November

CCTPP Meeting Minutes, November 29, 2011

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
29 NOVEMBER 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by Chairman BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge was led by HARRY THOMPSON
Invocation by NANCY BOCK

BOB told the members that next week we were going to convene the meeting and then adjourn and all go over to the Community College, Joslyn Hall.  The John Locke Foundation is hosting a wind power work shop and Dr. Droz will be speaking as well as Daren Bakst and David W. Schnare. He asked HARRY THOMPSON if it wasn’t Dr. John Droz that he had talked about going to Raleigh.  HARRY said Dr. Droz was local and had spoken to us a few meetings back.  His passion right now is the hoax about ‘wind power’ that they are talking about putting up here off the coast.  It is a very expensive thing to try to do.  It is not efficient at all and it will cost lots more than what it costs to receive our electricity like we do now.  It is not only wind, but solar as well.  He has some really good presentations on his web sites and if you ever had any doubt about it, just read through some of those articles he has written and look up on the web site that he has put out there.  He has a slide show presentation that will just absolutely convince you.  Anybody with a half way open mind will understand this mess being touted is just a big joke.  BOB asked “What was this meeting in Raleigh Dr. Droz attended with the Legislature?:  HARRY said “Yes, he met with the legislators.  He had been invited by the  Speaker of the House, who had been informed by a member of the House, who had a friend that knew Dr. Droz.  Dr. Droz said they had about 100 people in the audience. They said he put on a good presentation there and the John Locke Foundation is using him now in conjunction with one of their presentations to talk about this subject.  He is fairly well known around the country and is getting better so.  He has done a lot of studying on this stuff.  Anyway, it is on Tuesday, December 6, he will be at Joslyn Hall at 7:00pm for a workshop presentation by the John Locke Foundation.  So if we can work it out so we can attend, he thinks we will find it most interesting.  HOWARD asked if HARRY knew Dr. Droz’s web site address.  HARRY said he could not remember right off the top of his head but he would get it to us.  HOWARD said he thought we should get it and include it in tonight’s minutes.  BOB said ‘it might be in the old minutes back when he spoke to us’,  but no one was sure of the date.  NANCY said we may have a link to it from our web site if anyone wanted to check it out.
JERE GEURIN spoke up and said ‘apparently we had forgotten that, for next Tuesday’s meeting he had arranged to have Dr. Mark Creech, Executive Director of the Christian Action League of NC come and speak with us.’  He wanted to know if BOB wanted him to contact Dr. Creech and try to get a different date.  Dr. Creech is scheduled to meet with various groups next Tuesday on the work of the Christian Action League, present a Legislative Update, and most importantly discuss the Marriage Amendment, which is scheduled to be voted on in May; and he had included us in his agenda.  BOB, at first said ‘yes’, but after considering, he changed his mind.  NANCY BOCK wanted to know how long JERE thought he would need for his presentation.  Maybe we could meet early, like 5:00 or 5:30 and if we left by 6:45 we could still make it to the Convention Center by 7:00.  JERE said he needed to know so he could let Sarah Bowman know, so they could adjust their schedule if needed.  HOWARD asked JERE what he thought about starting early.  Did he think Dr. Creech would need more time than say an hour or an hour and a half?  He didn’t want to cut Dr. Creech short.  JERE said he frankly thought the Marriage Amendment to the NC Constitution was probably more important, and more exigent than the wind mill issue.  The Marriage Amendment is going to be on the ballot in May and we need to know about it so we can tell other people what it is about and support it.  He knows it is outside the purview of the TEA Party because it is not one of the three main values.  Never the less it ought to be important to anyone who is a Christian or Conservative.  It is an important issue.  HOWARD said ‘Let me make a suggestion that we meet next week at 5:30, if no one has any objections, and we can tell Dr. Creech that we are going to have to leave by 6:30, so we will only have about an hour.  BOB said we could be out by 6:45 at the latest and still make it to Joslyn Hall by 7:00.  NANCY said since a lot of people are here by 5:00, why not start the meeting at 5:15 (until 6:45)  and that would give him an hour and a half for his presentation. Would that be more acceptable?  JERE said he didn’t know how much there was to say about the topics Dr. Creech would be talking on, but he thought that was surely be enough time.  HOWARD said the only thing that bothered him on the time was not how long Dr. Creech would speak, but there probably would be a lot of questions asked; since most of us are very interested in the amendment.  JERE said his main question was ’what do we say to people when they ask us about the amendment?’  He hopes this is one answer he will be able to give us.  HOWARD said it appears to him now, and he is not up on it like JERE is, but it seems to him that Christianity is under attack from every direction.  All agreed.  JERE said we have been under attack for many years and HOWARD said it is getting worse he thinks, isn’t it, or is he just noticing it more?  All believe it is getting worse daily.  BOB said, ‘well are we meeting here at 5:00 or 5:30’?  All agreed on 5:00pm.  BOB asked PEGGY to get the word out to as many as she could.  JERE said he would call Sarah Bowman tomorrow and let her know of the start time.  BOB said we would meet here at the Golden Corral at 5:00 for Dr. Creech’s talk, adjourn no later than 6:45 and reconvene at Joslyn Hall by 7:00 for the second half of our night.  JERE said if he could not work it out with Dr. Creech, he would call BOB and let him know.  BOB said he was hoping it would work, because he would hate for Dr. Creech to be here in town and we not be able to get with him so he would have to make a return trip just for us.
BOB wanted to know if anyone here heard ’Saltwater Catch’ on the radio today?  Chris McCaffity, (our local fisherman member) was on maybe an hour (or maybe a little less) being interviewed and he, boy, he just really carried himself well on that program.  Covered all the issues, sharp as a whip, expounded on some good ideas, and the moderator, Hitchcock, BOB thinks was won over by Chris and his knowledge and expertise.  Hitchcock had said he would definitely have Chris back on again.  He was very excited about some of Chris’s ideas.  Remember the last time Chris was here, he was talking about Governor Perdue asking for ideas from the public about how better to use state facilities down there, and Chris proposed a co-op fish house on Radio Island.  The co-op idea really got Bill Hitchcock excited.  He thought it was one of the most worthwhile ideas he had heard for use of the facility.  Chris’s passion really comes through when discussing the commercial fishing industry.  He is totally dedicated to his cause.  He has been to Raleigh and to lots of federal industrial meetings.  He is really involved.  PEGGY said ‘remember he had all those cards already made up, ready for mailing, the night he was here.  All we had to do was include a short comment if we wished, sign our name and address, stamp ’em, and drop them in the mail.  He was very organized she thought.  NANCY told about the big “blue fin tuna” (I think it was) that was huge, and it was taken away from a commercial fisherman by a government official because it was supposed to have been caught on a hook and line and not a net.  When the fisherman said he had never been told that (although he had all his legal papers to fish, etc.) and the official told him he was supposed to know.  You are supposed to know all the fishing regulations, before you do any fishing. GRACE GILLIKIN said a fish the size of the one the fisherman had caught was probably worth several thousand dollars, so the official saw money signs when he saw that fish; which is why he took it from the fisherman.  They may have had someone report the catch and that was why they were there waiting for him when he came into dock.  NANCY said she wondered if there would have been a difference if the man had been a recreational fisherman?  Discussion on the policy of having to throw anything, considered illegal to catch, back overboard to die.  It makes more sense to keep everything caught and consider number of pounds caught rather than number of fish caught.  It seems stupid for example: if you catch, say a red drum that is over 27 inches, it is illegal to have it, so you have to throw it back overboard.  Chances are the fish has been injured (or dead) from being caught.  So you have now wasted a perfectly good fish that could have been used for food.  BOB said it was a shame what they were trying to do to the commercial fishermen.  They are trying to drive them out (and are doing a pretty good job, it appears).  Now it looks like they are going to try to make game fish out of speckled trout, striped bass, and red drum and stop the commercial fishermen from being able to catch them.  CLAYTON  GILLIKIN said he used to be a commercial fisherman but the regulations got so ridiculous he got disgusted and quit.  He would set swing nets for flounders and if a crab got in the net and ate the belly out of a too small or illegal fish, he would take the fish, clean it right there in the boat, put it in his cooler and take it home to eat for himself.  Every week they would stop him just to find out what was in that cooler.  He told them to go ahead and write him up, he didn’t care.  He did not believe in wasting what GOD had given us to eat and use.  BOB said one of Chris’s ideas that he really likes is, getting rid of the size limit, instead use weight limit.  Instead of throwing all the by-products away, weigh your catch, bring it in where it can be used, instead of letting it all die.  GRACE said another problem is our fishermen are supposed to stay within a certain limit of shore; whereas the Japanese, and other countries are just outside the limits assigned to American fishermen and they are catching anything and everything and never throwing anything back.  CLAYTON said and the sad part is they are selling their catches back to us…catches that would be illegal for us; and our fishermen are sitting here starving to death because of all the regulations placed upon them.  BOB said he could not understand why anyone would want to destroy the commercial fishing industry.  What is the advantage.  Several said the recreational fishermen have the money to get the rules like they want and could care less about the poor fishermen trying to make a living.  BOB said don’t they have to abide by the rules like others, ie you can only catch so many fish (per species) a day?  CLAYTON said where a commercial fisherman has to abide by the size, for example, of a flounder and is not allowed to keep it under a certain size; the recreational fisherman can come along behind him with his ‘stupid stick’ and gig him.  The government does not want the fisherman trying to make a living get him; they want that idiot with his ‘stupid stick’ to have the honor.  The officials will not go out and check the recreational fisherman, but they will sit on the shore and wait for the commercial fisherman to come in with his catch.  CLAYTON said you can sit and watch those game wardens watching the shrimpers with night binoculars checking out where you can and can’t shrimp.  You let one of those shrimpers cross over that imaginary line (even with their nets floating) and they are on them like you would not believe.  How in the world can the game warden tell exactly where that shrimper is when the game warden may be a half mile away; but it is the shrimpers’ word versus the official’s and you can bet that shrimper will get a several hundred dollar fine every time.
HARRY THOMPSON said he had gotten an email today from the John Locke Foundation about the next session on the Constitution.  They had presented the first portion a few months ago that many of us attended. When HARRY  sent the information requesting their coming back for the second workshop, he had asked about Troy Kickler getting something set up for us in January.  Mr. Kickler told HARRY in the email today that  they were currently trying to make arrangements for January.  HARRY will let us know as soon as he hears something.
