  SCOTT wanted to know if we had a contact list of names of members and those wanting to be a part of the group, to advise of the latest information.  ERIC said KEN usually sends out an email to all the addresses that have been given to him.  FRED was asked about parking and he said ’that would be the hard part’.  They usually park on the other side of Arendell on the side streets, but it would only be a couple of blocks to walk.  ERIC asked everyone to please watch our website for any new and current information.  He realizes that this is not the best way (and time) to inform people, but a lot of the problem is not anything we can control.  Check your emails and the website and try to keep informed.  FRED will call PEGGY and KEN just as soon as he finds out anything.
ERIC said as far as he knew BOB would be pulling the trailer like he did at the July parade.  Asked HOWARD GARNER about the ball for the trailer hitch.  HOWARD said all taken care of – it is in the back of his truck along with the chairs for the float.  ERIC said he understood BOB had asked HOWARD and PEGGY to get the candy and asked how much they had gotten.  HOWARD said they had gone to WalMart this morning before the sun came up, gotten 30 bags at a cost of $69.00.  The trunk of his car was over ½ full.  FRED said he had been in a store today where they too were marking their Halloween candy down and he had bought himself a couple of bags.  PEGGY said  WalMart had been priced at 50% off and more.  Most of the bags had run $2.65 or less.  ERIC said he thought probably just about everybody had at least a couple of bags left over from Halloween.  ERIC said he didn’t know about anyone else but he only had about 4 or 5 ‘attackers’ at his house, which left him with a few good snacks for himself since he had bought the kind of candy he liked.  HOWARD said if anyone wanted to see what kind of candy we had gotten, he had it in the back of his car and they could look at it and see.  SCOTT said candy was one of the problems we encountered at the 4th of July parade; we had run out before the end of the parade.  PEGGY said the reason for that was there were about 15 or 20 people throwing the candy and they had started off at the beginning of the parade throwing double hands full…which equated to about 30 to 40 hands full of candy being thrown at the same time.  We either need fewer people throwing the candy or ration the amount thrown.  A lot of the first kids had more candy than they could hold in their hands before the second throwing.  ERIC said maybe we need only one person on each side of the trailer throwing candy.  EULA said she had been involved in several parades with the girl scouts and had found that they did not approve of throwing candy.  Kids could run out into the street to get the candy and not look where they were going and run under the wheels of the floats and vehicles.  Others said it appeared that there had been no problem at the 4th parade and the kids really looked forward to getting the candy.  ERIC said he understood that we planned to have 6 walkers, 3 on each side of the float, two passing out pocket constitutions, two the special TEA Party flyers and business cards if we have them, and two carrying our sign.  SCOTT said no the last two were serving as gofers to resupply those handing out the constitutions and flyers.  He was told that we were out of business cards and needed to get another batch made up; that DENNIS TOMASO had made the last ones.  Someone asked about getting a stamp made up with our TEA Party information to use to stamp the next batch of constitutions we get in.  NANCY said there usually was not enough readable space to stamp the information; that a sticker worked better.  TOM HARMON said he would get up with DENNIS and ask him to make up 600 stickers to put on the backs of the constitutions we currently have (estimated about 600).  We will put the stickers on the backs of the constitutions while waiting for the parade to start (after we finish decorating.)  All agreed that we need to have something on the back or inside of the constitutions to remind people later where they came from.  ERIC said we need to have “Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots, our website address and if room time and dates of our meetings (both here and the Western group)”.  LOU said as long as we had the website on there we didn’t need the rest of the information about our meetings.  They could get that from our website.  TOM stepped out from the meeting and called DENNIS and asked him if he would run us some stickers.  He reported back that DENNIS told him he would have them tomorrow.
ERIC said he had just gotten a stack of the pocket constitutions this week from Sen. Burr he thought.  Knew it wasn’t from Sen. Kagen, since he never got a response from her.  HOWARD said she would respond, but it was always with a ‘canned/form’ letter.   Basically, if you write her a letter about something, she explains what you had written about and that she is looking into it.  That is just about the gist of it.           SCOTT is going to print about 600 of the flyers he made up listing our Core Values and Philosophy for handing out.
LOU said you all realize this is the largest Veteran’s Day parade in the state.  ERIC wanted to know if we thought we would have enough.  (No time to get more at this late date – have to make do with what we have.)
ERIC asked how many here tonight are planning to attend the parade.  Almost everyone there raised their hands.  TOM said he and JERE would not be walking or riding in the parade since they would be setting up and working  the sales table.  PEGGY said she would need at least four to hold the posters she had made.  Only hopes it doesn’t rain, because the posters are on cardboard and she would hate to see them ruined as much work as she has put into them.  ERIC said he thought they made some kind of coating to maybe spray on to protect them.  He thought they may have something at Michaels.  HOWARD said according to the weather report the rain is supposed to be over by parade time.  (Keep your fingers crossed.)
ERIC said he knew the weather had turned cooler and we probably would prefer hot coffee or chocolate, but did anyone plan to bring a cooler and bottled water?  RUTH PARKER said she had one she would bring and a case of water.
CLAYTON said he and GRACE went to WalMart this morning and they got $75.00 worth of candy.  ERIC asked to bring it with him in case we need it.  CLAYTON and several others said we can save it for the Christmas parade in case we decide to enter that
also.  Everyone agreed that was the way to go.  CLAYTON said if we think we may need more, then we wait until they mark it down again and then go buy more.  He thinks all that is not sold in three or four days, will probably be marked down to 75% off.  We could go in and get another $100 or so and always have plenty of candy on hand for whatever we may need it for.
SCOTT said another thing we had talked about after the July parade was having music.  NANCY said she didn’t think we would need music for this parade since most of the county high school bands and the Marine Corps band would be entered and playing.
ERIC said then that covers everything we can do tonight.  We are all square – 9:00 am, Saturday morning, November 5, we are going to meet in the area that FRED is going to find out and notify KEN and PEGGY so they can let everyone else know via the website; hopefully some table information up there too (where we are going to put them); (LOU said maybe we need to do it by lantern, one if by land, two if by sea), and (TOM said he wondered how long before he and Jere get arrested.  HOWARD said not to worry, we have an in with the Clerk of Court.)  STEVEN BEST wanted to know if we were going to show up if it rained.  HOWARD and several others said the weather report doesn’t call for rain on Saturday.  ERIC said if we were concerned then just bring an umbrella.

ERIC said several weeks ago we had mentioned the TEA Party by-laws.  Has everyone had a chance to look at those.  They were supposed to be posted on the website.  He is going to try to get them up again for everyone to read.  In the next few weeks we are going to be making a decision on what part of these bylaws do we want to adopt, because we do have to have elections ever so often for officers and the bylaws do spell that system out clearly….the elections process and what positions will be available.  LYN wanted to know if this was something that came from the TEA Party Patriots.  ERIC said no, this was something he had come up with.  TOM wanted to know if the bylaw information was in the PDF format.  ERIC said he was sure he had sent it out that way.

ERIC said on the 15th of November Frank Palombo will be attending our meeting.  He is running against Walter B. Jones.  Mr. Palombo has spoken to us previously (prior to announcing his candidacy).

