CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
JULY 12, 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 WAYNE WILLIS
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
Number in Attendance – 24

New Attendees:
Kelly? – Sorry I did not get her name, since she did not sign in.  I enjoyed talking to her after the meeting.  She owns a farm near Raeford and visits in Carteret County.
Gene & Kathy Crain – They live on a boat and are staying around Beaufort while they are doing some repairs to their boat.
BOB told us about his life with boating.  Bought a boat and while he was under contract with Brandywine, he kept his boat there.  When the contract was up, he had to move the boat, whereupon it was stolen.  It was a 16’ John boat and was never in the water.  About three years ago he bought another boat, and it still has never been overboard.

BOB read an email he had received concerning a study on class size and mortality rates:
“Children randomized to small classes (13-17 students) experienced improved measures of cognition and academic performance relative to those assigned to regular classes (22-25 students).  As expected, these cognitive measures were significantly inversely associated with mortality rates.  However, through age 29 years, students randomized to small class size nevertheless experienced higher mortality rates than those randomized to regular size classes.  The groups at risk included males, whites/Asians, and higher income students.  The study involved 11,601 students in Tennessee between 1985 and 1989.

BOB reported on the “Beaufort County Committee for Constitutional Studies and Beaufort County Post 6088 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in cooperation with Harvest Church will celebrate the 224th birthday of the U.S. Constitution with a short ceremony followed by the presentation of a seminar on the Principles of Liberty and the United States Constitution.  The presenter will be Dr. Earl Taylor, president of National Center for Constitutional Studies, who is an authority on the Constitution.”  The event will be held Saturday, September 10, 2011, 8:00 am.-5:00 pm.  Admission is Free; however a $15.00 donation will cover the cost of a study guide, which will be available and is recommended.  There will be periods for breaks and lunch.  Restaurants are nearby or you may brown bag.   NANCY BOCK said she had read where one of these seminars will be held in New Bern.  She will report to the members as she gets additional information.

BOB asked if everyone was familiar with the Chevy Volt and the ‘dirty little secret behind  it’.   He had read where Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute recapped the well-known consumer fraud in which GM has touted the VOLT as an all-electric mass production vehicle on the supposed basis of which its sales receive a $7,500.00 taxpayer subsidy, which still renders it overpriced and unmarketable.  Sales are anemic:  326 in December, 321 in January and 281 in February and has announced a production run of 100,000 cars in the first two years.  “Who is going to buy all these cars?”  Answer:  Jeffrey Immelt’s GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars.  (As you probably know President Obama recently selected GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board.)  Soon after Immelt’s appointment he announced that GE will buy 50,000 VOLTS in the next two years, or half the total produced.
Assuming the corporation qualified for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000.00 to a company that pays no taxes, to buy cars that no one else wants, so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants.  It has been found that in a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak.  Consumer Reports their tests averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, (in part because it was tested in cold Connecticut).  It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries.  When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of ‘premium’ fuel, which in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg.  A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (VOLT 4), gets 35 mpg on the highway, and costs less that half of what VOLT costs, even with the tax break.
This is a classic tale of the Government deciding what the public needs, not the marketplace.  Why?  To keep the UAW in business, so they can pay for Obama’s reelection and because he owes them for his election.  Starting to make sense now?

BOB reported on Obama’s speech this past week on increasing the debt, where he talked about millionaires keeping money they didn’t need.  They should be willing to give it to those in need.  Even he had more money than he needed.  BOB then read a list of 55 programs
the Republicans had proposed cutting, but the Democrats won’t agree to any cuts at all.  These programs would equal a total savings of $2.5 TRILLION.  Following are just a portion of the Republican proposed cuts for your viewing:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy – $445 million annual savings
International Fund for Ireland – $17 million annual savings
National Endowment for the Arts – $167.5 million annual savings
National Endowment for Humanities – $167.5 million annual savings
Amtrak Subsidies – $1.565 billion annual savings
Eliminate duplicative education programs (HR2274 in last Congress eliminates 68
programs at a savings of) – $1.3 billion annual savings.
Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half – $7.5 billion annual savings
Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20% – $600 million annual savings
Essential Air Service – $150 million annual savings
Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants – $2.5 billion annual savings
Economic Assistance to Egypt – $250 million annually
General Assistance to District of Columbia – $210 million annual savings
Presidential Campaign Fund – $775 million savings over ten years
And how about:
Require the IRS to deposit fees for some services it offers (such as processing payment
plans for taxpayers) to the Treasury, instead of allowing it to remain as part of its
budget – $1.8 billion savings over ten years.
Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees!!! – $1 billion total savings
Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees – $1.2 billion over 10 yrs.
Eliminate death gratuity for Members of Congress
Eliminate fund for Obamacare administrative costs – $900 million savings.
And this is only 18 of the 55 proposed!!

TOM HARMON gave the following report on his wife’s recovery.  She had received 2nd and 3rd degree burns when she spilled a pot of hot grease on her legs.  He carried her to Carteret General on the 4th and they wrapped her legs.  The next day they sent her to the NC Jaycee Burn Center.  She had to have skin grafts.  She has gone through some rough times but is walking a little more each day and improving with time.  Tom was not at home when the accident occurred.