BOB said the last time we met we talked about having a rally or a fund raiser or something in the spring.  He said PEGGY brought up an idea before the meeting, that he thought was a good one, of assigning a committee to research, organize and coordinate the effort.  So, he was going to appoint HOWARD and KEN LANG to get together and devise a game plan for us, because we can’t seem to reach any kind of decision during the meetings.  We are like the house of representatives, doing more talking than acting.  HOWARD said he hoped they could do better than the super committee did.  BOB said he went down and looked at that Fort Benjamin Park and he thought it was quite a facility.
BOB asked STEVEN BEST if he had some kind of extravaganza going on at the cave for Christmas.  STEVEN said, yep, on the 18th at 5:00 (after all attending eat soup and sandwiches) they were going to show the movie “Nativity”.  That is on a Sunday.  BOB asked how the attendance has been there.  STEVEN said the first time was pretty good but the second was not as great.  They will have plenty of popcorn available on the 18th.
BOB called on EULA PARKIN for her weekly report.  Once again she asked how many had watched J’Had Watch today.  Only one responded yes.  She wanted to suggest to all that when we go home tonight look up J’Had Watch for today and you will be surprised, because, it is one of the best programs she has seen yet.  As you open it up, it starts right in with a presentation by this fellow named Bosth Bostom??? Who is a Muslim that speaks perfect English.  He talks about 40 minutes and then there is someone from England that speaks about what is going on in all the countries, including Africa.  There are several speakers, and you just have to keep hitting up on the pictures to bring up all the different segments.  They each run 30 to 40 minutes each.  The one that really got her attention was about the voter fraud of Al Franken.  It was brought out that there had been voter fraud in his election.  He was the one vote they needed for Obamacare.  Discussion on number of recounts they had before finally getting the vote the way they wanted it.  It was pathetic.
HOWARD said he didn’t know how many had gotten the email, but KEN did some research and in the 2012 election there are two commissioners and three members of the Board of Education up for reelection.  So we need to be looking.  He had made one contact today.  He did not ask for an answer right then, since the man needed to talk it over with his family.  (He has run against Cathy Naegle twice in the past and lost. HOWARD feels with our support, he just might win this time).  HOWARD said he had not thought about it until this morning when PEGGY reminded him that he had said he would check into trying to get a map that outlined the Board of Education districts.  BOB asked what was the map he had last week, and HOWARD said that was the County Commissioners.  He feels that the Board of Education district map may change also, but he wanted to know what the boundaries were now, anyway.  BOB asked was there the same number of BOE members as there were county commissioners.  No one knew for sure.  BOB said it would make sense to have one map of the county for everything.  You’ve got your federal districting, state districting, county districting and a Board of Education districting; then fire districts, voting districts, etc.  HOWARD said he had made several calls, hoping to find someone who could help him get a copy of the map.  He had called the Board of Education office and the lady who answered said they were all out (and that was 9:00), but she would have someone call him when they came in.  She did and the lady who called gave him a number to call, (the tax office).  He then asked to talk with a friend who worked there that had helped him in the past.  The info had to come from the GIS Department at the tax office, and his friend was going to go over and try to get it for him, but PEGGY had checked prior to us leaving today and it had not come in yet.
BOB said he had been talking earlier with RUTH PARKER and she said the Iranians had taken over the British Embassy today.  BOB said does anyone know what brought this on?  Someone’s understanding was that the British were friends of the Americans and therefore they wanted the British out of there.  Discussion on whether or not we have an American Embassy there now.  Decision was that it was closed.
HOWARD asked if anyone was keeping up with what was happening in Richmond.  The TEA Party requested that (since they had had to post bond and pay for  permits, etc, to hold their rallies there, and the OWS had not had to pay) the money the TEA Party had been forced to pay be refunded.  Now the mayor is demanding the TEA Party be audited.  They have to provide documents on how much money they had received from food, lodging, etc. complete audit of books, anything to do with finances.  BOB asked were they going to audit the OWS group also.  No, just the TEA Party.  PEGGY said the reason they wanted to audit the TEA Party was because they had complained about them being charged and the OWS not being.  They were just retaliating against the TEA Party having the audacity to complain.
GRACE said apparently we have scared a lot of the Democrat politicians.  Did we see where a lot of them were not going to run again?  BOB said ’praise the Lord, Barney Frank is not going to run again’.  (Applause) His reason though is because his district apparently has been redrawn and this time he may have competition and that will mean he will have to get out and campaign and that is something he cannot really lower himself to do.  Someone said the only thing wrong there is when Barney retires, Maxine Waters is in line to take over his chair.  BOB said no need to worry about Maxine getting his chair, because if we can get the Republicans back in power, she can’t do anything anyway.  HOWARD said she doesn’t have the brain power, even Barney has, to do too much damage.  RUTH said ’she is an idiot’.  Just think about all the stupid things she has said recently about the TEA Party.
LOU KUKULINSKI said Sam Sanford will be packing boxes tomorrow morning.  Same time, same place.  If you want to help set up, come at 8:30.  JERE said they would probably do 100 boxes and he and Sam would take them to the Post Office Thursday, provided the weather is good.  BOB said last time we had over 40 people show up and they did the 100 boxes in 45 minutes.  The last time we talked about “We Care”, he didn’t know whether it was in a private conversation or not but the general idea was if we were going to support any charitable organization (we were considering Hope for the Warriors, Carolina Canines and We Care) the comment was we ought to do it locally and throw our support behind Sam Sanford’s “We Care”.  Was that at the last meeting?  Answer- yes.  BOB said he would like to go ahead and vote on that today unless someone thinks there is more to discuss.  HOWARD wanted to know if we had enough money in the bank at the present to start donating or do we need to raise more money first.  BOB said our money we donate comes from profits generated on the sale of tee shirts and hats.  Any other place we get monies, he asked NANCY?  NANCY said we got a lot of donations last year to help.  HOWARD told NANCY that we had 48 pounds of candy left from the Veteran’s Day Parade.  It is currently under lock and key and only he and PEGGY have keys.  Since he is diabetic he can’t eat candy anymore, so it now is safe from him, and PEGGY eats very little candy.  HOWARD recommended that if we could find somebody who is participating in a Christmas parade and would like to buy what candy we have, we can let them have it at a reasonable price, just to get rid of it.  He said we could offer it at a $1.00 a pound which is a lot cheaper than what they can buy it for in the store.  PEGGY said we should not take less than $1.00 a pound, though.  Discussion on who would be interested in using the candy in the upcoming Christmas parades.  PEGGY said RUTH had said something about donating part of the candy to Sam to put in the boxes.  What did others think of that idea.  JERE asked how many here tonight would be willing to donate on a monthly basis to ’We Care’…like maybe $5 or $10.  If we are willing to do that he will bring his mailing address to us and we can donate through the mail and he will send each of the donators a receipt for whatever you send and that receipt is tax deductible.  That money is tax deductible.  He is a 501 organization.  BOB asked him to get Sam’s address to PEGGY and she will get it out to all our members:  (WE CARE, c/o Sam Sanford, 1603 Fairfield Ct., Morehead City, NC 28557).   HOWARD said let’s settle this about what we want to do with the candy.  Do you want to donate the hard candy to We Care and then try to sell the chocolate and chewy type candy.  PEGGY said if we use the hard candy for We Care, then you will need it tomorrow morning, right?  JERE said if we want it to go in this week’s shipment, (this will be the last shipment of the year) then yes, they need it early in the morning.  PEGGY said she would go home and sort through all we have and have the usable candy to them for packaging in the morning (by 8:30).  (NOTE: Sam told Peggy Wednesday morning that he could use chocolate and chewy candy during the winter months while it was cold since it would not melt then.)  BOB asked ‘all in favor of donating the hard candy to Sam’s We Care, please raise your hand.  Carried.  For those who are interested, Sam sets up behind the new Furniture Distributor Store across from Trucker’s Toy Store on Hwy 70.  PEGGY said she would take care of sorting the candy and she and HOWARD would make sure the candy was at the location prior to 9:00 in the morning.  EULA wanted to know if we could just give JERE the money for mailing a package  – $12.95.  JERE said sure he would see to it that Sam gets the money before he gets to the Post Office.  A couple of members gave JERE enough to mail a couple of packages.  BOB asked GRACE what was the status of the candy they had.  GRACE said they probably had about 5 bags at least.  GRACE said another thing that was good to mail was ink pens and pencils.  BOB said when he was overseas, it was truly great to get a care package from the states.  It was like celebrating Christmas.  GRACE said when she went to stores that had stuff like that marked down, she would usually try to buy some for use later.  LOU said he liked getting those big old sticks of pepperoni,  nuts, and chocolate chip cookies.  GRACE said don’t send those little bottles of Tabasco Sauce, because she had tried that one year (making sure she thought that they were well cushioned) but by the time they got to their destination, every bottle was broken and mixed with all the other items enclosed.  BOB said he thinks Sam sends Tabasco Sauce, but he thinks it comes in plastic bottles now instead of glass.  BOB asked GRACE and CLAYTON to remove all the chocolate and soft chewies and get them to Sam by morning.  She said she would just drop the bags off in the morning since they had to go by anyway.  BOB wanted to know if Tootsie Rolls would be alright.  JERE said no, they melt.  PEGGY said we will save them just for BOB since he likes them so good.  JERE said the boxes will probably set out on the tarmac in the sun, so any candy that could melt it is best not to send.  EULA said she used to buy boxes of cross word puzzle books, but her problem was getting them to the troops.  She finally found some people in Havelock that could get them over there for her.  She said you could get like 60 cross word puzzle books for around $25.00.  She just recently bought a box of them.  JERE said he thought they would rather have something to read, because they could pass them around.  One magazine could possible reach 100 GI’s before it wears out and falls apart.
BOB asked NANCY what the treasury looked like.  She responded $995.00.      BOB asked if there was anything from the floor.  Discussion on Gov. Christy and his comments on Obama; and the fact that Obama had prayed a Thanksgiving prayer without mentioning GOD’s name.  Several said ‘what’s new’?.  MARIAN MERRILL said he sure could come up with some stupid remarks, like when he said we had 57 states.  PEGGY said wouldn’t it be something if the news media would have a field day over
Obama’s blunders like they did with Dan Quail‘s ‘potatoe‘.  BOB wanted to know if anyone still thought Herman Cain still had a chance at the presidency.  Most thought it was all over for him (innocent or not).  HOWARD said don’t count anyone out – it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
Don’t forget 5:00 next Tuesday, meeting early!!!!
BOB adjourned the meeting at 6:50pm.
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary


CCTPP Minutes, November 22, 2011

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF
22 NOVEMBER 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by KEN LANG
Invocation by STEVEN BEST

BOB said he was listening to Glenn Beck this morning and he endorsed Michelle Bachman.  He said he had made his mind up and he would vote for Michelle and his second choice was Rick.  Someone in the audience said “he did not endorse her, he said he was going to support her.”  Bob asked “what was the difference?”  The reply was “he said he was going to vote for her but it was not an endorsement.”  Bob said “sounded like and endorsement to him.”  KEN LANG said it was kinda like splitting hairs to him.  Glenn thought she was the most Constitutional, conservative and had not changed in any way.  BOB said “true but she is probably the least electable”.  KEN said “Rush Limbaugh said today that she was the most consistent of all the candidates.  What she said ‘back there’ she says ‘right now’.  She has stayed the same pretty much all the way through.”  LOU said he thought she could save American in a heart beat.  She will definitely get in there and fight for the United States of America.  Some of the others said ‘let’s don’t count her out just yet’.  BOB said a couple of weeks ago he thought she would drop out and she and Sarah Palin would support Herman Cain, but now he didn’t know.  It is all up in the air now.  DAVID COX said “just curious, how many here tonight have already made up their mind how they plan to vote.”  RUTH PARKER asked “if we had to vote tomorrow”.  DAVID said yes.  LOU KUKULINSKI said “Newt, Newt Newt”.  Several agreed with LOU and said “I’m with you”.  KEN told us to go on the Web Site and it was probably further down now since it had been there a while, and there is an article about Newt Gingrich.  It raises a lot of questions about the various positions he has taken (something like 8 questions that are raised about these positions).  For instance he endorsed the individual mandate for health care and he hasn’t backed off on that.  He also supported, if you remember the famous commercial with Nancy Pelosi, global warming, renewal energy and green sources.  LOU said “he did say he wished he had never done that.”  KEN said he said he wished he had never appeared with Nancy Pelosi.  He didn’t say he had changed his mind on the position.  RUTH said she heard him say it was one of the dumbest things he had ever done.  BOB said Hannity asked him about that and Newt said he was just trying to show that conservatives do care about the earth and environment.  He said it didn’t go over well and was the biggest mistake of his political career and he definitely would not do it again.   BOB said he was still the smartest guy or candidate to debate Obama.  It appeared that everyone in attendance agreed with that statement.  DAVID asked how many would change their mind if at the end of the run just to defeat Obama.  ‘OH YES’ from all.  STEVE said “anybody but Obama”.  All in agreement.  LOU said he would even vote for “BOB”.
BOB said we have several items on the agenda for tonight: SCOTT with a recap of the Veteran’s Day Parade; EULA PARKIN on her ‘Publishers’ Clearing House’ request for readers interested in the list of books she has (buy 25 for a $1.00 each or $3.00 per book if can not reach 25 interested in any one book) and PEGGY GARNER with a fund raiser she would like to discuss.  He thinks it is overly generous of her, but he will let her tell us about it and then we can beat her up about it.  We want to discuss what we want to do in the spring time regarding either a fund raiser, rally or combination of the two.  Also we want to talk about the primary campaign and our involvement in that.  LOU asked “What is with the Ho Chi Minh shoes?”  BOB said he had been working hard today trying to get all his work done so he could leave town tomorrow to have Thanksgiving with the in-laws, so he had worked just as long as he could and prior to coming here, he had ducked into the pool room and changed him clothes and realized he had forgotten to bring any shoes.  These (showing his sandals) are $98.00 Ho Chi Minh shoes. HOWARD said “there must be good money in grass mowing.”  CLAYTON GILLIKING said ’either that or sheds’  (inside joke).
BOB asked EULA what she had.  EULA said she had a question.  She understood there had been 3 or 4 photographers filming the entire parade; but they had only shown just the very beginning of it.  BOB said he saw photographers all other the place videoing but had seen almost nil of the parade on TV news.  EULA said a female veteran told her that it had meant a great deal to her that they had been recognized finally.  BOB said he understood the feeling.  He had not had a very good homecoming in New Jersey when he got back.
BOB said he had tried to spare us from the following as long as he could but SCOTT could just not be held back any longer, so he entroduced SCOTT CARPENTER, asking him to man his DI hat and go over the pro and con report on the Veteran’s Day parade.  SCOTT said he always liked to go over a project and try to improve on what we do.  Always want to do better, that is what we like to do personally.  The purpose of this is go over these bullets.  Let’s look at them in the positive.  Hopefully no one will be offended.  That is not the purpose of this.  The next time we participate in a parade or event we will do better.  The first thing we want to talk about is a banner in front.  He didn’t remember us using a banner in the previous parade – 4th of July.  Do we need a new banner?  Maybe a generic banner or something like that?  BOB said for the 4th of July parade we had a couple of folks dressed in period costume carrying a banner.  This time we just had them on the float.  Either way, the crowd knew who we were when we went by, so he thinks the banner we have is sufficient to let the crowd know who we are.  He does not see any need to improve upon it or have a bigger one.  NORM KENT said he was new here, but he was curious did we have a motto or something like that.  BOB said we just use TEA PARTY PATRIOTS.  NORM said maybe something like Freedom Forever, Socialism Never?  He said each parade was for different causes.  PEGGY had made the signs we had used in the Veteran’s Day parade.  SCOTT said we would talk about that later on, but thanks for bringing that up.  KEN said on the banner, several folks suggested at the parade (NANCY BOCK was one) that we have a banner but not say TEA Party Patriots on it, but saying something like “Thank you to the Vets”.  If we are going to do a Veteran’s Day Parade again, we might consider this.  PEGGY said STEVEN had walked in front of our float carrying a poster that said “GOD Bless or Country and The Troops Who Have Defended It”.  BOB said that was true but you could only see it from one side.  STEVEN said no, he was walking straight and turning the poster from side to side.  KEN said that the suggestion by NANCY was the only comments he heard but to do this we will need a new banner for each theme of  the different parades.   SCOTT wanted to know if we shouldn’t get a banner just thanking the vets.  BOB said it would depend on what parades we get involved in.  A sign thanking the vets would only be used for a Veterans’ Day Parade.  If we decide to march in next year’s Veteran’s Day Parade, we should consider having one made then.   SCOTT said he had heard the same chatter that KEN had heard and that is why he had placed it on the discussion board.  SCOTT wanted to know if we couldn’t form a committee to decide what to put on the banners or signs prior to the next parade.  He wanted two people to volunteer to report back next week with suggestions.  Thanked ERIC BROYLES (who had just walked in) for volunteering and also TOM HARMON for (not raising his hand) volunteering.  TOM said, sorry he was not going to be here.  He was leaving to go to Thailand and would not be back until May.  Anything we wanted from him would have to wait until then.  SCOTT said, moving on to the next subject (bullet) Fliers.  He thought the flier we used in the Veterans’ Day Parade went over well.  However, next time we need to have them already placed in the Constitution rather than trying to place them during the  parade.  BOB agreed saying it was all NANCY could do to keep up with stuffing the flyers while walking in the parade.  SCOTT  wanted to know if anyone else had any comments about the flyers.  ROMA WADE said he thought the Constitutions went over better than the candy did.  So much candy was thrown from so many floats, that a big majority was left laying on the ground after the parade.  The kids wouldn’t even pick it up.  He said as he walked down the street, he saw all the candy left lying on the ground, but never saw the first Constitution that had been thrown away.  SCOTT said not only do we want to have the flyers printed and put in the Constitutions early but we needed pre-printed stickers to place on the backs of the Constitutions.  He said that was something we missed this time.  TOM, RUTH and EULA all informed SCOTT that the stickers were on the backs of the Constitutions we handed out.  TOM said he did about 300 prior to the parade.  (All that we had that had not been fixed previously.)  SCOTT said, Sorry, he did not know that.  LOU said “didn’t you do any research here Colonel?”  SCOTT said no he was getting ready to go to Thailand with TOM.  SCOTT asked if there was any more information on the Constitution, besides putting the flyer inside prior to the parade and having a sticker with TEA Party information on it stuck to the back.  BOB said we need to get some more prior to the next event.  SCOTT asked did he mean the booklet or the flyer.  BELVA MANNING said she had a small box of Constitutions in the back of her car.  BOB said a small box held about 200 copies.  Wanted to know if being the new fiscal year, could we get some from our congressmen like Jones, Burr, or Hagan.  Asked if anyone knew where DENNIS TOMASO  was, that he was the one that usually got us the Constitutions.  LOU said he thought NANCY got them last time.  BOB said ERIC got some from Jones and ERIC said they told him that it was too close to the end of the year and they were almost out of stock.  CLAYTON said maybe we should order them from the Democrats.  They should have tons of them, since they never read them.  Several recommendations were made.  LOU said he thought the last ones came from the Heritage Foundation.  SCOTT asked who would call the Heritage Foundation to try to get some Constitutions for us.  He needed a volunteer to call.  BOB said it was not a matter of calling, you had to order them and it was about $200.00 for 1,000.  All agreed that for us to order them we need to go through and authorized NANCY to order them.  She is the one to write the checks.  SCOTT said OK, then how many do we want to authorized NANCY to order for us.  Agreed on 1,000 at $200.00 but was not officially authorized to order.  No vote taken.  SCOTT wanted to know if there was any comments to be made on the trailer we used, positive or negative?  Everyone agreed it worked great.  KEN said only problem he saw was we needed to cut down some tree limbs along the route.  (streets of Morehead City)