Anyone interested the TEA Party Patriot website, (the national website) they will be launching a new website in the near future….TeaPartyPatriots.org.  They have not put out a specific date.  It could be tomorrow or next week. Keep an eye out.  SUSAN RYNAS wanted to know what the relationship was between this organization and the TeaParty.net.  ERIC said there were many various Tea Party organizations, all with pretty much the same principles that we do.  Conservative government, etc.  TOM said there was one on the West Coast he hears a lot about; but they get more involved in political races (backing a lot of candidates).  Some do a lot of fund raising.  RUTH said in fact one group was talking about going to be up there in Ohio about that vote (about the union).  Continued discussion about the various groups.  ERIC said the governor in Wisconsin is looking at having some problems, because after a year they can hold a recall election.  If you recall he also stood up against the union there.  He would not be surprised if they did not attempt a recall.  ERIC said he recently saw where the federal government was taking on even more states (they’ve taken on Arizona, Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia on immigration and now they are suing South Carolina about immigration.) He has never seen the federal government sue so many people before in his life.  HOWARD said there are a lot of lawyers out of work and Obama is just trying to help create more jobs.  TOM said what they have come up with is the state governments are hindering the federal government from doing their job.  The federal government is saying they are only going after felons, and if the state government arrests all kinds of illegal aliens, then they are hindering the DOJ from going after the felons.  That is their whole case.  They are saying if he is a felon, then we are going to kick him out, but if you keep sending us all these DUI’s that are here illegally, then you are hindering our efforts to get rid of the felons.  That is their justification for the case.  SUSAN said what scares her is Obama using his executive orders to go around Congress.  And even if we are unfortunate enough to not be able to get Obama out of the White House, we do need to get more Conservatives in the Senate, so we can override Obama’s vetos.  FRED said there are 33 Senators running in the next election and 23 of them are Democrats, so that is going to be our chance to pick up some.  ERIC said he hopes we can pick up enough to control the Senate anyway.  CHARLES TARPLEY said Obama is totally and completely out of control.  He insists on getting what he wants, when he wants and anything he wants.  He thinks Obama is doing all this on purpose, because he knows he is going to lose and be a one term president…even some of the Democrats are shying away from him.  He is going to do as much damage as he can before he gets kicked out.
LOU said he emailed Walter B. Jones today and wanted to know when he was going to start impeachment procedures.  He does that once a month.  When are some of the rest of you going to start doing that?  Discussion about who should be involved in getting this started…Senate or Congress.  LOU said he sends the same message to Burr and Burr
says it starts in Congress (House) to impeach.  If passed it goes to the Senate and gets tabled so it goes no where.  LOU said he doesn’t give up, he continues to send his emails to Jones and Burr monthly.  ERIC said from what he can come up with, Jones does believe Obama can be impeached for some of the things he has done.  Jones says he has tried to push it to the other representatives but they are of the feeling that Obama is going to be thrown out anyway.  ERIC said just like Bill Clinton, he got impeached by the House but not by the Senate, so it went nowhere.  Obama is, right now, involved with the Occupiers of Wall Street and playing right into their hands by saying OK we are going to come out with a way to get loan forgiveness on your education loans.  We will come up with a way that you can get your loans forgiven; we are going to find a way to wipe out the debt; etc.  LOU said he is doing all that by executive order and all that can be rescinded.  ERIC said but the thing is he is getting all these young people jumping on the bandwagon because they are thinking they are going to get a free ride.  LYN said she bets less than half of those people sitting out there Occupying Wall Street will actually vote.  ERIC said the sad part is that the other half might.  Remember, Obama only won by a small number last time.  TOM said Obama does not have the support on campus like he did last time.  Much vocal discussion followed as to whether Obama will have that young support again or not; the outrageous voter fraud in the last primary, and other topics.  ERIC interrupted the mass conversation to encourage all of us to call our congressmen and senators and ask them to come up with a game plan and make public as to how they are going to deal with these mortgages and student loans.  The way he looks at it is Obama is out there giving them a quick sale.  LYN said as far as the student loans go, if Republicans take over they can put it back into practice.  That is what they are going to do although it may be too late to completely undo it.  LOU asked if anyone saw where Fannie and Freddie wheels got pay raises today.  LYN said they are getting Christmas bonuses also.
ERIC said someone had just given him a paper on the Occupy Wall Street backers   and listed several, ie International Socialistic Org., Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, (he was surprised to not see Harry Reid’s name listed).  ERIC asked SUSAN where she got the list and she told him “The Tattler”.  If anyone is interested in checking this out go to http://pjmedia.com.
ERIC asked if anyone had anything else they would like to bring up before adjourning the meeting.  SUSAN said she knew Solis back in California before coming to Washington and on Obama‘s handpicked/non-Congressional approval).   Acorn was putting up posters that read “If you pay any kind of tax, you should be eligible to vote”.  One of the bilingual kids she taught came to school and said he had voted.  She said she didn’t know he was a citizen and could vote.  He said he didn’t have to be a citizen.  He paid sales taxes and therefore was eligible to vote.  She had complained about the signs misleading and they would not take them down.  Next thing she knew she was pretty much booted out of there. Solis was only on the school board then and now look where she is.  It has probably been 8 or 9 years since that happened.  ERIC said at that rate, they could bring half of Europe over here and as long as they paid one penny of sales tax, then they could vote.  Actually there are some bills (immigration for example) just about as ridiculous that he has been looking at recently. The Democrats want to grant them all amnesty so they will be able to vote in the next election.  (Buying votes again)  FRED said one of our biggest problems is the Union.  They do not want to take a cut regardless of the problems we are encountering.  Someone said, just like the teachers, they don’t want to take a cut either not even to prevent job layoffs.  That is a selfish mentality but it prevails.  ERIC talked about the problems in Europe and especially Greece.  He understands they are going to take the problems to the people and let them vote.  We all know how that is going to go.  Don’t take my bennies away.  Take more from the rich.  He is afraid it will only get worse and those people over there don’t play, they kill people.  The leaders are going the voting route because they know how the vote will go, and then they can say, don’t blame us, the people got exactly what they wanted.  ERNIE GUTHRIE said we are fortunate here in the US because over there if they would do as we do and speak out against their socialist policies or whatever, they might be killed.  LOU said they’ll want to do that here if we don’t get those sitting up there in Washington right now – out.  ERNIE said that is the path we are on right now.  ERIC said they disarmed their populace in most of those countries.  They are trying to do that here in the US also.  ERIC said the Second Amendment was the most important amendment we had – even more than the freedom of speech.

LOU said can you believe the United States is giving foreign aid to China!!  We are probably borrowing the money from them to give back and then have to pay interest on the money we borrowed.  Something just doesn’t sit right here.  We have to be brain dead.

ERIC said ’one final thing, next Tuesday, don’t forget to vote.’  He wanted to know if we wanted to cancel our meeting here next Tuesday since it was election day.  HOWARD said we could have our meeting and then go home and listen to the returns.  Decision was made to meet as usual.

Meeting adjourned at 7:00 pm.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER.

 Click on the link to read the CCTPP Newsletter

CCTPP Newsletter-11-11

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OCTOBER 25,2011

Meeting was held at the Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order by President BOB CAVANAUGH at 6:00 pm
Pledge of Allegiance was led by PEGGY GARNER
Invocation by HARRY THOMPSON
Attendance – 26

BOB introduced the new attendees:
JOAN COOGAN and BUCK DAVIDS who according to Buck live across the road in the tower.  He said he got here because the cops, in the town he lived in before, threw him out, thereby reducing the crime rate in that town by 72% when he moved out.  He is currently establishing a repartee with the Morehead City police.  He is allowed to attend one meeting per month but is required to have at least two guards with him.  Amid all the laughter, BOB asked if Ms. Coogan was one of his assigned guards; said he was glad that Buck had chosen our TEA Party meeting as one of his monthly meetings and hoped he would come back.
BRIAN KRAMER, representative of the ‘Hope for Warriors’ Kayak Race in Pine Knoll Shores.  He thanked DENNIS TOMASO for inviting him to our meeting.  He said he really respected what the TEA Party stands for.  About four years ago, the decision was made that they needed to do something to help wounded Marines at Camp LeJeune.  They decided to hold an annual kayak race to raise funds .  All the funds go to the ‘Hope for Warriors’ foundation.  They do similar things as the ‘Wounded Warriors’ group.  (We had been told their logo was the same as the Wounded Warriors but this is not true; they have a totally different design/trademark.)   The way the Hope for Warriors was formed in 2003, a group of guys were coming back wounded from Iran and Iraq, and their units were no longer here, but were still deployed overseas.  General Amos, who was in charge of Camp Lejeune at the time (and is now the Commandant of the Marine Corps), put them all in one barracks so they could be looked after in a group.  That morphed into the Wounded Warrior battalion which is now the Wounded Warrior Regimental Flag Unit of the Marine Corps.  The Hope for the Warriors Foundation spun out of that and is now one of the best organizations in the country (he believes) in taking care of the guys and gals coming back banged up.  It is headquartered out of Camp Lejeune.  There are two or three buildings where they have their headquarters, with about two young ladies and several volunteers who do most of the work.  They do have satellite offices in cities all over the country.  For those of you who are real careful in tracking what kind of charities you work with, as all should do, their admin rate is like 5%; which is really good for an organization and can be verified, by the way, on web site charitynavigator.org.  Go there and check these guys out.  They have a four star rating, so they get audited and checked.  They do some great things.  They have different programs, like transitioning the wounded with prosthetic legs, (he and DENNIS have met some of them) out into jobs and such.  A lady, Peggy, was supposed to have attended tonight’s meeting, but was unable since she is over at a TVI injury household, helping out the couple (wounded marine and wife) get through some financial issues right now – financial integration program, one of the many programs to help out the wounded warriors.  They also have ‘Warrior Wish’, which is
similar to ‘Make a Wish’; helping guys/gals (help both sexes) who come back injured (all branches, not just Marines).  This last year’s kayak race he kayaked with a blind marine, who had lost his sight while fighting overseas, and he had his dog with him.  They kayaked three point two miles.  It was pretty motivating.  He said when you weigh all different organizations, the good thing about this organization is you can touch this organization.  He can take us to Camp Lejeune and introduce us to some of the people overseeing the area program, as well as meet some of the wounded marines; so we can actually see where our money is going.  BOB asked ’What do you actually do for the wounded warriors that say the Navy Relief Society wouldn’t do, such as for planned assistance and beyond what the military medical aid provides?’  Brian said they were familiar with the relief societies aid.  That is small change (like giving them $400.00 to fly home for Christmas).   ’Hope for Warriors’ helps pay for education for families of fallen servicemen.  BOB asked ’Wasn’t that available for them now?’  Brian said he was not sure how much is offered, but this organization has been able to help such that it dwarfs any other help available from the relief societies.  Part of the reason for this, as well, is negotiating the relief society way (guys wait years for the VA to get them what they need)  and Hope for Warriors’s has a little faster response.  BOB said “Do you get them better medical treatment?”  Brian said, “No, they don’t do any medical programs with doctors and services such as that. But for example, last year they put in a swimming pool for a marine’s use in rehabilitation.  He doesn’t think the VA would have ever done that.  The pool was put in at the warrior’s home in Richlands.  DENNIS  said Brian had neglected to say the kayak race four years ago had raised $700.00 and this year they raised $39,000.00.  You can tell by that the support in the community for this program.

