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