Discussed LIGHT BULBS – An aide of Walter B. Jones said Jones was against doing away with the old style bulbs.  PAT NALITZ said they had found that turning on and off the new type of bulb (which is supposed to last almost forever) will deplete the life of the bulb.  BOB said he had one in a crawl space that he installed in 2008 and it was still burning (had never been turned off).  PEGGY GARNER said she hoped they did not do away with the old bulbs, since those who live in the country depend on them to heat the pump houses in the winter.   (They put off heat.)  Also she had read where they had been replaced in street lamps in a northern city and they were having problems with them, especially in the winter.  It seems the old bulbs put off enough heat to melt the snow and the new ones let it pile up creating problems.

GERE GUERIN said he had several packages to be mailed to our troops overseas and
requested that the attendees please take one and mail it tomorrow.  The cost is only $12.95 and will reach 10 to 20 GIs.

Discussed the letter to the editor from a C4 member criticizing County Commissioner Chair Doug Harris.

Discussed Project on dredging at Port for sulfur project.  The facility will be 2 ½ times taller than the Beaufort bridge.  This will ruin Morehead City with the sulfur smell (like rotten eggs).  HOWARD questioned how in the world they got all the permits through without the people of Morehead knowing something was going on.  Mayor Jones and Manager Randy did a lot of manipulating behind the scenes.  It only came out when the CAMA report came out.  They will be bringing the product from Aurora to process here and then ship back to Aurora.  BOB asked us to keep our eyes and ears open and keep up to date on this project.

BOB said STEVE BEST had been assigned to report each week on a portion of Agenda 21.  STEVE has a 30 minute program  (Audio/no video) which he plans to show next week.

WAYNE WILLIS asked if anyone had heard anything on overriding Gov Perdue’s Vetos.  The Legislature will return to Raleigh tomorrow and that’s when the fun begins.  Discussed various bills.
Discussed Redistricting of 3rd and 7th Districts.  It appears that Palombo, who planned to run again Jones, is having to rethink his position.  Since Onslow and most of Carteret have been removed from Jones’ district, it also cuts back on the number of those familiar with Palombo.  WAYNE said Federal Law mandates that we are required to maintain a certain number of black districts.  This redistricting is supposed to help the Republicans gain the necessary 4 seats.  The census showed that more people are now situated (living) in the central part of the state.  Therefore, the coastal area districts are having to be enlarged to obtain the required number of voters.  HOWARD said he remembers attending a Craven County Tax Payer Association meeting several years ago where gerrymandering was set up to have a certain number of districts with large number of blacks.  Redistricting is done every 10 years after the census.  Areas are divided accordingly to maintain an equal number of voters.  It has been over 100 years since the Republicans have been able to have a say so in the redistricting.
MISC. Discussions:
RUTH PARKER reported that the couple from South Carolina, (Ken and Betty Lee Westbury), that were here for our May 10th meeting, had lunch at Cox’s today.  They said they really would love to attend our meeting tonight but had other plans.  They reported that they had taken some of our ideas they had heard back to South Carolina with them and were in the process of getting rid of about 3 people.  They sent us their best wishes.
EULA PARKIN said it was becoming more and more obvious that the TEA Party has to have a thick skin.  She said she had been watching GLEE on TV the other night and got very upset with the way it made fun of the TEA Party.
BOB said it was ridiculous the way the media made fun of Michelle Bachman’s gaffs, but ignored Obama’s …example when he said he had been to all our 57 states.
Someone talked about how Texas job hiring was increasing.  Another reported that they are importing items from Mexico to sell here and are hiring people to transport them to other areas for distribution.  Items are not made here so we are helping Mexico more than the US.
School Discussion.  BOB said Robin Comer (County Commissioner) had told him that once the money is allocated and handed over to the school superintendent, the schools can spend that money anyway they wish.  Requests for a breakdown of spending had gone unanswered.  He finally received a one page accounting from Dr. Novey, which was worthless.  They say they have 710 teachers in the county, but how do we know that is right?  Can we trust anything they report any more?   PAT NALITZ said a teacher had told her that six teachers were going to lose their jobs in her school, but when she spoke with her recently she said no teachers were let go; but some aides she understood were.  Pat wanted to know why they were told that 6 teachers were going to lose their jobs and it didn’t happen.  BOB asked PAT if she would go on line and try to determine exactly how many teachers there are in Carteret County; are some being counted more than once.  She said she would try but it might be difficult since she had to check each and every school and there may be some overlap.   The Board of Education is only an Amen committee to Dr. Novey.  Al Hill is the new chairman of the BOE.  He just swapped jobs with Cathy Nagle.   Most feel that everything is already decided prior to meetings.  We still need to find good Conservative people to run for the BOE.

NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, reported that we made $450.00 on the parade and we have $1,246.00 in the bank.

A small discussion on Immigration followed.  Alabama’s law is the toughest.  Most of the states attempts at controlling immigration have been kicked down by local circuit judges.  It will end up in the Supreme Court before anything can take affect.  A lot of the states have prostituted themselves by folding under to the Feds for their money.

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