ROMA WADE said he would like to remind us all that there are five branches of service:  Army, Navy, Marine, Air Force and Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard is the oldest sea going outfit and has served in every war and they have lost a lot of people also.

FRED DECKER wanted to know didn’t they get their medical help from the Camp Lejeune Hospital.  Brian said ‘When they come back and they are still on active duty they do get treatment at Camp Lejeune but ‘Hope for the Warriors’ helps after they get out/ beyond discharge.  FRED said ‘But they still have assistance through the VA.’ Brian said ‘yes they do’.  This is not meant to take the place of their VA benefits.  FRED said he was a member of the Retired Enlisted Association in Cherry Point and they give money to the Wounded Warrior League Program.  Brian said he had just gotten a good example ‘a Marine is injured, and his unit comes back.  You have seen all the signs, and they have a big event welcoming them home.  When a Marine is injured and is returned home, they will pay to have the injured Marine’s family fly up for the memorial services usually held for the fallen guys and the welcome home to their injured family member.  That is something you would not find funded by the VA or military.  If you go on the web site you will find they have seven programs now, that definitely fills the gap.  BOB said it was his understanding that the Wounded Warrior barracks in Camp Lejeune are also a holding barracks for a lot folks who are just being processed out and discharged (for like drug abuse or other mental non-combat reasons).  Do you help everybody or do you specifically target those wounded in combat?  Brian said he was not certain that that was the case of the barracks holding non-combat persons.  He would check into that.  What they did was build right next to the naval hospital a wounded warriors’ barracks and the Fisher House (which is like a Ronald McDonald House for visiting family members).  He has not heard of them putting admin discharge people there.  Now a lot of the wounded guys are in various admin discharge procedures/medical separations.  That is part of the reason why they are assigned there, since they can not be included in their normal units; however, disciplinary issues; he doubts, but will find out.  BOB said another example would be a marine wounded in a car accident (not in combat); would those be placed in with the wounded in combat?  Brian said he would check all these questions out and get back with us as soon as he found out.  He said he would be real surprised to find out they were putting disciplinary/accidental injuries in the Wounded Warrior barracks that they had spent several million dollars to build for them.  FRED wanted to know didn’t they have a Wounded Warriors’ barracks on the West Coast also.  Brian said yes they do.  What they did was General Amos set that up here at Camp Lejeune and Secretary Rumsfelt thought this was a good thing and directed the Army to do it in Bragg and several other locations.   We now have a battalion on the east coast and Camp Pendleton on the west coast.  Both are Marine Corps Units, Wounded Warrior East, here at Camp Lejeune, and Wounded Warrior West there and a regiment in Quantico.  BOB thanked Brian for his presentation and invited him to come back to see us.  He told him that once our group voted on which charity we wanted to support, we would let him know.  It might not just be one but may split our donations among several.

On November 5th we have the Veteran’s Day Parade coming up in Morehead City.  BOB had received an email from NANCY BOCK.  NANCY is missing tonight.  Her daughter is playing soccer (BOB thinks this may be the last game of the season unless they win and then there may be playoffs, and I guess to get NANCY back with us maybe we should hope they lose.  (Just kidding Nancy).  BOB said he assumes we still have about $1,200.00 in the Treasury.  He had asked her when and where they were going to get together and decorate the float.  She had emailed back “We should decorate the float near the starting point of the parade the Saturday morning of the parade.  It probably won’t take an hour, so say meet at 9:00am just to be safe (parade starts at 11:00).”  NANCY did not know where the parade starts or exits so had not scoped the place out yet.  “She will get the flags from LYN BAKER on Tuesday prior and have them attached to the poles.  Then we will only have to attach the fringe, banners and PEGGY’s posters, and put the chairs on the float.”  LYN had told us she could get the military flags from her church (I think she said).  Apparently she came through and had let NANCY know.  BOB asked FRED if he knew where we were supposed to be in line and where we needed to have the float.  FRED said he would call and find out the exact location we need to meet, but he thought it would be somewhere near Saint Egberts Church on Evans Street (?).  He would call, get the information in the morning and call PEGGY so she could include it in tonight’s minutes.  (Called, but the Parade Organizers have not made up a lineup yet.  Are waiting until the deadline for requesting permission to have a float in the parade.  He will let us know as soon as he can.  KEN LANG will probably send out an email letting us all know.)
BOB said those interested in helping and/or being in the parade (after we hear from KEN) will meet and 9:00 or 9:30 to decorate.  He said he would need to get the ball from HOWARD and HOWARD said we would be there with the chairs and he always had the ball in the back of his truck, so that was covered.  BOB called on SCOTT CARPENTER to continue our discussion and plans for the parade.  SCOTT had his flip charts set up for keeping a record of what/who/where/lessons learned from previous parades, etc.  He had forgotten to bring a copy of his typed notes from our July 4th Parade so he didn’t have a list of our mistakes and should-have-done’s with him tonight.  Asked how many planned to be there on Saturday morning to get set up.  Verified that KEN would be sending out an email with everything we will need to know.  BOB said he thought the parade would be about 10 blocks long.  This information is for those who do not think they will be able to walk that far and will need to ride on the float.  (Need to have a count on number of chairs to bring).  SCOTT  wanted to know if the flag posts will already be pre-positioned on the float.  Last time we clamped them on.  Since there are still so many unknown variables, we’ll just cover what we can tonight.
HOWARD – bring ball (trailer hitch) for pulling trailer, any tools he thinks we may need (ie electric screwdrivers), and the chairs.
NANCY –  trailer, fringe, flags from LYN,
Will need at least 6 walkers to pass out … a lot of joking about passing out … pocket Constitutions and flyers.  Did not have enough handing out materials at the 4th
Parade.  BOB wanted to know what kind of flyers we are going to pass out.  SCOTT thinks we should pass out a list of the three core values of the TEA Party.  Feels like everyone should know what our mission is and what we stand for.  Wanted to know who had a copy of the flyer so we could make copies.  No one was aware of any flyer already prepared.  Some felt that this parade was for the veterans and that we should not be pushing the TEA Party.  Our red shirts would do that for us.  (Everyone in the parade, both walking and riding should be wearing our TEA Party Tee Shirts.) Questioned if we had enough pocket Constitutions to pass out.  Think we have somewhere around 1000.  Hope that will be enough.  BOB thought three people on each side of the float passing out the Constitutions was an overkill; we would run out before the end of the parade.  SCOTT said no, only one on each side would be passing out Constitutions, another would be passing out the flyers and the third would be a gofer to restock those passing the information out.  DIANE LANG brought up that we had a table set up at the July 4th parade where we sold hats, tee shirts, etc. (BOB said maybe we could recycle our old McCain bumper stickers by cutting the Mc off.)  He said ROMA and EDITH WADE had set that up with a friend in Beaufort to utilize space in front of their store.  Don’t know if we can have that privilege in Morehead.  Much discussion on table.  Question was raised if we might have to have a permit for the table.  BOB said he thinks that might be one of those times when you say “Sorry, didn’t realize that – and ask for forgiveness afterwards”.  Think the decision was made to try to set up down by the food booths and it will be manned and operated by TOM HARMON  and JERE GEURIN.  (We’re in trouble now with Tom and Jere in charge.)  TOM said he had a table they could use.
Someone asked if we still had any of those real small flags we passed out last time.  TOM H. said he thought he still had a few in the back of his truck.  He would check.  BOB said he would email NANCY to see where we stand on getting the small flags.
SCOTT wanted to know if we had anyone set up to procure the candy we wanted to toss to the kids.  BOB said since PEGGY had done such a good job for the July 4th candy toss, he understood that PEGGY and HOWARD were working feverishly to procure the candy for this parade.  (Thanks BOB – just love being volunteered, but we will give it our best).   HOWARD asked how much they wanted us to spend.  BOB said whatever it takes.  He is assuming we are going to hit the stores right after Halloween for the sales.  He wanted to know how much we had gotten for the July 4th parade and what it cost.  (LOU said we had run out and caught the devil from kids who lost out.  Problem was at the start of the parade the candy was thrown out by the double handsful, so we need to remember that when we start off for this parade.)  PEGGY said she had gotten two big boxes of candy (Ruth had helped by donating some money); but she had no idea exactly how many pounds there were.  HOWARD said last time we donated the candy, but felt we needed help for this parade, it does get rather expensive.  SCOTT said well, the candy is covered – Thanks HOWARD and PEGGY for volunteering!!!
BOB asked PEGGY what her posters/signs depicted.  She said she hoped to have at least four ready – one was the liberty bell that says Let Freedom Ring; another was raising the flag over Iwo Jima with Freedom is Not Free; another was saluting the flag with the Pledge written out and the last was six military personnel in dress uniform carrying a  coffin through a cemetery with the statement ‘Some Gave All‘.
BOB said well we seem to have just about everything covered.  SCOTT wanted to know if we were encouraging those who have motorcycles to ride them in the parade.  No one knew of anyone off hand that was interested.  Last time ROY MUSSER had shown up to ride with us but we haven’t seen ROY is several weeks.
SCOTT said we need to ensure enough members stick around after the parade for break down of the float and returning items used.
BOB said for the 4th parade NANCY, her husband and CATIE MCCABE wore colonial dress and carried the banner.  He did not think the costumes would apply for this parade but we will still need at least two people in TEA Party tee shirts to carry the banner.  BOB said he thought there would be no problem in breaking down, since he was pretty sure we would wind up at least near where we started.  Then it would just a matter of taking the fringe off, flags down, and the chairs and posters back in HOWARD’s truck.  Please be sure we have your email address so we will be able to contact you.  BOB jokingly told Buck David, if he was worried about the cops finding him, then he could always give someone else’s email address.  Buck said that was a great idea.
SCOTT asked if there were any further comments, ideas or suggestions.  Discussion on parade concluded.  BOB asked SCOTT to access our performance again at this parade and we will discuss it at the meeting after the parade.