HOWARD said NANCY and her husband had cleaned and painted it prior to our use for the 4th of July; it was handy; and we it looked like we could depend on them to furnish it for us.  FRED DECKER said he thought a big plus for our float was the guitar picker (Jeff from Havelock and was  retired Coast Guard.)  All agreed.  HOWARD said he added a whole lot and we all noticed that the viewers would join in singing GOD Bless America when we sang it going by.  SCOTT said one thing being on the left hand side was a safety concern.  There was a lot of movement around the trailer, with the double axle, and he was concerned that someone might get their toes run over.  TOM said there were some close calls a couple of times.  SCOTT said we need to be careful about throwing candy.  Make sure to throw it at a distance.  If you throw it too close to the trailer, some kids could come up to pick up the candy and get too close and get hurt.  His concern is about the safety around that moving vehicle.  We need to be extra careful.  BOB said a lot of kudos go to NANCY and Ken, her husband for painting that trailer, making it available to us, and Ken’s volunteering to pull it for us this time since BOB’s truck had been in a wreck.  TOM said he would volunteer the use of his truck next time if we needed it.  SCOTT said if we use TOM’s truck next time, what about the ball and trailer hitch.  TOM said he had one.  TOM asked if it was a 2”?   HOWARD said ‘no, it was more than 2”.  2 and 5/16 or as commonly known a mobile home hitch.  SCOTT then asked about the candy.  Did we have sufficient candy this time – enough to last the whole parade?  HOWARD said we have a lot of candy left.  We carried it home with us and it is in an air conditioned room.  Have not weighed it yet but there is lots left.  (We have since weighed it and there is about 48 pounds.)  If we could find someone that could give us a reasonable price, that might need it for the Christmas parade,  he thinks we should consider selling what we had left rather than hold it until the next parade, which could be July 4th.  All agreed.  We could put it into the refrigerator, but would prefer to get rid of it if we can.  EULA wanted to know how much money were we thinking about getting.  HOWARD said we needed to weigh it prior to deciding on a price.  EULA said she would contact someone she knows who may be interested.  HOWARD said if anyone gets a nibble to please call us or let us know and we will see what kind of offer we can get for it.  SCOTT said ‘moving right along – our posters.  Did we have sufficient posters?  Do we need to make new posters?  What about people’s comments on posters?  KEN said the ones we had that PEGGY had made were excellent.  DIANE LANG said we need to get them framed so they do not get messed up.  HOWARD said we had already bought two frames and if they work, we plan to frame the others.  PEGGY said WalMart carried the frames like we had discussed and they ran right around $12.00 each with plexiglass instead of real glass which could break in usage.  SCOTT wanted to know if there was any further discussion or suggestions on posters or examples.  TOM said posters need to be appropriate for the event and KEN said they were for this parade.  BOB said these were appropriate for the Veterans; maybe next time we will need anti-Obama posters.  Any further positive or negative comments on the posters we used. BOB said he didn’t know anyone that made prettier posters than PEGGY.  He was so impressed that he thought we should auction them off as a fund raiser.  Most disagreed.  Said we should keep them in our archives for later use. SCOTT said OK now let’s talk photos.  He understood we did have some good photos this time.  Are there any comments on photos?  Do we need more that one photographer?  Is one sufficient?  BOB said he noticed that he was barely visible in any of them.  TOM said there is a reason for that.  Lots of laughter.  TOM said when we got up to the reviewing stand he wanted to get on the other side and all of a sudden his lens went in and he realized his battery had died.  So he was standing there running along side of the trailer, moving the batteries around and he put the bad ones back in and by the time he realized it we had passed the viewing stand.  SCOTT said we need to talk about the photos being put on our web site.  KEN said he had not had time to get them posted yet.  He had not gotten around to it.  SCOTT said then let’s put a line in the sand to shoot for.  KEN said he would give it a shot by next week but did not want to promise.  SCOTT said he would give him two weeks then.  He would be lenient this time.  SCOTT wanted to know if the meetings times and locations were clear on our web site.  Do we need to tweak that?  Does everyone feel comfortable with the way it advertises our meetings.  He said NORMAN brought up last week that he had checked the web site and it said 7:00 but that was for the meeting in Cape Carteret and he was interested in the Morehead City group.  KEN said the very top of the page talks about the new group of Cape Carteret that was just organized.  You have to go below the picture of George Washington to see the information on the Morehead City group.  SCOTT said somehow we need to clarify that right up front.  KEN said he didn’t see how it could be more clear.  It did say Western Carteret County TEA Party right at the top as opposed to the one at the Golden Coral.  He didn’t know how he could clarify it further.  KEN said if he had any suggestions, please email him and he would try to make it more understandable.  SCOTT said he would take that upon himself to contact KEN.  PEGGY jokingly said “We need top billing”.  KEN said since it was a new group, he felt it needed to be at the top.  SCOTT said since we have the web master with us, is there any more comments or suggestions on the photos and meetings; write ups updated; or clarification on our web site.  LOU said he thought KEN was doing a d— good job.  Got a round of applause.  SCOTT wanted to know if we felt comfortable with our email mailing list.  BOB said aren’t we still supposed to be talking about the parade?  SCOTT said he felt this pertained to the parades.  Is our list updated sufficiently enough to notify everyone about the events upcoming.  Do we need to do anything with that?  KEN said every new email that is placed on our sign-in list, he adds to our list and we currently have somewhere around 950 addresses.  He would like to see it over a thousand.  One thing he does do at Western Carteret is a lot of the people there are new so he tells them if they have any friends who are interested in getting information on TEA Party activities, tell them to get him their email addresses.  Now a year or so ago we had some who felt like they were getting too many emails, and others not frequent enough.  He is a little uncomfortable about sending out everything to those too frequently.   He sends out a blast every now and then so people don’t just totally ignore us.  One of the TEA party groups that he is on their list, he gets 2 or 3 things a week.  Listed a couple of them.  So a lot of the time you see them and just delete them; so he prefers not to do that.  SCOTT said “Thank you for those comments, I appreciate them and other peoples’ feed back.  Back to discussing the parade.  Next is the booth.  We talked about it, but apparently we did not get the necessary paper work.  Is that something we need to write and push next time?  Having a booth set up and selling Tshirts, hats, stickers, free literature, etc.  BOB said we need to look into it a lot further ahead of time.  This time we never got a positive answer on whether we needed or did not need a permit.  As it turned out it was such a windy day, I would have hated to have to been sitting there at the table trying to hold on to everything to keep it from blowing away.  We would have had to have a sheltered area, and then you are out of the traffic flow.  If we were going to have a table at the parade where would have been the most advantageous spot to have had it, because the crowd was pretty evenly distributed and they were static.  So the whole idea of having a booth there for the Veterans’ Day does not make a whole lot of sense, plus he did not think it would be appropriate for that parade any way.  That parade was to honor the vets, not for making money.  SCOTT said ’So what I heard then we don’t think we should have a booth for next year’s Veterans’ Day Parade.’  All agreed.  SCOTT said, ’moving right along, sale of Tshirts, hats, stickers, (ie bumper)’.  Any further comments.  TOM said “on our Tshirts, when we run out of these, we are going to have a new shirt with new logo.  Has anyone come up with any design or made a decision on what organization we plan to sponsor?”  BOB said no, we still have not decided on who we are going to donate a portion of our proceeds to.  We have heard from the Wounded Warriors (actually meant Hope for the Warriors), Carolina Canines, and Jere Geurin is working on getting Sam Sanford down here to speak about his program, “We Care”.  It is really between these three.  He does not know if we want to give to all three (which will not amount to a whole lot of money) or if we just want to pick one.  If we go with the one in Jacksonville – Hope for the Warriors – we can keep the same logo, because they have a logo very similar to the Wounded Warriors.  NORMAN asked what about the USO?  BOB said that is such a large organization already and he did not know what kind of funding they have.  One of the reasons why we have left the Wounded Warriors is because the guy that is running the thing is getting over a million dollars a year salary; so we felt that instead of donating money to the Wounded Warriors, we were actually helping pay his exorbitant salary.  35% is being sucked up in overhead in administration; whereas with Hope for the Warriors, the guy running that only gets $35,000.00 a year.  LOU said that is one reason he thinks we should support an at home project like Sam’s.  TOM said you look at Sam’s and it is grass roots, man.  Sam does not get a penny.  Everything he gets, he puts back into items to send to the troops.  LOU said just one thing, we definitely do not want to put a picture of Sam on the back of our tshirts.  BOB said if anyone wants to look at Sam’s operation, here is a whole bunch of pictures that TOM took during the last mailing.  About 40 people showed up to pack the boxes to ship overseas to service men.  TOM said they did 100 boxes in about 45 minutes.  LOU said that is great, he remembers when they only had 5 or 10 people to help.   RUTH PARKER said ’with all the troops leaving and coming home, she didn’t know what Sam was going to do.’  BOB said we will always have troops deployed overseas.  PEGGY asked “what he packs up to send, does it come from donations, or how does he come up with all that he sends.  LOU said most of it is donations.  PEGGY wanted to know if he had a list of items he wanted donated?  Maybe we can help him out that way.  LOU said anything that someone away from home would like to get in the mail; like chewing gum, deodorant, chapstick, magazines, hot sauce, pepperoni, etc.  BOB said to get with Jere and see what he recommends.  Asked PEGGY what she wanted to give “Collards”?  (Picking on me for sharing our collards with a lot of our members.)   SCOTT rapped and asked about the TEA Party hats and stickers (ie Don‘t Tread on Me), any comments on those.  BOB said as far as inventory right now we have 31 hats.  (listed our inventory).  BOB said we do need some Crystal Coast TEA Party stickers (like address labels) to go on the back of the Constitutions.  We probably need about 1000 of those.  HOWARD asked “Didn’t DENNIS make the last ones we got?”  TOM said DENNIS had made 600 and TOM had used 340 or so and gave the rest to NANCY.  LOU said the print shop would probably make some for us and it probably would not be too expensive.  Several said we could make them at home on our computers and it would not cost anything except for the box of labels.  TOM wanted to know if we wanted them any bigger.  Consensus was no.  Do we need any further information on them?  No.  BELVA MANNING said they worked just perfect on the back of the Constitutions.   SCOTT asked if he saw any hands go up to volunteer to make the stickers or at least procure the stickers?  BOB said he thought he saw SCOTT’s hand go up a few minutes ago.  SCOTT said let’s run back over what we have decided here tonight.  ERIC and TOM are going to come up with some suggestions on banners (TOM will mail us his input from Thailand or when he gets back).  NANCY is going to be ordering some more Constitutions (1000).  Also SCOTT is going to come up with a suggestion on how to write up the TEA Party meetings to be more coherent.  Also volunteers to make up the stickers to go on the backs of the Constitution.  Anything else he missed?  Any further questions or comments.  BOB wanted to know what he planned to put on the stickers.  SCOTT said he would show him (an example) next week.  BOB said just as long as it has our name and web site on it.  BOB thanked SCOTT for the presentation.
