Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:04pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by SCOTT CARPENTER
Invocation by STEVEN GUY BEST
Attendance – 27
NANCY BOCK, Treasurer said we had $995.00 same as last week. No bills have been paid. Owe for pocket constitutions (1000 for $236.00), flags (about $70 or $80.) the fringe for the float will be about $70.00. We have a credit of $75.00 with the paper because they overcharged us for the last ad we had. She has left it with them to offset our next ad we plan to use before the runoff. PEGGY gave her the $50.00 check she had received at the last meeting from one of our attendees and BOB said there was also some additional money in the donation jar.
LYN BAKER had purchased some car refreshers (which smell like new car) to sell at the parade for $2.00 each. They are replicas of the flag.
CHRIS McCAFFITY said he did go fishing not long ago and took some scientists on the Carolina Princess. They got to see how they were discarding tons and tons of fish and a lot of the fish were floating off and dying. Actually had seagulls pecking their eye out as they were floating off. Good for them to see that first hand to display why he refused to go fishing anymore until we get it straight. One of the ways to do that is; many of you filled out postcards and sent them in on several different issues. One of them was the area closure, 200 miles offshore from Virginia to Key West. That was based on the lack of data on two fish using Agenda 21’s precautionary principles. They had taken that freedom and he thought when they took it they would never give it back. But we kept on sending postcards anyway to the Secretary of Commerce and this year they suspended the entire closure. (Applause) But that was because the people had made their voices be heard. He said he could shout it all day long from the rooftop and it doesn’t matter, if it is just him saying it. It doesn’t have any impact. But if a 1000 people support what he is saying or 2000 (that is the number of postcards he had made) about an issue, it makes a difference. We have been able to stop the game fish bill here in NC. He has spoken to the Speaker of the House, Thom Tillis, twice now and Thom asked Chris to offer an alternative to that bill, so what he is trying to do now is work with different people in the fishery industry to come up with a plan to present to him and hopefully get Pat McElraft to sponsor it and some others…so we are having some success there and we are going to keep going. He has a postcard here with him tonight….what he is doing is addressing it to different people now, because he has been traveling. His wife is a traveling nurse and so….he was out in California and gave a speech to the TEA Party out there and mentioned you guys and mentioned you on the air when he was on the radio. Out there in Cal., they now have heard about the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots. He gave us good credit when they asked how TEA Partys and other groups have responded to him asking for help. He said almost all of them have refused to even acknowledge him except for the Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots. We had given him the opportunity to speak when he comes to the meetings and let us know what is happening and he appreciates our support. It means a lot to him, especially since there has only been…he can count on one hand out of probably 500 groups he has asked…from the Heritage Foundation to the ACLU. They have all just refused to even respond back to him. The Heritage Foundation told him if he paid them by joining their group, they might help him. That is not saying anything good for them. He was kind of disappointed in that. They say join us and we might be able to help you. But he said he didn’t have the money to join every group that he is asking for help from. We the people are the ones that have the power and that is what I want people to realize for any success we are having is all the individual…no matter if they are a part of another organization or group…Democrat or Republican almost everyone distrusts bureaucracy and that is who has the power now. We can change the leaders through the elections but the bureaucrats have the power regardless of who wins those elections….and they manipulate the system and then you have the big ego charities who get their donations from the political corporations. Talking to different groups, you hear Democrats talking about corporations a lot that they don’t like them and don’t trust them and I understand why. They manipulate the system, they control the people that run for election through their donations and then they control the ego charities that can give this stuff to us through the bureaucracy. It is a big cycle there. He has been looking into why things happen and it is you just follow the money and you find out and you find out why they want to accumulate the power that they do. He passed around the new cards (or mini-petitions) he had and asked those who would like to help to please sign the cards and return them to him to mail himself. That way he knew how many actually got mailed. The other way he was doing it only about a third actually got mailed. BOB asked him how he was paying that postage and Chris said through the calendars he was selling. He has calendar 2113 with him tonight, with a whole new set of pictures. He passed them around for everyone to see and collected the postcards (mini-petitions) that attendees had signed.
