CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
1 MAY 2012

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting was called to order at 6:05 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by TOM AUSTIN
Invocation was given by LYN BAKER
Attendance – 37

BOB recognized a long time member who now lives in Jacksonville, TOM AUSTIN.  It was great to see him.

HOWARD said he wanted to steal some of SCOTT (Carpenter)’s thunder.  He realized that it was SCOTT who talked our guests into coming here tonight but he was sure many of you here have heard him (HOWARD) speak of the old man in Wildwood that lectured him on what was right and what was going to happen – that was our guest (Gerald Murdoch’s) daddy.  His daddy had a whole lot to do with forming HOWARD’s beliefs.  HOWARD said, ‘When he first started talking to me I was probably about 20 and pretty liberal at the time and he’d say such and such is happening and it is going to cause such and such and I would just chuckle because I thought the old man was crazy.  But you know what, in two or three years I found out he knew what he was talking about.  He was a pretty smart old man.’  PEGGY asked Mr. Gerald to introduce the lovely lady he had with him.  Mr. Gerald said she was Grace Madden, a good friend.  He said he didn’t know very many there tonight, but he was interested in what we were doing and that is why he was with us tonight.

BOB called on NANCY BOCK for a treasurer’s report.  She said we have $1,700.00 in the bank but she had not received a bill for the ads yet.  HOWARD asked what that was going to be approximately.  BOB said $l,100 or so, just under $1,200.  NANCY said we would have about $500.00 after the bill is paid.  BOB said we had about $100 or so in the donation jar also.  BOB asked if NANCY had given Sam a check for the We Care Project (for sales of shirts).  She said yes she had sent it to him and we already had a thank you note back.

BOB said we have another distinguished guest with us tonight – Ken Jones, who is running for State Senate (Jean Preston’s old position).  His rivals are Randy Ramsey (whom we all love) –
Boos from the audience – and Norm Sanderson, who has spoken to us a couple of times.  Ken is the mayor of Pine Knoll Shores and has spoken to us previously.  BOB asked him if he would like to give us one last pitch.

KEN said “Get out the vote is very important” and from what he understands it has been extremely light.  He doesn’t know what they are waiting for…but grab your neighbors by the hand.  (Several in the audience said it hadn’t been light they thought.  LYN BAKER said early voting has been far ahead of previous years.)  Ken said district wide he understands it has been low.  He knew that in Pamlico and Craven (he was there this morning) the numbers were low.  LYN said this is Carteret.  Ken said he was aware that this was Carteret.  (Laughter)  He lives here.  Anyway, it is lighter than he would like.  So, anyway, grab your neighbor by the hand if you have to, whatever, offer people a chance to get out and vote.  I always appreciate your vote, of course.  The reason I am running is I think we need strong leadership and we need somebody who is really experienced at this.  I have been the mayor of Pine Knoll Shores and I am on my second term right now.  I promise I will spend as much time in Raleigh as anybody but the fact is I am for smaller government, I’m for more efficient government and I have a proven track record that I am that way.  There are some people in here from Pine Knoll Shores and they know that is the way I see it.   Small government and more efficient.  I have promised people that, if elected, I want to have a town hall meeting somewhere in the district every month.  There is no reason not to, to communicate with folks and tell them what is going on in Raleigh and for you to tell me what is going on…the local problems, because I think communications is paramount.  It is not like anybody has to get on a horse and ride back from Raleigh.  We have all kinds of communications techniques and we have these 4 wheel vehicles (Jokingly asked Lyn if we have those things in Carteret County with laughter) so there is no excuse for not communicating.  It is not a long drive from here to Raleigh, everybody’s done it…so… HOWARD said “It is at my age.”  Ken said, ‘If he needed a driver to me know…but if he needed gas, don’t let me know.  (More laughter)  Ken said, “There is no doubt in my mind a lot of things need to get better.  When it comes to the economy, we need to change the tax rate, we need to change the corporate tax rate,  we need to cause an environment in this state whereby companies want to come here.  We shouldn’t be taking tax payers dollars and paying them out as incentives for companies to come here or for companies to stay here.  We need to get smarter about how to do things.  There is way too much overhead in our school system.  It is just incredible.  The money needs to be where the rubber meets the road, and that is where the teacher meets the student.  We need to provide a couple of avenues for the students as well.  Those that are definitely college-bound, and those that want to get into the job market that much sooner and learn a trade.  We definitely need to do that.  Do you realize we are the only industrialized nation where we think everybody has to go to college.  What I am saying is that causes our economy to be slow and cumbersome and people to be unemployed…which is more of a burden on us.  The other thing we need to pay attention to is infrastructure.  We have a port here that it is difficult to get to at best for anything that is going to be hauled out.  This is the deepest port in the state.  The port in Wilmington can’t be made any deeper.  It has a rock bottom.  So this is the best  port available, so we need to get roads, we need to get railroads that can come this way.  I am on the Eastern Region Economic Development Commission which means I represent 13 counties, so I am trying to bring businesses and jobs here.  I get so frustrated and I look toward Raleigh and I am like…what is going on up there?  We need to lower the taxes so we have some action.  That is why I say we need a leader.  We don’t need somebody to go to Raleigh to push a button.  We can get a monkey for that…right?  We need somebody to go to Raleigh that is going to stand up for eastern North Carolina…stand up for Carteret County (looks at Lyn and says ‘right … I’m relentless‘), Craven and Pamlico Counties.  We really need that.  We need that bad.  We need to fix our school systems.   We need to fix our economy.   We need to fix our state.  I know and you know the federal government is in trouble.  They need to get out of here and go fix their own problems.  If you are not tired of the federal government being in our business…then you are not paying attention.  That is a huge problem.  If the federal government has a problem, I’d like to think we have the answer here in North Carolina and we are going to take care of ourselves…take care of our state and take care of each other.  Thank you very much.  (Applause)

ERIC BROYLES said he had talked beautifully the other night about immigration.   Ken said he had been asked about how he felt about illegal immigrants…which I don’t even know what that means.  It’s illegal aliens.  Emphasis on the word ’illegal’.  Close the borders…declare a national language so that you don’t have to push 1 or 2 on your phone every time you make a phone call.  People who are born here shouldn’t just automatically get citizenship.  They are here illegally.  People say well my parents immigrated over here…so what?? These people came here illegally.  Let’s emphasize that word.  They shouldn’t  be here.  They shouldn’t get free school.  They shouldn’t get free benefits.  They shouldn’t get anything out of it.  They should get – back across the border, right?  I think we need to get harder on this.  When I hear about some of the things that happen in Raleigh, I’m always like, why didn’t you attack  that to the Attorney General to do something about it.  Why didn’t you say…hey let’s stand up against…what’s that guy’s name up there…oh yeah, Obama.  (Laughter)  He’s the guy that is living in public housing up in Washington, taking public transportation, big jet, all that stuff, yeah, also causing us to not have some jobs available, overfilling our schools, spending your tax money.  Again it is not efficient.  It is not right.  If they are illegal, let’s get rid of them.  That is the bottom line.

TOM AUSTIN said the something that sticks in his craw, that he has spoken about at other meetings, is this governor and the legislators up there haven’t done anything about.  The Mexican Consulate in Raleigh sets up this mobile Mexican truck that hands out illegal and false documentation and when he has written letters of protest about this thing and argued with them about it, they just say shut up, it is none of your business.  They are a foreign country; they can do as they wish.  This is North Carolina.  Is there anything that you know of that can put a stop to this garbage?  Ken said, “Absolutely.  Some of the very things I just said, but the other thing is, I don’t care what country you are from, if they are in the United States, they don’t follow constitutional rights.”  Tom said, the thing is the Consulate does.  Well they have diplomatic rights.  But they go down and do this in public school systems and at public venues at other places they set up and all the illegal aliens show up and if you protest against them, the cops show up and won’t let you take photographs, won’t let you do anything, won’t let you get involved…Ken said, “That is an indication of our liberal government”.  TOM said, ‘The question is:  Is there anything you can do to stop this?’  Ken said, ‘Absolutely.  It has happened in Arizona.  The first thing we need to do is identify the illegals and get them out of here.  Racial profiling…what?  Tom said, ‘He always thought a consulate was a building here with given property, not a truck running around’.  Ken said, ‘Right, exactly. And diplomatic immunity does have an ending to it.  It is not everything goes.’  SUSAN RYNAS said, “With Holder in Department of Justice, I don’t know of what chance we have of ever doing anything about immigration.  We have to get him out of there.’  Ken said, ‘Well, maybe at this point, but the clock is ticking.  I hope he is packing his bags along with the rest of them.  They need to go. We need people who will stand up for America and stand up for the real citizens of this country.  No two ways about it.  LYN said, ‘A little ray of hope, I understand that just as many are crossing back because there are no jobs and Mexico’s gross national product is higher than ours.’  Ken said, ‘I heard about a month ago that illegal crossings are at an all time low.  They should be at zero anyway.  An all time low because the job opportunities in Mexico are better now than here.  So we may have found a solution.  Although it is not the right one.

LUKE KUKUCINSKI said, ‘Speaking about immigration, last hurricane…we have a condo at Indian Beach.  They run us off there.  Nothing happens, so we come back the next day.  We drive down the road and here is the ‘Piney Knoll’ police department saying you guys can’t cross here.  LUKE said, what do you mean I can’t cross it…I live right over there.  He was told you have to go all the way around.  LUKE said he told them that was not Piney Knoll’s road, it is a state road.  Why can’t I go across the road to my house?’  Ken said, ‘I will gladly explain that situation.  I have the great opportunity, I am the one that declares a state of emergency for my town.  The four of us mayors sit down with our public safety folks and our town managers are usually with us, but we decide on a state of emergency.   We decide when to declare mandatory evacuation.  There is no such thing as non-mandatory evacuation.  And we decide when to authorize and when to enforce a curfew.  And in the end, we decide when to pull those things back.  We do it as a group, OK?  That is very important….we do it as a group because what happened this time, during what is normal, when the power comes back on its in Atlantic Beach first, this time it came around Emerald Isle first, because there were so many problems over here at the Exxon Station at Atlantic Beach.  So the power is coming around the other way from Progress Energy faster than they could get it this way.  So, we had a talk that morning, I think it was a Sunday, about 6:00 and us in Atlantic Beach said we are not opening the bridge…and Indian Beach gave me carte blanc and said Ken, whatever you decide to do, I’ll go along with you.  However, Emerald Isle said we are opening the bridge because we have tourists in here and we want them to spend their money.  So I said, they are not coming down here.  Atlantic Beach told me they could not do it, because they do not have water.   They did not have power so they could not pump water for their constituents, people who live there, and I said ‘Trace, I will stand by you until this is over…and I made that promise, I will not let them down.  So we kept that bridge closed for that reason.  When we opened the bridge on this end, (that’s where your question is) there was a problem in Emerald Isle and Indian Beach and so we had to stop it again.  The power was a major problem during this storm and getting it in to the right areas.  That is why we did what we did.’  LUKE said they made it all the way to the Sheraton and that is as far as they got.  Ken said, ‘I take that decision very seriously.  I don’t like to declare a state of emergency but I’ll tell you what, if your life is in danger, I’ll do it in a heart beat.  In an evacuation order, people get upset about that…if you have seen a category 3 hurricane hit land you know you need to be running anyway.  I get the biggest complaint about the curfew.  Actually the biggest complaint is about the sidewalks in Atlantic Beach.  About the curfew, people say you are treating us like a 3 year old or whatever….no that is not true.  If we order an evacuation, I order a curfew to protect the people’s property that left like I told them to.  Curfew, in case you don’t know, isn’t just at night, it is 24/7 so if we order a curfew, it is in place all the time….period.  BOB thanked Ken for taking our questions.

BOB told us that we have one week…that next Tuesday is the day.  He hopes our efforts have made some impact in the trajectory of this election.  He had gotten disheartened early on.  STEVEN BEST had told him that while working the polls at Fort Benjamin Park, a lady, after voting, came out with one of Ramsey’s campaign folders and asked STEVEN if all that was true.  STEVEN told her no, it was all lies.  She said she wished he had told her before she voted, because she had just voted for the guy.  You know you kind of throw your hands up in the air..what more could we have done?  What with our onslaught of letters to the editors, radio stuff going on, and with all the talk in Carteret County about it, there are still people who have no idea.  HOWARD said ‘According to the Elon poll yesterday, 50% of the people in North Carolina does not even know who Pat McCrory is.  So there is probably no hope for half of us’. NANCY wanted to know who had put out the ‘Rino Ramsey’ signs…she had just seen them on the way to the meeting.  Someone held up one of the signs and asked if that was the sign she was talking about.  She said yes.

HOWARD said he had not seen it, but he talked to Norman Sanderson last night and Norm said he had made a new tape yesterday where he will be doing the talking, not sure if it will be TV or radio.  He told Howard he had a little bit of money to put it on the air with.  Norman estimates his average donation is $75.00 and Ramsey’s average donation is $500.00.  HOWARD said the little folks are standing up and sending what little bit of money they can and it is helping the cause.  Discussion on Ramsey’s negative commercials and ads.  ERIC BROYLES asked if anyone had seen the latest TV commercial about the loan sharks.  Everyone agreed that that was one of the most disgusting yet.  TOM AUSTIN said,  ‘The one that got to him first was when Ramsey said Sanderson had voted for Obamacare.  Excuse me, but Sanderson is not the federal government, how could he vote for when he is just a NC Legislator.  BOB said he didn’t see how they can just blatantly lie and get away with it.  SUSAN asked if anyone remembered that court ruling in California where both candidates lied about their background and the judge ruled that was their constitutional right.  So, if that’s the case, how can you trust what any of them say.
LYN said it was disheartening to see it come so local.

ERIC said we have what about $500.00 in the treasury?   Why don’t we buy a TEA Party fact check  section in the newspaper (¼ or ½  page) and put up the lies that have been stated with the true facts.  BOB said if the word is not out now, with all the letters to the editor that have been submitted, then another article in the paper won’t do it either.  Apparently some people just don’t read the paper.  And besides chances are that would cost more that the $500.

WAYNE WILLIS showed the cartoon he had submitted to the paper.  He is hoping it will be in Sunday’s paper.  He wanted to know if anyone there felt that he had gone too far with his idea.  All said no, they thought it was a good cartoon.  BOB described the drawing as a Norm Sanderson sign with a Jarrett Bay airplane shooting the sign to pieces.  He imagined that the dirigible flying behind the plane is carrying Ramsey to oversee the damage.

BOB said WAYNE was down in Florida when they were voting and asked when they count the votes and he was told they count the early votes in the event of a tie on election day.  BOB asked Ken if he knew what the law in North Carolina is.  Ken said they are counted separately, the absentee votes are counted separately and the day of the election votes are counted separately.   They are added all up the day of the election.  Actually they add the votes up daily during early voting, so if you think there is no one out there that knows what the numbers are that is not true.  HOWARD said he knew they know how many have voted because when you place your completed vote into the machine it tells you how many have voted to date at that polling place.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said the way he understands it to work is they take the election day votes and count them.  They do not add any of the early vote or absentee vote in unless it is a close race on election day.  Like him, he has already voted early, and his vote may not count at all because if the majority of the people vote for more than what there might be an argument over…example if one gets 500 votes less than the other person and there are 600 early votes, then they will count those early votes.  BOB said you are saying that early voters could be disenfranchised.  Much discussion followed.  LYN said when the Secretary of State certifies all the votes are counted.  It is just when they give it out to the press the day of the election they do not need to count those then.  More discussion on the loss of ballots a few years ago when Secretary of Agriculture Troxler was running and the consequences.

WAYNE gave a report on Davis Shore voting as of Monday…26 people had voted…a week of early voting.

SCOTT CARPENTER asked STEVEN (since he had been working the polls at Fort Benjamin Park in Newport) what his thought or feel on the voting there.  STEVEN said it was picking up.  At first it was slow, but the last couple of days there has been a lot of voters.  Almost everyone coming up is taking a handout.  BOB wanted to know if anyone working the polls had noticed voters showing up with our ballot that was in the paper.  Several said they had.  HOWARD said he had noticed a difference in attitude this Monday and Tuesday.  He had been helping out some, but had not been as faithful as STEVE.  We have been more favorably received this Monday and Tuesday than we were last week.  He can’t tell us why.  When you walk up to people, the way they smile, the way they act, their body language is totally different, more friendly.  BOB said maybe the weather had something to do with their attitude.  Last week on Monday it was hot, Tuesday, cold, and Wednesday, blowing a gale.  FRED DECKER said he could understand, that between he and HOWARD they knew ¾ of the people that came to vote.

SCOTT asked how Ms EULA PARKIN had done in Beaufort.  EULA said well the first day she almost burned up and sought shade and was told she couldn’t sit there, she had to move so she left and went home.  The second day she almost froze to death and the third day she almost got blown away.  Yesterday she went and was confronted by this young man and woman wanting her to vote against the Marriage Amendment, so they got into a little dispute.  They moved over into another section.  BOB said the first day EULA was there, so was Norm Sanderson.  They were standing around talking and EULA looked up at Norm and asked ’are you running for office’?  (lot of laughter)

BOB  said ’next Tuesday he would like as many precincts manned with a TEA Party table as possible.  We have 27 precincts in the County…was 34 but has been narrowed down to 27.  If you are willing to work a table/precinct on Election Day, either at your precinct or a neighboring precinct or any precinct, please raise your hand.  Does everybody know what precinct they are in.  Most did, so BOB passed around a sheet of paper for us to sign as to what precinct we would like to man.  STEVE went to his car and got the list of precincts and BOB read them off.  BOB said it would appear we had people here for about 9 precincts and when we finished here he was going to Cape Carteret to see how many he could get lined up there.  Since next Tuesday is Election Day THERE WILL BE NO TEA PARTY MEETING NEXT WEEK!!!!    HOWARD wanted to know what time the polls opened next Tuesday.  BOB said he was going to be at the Broad Creek polling spot at 7:00 to set up his table and he thought the polls opened at 8:00.  If your polling place has multiple teams, you can do shifts.  You will not be expected to work everyone all day long.  He passed out the TEA Party signs he wants us to place on our working tables.  PEGGY had some copies of the TEA Party candidate list and asked those who were manning the polls to please come and get some to get started with.  She would run more and BOB will get them out to the workers at the various polls.