BOB introduced NORMAN KENT who spoke to us about the Council on Foreign Relations.  He said he had attended our rally that we had originally scheduled to have in the Kmart parking lot that got moved to the Flea Mall.  He had run across a book called Shadows of Power (author James Perloff) that describes in detail the CFR.  It came into being in New York.  It started with Woodrow Wilson, the Rockefellers, Carnegies, (Trilateral Commission which came later).  It had your industrialists, financiers, and bankers involved.  So many on Wall Street were tied to this.  What they decided to do was create a government within our constitutional government.  More or less power brokers.  In the past the whole thing was kind of clandestine.  They would meet in secret.  In order to become a member of the organization, you pretty much had to take an oath that whatever is said in the group, stays in the group.  There was one that kind of broke that oath.  His name was James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy (back in the Eisenhower days he thinks).  He was a member of the CFR and after being in the group a little while, he started to realize that it was a conspiracy.  This is not promoting our Constitution.  In fact it is taking us away from that.  What happened to him was “they found him kind of incoherent, possibly drugged, so they put him into a hospital.  Finally they got permission to get him out of the hospital, and the night before he was supposed to leave; around 2:00 in the morning, they found him dead, hanging outside his 16th floor window.  The official ruling was ‘suicide’.  When he was reading this book, he found everything was very well documented.  You can check it out elsewhere also.  In later years the CFR got involved with the media.  How many know who Rupert Murdoch is?  He owns Fox News.  He is one of the biggest Socialists on the face of this planet.  You know how it is today.  We don’t get mentioned because we are not part of their involvement.  Even though they say they are just there to help us with our foreign policies; so most of the world can understand America.  From what he has been reading, they are trying to lean towards ‘one world government’.  (Socialism)  You cannot ask to join and become a member.  They are the ones who do the picking.  They determine who is going to become a member of the organization.  Now some of our politicians, who want to get noticed, will write articles for publishing in behalf of the CFR and its agenda,  in the magazine called “Foreign Affairs”.  Examples of membership:  William Jefferson Clinton, (ERIC said he bet there was a teleprompter that was a member also; but Norman said he had heard that but when he checked Obama was not listed as a member), although George Herbert Walker Bush was.  (Commented that haven’t you ever noticed that whoever is in office, the same garbage runs downhill. Things do not get better, we get further in debt, lose more of our freedoms, sovereignty goes by the wayside, and we wake up and find illegal aliens have more rights than we do.)  The whole reason he is presenting this to us is for us to be more aware of the backgrounds and philosophy of our politicians (aka candidates for president).  You have heard of wolves in sheep’s clothing?  Well, you can draw parallels.  You can have sunshine patriots, who are not the right guy.  They are not going to protect your individual liberties, or the Constitution.  Look at the Vietnam War and  Lyndon B. Johnson…..Dean Achison (?)  and another man (but he could not remember his name) – they were considered the wise men.  Dean was the first one that wanted to get out, but Johnson didn’t want that so he increased the numbers deployed there.  When things started going a little sour and started to go wrong, the wise men told Johnson, you were right we need to get out of this.  Just drop it.  This was after Johnson had put his neck on the line and afterwards Johnson cited his famous words, “I will not seek the nomination for my party to run for president or seek reelection”.   So you have the CFR, not suggesting, but influencing.  Then you have the CFR in the media repeating what the CFR wants us, the public, to hear.   (Discussion of authenticity, and research of facts, the author, etc.)  This country was founded upon the ideals of ‘of, by and for the people’.  Before that you had feudalism, monarchy’s, ruling with iron fists.  When our forefathers seceded from England, somehow miraculously we got democracy.  We had not had that before.  Now some are trying to return us to the old system of feudalism.  Their perfect system is to have a ’one world unity, peace, feudalistic system’.  Some other members of the CFR: Collen Powell, Secretary of Defense under George Bush, Conga Lisa Rice, many of our ambassadors, senators, (John McCain, Newt Gingrich,) a ton of these folks that are all CFR members.  To belong to that organization and hold yourself to those goals and ideals, runs contrary to what our forefathers created for us in the Constitution.  To sit there and say I want to help you people, and belong to an organization like the CFR, he draws that equivalent to Barrack Obama sitting in Jerimia Wright’s church for 20 years and saying ‘gee, I didn’t know, that doesn’t affect me’.  Where do your loyalties lie?  Norman said he was not telling us who to vote for; personally he had like Michelle Bachman at first, and was now wavering and getting the fear ‘we don’t want Obama, but do we want to be manipulated by the power of the CFR?’  We had a choice between Obama and McCain.  All it was was a skid downhill, just one is not as fast as the other.  This brings him to Romney and he sees him wavering back and forth and kissing up to the CFR, even though according to the list he has, is not a member of the CFR.  But for whatever reason the CFR doesn’t like him, because what did they do in 2008?  They did not trust Romney enough so they strong-armed the delegates to get behind McCain to win.  That is the picture that lies before us.  If you know of a real good conservative candidate, now is the time to get behind him.  But the time may come when you realize ‘my candidate doesn’t have a chance’, so we don’t want to be manipulated in going ‘oh, yeah, I got a CFR man, and he’s got to be better than Obama.’  No, we lose on both ends.  His goal is to impress upon us that whomever you go for make sure that person is not a member of the CFR.  HOWARD GARNER asked ‘how can we confirm that he is or is not?’  Norman said we should go to the CFR membership list because they have it posted on their web site.  Other than that, if you do not see it, he would even suggest that we write and ask them about whomever you are interested.  (Other members on the list he has: Isner, Walt Disney, NBC, George Soros) Anybody associated with that group he doesn’t want to touch them.  Rupert Murdoch and George Soros have nothing against making a buck.  They are socialist capitalists and if you are willing to play the game with them, they will throw you a few crumbs and let you be in on the ballgame.  But if you are not, sorry, but you are too far beneath him.  Unfortunately our government is so deeply ingrained with this organization that now who cares what the people want,  they are going to do whatever they want.  That is why they liked Newt Gingrich.  He had the Contract with America, and whatever happened with that thing?  They worked on it supposedly, but when push came to shove, they shut down the government.  It was good for show, but what was the end result?  Nothing!  They all caved.  HOWARD said he was exposed to the CFR back in the 60’s or 70’s. This guy who was active in the John Birch Society,  gave him a couple of his little brochures, and since he was a federal employee, he was afraid of being caught with them, so he gave them back.  The brochures warned us against the CFR.  The John Birch Society was doing that way back then.  Here recently someone has put a couple of Robert Welch’s speeches on the internet, and if you will listen to what he says in those speeches, everything he predicted has come to pass.  People thought he was a total crackpot.  At least the media tried to make him out that way.  Norman said, Exactly.  That is how the media deals with you today.  If you stand up and say something they disagree with, they just call you a right wing lunatic,  on the outer fringe, he’s got problems, etc.  You got that right.  By all means, investigate what he has brought up to us tonight.  He hopes he has given us enough motivation to do so.  BOB thanked him for his presentation.
STEVEN BEST said “A lot of this is on the video that we have not watched yet (Agenda 21)”.  BOB said, ’it will have to be after the holidays, but he wants to have one of our meetings at ’the cave’ (STEVE’s theater which will hold 45, but he can add more seats if needed) and show the movie, which is about the movement of Socialism/Communism into our way of life.
ERNIE gave a brief dissertation on what he knew about the CFR and the extent it has involved itself into our political lives.  Just about every Obama cabinet is headed up by a member of the CFR.  The CFR is the American branch.  You have the Royal Institute of International Affairs which is the British branch, which appeared after World War I.
EULA PARKIN said for us to go to ‘frontpagemag.com’ and key in ’George Soros’.  Ten pages long of the organizations that he supports.  He is the one that wants ’one world’.  Several spoke up and said he was not the only one in support of one world government.  EULA spoke up about the books she had available for us to order for $1.00 again.  BOB asked if anyone is interested, please sign your name next to the book we are interested in and as soon as we can get 25 requests for that book, we will order it.
BOB asked what are we going to do about the fund raiser and/or rally coming up in the spring.      FRED DECKER said he had mentioned last week about getting a phone committee set up.  If anyone wants to participate, please give him your name, precinct you are in and phone number and he will give you some other people to help you.  It is going to be up to us to cover the whole county.  This will be for the primary.  You do not have to be registered Republican to work on the phone committee.
BOB said HOWARD and KEN LANG have been discussing about our need to become involved in the upcoming Primary.  HOWARD said a few years ago in Carteret County whoever won the Democratic Primary was guaranteed the election in the fall.  Well now, Carteret County has shifted enough that he thinks whoever wins the Republican Primary is going to win in the fall.  So we need to decide who to get behind in the primary.  We won’t know who until filing is over, to decide where we stand.  Another thing they are going to elect members of the Board of Education in the spring.  Now here is where we need to work hard for our candidates.  There are enough employees in the school system that they can turn their families and friends out and they can elect whoever they want.  They are going to want to elect whoever will spend the most.  So we need to get involved in supporting people that believe in our philosophy or as close as possible.   We may need to recruit some members if we can to run as candidates for the Board of Education.  I’ll almost bet you, that Rene Coles will be a candidate for the Board of Education or County Commissioner.  Rumormill has it that Commissioner Greg Lewis will recruit her to run for Holt Faircloth’s position.  Holt told him that he didn’t care who ran, because he had had enough and he was not going to file.  We do not want Rene Coles in any seat in county government or anyone like her.  Not that he has anything against her personally, but against her personal philosophy in spending.  KEN said if he was not mistaken there was at least two people who were not going to refile for county commissioner.  One is Holt Faircloth and the other Pat Joyce.  There are three positions that will be open, the two above and Doug Harris.  Pretty sure Doug will run again.  We need to really think are about people who will serve in both of those positions.  Not just one.  He doesn’t know if that will involve talking to the other County Commissioners, but we need to make sure that the right candidates and certainly not someone like Rene Coles, who is a registered Republican.  They are big donors to the party but she is involved in C4 activity, wanting to spend a lot of money on education without knowing what is will be spent on.  That is his main objection to her.  BOB said he understands both her and her husband come from money, so to her money is not an issue.  FRED said he had talked to some of the County Commissioners and he understands that is why she was at the reverse raffle.  The other Commissioners know that Greg Lewis has been meeting with the school board and that he is supporting her for County Commissioner, from what he was told.  Evidently he thinks that will give him two votes on the board.  HOWARD said it looked like to him that Greg had his eye on a higher office.  Maybe Rene can funnel some money his way.  That may be his game.  FRED said if he is planning on running for State Senate, he may as well quit because as long as Jean Preston runs, she will win and if not then he plans to support the man from Craven County that has mentioned being interested but will not run as long as Jean does because they are friends.  He cannot support Greg Lewis, because he thinks Greg is in it for Greg and not the people in the county.  FRED said he was working on getting enough Republicans to run for offices in the party, that he can hopefully get Greg thrown out as Party Chairman.
He’s wanting enough candidates to attend the Republican convention to have the vote.  He’s not sure we can get enough votes to get him out as commissioner, but hopefully they can as Republican Party Chairman.
HOWARD said we were to the Commissioners meeting last night and this (showing the county map passed out at the meeting), is the proposed district plan now.  It has not been approved but was done up by the county manager and Rob Wheatly, county attorney.  The second page gives the numbers based on the recent census.  There was some discussion.  Part of them do not like it, but he suspects any plan you come up with will have disagreements.  Basically they have come up with about 9500 in each district.  They are pretty equal in representation.  BOB said it looked like they had not gerrymandered the lines, but had used highways, and rivers/streams as boundaries.  HOWARD said he may not completely understand the underlying concerns, but it looks like a pretty decent distribution to him.  He had told Rob they had done a pretty good job.
Another thing they had brought up last night was they had a lot of positions on the various committees in the county and were having trouble finding people to volunteer for them.  Bill Smith told us to go to the county web site and find out the vacancies, and they would like to have people to volunteer for nomination to these committees.  Most people today only want positions that are paid, the political plums.  Discussion on those positions and their bennies.  HOWARD announced that PEGGY had been asked by Bill Smith to volunteer and was appointed to the Senior Center Advisory Board last night.
BOB said getting back to the Primary…this coming May is when we elect the school board.  From the time of the filing until the election is about 10 weeks to vet the candidates and publish our recommendations.  If we are going to get everything done, we are going to have to bust our butts to get hold of these folks who are running for the offices and press them to come on down here.  It is going to take a lot of coordination on our part to get them here to answer our questions and make our decisions on who we want to recommend.  He asked FRED if he had any names in mind for the school board.  He said he had been talking to ERIC BROYLES and was trying to talk him into running.  We need to get someone from Newport.  HOWARD recommended Doc Westbrook.  He said he would contact him and see what he thought about running.  BOB said the first thing he would like to see the new school do is get rid of Novey.  We need a little more transparency with the school board and county commissioners than what we have had under Novey.  HOWARD said the board picks the superintendent, so we have got to pick a board that will pick a different superintendent.  It is that cut and dried.  Does anyone here know of anyone that will run for school board.  Maybe we should advertise on the web site. (Several recommendations were offered with reasons why not to support them).  Mainly we do not want someone who has been connected with the teaching profession involved on the school board.  They have already been corrupted by the system.  FRED said he did not think you should be on the school board and teach in Carteret County.  Even retired school employees had been brainwashed by the system.  That is all they know.  Bill Blair was a shining example of that.  KEN said he didn’t want to sound too negative about this but we have been talking about replacing some of the school board members and then we leave the meeting without making any real progress.  Maybe tonight we have made a little progress because some have learned about who is not going to run again or we think they may not run again.  We need to find out definitely what they plan to do.  We need to find candidates more than anything else.  Sitting here talking about who are not going to run and it would be nice to have someone else, just doesn’t get it.  If we do not have someone to go into the position that is like minded with our group then we are just spinning our wheels.  It is frustrating because I think we have people here who know a lot of people in the county.  To be sure we can come up with somebody who will be a candidate in some of these areas.  He agreed with BOB that we need to be looking for those without pre-vested interest in the school system, because they are already tainted.  You know how they are going to vote.  NORMAN asked what kind of candidate were we looking for.  What scrutiny is important.  BOB said he felt we needed someone who is retired and has time on his/her hands.  Probably newly retired, but not from the school system.  Maybe financially well off enough they don’t have to have a second job.  Working people are just too busy to devote the required time.  KEN said, ideally you want someone who knows something about budgets, because the problem with the school board that we have now is that they rubberstamp whatever the school superintendent presents to them.  They do not know how to critically evaluate a budget, so therefore when the superintendent comes in and they rubberstamp it and take it to the commissioners.  He thinks the commissioners this year have done an excellent job in examining what is in the budget, why it is there, and if they can do without it.  But there should be people on the school board who are doing that before it gets to the county commissioners.  CLAYTON said most of the stuff on the budget is coded so no one knows exactly what it is.  KEN said the superintendent does that intentionally.  That is why we need a new school board and then we need a new superintendent who will be more transparent with all.  KEN said he feels that the current school board does not put the amount of time actually needed to do a good job into it and just lets the superintendent do as he wants.  BOB said FRED had mentioned ERIC and he thought ERIC would be a good candidate.  He has a banking background and knows about budgeting etc.  HOWARD said Doc had run for school board years ago against Cathy Neagle and he was pretty sharp on figures.  Maybe he should go talk with him.  FRED said he had been talking to Richard Hunt about the school board.  BOB said he had just been elected on the town board at Cape Carteret.  FRED said but the one he would be replacing position does not run out until 2014.  HOWARD said by that time we will have a better understanding of how Richard thinks and handles things.  A track record is a good thing to go by.  KEN said he didn’t think Richard would be interested in leaving the Cape Carteret board since he had just won election there.  He thinks he will stick with the Cape Carteret seat based on what he had talked to him about.  If he had lost that election then he probably would have considered running for the board of education.   BOB wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions for Beaufort.  Since there is no one here tonight from Beaufort (other than EULA).  A few names were bandied about but no final recommendation was made.  Betty Bell’s name was mentioned, but no one knew if she would even consider getting back into the fray.  BOB said we only have about two months or two weeks to get everything done…basically from March 1st thru April 30th.
That is once we have the candidates in place, to vet, decide who to support and prepare our recommendations and line up our manning of the precinct voting booths, prior to the May primary.  We need to get to work and stop the talk.  He still thinks if we had gotten involved in the Morehead election for mayor that David Horton would have won.  HOWARD said he still thinks that Sunday advertisement from Jerry Jones with all the untruths in it that David did not get the opportunity to refute.  BOB said he still thought if we had had a couple of people sitting down at the Morehead precincts passing out TEA Party recommendation lists, that would have carried more weight than anything in the paper.
Last thing, real quick, do we want a rally or a fund raiser or a combination.  With a rally we need speakers, sound system, insurance, portajohns, tshirts, etc.  HOWARD said if we decide to use the Fort Benjamin Park, they have restrooms, so that would eliminate the portajohns.  They have a stage.  BOB asked HOWARD if he remembered how much the rent was.  HOWARD said $50.00 for the event (use of band shell) for a non-profit.  The county manager has to make the final decision whether we can use it or not.  We can talk to some of the county commissioners in advance and maybe they can support our usage.  BOB wanted to know if he meant the county or Newport manager.  HOWARD said, the county since Fort Benjamin is a county park, but we may want to contact the Newport manager as a courtesy type thing.  He doesn’t think Newport really has anything to do with it.  BOB said we were all familiar on what it takes to put on a rally.  It is no small thing, but neither is a fund raiser where we will be serving food.  There is a whole lot involved.  HOWARD said they have a kitchen there but there is an extra fee of $5.00 per use for non-profit.  BELVA MANNING said they also have a covered outside shelter that has picnic tables.  BOB said using the Flea Mall for the rallies has been nice, but it has been kind of limiting to some extent since we can not have food vendors there in competition with the Mall.  Also at the big rally we had there were over 700 cars just for the rally. So if we have a combo rally/food service fund raiser we are going to need plenty of parking.  Fort Benjamin can supply what we need.  (Discussion on the use of Pat Joyce’s open field without electricity and borrowing of generators.  Also discussed the possibility of getting Joyce to allow us to put up signs advertising our event near Hwy 70 even if we have it at Fort Benjamin)  BOB asked what do we want to do folks.  TOM wanted to know what time factor we are talking about.  BOB said he figured we were talking sometime in probably April.  TOM said he had the Don’t Trust the Media signs in his truck and since he would not be back until sometime in May he would like for someone else to hold them.  HOWARD said he would put them in his truck and store them for later use.  Discussion on date for the event.  HOWARD wants to do a little more checking things out and will get back with the group as soon as he can.  BOB said we need to start getting our ducks in a row and start making some decisions soon, before our time runs out.  We also need to be ready to announce our vetting of the candidates early.  For that we will also need a better venue than the Golden Corral.  FRED mentioned the Newport Town Hall, which he said would seat maybe 40 or 50.  BOB said apparently we need more time to put our thinking caps on, so let’s go back home and think about it some more.  BOB asked that we come better prepared next week with at least some firm propositions.