BOB asked him if Tillis has asked him to run for an office or be a politician. He said he had no desire to be a politician, he really wanted to be a fisherman. He wants to go back doing that. He is very happy that we are having some success. We have a meeting coming up in December with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and what he is trying to do is get people to come up there and take part…whether it is the TEA Party or just a group of individual Americans that want their freedom to fish and eat American sea food. If anybody is interested in that…his web site is Freefish7.com and his email is
freefish7@hotmail.com. So if you send him an email, he will get you all the information. If we could get 3 or 4 hundred people to come to that meeting, because usually it is just CHRIS and a few others that show up, we could make them listen. He was asked where it was going to be and he responded…it is supposed to be at the Sheraton on Atlantic Beach but he is not sure that is going to pan out. KEN LANG said if you go to the TEA Party Web site you will see a whole bunch of links on the right side…just go down until you find the link that takes you to his site. We have had it on our web for a couple of years now. Chris said he really appreciated that. That is the thing though, power and numbers….there are two things that we have….knowledge and power…then we can trump any amount of money or numbers of bureaucrats and politicians with numbers of American citizens peacefully using their freedom of speech to defend their God given freedoms. That is what we need to do. BOB asked how Burr and Hagan, McElraft, Tillis and Jones….how did they all react to you? Chris said it was different with each one….depending on how much time they have too. If it is a short meeting they are kind of rushed. Burr and Hagan, they were almost like deer in the headlights talking to them. It looks like they are just thinking pass what you are saying or have something else on their mind. Congressman Jones….he has been great as far as our fisheries go. I think he has done a very good job. He listens…I’ve had one on one meetings with him…he is opposed to the catch share scheme that would allocate our resources to a few big local corporations and put small, independent fishermen out of business. McElraft, she has been very helpful…Tillis, we had a town hall meeting with him and then he came and met with a group of fishermen. Actually, he wanted to hear what Chris had to say. They like to hear people who offer solutions, too, that is one of the things that they are happy about….that he is not just complaining and saying don’t do this or that, but offer positive solutions that mitigate a lot of these negative impacts of what they are doing to us. BOB said the reaction of these scientists that went fishing with you….and all those dead fish….Chris said he had been telling them…now look these fish come up from 100+ feet of water with their eyes bugging out of their heads…they are a done deal. That fish is going to die anyway. Really these fish are a gift from GOD that we should treat with respect and if we are going to kill them we should kill them quickly and we should use them wisely. As long as we have quotas in place so that we don’t kill more than we replenish the stock we will have them there forever. Just like 2000 years ago on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus, himself, caught fish and fed them to thousands of people as he taught them things like the Golden Rule. Remember that when you talk to Democrats and all different people…we all have a yearning to be free…and it is just that the leadership in a lot of cases kind of manipulate the way things go and you are either a ‘d’ or an ‘r’ and there is a lot of room in between there where we the people; if we just stand together behind some simple solutions, regardless of political affiliations; really could have a whole lot more impact because when you have bi-partisan support for something they will listen, if it is just the ‘d’ saying it or the ‘r’ saying it, it kind of falls on deaf ears on the opposite side.
KEN LANG said Chris had mentioned Agenda 21 which is behind a lot of things that are going on across the country and certainly in NC. He said he found a site on a face book page on Agenda 21 called “Fighting Agenda 21 in North Carolina”. He has posted it on our face book page and he sent an email out to about 40 people in our group….did not send blasting mail….because he has some problems right now with doing that. When he found that page they had had something like 580 some members on that page. They have almost a 1000 on there now. Apparently a lot of those he had contacted went on their page and signed up for it. They exchange information about Agenda 21 and one of the things he found was a series of articles about some recent things happening in the NC Legislature. There is a guy named Representative Glen Bradley who submitted a bill to take out some language from another bill that was going forward that was going to renew the charter for the NC Food Council. The NC Food Council is overseen by the Department of Agriculture which is run by Steve Troxler, who is a Republican, supposedly a conservative Republican. Well that charter was full of Agenda 21 language and Glen Bradley had a bill to take all that language out of it. The bill was opposed by Paul Stampe, who is the majority leader in the House of Representatives in