BOB said  ‘Last week we talked about the death in the Cox Restaurant owners family and I asked RUTH to pick up a sympathy card.  We, the TEA Party got our start meeting at the Cox Restaurant for the first year or so until we outgrew their establishment and parking area and moved across the street to the Golden Corral.  Everyone please sign the card and if you would like to make a  donation to help defray Jennifer’s medical and funeral expenses (she left 3 small children) please place it in the card when you sign. She died of cancer and was only 37 years old.

BOB said for those who are going to be working the polls, bring your own table, chairs, and umbrella in case it rains.

There will be a meeting at the Sanitary this Thursday hosted by the Republican Men’s Club for a question and answer session with the candidates for County Commissioner.  Everyone is invited.

He reminded us again that there would be NO TEA PARTY MEETING NEXT TUESDAY, election day.  Our next meeting will be May 15, where we will either be celebrating or crying in our beer.

Meeting adjourned
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES  OF
APRIL 24, 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:05 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Invocation was led by HOWARD GARNER
Invocation by STEVE BEST

BOB opened the meeting with “It has been an exciting week!”.   His phone has been ringing off the hook.  Several others said they had had the same problem.  EULA PARKIN said she had been driven off the sidewalk where she was working the polls in Beaufort.  When it had gotten too hot for Ms EULA, who had set up on the pavement of the parking lot, NORM SANDERSON had helped move her table into the shade (awning of a store, down pass the last business) .. still outside the 50 foot legal distance.  Doug Raymond told her she had to move, that the Board of Elections had called him and said they had had something like 20 calls about her blocking the entrance of several stores and they (the customers) were having to walk around the table.  Several different stories were told about this incident, so no one is totally sure exactly who insisted on EULA having to move, but several had their opinions.  BOB said last week an elderly gentleman had shown up at the Beaufort polling place, said he was a member of the TEA Party and told voters who came up not to pay any attention to the list the TEA Party had put out, it was wrong, they were asking people to vote for Elaine Crittenton and NOT Harry Taylor.  Well, it seems Harry stopped by and asked him who he was and why was there a problem with the TEA Party’s list.  Harry called HOWARD, who in turn called BOB and by the time BOB got there to check it out, the man had left.  We also had an incident in Newport where one of our new young Republican/TEA Partier (and BOB said he noticed they were missing tonight)…(Note:  they showed up right before the close of the meeting without making any comment.) was working under the Republican umbrella but passing out TEA Party ballots.  He was telling voters that he was with the TEA Party Group but don’t vote for the first 3 people.  He was against anyone voting for Mitt Romney (was pushing Ron Paul), talked against Frank Palombo and Pat McCrory and recommended they not vote for any of those three.  Most of the attendees at tonight’s meeting were upset and considered this a stab in the TEA Party’s back.  BOB said he planned to have a talk with the offenders.  This can not be allowed.  If they disagreed with the democratic vote we had taken, then they should not proclaim to be members of the TEA Party, but campaign under their own auspices.  This is a bad reflection on them and makes the TEA Party look bad also.  KEN LANG said he had gotten several messages on Face Book indicating their dissatisfaction on Ron Paul not being selected by the TEA Party to support.  They also went to the 3rd District Republican Convention with a group from other areas supporting Ron Paul, but because of the rules and the way things were, they made virtually no end rows at all. You could tell by the different counties represented that they had gotten together and they were very well organized.  But as it turned out they were unable to get a delegate elected to send to the National Convention in Tampa, Florida.  There were a couple of other positions that were voted on (at large positions) which they were unable to get delegates for either.  KEN said he thinks they got upset with that process also.  He thinks they were here, and there, for one purpose and that was to drive Ron Paul onto the recommended list, which is fine, because that is what we are all about, especially here.  Everyone in attendance Tuesday night week, voted, went with the majority vote and that was the way it was. You can’t just accommodate the minority, which is what they turned out to be.  Majority rules. BOB said he felt that giving voters our ballot and telling them to dis- regard anyone is disenfranchising the votes of all the people that were here that night to vote.

HOWARD said he wanted to apologize…BOB forgot the donation jar last week in his hurry to get to Cape Carteret meeting and we carried it home with us, planning to bring it back tonight.  We forgot it.  But he did want to report that during the week we had a $20.00 cash donation, and a check for $50.00 given to us.  (With what was in the jar, the new donations, and tonight’s donations, we have collected $100.00 for our treasury.)  BOB said, well with collecting that kind of money, maybe the Garners should just keep the jar.  HOWARD said he was blaming it all on BOB and then apologizing for his forgetfulness also.

BOB reported on the final total votes for each candidate (both Morehead and Cape Carteret) and how we ended up with our recommended ballot.  We had 27 people here that night and 17 at Cape Carteret for a total of 44 eligible votes.

He said he had gotten a lot of flack from disgruntled folks saying we had picked the wrong candidates, with all kinds of accusations about who is being hand picked by other leaders in the party, who is trying to stuff the county commissioners board and school board, etc.  People he has known for many years have called arguing for one candidate or another that did not appear on our list.  LYN BAKER asked if he told them they should have been to the meeting to vote.  BOB said he had been concerned about narrowing the list (especially in the county) to one candidate might disenfranchise a lot of people who would otherwise support the TEA Party and might now see us as being biased.  He worried about how it would impact the TEA Party going forward into future elections, but after discussing this with several other TEA Party members, he decided that we would cross that bridge when we come to it.  We made our decision, we cast our votes, everyone here was in agreement with the process, and we tried to be as fair and honest as we could be.  Everyone here had an opportunity to listen to the candidates who came to speak to us, offer their opinions and rationale, and then vote.  If there are some who are disappointed in our decisions, we are sorry, but we did what we felt was the right way to go.

BOB said a lot of discussions were going on in the Republican Face Book page and recommended anyone interested to check it out.  Also check out the Crystal Coast TEA Party Face Book page also and join in the discussions.

BOB reported that he had received an email from Harry Taylor and Harry had asked BOB to thank everybody for their support, and he promised he would not let us down.  He really did appreciate our show of confidence in him.

David McFayden had stopped by to thank us for our support tonight prior to the meeting.  He was on his way to another meeting and was unable to stay, but wanted us to know how much it meant to him to receive our endorsement.

BOB again recognized EULA PARKIN saying she was 85 years old and probably weighed about that same amount, but had been representing us at the poll in Beaufort and she could really use some assistance.  The poll in Beaufort runs from  8:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening.  Give her some slack, she gets down there about 9:00 or 10:00 and stays a reasonable amount of time.  One of the members said he went down by the girl scout building and he couldn’t find where the voting was going on.  (He was in Morehead City.)  BOB explained that there was no early voting in Morehead.  The early voting was taking place at the Fire Department in Davis, the County Board of Elections office in Beaufort, Fort Benjamin Park in Newport and the Western Park Community Center up by Cape Carteret.  The member said he guess that was why there was no one there when/where he went.  The Beaufort location is open from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday, while the other sites are open from noon to 7 pm Monday through Friday.  The last day of early voting is May 5, (Saturday) when all locations will be open from 8 am to 1 pm.  BOB said STEVE BEST has been manning the location at Fort Benjamin Park.  It has been a little windy and cool the last couple of days.  The wind blew his tent over and while he was chasing that the wind blew his table over and all his papers.  STEVE has really stepped up to the plate, a real trouper.  KEN LANG  has been manning the table at Cape Carteret.  KEN said he has actually had some help this time.   Two years ago he had done it all by himself for the whole early voting.  Jim and Pat Nalitz and Karen and Bob Clark and a gentleman, whose name Ken could not remember, have been helping and Bill Sherry has volunteered to come tomorrow also.  He feels he has had decent volunteer help.  It would be nice if we could get a few people to come out and help Eula.  WAYNE WILLIS reported on the Davis Fire Department polling site.  He said there had been a grand total of 13 people voting and he was one of them.  Another was Weston Willis, who is relieving  him today, because WAYNE had physical therapy and another voter was CLAYTON WILLIS.

HOWARD said he has seen some dirty elections before but never like what he is seeing today.  He is talking about the campaigning being so dirty.

Discussion on the fact that Randy Ramsey had workers at every one of the polls.  Someone said they were employees of Ramsey’s business.  KEN said it was not like he had this vast army of volunteers working for him at the polls; it is his employees who are there.  BOB wanted to know if anyone knew how Ramsey was manning the polls in the other counties.  Someone in the audience said he was doing the same thing in the other counties, because there was no one working at the business the last few days, including Randy, who was out politicking.

HOWARD showed everyone his sign that someone (who was stupid enough to leave his address on the Ramsey flyer) had defaced.  They had taped one of Ramsey’s flyers to one side of a Sanderson sign and taped an X over Sanderson’s name on the back.  Everyone wanted HOWARD to take the sign to the sheriff’s office and complain.  HOWARD said he might later on but was getting a lot of mileage out of showing it to people right now.  He had it to the polling place in Newport last Friday and a lot of people saw and commented on it, including the man who was there representing Ramsey.  He apologized for the action by apparently one of Ramsey‘s supporters.  HOWARD said he had been having a lot of problems with someone stealing or tearing down the Sanderson signs he had put up.  This one he was showing had been a replacement for another sign in the same location that had been stolen.  When he was going by on the way to the dump (at the intersection of Masontown and Tom Mann Roads) he noticed the sign had been tampered with.  He stopped and started to tear off the electric tape that had been used to deface the sign and PEGGY told him to keep the sign, what had been done to that sign was illegal and could get whoever was responsible in real trouble.  So he brought the sign home and later put up another one.  A couple of days later he noticed on the way to church that that sign had been pulled up and thrown down in the mud.

KEN said Ramsey has sent out approximately 12 different flyers to Republicans and Independents in Carteret, Craven and Pamlico counties.  It is estimated that it is costing him about $10,000.00 per mailing.  That is $120 thousand that he has spent so far just on mailing these things out.  He has radio ads on 107.1 and probably 94.1.  The frequency of those have gone up in the last several days.  And he has television ads on Time Warner’s Channel 14 and several others.  It is estimated that Ramsey will probably end up spending about $250 thousand to win this race.   Norm Sanderson told KEN that he doubted that he would be able to spend over $20 thousand, because he just doesn’t have the money or the big spenders (“What’s in it for Me Crowd”).  You have heard very little from Norm defending himself from this attack on his supposedly voting for Obamacare, because he does not have enough money to put ads in the papers, radio and TV to defend his position.  The fight is being done via email, face book, Twitter, and stuff like that, that is free.  KEN has posted Pat McElraft’s letter to the editor on the  TEA Party Web and Face Book pages.  He also sent Pat’s letter to the over 900 TEA Party member email addresses he has.  This is the only way Norm has of getting the truth out to the voters right now and hopefully all those will pass the word on to their friends.

HOWARD said he had talked to Pat and during their discussion he mentioned that the lady working the Republican booth had gotten a copy from HOWARD of Pat’s letter.  She then had shown it to Ramsey’s man at the poles, after which he noticed the man on his cell phone for an extended period of time.  Upon figuring the time frame of Ramsey’s man getting the letter and making his phone call, Pat said it was somewhere around that time she had received a phone call from Ramsey.  He did not apologize but instead told her he was going to win and looked forward to working with her in Raleigh.

WAYNE said around Easter he went to the church he has been going to for about 7 years and the preacher pulled in ahead of him and had a Ramsey sticker on the back of his vehicle.  This was not problem, since that is his prerogative but when he went inside, there on the table along with the bulletins of the church activities and other religious pamphlets was a stack of Ramsey political propaganda.  So he got in touch with the pastor and he told him that it did not appear to him to be an appropriate place for him to display political activity of that nature.  The preacher responded by saying that he goes out to Jarrett’s Bay every Wednesday, conducts a prayer meeting, and apparently someone stuck the sticker on the back of his vehicle without him knowing it and brought the political flyers in and put them on the church table.  He doesn’t know whether the preacher is being totally honest with him or not, but WAYNE feels this is inappropriate action.

HOWARD and BOB, both, said if anyone could afford a little donation to help Norm out, please do so.  It will be greatly appreciated.  If you can’t help financially, then please get on the phone and call anyone you know in Carteret, Craven or Pamlico counties and ask them to please vote for Norm and help him out.  Explain the flyers that are being mailed out are false and there is no truth to them and that Norm has been endorsed by Pat McElraft.  Pat has informed the radio listeners recently that what Norm Sanderson did vote for was done by every Republican in the House and several Democrats, also.  The only people that voted against that bill were the liberal Democrats in the House, which is an indication that the bill is not what Randy has represented it to be, otherwise liberal Democrats would have voted for it because they are FOR Obamacare. Pat is very upset because basically when Ramsey tried to impugn Norm Sanderson, he ended up impugning every single Republican member of the House.  BOB said in case you are not familiar with the bill, it was not an endorsement of Obamacare, it was largely a procedural bill that protected North Carolina in the event the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare and would save the state countless dollars.  In fact, the full title of the legislation was “An Act to Preserve State-based Authority to Regulate the North Carolina Health Insurance Market and Prevent Federal Encroachment on State Authority by Establishing the North Carolina Benefit Exchange”.   As the name implies , it was designed to limit the power of Obamacare.  It was NOT an endorsement of Obamacare as Ramsey implies.

NANCY BOCK said she had seen about some meeting with Pat McElraft as guest speaker on the internet or via email (could not make out totally what Nancy was saying).  She said she would send it to KEN and PEGGY to put into the minutes.  (Not received in time to go in these minutes, so maybe KEN will get it out via email to the members in time.)

HOWARD reported that he understood Phil Knight (radio host) will have Randy Ramsey on his radio show Thursday and Norm Sanderson on Friday.  Might be interesting to listen to.

KEN said tomorrow night (Wednesday) the League of Women Voters is having a Senatorial candidate forum at 6:00 in the County Commissioners meeting room in the Beaufort Court House.  Need to get there early if you want a seat.  It will be a question and answer.  You can get a card and write down your question and the LofWV will choose which questions to ask.  Discussion followed on the fact that pointed questions were never selected to be asked.

BOB said Thursday they are going to have a second forum at the same time for the county commissioners and the board of education.

KEN said he understood we were running the recommended list of the TEA party in the paper on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.  It is going to cost us $1,113.00, which will just about deplete our treasury (approximately $400.00 left), so we need to be thinking about how to build our funds back up, because after the primary is over we need to start thinking about the general election and funds are going to be needed at that time.  Our list is worth putting out.  If you notice at the polls, many people come up with the copy from the paper or ask for one from us.

KEN brought up about the death of Cox’s Restaurant owners’ daughter and he thought it would be nice if the TEA Party sent a card or something to let them know how much we appreciated their help in getting us started.  HOWARD said the VFW in Newport had a fund raiser dinner last weekend to help with the expenses of her treatment.  She had three children he understands.
BOB asked RUTH PARKER to get a sympathy card and bring it next week for all of us to sign.  He said he would carry it down to Cape Carteret for those members to sign also..

CLAYTON wanted to know if anyone had any pocket Constitutions that we could hand out at the polls.  BELVA MANNING said she had a box full at her house.

The Men’s Republican Club is having a candidate forum on May 3rd, at the Sanitary Restaurant and it is for the County Commissioner races.  All candidates running have responded that they will be there.  He thinks it starts at 6:30 if you want to come and eat there and then the candidates begin to speak at 7:30pm.  The reason it is as late as it is is because they asked Lockwood Phillips to m-cee and he had a previous engagement so they had to kind of jockey the schedule so he would be able to do that.  Feel free to come.  It is open to anybody.

EULA discussed “UVisa”.  It is called violence against women authorization act or VAWA.  It was initially passed in 1994 to protect women suffering domestic violence and abuse.  It has become the latest vehicle for open borders lobby to increase visas and grant amnesty to illegal aliens.

EULA requested that everyone above the age of 65, please check to determine when they had their last pneumonia shot.  If it is over 5 years, we need to get it renewed.  She also asked how many had had their tetanus shot.  She told about her sister in law who died after getting cut by a rusty wire.  Everyone should have an up-to-date tetanus shot.  Also if you have ever had chicken pox, you need to check into getting a shingles shot.

BOB recognized Debbie Rucker who is now attending the Cape Carteret meetings but came out tonight to say hello.

HOWARD said he felt that the reason we had been getting so many phone calls is because apparently some people think we are more effective that he even thinks we are, or we would not be getting those phone calls.

JERE GUERIN said he too had been receiving phone calls about our selection, and he had told them that he didn’t think everyone of the TEA Party members agreed with the total selection but we had all been given the opportunity to voice our opinion and vote, and the majority ruled per our decision of how we would select our candidates.  He thinks that everybody in the TEA Party will support that slate as a group.

CLAYTON wanted to know how many had voted already and over half raised their hands.  CLAYTON said he voted early, in case he dropped dead, he wanted his vote counted.

RUTH said when she went to vote she was not asked for a voter ID, but did have to give her address which they matched up with her name and address they had listed, but she did show them a  picture ID even though they didn’t ask for it.

JERE said he would like to address the Voter ID issue.  Every time he goes on the base at Cherry Point, even though he has a sticker on his windshield, he still has to show his ID card.  If he goes to the base exchange to buy something, when he goes to the register to check out, he has to show his military ID card.  Every place he goes on the base he has to show a military ID.  In town, if he goes to cash a check at the bank, his own bank, they ask for a picture ID.  Why is it such a bad idea to show ID when you go to vote, which is one of two things that a citizen can do to support the government and the other one being jury duty.

