CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING OF
MARCH 20, 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:04pm by Vice Chairman ERIC BROYLES
Pledge of Allegiance
Invocation by Eula Parkin

PEGGY GARNER reported that, since KEN LANG had another meeting he had to attend tonight, BOB CAVANAUGH, our Chairman, was conducting the meeting in Emerald Isle and ERIC would be leading our meeting tonight.

ERIC called on NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, to give the Treasurer’s Report. She reported that we had $1,637.00. As ERIC said, we are going to need it as we get closer to the election, what with buying advertisements, announcements in the papers, etc.

ERIC commented on last week’s minutes, which comprised 16 pages, and thanked PEGGY for her dedication to being our Secretary. We had 4 people to speak at our meeting last week and it lasted almost 3 hours, and he hoped to get us out tonight in hopefully one hour or less.

Tonight ERIC said he just planned to touch on several items of interest and have a little longer open session, which we have not been having the time for recently.

OLD BUSINESS – The Repeal Rally this weekend in Washington. (Supreme Court will be reviewing Obamacare for its Constitutionality.) RUTH PARKER is in charge of a van going to Washington, to transport those of our members wishing to attend. As of right now, it appears the van is full. FRED DECKER said if enough wanted to go, maybe we could get another van. All agreed it is a little late for that now since they are planning on leaving from Wal Mart parking lot, Staples side, (Wal Mart Garden Center side), at 1:00am Saturday morning (March 24th). Look for a white van. RUTH said she understood it normally took 6 hours to drive, but they were planning to take an exit off I95 at Woodbridge and catch the Blue Line Train in. It will cost $4.50 to park the van for the day, and catch the train (a 42 minute ride) into the capitol; cost $10.00 to $12.00 for roundtrip on the train. They will do the rally from 12:00 to 2:00. RUTH said she didn’t see any need to bring signs, that they are just a pain in the butt especially having to keep up with them on the train. She did that the last time and having that sign on the train made you extremely conspicuous. Everyone please wear your TEA Party shirt and caps. ERIC said remember this is a peaceful demonstration and the TEA Party has a reputation of leaving the area cleaner than they found it, so take along a small garbage bag and make sure we do not leave any trash behind. RUTH said if any of the Wall Street Gang was there and tried to start something, just ignore them and keep walking. If there is any conflict you can rest assure that the media will claim it to be the TEA Party’s fault. RUTH said Herman Cain was supposed to be the speaker. Ann Coulter, Charlie Gasperino, and Michelle Malkin, are also supposed to be there. ERIC said if you would like to go with the Americans for Prosperity on the 27th, there is a bus leaving out of Wilmington with a couple of stops along the way and seats are $15.00. DAVID COX is planning to go on that one. If interested you will need to link up with AFP, Wilmington and make arrangements as to where to meet the bus. Be sure to bring your cameras.

OLD BUSINESS – Last week we had a couple of guests from the Cape Lookout Charter School. Since their visit, ERIC has been working very closely with Joe Bradley, Director for the NC Charter School Advisory Committee. They are the group that on December 14, voted for the four year renewal of the school’s charter license and then on January 10 voted to revoke the license; because, on December 15, the school apparently asked for additional funds because they were short. They had had to return funds to the state because their enrollment was not as high as it was supposed be (projected). They started off the year with about 65 students (the minimum you can start with) and by the time they did the budget they had 84 students, so they had to return some money to the state. He had copies of the minutes for both meetings and if anyone wanted a copy to please let him know so he can email you a copy. It would appear to him that no intended misinformation was given. It is a small school with teachers that are not financial administrators or accountants, and maybe the long term budgeting didn’t work out the way they had figured it was supposed to. They have the brick drive going right now to try to raise the needed funds to cover the shortage. ERIC’s concern is if they close this school, what is going to happen to those students that Dr. Novey is kicking out right now. This school has been having a good success rate. Every one who ends up in prison, it costs $32,000.00+ a year. These will be the type of kids that, if we abandon them, they will be in trouble at some time. It is going to cost us one way or the other. Cape Lookout has a lot of good children there, some academically gifted students, who have a problem fitting in to the regular school system. These are the kids that think outside of the box and do not fit the regular cookie cutter environment. When they go to this school, they do very well. This school does have a lot of pluses. When everything is up in the air and no one knows if the school is going to stay open or not, who wants to send their child to that school. This has had a big impact on the enrollment. ERIC said another thing he is concerned about is they are criticizing them for not achieving certain levels in testing. Think about it – they are, in all practicality, drop outs. Their testing scores are way down; and do you think they are going to be way up here by the end of the year? No. It takes a couple of years to work with these kids. Anyone who has been a troubled child, for whatever reason, it will take time to correct their problem. It doesn’t happen over night but the school is having successes. Most people are not aware that the parents are required to be involved in the school much more so than in public school and every other Saturday, they hold additional schooling for those in need and have about 24 kids attending these special classes. This says a lot to him about the character of this school and he feels that it is worth saving so if you can afford to help (buy a brick or make a donation), spread the word, tell your friends that you feel the cause is worthy; he is sure they will appreciate it. If 50 percent of these kids come from not fitting into a public school (potential drop outs) and 50 percent of those graduate, then as far as he is concerned they have a 50 percent more success rate than our normal high schools. This will help them get jobs and even help them go on and get further education. He feels the school is worth saving. There was a lot of discussion on the condition of the school building and feelings that if the town was going to rent the building, they needed to maintain or rehabilitate, or whatever is needed.