NC. He is also with the GOP in Wake County. He did not like the bill and he, apparently, does not believe Agenda 21 even exists. He thinks it is a conspiracy theory. Apparently about 17 other Republicans in the House also believe that because they also voted against Glen Bradley’s bill to take that language out and so Bradley’s bill was defeated. Mainly because Republicans voted with the Democrats to defeat Bradley’s bill. There has been a lot of traffic on this fighting Agenda 21 in NC obviously about that. Paul Stampe, and Thom Tillis, as well as some other notable leaders in the House and the Senate, apparently just don’t believe in Agenda 21. He had a couple of emails going back and forth between Pat McElraft and himself on that and she acknowledged the fact that a number of Republicans don’t understand what Agenda 21 is. Glen Bradley actually offered a workshop for members of the House of Representatives and only 4 representatives in the Legislature showed up for that workshop on Agenda 21. He also found on that site somebody had posted a resolution that has been adopted by at least 2 county commissions in NC now called United Nations Agenda 21 to heighten awareness of its impact on the communities of the United States. He only has one copy…he has been having some computer problems, so….it is about one page and what they are doing though this face book page is trying to encourage other counties into passing this or a similar resolution on Agenda 21. There was also an Agenda 21 resolution passed at the third district GOP Convention. That never made it out of committee for the state convention. Obviously there are people in the state GOP level who don’t want to fool around with Agenda 21. I think most of it is out of ignorance really…cause quite frankly it does sound like a conspiracy theory when you start talking about it. But it is not! It is real and we obviously know there is a UN document that is huge that describes that thing. And also the Rio 20 Conference that was just held included pushing Agenda 21 forward. This ‘Lost at Sea Treaty’ (LOST) is headed up by a subcommittee, but it still kind of falls under the broad purview of Agenda 21. That is another one that some people like John Kerry who is pushing ratification of that treaty (LOST). There are people out there that just don’t connect the dots between all these things or either they are doing it on purpose or out of ignorance. BOB said a lot of these people in support are these large conservation groups and they funnel a lot of money to these elected officials to support these laws. HOWARD GARNER said he heard on the radio today as we were coming to the meeting that Pat McElraft was standing her ground against a bunch of people outside of her office protesting. We heard some of them speak. It sounded like they were probably young college students. KEN said Pat emailed him back that she and Norman Sanderson would continue to fight against implementation of Agenda 21 and all those bills. Pat and Norman were two of the people who voted for the Bradley bill which would have been against the Agenda 21 language. He has posted this resolution on our Face Book Page. There are also some good videos there explaining Agenda 21.…one a David Ikeman that is very good. He posted it on that Fighting Agenda 21 Face Book page and he would say within the first hour he must have gotten a dozen real positive comments about how good that video was.
CHRIS said ‘Real quick, about fighting Agenda 21, I believe in the Golden Rule and being a happy warrior and all that…one of the ways that he found that you could get people to not consider it so much of a conspiracy theory…..cause he was one when he first heard of it…but look at it and find things that you could support and implement them properly and then point that out…hey, there are parts of this I agree with. We need to now debate on how to do that in a way that preserves liberty and can be done with very few negative impacts and as many positive benefits as possible. And then they are like oh! Here’s an open enough mind to agree with part of it. That is the thing with a lot of these issues; we can find some common ground on a lot of things…when you agree to disagree on some issues. He is in the middle of a discussion right now and you can see it on the discussion page of his web site. He is kind of going back and forth with Debbie Sullivan and he has asked her what they supported out of that Rio+20 thing and she just came back and said here is a link to it right here about what was supported and happened out of it. They will actually acknowledge when you don’t come back with what is this conspiracy that you are trying to do…and come off sounding more angry…which will not solve the problem. KEN said that was one of the things that happened with our county commissioners last year….there was a fellow (we have heard his name before) Nelson Paul, who has been fighting against Agenda 21 particularly in down east. He has made several presentations (and KEN has posted a video of Greg Lewis who had a rant after one of Mr. Paul’s presentations). Greg, KEN will assure you, is one of those who believes that Agenda 21 is a conspiracy. He does not like talking about it at all. KEN plans to talk to Robin Comer about this resolution and see if he can’t at least get them to debate it in the Carteret County Commission. He is also 100% sure that Greg Lewis will be one of those who is fighting against it.