ERIC was asked how his wife was doing and he said she was still having problems with her medications, which is keeping him pretty much tied to the house right now.  That does not mean that he has quit working for the TEA Party, as we can tell by the number of handouts he had passed around tonight.   He wanted to discuss two subjects tonight.  The first is about the candidate he thinks we should support in the Morehead City Mayoral Race.  He didn’t know if we had chance to see or read about the debate that occurred a couple of week’s ago.  It convinced him that David Horton’s ideas reflect the ideas of the TEA Party…fiscal responsibility, limited government….MARION MERRILL spoke in opposition that Jerry Jones had been mayor for 16 years and had more experience than Horton would ever have.  ERIC said he realized that we had various opinions and he appreciated the fact that we were able to voice them; but economical times are bad and getting worse.  In his opinion, a lot of money has been wasted in recent years, the police station, the JIB property, the ball field, etc. and the tax payers have not been allowed to have a say so in any of it.  He thinks the current mayor and city manager have spent money on things we could have done without and used at least a part of that money to give the town employees a raise.  MARION said she did not believe that either.  ERIC told her then she needed to read the minutes.  David Horton has asked ERIC if some of the TEA party would be willing to help with phone calls, maybe a little assistance at the polls, etc.  ERIC had brought a sign up sheet, for anyone wishing to help Horton, to please sign before they left tonight.  He had distributed a letter from Horton on the Town Council Meeting Minutes of Tuesday, June 14, 2011 in with the pack of data he had passed out earlier for us to look at, which explains why he did not support the budget this past year, nor in 2010.  Bottom line is ERIC thinks Horton is the best candidate that supports the TEA Party.
On another subject, he had distributed some other information that he had obtained from the White House.  He thought it was kinda interesting and wanted to share it with us.  One of the charts he had given us was about the individual income taxes.  Who pays what, broken down by top 1%, 5%, 10%, etc and bottom 1%, 5%,10% etc.  To give you an idea, the top 10% pays almost 70% of all federal income taxes.  The top 25% pays 87%.  The bottom 50% only paid 2.7%.  So you can see the burden is being carried by the top 25% of this country.  The other thing he thought interesting is the report that shows receipts from individual, corporate, and excise taxes and other.  In 2010 $898,549 billion dollars came from tax payers like you and I.  The estimate for 2016 is $1,785,970 trillion dollars; literally doubled.  We have all heard about these tax hikes President Obama has been talking about; well these are his estimates; so we clearly know what his agenda is.  He has no intention on cutting spending.  If anyone is interested in more information, please contact ERIC and he will try to get it for you.  PAT NALITZ wanted to know if ERIC had any figures on the percentage of those in poverty of that bottom 50%.  Surely we are not 50% in poverty.  ERIC said he would think if you were not paying any taxes, then you couldn’t afford to pay taxes.  According to the way he reads the chart it would appear that the bottom 50% earn 33 thousand dollars or less (adjusted gross income).  BOB said we have to remember that a number of people end up in the lower tax bracket due to number of kids/dependents they have, high mortgage, and things like that.   Just because they are not paying taxes does not mean that they are unemployed or as TOM said they could be like Timothy Geitner, making gobs of money and just not paying anything.  HOWARD said a lot are getting income off the record.

KEN LANG spoke on Moore TEA’s billboard project.  He said about a month or so ago he mentioned that a group from Moore County’s TEA Party were looking into putting up billboards prior to the Democratic Convention in 2012 (between July and election).  They did four billboards in 2010 around the Moore County area.  This time they have been going all around the state trying to find “good” locations for renting to put up billboards.  He and DIANE met with some of them this past weekend in Swansboro.   They were looking at billboards in this area along Hwy 24 and 17.  They currently have logged in 2400 miles in researching locations.  They have collected somewhere around $1,200.00 but have just got the ball rolling.  A lot of these billboards cost around $400.00 per month, sometimes more and sometimes less; depending on the location.  So they are now looking for donations.  We have had several members from this group (Morehead) and the Western group who have sent in suggestions for slogans to be used.  The slogan that the Moore group used two years ago has been taken by the AFL-CIO and it will now be used on their billboards, so we need to find another really catchy slogan to use.  If you go on our website, there is a link to the Moore TEA website, ncteabillboards or something like that, where you can get further information, suggestions received so far, and inform as to some of the locations they are looking at and have pretty much decided on as soon as they get enough money to do it with.  KEN said he really would like to see this group commit to providing some funds to this project.  Individuals are encouraged to participate also.  DEBBIE RUCKER told KEN that she had already sent them some money.  Several thought it was a good idea and thought we should consider making a donation.  KEN thinks they may end up with possibly 20 or so locations and then narrow them down to whatever they have money for.  They would like to put up all 20 but are hoping to put at least 8 to 10 up.  They do want to put some billboards down in this part of NC, because they know there is a lot of support here.  DIANE said she felt we should donate to the cause.  We can pass out all kinds and amounts of flyers, but a billboard will cover a whole lot more ground and attention. BOB told KEN that the next time he talked to them, that maybe they should decide on how many they want to put up and then state this is how much money we need to raise.  In other words,  set a target.  KEN said he thought that was their ultimate goal, but they had just started this project recently (about 4 or 5 weeks ago) and they are putting a lot of personal time now in just getting prepared.  They are also looking at different companies trying to get the best prices they can.  ’Course prices are based on how much traffic goes by the signs, how visible they are, and those kind of things.  At this point they are shooting for 10 signs at $400 (at the least) per month for that period of time.  That big billboard they were looking at down around Swansboro, has great visibility, and it is around $400. He feels sure that there are some in the western part of the state that will run a whole lot higher.  HOWARD said there is a potential that if you can tie in with some business, that agrees with the program, and has a long term contract, (sort of like sublease) of renting billboards; we may be able to get them to let us use their billboards at a reduced rate.  BOB said we would certainly like to be able to contribute to that project.  We currently have roughly around $1,200.00 in the kitty, but he doesn’t know what expenses we have coming up, and if we want to hold a rally in the spring, prior to the primaries, that is going to cost us some money.  We might do a pass the hat type thing and maybe raise at least $400.00 to pay for one month for one sign.  TOM recommended we come up with a fund raiser.

STEVEN BEST reported on “The Cave” theater.  It is almost finished (needs to set up the projector and speakers) and Friday night will be the grand opening.  The movie they will be showing is Matthew 10.28 and he hopes everyone here tonight will show up for the premier.  He has gotten popcorn and hotdog machines.  Social from 6:00 (with free hotdogs) until 7:00 when the movie will start.  Would like to know how many plan to attend so they will know how much food to get.  Please join us Friday night.

JERE GEURIN informed us that all the packages (105) they had packed to send to the troops overseas; sponsors to mail them were found, and all got mailed this past weekend.
This “We care” program (headed up by Sam Sanford) will again be packing boxes tomorrow morning (Wednesday) hopefully another 100.  Anyone interested in helping please come to Hwy 70, across from the Trucker’s Toy Store and behind Furniture Distributors.  Plan to start about 9:00 and we should be through by 11:00.  He and Sam will again be at the Post Office in Morehead City next week looking for sponsors to pay the postage ($12.95) for mailing the boxes.  ERIC said since we are looking for charities to sponsor, this might be one that we could help out by paying the postage on 5 or 10 boxes at each mailing.  BOB said if it would fall into our budget, it would be nice.  BOB said he would like to have Sam come in and pitch the ’We Care’ program to the group, because “We Care” is certainly in the running for getting proceeds from our tee shirt sales.

BOB said there is going to be a training session on Agenda 21 Saturday, 3:00pm November 12  at St. David’s School in their newly renovated Performing Arts Center which is located ¼ mile from North Hills at 3400 White Oak Road in Raleigh.  Admission is free and ample parking is available.  Guest speaker is Mr. Thomas DeWeese, President, American Policy Center of Warrenton, Virginia and will be speaking on the UN’s Agenda 21/Sustainable Development Program.  Mr. DeWeese is a nationally known expert on Agenda 21 and will present an in-depth analysis of how each and every one of us is being affected at the local, state and national levels by this insidious threat to our liberties.  Sustainable Development calls for changing the very infrastructure of the nation, away from private ownership and private control of property to the central planning of our entire economy.  This is being done through Cap and Trade, population control, open borders, social justice, farming reform, environmental protection, smart growth, open spaces and economic justice to just name a few of the ways this threat is being presented to the unsuspecting American people.  Sponsors of this event are Feet to the Fire (FTTF), Conservative Women’s Forum, Southern Wake Republican Club, Chapel Hill Republican Women and Triangle Conservatives United, have joined together to establish an education fund that will be used for this and future educational events.  There is a growing need in our community to keep ourselves informed of vitally important issues that we are currently facing.  This fund will be used to bring experts on various controversial subjects into our area to speak on a variety of important issues.  BOB asked if anyone would be interested in going to this event besides Steve.  BOB said he was seriously thinking about going.  Agenda 21 took up a large part of last night’s TEA Party Patriots conference call.  They had a big meeting in Chattanooga (he thinks it was).  They had folks from three states.  There is a Karen Bracken who stays on top of Agenda 21 and she has a weekly program that you can dial in and get involved.  You can contact her at karenbracken5@gmail.com or you can go to www.agenda21today.com for more information.  Agenda 21 is something we need to be smart about and keep ourselves informed.  They are pushing this stuff at us a lot faster than we are aware of all around the country and all around the world.  There is some legislation in Wisconsin that the folks up there were fighting to have eliminated (essentially trying to defeat some initiatives being pushed there)  TOM asked if the TEA Party Patriots were asking any questions to the candidates.  BOB said no, but they were talking about another TEA Party debate in South Carolina.  That is not set up yet.  Instead of having it like the normal debate, (question is asked and every candidate gets 60 seconds to answer).  What they want to do is isolate the candidates in sound proof booths so they can not hear the other candidates response.  It will be like a 3 hour event.  That way you will be able to hear what each candidate thinks without his/her knowing the other responses.  It would also stop this quibbling back and forth.  TOM said he thinks we should find out how/what these people think about Agenda 21 before we go putting them in the White House.  TOM said he understands that Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain are going to have a debate that will be held by the TEA Party on November 5.  LOU and TOM said Newt was on a couple of programs today and only had nice things to say about Cain.  When it was mentioned about the two debating, it caught on like crazy.  You know how Newt is talking about the three hour linkage debate with President Obama,   Well, Newt and Cain are going to knock it around.  BOB said he couldn’t see a debate between Gingrich and Cain, they agree on just about everything.   TOM said they were going to discuss Tom Ryan’s medicare plan.

FRED reported that Friday night at Newport Elementary School they had their fall festival.  Security was provided by the TEA Party Patriots…FRED, SCOTT, and LOU.  BOB wanted to know if they had on their TEA Party shirts.  Fred said no, he had on a red one but not our official shirt.

Meeting adjourned at 7:45.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OCTOBER 18, 2011

Meeting was held at the Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting was called to order by President BOB CAVANAUGH at 6:00 pm
Pledge of Allegiance was led by LOU KUKULINSKI
Invocation by CHRIS McCAFFITY
Attendance – 19

BOB introduced WILLIAM ‘BILL’ HARRISON from New Bern.  Bill has been with us before and said he enjoyed coming to our meetings.