Meeting adjourned at 7:57 pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary


CCTPP Minutes, November 15, 2011

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
November 15, 2011

Meeting held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:04pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance led by NANCY BOCK
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
No. in attendance: 28

Introduction of New Attendees:
JOHN and LEDA LARSON -  They found out about us through their son-in-law, who attended one of our meetings.  They live in Morehead City.  BOB asked if they voted last week and they assured him they did.
BLAKE BEADLE – Group creator of the Young Professionals, new title for the Young Republicans.  Officers not yet elected.  Age group is 18 to 40, so if you have children or grandchildren, neighbors or friends, that are interested in getting politically active, please have them get in touch with Greg Lewis or the Party and they will direct them to Blake or others now involved.  (Bob jokingly said “they cancelled the parade the other day for the Young Republicans; one got sick and the other one didn’t want to march alone.’ —- Boos from the audience.)
FRANK PALOMBO – Candidate for US House of Representatives – running against Walter B. Jones.
BRIAN MULLAS – Friend, supporter and Campaign Manager of Frank Palombo.
Late comer – NORMAN KENT – Apologized for being late.  He had read on the website about our meeting but had misread the time.  When he rechecked and discovered the time, he had gotten there as soon as he could.  He said he lived in Newport.  BOB explained that we (those who wish to) meet at 5:00 to eat and socialize and the meeting starts at 6:00 pm and runs until he gets a sore throat.  He explained about the Western end of the county recently starting another group for those who live in that end of the county.  They meet the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month.  We meet every week.

Budget Report -  Jan 1, 2011 – Nov. 15, 2011
Beginning Balance Jan 1, 2011                                                   $1,997.82
Income:
Donations:                    $1,090.00
Sale of Tees/hats                874.41
4/15 Rally                          694.50
Insurance Claim
(Bob’s Fire)                    610.00
7/4 Parade                           451.25
$3,720.16                             +        3,720.16
Expenses:
4/15 Rally                      $1,488.43*
Hats                    800.00
Banners                               549.53
Ad for JLF Seminar            447.84
T-Shirts                348.00
Flags, Buntings            270.91
Veterans Day Parade            231.26*
Pocket Constitutions            198.81
Bumper Stickers                  169.95
Business Cards                    113.13
Carteret Literacy                  100.00
Islamaphobia Booklets           25.00
$4,742.86                 -   $4,742.86

Ending Balance Nov. 15, 2011                                                                 975.12

*4/15 Rally Expenses:
Ad            $ 622.00
W. Montague           360.00 (plane ticket)
Sound System           323.25
PortAJohns           183.18
$1,488.43
(Does not include $940.00 special events insurance paid 2010 for 2 events in a calendar year.)

*Veterans Day Parade Expenses:
500 ea 4×6 flags    $  129.87
50’ Fringe              51.39
Candy                  50.00
$   231.26
(Gave out approximately 800 pocket Constitutions, 400 small flags, and 500 flyers.)