ERIC BROYLES and KEN further discussed Rio+20 and its socialism view. GLAYDS talked about ICLEI….it is a group that comes in and tells you how you should plan your community so that it is conforming to this Agenda 21. TOM HARMON said that is the same group…they are kind of like a recruiter. KEN said they are a subcommittee under the Agenda 21 group. GLADYS said we may not be able to work higher in the state or federal, but we can work locally in throwing these people out of our governments here and kick them out of our towns and say we don’t want you here, get out. We can plan our own. KEN said that is what this resolution does…or similar resolutions and he thinks there is going to be a number of counties that are going to take these up. Now at least two and maybe three counties in NC have already passed it. It is something to look at and he will try to get more copies and also get posted to the web site as well. BOB said it is definitely here in NC. He and STEVE went to a presentation in Kinston and the guy giving the presentation said they are even teaching sustainability in the colleges now. He said on the way out of town there was a big billboard for Lenoir Community College “Sustainability Studies”. HOWARD said ‘this scenic byway thing down east that they are promoting…that is definitely Agenda 21.…and going back to what CHRIS said about numbers, we proved that this last election. If we had not been as successful as we were working the polls we never would have had ‘state-wide’ candidates coming to Morehead to speak to the Crystal Coast TEA Party. They saw that we were effective and that is why they wanted to come and speak to us.’ KEN said also on our Face Book page, Dan Forest has come out endorsing anti-Agenda 21 position also. At least that is one politician who is running for a high level office that knows what Agenda 21 is all about. Also Ed Goodwin knew a lot about it when he talked to us the other night. It was either last night or the night before that Tony Gurley was on Lockwood’s program and he mentioned Agenda 21 and how insidious it was. We have people who are running now, good conservatives, who know what is going on. The problem is we still have a lot of the old guard in there that is burying their head in the sand. They are not paying attention.
KEN said this Thursday, June 28th, from 5 to 7, Americans for Prosperity is having a meeting in New Bern at the Bridgepoint Hotel and it is to basically sign a petition and to talk to people about telling Obama that the private sector is ’not doing well’. Lockwood Phillips is going to broadcast the whole thing on the radio. There are a couple of other meetings, one on Wednesday, from 5 to 6 at Captain Raddy’s in downtown New Bern, that AFP is conducting, that will also be hosted by a talk show host from New Bern. AFP will also be in Greenville, Wilmington… they are doing the same thing throughout eastern NC. KEN thought the one on Thursday would be the most favorable time and place for most of our group. Several from our group and also from the group in Western Carteret group plan to go. GLADYS said they are also looking for businessmen who are having a hard time and things are not going like you had hoped they would, and would like to speak to the crowd, to please attend. They need you to support their program. KEN said to tell your other friends about it. Lockwood has been advertising it just about every day on his show.
KEN said the TEA Party is having a float in the July 4th Beaufort Parade, but the GOP is having a float in the parade also, and he and BOB kind of got volunteered for that committee. On Tuesday afternoon (l:00) we are going to assemble that float (GOP) and it is going to be at the storage area just off Hwy 70 at the stoplight on Hwy 70 and Howard Blvd in Newport, across from the First Citizens Bank. If you are interested in helping assemble that float and/or would like to ride on the float, please let KEN, BOB or FRED know.
On Tuesday morning (July 3rd) at 9:00am, Judy Wilgus is asking people to help her, at the same storage area, to help load materials from one of the storage areas and transport it down to the Republican Headquarters. The GOP Headquarters will be opening up on the 9th. CLAYTON wanted to know where the Headquarters is going to be. PEGGY said it was in the same shopping center as the ‘Kountry Kitchen’ restaurant. BOB said it was right next to it. Then they will be looking for people to help man the phone banks and get stuff out, so anybody interested in helping, Judy will really appreciate the help.
KEN said another series of interesting events have been taking place. It started out actually in February in the Randy Ramsey campaign. We had heard that there were some people in Raleigh who were interfering in the election process in the local counties. Some of those same people had actually recruited Randy Ramsey to run for Senate. KEN said we didn’t want to name names at the time, so he wrote a letter to the editor called what if? It was ‘what if leaders in Raleigh started selecting your candidates? Why would they want to do that? It posed a whole bunch of questions. Well at the convention, Jessica Hult, who is a delegate from his precinct in Stella, passed out a flyer that said ‘Is the GOP intruding in local or state and national primaries? Are they recruiting and supporting newly switched Democrats and opportunistic RHINOs to run against conservative and principled new candidates? Are they running decoy candidates so as to manipulate elections and place their puppets? (Here is where KEN thinks she made a mistake) Is Vice-Chairman Wayne King the acting henchman and for whom? (Senator Rucho and Speaker of the House Thom Tillis were in parenthesis.) (KEN said he would not have mentioned the names like she did, but she did…and she was passing these out as well as a few other people.) Well, to her surprise, while she was passing them out, Thom Tillis and Wayne King came down and just scolded her to no end. They were pointing their fingers in her face and threatening to sue her for libel and slander if she didn’t quit passing these things out. Then they were joined later by two more men, one who was a lawyer for the NC GOP, and they basically had this poor lady surrounded and everyone of them was just scolding her to no end. So, KEN wrote a letter to the editor again after this event happened and asked ‘why would they do this? They must have something to hide if they are getting so upset about somebody simply asking questions’. That has quickly been followed by other people in eastern NC. The Beaufort Observer has printed two to three editorials (big articles) along that line. Lisa Marley, who writes a blog out of Dare County, called Truth or Dare, has written a couple of articles (the last one was excellent. She did some really good research on it.) It was titled “Tillis’ Bridge to Nowhere”. She was asking the question, why is Thom Tillis doing this? What is his game? Everything she talked about she tied to something else. It basically said Tillis wants to run for Kay Hagan’s position when her senate election comes up in a couple of more years. He is trying to consolidate power even among the Democrats down east. That is kind of what is behind all this. He is doling out positions in the state house, hoping for favors and support from these candidates, like Randy Ramsey, he was one of them…Arthur Williams, who is running in District 6.…and he doesn’t remember the other man’s name who was running in Pitt County. We managed to defeat Randy Ramsey, and the fellow in Pitt County was defeated also. Tillis lost 2 out of 3. Arthur Williams lost to Mattie Lawson but not by a large enough margin, so they are in a runoff in District 6 coming up. Walter Jones came out last week and endorsed Arthur Williams, who is a former Democrat (like Jones), but a fellow out of Farmville, he thinks is Todd Bennett, called Jones’ office and he was told flat out that Thom Tillis called Jones and asked him to endorse Williams. So, Tillis is mixed in with all this, and there is no disputing about it now, it is absolutely clear that Thom Tillis is behind this. There are other people involved in it as well. Phil Burger, Harry Brown, Paul Stampe, are involved in it, and all these are senior leadership in the Republican Party. We need to ask ourselves why are we supporting leadership in Raleigh that is playing this kind of dirty politics in NC. BOB said these guys that are trying to pick our candidates for us are picking those with deep pockets, because they want access to that money because Tillis is going to need it when he runs for the senate. If we keep beating these candidates in the mud like we did with Randy Ramsey, then Tillis is going to lose his power. People are going to start seeing him as a loser. That is the kiss of death. That is our way of beating these guys in high office. KEN said Tillis has even asked through a third party to get someone to talk to Jessica to drop her drive against Tillis. However, it is beyond Jessica now. It doesn’t matter who he talks to now because too many people out there are informed as to what has been going on. KEN has been sending all those articles, especially in the Beaufort Observer, to Carolina Journal, and is hoping they will pick up on them. He spoke to one of their writers who said they were not going to do anything right now but to keep him informed as to what is going on. KEN expects that as some point there is going to be enough information available that Carolina Journal will do a follow-up article. BOB said he didn’t think it would happen before the July 17th runoff. He, FRED and KEN had gone up there and discussed what we had done here in Carteret (and won) under similar circumstances. They have adopted our recommended handout (and our wording) to use.
LYN BAKER reported that ROY MUSSER would be having surgery next week. BOB said he was working but was under massive pain pill popping in order to keep going. Concern about him using power tools while under the influence of pain pills. BOB said he had understood that ROY had laid the bike down before impact but apparently he actually hit the vehicle and was catapulted over the bike and landed on his head and didn’t remember anything other than flying through the air. He woke up in the cool, wet grass and then he realized what had happened and how much he hurt. LUKE said it was a wonder he was still alive. He is lucky he didn’t break his neck. HOWARD wanted to know if they ever caught the guy. BOB said Nope, it was a dark blue or green, some kind of dark color late model Mustang. No one who saw it happen got the license number. It happened on Hwy 24.