KEN said WAYNE had told him that when he went in to vote in Davis, he had his TEA Party hat on and they made him take it off.  Much discussion followed.  Did not like this.

Discussed the pro-Ramsey letters to the editor.  Most felt the authors had some type of connection to the boat industry….employees, owners of other boat companies that deal with Ramsey, etc.  Information on where Ramsey’s donations have come from will now be published until probably sometime next week.  Not in time to write anymore letters to the editor.  KEN said if he could get hold of it earlier, he would send it out to the members.  Make sure KEN has your email address.

PEGGY asked if all had heard Walter B. Jones latest ad.  It is not about voting for him but is FOR the Marriage Act.  It is a great commercial.  Almost makes you want to vote for him!!!  BOB said that’s what it is for.  PEGGY said she thinks it is going to work.  HOWARD said when he and PEGGY went to vote they voted the TEA Party slate.  We felt we worked for and belonged to the TEA Party and we owed it our allegiance.  PEGGY said she felt if she couldn’t support the TEA Party’s decision, then she shouldn’t be a member.

Meeting adjourned at 7:18pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
17 APRIL 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:08 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by WAYNE WILLIS
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
Attendance – 27

BOB displayed our new TEA Party signs that NANCY BOCK had ordered.  BOB would like for those who are working the polling places during the early voting, to please pick one up to display on table used to hold our voter handouts.

On schedule tonight is the finalization of the candidates we decide are the ones most likely to best support the TEA Party principles of Limited Government, Fiscal Responsibility, and Protection of  Free Markets.  It was decided we would vote by show of hands and not by secret ballot.  Most said they were not ashamed of showing everyone where they stand.  Upon closing this meeting BOB will go to the Cape Carteret meeting and collect the ballots cast there and collate them for a final recommendation.  Following is a list of those candidates chosen by our group tonight.

President – MITT ROMNEY
There was discussion on leaving all of the three remaining candidates (Newt                Gingrich, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney) but decided to narrow all offices to one.
U.S. House of Representatives, District 3 – FRANK PALOMBO
N.C. Governor – PAT McCRORY
NC Lt. Governor – DAN FORREST
NC Auditor – DEBRA GOLDMAN
NC Commissioner of Agriculture – STEVE TROXLER
NC Commissioner of Insurance – MIKE CAUSEY
NC Secretary of State – MICHAEL (MIKE) BEITLER
NC Superintendent of Public Instruction – JOHN TEDESCO
NC Treasurer – STEVE ROYAL
NC State Senate District 2 – NORMAN SANDERSON
Carteret County Commissioner District 3 – TERRY FRANK
Carteret County Commissioner District 5 – HARRY TAYLOR
NC District Court Judge, District 3 – DAVID McFADYEN III
County Board of Education, District 2 – (Leave blank)
County Board of Education, District 3 – MARK MANSFIELD
County Board of Education, District 4 – (Leave blank)
Constitutional Amendment to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only
Domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in the State –  FOR

Upon completion of the voting BOB closed the meeting and left to go to the meeting at Cape Carteret to incorporate their ballots with ours.

Meeting adjourned at 7:40pm
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MEETING MINUTES OF
10 APRIL 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral Restaurant, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:02 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by STEVE MILLER
Invocation by STEVEN BEST
Number in Attendance – 30

BOB introduced tonight’s guest speaker Bernard Bush, who is running for District Court Judge.  Those running for the same office, Judge Waddell’s seat, David McFayden and Kirby Smith, have already spoken to us.

Mr. Bush (Bernie) told us that he was the attorney for the Craven County Department of Social Services.  He started practicing law in North Carolina in 1994 with Pamlico Sound legal services.  “I handle landlord/tenant matters, employment matters, and subsidized housing matters.  In 2000, I got the job at Craven County Department of Social Services.  So, whenever there is abused children or neglected children that have to come out of their home in Craven County, I am the attorney that represents the county’s interest in court.  Over the past eleven years, I have seen Judge Waddell work with kids and he worked with families and he did a wonderful job.  He was very compassionate but firm.  Either the  parents would get their acts together or they wouldn’t.  And if they didn’t, they knew it was because they didn’t do it, not because they were run over.  And at that point we would look for grandparents, aunts, or other family members.  If there were none, then we looked to find an adoptive home for those children.  Judge Waddell retired recently and his seat became open and I’m running for it.  There is really not that much else to say about me.  I could go on and on but I will open it up for questions.  Some general things is – I graduated from Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville Tennessee in 1994.  As an undergrad, I started off in a community college which was called Camden County Community College in Blackwood, New Jersey.  After two or three years I transferred over to Gladsboro Community College in Gladsboro, New Jersey, a small town between Philadelphia and Atlantic City and got a bachelors degree there.  During that time, I worked my way through college at a super market, in the South Jersey area and also the United States Marine Corps, where I went in as a private and came out as a corporeal.  I was stationed at Trenton and I was in the artillery unit.  I ran the phone wires from the artillery batteries so that when they would mess up, they would break the wires to buy themselves some time and I would have to run out and fix the wires.  In a way I have had a whole lot of doubt working my way through college and met a lot of wonderful people and I think that would give me experience as judge because I’ve been there.  I’ve worked in the casino; the gift shop; I’ve worked in spaghetti factories and bread factories.  You know those Subway rolls, they actually come from a factory where (they are heated at the different stores but) they are actually made in a factory.  I’ve actually worked in those factories; spaghetti sauce factories…I’ve done them all.  You know the Marines…yes we fired guns, but I swept and mopped more than I shot at anything.  And learned quite a bit.  That’s about it for me.  While I was in New Bern, not only did I practice law but I worked in Habitat houses when they would have those habitat bills that they would have college students come out and since I was in town, I would go out and help them.  What I found were, for whatever reason, men in their 70’s have a whole lot more energy than I did.  I came out there in the morning I was ready to put them to shame, I’d be hammering, I’d be working and carrying things and by afternoon, they were working like nothing went on, my hands were sore and I was hitting my thumb more than the nails, but I was out there doing my part.  There is a community theater in New Bern, the New Bern Civic Theater.  I’ve worked with a number of productions there as well.  And I got to work with some really wonderful people.  The advantage of the civic theater in New Bern and in Carteret is we have the military base, Cherry Point, so you have some incredible talented people, who are in this area for a very short period of time and it is very humbling to be on stage with them.  I couldn’t sing, still can’t sing, so I won’t sing for you this evening, but in other parts of the stage I was able to do just fine.  That is about me in a nut shell.  Does anyone have any questions for me or about social services that I can answer.  I mean I might be able to give more information that way.’

KEN LANG said we have asked the other candidates even though it is a district court position, judges can advance into other positions from there, so what is your stance on judicial legislation from the bench?

Mr. Bush said, “It is not their job.  Their job is to take the law as it is written and apply it to the facts.  Leave the legislature to legislate and judges to their judging.  As a DSS attorney, I have social workers, it’s not my job to do social working.  You know sometimes it is a temptation or when someone makes it look easy, to jump in and tell them how they should be doing it better. They have their job and I would have mine.

BOB asked his favorite question.  ’What was your ’aha moment’ when you decided by golly I want to be a judge?’

Mr. Bush said people kept coming to him, because he was happy as social services attorney, because he was going to different churches, he was able to play guitar since he couldn’t sing.  ‘Everything was good.  Waddell was retiring and people started coming up to me and saying why don’t you consider it.  Not saying anything bad about the opponents, but you know you have been doing it, we think you would make a good fit.  I poo pooed it for a while, but then a moment came where I said well, OK let’s give it a shot, because they were saying you have nothing to lose.  Give it a shot.  You have a great personality, present yourself, if you win that is great, if you lose, you lose nothing for doing it.  It has really been wonderful.  I was scared because I am familiar with New Bern and Craven County because I ride my little motorcycle and I know the people there.  But I will go into Carteret County and Pamlico County in the far reaches to meet people who hear stories and have fears, but people have been absolutely wonderful.  I’ll go into beauty shops, or just regular stores and see what is going on and everyone’s really been wonderful.  So, it wasn’t like I had some dying passion, just an opportunity that came up…and I saw what Waddell did in civil/juvenile court with kids.  I have seen what social workers do.  I’ve seen them at their best and I’ve seen them at their worst.  So what separates me from the others is I know the inner workings of social services.  So I can better determine what is real and what is not real.  And one other thing that separates me from the other two is they were private attorneys.  As a DSS attorney over the past 11 years I got to watch mental health be dismantled.  It is no longer a working entity.  What it is is Neuse Mental Health used to send people to Neuse Mental Health and they would assume responsibility.  They would provide the services, they would see that they got the adequate services.  If someone needed a guardian, they would act as guardians.  They had therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists on staff so they could be provided the help that was needed.  On a state level you had state hospitals for people who needed hospitalized care.   That is all being dismantled.  They want those people in the community… which is good in theory, but the problem is there is no place in the community; so recently there was a law suit where a disability rights advocate said ‘Counties and states you can no longer put people with mental health issues in nursing homes with elderly people.’  That was going on because there was no place else to put them, so they were looking for a bed.  And that is really a terrible mix.  If you have people in their 70’s and 80’s with Alzheimer’s or are frail, you don’t want some 30 year old with mental health issues who….people with mental health issues tend to be stronger than you or I because for whatever reason, their brains do not have a stopping device.  Where if you hit me hard enough, you win.  The fact that you ball up your fist, you won.  Someone with a mental health issue don’t have that so they would keep on going even where a normal person would stop.  The problem is that’s been taken away.  There’s this thing called ECBH where Neuse Mental Health used to serve just the area and a few outlying areas.  ECBH now serves a ten county area and the state is looking to expand that further.  They want these people to be regional providers.  And what they are to do, they are not to be responsible.  They are just to be the purse string holders so if you said that somebody had a mental health issue, they will say, OK, you say so, but we are going to valuate them.  We are going to determine what services they are going to need.  We are going to tell them what doctors to go to and we are going to tell the doctors how much we are going to pay them.  We will tell you when they have enough services.  Which in theory may look good, in a county like Mecklinberg county or Charlotte where you have a lot of therapists, that may work, but in eastern Carolina where you don’t have that many therapists to begin with it is going to work terribly.  ECBH covers there where you don’t have a lot of therapists.  When DSS has these conferences, DSS attorneys meet two times a year and we discuss matters that affect DSS attorneys, somebody from mental health came and they are basically apologizing and back pedaling the whole time because the questions were ’We hear what you are saying about trying improve but you are not even answering our calls, our telephone calls, and we are the attorneys.’  We have people who call us saying  they are not getting through.  We are trying to call and can’t get through.  And it is frustrating because, on a state level and on a federal level, they learn to talk the talk, so you can have them come in right after me and they’ll say we admit that we are learning some things.  We’ve got some bugs to work out.  But you are a stake holder and we are partners and together we can make this better, ignoring the fact that people on the local level can not get the services they need.  And it affects us in a very intimate way, because if somebody has a mental health issue, that person has a family member, a mother, or wife, or other families that have to deal with it, if there is no one else to help them deal with it.  If somebody has a mental health issue, and it is not treated, many of them can drive a car.  If you have epilepsy, you lose your driver’s license.  If you have a bad vision, your license can be taken away.  If you are an elderly person, your family can tell the DMV this person needs to be tested again and have their license taken away.  With mental health, if someone is on their meds and are doing well, they can be smarter than me and articulate and then come off their meds it is a totally different story.  There is no mechanism to stop them from driving a vehicle.  And that is a best case scenario where you have somebody who is on their meds and doing well.  You have others who need to be in a Dorthea Dix where they are saying send them to a community…we are shutting them down…we are taking them out and there is no place for them.  Many of these people are high functioning.  The stereotype is people who are low function, but there are a lot of people who are very intelligent, very savy, and they can work a car.  They should not be behind the wheels of a car and they should not be asking a county to take care of them only because the people at the federal level and state level…they want to act like they are cutting costs but they are not cutting…they are transferring.  If you are going to cut…cut.  But if you are going to transfer be honest and say it and instead of giving ECBH all the money, give it to the county if you are going to do it so that we can fend for ourselves the best way we can; because when you have a ten county area calling somebody…where before it was on Neuse Blvd in New Bern, it may be in Edenton someplace and they might not be in such a rush to help us when we are saying something is going on real bad here.

ERIC BROYLES said ’On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most conservative and 10 being the most liberal, how would you classify yourself?’

Mr. Bush said ’It depends on the issue.’  ERIC said ’overall’.  Mr. Bush said he would say 5 for this reason…‘I am not a fan of wasting money.  I did not get, you have heard my background, I basically had to work my way through school, so I am not into wasting money.  I am not into getting a free ride.  The problem we have as a nation though is we are bailing out other countries,  which is just fine, I understand that, but our American citizens have to borrow money to go to college and they are now coming out every year with at least a $60,000.00 debt load when they are in their early twentys.  This is when they should be having a family and it impairs their ability to get credit.  There is no jobs, so now the student loan people are on them.  They can’t get a good mortgage and they are behind the 8 ball and they will stay there for the rest of their lives.  That is what we are facing so when you say are you liberal or conservative, I don’t know how to answer that except to say we have to fix that.  If somebody is willing to work hard.  I’m not saying to give it to them for free, but don’t make them a slave because other people are going to look at them and what is happening now you have a lot of people saying to young people ’do not go to law school.  There is too many lawyers.  You can’t find the work and if you are going to come out with a $100,000.00 in debt you are better off doing anything else.  I’m not saying everybody should be a lawyer but it is happening in other fields…doctors…don’t be a doctor…you are going to be eaten up in medicine insurance and the first time somebody dies they are going to find fault and sue you.  Be an insurance person.  This way you can be in on the good side.  That part is broken, so I don’t know how you would classify it…I’m not saying give it away for free, but don’t do it so…….ERIC said ‘the TEA Party principles are fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets.  Where do you stand on those issues?’  Mr. Bush said ‘Who in their right mind would be against that?  Here is the problem, the media has done a terrible job of telling the truth to the American people.  The politicians have done an even worse job.  I have been going door to door, business to business, barbershop to barbershop, meeting people saying Hey, I am running for judge, think of me.  And what I am hearing is ‘not only have I not seen the other two, you are the first person who has ever done this.  So you have black leaders, you have white leaders, you have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have Independents on TV speaking about what the American people want and they have never spoken to you.  It is a problem.  You have the media that is portraying the TEA party as a bunch of right wing Republican wackos.  But when you look at what you are saying ‘who is against it’ really? And why are they portraying you in that way?  How am I able to run into this guy (BOB) and not know who he is and we get along fine and then he says by the way I’m a TEA Party Republican.  Come on down and speak, we would love to have you.  If I had listened and believed everything I had heard on TV I would have run the other way.  Nobody has bit me yet.

HOWARD GARNER said Mr. Bush had mentioned a couple of things he would like to address.  He said speaking about running from the TEA Party….he was in Sam’s in Greenville, had on his Tea Party cap and there was a black clerk and he (HOWARD) said something to him and he (the clerk) was big enough to pick Howard up and toss him, and the clerk just backed away and said
I don’t want a thing to do with you.  HOWARD told him he had been listening to the main stream media too much.  HOWARD said he didn’t think he had harmed anyone in his life.  Going back to this mental health, he tried to keep up with it as best he could and he was able to determine when they went from Neuse Mental Health to the Onslow/Carteret thing.…things got worse instead of better.  A month or two ago there was at least four of us here that attended the County Commissioners meeting and this new group that is taking over had two people explaining to the county commissioners what was going to go on.  I don’t think I’m that dumb, but I left more confused on that issue than what I was when I went it.  Mr. Bush said if he knew the truth, he would be angry, not confused.  HOWARD said nothing tears him up any more than what he considers useless government paper pushing and it is running this country…that and lobbyists.  Mr. Bush said Yep, it’s terrible and that is why in my ad you see in the newspaper, one of the things is ‘go to church, any church.’  I go to church.  I play in churches.  I grew up in a church.  I’m not here to force my religion on you even though I think it would be good on a personal basis.  But watching mental health be dismantled I am seeing the same philosophy being applied elsewhere.  They are trying to get the county in other things.  Instead of seeing it as a failure, they are seeing it as a model.  They are trying to do it with other things.  They are trying to cut corners everywhere they can.  So, what I am telling people and what I will tell them when I become a judge is…in New Bern where Neuse Mental Health is disappearing there is this Baptist Church called Temple Baptist.  It is a large Baptist Church.  It has this group called Celebrate Recovery where the church is taking in people with substance abuse issues, working with them, turning their lives around, and putting them on the street in a safe way.   That should be supported.  What I am saying to all the other churches, we don’t need 15 Celebrate Recoveries.  If they got this, find some other need….foster parents, single parents, school teachers.   You pick it.  Find something to help.  If everybody does a little bit, the situation gets a little bit better and then when we meet again we can go from there.  That is what I will be saying.  I will be going to different churches, white churches, black churches, TEA parties, liberals, whoever will listen.  That is what we have to do and the reason I say go to a church and go early, a lot of times in court, people go to church after they get into trouble.   With Neuse Mental Health broken down, it’s just a matter of time before all of us are going to need some help one way or the other.  If you don’t have a mental health issue you are one guy swerving off the yellow line being in trouble, so instead of everyone waiting until after they got into trouble, if everybody went to a church , any church, any denomination, and help them out a little bit.  I’m not saying accept everything they do, work to improve the building, work to improve the fellowship so that you know someone, make the church a little bit better, a little bit stronger, a little bit more useful, so if you need it or somebody else needs it, it’s there.  The reason why I am picking the church is in looking what they did with mental help and looking at what they did with other things, the people, they don’t get it; they’ll say what you say and say that what they meant was just shut everything down. That’s not what he said.  But that is how they will interpret it.  They screw it up every time.  I don’t know what happened between the top and the bottom.  It goes through so many hands that by the time it reaches local, its unrecognizable.  The church was here before the mess.  The church will be here after.  I’m saying find a good one, work with them, and let’s get through this together.