BOB asked CHRIS to give us an update on the fisheries situation.  He said the last time he spoke to us was on the closed  areas they had placed on the commercial fishermen and about some of the restrictions.  He informed us he had brought some postcards that he hoped we would sign and mail in support of the fishermen.
Postcard (1) “The freefish7 plan“: a. Set reasonable annual quotas on all targeted species b. Remove all size limits.  They are a waste of our resources c. Manage the quotas with split seasons and possession limits to keep the fisheries open all year.  This would limit waste and provide a dependable supply of local seafood  d. Set aside 10% of the annual quotas for soup kitchens.  Fishermen could donate fish they did not want to eat or exceeded the commercial limits to that quota to avoid waste.  – Comment: The removal of size limits and properly managed quotas would allow fishermen to responsibly harvest our seafood with very little waste.  I support the freefish7 plan as an alternative to HB-353, catch shares and derby fisheries.  (Please sign your name and any other comments you would like to make).  Send to Senator Berger, NC Senate, 16W. Jones Street, Room 2008, Raleigh, NC 17601-2808.
Postcard (2) – “HB-353”:  HB-353 violates the Fisheries Reform Act.  It will strike down many of North Carolina’s commercial fishing jobs while restricting our freedom to eat local seafood.  Please oppose HB-353’s attack on our jobs, food, and heritage.  Speckled Trout, Striped Bass, and Red Drum are public resources.  The Fisheries Reform Act requires them to be managed for the benefit of ALL N.C. citizens.
(Please sign your name and any other comments you would like to make.)  Send to Speaker Tillis, NC House of Representatives, 16 W. Jones Street, Room 2304, Raleigh, NC 27601-1096
Postcard (3) – “Request to Neal Boortz Show”:  Mr. Boortz, please give Chris a chance to inform your listeners about how a few unelected bureaucrats are striking down our freedom to fish and access a dependable supply of delicious American seafood.  We should all have a common goal of healthy fisheries that can be responsibly harvested forever with no waste.  Please interview Chris about how we can achieve those goals by using sound science, common sense and following the Golden Rule. (Please sign your name and any other comments you would like to make.)  Send to The Neal Boortz Show, 1601 W. Peachtree St., Atlanta, GA 30309
Postcard (4) – “Co-op Fish House on Radio Island”:  Please support a co-op fish house on Radio Island as an alternative to a Sulfuric Acid melting plant or holding tanks.  The co-op could derail any other toxic ideas that would threaten our coast.  I could support a co-op fish house on Radio Island as a way to preserve our commercial fishing  jobs and heritage as well as our access to safe local seafood.  The co-op would promote tourism and benefit all NC Citizens. (Please sign your name and any other comments you wish to make.)  Send to Governor Perdue, Office of the Governor, Constituent Services, 116 W. Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27603.
Chris said your support in forwarding the above correspondence will be greatly appreciated.  This correspondence will continue to ensure our voices are heard and help keep our freedoms in the fishing industry.  While we have been successful in stopping or delaying many of the restrictions they want to place on us, they continue to come up with additional ones or rehash the old ones.  Chris spoke on many of the problems being encountered by commercial fishermen, not just here in North Carolina but all along the east coast, from Virginia to Key West.  If we stand together we can keep our freedoms, but he guarantees us when we lose one freedom, they will come after another.  He asked the TEA Party to come together and support this issue, that it is something we can and should believe in.
WAYNE WILLIS said 20 years ago there was a public meeting on the same issue that CHRIS is trying to fight and the issue at that time was “who is going to do what about the argument between the recreational and commercial fishermen.  When the meeting was just about over a man got the floor and said he represented an organization, the Raleigh Support Fishing Association (something like that, can’t remember the exact title).  He addressed the commercial fishermen and said “There is no need of you fighting us, (the recreational fishermen) because you can not win, and the reason you can’t is because there is more of us; we have more money; and we will prevail.”  You see what has happened in the last 20 years.  You just about can’t catch a speckled trout and if you do, you can’t sell it.  WAYNE went on to discuss the effort to dredge the end of Taylor’s Creek in Beaufort.  At one time it would draw 10 to 15 feet of water, but now if your boat draws as much as 16 inches of water, don’t even try to get through.  They have taken the buoys and channel markers up because there is no traffic through there anymore.  The reason for the lost of the channel is because commercial fishing is a thing of the past and the trawlers, just as well be, because they are now tied to the dock.  He said it was sort of like Yogi Berra said about the restaurant in New York when asked if he wanted to go to it.  Yogi said ‘no, the crowd is too big, nobody goes there anymore’.
CHRIS said true, there were now more recreational than commercial fishermen but there was more people who eat seafood than both, put together.  97% of North Carolinians get their seafood through commercial fishermen, seafood markets and restaurants.  And if the restaurants had a more dependable supply, then they could/would be selling local seafood and not seafood imported from some other country.  This is what encouraged him to push for the co-op fish house on Radio Island that got shot down.  The governor issued an order asking for suggestions on what would be compatible on Radio Island.  He went to the meeting and offered the co-op idea and the commission liked it; the public liked it; it could double as a museum to preserve our heritage; and be a working waterfront property that would be there forever.  With just him saying it, like anything else, it didn’t matter.  It just falls on deaf ears for the most part.
How does the Marine Fisheries have the authority to enforce rules?  By violating our Constitutional rights!   They should not be allowed to do the things they do (like coming on board your boat and checking your catch, and throwing back anything they decide is not legal).  When asked ‘By whose authority do you have the right to do these things’; they have no answer.  So, if no authority has been given, then they need to get a warrant to search the fishermen’s coolers, or anything other than safety equipment.  The Supreme Court gave them the right to do that, but nothing else.  Until CHRIS started the postcard campaign, they refused to even listen.  Now they are starting to hold hearings; whether it is directly because of the cards, he doesn’t know.  But they still are just doing what they want.  The head man of the committee is from Washington State and they are just a bunch of unelected bureaucrats, drawing salaries from our taxes.  They get a billion dollar budget to rule us with an iron fist, with the full weight of the federal government behind them.  They are supposed to answer to Congress, but they really don’t have to answer to anybody.  They told CHRIS to go talk to his congressman, if he didn’t like what they are doing.  He gets to talk to Walter B. Jones, Kay Hagan, and Senator Burr.  They rest of the Congressmen from other states tell him, since he can’t vote for them, they don’t have to listen to anything he has to say.  CHRIS said he had tried to talk to Pat McElraft and Jean Preston, but they had brushed him off, since he had not gotten any response from them.  Norman Sanderson had been very open and had listened to him when CHRIS had gone and spoke at the TEA Party rally in New Bern back in the spring but he had not gone any further with CHRIS’s suggestions, also.
CHRIS  proposes the fishermen donate 10% of their catch to the poor; sell what they are allowed; and keep what they need for their own use;  in lieu of throwing back overages or those too small.  This is a waste of GOD’s own harvest, because once the fish are thrown back into the water, they have been weakened and usually die.
BILL HARRISON told of his son going fishing, and as he was coming in he realized that he had several pounds over the limit.  He informed the authorities, and normally they are supposed to throw them overboard, but his son recommended they not waste the fish but give them to the homeless, or people hungry who have lost their jobs and have no money.  Anybody can fix fish to eat.  Nope, they fined him several thousand dollars and threw the fish away.  CHRIS said this is exactly what he is talking about – the waste of GOD’s gift to us, (use them as GOD intended), and taxpayers money. Even 2000 years ago, Jesus fed the masses with fish caught by fishermen with nets.  LOU said it is not just fish that are wasted.   A few years ago Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and others had food left over or on shelves not being used and wanted to give it to the poor, but were told NO, they had to throw it away. BILL said he asked Norman Sanderson about it, and he said, the way it is up in Raleigh, they figure fishing is just for the coast.  Norman had said fishing is all over NC, not just the coast, but he can’t find anyone to pay him any attention or back him.  They tell him if it doesn’t pertain to the western part of the state, mountains, ski resorts, etc., they don’t want to even discuss it or talk to him.  BILL said that is kind of ridiculous, our state runs from the mountains to the sea, not just Raleigh west.  ERNIE said the big money comes to Raleigh from big companies like Cisco, Southern Foods, etc. who purchase their seafood from overseas because they can get it cheaper.  The overseas fishermen don’t have all the rules and regulations to abide by.  They can throw their nets overboard, catch whatever is there, sort it, pay their help a small amount of money and sell cheap.  That way the big businesses here can make more money and are able to donate larger sums to the politicians and their campaigns.   If these large companies could no longer buy from overseas and had to buy locally, there would go their profits, as long as our fishermen had so many regulations to abide by.   HOWARD GARNER asked if anyone had seen where that fish house in Beaufort was going out of business and they are going to put a marina there.  They are getting a grant to build…just what we need…another marina.  ERNIE thinks we need to stop letting them put marinas here, it has gotten out of hand.  They are a part of the commercial fishermen’s problem.
BOB reported on our attendance at the County Commissioner’s meeting last night.  BOB, KEN and DIANE LANG, HOWARD and PEGGY GARNER, DENNIS TOMASO and ERIC BROYLES attended.  Discussion was on whether the county commissioners should release the $500,000.00 budget funds that had been held in reserve.  BOB spoke on why he felt the funds should not be released. Ie. School had only been in session a couple of months and if they were already needing those funds, (supposedly for overtime for teachers assistants/bus drivers; funding for additional teacher sick day funding, having only been funded for 3 days out of the 10 allowed; may have to hire additional teachers for the western part of the county because of oversized/crowded class rooms) what was going to happen a couple of more months from now.   He felt that if they had funded 3 days per teacher for sick days, (which he had figured amounted to about 2100 sick days), and if they had already used up all those funded days by mid October….HOWARD interrupted and asked if BOB had caught that you could use sick days to stay home with a sick member of your family.  The teacher does not have to be sick to take sick leave.  BOB said there was a provision where they are allowed time off for pregnancy, caring for family members that are ill, and some other things, but he thought that was separate from the 10 days allowed for their own personal illness.  BILL said he had been married to two school teachers…North Carolina let only 500 and some go this year; up to this year 1800 had been let go each year.  Actually three years in a row they have been funded, the money has been spent and no teachers have been fillings those slots.  If nobody is there filling those slots, but money has been authorized, they are taking our money and blowing it on something.  What are they blowing it on?  Who is advising the superintendent?  When he was growing up you had one principal, one teacher per classroom (above about the 3rd grade, where any helpers were volunteers, non-taxpayer funded.)  He feels he got a pretty good education without all these “have to have” aids, and more, more money.  According to his research, for many years they have been funding for X amount of school teachers, with only a portion actually being filled with teachers, but the full amount of money goes every year.  That is not right.  FRED DECKER said when he went to school the assistant principal was a teacher also.  Croatan High School has not one but two assistant principals.  HOWARD said he thought West Carteret had three.  FRED said they all have three or four counselors.  Newport  Elementary has 5 reading teachers, 2 counselors, and 2 nurses.  Used to be the nurses went around from school to school.  Money could be saved by contracting out food services, janitorial, and bus services, putting them out for completive bids.  BOB said what surprised him was Commissioner Robinson asked about the overtime (these teacher assistants who also double as bus drivers wind up going into overtime) and wanted to know if for the overtime they were paid as teachers assistants or bus drivers (at the bus driver rate or teacher assistant rate).
Comes out if; for example: Once they reach their 40 hours for the week, the overtime was determined by: example: if 75% of the day was spent as teacher’s assistant and 25% as bus driver, then 75% of the overtime came out of the teacher’s assistant budget and 25% from the bus driver budget.  LOU asked what was the difference.  Someone said one thing probably was in addition to the salary; the benefits for each position.  HOWARD said it was obvious at the meeting that they did not want to hire outsiders to drive buses.  Onslow has been running ads in the paper for school bus drivers, offering he thought he read, $10.00 an hour.  Apparently Onslow has determined it to be cheaper hiring non-teacher assistants to drive the school buses.  BOB said his gut feeling was the Superintendent of the School Board is using this whole teacher’s assistants and overtime bus drivers and playing games with manpower management to inflate the budget to get more money.  Once they get the money, then they do ’proper’ manpower management so they are not using that money for all that overtime, making it a slush fund for other purposes.  To prove that, is a whole different matter.  LOU said they have had this teacher/bus driver routine forever; his ex-wife used to do that and she was here in 1972. Part of last night’s meeting was; after the school board got through pleading how much they needed the funds and how many project loses they were facing; Commissioner Harris had the screen drop down , had some power point slides and showed a couple of charts (Howard had gotten a copy of those slides and he passed them out to the attendees).  HOWARD discussed the handouts.  He said if you will look at the first page, you will see there have been no cuts.  The schools have received an increase every year.  The school board attendees, when shown these figures, were upset and said those figures were wrong.  Mr. Harris told them, ’tell you what, you show us we are wrong and we will change them, but we got these figures from you’.  In HOWARD’s opinion the County Finance Manager is pretty smart.  She is apparently the one that put this presentation together, which threw the school board for a loop.  Commissioner Harris showed the school board that by using their own numbers that they had submitted (in order to justify release of the $500,000.00) they actually were getting about 2 ½ million dollars increase more this year than they got last year.  They were not being cut the 3.1 million dollars they were saying, because when you add their own numbers which they had supplied, based on federal, state, and local monies received,  they actually wound up with 2 and ½ million dollars more.  Of course the Superintendent and County Board of Education Chairman disagreed….that was all wrong.  DENNIS TOMASO  said Mr. Hill (BoE chairman) said those figures were wrong that they got 78 million last year and only 75 million this year, so they actually lost 3 and ½ million dollars. DENNIS said, regardless what the figures showed, the school board continued to moan about that 3 ½ million dollars they think they lost.  BOB said we left the meeting last night all wondering ’what in the ’h’ were they doing – releasing this money, when the commissioners had shown them that they got more money than they requested originally, so it would seem they really did not need that ½ million dollars. The commissioners had voted to release the funds (not all at once, but doled out as needed).  DENNIS said the biggest problem is in about three months they are going to come back and need more money.  All agreed. HOWARD pointed out a few more figures he thought were worthy of note.  On page 1 of the handout under Appropriation $1,372,000.  This is monies found by the auditors that had apparently been hidden.  On page labeled 2 of 50, under Other Fringe Benefits – (Workers Comp, Unemployment for RIF and Medical Ins. Payments for RIF) – those figures highlighted are figures they put in the budget asking for money, but is not actually what they spent.  They did not have to spend that much for these items, since it was based on the  possibility of RIFing 92 staff members.  On page labeled 5 of 50, under Board of Ed – Claims Reserve – Workman’s Compensation – the $350,000.00 was not spent either.  So it looks like the school board puffed their figures for the budget to get more money.  It appears there is no integrity on the Board of Education or the staff.