TOM HARMON wanted to know if anyone remembered Shannon DeMarco who used to come to our meetings and moved to California. She had twins a couple of months ago. They left Calif and are now in Alabama.
BOB asked HOWARD and PEGGY to report on the Constitutional Workshop they attended last week in New Bern. HOWARD said it was one of the best and most informative class he had ever attended. It was taught by Earl Taylor (not the owner of T&W) but a teacher from Mesa, Arizona. He teaches the Constitution at a Charter School there. He had us sitting on the edge of our chairs. We learned things about the Constitution that we had never even thought about. He would explain where we had gone wrong and why we had gone wrong and what the founding fathers thought about it. We were so carried away with the program that we got an order blank to order some of the books he recommended … The Real George Washington, The Real Thomas Jefferson, The Real Benjamin Franklin and The Making of America…$75.00 worth of books. Haven’t had time to read any of them yet, but Mr. Taylor had especially talked about ‘The Making of America’. It takes a small portion of the Constitution and then gives you what the founding fathers thought about that portion of the Constitution. We are looking forward to reading this book in particular. He brought out things that if he, HOWARD, had ever been told that before, he had totally forgotten it. He covered it in such detail and HOWARD had never heard it covered like that before. In fact, if he didn’t hate to drive at night (problem with night blindness) he had been tempted to go to Little Washington the next night to hear him again. He was that good. If you ever get chance to hear him, by all means, please do so. You will not regret it. There were questions about Earl Taylor, why he was here in NC, and is he doing a series, etc. TEA Party groups all over eastern NC have been having him come in and talk to them. He has also been over to Dare County. GLADYS said he has been traveling all around the US doing these talks for several weeks. He was up in Maine and he was saying to the Governor, wouldn’t it be great if everyone of the employees that are Maine government employees went through a course like this. He said he would be willing to stay there for a week and teach them. The Governor said the unions here (in Maine) are so strong they will not allow that to happen. They can not go to that class that you teach on the Constitution (there is about 14,000 of them) but I do have 16 that work directly for me (the Governor) that are not in the union. We will schedule them and I will give them time off (they will get paid) but they will come to those classes if you will come and teach. Earl Taylor said if he could get the Governors of every single state to allow him to come in and teach the Constitution to the employees, that is a beginning. That is what he is going to start working on. HOWARD said his course ought to be required for everyone running for the legislature or congress.
BOB said the next event coming up is the 4th of July parade. As we did at the last July 4th parade, let’s all met at EULA’s house about 9:00 (8:30 to 9:00) in the morning of the 4th (Wednesday) and we will decorate the float, board the float and head on down to the parade route. EULA lives at 1513 Ann Street in Beaufort. Don’t forget to bring candy to throw to the kids along the way. Bring your own candy. BELVA MANNING wanted to know what time the parade starts. BOB said we need to be in position at 10:30 and the parade starts at 11:00. We are number 5 in the line up and the GOP is number 8. We start lining up at Gordon Street on Front Street. We will have Ken and NANCY’s suburban to pull the float. Those on motorcycles will fall in line right behind our trailer float. SCOTT wanted to know if we had sufficient stickers to put on the Constitutions. (BOB said we have the flags, about 1000 pocket constitutions and we plan to insert our voter recommendation list into those constitutions.) DENNIS TOMASO, who made our stickers last year, is still off motoring around the US in his RV. Does anyone want to volunteer to make up a 1000 address labels to stick on the constitutions. Discussion on when we will be able to put the stickers on them….either Tuesday night during the meeting or Wednesday morning while some are decorating the float. SCOTT said we would have plenty of time while we were sitting on the float waiting for the parade to start. VERNE THOMPSON wanted to know what kind of labels we were talking about…just paper? BOB gave VERNE a copy of a constitution with a label attached from last year. VERNE said he could print them if we just wanted paper labels. VERNE asked that we give him exactly what we wanted and he would make them for us. We don’t want anything big because we only have a small area in which to place them. Discussed buying a stamp, but NANCY and several others said the constitution covers are slick and the ink will smear too easily.
We still have not found the guitar player but several are still looking.