A member asked ’Getting back to college loans.  I understand that we up to a trillion dollars in college loans.  That is more than home mortgages, that’s more than bank loans, that’s more than all this together.  You don’t feel like students have anything to do with it?’  Mr. Bush said ’They do, but the people who allowed that, just like you don’t give drivers license to 12 year olds.  If we have a system where the college knows going in that only 10% are going to find a job, the lenders know that all are not going to get a job, and everybody knows that all those entering class, 1/3rd is going to drop out before the second year.  Don’t put it all on the students.  Give them their share of the responsibility but when you have other things going on, just like the mental health system, as judge if somebody comes before me and they didn’t take their medicine then it wasn’t their fault that they did the crime they did.  But it wouldn’t be fair if I said, he is in jail, my job is done.  I have to speak to somebody and say you know this EBCH thing it’s really getting on my nerves because people who otherwise would not be in jail are in jail.  And one more problem with putting them in jail…say a 17 year old is acting a fool and they need to be taught a lesson, let’s put them in jail, see if they learn their lesson, come out and do well.  If that becomes the warehouse for people with mental health issues, instead of learning their lessons, they are fighting for survival and they are honing skills that you don’t want them coming out with….and all these people are coming out.  The gentleman said his point was they make the loans so available everybody uses it as a party and they go to school to party for four or five years.  Mr. Bush said, ’The schools allow it because the schools monitor grades and they can kick you out or put you on academic probation.  The only time they clamp down is when somebody gets killed.  Why?  Whenever there’s a frat party and somebody dies because they were intoxicated they will shut that frat party down.  Why stop there?  How much if you are not maintaining a B average we don’t care what you do in your free time, we won’t get into it, but if you drop below a certain level, because you are not going to be beneficial to the field you are studying and we have foreigners who are competitors and you are not going to buckle down, you got to go.  Why is that not in place?  Why does somebody have to die first?  That is the fault of the system.  DAVID COX said ‘when our president gives credit to…disavows these loans…excuses these loans by the thousands.  Mr. Bush said we are going to come to a tipping point as a nation.  I don’t favor that.  But it is getting to a crisis because these young people are making choices based on the fact that they have a certain amount of debt and they are not getting jobs.  As a society we are not going to be productive if they can’t get jobs, they can’t buy houses and cars because they are struggling under a debt load and foreigners don’t have that problem.  DAVID said ’How do you discourage it when you excuse the loan and they are getting ready to excuse some more?’  Mr. Bush said, ’Because they don’t excuse everybody’s loan.  It is not every ones.  I’m not sure how it is given out, but the bottom line as I understand….I’m writing some big checks every month and a lot of people I know are writing them too.  It is a broken system and it is not going to be improved by playing favorites with a few or grandstanding in front of a TV.  Again it goes back to the media.  I’ve heard nothing from them about forgiving.  So they are going to forgive a couple of million and they are going to have the TV cameras and show some lucky person, slap him on the back and talk about what a wonderful job they did.  Turn off the cameras and the other 99% have to deal with their loans because somebody’s making interest off those loans (interest and penalties).  So you can be paying on a loan and after 10 years you owe more than you did at the beginning.  That is going to stifle the American creativity that made us great.  You are right, but not enough people are being forgiven and I think it is just for show.

ERIC said, ‘We see court rooms filled because of continuances.  Cases are continued time after time, after time.  There are some people that have had continuances for up to over a year.  I’m not talking about murder cases.  I’m talking about driving without a license because you got DWIs.  A third of the people are driving on revoked licenses and most of those are DWI’s.  This is tying up the court system.  It is costing the taxpayers.  It is because the judges allow it.  What will you do as a judge to tighten that process.  I understand that you have to be careful what you say.  Mr. Bush said, ‘No, he would be totally honest.  The law will only allow how much punishment you can prescribe for someone, just like I told that gentleman…if you put somebody in jail with mental health issues, eventually they are both coming out.  The legislature has to deal with that.  People coming out and doing it repeatedly, the legislature has to deal with that and as a judge, he will apply those laws as they come down.  The problem with continuances in this area is that you have a small number of attorneys and they are trying to be in several courts at once.  So, like you have attorneys in Havelock, today they could be in Carteret, tomorrow they may be in Pamlico.  Add to that witnesses.  You have therapists, doctors, witnesses who were at the scene of the crime, forensics experts, DNA testing has to be done, psychological exams and various others.  The problem is that it is real easy to say I’m going to crack the whip and I am not going to allow it to happen but the truth is…and I deal with this with my social workers, they get upset because cases are continued until they need a continuance….their car is broken, or they are sick, or it’s their vacation, and then all of a sudden they want a continuance.  And it happens.  We are limited in this area because of the number of attorneys we have and the fact when you have a lot of moving parts…yeah, they can work it and give a colorful excuse, what are you going to do from the bench?  Go by their home to see if they are sick or go to the golf course to see if they are there.  Again you have a lot of moving parts…the attorney may be there but the witness isn’t there.  If they are in the hospital….a lot of what you have is DOC problems.  If somebody is in the Department of Correction you do what is called a rig(?).  So it is up to the Department of Corrections to bring them, so sometimes they bring them, sometimes they don’t.  Again there is a lot of moving parts.  I’m not saying I am going to excuse it, but it is really hard to get up.  If anybody promises you that they are going to eliminate it…. (Several people offered their comments.)  Mr. Bush said you can do the best you can but when you are one person and you have all these different people and you have a docket of 400 cases with 400 different excuses, I can do the best I can to move things along.  ERIC said he just wanted to make the work easier.  Mr. Bush said he did not want it easier, but if you can’t do it, you can’t do it, because what every judge is looking at is if you say OK, I don’t care what is going to happen, I don’t care, we are going to try the case regardless.  And they do it.  It gets appealed.  Now it goes to the Court of Appeals and that takes about a year and a half to two years, so you saved no one anything.  So that is another thing they are looking at because the District Court Judge doesn’t have the final say.  The Court of Appeals is a more final say and it takes longer.

STEVE MILLER said, Basically the Crystal Coast TEA Party and the TEA Party in general is based on fiscal responsibility (Taxed Enough Already – TEA).  What is your opinion as a citizen, not as a judge, but as a citizen, with Obamacare (the affordable health care act)?  Mr. Bush said, ‘I didn’t study it closely enough to say (you know this chapter and that chapter).  Here is the problem…he did not get everybody on board.  They sort of ran it through and they got it because they could at the moment.  Now the Republicans, if or when they get in power because we know the power shifts, they are going to undo it.  The problem with doing anything that way if that you get people dependent on a system that is going to go away and you create another set of problems.  Our welfare system, our subsidized system, housing system, all these systems have become corrupt because they have been in place too long.  They hadn’t been well thought out so when somebody just says we are going to cut out or cut them off, they do not understand the ripple effects.  For example, with food stamps.  Fiscal year 2011Craven County alone, was I think, 24 millions dollars worth of food stamps issued.  It ranges from like senior citizens getting $10.00 (why they bother) to a family getting $600 worth of food stamps.  There is a myth that it pays off, but it doesn’t.  But what the individual gets is an EBT card which gives them the right to purchase food stuffs.  If they sell that for money, they can be arrested and jailed for fraud and I would do that if they did.  The problem with saying all these people should be cut off but when you take 24 million dollars and take it out of the economy, two lobbies are going to come right at you.  And it is not the poor people’s lobbies.  The farmers, because it is distributed by the USDA.  The farmers depend on that 24 million dollars for their crops.  Also the end user, the super markets in Craven County, there are 69 super markets that accepted these EBT cards and I guarantee you one of them got the lion’s share…WalMart.  So if you just say we are going to cut it out and the system will correct itself in five years, your WalMart lobbyist will shut you down.  And I guarantee you they are Republican and that is why when we start talking Republicans and Democrats, instead we need to look at rich and poor…the have and the have nots.  Everybody here and the folks who are doing well because it crosses lines.  The media portrays the folks as right wing whacks, but you describe what you are about and I say ‘who is against it?’.  Who is against fiscal responsibility?  Who is for fiscal irresponsibility?  No one, but you all got tarred.  And I think it was for a purpose.  It keeps the little people separated.  As long as people are jumping back instead of saying ‘brother’ the people above can do whatever they want.  They have been and they will continue.  That is a problem.  As a judge I will go from community to community, group to group, and just be honest with you.

ERIC said, ‘The good thing is you will be able to cut back on the fraud in that area as a judge.  You will know how that game is played.  Mr. Bush, said ‘we do, we have fraud investigators, and what has helped us more that anything is technology.  Where 10 years ago, food stamps was like in a little book, you ripped out the ticket and you gave it.  It was hard to track that.  With an EBT card, I don’t know if I should be telling everybody, is computerized and you can tell fraud, based on the pattern.  If somebody buys like say they got $600 worth of benefits.  They buy $400.00 worth of benefits here and they go across the street and buy another $200.  You know, if it doesn’t make sense, that is a red flag.  But it is computerized so now you know who is buying what and where.  You can not buy dog food or beer.  Now that it is computerized.  Before you shouldn’t have been able to either.  Back when I was working in a supermarket we had to (forgive me, I’m telling my age) we had these things called cash registers and you had to type the dollar amount in and there was a button you had to hit to let you know whether it was a food stuff or non-food stuff.  And then the total based on that would tell you how you could use the food stamps.  Now because it is all computerized when they ring it up and the person says it is $90.00 and you have a EBT card, the lady will hit a key and it will say like $80.00 is eligible.  So they will swipe the card and it will take $80.00 off and the customer will have to pay the $10.00 for the dog food.  The dog food will not come up on the EBT stuff.  Question was asked was the EBT card limited to a geographical region.  Answer, No.  Anywhere in the country.  HOWARD asked will this stop them from using two carts?  You see that.  They have one cart with food stamp stuff and one cart sometimes with stuff that I can’t afford and they are going to pay for and then they go out and get into a fancy car that I can’t afford.  Mr. Bush said he was not defending them but as far as cars go, you never know who the owner of the car is.  You may have someone’s parents who say I have carried you long enough, you’ve got to do it on your own, so they are living across town and now they have to go shopping and Dad says here take the car.  You get your food and you bring the car back and if you scratch it you and I are going to tangle.  I’m not saying there is not fraud, but you can’t say looking at the car and also about two years ago Hatteras laid off 200 people.  So people went from making $60,000 to nothing so I don’t want to hold it against them if they qualify for food stamps and they show up with that year’s Silverado.  Up until that point they were working and they had actually earned it, so I don’t want to be one to say well for you to get food stamps, you have to drive what I drive, a 1998 Camry.

What he takes issue with, is you take Obamacare.  I am going to agree with you there is probably doing things wrong, but what I want to point out to you is that it happens under every administration, whether it is Democrat or Republican.  Because you have a lot of lobbyists that are writing legislation for both sides.  You have a lot of career bureaucrats  that are doing everything.  So avoid heaping everything on the figurehead.  For the job of President of the United States that pays $300,000 a year, I believe, (several said over $400,000 or close to a half of a million) what does that tell you? (Several discussed the issue further)  Mr. Bush said what he was asking everyone to do was point fingers at everybody.  Call a spade a spade, so when you say Obamacare, Romney is doing the same thing.  Call a spade a spade because as long as we on the ground (several interrupted).  The thing is don’t get comfortable when he leaves office.  Even if he wins the election, he is not going to be in office forever.  Democrats will not be in office forever.  Republicans will come in.  Like the Who song, Here’s the new boss, same as the old boss.  Do not allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security because you happen to like the person who is up there because you don’t know them …. more discussion by the audience.  Mr. Bush said the part that is frustrating is the way we seem to fall for it like sheep.  Not just college or high school dropouts, but people with doctorate degrees, just as foolish, just as easily led, just as thoughtless, it is scary.  When he went to Vanderbilt, he thought Vanderbilt was this ivy league school, I am going to be with the best of the best, the smartest of the smartest.  I started off in a community college by gosh I am going to be with some real smart ones now.  Not so.  There were some smart ones,  There were some brilliant ones.  But there were others, the rest of them, but what are you going to do, so you just turn to your books and do what you did to get you where you are.  As people get higher, there is an expectation to do more.  The frustrating thing is as an agency attorney in the Craven County Department of Social Services, we go through a hiring process.  You post the job and get all these applications.  People interview very well.  They present very well.  They put on their shirt and tie.  They give you this paperwork to show they are as bright as can be.  You give them a job and they can’t write a simple paragraph.  And they have the degree….with honors.  And you are looking at this…what school.  Just like when I was in the Marines and going through boot camp and I saw them throw some out and then when I see some Marines do something absolutely asinine and it is obvious that it was not a bad day, that this person is just a pure idiot, I’ve going ’how did they get through, how did they not screen them out at the first base, how was this person able to wear the uniform.  It is not enough for the media to say ’Ex-marine shot wife and buried her in the back yard’.  No, no, no, how, who’s letting it go on.  Same thing with government.

A member of the audience said he gathered Mr. Bush was from up north.  How did he end up in Craven County.  Mr. Bush said the police didn’t look for him here.  (Laughter)  He said his car broke down, the police helped him opposed to arresting him, so he decided to stay here.  Seriously, the Legal Services Cooperation of North Carolina gave him an internship when he was in law school and they put him in New Bern.

HOWARD said you are talking about people with a degree but no education.  Mr. Bush said no sense, just stop there. Howard said he saw in the paper recently where the UNC School of Journalism is going to quit teaching spelling.  No more education that I have, I see all these misspelled words in print and the grammar is wrong, punctuation is wrong; it has gotten to be pathetic.  Mr. Bush said ’it is. And we have computers that are supposed to correct and they can’t even do that right.  When I was coming up through school the big debate was like during the 70’s, and NASA and calculators were new, so there was this big debate about whether calculators should be allowed in school where kids could use them or not.  Now my kids are younger than what I was then and they are getting like the scientific ones.  So even in math, not just reading and writing.  Social skills, everybody is tweeting each other, they are not going to be able…their table manners are horrible, their social skills are horrible, manners, forget it, you know you just want to spank all of them when you hear them in a group in WalMart in a public setting you have older people there and if you are going to curse, have the decency to do it outside in the back, not in the supermarket where you are showing off how manly you are.  I have a problem with that.

ERIC asked Mr. Bush if he was a Democrat and he replied yes he was a registered Democrat.  To the extent we are taking sides, like we are taking sides in a super bowl, you know, like I don’t like Obamacare, which sort of implies you are in favor of what the other guy is doing and it is just as problematic.  Watch both of them.  Demand the best from both of them.  Make your Republican representatives at least hear you.  Make them come and speak to you.  The Democrats should do the same.  And they should do like you do, OK this guy is a Democrat, we don’t know who he is.  He is elected to represent all of us, let’s have him come in and say a few words.  If I become Judge, invite me back and I’ll come and speak, maybe less, but invite me back.  And if I don’t win, if I lose, you still want the Craven County attorney come in, I’m just a drive away.  It is a nice drive.  He said ‘Thank you all for your time.

EULA PARKIN told about seeing a van in the Lowe’s parking lot with a big sign that read “The TEA Party and Republicans are a greater threat to America than the Taliban”.  She said she was very insulted.  Several others told of seeing it here the night of the precinct meeting and another time here also.  It is shameful.

BOB read an announcement of “Meet the Candidate Norm Sanderson, who is running for NC Senate 2” which is going to be April 14 from 12:30 to 3:00 at the vacant field at the corner of Hwy 24 and Broad Creek loop Road across from the fire department which is by Mike Lawrence Electric.  Free hotdogs and lemonade.  Hosted by Jennifer Hudson and Tim Buck.

HOWARD said we were all aware of the beautiful colorful brochures that Randy Ramsey is putting out.  Norman Sanderson would like to be able to get out one if he can raise the money for it.  He does not have the money right now.  So any amount you can afford to help him out, will be greatly appreciated.

BOB said he understood they had a fund raiser last week in New Bern at Mark Chestnut’s house for Randy and raised he thought he heard about $20,000.  He had all the car dealers and attorneys there.  RUTH PARKER said but he won’t come and talk to us.  BOB said we have sent an invite.  ERIC said Randy had responded that he would have lunch with BOB and ERIC but did not have time to meet with the group.  BOB told him we vote as a group and the group deserves to hear him.  Randy told them he was not able to make arrangements to meet with the group.

BOB asked NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, for a Treasury Report.  She said we have $1600 in the bank.  BOB wanted to know if she ordered those TEA party signs.  She said yes.

BOB introduced Butler Bennett and wife Ann who had met with us a couple of years ago.  He came tonight to thank the TEA Party for what they do.

Mark Mansfield, who is running for school board and spoke to us at a previous meeting, was with us again tonight, as a participant in the group, not campaigning.

BOB said there were four voting places for Early Voting:  Fort Benjamin Park in Newport, Davis Volunteer Fire Department, Davis, Western Park Community Center, Cape Carteret, and Beaufort Square Shopping Center, Beaufort.  Early voting starts April 19.  We need people to man each polling place.  Newport appears to be well covered, but concerned about Davis and so far only EULA has volunteered for Beaufort.  If you can work it in, please help out.  Where ever you plan to work you need to contact the judge at the polling place and ask where you can set up so you will be legal.  It has to be 50 feet from the entry way.  We have signup sheets for every day of the week.  BOB said he would be the roving patrol.