BOB recognized STEVEN BEST to tell us about his latest endeavor “The Cave” Movie Theater.  His pastor came up with the name, because a cave is a place of refuge, hiding place as mentioned in the Bible.  About 3 months ago STEVE said the Lord gave him this idea in a dream about putting a movie theater in his garage to show family based movies, Christian movies, entertainment for the kids and teenagers since all the movie theaters in Carteret County have closed.  He discussed his dream with the pastor.  He told STEVEN that he had a projector they could use.  All he would need was a sound system.  So STEVEN went to the Thrift Store and found a  Movie System Surround System for $65.00.  On base they were giving away free furniture and he got 50 free chairs.  Then he was looking for a movie screen (they are very expensive – like $900.00) so he went to Best Buy and asked if they had one and they told him they had one in the back that they had been unable to sell and they would take $200.00 for.  160 inches long.  So he got the screen.
For the last 3 to 3 ½ weeks he, the pastor and another guy have been getting the cave ready for operation.  They have put up walls, ceiling, insulation, has a fire place in there, and all they have to do is paint it.  LOU asked why they were doing it at STEVEN’s house and not the church.  STEVEN said if you do it at the church you had to have a $500.00 permit.  To have it at your house and have less than 500 people you need no permit.  (It appears STEVEN was meant to follow through on his dream and received assistance in fulfillment thereof.)  The Grand Opening is Friday, October 28, 2011 at 6:00pm, at 103 Washington Ave., Newport.  They are going to have free hotdogs, popcorn, candy for the kids, and a good movie (Matthew 10.28 which is about a teenager who is supposed to go to a church meeting on Halloween night and instead goes to a Halloween party, gets killed, and goes to hell, showing graphically what hell is like) in the cave for adults and teenagers.  The kids will enjoy a big screen TV in the house, (movie Prince of Egypt or an animated Jesus story).  Currently STEVEN has about 30 movies in his inventory.  He hopes to have movies twice a month probably on Saturdays.  BOB said this might be an excellent place for us to show some of  the TEA Party movies we have or have heard about or maybe we could use it for social get togethers like picnics where we can invite friends; maybe a good way to help increase our numbers.  STEVEN said he would be glad for us to use his facility.   For further information, please call STEVEN and Susie Best at 723-0493.

MARIAN MERRILLE asked if anyone there knew who was teaching Spanish at the Senior Citizens Center…Ken Humphrey!   She said she went one time, found out who was teaching the class and didn’t go back.

BOB  said he heard someone had stolen Obama’s teleprompter and other equipment; but what was even worse, someone in California had broken into a SWAT Team’s building and stole all their weapons.  HOWARD said Harry Truman came to the North Carolina state fair and someone picked the pocket of one of his secret service men.  The Occupy group is still being pushed as the TEA Party of the left, but they have no organization, no core values, other than tear down capitalism.  TOM HARMON said they have the unions behind them and they are getting money and organized.  They are talking about tomorrow night surrounding the stadium when the world series is being played. They plan to harass families coming in to watch the game.  I’m sure they will get a lot of backing for doing that.  There is a lot of support, and a lot of money being funneled into their cause (mostly by those big bad CEO’s and rich people from Hollywood, who are being punished by Obama, Ha!)  SUSAN RYNAS said she understood Van Jones was heading up a group also.  He had predicted this ‘uprising’ several years ago.  It was preplanned, not like the TEA Party, and advertised on the internet prior to beginning.  BOB said Beck predicts this is going to grow and spread and result in violent rioting.  LOU said he understands that the owners of the park in New York had received phone calls and ‘advice’ not to make the protestors leave so they could clean up the mess they had made, since it was so unsanitary that it was unhealthy to be there.  BOB said he thought backing off of cleaning the park was a good idea.  These people are looking for confrontation, as an excuse to begin the riots.  Maybe with the weather forecast predicting cold weather and rain, it will clear out on its own.  TOM said he heard today they are stealing from one another.  They even have stolen the money used to buy food for the kitchen they had set up to feed the crowd.  They have stolen lap tops, iPods, etc. from each other.  CHRIS said he thought some of these Occupy people have pretty good ideas, individually some even think like TEA Party people, just from the left.  He would like to see the TEA Party try to make contact with these people and say we agree with you.   We don’t think we should be bailing out these banks and corporations.  That is not what capitalism is about.  If they are going to fail because they did not have a good business model then let them fail.  The government is not doing their job by doing the anti-trust laws that keep these businesses too big to fail.  They are going to collapse our economy if they continue.  We have common ground with some of the Occupiers and should be working together on these common ground ideas.  We should not be calling them names and bad mouthing them.  That is what we complain happening to the TEA Party.  Maybe we can convince them to at least move to the middle ground, away from the union influence and socialism.  BOB said he heard a reporter today basically say the TEA Party and some of the Occupy group are saying about the same thing but from different ends of the spectrum.  The TEA Party is against ’big government’ and the Occupy Wall Street folks are against ’big business’.
CHRIS said he talks to homeless every week, and they are against the bureaucracy – they do not have a ’d’ or an ’r’ next to their name but are opposed to the bureaucracy ruling us.  That is one place we do have common ground.  Just because we do not think exactly alike, and agree and disagree on issues; we do have common ground and should be looking to work together on those.