BOB reiterated that we would meet at 1513 Ann Street (EULA PARKIN’s home) no later than 9:00 am, and we will decorate the float. NANCY is getting the fringe to go around the base of the trailer. Decision was made to put the stickers on while waiting for the parade to start and we will do it all the same day. ROMA and EDITH WADE will set up a table at a friend’s store front and sell shirts, hats, car deodorizers, and pass out constitutions and voter’s lists. During the parade we will be passing out the pocket constitutions with voter list included, and flags as well as throwing candy. Discussion on who we had voted on for that list, since several had missed the meeting where we voted. Copies of the voter list that PEGGY had run off were passed out to the members in attendance that wanted a copy.
The next event after the 4th of July parade is the July 17th runoff election. Early voting starts on the 29th which is Friday. EULA, STEVE BEST, JERE GEURIN and anyone else who would like to help EULA work early voting, at the Board of Elections. Probably next week at our meeting we will determine who will be working the various precincts and taking names of who will be there passing out our ballots on the 17th. It is very important that we man as many of the precincts as we possibly can, hopefully every one of them. We did 20 out of 27 last election and those unmanned did the worst of any of the precincts. We are trying to encourage all the other TEA Partys in eastern NC to get the vote out encouraging them to vote against Richard Morgan, who wants to jack up our hurricane insurance rates here on the coast.
FRED had some of the voter phone lists he promised last week. He will try to get the others out as soon as he possibly can. 1300 Republican and Unaffiliated voted in the last election, so we need to contact each name on those lists and encourage them to come out and vote. BOB would like to see each member at the meeting the Tuesday before the election (the next week) bring their cell phones and set up a phone bank here at our meeting and call as many as we can that night. LUKE wanted to know if we planned to put something in the paper and was told the plan was to put the list in the paper the Sunday (the 15th) prior to the runoff.
Any further questions about events upcoming in the near term? Once this is over with we need to start gearing up for a possible rally in the fall and getting ready for the November election.
Question on the Moore TEA Party mega rally they had been talking about. KEN said the last he heard they were still trying to find a big name speaker to draw attendance. The other thing they did and he is not exactly sure how this works but apparently they have done it before. For the Republican Convention in the state, some of you may know about this; but apparently they have what they call caravan rallies. I guess they get people together from different parts of the state as they were driving to the convention and they hold little rallies along the way up to the big rally. They are working on the logistics on how that would actually be done, but that was a thought to get people active and get other people on the way up there to say hey, that is a good idea. I think we’ll go too. When I hear some more, I’ll let you know about it. I think they are more interested at this point in trying to find a speaker because that will draw the crowds. They are looking for someone like Herman Caine, Mitt Romney, or Sarah Palin….somebody that will draw a big crowd. KEN said he has had some feedback about them trying to get a big name…that that was going to cost big, big money. Well keep in mind Moore TEA is the one that started the billboard project and they got the billboard project funded. They are putting up every single billboard planned plus two mobile ones that they set out to do in the first place. I think it is something like 15 or so billboards plus 2 mobile billboards that are going to run from July until the election. That was approximately $100,000.00 that they raised to do that. So I think if they have to come up with a large amount of money to pay a speaker, they will be able to do it. HOWARD said that is over by Southern Pines, right? There is some ’big’ money there. KEN said they got money from all over the state. He realizes they have some deep pockets over there but they raised that billboard money from all over the state, plus they got a big boost from the TEA Party Patriots. BOB said they got two $10,000.00 checks from the TEA Party Patriots…not our group, we don’t have that kind of money. Discussion about the information on the billboards…whether it was appropriate, effective, or eye-catching enough and what it said.
JERE GEURIN said in the morning he will take off his TEA Party hat and put on a “We Care” hat. He has 40 We Care boxes to get mailed tomorrow even if he has to stay there until 6:00 tomorrow night. He did very poorly last week, that is why he has so many to mail this week. If you would like to help out, he will be at the post office in Morehead City tomorrow morning at 8:30. He is asking for help because right now it looks like he will be there by himself. Sam is laid up. He has a bad leg. He needs someone to stand there at the table soliciting additional sponsors for the remaining boxes, while he goes inside and mails the paid for boxes. He already has several paid for that he can mail. With the donation he received tonight he now has 22 that he needs to find sponsors for. Each box costs $13.45.
BOB asked how many were planning to go to New Bern Thursday and several hands rose.
Meeting adjourned at 7:23pm.
Minutes of meeting submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER.