HOWARD said he had gotten a tip that they were going to have a fund raiser for Randy at the end of Front Street in Beaufort.  That new boat place, sponsored by the ‘What’s in it for Me Party’.  BOB said he can’t repeat some of the things he has been told about Randy, but he feels we are fortunate that we did not jump on his band wagon.  There is going to be some real ugly stuff coming out later on, he is afraid.  HOWARD said he has had a couple of phone calls on some of the stuff on Randy also.  BOB said we do not want this guy in the Senate, that is for sure.  HOWARD said ‘if he won’t meet with us now, if he gets elected, do you think he is going to  meet with us then’.  BOB said he thinks Randy believes he can raise enough money and with advertising, he doesn’t have to meet with anybody.

BOB said we do not have time tonight, but next week we are going to go through the TEA Party ballot and the folks that we are going to put on our ballot.  He has worked the wording on it to say the ‘Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots believe the following candidates best support the TEA Party principles of Limited Government, Fiscal Responsibility and Protection of the Free Market’.  We have been trying to get as many candidates in here as possible to talk to us. It was decided that we would only list one candidate per office and the vote would be secret.

There will be a Republican meeting Thursday night (5:30 to eat), at Ribeye’s Steak House in Cape Carteret.  Guest speaker will be Mike Bietter, North Carolina Secretary of State candidate.  Many of the candidates will be in attendance.

Saturday morning (7:30) there will be a ‘Meet and Greet” at the Emerald Golf Club in New Bern.

Meeting adjourned at 8:00
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MINUTES OF
2 APRIL 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:03 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by CLAYTON GILLIKIN
Invocation by NANCY BOCK

BOB asked NANCY to tell about how she broke her arm.  CLAYTON said he heard she got caught stealing Randy Ramsey’s signs.  NANCY said ‘No, her dog pulled her down.  She wasn’t paying attention (while walking two dogs).  She has 5 more weeks to go in a cast.

BOB introduced Mark Mansfield, who is running for a seat on the Board of Education, District 3.
Mr. Mansfield thanked SCOTT CARPENTER for inviting him to come tonight.  He said ’I strongly believe in fiscal responsibility.  I am an independent business operator.  I appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk to you tonight.  I believe in education.  I believe we need to maintain the quality of education in our schools in Carteret County while simplifying fiscal discipline.  I believe education is an investment in our future, however; I think everyone should scrutinize their investments and privatize their goals.  For those of you who do not know anything about me, I married my high school sweetheart, Jane Lewis Mansfield and we have three children.  I played basketball here at West Carteret High School when we won the State Championship.  I went on to University of North Carolina at Greensboro where I played basket ball and got a Batchelor of Science Degree in Nutrition and Concentration of Restaurant Management.  I am a realtor, a real estate investor, and a business owner.  I have been affiliated with the Dairy Queens here in Carteret County and we have locations outside of Carteret County (up to ten at one time).  I like to think I am capable of running a business.  I understand budgets.  I understand the value of a dollar and at the end of the day, if I don’t meet my budgets I am going out of business.  I have been doing this for over twenty years.  My opponent is a good person.  He was actually a PE teacher when I was here at West Carteret High School.  I think he is a great guy and that makes it hard sometimes when you run against somebody and you don’t really believe that they believe in or you don’t really like them, then it is easy to say bad things.  I don’t have anything bad to say about my opponent.  He is a really great person.  However, there are currently four people on the Board of seven from the education field.  At this point in time I strongly believe that five would be too many.  (Applause)  You hear catch phrases and terms all the time today, you hear a lot in the media, we need more transparency in our county government for the citizens and for the County Commissioners to understand what the needs are at hand.  I think that with somebody who can communicate and share their knowledge and help shape the future, education is where it all starts.  Without a good education we would not have the proper guidance we have here today.  Nobody wants to live where there aren’t good schools.  We wouldn’t have the doctors we have in our community, the lawyers we have in our community.  It is an important integral part as we all age to have people come back and take care of us.  We need to learn to meet doctors, lawyers, nurses, engineers, maintenance, being able to fix the roads, and take care; but the main thing is I am a business operator, I do believe in a strong fiscal background.  I don’t believe in spending more money, but by the same token, I sell real estate and I am not going to drive around in a 1972 Oldsmobile station wagon.  There are certain things I have to invest in to do my business, whether it be a new ice cream machine at the Dairy Queen or whether it be a new computer at the office.  I recognize the fact that we do have to spend money, but I do think we should scrutinize how we do it.  That is pretty much my thoughts.  Any questions?  I will do my best to answer them.’
ERIC BROYLES said ‘Over the last several years the school board has submitted budgets that exceed the cost of living.  For example this year the budget was 10% more than what they had before even though the cost of living has been established overall as around 3%.  What is your opinion of the fact that the schools are requesting more than the people here got raises.  Mr. Mansfield said ‘The answer to your question is a tough one.  Not being an elected official, not being privy to some of these closed meeting sessions, I don’t know that I have the correct information to answer your question.  Sometimes, and I don’t know what their situation is now, and obviously we have come through hard economic times in the past five years.  We have all deferred some expenses or eliminated things we have had to.  Sometimes you defer maintenance areas.  If you under fund things sometimes and don’t do maintenance, it’s pay me now or pay me later.  I don’t know if that is gamesmanship and they are asking for 10% and they are only wanting to get 2 or 3.  But they feel that if they only ask for 2 or 3, they are going to get cut 5.  I don’t know the answer at this time but I promise you that once I do have those numbers.  That is the transparency I am talking about.

ERIC said the reason he was asking the question was right now 42% of the students are getting some type of nutritional aid in reduced lunches.  That to him is a clear indicator that we live in a community who is of lower income than general.  If you discount Atlantic Beach, Pine Knoll Shores, that strip out there, you will find out that 55% of this county is classified as lower income.  Anytime you raise taxes that has a deep impact on most folks, especially the 42% that can’t even afford their own lunch.  That is why, if we support you, we would like to think we have a fiscally conservative in there that will try to control this out of control budget, the school has every year.  Mr. Mansfield said he would only be one of seven, so he didn’t know how much control he would have, but you would certainly have a voice.  On the flip side of what you are saying on the 55%, we are very fortunate that we do have people that are second home owners who do pay taxes here, especially that island.  They probably pay about half, I’m not sure it might be more, and they don’t use any of the services so we do have one of the lowest tax rates in the state.  However, you are correct the people who are receiving some sort of assistance, we are a low income.  We get penalized at the state level and we need to fight for more money, because we don’t get some of the state funding we are deemed a rich county; because we are fiscally responsible with our money, which I don’t think is right.  I don’t think you are going to find many business people that aren’t, you know (some of my friends call me thrifty, my wife calls me tight).  I am the President of the Carteret County Association of Realtors.  They sent me to a leadership summit up in Chicago.  They reimbursed me for all my expenses for the trip.  When I flew into Chicago O’Hare you have to take a cab downtown.  It is about a $50.00 cab ride.  I could have gotten a cab and ridden down town, paid the driver $50.00 and $50.00 to come back to the airport and turned in my expenses and got paid for them.  Instead I rode the train down to the main station and then took a cab to the motel and it cost me $10.00 each way.  It wasn’t my money, but I treated their money just like it was my money.  If I am elected, I will do the same thing with you.

HAILEY HULT discussed how it is the school’s personal responsibility on how the money from the county is handed out. When she was in school their teachers met as a group and decided that instead of taking bonuses or raises, they would apply it to the school.   And that is how they got new computers, and a lot more technology than what the school could afford.  She wanted to know if Mr. Mansfield had any experience in the school system itself.  Mr. Mansfield said he had received checks from the Carteret County School system for about 10 or 12 years now.  He has coached high school basketball.  As he had said he went to college on a basketball scholarship and who knows where he would have ended up without it.  Basketball paid for his education.    He has come back to Carteret County to try to give back to the schools the same opportunity they gave to him.  Right now he does not think it is the county’s responsibility, however he thinks we do fund part of the school system.  He thinks the state is not operating correctly and wastes too much money.   Now, unfortunately teachers are suffering, haven’t had raises in 5 or 6 years.  He doesn’t think that is right.  Hailey said she had heard some things about him, but not actually his being with the schools.

HOWARD GARNER said he didn’t know how aware of the system Mr. Mansfield was, but the school superintendent submits a budget to the county commissioners and how he is going to spend it.  But once he gets his hand on that money, he doesn’t have to spend it according to that budget he had submitted.  We have been going to several commissioners’ meetings and some board of education meetings recently.  A certain person does a whole lot of rug dancing.  Mr. Mansfield said it was hard to talk about hypotheticals and not knowing, and with the rug dancing you are talking about, I’m not sure I have the correct information or the citizens, and that is the need for transparency.  HOWARD said he did not know that he would be able to get that information.  The commissioners can’t.  Mr. Mansfield said that is why he was not running for county commissioner.  He was running for school board.  That is why he is here, and why he is running.   He does have kids, one who is in college, the business school here, one is in the first grade and one in the ninth.

CLAYTON said you were talking about maintenance a while ago.  East Carteret High School’s first class was in 1965, he thinks.  The school people submitted a budget each year for a certain  amount of money for maintenance at East Carteret.  This amount was included every year in the budget.  He graduated from East in 1975 and as far as he knows, or anybody can find out, there was never or very much money spent on East Carteret maintenance.  After being involved in politics for several years, he went to them and asked them where all that maintenance money that had been allotted been used.  He was told it had been spent on other schools.  He asked why it was spent other schools, when it had been delegated to East Carteret.  He was told that other schools in the western part of the county needed it worse than East Carteret did.  Mr. Mansfield said again he didn’t have any information but at least if he sits in that closed meeting he might learn some things.  Funding for the schools come from three different sources, the federal, the state and the county.  The state actually has access to that checking account.  They can actually take funds out and can put funds back in without permission from the board of education.  He said he could add real well, and you can play shell games and move things all around but it is still income and expenses.  Right now, not having information, just like you don’t have any information, I can’t sit here and promise you anything.  I can promise you that I will go in with an open mind and try to see what needs to be done, but by the same token, I don’t want to tell you and misrepresent.  I am not for gutting the schools of Carteret County, but I am for spending your money very wisely.  CLAYTON said, getting back to what that young lady was asking a while ago about his experience with the schools, he personally did not want anyone on that school board connected with the school system, whatsoever; because they are going to ask for everything they can think of to get for the school system.  Mr. Mansfield said that is what he was saying about everybody has an agenda at some point.  His agenda is being able to make an educated decision to protect the citizens of this county; but not sell ourselves short or shoot ourselves in the foot.  You can be penny wise and pound foolish.

JERE GEURIN asked if Mr. Mansfield could ever think of any reason why the school board (or public servants) to ever meet in closed meetings or close that meeting to the public.  Mr. Mansfield said he didn’t know whether he could know until he got in there and found out what they were talking about.  He could think personnel issues, contracts, something of that nature that shouldn’t be or where it could hurt the county itself and expenditures, but he did think there should be more transparency for the citizens and for the county commissioners, because if they actually knew what was going on, maybe they would feel more comfortable about the money.  Maybe they feel slighted or cheated, and he doesn’t know if that is how they feel, but that is how it appears by what he reads in the paper.  He thinks somebody should be able to sit down and talk, communicate and be reasonable.  He thinks he is a pretty reasonable guy.

Hailey said the reason she asked about his experience with the school system, she feels that people her age will feel more comfortable voting for him, with him having experience with the school rather than someone who doesn’t.  Mr. Mansfield said the position on the school board you will be looking at contracts, budgets, maintenance, personnel.  However, he probably could teach but they are not going to ask him to go into a classroom and teach a class.  Hailey said she was just concerned about if he had any idea about what goes on in the schools.  Mr. Mansfield said he had been volunteering since he had returned to the county from Greensboro.  He coached  before he even had kids.  He coached Tball teams and sponsored Tball teams for the Dairy Queen, coached soccer teams, before he had children and coached his own kids teams.  He coached in high school before his kids were even near high school age.  He can make more money flipping hamburgers at Dairy Queen than what he makes from the school for those four months that he goes and teaches basketball.  He has a license so that he can drive the activity bus.  He has been in the school system.  He sees the things that go on but he is not a part of what goes on out there.

BOB said part of the problem that we, here at the TEA Party, is with the school board; there are too many teachers on the school board.  We don’t feel that the school board knows enough about the budget, how to read a budget, and how to sort though all the numbers and stuff like that.  Basically, right now, they are just rubber stamping whatever the school superintendent says they are going to do.  He just steam rolls right over the top of them with piles of numbers, figures, facts, and carries it right off.  We need someone with a business background that can read a budget and not be so entrenched in the school system that they only look at the problem from that perspective.  That is why we would like to see more business oriented people on the school board.  ERIC said he thought it was a conflict of interest to have more than one teacher on the school board.  That has been part of the issue.  They are just rubber stamping stuff.

ERIC asked ’What is your position on ‘for five years the quality of education that our students get, based on the ABC scores and AYP scores, reading has declined in most schools.’  For example, last year, only 5 schools out of 16 made adequate yearly progress.  The year before, 16 out of 16 made it, and in 2007, 10 out of 16 made it.  What can you do, if you are elected, that will improve this situation.  Not adding teachers, because he feels they already have enough teachers, it is 11 to 1 ratio right now.  What can you do from your perspective to improved the quality of education.  Mr. Mansfield said, ‘one out of many, I’m not sure exactly how much one person can do totally to improve the school system.  You can take numbers and just as you have seen in the past, you can get them and make them look what you want (a lot of things).  On reference to your test results, he is not familiar with those test scores, but he is familiar with those the state has mandated over the past five or six years, and has put such an emphasis on EOC’s (end of class or end of grade) testing, where they placed a ton of our money and the teachers are pushed to teach those tests.  So where they may excel on those tests now, and not do as well on the tests you are talking about may have something to do with it.  He doesn’t think we should waste money on a test if it is not needed.  The state mandates certain things you are required to do at the county level and obviously the federal government mandates some things that you have to do at the state and county level.  A lot of them are unfunded mandates and we all get stuck.  ERIC said the reason he raised the question was this county has made a big commitment dollar wise; we are number 12 in the state in the amount of money the county gives to the education of a student and while we are paying a premium price for education, and we are standing there with our hand out like this, there is a problem.  Mr. Mansfield said he was not so sure about this, but he would look into the problem.  He can tell us right now, the amount of kids, and he has served on the scholarship committee of the Board of Realtors last year when they gave ($16 or $60, not exactly sure of amount he quoted) worth of scholarships, there was a child from East Carteret High School that got accepted by Duke University and that is an extremely prestigious university to get into.  We have had numerous students from this county go on and go to outstanding schools.  We have some smart, very qualified people in this area.  BOB said he read an article in the Carolina Journal this morning and out of the 50 states North Carolina is ranked 42nd as far as spending per pupil and we are 45th as far as scholastic achievement in the states.  So that doesn’t necessarily mean that money equals education because I think that Washington, DC has the highest per capita per student, and one of the worst scholastic achievement rates.  But do we need to spend more?  I don’t know.  We are 42nd out of 50 states as far as spending per student.  Our state house of representative Pat McElraft was here last week and the last budget or the current budget we are operating under now, in the state of NC, in the money they set aside for the schools, was included enough money to hire and fund 2000 more teachers.  And yet, when the money came down to Carteret County we wound up losing teachers and teachers aids.  So what happened to that money that was supposed to come down from the state so we would not lose teachers.  This goes back to Dr. Novey, he can just take that pile…..Mr. Mansfield interrupted with he would have to investigate that.  ‘When you start talking about… because of our finances in our county we are deemed a rich county.  So we get less state funding than Havelock or less federal funding because a military base is hard in Craven County and Onslow County so there is some dollars we are not getting here.  We probably could get more of those dollars but I can’t sit here and honestly  tell you what I am for…you know the money is going to come from somewhere. I’d rather it not come from, I’d rather we get it from the federal or state government.  But I am for spending less, but that doesn’t mean that I am for axing education.  Right now I’ll tell you you can go to the board of education and get all the numbers in the world you want and go spend a day with a teacher in the class room.  Like you say, the money is being shifted around.  I don’t know where it is going.  That is why I want you to elect me so I can find out.  When you were in school I guarantee you took a book home with you.  Today they don’t have enough books, they can’t all take books home.  They share books, they check out books.  Teachers spend their own money, who haven’t had a raise in 5 or 6 years, and go buy paper to run off stuff to give students stuff to do.  We raised I don’t know how much money by the real estate association to buy back packs, pencils, and all these things to help fund that, to help make out a difference.  The community does have some responsibility and we all do have individual responsibility but I can’t tell you what I can do until I get there.  That is the unfortunate part.  I have never been involved in politics before, never really had any desire, but for the same questions you are raising, the only way to get the answers is to step up and do something.  I am willing to volunteer my time.  $300 a month isn’t going to pay me…..I’m just here to let you know that I agree and understand your concerns and I would like to try to make a difference.  Whether I can; I am going to be one of 7.  I am a very honest person, and I believe in what I do and I don’t want to stand here and lie to you and tell you that I am going to go do something and then not live up to my promise.  I’d rather under promise and over deliver.  (More discussion along the same lines followed.)  Several in attendance thanked Mr. Mansfield for coming tonight and especially to the ’new’ young people who came out tonight and joined in the discussion.  We appreciate your concerns and involvement.  Invited them to come back to future meetings.

Mr. Mansfield was asked if he had any questions for us and he said he hoped we liked what we heard and understand that he is not promising anything…a golden parachute or anything like that… He promised to work hard and will try to get the most for our money.

BOB told him that we have another group of TEA party members that meet in the western part of the county the first and third Tuesday of the month.  They are meeting now…their meetings don’t start until 7:00.  He has already called KEN LANG ahead of time that you might be down there tonight.  So if you would like to head on down there…It is 10 minutes to 7:00.  He then gave Mr. Mansfield instructions on how to get to the community building where they are meeting tonight.

