CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
28 AUGUST 2012
Meeting held at Jing Gianni’s Restaurant in Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:05 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by KEN LANG
Invocation by LYN BAKER
Attendance – 32
BOB informed audience that FRED DECKER had $2.00 each raffle tickets for ½ buffalo (meat) for sale to raise money for “Young Marines” for anyone interested.
Discussed the movie ‘2016’ and who had attended so far and their comments. BOB asked if it had changed anybody’s opinion and the response was ‘Yes, even more determined to vote against Obama”. KEN LANG said it did not change your opinion but it sort of explains why Obama does what he does. When you talk to people in their 30s and 40s and you tell them Obama is trying to pull America down, they will ask, ‘why in the world would he do that?’. This movie explains why. Obama does not view America the same way that people who grew up here does. He spent his first 10 years in Indonesia and after that he went to Hawaii, which if you remember, was a possession of the United States at that time. (A colony) The whole basis of this movie is that in Obama’s mind the US has stolen everything from all these other countries (3rd world) and now we need to give it back. One of the things he points out was the money he had given to Brazil and Mexico to drill for oil and in other places other than our territorial waters. The author, Denesh D’Souza, went through several examples like that. To KEN, the most impressive one was how Obama has basically thrown NASA under the bus because one of the things that held the US up and out front, since the 60’s when John F. Kennedy started NASA, was the space program. LYN said, ‘It also united us.’ To him, it put a lot of stuff in context, though it may not have changed his mind, or like JERE said, ‘It made you even more resolved to try to defeat this guy’. Discussion on amount of time Obama even knew his father. KEN said Obama did not really know his father, since he was only two years old when his parents separated and he went to live with his mother. The only way he knows anything about his father is through his mother and the stories he has been told. He is only representing what he was told his father was like, not what he was really like. Discussion on a couple of other movies coming to a theater near you in the next couple of months. Info will be posted on our Face Book and/or web page. LUKE KUKULINSKI said, ‘There is another coming up on November 7th called ‘Obama Rents a Uhaul’. (Laughter) ERIC BROYLES asked, ‘Did it seem to everyone else that a whole lot of anti-Obama books and movies are coming out right now?’. KEN said he thought they had timed it that way. HOWARD GARNER said he was surprised that D’Souza hadn’t been bumped off before now.
BOB said he was sure that quite a few of us were aware of the controversy going on at the convention down in Tampa over the change in the rules for nominating candidates. Rule 15. Apparently the Romney camp wants the rule changed so that the primaries are frontloaded with winner take all. In my mind this will eliminate folks that are not well funded at the beginning of the campaign. As VERNE THOMPSON pointed out this last Republican primary was a big long drawn out thing and as you remember, Romney would win but with only 30% of the vote. This went on forever. The long campaign really burned up a lot of the money that people were donating into the Republican primaries. He thought it was a good way to handle the primary to let the candidates just keep slugging it out. Having this front loading of the primary puts an unfair advantage on the wealthiest guy at the beginning of the whole thing. Then there was a fight over Rule 12 which would allow the RNC to amend the rules in between the conventions so they could arbitrarily meet and change Rule 15. BOB said that John, our host, had just gotten off the internet the following: ‘Ron Paul’s supporters come up short in the rules fight. Grassroots, Republican Activists, and Ron Paul’s supporters came up shy in their effort to beat back two major rules changes Tuesday in the Republican convention. Amidst contentious scene on the floor of the convention House Speaker John Behner ruled that the committee rules had passed by a voice vote, despite loud protests from many in the arena.’ BOB said, It looks like a lot of angry Republicans going forward.
BOB told VERNE that he had had chance to read his Ryan’s Roadmap, the consolidated Ryan Budget, and thought it was very well done. If the rest of you have not read it, by all means please do so. It is even worth a second read, because there is so much information in it. He thought the Q&A section at the end was an extremely valuable addition to the whole thing. It really kind of narrowed down that great big Paul Ryan program so that it was easily digestible so that you could get a much better grasp on what the Ryan plan is. Course now there is not a Paul Ryan plan, it is now going to be a Romney plan. He asked VERNE if he had any information on where the Romney and Ryan plan might diverge on aspects of this. VERNE said, ‘only the one I talked about last week…..this business of the $716 billion that it is said that Obama is cutting out of Medicare. It is also cut out of Medicare in Ryan’s plan because Ryan’s plan is drawn from the base budget and that cut is a part of the base budget. Romney’s platform is to eliminate that $716 billion cut. As far as I can tell, that is the only subjective difference between Romney and Ryan on the issue of Medicare. Before you leave the subject, let me say this, the first and second topics in the Title Issues. Based on my reading of it, it seemed to me that they were suggesting that seniors could opt into the new plan if they wanted to, once it was up and running. I’m no longer sure that is true. It may be that seniors, that is people 55 and over, will just continue on the present plan, and only those 55 and younger will have the option of the new plan. It is not altogether perfectly clear to me.’