OLD BUSINESS – “The Cave” projector. Steve has been unable to obtain a used or donated projector and is still in need of one. Any donations for same will be greatly appreciated. He needs approximately $400.00 to buy a new one. Steve has been using his converted garage theater to show Christian movies and movies for the TEA Party. With a new projector we will also have the capability to bring the projector to our meetings, so if we have something we want our members to see, power point presentations, or for use by our guest speakers, if needed, we will have the capability to provide.

NEW BUSINESS – Pat McElraft, will be speaking to us at our next (March 27) meeting. She will be speaking on how the state apportions school funds to each county. We have seen big disparities between counties. Some counties get $13 or $14 thousand dollars per student, and some counties like ours gets only about $5 thousand. She is going to explain how that comes about. Our school system is asking for a 9 percent increase this year even though the cost of living is only up about maybe 3,1 percent. So they are asking about three times the cost of living increase. ERIC said he has nothing against our school system, he feels an education is the most valuable gift we can give our children other than birth. EULA PARKIN said when she was teaching (beginning in 1974) we were 49th in education for the entire 18 years she taught. We were 37th in teachers‘ salaries. Recently she heard we are now 48th, but does not where the teachers’ salaries are today. ERIC talked about the ‘No Student Left Behind’ and “STAR” programs. The STAR was developed in Tennessee with the idea that if they lower the student/teacher ratio the better the education, which was probably found true in K through 3rd grade, but those are the developmental years anyhow. If we put our money in the basic foundation of the first couple of years of learning and teach them very well, then they will benefit from that the rest of their life. Other than those formable years, he doesn’t agree with the study. He has known many who have masters degrees, PHDs, MIT, gone to Harvard, Naval Academy, and got a very good education, and their smallest class size was 25 or greater.

NEW BUSINESS – The NC House Select Committee on Immigration is having a hearing on March 28 at 1:00pm in Room 643 Legislative Office Building. You may speak for 3 minutes if you want to attend and have your say. This has been going on for the last couple of months and he thinks this is the last public hearing on the subject of immigration.

ERIC wanted to know if we had heard about the ‘No Budget – No Pay’ Act. RUTH PARKER said that was not going to do anything. Technically, right now Congress is in violation of the Constitution.

RUTH told ERIC when Pat comes next week, let’s ask her about this Voter ID. ERIC said you know it was vetoed. RUTH said we need to bring it up again and get it passed before the election. Discussed the fact that voter ID laws had been passed in several states, only to have a judge strike them down.

Discussed ‘Insider Trading’ and the Congress. They have passed a bill to stop it in Congress and the Senate. There were four senators that did not vote for it. Two were Republicans. Guess who one of the Republican senators was? Richard Burr. ERIC called Burr’s office about this and was told that quite frankly they felt there were more things on the agenda than voting for a law that already had a law to stop that nonsense. ERIC asked ‘how many senators or congressmen have been impeached under those laws for insider trading. If you have laws on the books, why are you not enforcing them? Burr’s employees did not like that question. DENNIS said they did not include insider trading on land and therefore the bill was worthless. ROY MUSSER said they should have to follow the same laws we do.

Former presidential candidate Herman Cain will speak at the University of NC at Chapel Hill, School of Medicine’s Bio-moleculor, Room 2204 at 4:00pm. on March 22 during his visit to the Triangle.

PEGGY made copies of the instructions on how to post political signs along the highways for anyone interested in following the correct procedures of putting up signs for their candidate.

FRED said he had met the lady (Debbie Golden) who is running for State Auditor and he had her calling cards that he would like for us to hand out at the polls. He will hold them until then.

ERIC said wasn’t someone supposed to get a copy of the actual voting sheet. PEGGY said KEN said the Board of Elections had one on display and he would try to get a copy for us so when we finalize our voter recommendation list, it will be in that same format.

DENNIS TOMASO said about two weeks ago they had that wind turbine session with John Droz, who gave an excellent presentation, essentially said wind power is a waste of time and doesn’t do anything for the environment and is in fact against the environment. It is not financially sound (costs like crazy) and scientifically it is not sound. He has a web site (and said he would give it to Peggy, but if he did I lost it – will try to get it later). Sorry. DENNIS said he has a lot of slides on the web site, and you will find it most informative. Mr. Droz is an environmentalist but when he got into this he found it was the Sierra Club pushing it. ERIC said in some circumstances there might be some valid reasons for a wind mill but they are usually the small windmills not the big turbines. Mr. Droz will come and speak to us if we are interested. ERIC said he thinks the future is in natural gas as we have a large supply available.

ERNIE said until we get a sound financial policy, stop the inflation and fix our monetary system, nothing we do will stop the continued increase in gas, food, and all other commodities. We need to once again back our dollars with gold or some other precious metal and even then it can not be changed right away. You can not reverse something in two days that took many years to deteriorate. ROY said we are not going to be able to do anything until we get this administration out of office.

STEVE said he was coordinator for the Carteret County Vote for Marriage Amendment. Leonard O. Goenaga, Grassroots Coordinator for the Vote For Marriage, NC is supposed to be here next week to speak to us. STEVE said we could go to VoteFORMarriageNC.com and request yard signs. A vote FOR is a vote to preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. North Carolina is the only southern state that has not protected the definition of marriage in its constitution. Vote FOR the amendment so we may join 30 other states in protecting traditional marriage from being redefined by an activist judge or future legislature. STEVE asked for donations to run a full page ad promoting the voting FOR the Marriage Amendment. It is going to cost $1,000 and they are trying to get churches, and organizations to help defray the cost. He plans to have the donors names (if would like) listed in the advertisement.

PEGGY said Harry Taylor, who is running for County Commissioner against Elaine Crittenton, will be here next week to talk to us and ask for our vote.

Meeting adjourned at 7:13pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary