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.