KEN said to follow up on what VERNE was saying, I haven’t seen anything in writing on it, but Ryan was interviewed the other day by Brett Baer on Fox News, and he was asked about what you were talking about as far as people who were over 50 years of age now, who would stay under Medicare as it is now, but he did say that there was an option that you could elect to go into the new program if you wanted to, but it was an option. All that stuff is what he has put forth which is changed a few times since he originally submitted it, so that could change later on but that is what he said about two days ago. BOB said by the time Congress gets though with it, you won’t even recognize it. VERNE said by far the most important point though and needs to be reiterated as often as we can is that there is no mandatory change for anybody over 55 years old. That is the thing the Democrats are using to scare the crap out of older people. KEN said, since we are talking about that, this is probably a good time to mention I sent an email out to our mailing list and hopefully you have already gotten it, but if you haven’t seen it, tomorrow the Democrats are having a phone bank in Morehead City, which kinda surprised me, but they are having a phone bank on Arendell Street (512 I think), where they are going to be calling senior citizens in the county to warn them about their Romney/Ryan Medicare cuts. He was also surprised that they were organized enough to do that. HOWARD said he read today that Obama has 40 offices in North Carolina. This may be one of them, he’s not sure. Another thing that concerns him is the latest polls show the majority of people don’t want the Medicare Program changed. If you think it through, you’ll realize that it has to be changed to survive.
LYN said, ‘Last Saturday, she went into Roses in Beaufort, and there was a lady out front doing voter registration. She asked me if I was registered and I told her yes, and she turned to another lady who had walked up. I was going to ask her when I came out who she was working for, but she had someone signing up. I don’t know if she was a Democrat or whatever. BOB said the Democrats have a very active nationwide campaign to get voters registered.
ERIC said, ‘in regards to that phone call from Democrats….if any of us get one of those calls, we need to keep them on the line as long as we can. That keeps them from calling anyone else. VERNE said he did not know if any of us knew about phone banks, but you will probably not get a chance to keep them on the line. They have been given a spiel written out and chances are they are not going to know anything beyond what is on that paper.
KEN announced that there is a debate coming up between the Insurance Commissioners….Dave Goodwin and Mike Causey on Monday, September 17 at the Sanitary Restaurant. It is during lunch between 11:30 am and 2:00 pm. Lunch special $10.00. Reservations required by emailing ncdoidebate@gmail.com. Sponsored by the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors – Carteret County.
KEN also told us that he had a “bumper sticker” on the back of his truck that measured 4’x6’. Actually it is in the back in the bed of his truck. It says ‘Save American, Vote Romney’. It was paid for by the Republican Men’s Club here in Carteret County and he built a mount so he could put it in the back of his truck, but so that we can slide it out into other people’s trucks also, so they could drive around the county and see it. The day I put it up, I drove through Swansboro, got lots of horn beeps and thumbs up and people hanging out the window hollering ‘yes’. It was kind of interesting. The other day I stopped on Hwy 58 to pick up one of Kirby Smith’s signs cause Dave McFadyen had asked him if he would take that sign down. Apparently he got approval to remove the sign. A couple of people went by, blew their horn, thumbs up, and one lady came by, blew her horn and when I looked, I got the bird. She was really angry. She had this really angry look on her face. I was standing there wondering what had made her so mad, it is just a sign. It is kinda like Rush Limbaugh and others on Talk Radio that liberals are just angry people. RO said maybe she was upset over you talking Kirby’s sign down. KEN said the sign was already down, so he didn’t think that was it. LUKE said maybe he should drive by the Democrat phone bank tomorrow. Some others agreed. VERNE said maybe it wasn’t the sign the lady disliked, maybe she didn’t like your looks.