Discussion on who our group is going to sponsor.  It was decided and we were in agreement that we would support Sam Sanford’s “We Care” project with the same distribution for us as we had done with the Wounded Warrior’s project…$4.00 for each T-shirt we sold.  The reason for the change was we found out that the head man of Wounded Warrior’s was receiving a 6 figure salary, so we decided to change our support.  JERE GEURIN spoke on the We Care Project for those who are not aware of what the project is.  ’Sam Sanford is a retired Lt.Col.  He was a special forces guy, green beret, served in Viet Nam, Panama, and many other places.  Many of our members here tonight have helped out with this project.  We assemble and pack care boxes that go to our troops in Afghanistan.  Each box is addressed to a First Sgt over there because when you send something through customs that box has to be addressed to an individual.  We cannot send it to a First Marine Air Division or any organization.  We have to send it to an individual.  We get those boxes, we pack them with stuff that is donated and a lot of stuff that Sam buys out of his own pocket.  We put in there tooth paste, shaving cream, deodorant, magazines, books, trail mix, candy, coffee, and all kinds of goodies for these guys to eat.  This goes to guys in remote areas.  These are people that cannot get to a base exchange or post exchange to buy things that they need.  It makes their lives just a little bit more comfortable.  For example, a couple of weeks ago, we packed up something like 125 boxes.  We carried them to the Morehead City Post Office and asked people who came to the post office to please take one or more boxes into the PO (they are all addressed and the customs forms all made out) and mail them.  It costs $13.45 postage to mail each box.  100 boxes would be $134.50.  That is a bit much for Sam to have to undertake.  He already spends, JERE said he would estimate about $500.00 per month out of pocket getting stuff to send in his little warehouse to mail at the next mailing.  The day they took about 100 boxes to the Morehead City Post Office and they did not do very well that morning.  They only got about 20 of those boxes in the mail.  Yesterday they went to Newport and got about 50 in the mail.  This morning they went to the Swansboro Post Office where they were received by the clerks and post master there just like we were old friends.  They put the rest of the boxes in the mail today.  Sam plans to pack again a week from tomorrow, Wednesday morning.  If you are interested in helping out let JERE know and he will explain where to go and when.  Normally he sets up in the warehouse, forming tables in a “U” shape and puts all the stuff that is going in the boxes on these tables.  We assemble the box at one end.  People pick up a box.  They fill it and take it to the other end where someone seals it and it is done.  You can also support Sam by sending him money, because most of the boxes that we mailed today were financed by people who came by and gave us money.  If you have any kind of organization that meets, Sam would like to attend your meeting and explain to you all about “We Care”.  It is a great mission.

BOB gave NANCY BOCK the address to where she could mail the check.  He asked her for an accounting on where we stand financially.  NANCY said we have $1637.00 and we are obligated on the T-Shirts for $308.00.  She wanted to know if that is what we want her to make the check for to ‘We Care’.  BOB wanted to know how we were doing on shirts.  She had bought some recently so we are in pretty good shape right now.  SCOTT wanted to know if we were going to have a Tax Day Rally on the 15th or 16th of April.  BOB said we had put if off for too long a period and now did not have the time to get one organized.  HOWARD said he thought now that our time would be better spent to go to that meeting in New Bern on the 14th.  (Discussion on which meeting he was talking about.  There is one on Monday the 16th as well as one on the 14th).  It is the one at the Taberna (correction – Emerald Green) County Club from 9:00 to 12:00.  GLADYS said that was a different one than she was talking about on the 16th.  HOWARD said supposedly they were going to have all three of the State Senator candidates there.  Whether Randy Ramsey is going to show or not, we don’t know.

ERIC said since we are not going to support the Wounded Warriors anymore, should we not come up with another design on the back of our new shirts we order promoting “We Care”.  BOB said we will need to find out how much that is going to cost us to change the logo.  Find out is there is a set up fee and how much.  The logo for We Care is shown on the card BOB gave NANCY for mailing the check.  BOB asked about our printer of shirts and what NANCY’s contact with them on the situation had been.  She said she had been talking to them about the other Warrior (Hope for the Warriors) project and he said the logos were almost the same, that they would not need to change it.  We might want to get something generic so we can support whoever we want to.  Many at the meeting felt that since we are going with “We Care”, we should change the logo and Sam’s logo is absolutely beautiful and eye catching.  JERE said he would recommend that if we are going to support We Care that we contact Sam and ask him what he would like for it to say.  BOB asked “Do we want to change the logo?”  Discussion followed.  BOB decided to get NANCY to get a price to have the “We Care” logo produced and put on the shirts and what it would add to our bottom line as opposed to what we already have set up to run the current ones.

DAVID COX reported that he had ridden up to Washington on the bus with the group that is putting up the billboards and he was very impressed with what all they have going on up there.  He wanted to know if there was any way we could help them, he would like to.  BOB reported that we had already given them $400 to sponsor a month on one billboard.  We sent the money in January.  DAVID said they are doing some great work there.

BOB asked if anyone had heard about the Super Pac that was going to come out and run ads against Walter B. Jones.  There was a good article in the Beaufort Observer about it and a long letter about the Super Pac(but he couldn’t remember the name of them).  They were expressing that the incumbents have about an 86% election rate.  In the 2012 election the incumbents have all the benefits when running for election because they have all the pac money, the party, envelop franking privileges, etc.  This creates an arrogance of incumbency where they do not feel they are responsible to the voters anymore.  They can just vote however they feel and that becomes more and more evident the longer they are in office.  They get where they feel invincible so this Pac (is not running a campaign for Palombo) but are running their own thing on the side However, it is going to end up benefiting Frank Palombo because he is the only one that is challenging Jones in the Republican primary.  He was talking to Frank Palombo about this whole thing and he feels there is a whole other issue.  He said to watch for the news on Thursday.  There will be a big story coming out, a big media event, but he couldn’t tell what it was about.  He was bound by whatever and couldn’t share the news.  Latter part of next week, around Thursday, maybe Friday morning look for something pretty significant in the news.  Frank shared with BOB a poll that his organization paid for (to do a campaign poll costs a lot of money).  They polled voters within the third congressional district (approximately 500 likely voters) and they asked them about whether they would vote to reelect Walter Jones or not.  He scored a 46% which according to the pollsters is very good.  Then there was a series of eight questions that followed and each question dealt with different pieces of legislation that Walter Jones either voted for or against.  They would ask the question like ‘would you vote for Walter Jones knowing that he voted for the financial reform act (the Dodd-Frank bill).  It would go down the whole list of 8 questions like that and then at the very end they would re-ask the first question again.  Rephrasing “knowing what you know now about Congressman Jones’ voting record how likely would you be to vote for his re-election.  On the second go-round he scored a 29% which anything under 30% means you are going down.  Frank said the whole gist of that poll showed a real softness out there for Walter Jones and it is really all about voter education.  Getting the word out to the voters so they understand that Walter Jones is not the conservative they think he is.

STEVE talked about the prayer rally in support of the Marriage Act, that will be held the same day as our April 17th meeting, in Swinson Park.  He has yard signs and bumper stickers for anyone who would like one.  They think it will last about an hour and half.  They have speakers they are trying to get lined up to come out.  BOB asked if the churches were pushing this from the pulpit.  STEVE said some are but not very many.  Most are afraid to do anything political.
Some are opposed to the amendment because they say it is a hate the gays.  The pastor of Open Door preached about it two weeks ago to vote FOR the amendment.  He has a yard sign in his front yard and plans to put a sign on the church sign also.  A church in Pellitier is way on board.  Their church is doing a lot of stuff.

BOB  introduced Kirby Smith, who is running for judge.  Mr. Smith spoke to us a couple of weeks ago.  He said he appreciated us letting him speak to us again for a moment.  Two weeks ago he was appointed to fill the remaining term of Judge Jerry Waddell on the District Court bench.  That is through December.  He still has to run in the election on May 8, and if he survives that, run again in the election in November.  He told us when he was here last time that he wanted to keep coming back and he wants to keep that promise.  He really wants to keep it when he is a judge.  He is going to be sworn in next week in New Bern on April 12 at 3:00 and you all are invited.  He spoke at length here last time and during his talk to us tonight repeated much of the same information.  He said he loved coming here.  He had spoken at another TEA party meeting and someone came up afterward and apologized for all the hard questions they had asked.  He said he loved the hard questions, it was the easy questions he did not like.  Everyone hits the easy questions out the park.  It is the hard questions that show your mettle, what you are made of and how you think.  He asked everyone to go to his web site to find out what he has done and keep up with what is going on in his campaign.  He makes changes almost every day.  He wants to be approachable as judge.  While he can’t discuss cases, he still wants the contact with the people.

BOB said since the last time he was here, and now that he was elevated to the position of judge, and since we have already heard from the solicitor general arguing before the supreme court, where would you fall on Obamacare and why?  Judge Smith said ‘Oh, my goodness, he would have to quote Justice Scalia when he said 2700 pages – you expect me to read that?  He does not know how they got 6 hours of oral argument in three days.  Normally, you get one hour of argument per case.  He has never heard of this before.  There were several different issues, and he has to be honest with you BOB, he has not been tracking it.  He has been busy with his campaign.  He was not trying to duck his question.  RUTH PARKER said ‘let her ask it to him this way – does the government have the right, through the constitution, to tell us what we need to buy…what we can drive…what we can eat…what we can think.  It is out of control.  Judge Kirby said he agreed with Ruth.  He went on to discuss the bill of rights…what they put in them and what they left out.  The 10th amendment of the US Constitution ‘all powers not relegated to the federal government are reserved for the states.’  It has now been relegated to relatively nothing.  He went on to discuss the Civil War.  He feels it basically was not fought on the issue of slavery but what the Civil War did is (in his opinion) it brought in the era of big government.  The Civil War basically established that we will have a dominate federal government and subservient states.  Because when the states tried to leave the federal government came in and said no.  There were other things that flowed from the Civil War.  BOB said are you trying to blame big government on Republicans?  Judge Kirby laughed and said he hadn’t thought about that.  The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments.  If we say these are the rights … are we saying that is all of them?  Are there more?  Are there less?  Some people did not want to put any bill of rights in there because they were afraid of limiting the rights.  In answer to your question, Ruth, no, it is expressly not in there.  And what Justice Scalia’s argument is, he is the true strict constructionist on the Supreme Court, who, in Judge Kirby’s opinion, writes articulate decisions.  He says if it is not in the Constitution, the solution is simple, then you amend the constitution with what you want in there.  Someone in the audience said he thought Ruth’s question was, ’did he think Obamacare was Constitutional or not…the mandate….is that constitutional?’  Judge Kirby said ‘No, he would be shocked if the US Supreme Court said it is.’

Discussion on DUI’s, levels of offenses and levels of sentencing.

ERNIE GUTHRIE asked Judge Kirby what did he have to offer compared to Mr. McFayden?  Judge Kirby said he did not want to talk negative about his opponent; but he will quote Ronald Reagan when he was debating Walter Mondale….”I don’t want to use my opponents youth and inexperience against him’.  He said he had 20 years of practicing law and that is what he brings to the table.  He has tried and prosecuted every type of case that he can think of.  (He said he hates to say that because someone could raise their hand and ask if he had ever prosecuted such and such a case, and he might have to say no, but he thinks he has covered most of the bases).

Judge Kirby thanked us for our attention and said he always liked to come and talk with us.  Several in the audience thanked him for coming back and said he was always welcome.

BOB talked about the Young Professionals Group (formerly Young Republicans) starting to die out.  He has mentioned it to the Republican Men’s Club and they are discussing incorporating them into the Men’s Club.  He said he would like to see someone like JAMES LAWVER be assigned as Chair of the Young Professionals, but they would have to see what is going on with the current leader.  We had a good group of young voters with us tonight and he would like to see them get involved.

EULA PARKIN wanted to know if you had to be a Republican to belong to the TEA Party.  Didn’t we want any Democrats to join with us?  BOB and several others said we would love to have good conservative Democrats to come out and join us.  If you can find some conservative Democrats, bring them on down.

HAILEY HALT said her mother had been trying to get her to come to the TEA Party meetings; that she (her mother) had been trying to get a group organized in Stella, but so far had had no luck.  Her mother went to the Republican conventions.  BOB asked who her mother was and HAILEY said Jessica Halt and BOB said he knew her.  HAILEY said her mom had also worked with the Young Republicans for a while.  HOWARD said we have a couple from Stella who are very active but are at the TEA Party meeting in Cape Carteret tonight.

BOB asked WES KRAMER where he was from and WES said he was originally from Onslow County.  He went to White Oak School.  He has been living in Las Vegas for the last five years.  He just moved back.  BOB asked if he was working or still in school.  WES said he had just picked up a job at Piccato’s and was hoping to get into Coastal Community College in Jacksonville.

BOB asked ERIC WILSON where he was from.  He said he had lived in Morehead since 2005.  He lived in Newport before that.  He was a West Carteret High School graduate.  He got involved with the Fire and EMS about four years ago and that was also his entrance into the medical world.

BOB asked STEVE BEST how old he was and STEVE said 4l.  BOB said he did not look it, he looked a lot younger; but BOB believed the Young Republicans ages were 18 to 40.  At least that is what it was back when he was one of the five original members that started it, back in 1980.  He was all enthused with Ronald Reagan and he left the area in 1983 to go down to Florida on Marine Corps orders and when he came back in 1986 those young Republicans were all too old.  The group just fizzled out.  You young folks, you are the future of the country.  He had been to a bunch of TEA Parties and rallies and when he looks around, most there are about the same age as he is.  He is now 64.  Some here are a little bit older.  EULA said she was the oldest.  BOB said, ‘are you older than HOWARD?’  EULA said she was 85 and HOWARD said he was 77.  She said when she was in school the desks were screwed to the floor.  The first mistake was when they unscrewed the desks from the floor.  Until then there was respect, discipline, and you didn’t have the kids saying, ‘well, my momma’s going to sue you.’  Talking about the education system going down, it is television, computers, cell phones, and all these little games they play on hand held instruments, and the parents who don’t have time.

Several stories were told about school situations and how they were handled.

BOB adjourned the meeting at 7:55 pm.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS
MINUTES OF
MARCH 27, 2012

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
Attendance – 33

BOB recognized our guest speakers here tonight:
Pat McElraft – House of Representatives for Carteret County and Jones County (no
opposition in the Primary but will have in general election, Libertarian
Rike)
Dave McFadden – candidate for District Court Judge (running against Kirby Smith and
Bernard Bush)
Larry Land – candidate for County Commissioner, District 3 (opposition Terry Frank)
Harry Taylor – candidate for County Commissioner, District 5 (opposition Elaine
Crittenton)

