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.