KEN announced that he had some bumper stickers that he had had printed up and would like to sell for $2.00 to give him finances to purchase more political data. Right now it is hard to get Romney stickers. This one says, ‘Romney/Ryan, they believe in America and so do I’. FRED DECKER said he had told them at the GOP Headquarters that when they received word that signs and stickers were available, that he would be glad to go pick them up. KEN said JUDY and GUS WILGUS, and Steve Malle and his wife drove down to Tampa to the convention in hopes that there will be a lot of signs available down there, so they plan on loading Steve’s car up with them and bring them back with them. They won’t be back until the convention is over and a few days after that because it will take him a few days to get back home. The Republican Men’s Club has decided that they are going to set up a temporary headquarters in western Carteret, as soon as they get those signs and bumper stickers so they can distribute them on that side of the county. It is going to be on Hwy 24, but he doesn’t know exactly where; probably down around Cape Carteret and Cedar Point. Richard Hunt has arranged with a business and we have a meeting tomorrow to finalize the plans and setting up a schedule for putting it together. We are just going to put up one of those big white pop up tents and man that. Once we have it set up and anybody that lives down that way or wants to drive down and help man it, that would be great also. He’s thinking about parking his truck there as well as using the Men’s Club banner on the front of the tent.
ERIC said he understood our funds were a little low right now. He wanted to know if it would be worthwhile to do some kind of –?– drive, kind of like the fire department does. BOB said that entailed getting permits and a lot more effort than just a drive and you have to be a 5013C for that he thinks. We’ve got a couple of months (September and October) to raise 3 or 4 hundred dollars. We are going to need somewhere around $1300.00 worth of advertising for our voter ballot. Either dig deep into your pockets and give generously or come up with a good money maker.
BOB said EULA PARKIN has a couple of interesting things….Saturday, September 8. You all remember CATIE…..HOWARD and PEGGY’s great granddaughter…..that came and spoke to us about human trafficking (her organization is called Youth 4 Abolition). Well, that group is holding a Freedom Run/Walk. Runs/Walks are broken down in age groups, so those in their 60’s won’t be running against someone in their 30’s or 40’s. EULA brought some registration forms, if you are interested in participating. PEGGY said, ’while we are on this subject, on the 31st of this month, Chick Fil ’A in Morehead City, will give a portion of their proceeds to this organization. Just go in, order and tell them you are there in support of Youth 4 Abolition.’ BOB asked KEN to please put this on our web site.
BOB said he was looking forward to Chris Christy’s talk tonight. He hopes it will be as entertaining as he hopes it will. He is hoping for an interesting convention. Discussion on Ron Paul, pros and cons. Most felt that a vote for Paul was a vote for Obama.
KEN LANG introduced Bethany Hudson, a representative of Americans for Prosperity. He said she had attended their Western Carteret TEA Party Meeting last week. You all remember when we met at Cox’s a few months ago, we had Wes King who came over and talked about phone banks. Wes has gone on to law school and Bethany is now filling the void for him permanently, as permanent as permanent is in any organization. She is also working with Onslow County and their people trying to get them kick started.
Bethany said they were trying to get phone banks started everywhere, pretty much. “I am thinking I will probably be up here on Thursdays. I have a group in New Bern, the Tax Payers Association, and then you all and my Onslow group. I think Thursdays work better for all three groups. It may be every second Thursday, but I’m trying to figure out what day but we will have phone banks, food, prizes, everything from an autographed copy of Marco Rubio’s book This week I have been giving out gift certificates to the movies down in Wilmington. The idea to get people to go see 2016 and they did. I want to make it worth your while. I know you all are in need of funds….I can meet with BOB and KEN and privately work out the details but I can also offer scholarships (what we legally have to call it). The Tax Payers Association, we are still working out the details, but I think they are getting up to $2,000.00. So, I have money to give.
The Tax Payers are definitely on their own now. You can do your phone calls from home, so it doesn’t have to be just when I am here. If you all want to get together and work towards that monetary goal, you can do it on your own from the comforts of your couch as well. We also need ’Door Knockers’. Our door knocking system is very easy. We have tablets. I’ll give you the pass word and the log in name for the work book that you will be using that day. It will give you an address, tell you how to get to that address from wherever you are, go there and knock on the door, click on the tablet…arrived at destination….if they are there and you can ask them the questions you will just key in their answers as you go….press next and go on to the next question. If they are not home, you just hit ‘no answer’. It is very simple. It is just getting comfortable with that tablet technology, but it is all touch screen, it shouldn’t be too hard. That will definitely be getting started here this month (September). So please come out and make calls and door knock. You will be contacted via email‘. KEN said she would email him and he would send it out on a blast and he could also post it on face book or the web site. If you are not on the internet, please ask someone else (another TEA Party member) for needed information to be kept informed. Bethany went on to tell about all the events planned during the Democrat Convention, who they were expecting to attend their events, etc. Also told of all the bus trips she had been on and the fabulous information she had obtained from them. She said if there was a bus trip that you really would like to go on but did not have funds available, then the AFP would work with you. She had a guy right now working a phone bank to pay for a trip he had taken. Don’t ever let money stop you from going.