BOB introduced Pat McElraft to speak to us first.  BOB said anytime Pat showed up to one of our meetings, it made us feel like we were accomplishing something by getting the attention of those who matter.  Pat said we had her heart.  She reminisced about the first TEA Party rally we had at the Flea Market fair grounds that she attended and it was just amazing to see all those people getting involved, and the passion about saving this country and that is what it is all about.  We start at the town level, county level, and state level, and all do our part.  Without the TEA Party, this whole sleeping giant would not have awaken…so Thank GOD for the TEA Party.  She  came by today just for us, to answer any questions we may have, or discuss any subjects we might want her to talk about.  She would like to go over some of the things they did this year.  ‘It has been 140 years since the Republican party has been in control of the House and the Senate or really Conservatives have had control over House and Senate.  They had one Unaffiliated who became a Republican at the end and was part of their caucus on the right.  For the first time they had total control over the House and Senate.  Everyone said they had a 3 billion dollar hole. It is not a good time for you all to be going in, you are going to be blamed for everything.  We went in and we filled that hole by cutting; and going in and looking at and doing zero based budgeting, (not strict zero base budgeting) but looking at every department and seeing where they could cut; instead of raising your taxes.  The easy thing to do was what our predecessors did for years and years was going and raising your taxes.  You need more money you just raise taxes.  When it comes out of your pocket; what does that do to the economy?  So what we did this year is put 1.5 billion dollars back into the economy of North Carolina by lowering taxes!  We did that by lowering corporate tax to bring more businesses here, because we had the highest corporate tax rate in the whole southeast and almost in the nation.  We did that by cutting the three quarter cent sales tax out, which the governor is still trying to get.  We put that money back in your pocket.  The average that meant for each NC resident was about $200 per year.  That is significant in people’s pockets when they are having to pay these gas prices today.  On the House side, we also have voted to cap the gas tax.  Now it goes over to the Senate side and they are going to do that in May.  They promised us they would do it before it goes up again but they are going to look at it in totality to find out what can we do.   When the wholesale price of gas has gone up then they penalized you more by having a higher gas tax.  That needs to stop.  We need to have a flat amount each year for budgeting and not worrying about whether gas prices go up or down.  So they are looking into it, but the main thing they are going to do is cap it like it should have been done.  The House did it at the very end and the Senate did not have the time to take it up is what they said.  They are going to do that for you all, they promised this year.  Some things that really help with businesses coming in to the state of North Carolina (not just businesses but people building houses or whatever) is regulatory reform.  We did a lot of regulatory reform this year.  We went out in six areas of the state that had public hearings about how you felt about over regulations penalizing you or your business.  So we have regulatory reform in that it says ’no regulation, if there is a federal regulation for it, the state of NC can not be stricter than the federal regulation.’  The businesses are loving that.  It is helping them a lot.  Of  course it was vetoed, but we overrode the veto.  Governor Perdue came down into my district and said it was all my fault the sulfur smelting plant was going to be here because I was for this regulation reform.  It had nothing to do with the sulfur smelting plant by the way.  We also have a 50 thousand dollar personal income tax deduction for active business income for 450 thousand small business owners.  So if you are a small business owner your first 50 thousand dollars of personal income tax will not be taxed.  (Applause)  We also took the cap off charter schools so that will make it more competitive for our public school system, so get out there and do a good job in educating the children.  We also gave tax credits for children with disabilities, so they can leave the public school and go out – example, if they are deaf children, they can go out to where they can be best helped for their disability.  That will be parental choice, and we figure about 10 to 20 percent will leave the public school system.  The tax credit is exactly what we are paying to the school system, so it is not costing the tax payers any more money.  It is doing a good thing for children with special disabilities.  House Bill 588, this one you’ll love, it requires public schools to teach a semester in high school entitled ‘American History, the Founding Principles’.  And it has to include ‘creator endowed inalienable rights of the people in the law, equal justice under the law, private property rights, federalism, due process, individual responsibility‘.  That is going to be taught in high school now.  (Applause)  You know we wrote House Bill 2 to take North Carolinians out of the individual mandate and it was vetoed.  It came back over and we had to do a political maneuver to have one of our members vote against the override so the bill could stay active.  We have that bill for the override ready to go if they have a few members.  On the Senate side they can override anything.  On the House side we need four Democrats in order to override any vetos she has.   We did it with the budget, we did it with regulation reform, and some other things, but Voter ID and House Bill 2, the health care thing, they did not go with us.  We are waiting until some of them are absent and we have those bills ready to go.  On property rights we repealed the land transfer tax.  They can not do the land transfer tax in any county any more.  Property land owners rights – we protect those with House Bill 762 and we reformed the involuntary annexation law.  There were a lot of red shirts, just like you guys, came up to the Legislature for annexation reform and there will be no more forced annexation without a vote of the people.  So that is a good thing.  A lot of people said you need to take care of the economy thing and leave the social issues alone.  Some of you may have that same philosophy, but we thought a lot of this was very important to do, so we went ahead.  Amendment 1, be sure and go out and vote for or against, whichever you feel, the Marriage Amendment.  That is very important to us because we are the only state in the south that does not have that in our constitution, that marriage is between a man and a woman.  So it will be up to you to go out and vote on May 8.  Whether you vote in the primary or not, you need to vote whichever way you feel about Amendment 1.  That will then become a constitutional amendment.  Then it will take more than just a judge to decide if North Carolina is going to allow same sex marriages.  It should be a vote of the people, not of the judge.
ERIC BROYLES said several states have passed something like we are doing.  What is going to make our state stand when some of those states are being challenged by the courts.  Pat said she did not think the constitutional amendments were being challenged. (Short discussion)  Pat said if Federal makes it a part of the Federal Constitution then that can override what we decide.  HOWARD GARNER said Obama has spoken out against the constitutional amendment.  BOB said California had a referendum but did not amend the constitution.  Pat said right now we do have just legislation to have marriage between a man and woman in the state of North Carolina, as do many other states have it in their legislation.  Now it actually takes a vote of 2/3 of the people to remove it from the constitution, so it is best if we can get it into the constitution, we are safer then than we are now.
Pat continued ‘The other thing the unborn victims act, we were the only state also in the south that didn’t have a pregnant woman who got killed and her unborn baby got killed also, (in North Carolina it was only one murder), until we had House bill 213.  We finally got that bill through after trying for 6 years to get it through under the other control.  We were able to get the “Unborn Victims Act” back in there.  (Applause)  We also got to choose ‘life’ license plates and then what happened, it went to Federal Court and there is an injunction on it cause they said we didn’t have a pro-choice one.  But they could have put a pro-choice one in if they wanted to, but now the courts are going to decide that.  The other thing there is a 24 hour wait for informed consent for a pregnant woman before an abortion.  Only the ultra sound part of that is in court right now, but everything else is already.  I was a primary sponsor on that bill.  (Applause)  BOB said he had heard that had saved 2200 abortions.  Pat said ‘We have fiscal research on how much is this thing going to cost,  a fiscal analysis, (even the people in the Fiscal Research Department were so against legislation, that they wrote that we were going to have to educate all these 2000+ children.  It was going to cost the state $17 million a year to have these children born.  We thought that was so ridiculous so everybody kinda said forget that.  This is only 10% of babies aborted every year in NC.  This is not taking away abortion rights, it is to allow a woman to have all the information, to hear and see an ultrasound, before she makes that important decision.  We estimate that about 2200 women will change their mind and these babies will be born.  I am very pro life and I hope I do not offend anyone here but I have always been and will be pro life.  You can either fire me or hire me, but I will always be pro-life.  We did a lot of other things but I felt these were the hi-lights of things you all might be interested in.  Any questions?”

KEN LANG said it was more of a comment, because he was happy to have you guys still pushing that Voter ID thing.  He heard on the radio today coming over here that there is an ID requirement now for taking the SAT for high school students.  That they have to produce an ID
card now, because of all the problems that have been taking place.  So now you have to show ID for almost everything you do, including taking the SAT, except vote…and we can’t get a Voter ID law.  Pat said, “It makes no sense.  And we are just one of a very few that don’t have a Voter ID law.  But they are fighting it big time here.  It just makes no sense at all.  Most people, both Democrat and Republican want to show their ID when they come to vote because they want to make sure that their vote counts.  It is very frustrating, but if we get a few people absent we can override that veto, so we keep it on the calendar, every time we go back into session.  When we have a skeleton group there, everyone of them show up on the other side, because they were afraid we were going to bring it up again.  The only problem is they ask for per diem too, so they tell them they are not going to get per diem when we only have a skeleton crew since this is to save the tax payer money, so you can come and sit if you want to but you are not going to get per diem for it.”  She told us she had some North Carolina Constitutions if any of us want them, she will be happy to bring them to us, but after Amendment 1, they will probably need to be reprinted.

FRED DECKER asked if they did anything on that E-Verify stuff.  Pat said, ‘We did, we have an e-verify law that says (it’s not as strong as what Rep. Cleveland wanted) but we got that the businesses need to check for legal status.’  ERIC wanted to know didn’t the business have to have so many employees.  Pat said ‘Yes, I think it is 50 or more employees.’  Someone said they thought it was 25.  Pat said it might be 25, she was not sure.

BOB said the 3 core values of the TEA Party are Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government and Free Market Capitalism and everything Pat had talked about tonight about the accomplishments of the Legislature fits at least one of our values.  As long as you folks in office keep pushing in that direction we’ll keep you up there forever.  We understand that we have to be taxed, this stuff ain’t free out here.  We just want our taxes spent smartly and not wasted.  We don’t want to keep throwing money to the education system just for the sake of throwing money at it.  We would like to get North Carolina off the bottom of the heap there and take the burden of taxation off businesses; that will help NC grow more than anything.  He wanted to thank Pat for all that and to tell her fellow legislatures we are behind them and keep on keeping on.

ERIC said he understood she was going to talk briefly on how the money is parceled out to the schools.  Pat asked “With the lottery money?”  ERIC said not necessarily just the lottery money.  For example one county may get $15 thousand and another $5 thousand.  Pat said ’It is based on the tier system and Carteret County is considered a Tier 3 because of our tax rate.  You get punished in the Tier System that’s for economic development and for the way we give capital money, lottery and all, to the schools.  Because , here in Carteret County, we have a low tax rate, we get punished for it and they say it is an effective rate because we have high values, so we really don’t have low taxes.  They’re probably lower than a lot of other beach communities or whatever, but the problem is we get punished for it.  To change this will probably be hard.  We need to find at the county level some other way to work on that.  It is already in legislation that the Tier System is set up for economic because you have poor counties that cannot afford sometimes and quite frankly with the lottery, most of the money is made from the poor and in those poor counties they don’t have money for schools and things like that; so when they set up the lottery I think their idea (not that I would have voted for the lottery, but now that we have the lottery, it is going to be hard to replace it is the problem.)  The money needs to go back in that tiered way to the lower wealth counties and not necessarily their tax rate because that doesn’t really tell whether they are low wealth or not.  Someone can set a real high tax rate and not be a high or low wealth county. Because most of the lottery tickets are sold in the poorer counties, then they should get a bigger portion of the lottery money because they really and truly are the ones paying for that (the lottery).  ERIC said, they can’t educate the kids but can afford to play the lottery.  Pat said, ’That is the problem with the lottery’.  She even sees it here in Carteret County (and she occasionally plays the lottery and says she is supporting education, especially when it is over $100 million.)
BOB asked if she would be available after the meeting in case some of the other members may have questions.  Pat said ’Sure, she would be glad to stay.’

BOB then recognized Clifton Rowe, candidate for District Court Judge, who spoke to us a couple of weeks ago.  He arrived to our meeting after the other guests had been recognized.  He said he was running against an incumbent and would not be on the primary ballot.  He just wanted to stop by for a visit.

BOB then called on David McFayden to talk to us.  Mr. McFayden said he would not take much of our time.  We can talk and ask questions afterwards but he was honored to be here tonight.  He said “I am David McFayden.  I am running for District Court Judge for the position that was opened up when Judge Jerry Wydell retired.  I just want to tell you a few things about myself.  I am proud to be the only Republican and certainly the only conservative in the race.  I have never really been a political person.  It has never been a goal of mine to be a politician.  In that I mean that I am not the kind of person who likes to be the center of attention.  Hey, look at me, look at me.  I think that type of person doesn’t make a good judge and that is my personal opinion.  I am not that kind of person.  I tend to think a good judge is like a good referee or umpire at a sporting event.  If you leave a sporting event and all you talk about is what that referee or umpire did, then he probably did something wrong.  He probably did something to make himself stand out.  What I can promise you as a judge is very little, and Clint will agree with me on this, I can’t stand up here and tell you that I can reduce your taxes or work on the school board.  What I can tell you about myself is that I will be fair and firm on the bench.  I will be as protective of your constitutional rights to the extent I can be from the court bench.  I will be a conservative judge for you.  There is no question about that.  I am from New Bern.  I have been married for 13 years and have an 8 year old son.  I will protect your rights as best I can and be a good conservative judge for you.  I do have a primary on May 8 (early voting starts on April 19) Clint is lucky enough he can go straight to November and he doesn’t have to deal with this primary.  I do have 2 opponents in the race.  One is Kirby Smith and the other Bernard Bush, both Democrats.  You probably read in the newspaper or heard on the radio or TV that Mr. Smith was rewarded by Beverly Perdue for his long financial and commitment of time to her over the years.  I will tell you that the only thing that does in my race is make me want to run harder to win.  It means I am going to need your help just a little bit more because now Mr. Smith can tout himself as sitting judge.  (Temporarily, I hope)  But I am going to need your help.  I would love your vote, and love your support.  If there are any questions, I will try to answer what I can.  Clint will probably agree with me we have a hard time with policy questions.  The code of judicial conduct keeps us from certain questions, but I will try my best to do what I can for you.  Thanks a lot for letting me be here tonight.  I am honored and look forward to your vote hopefully on May 8.  Thank you.  (Applause)

BOB asked Mr. McFayden what made him decide to run.  Mr. McFayden said, ’I will try to make this brief.  When I was younger, I was fortunate enough to be in elementary school when my father was in law school.  So I was exposed to him learning to be a lawyer.  He bought or gave me some older law texts and I started reading them.  I had decided early on that I wanted to be an attorney, early in life and that is the goal I set for my entire life.  After he became District Attorney and we moved back to New Bern, I was also again fortunate enough that on some Sunday nights when he would go to the office to work and catch up on some of the work of the week I was fortunate enough to go with him to the old court house building in New Bern.  His office was downstairs at the time, and I would often take my homework.  I liked to read the newspaper and I would take the newspaper or I would take some of those law texts or find something in the courthouse to read.  I would usually end up upstairs in the superior court room in the judge’s chair.  Since I knew I wanted to be an attorney, obviously it was interesting to me to think about what a judge might do.  And sitting in that court room, I’ll tell you, you look at all those empty seats being filled with people who maybe a victim, or someone who is looking for justice; somebody whose liberty is possibly getting ready to be taken away or any number of people in that audience and you realize the impact that a judge can make.  It was then, as maybe a 12 year old boy, I decided that if I was lucky enough to go to law school and become a lawyer, that I eventually wanted to become a judge and serve the people.  It has just been a goal of mine.  I did not want to be a District Attorney.  Trying to follow in someone’s footsteps is not a good idea.  But deciding to become a judge, I think that I have the personality and I’m not trying to pat myself on my back but I think I have a pretty good personality and temperament, one that will lend itself to be a good person who is able to stay in the middle of things and hear the facts of the case and use the law that Clint and I are given to deal with in District Court every day and make a decision effectively.  I think that was a long round about way on why I wanted to be a judge.
ERIC asked what was his view point…should a judge just administer the law and go by what the statutes are or should he create law?  Mr. McFadyen said, ’A judge’s job is to take the rule of law, take the facts, like he said, apply the facts, and put them all together, and make a decision.  Legislating from the bench is one of the most poisonous things that we can have in this country.  When you have folks who get up on the bench and think they are going to take a situation and bend the law, or create, or go around their elbow or something to mold the law as they like it, I do not think anybody is treated fair.  It is the way I run my practice now.  We have a book of laws, and you stick by that book.  The legislation makes the laws and send them to us and we take the facts of each case and apply those laws.  I tell you that is the type of judge I will be.  (A couple of questions were asked (one about any American citizen can be detained without trial)).  Mr. McFadyen said, ’Unfortunately I would tell you that is something I can not give you much of an opinion on.  That problem may not appear before me but there might be some type of trickle down and I do not want someone in Raleigh to find out I am answering questions on policy.’ Another question was asked ‘on selecting judges to get a ruling you are looking for‘.  Mr McFadyen said, ’I can tell you that from the moment I launched my campaign I have not gone to the folks I think wield the power in the defense bar, because I won’t be beholden to any individual or special interest group.  I see the damage that that does to our district courts right now as a participant. I sympathize with you on your problem.  I hope that if I am lucky enough to get elected that I can help make things move along more freely and be someone who is not beholden to any one person in a law firm or lawyer or special situation.  Thank you so much again for inviting me tonight.

BOB said Pat mentioned Amendment 1.  STEVE BEST has a number of the yard signs FOR the Marriage Act.  He has some in his car, so if you are interested in displaying one in your yard, and bumper stickers also, please see him after the meeting.  FRED said we need some of them to put out at the polls where you vote.  We will need enough for 4 polling sites, Davis, Newport, Election Office and Western Carteret.  STEVE said he would have them available.

BOB then called on HOWARD GARNER to introduce our next speaker.  HOWARD said he had a tale he wanted to tell on him first.  ‘This cousin of mine, he told me, it may be a lie, I don’t know, (Walter Guy).  Well Walter Guy was fixing to go to a farm auction and Walter Guy believed in dressing to impress when he went off like that.  He goes by Harry’s and Harry is out in the field on his tractor, so Walter pulls up and asks Harry to come on and go with me.  Well Harry’s kind of dirty and all after just climbing off the farm tractor, but he agrees to go with Walter.  At lunch time they are lining up for their meal and Walter Guy is talking to this man and Harry is close enough to hear what is being said.  Walter Guy asked the man ‘you don’t need another farm hand do you?  I’ve got one over there that I’ve got to let go.’  The man looked at Harry’s plate and said ‘I don’t know, it looks like he eats a lot.’  HOWARD said, ‘I have known Harry Taylor since he was a teenager and that is slightly after Columbus came to town.  (BOB said and you were an old man then.  HOWARD said, ‘No, I was a young whippersnapper.’)  Harry has farmed and logged all his life.  He has worked; he has made money.  I was with the Department of Agriculture back in the 50s and 60s when it was all a farmer could do to survive.  We got hurricanes year after year, prices went to nothing, but expenses didn’t go down.  Harry hung in there and he fought and he has been very successful as a farmer and logger.  I think you have all heard me say that once someone announces for office I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to what they say, I go back and look at the track record.  A track record tells you what somebody is going to do, not what he is promising you.  Harry did not call me.  When I saw in the paper that he had filed, I called him and said I hope you win.  I believe that if he is elected County Commissioner that he will do what he can to try to look out for our money.  I give you Harry and let him tell you.