JUDY BALL spoke up and said she was new to the TEA Party and wanted to know how the TEA Party felt about Herman Cain.  Most of the attendees spoke up and said they liked him.  She wanted to know how he stands with the TEA Party.  BOB explained that the TEA Party was made up of small independent groups and were not controlled by any one group.  We were a grass roots type of organization.  We do not have a ’stance’ on any politician.  The TEA PARTY does not back any candidate.  We can only recommend (after vetting) a politician, not endorse, support, or even request that you vote for.  North Carolina is very specific about the use of the words, endorse and support.  At the last election we (this TEA Party group) vetted the candidates and as a group, made up handouts recommending (since recommend was not on that list) certain candidates (we had found to be conservative) that we passed out at the polling places. He thinks for the next election we will change that to ’the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots believes these candidates support the TEA Party principles’.  JUDY said she heard Herman Cain say on TV today that he believed in the TEA Party principles and  she said he came across as being very sincere and truthful.  She said she voted for Obama last time, but was very disappointed in the changes he had talked about during his campaign then, but Cain’s 999 program sounded workable. She thinks Obama still endorses too much spending.  BOB said he was for Cain, and LOU said he still liked Gingrich.  BOB said he would like to see a Cain/Gingrich ticket.  Cain to take care of the economy and Gingrich the political end of the spectrum.  BOB said from what he can determine in talking with other TEA Party groups, they favor Cain 2 to 1 over Romney.  Romney has about a 30% approval rating in the TEA Party.  Someone said they heard that the debate this week will make or break Perry.  BOB said Perry still has plenty of money behind him and if he can take one or two of the upcoming early caucuses it could turn things around.  TOM said that is Cain’s biggest problem, money, whereas Romney has piles of money and Wall Street.  BOB said none of them have any money compared to what Obama has (and he is not having to spend it on primaries).  TOM said that is true, but those big spenders he had behind him last time are not showing up at the big fund raiser dinners now being held for Obama.  HOWARD said these big Wall Street people don’t really care about government, all they care about is control.  They are going to invest in who they think can win, and who they can get their biggest return from.  If the country goes down the drain, to them, so be it, as long as we get what we want to “H” with the rest.  BOB said that was one of his concerns about Herman Cain’s 999 program.  That cuts out all the lobbyists, all the big business with their loopholes and stuff, and throws the old tax code out the window.  He worries about lobbyists and big business working to defeat Cain so they can keep their footholds.  PEGGY said she felt that Cain’s 999 program was the first step toward a Flat Tax.  Everyone agreed.

Marian Merrill said she understood we were getting a raise in our social security.  She thinks this is another Obama gimmic he has come up with.  It is supposed to be a 3% increase, but Medicare is going up again so whatever increase in social security will be eaten up by Medicare.  FRED said before Obama came up with his Obamacare, Romney had gone to the White House and discussed his Romneycare and that was what Obamacare was based on.  That is why his ratings are not any higher than they are right now.  BOB said he sees Romneycare as the albatross around Romney’s neck and immigration and college subsidy for illegals is Perry’s. DENNIS said Romneycare is creating a lot of problems and they are going to have to revamp it.  It is costing the doctors a lot of money and they are talking about pulling out of the program.  BOB said does anyone know what that CLASS Act is.  DENNIS said it was a type of insurance for the elderly that they would pay into for five years and no one would collect for five years, so they would have all this money. Problem is no one is joining the long term thing so they can’t sustain it.  Sebilus feels this part of Obamacare should be removed since one of the provisions of the law is ’if it is not self sustaining it has to be removed; however Obama says they are not going to take it out.  That was one of the things they were banking on having all this income offsetting the Obamacare costs.  You can not sustain something that is not sustaining itself.  DENNIS thinks they are just dancing around now until they can come up with something else.  BOB thinks the field is wide open for Cain unless he falls flat on his sword in the next few weeks.  LOU wanted to know why people got upset when Cain said he would build a 6’ fence all around the county with high voltage on top with a sign that says ‘This will kill you’.  BOB said “Liberals just can’t take a joke”.  Just like when Sarah Palin was asked about her foreign policy and she said she could see Russia from her back yard.  PEGGY said, sorry BOB, Sarah did not say that.  Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live was the one that put that forth and the media twisted it to be Sarah’s words.

Someone said it appears to him that Obama and the liberal media is trying to preselect our candidate for us.  Romney is the pick of the establishment.  He thinks that is one of the reasons for this change in the primaries.  The sooner that starts the better chance Romney has to hold his lead. However TOM thinks they are wanting Romney because as soon as the primaries are over they will shoot Romney down over his Romneycare, and other so called liberal agendas he has.  They can use this to turn off the Republican conservatives and hope they will just not vote.   While several like Michelle Bachmann, they feel she has no chance.  Her support is drying up.  Someone said they tried to go on one of her web sites last night but could not get it to come up.  BILL said Cain was the only one that did not have a big satchel pulling behind him.  All his money has come from his speaking engagements and the middle class and that is probably why he is short on funding.  BILL said he used to like Rick Perry until he found out how much money he had accumulated, he lost interest in him, because nothing is free and he is going to have to pay back all those debts sooner or later.  That is what Obama is having to do now – satisfy GE, the unions, – and there is no way he wants to put someone else in there having to do the same thing.  FRED said he saw a bumper sticker coming down to the meeting tonight that said ‘Where is Richard Nixon now when you need him?’

SUSAN asked if anyone had any idea of what we were going to do in Africa?  All of a sudden Obama is going to send 100 troops there and for what.  PEGGY said ‘to get them killed’.  They are going to come home in boxes.  BOB said he wondered if the Nobel Peace Committee would like to get their prize back from Obama, with all the wars now going on.  LOU said maybe they would like to give him an award for Economics.  Our best bet is to get out of the UN.  BOB asked, didn’t the UN want to build another building near the one they currently have and it got shot down by congress.  They would not say what it was for, so did not get the support needed.  They were told funding would be held off until they explained what it was needed for.  LOU said maybe Obama could use it to hold all his czars.

JUDY wanted to know if anyone had heard what Cain has to say about our troops overseas.  BOB said he didn’t think he had been asked about that.  Foreign policy is not his forte.  It is his weak point.  He is going to have to surround himself with experts to advise him but feels he has the intelligence to pick the most knowledgeable for advice unlike Obama.

BOB advised those who were not at the last meeting, that we now have a TEA Party library and STEVEN is the librarian.  If anyone has any books they would like to share, pertaining to the TEA Party, or views you found interesting, even expose’s on the other side,  please get them to STEVEN to put into our collection.

HOWARD said before we close he wanted to remind us about Judge McCullough’s book signing on Saturday at 1:00pm.  He was the author of ’Sea of Greed’ about drug dealing in this area and Noriaga’s downfall.  He promises to discuss more events than were covered in the book.  It will be held at either the Community College or Civic Center.  He had heard both mentioned.

TOM said he had sent a suggestion in for those Moore County billboards and he had sent a copy of the email he had received back to the officers.  They are supposed either this week or next be looking at locations on Hwy 24.  They are looking for suggestions of the best locations for viewers.  This is for existing billboards that they want to rent to display their TEA Party signs.  They are looking around Camp Lejeune, but are curious about other places further down our way.

Meeting adjourned at 7:15 pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.