KAREN BLOOMFIELD said she had been to the meeting at Cox’s when Wes King had passed out the AFP Teeshirts and wanted to know what the connection between AFP and TEA Party was. Bethany said the AFP was a non-profit organization (a C-3 and a C-4) (C-3 is committed to just education – like they have a guy in Winston Salem that is giving lectures on fracking….non-activist type stuff) C-4 is where we take what was taught and what you learned and what you got motivated about and activated – like making the phone calls and going door to door and trying to implement and spread that message. AFP is all about economic freedom….budgets, stop wasteful spending, (have a campaign called ‘cut spending now’)….and one time they handed out pizza cutters that said ‘cut spending now’. We are about school choice and obviously about ‘hands off my health care’….lower taxes….less wasteful spending. If you go on our website AFP.org, you will be able to click issues which will give you a whole breakdown on what we are about. We do not endorse or support candidates as a non-partisan group. We do work against policies, so in Wisconsin we were making phone calls and going from door to door to make sure people knew what Gov. Walker’s policies had done. That they had cut the budget, that they had cut the deficit and Wisconsin was better off. It is kind of tricky and it may frustrate some people that we don’t come out and support any one person, but we support or campaign against policies or issues. An elected official will disappoint or upset you at some point, now matter how much you like him, even if it is your son, daughter, husband; but the policy won’t. You can’t deny a policy is right or wrong as far as how you feel about it. There is no wishy-washyness with a policy; so that is what we are about. We think policies win. Policies outlast. So you get out and campaign for a candidate, but what you are really campaigning for is his policies, and hoping that when that candidate gets in there, he is going to do it. She was asked who came first the TEA Party or AFP. She and BOB, both agreed that they developed and took off about the same time. The AFP is now in about 35 states….chapters, but we have activists that email us and keep in contact in all states. I think we are up to about 7.5 million activists. I remember one protest in Raleigh, I think it was, where they were beating and banging on pots and pans. They AFP went out and handed out ear plugs to anyone that wanted them. When HOWARD said he thought it was the Marriage Amendment, she said she didn’t think so, that social issues aren’t really covered in economic freedom. All of their members are on the same side of the Marriage Amendment, but it is not something AFP gets involved in.
Bethany gave a brief background on herself. She is originally from Chatham County, just south of Chapel Hill. Went to UNCW. While at UNCW, she interned two summers for Representative Carolyn Justice from Pender and New Hanover at the state legislature. Her third summer, she interned in Senator Burr’s Wilmington office. Then moved back home, couldn’t find a job for a little while. Finally found one at an inn and was there until she got the call for this job. She was in College Republican all three years and was president her senior year. There was a small group that was leading the organization all four years and they kind of had this open policy of ‘we’ve got an idea, we’ll set up a booth for it’. We did pro-life days, terrorism awareness days, and Dr. Adams protégé at the time, Tyler, wanted to do a ‘concealed carryon campus day’. We did it and one of her professors came by and got in her face and said ‘you are stupid, you are an idiot, you are crazy, you should be locked in a mental institution. This is nuts. And he walked away. She thought ‘I’ll skip class in the morning!’. And then he came back by later and Tyler was there and the professor got into an argument with Tyler. She said she called Dr. Adams and said ‘you might want to get down here. It is not fair. A professor and a student confrontation. You need to get down here. Dr. Adams came to our rescue. He didn’t even get into the ‘concealed’ debate; he just told the other professor ‘you should be ashamed of yourself. This is a student. You should be embarrassed for what you are doing right now. You should be promoting their right to have ideas and free speech. The other professor ended up walking away. But it did get tough sometimes too. HOWARD said, he didn’t know if she knew Dr. Adams background but when he went to UNCW he was an atheist and a liberal. He got glowing reports and even got Professor of the Year. Then he became a conservative and a Christian and they opposed him getting full tenure. He went to court but HOWARD said he never heard how it came out. Bethany said the last she heard when she was a senior, she thinks it had failed, but he had mounted an appeal. Dr. Adams asked her to apply for resident advisor in one of the dorms, because he had heard that if you refuse to become a GLAD ally, the gay and lesbian group, that you would not get the job. He wanted her to test it out. (She declined) He was always looking for things like that. Students from other campuses would email him and let him know what was going on at their campus. He would get involved and even hire them lawyers.