Harry said, ’It is kind of hard to follow the speakers in front of me.  I’ve known Howard a long time and if you see him walking slow today, there was a time when he could out walk anybody in Carteret County.  He worked for the Soil Conservation Service when people had to work for a living.  I didn’t graduate from but one college…the college of hard knocks.  When I was 18 years old, I told my daddy I was going to get married.  He said ‘well son, I want you to have good luck and I am going to give you something.’  And I said, Daddy, what in the world are you going to give me?  He said I am going to give you this whole big world to make a living in…and I started off.  He stopped and acknowledged EULA PARKIN, since he thought she was the only one in attendance tonight from his district (5).  Question as to what made up District 5. (Beaufort, Sea Gate, Mill Creek and part of Newport.  He continued, ‘I understand you have already had the lady running against me to speak with you.  I don’t know her, but I am sure she is a good person.
Anyway, I sat down and wrote a few things about myself last night.  I had to be a true conservative because I was raised on a farm.  I have a little bit of a record that I don’t think many people have.  My granddaddy started farming in 1861.  My granddaddy, my daddy, me and my two sons have never worked on a public job.  We have never drawn the first dollar except for farming.  I have been fairly successful.  Everybody has been good to me.  The good Lord’s been good to me and I have tried to treat people like I want to be treated.  I do not have any ax to grind with this job.  The only reason I decided to run is because I want to help the people of Carteret County.  I feel like I can help them by tending to their money.  It is not the County’s money, it is you folks’ money.  You are the tax payers of Carteret County and I promise you I will never make a quick decision on anything I do.  I’m not a yes person to just raise my hand.  I raise my hand for one thing, if someone asks me if I am a believer, I will raise my hand and I won’t think about it.  But to make quick decisions to vote to do this or that, I will never go in a back room and agree to any capital improvement without the taxpayers of Carteret County approving it.  I don’t believe in spending a whole lot of money without the taxpayers having their say so.  I would like to thank everyone for asking me to come tonight.  Some of you know me, but for those who don’t these are a few things about me… As I have said, I am a farmer, and proud of it.  I own some real estate (not a whole lot but I think I have done 15 subdivisions in my lifetime).  I am no stranger to hard work and I know what it is like to meet a budget.  I have always had to work with a budget.  I have never been able to spend my money and take it and do this and that.  I have overseen and worked a lot of people/labor in my farm.  I have always been interested in County government and now that I have time, I feel that it is my responsibility to take an active role in planning the county’s future.  This is my home and a very special place but I want to make it even better.  I am a fiscal conservative and I pledge I will be as careful with your tax dollar as I am with my own.  I will not agree to any capital expenditures without taxpayers approval.  This county belongs to you, the people who live here and pay the taxes.  I believe you have the right to vote on how you want to spend your money.   If elected, job creation will be a top priority for me.  Eleven percent unemployment is unacceptable.  Even those lucky enough to be employed are struggling.  I live out on 101 and people go to work at Atlantic Veneer, Parkers, and in the morning you see them come in with $5.00 to buy gas just to go to work.  You know those folks are struggling but they are trying to work instead of going down to the Welfare Office and draw food stamps.  They still want to maintain their dignity.  The two top manufacturing companies (Bally Refrigeration and Atlantic Veneer) employ less than 200 people.  Social Service has 105 employees.  Now that tells me that job creation is critical in this county.  More jobs could certainly reduce the dependency on public assistance.  I want to lower taxes, as you know, but we must reduce our spending also.  I believe we can cut spending and still provide good services.  Perhaps you know the county pays rent on various departments.  There is not enough space in the court house, but I would like to consolidate offices everywhere possible.  Instead of paying a whole lot of rent, (I don’t know if you all know how much the county is paying for rent right now or not, but it is a lot).  And so this makes me think of the school property in Beaufort.  We have a nice big building sitting over there vacant.  It has been sitting there for years.  Instead of using a building that belongs to the county we go down the street and pay thousands of dollars and rent office space.  I feel it is essential that we improve our school system.  Our children deserve every opportunity for success.  I also want more protection and enhancement of the environment.  The tourist industry and fishing industry are dependent upon it.  There is a difference between the wants and needs in my book.  I believe in giving school kids a good education.  I have two grand children in school now and I believe in giving them a good education and what they need.  But I don’t believe in the school rooms having a whole lot of assistant teachers sitting in the school room, which is spending a whole lot of money.  I want to give them what they need but not what they want.  I am concerned about public safety.  I’ll work with the DOT to have a stop light installed at the intersection of Hwy 70 and 101.  At 4:30 of an evening you can set there for 10 minutes.  The reason they gave for not putting a stop light there was ‘no body has been killed there’.  So we have to wait for somebody to get killed before the state will put a stop light there.  It just doesn’t make good sense to me.  I want a strong effective government that works for you.  I welcome your thoughts and ideas.  We can make a difference.  Again, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you all and I will spend your money very conservatively.  (Applause)

BOB wished Mr. Taylor luck in the upcoming primary.  He is running against Elaine Crittenton.  Harry said he did not know the lady but he understands she works for the hospital and he is sure she is a very good person.  BOB said we are not choosing sides on this but we have given each an opportunity to come and talk to us so we each can make up our own minds.  He asked Mr. Taylor if he would be speaking at any other event.  Harry said he would be talking to the League of Women Voters, who had called him today.  He did not know the date right now.

BOB said our final speaker is Larry Land, who is running for District 3 County Commissioner.
Larry said, “Thank you very much and thank you all for being here.  This is what this wonderful country is all about…people like you all that have enough interest to come out on a really pretty spring afternoon.  I am sure there are other things you had rather be doing but you are here, showing your interest in government and our freedoms.  Thank you very much and pat yourself on your back because that is very important.  I am Larry Land and running for District 3. I have been a resident of Carteret County for over 25 years.  I was born and raised on a small farm in Dallas, North Carolina which I am certain was a lot smaller than Mr. Taylor’s farm.  But I did hone my work ethic in that environment.  I started my business career the day after I finished my last exam at NC State where I earned a BA degree in Economics and I have been working ever since.  My most recent business experience was here in Carteret County with Acme Moving and Storage (Allied Van Line Agency) where I managed about 40 employees at the high level.  It was fairly seasonal and I can tell you, I do know how to make a payroll.  Sometimes it is easy and sometimes not so easy.  I have been married to Lynette Land for 25 years and we have 4 daughters and we were just blessed with our first grandchild (I have some pictures if you have time)…a mighty fine looking young lad that I went up to see in Raleigh.  Lynette has a dress shop which she has had for many years.  I have been involved with small businesses all my life.  I spent 35 years in the chemical business where I managed 25 salesmen and that is a real job right there.  It is like having 25 children.  My involvement in the community includes being named Libertarian of the Year in 2004 for humanitarian services.  I am also an active member of the Salvation Army Advisory Board which gives me a lot of experience in a lot of areas of the county.  I have stayed abreast of county government for the last 10 years.  I have been attending County Commissioners meetings for 10 years on a fairly regular basis, not regular, but fairly regular.  I have been chairman and vice chairman of two of the appointed boards (the Equalization Review Board which is a tough job, and the Harbor Authority).  In that capacity I have worked with numerous departments within the county government, the finance department, the county manager’s office, engineering department and the tax department.  I know all these people and I mention that because this is a pretty important county commissioners election.  We have 3 veteran commissioners retiring.  All with 8 years experience. Excluding Mr. Taylor, I can tell you that I have more experience in county government and more knowledge of county government than anybody else running.  To the best of my knowledge, my opponent has never attended a County Commissioner’s meeting.  I have been to many.  I was at the last one.  I think that is very important.  In these economic times, as Mr. Taylor said, it is really important to know the needs and wants.  With my varied business experiences, I know how to make a budget.  I assure you I will keep your tax dollars as low as possible, being sure that every dollar is spent or not spent wisely.  Again, I think this is a very important election because we have these 3 guys retiring and I would appreciate your support and I do ask for your vote.  Do you have any questions?  (Applause)

BOB said he had a question for both running for county commissioners.  One of the biggest issues is ‘jobs’.  Bringing businesses down here and creating jobs so that when our kids grow up, go to school, can come back here and find a place to work.  What do you think would be the best way of bringing jobs to this area.  Mr. Land said he thought regulations were a problem (and that would be Mrs. McElraft’s issue) of trying to alleviate some of the regulations at the state level.  We can also as a county make it more friendly for businesses.  When asked in what way did he mean.  Mr. Land said Well, one thing is the sign ordnances.  It is crazy around here.  Building permits and inspections, etc.  Because we are surrounded by water here normally you have to get CAMA involved in any business you are going to do.  I think our economic council needs a shot in the arm.  I don’t think our economic council has many things to hang their hats on.  They should be more active and successful than they are.  Mr. Taylor said ‘environmental issues…a lot of times people would come and try to start a business but it is very hard for them to get permits since we are so close to the water here.  I know we have to have regulations.  Everything has to have a certain amount of regulations but sometimes I think we are over regulated.  Have any of you started a house.  You go to get your permits.  You think you have them all.  The next day someone comes to your job site and says ut oh, you can’t start, you have to go back, you forgot a certain permit. I believe in regulations but I don’t like to have persons hurt because of them.  They are needed to ensure things run smoothly but as Larry said, this county needs some business.  I want to say something about our community college.  Everybody says we can’t find anybody to work because they do not have the skills…what it takes to work.  Many of our kids can not afford to go to college because of the cost it is today, I fully support our community college to help kids learn a trade, so they can get a job in this county and stay here and pay taxes in this county without having to go off to another area.

HOWARD said he heard in the last couple of weeks that Rick Perry ran for governor in Texas promising a 4 year college degree from a community college for $10,000.00, total.  He said people laughed at him, but he had been able to deliver.  Sounds too good to be true, but if it is true, why can’t we do it here.  Another problem and Pat is going to have to take care of it…North Carolina licenses twice as many professions as South Carolina.  I do not feel a bit safer here than I think the people do in SC.   I think there are a lot of things you have to have a license for that are ridiculous.  Pat said that is a part of the regulation reform they are looking at.  We have over 300 boards and commissions that the state pays per diem for that we are cutting in half right now.   Some of them have not met and they still have to have staff  to take care of  things, so there is a lot of stuff we are doing.  Another thing they have looked at is cell phone charges.  Do you know that in one department they had 300 employees and everyone had a cell phone.  Not only did they have a cell phone but they had a data plan which cost $150.  They can just go get a data plan and charge it to the state.  It is totally out of control.  We have started scaling back and if you did not have a field position and you were where a land line was, you did not need a cell phone.  We are not going to pay for it, or let you drive your state car home any more.  So there is a lot of stuff like that that we are looking into.  We just took down corporate income tax and we would like to take it down some more.  We have some of the highest in the southeast for businesses.  Last budget cycle, they actually put a tax on your taxes so if you were a small business person paying at a personal rate rather than a corporate rate then you had to pay a surcharge on top of  the taxes you were already paying, but we cut that out this year.  We’ve only had one year, just watch us, if we get back in control, we can keep going.  Otherwise, we will go right back to tax and spend.  HOWARD told Pat ’you did good this year, just keep it up.’

Harry said he would like to make another observation about the farmers and fishermen being over regulated.  ‘Everybody sees how the fishermen are being regulated out of existence.  It has completely killed the fishing industry.  I had a fish dealer tell me his truck was stopped coming from down east, and one of the fishery men jumped on the truck trying to find a fish that was not passable on the truck.  He found one fish and charged them a $250.00 fine before he would let the truck proceed.  I raised a lot a cabbage and potatoes.  We were very careful not to use anything that was against regulations.  The state inspectors would come out, cut the potatoes and cabbage, test them for pesticides, to see if there was any trace of anything that would hurt anybody.  I was never fined anything.  The regulations that we have that the state imposes on us.  Look what it has done to the fishing industry.  I remember when people used to go oystering, shrimping, and they caught plenty.  With all this regulating, there is nothing out there now to catch.  Go down to the North River bridge.  You see people there in cold weather with ice on their boots coming into shore.  There sits a dressed up fishery guy with a state vehicle sitting there running with the heater wide open while he gets out a minute or two to go over and see if he can find an oyster or clam that is too small, so he can write him a ticket and come back over here to Morehead and say ‘look what I done’.   I justified my job today.  This to me is just unnecessary for poor working people to have to put up with all these regulations.  Harry told Pat he appreciated everything she had done for this county.  Pat said really the over regulating is coming from the federal government.  It is really terrible.  BOB asked why was it the authority for the federal government to come down here and issue regulations.  Pat said anything within  three miles of the coast was state, and outside that was federal government.  However, the state was guilty of over regulating also.

ERIC said the biggest expenditure for the county is the school system.  For the last several years the schools keep coming in with a 10 to 15 percent increase in the budget, even though the cost of living has only gone up 2 to 3 percent.  In this county about 50% is low income, unemployed, or retirees.  The only way we can meet the schools wants is to raise taxes.  How can we raise taxes on those individuals that can barely afford to feed their kids, cause we are already feeding 42% of them at the school system.   Mr. Land said he had been on what he called a learning tour on education because it is 67, 68% or even more than that of our budget.  He said he could not get good information.  (Much discussion arose from the audience about getting figures from the school board.)  He thinks we need to be putting more money into the school themselves rather than that building over on Safrit Drive.  He said when he went into office, he will organize a committee to enhance communications between the school board and county commissioners.  They have historically been at logger heads with each other.  He would like to see these committees meet maybe once a month and communicate and eventually establish trust between the two boards.  There is no reason for the school board to come in with a budget 15% higher than their wildest dream is and then the county commissioners have to cut the funding to a standard level or slight increase, whatever.  If there were trust between the two boards, I think it would solve a lot of other problems.  ERIC asked Mr. Land if he would commit to holding the line at only a 3% (or whatever the cost of living was) increase   Mr. Land said with the knowledge he had right now, he could not commit to that right now nor to only raise taxes to that 3% either.  Discussion on the renewal of Dr. Novey’s contract early,  All think the county commissioners should have a say in the renewal of the contract.  It is not right that the board of education, under the superintendent’s  power, should have the power to grant him another 3 year contract at tax payer expense.  Pat said they funded 100% of the teachers from the state level.  The problem that the Legislature created was that they gave the schools flexibility.  When you give the superintendent of schools flexibility they can take that money for those fully funded teachers and teacher assistants and they can then move it into the central office or wherever they would like to use it.  ERIC said we have also seen a decline in grades, and he thinks the legislature should look at some kind of evaluation maybe every 4 years to test the schools to see where they stand.  He does not trust the current testing system.  Pat said they are going to try to get away from the state test because we are comparing ourselves to the rest of North Carolina.  We are not comparing ourselves to other states or other countries, so we are trying to get into the core curriculum where we are teaching the kids the same thing and testing at the same level.  Part of the problem is teacher tenure because you can have a bad teacher that is tenured and there is no way to get rid of them.  That is a bad thing.  Most businesses usually get rid of probably 5% of their employees each year because of poor performance.  Pat said they have a priority now to look at merit pay for teachers.  It is going to be based on outcome base pay.

BOB thanked all of our guest speakers for coming in tonight and speaking to us.  It was great to meet them all and hear what they had to say.  To let everyone know how the TEA Party works: we plan on manning as many of the voting precincts as we can with a TEA Party table and we will have a ballot/TEA Party recommendation sheet which will basically say ‘The following candidates support the TEA Party principles’.  Election laws prohibit us from saying vote for this or that guy.  For example in the Senate race, we are not going to have Randy Ramsey on our list.  We will let the voters decide between Norman Sanderson and Ken Jones.  In other words we will eliminate the people we do not think support the TEA Party’s core values.  Harry, you and Elaine will both be listed on the ballot as supporting the values of the TEA Party.  I liked what you had to say tonight and I like what Mrs. Crittington had to say a couple of weeks ago; so the TEA Party, as individuals, will make their selections.  HOWARD said he had already had calls wanting to know when we were going to have our list available.  DENNIS TOMASO is going to type up the names and PEGGY will make up the copies to pass out.  KEN LANG will forward the information he has already accumulated to DENNIS for inclusion.

BOB said ERIC has been talking to Randy Ramsey’s people about having Randy come and speak to us and give us his side of the debate, and the lady ERIC had spoken to said she would get back to him in a day or two.  If he has not heard anything by Thursday, he will call her back.  The TEA Party has been attacked in the paper saying we should not make judgments until we find out what his platform is.  So we are offering Randy the opportunity to give us his side of the situation.  KEN said he had invited Randy twice on the radio with no response.  We have made every effort to hear his side.  Since he has not shown up at any Republican event so we could hear what he has to say, all we can rely on is what we have found on the internet.  KEN said he understood that he had accepted an invitation to the New Bern Republican Men’s Club and he would post the date on our website for anyone who wishes to attend.  It is April 14 and a breakfast meeting starting at 8 a.m. at the Emerald Golf Club.  The President of the New Bern Men’s Club called him and said anyone we have that wants to attend can go to their meeting and ask questions.  Randy has confirmed that he will be there.  FRED said the Republican District Convention is the 21st of April, but Randy has scheduled a ‘Getting to Know you’ down at the Newport Park on the 21st of April.  That tells you how much he cares about the Republican Party.

BOB announced that SCOTT CARPENTER is hosting an event for Terry Frank and Norm Sanderson Friday night, March 30th between 5 and 7 p.m. at Hammock Place Community Building, Brandywine.  You are invited to attend.
On April 1, Sunday, 5 to 7 a Meet and Greet at Blair Farms Club House for Terry Frank.

HOWARD said he was losing signs that we had put up.  Twice already they have been taken down from the intersection at Hibbs Road.  We were told that the first time they were removed it was by Bob Chambers.  It happened again yesterday, and we haven’t heard who was responsible this time, but according to the rules for putting up signs, they were legal both times.  KEN said if someone is taking your signs down, whether or not you think it is right for them to do it, (because you say this guy is claiming they are on government land), you should call the sheriff because it is illegal for them to take those signs.  KEN said he knew of about a dozen Norm Sanderson signs were put up on the causeway and during daylight hours, two men were going along picking them up and throwing them in the back of their truck.  Somebody confronted them and they said ‘what business is it of yours?’  The person said, ‘Because what you are doing is illegal and I am going to call the sheriff.’  They immediately went to the back of the truck and threw all the signs out on the ground and took off.  They were reported to the sheriff for doing that, but they had told the guy that stopped them, that they were paid by Ramsey’s campaign to pull up the signs.  If you see this happening you need to report it.

RUTH PARKER, ERIC, GLADYS and ED SUESSLE gave a report on the rally in Washington, DC this past weekend.  RUTH said the weirdest thing happened.  A young man came up to sing (it was Andrew Britebarts favorite song) and it was pouring down rain.  Everyone was concerned about the possibility of the boy getting electrocuted with his electric guitar.  About a minute into the song, it stopped raining, the sun came out, and when he finished his song it started raining again.  It was just so weird.

WAYNE WILLIS asked if anyone had received a flyer announcing Mammograms, and Bonemass scans can save your life.  Medicare must now offer them to you for free.  Call your doctor today.  No co-pay under medicare thanks to America’s new health care law.  It is from the Democrat National Committee.  They are doing this right now to over power what is going on in the Supreme Court.  He received the flyer by accident.  He does not know the person it was addressed to but it was put into his mail box.

BOB asked Clint Rowe if he would like to say a few words.  Clint said just remember his name when we went to vote in November.  BOB said remember ‘rowe, rowe, rowe your vote’.

Meeting adjourned at 7:30 p.m.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.

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