BOB told Bethany that she was to be commended and admired because she was the next generation coming along and all the old ___s are looking around for young folks like you and your age to get involved. Many of the younger group that she knows will go vote but do not get involved. They are not vocal about things. It is not fun for them as it is for her. BOB said you do have to have a passion for it.
EULA said when she was young she was raised a Democrat. Are all those here tonight Republicans from the very beginning. A huge majority all said they started out as Democrats, but felt like the Democrat party had left them years ago and had moved either to the Republican Party or as Independents.
HOWARD said we need to thank VERNE for the outstanding report he did on the Paul Ryan Budget. VERNE said BOB started to talk about the issue of consumption tax. BOB said, yes, as VERNE stated in the report it was kind of vague on what….it says, this is a tall six digit consumption tax establishing a new taxing methodology for business and your (VERNE’s) comments are, ‘this section contains little detail and is not very clear’. Describes point wanted to abolish the current corporate tax, income tax, at a single consumption tax rate of 8 ½ % on goods and services. Does that mean like a paying company would add an 8 ½%……VERNE said, you can see from my annotation there is not much detail anywhere that I can find on there. My question is what do they mean by this business of netting imports and exports. I can not find any detail on that either. However, one good thing is it allows business to expense investments. It says expense everything the first year instead of having to capitalize which is a good thing particularly when you are trying to stimulate business. BOB said the three other issues was of the 8 ½% tax rate captured by the purchases from sales and applying the rate difference. VERNE said, let’s say if you were a dentist you obviously have your gross income and excepted your supplies as well as your payroll and I guess the difference would be what you pay (could not understand as two other people were talking ?) on. Again, some things are not clear, for example, what if you gave yourself a salary and subtracted that also. I suspect that is something that is going to need a lot of flushing out. BOB said the 4th is allows the immediate expensing of investments which is good, cause like in my case, landscaping, if you go out and buy a tractor, you had to prorate it out over 5 years, where you gradually deduct this $15,000.00 purchase. Meanwhile, that year you are out of your pocket $15,000. So it will be nice to write the whole thing off the first year and at least drop your taxable income substantially and the part he likes about it, is it lists the business consumption tax exports and imposes it on imports. He would like the Congressional Budget Office work that out….is it going to be good or bad? He would like for them to get rid of the Corporate income tax. He likes the idea of imposing a tax on imports to help level the playing field and he likes lifting the tax on the exports which will lower the costs going over seas. Like he was saying, this section needs a little more detail. It is not very clear, but this is something we are really going to have to pay attention to if it ever gets before Congress and they start to actually proposing legislation.
KAREN said she just checked with Wiccepedia and it says the TEA Party movement is an American political entity that advocates strict adherence to the United States Constitution, reducing US government spending and taxes, and reduction of US national debt and federal budget. The movement is generally considered to be partly conservative, partly libertarian and partly populous. The movement has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009. It also says somewhere in here that it doesn’t matter what party….you don’t have to be a certain party. HOWARD said it does have to be conservative and in today’s world, it is impossible to find a conservative Democrat.
SUSAN RYNAS said her husband’s people were from Washington DC and she was shocked when they went to visit and his mother had never even heard of the TEA Party. The only thing that she knew was it had something to do with Sarah Palin who was head of it. SUSAN said it was shocking that people in DC had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world. LYN said she had a doctor in New Bern that didn’t know either. BOB said there are a lot of people who do not pay attention to the news. They don’t read, or listen to talk radio, and the only TV they care about is who is going to win Dancing with the Stars. There is nothing we can do about them, because they are unreachable.
BOB said let’s give serious thought about working with AFP phone banking and door knocking and hopefully earn us some funds. Someone asked how keeping up with our time works. Bethany said if we had a phone bank here tonight, it would not count as one hour but an hour for each person here making calls. Funding will be based on number of hours spent on project.
Meeting adjourned at 7:20 pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.