INVENTORY:
78   -   s/a t-shirts
11   -   l/s t-shirts
31   -   hats
100  -   4×6 flags
600  -   Pocket Constitutions

OBLIGATION:
$216.00 donation to Wounded Warrior Project
Candy purchased by Clayton Gillikin for Veterans Day Parade ($75.00?)

UPCOMING:
Ad for second session of JLF Seminar
Ad for 2012 Elections.  (The Voter Recommendation ad we ran in 2010
Cost $1,592.32 for 8 times.)

We feel it was well worth the money.  BOB said he had worked all election day at the polls in Broad Creek.  Many, coming to vote, came to his table and took a copy of the recommendation form or showed they had their copy, they had cut from the paper, as they arrived to vote. TOM HARMON, HOWARD GARNER, and several others who had worked the polls, reported the same results.  SCOTT wanted to know ‘if we do another Voter Recommendation, at what point do we need to start having it published in the paper.  BOB said he did not know when the early voting would begin this coming election, but in 2010 we had early voting for probably two months or so.  KEN LANG, who is at the Out West TEA Party tonight, worked the Stella or Cape Carteret Precinct every day they had the early voting and he found the same thing.  We certainly want to have it ready for next year by the beginning of  September at least.  LOU KUKULINSKI asked were we thinking about having one for the primary.   BOB said there are so many running in the primary that it is hard to vet them all.  Do we discriminate with just the Federal Elections?  Hard to vet these people in person.  State Elections….Jean Preston, Pat McElraft, and folks running against them.  Problems occur with trying to coordinate between all their schedules, and finding time to pencil us in to come and answer specific questions we have.   Discussion on methods of vetting….paper questionnaires, email questionnaires, face to face interviews, etc.  Think we should wait out the primary and wait to see who is left standing when they are over with and then we will make our recommendations for the election…Republican or Democrat based on which is most conservative and meets our core values best.  If anyone has a way to vet all those various candidates in the primary, you are in charge of that committee right now!!! And give us a report by next meeting!!!
HOWARD said we need to find out who files before we can do anything.  BOB said that’s one of the problems.  The filing date is in February and the primary is in May. That’s only about nine or ten weeks. Anyone think we can get it all coordinated and get them all down here so we can vet them and then publish the meaningful data in that time frame to have an impact on informing the public.  HOWARD said most of the time you pretty much have figured out who is going to run.  BOB said yes, most of the time, but he knows of a couple of occasions (like Craig Weber) – who filed during the last hour of filing.
BOB said any way we go, we are going to have to raise some money.  He had asked us at the last meeting to put our thinking caps on so when we met tonight we could talk about the Spring Rally, which has always been a good fund raiser for us.  He said he was talking to KEN LANG and KEN recommended that maybe we should have a pig picking or something like that.  BOB said he didn’t think we could do that at the Newport Flea Market, since they sold food and would not want our competition.  HOWARD said they have let several organizations hold barbecue or chicken dinners to raise funds for various things (especially for those with large medical expenses).  FRED DECKER said maybe we could use Gracelyn Park (meant Fort Benjamin Park).  STEVE BEST said he understood it would cost $75.00 an hour.  BOB said we need to decide are we going to do a Rally, or are we going to do some kind of fund raiser like a barbecue.. (roasting a pig) for example.  SCOTT wanted to know why we couldn’t do both.  Some others agreed.  BOB said it boils down to ’parking problems’ then.  When we had our Rally there in Newport year before last, we had 700 cars and 2000 people.  He didn’t know if there was that many parking spaces at the Fort Benjamin Park.  HOWARD and TOM both said they thought there was plenty of room to park by utilizing the road sides just on the perimeter of the park.  BOB said to do both it was going to take a lot of long term planning…cooking pigs (how many needed), hush puppies, coleslaw, baked beans, etc., are we going to need some kind of County Health Permit? We need to really look into are we really able to do both.  We usually have the same crew to plan, organize, coordinate, etc.  The day of the event we have a big turn out of members, but most of them are unable or do not show up for the planning stage.  There is never a problem of shortage of people on the day of the event, setting up and such.  Another thing with serving food is the need for more tables and chairs.  He can get some from the base but not sure how many we will need.  HOWARD said several of the fund raisers serving food at the Flea Mall were mostly drive through and you didn’t need tables.  Some that he knows about have gone well.  BOB said the drive through would be a whole different thing from the Rally/Meal combo because with the Rally going on you will want people to get out of their cars and listen to the speakers as well.  Everyone think about it and decide what we can pull off and what we can’t pull off.  We won’t make a decision tonight, but be prepared to discuss it further next week.  TOM said he hadn’t had such grand ideas, maybe something like the scouts have…sandwiches along side of the road.  No Rally or anything, maybe have a big yard sale and sell sandwiches, cookies, brownies, cakes, etc.  BOB said that sounded pretty good also.  Hopefully we can come up with some good ideas and firm plans for next week and make a decision as to how we are going to raise funds.  Other locations were mentioned to hold whatever we planned.  BOB said we need to also consider when talking location about availability of electricity, especially if we go with the rally.  SCOTT said he thought we needed to stay with Highway 70 venue where there is more traffic.
Next week BOB said he would like for us to do our review of the Veteran’s Day Parade, dids, didn’ts, and should haves.  SCOTT is going to put his drill instructors hat on and walk us through our paces.
BOB said he would love to see us do something for the primary, since Frank Palombo is running against Walter B. Jones and he would like to see us provide him support.  He is going to need a lot of help.  He is here tonight to talk to us.  BOB said he told him we had already drank the Koolaid so we didn’t need the whole stump speech.   Mainly we needed to know how we could help him with his campaign.  Also sometime maybe in the spring, he, BOB would like to have a fund raiser to help Frank get some last minute advertising money prior to the primary which is around May 15.
STEVE MILLER (I think it was) said he would like to come up with a vetting plan and present it to the members at our next meeting.  He thinks it can be done with today’s electronic devices.  You get the right questionnaire, put a strong letter together that says ’here is what we did last time, all those we recommended won.  It would behoove you to pay attention to our survey and tell where you stand.’  BOB said one of the things he found out when he ran for Congress in the primary season, no one told him to expect a dump truck to back up to his house and unload all those surveys and things from all these groups that are trying to vet you.  You spend hours filling these thing out.  Some of them are like essay tests.  STEVE said it may be two weeks or so before he gets everything worked out, but he would come up with something.

He then turned the floor over to Frank.
Frank said he wanted to tell us why he came here tonight.  It is the TEA Party’s fault that he is running.  Everyone that was here the last time when he said he was thinking about running, remember?  Several said ’vaguely’.  Frank said it was because of “you all” and the reception we gave him that day, and the encouragement he received then and since, gave him the determination to move on in this process; making him realize there is so many in this district that want good representation.  They want real leadership.  He said he didn’t know about us, but for himself, he had had politicians up to here.  He just can’t take it anymore.  People have told him, you know if you run and win, you are going to be a politician.  He said ’No, I am not’.  You can send him to Washington in November and you can send him back again and again but he will never be a politician, because he is already what he is going to be.  He is a leader.  He knows it from his years of experience.  He knows it from the skills that he learned from the military and from his years with his law enforcement career, to dealing with folks like those here tonight.  And he knows this.. career politicians are people who have spent their entire life in Washington, DC or Raleigh.  They have no idea what we are going through.  None.  Because they live in a world that doesn’t even exist for us.  And our world doesn’t exist for them.  We’ve got to change that.  We have to put people up there that actually know what is happening down here and care about what is happening here.  And are willing to do something about it.  And not worry about being there year after year getting  re-elected and re-elected.  He is only going there to do a job and then come home.  His wife has already imposed term limits on him, so we don’t need a Constitutional Amendment as far as he is concerned.  She has already told him how many terms he is allowed.  So that is that – the Supreme Court has ruled.  Understand when he says ‘It is your fault’, and when he wins and goes to Washington, ‘You all can blame yourself or take the credit, whichever you prefer’. ’If I don’t do a good job, then kick me out’.  ‘Make that, tell me first so I can fix it and then if you’re not happy, kick me out. Impose your own term limits.’ He said BOB had told him he should tell us what he needs.  It is so obvious what he needs,  ‘I need your help, and a couple of things from you.  I need you to not be afraid to talk to 10 of your friends, each one of you, and tell them about Frank Palombo and about this campaign and about how important it is to change the leadership in Washington, DC, who will make a positive impact and make things happen with real change to all the things we know are a real problem.  So I need you to talk to 10 of your friends, get them to go to our web site “palomboforcongress.com”.  Take a look at it and see what is on there.  Look at the position on different issues.  Look at the buttons that say volunteer and contribute.   If you want to help, click volunteer.  There are lots of things you can do.  Find sign locations for us – have a little fund raiser at your house – a little meet and greet type.  I’m not talking about 100 people, maybe 10 to 20 of your friends.  Bring them over and tell them to bring their check book.  If you like what you hear from Frank, then leave a check for him.  So talk to 10 of your friends and get them to talk to 10 of their friends.  Oh, and please write a check for us.  Doesn’t have to be a $100 check, or a $500 check, please let it be whatever you can afford and get your friends to do the same  thing.  If you get 10 and they get 10 and they get 10, we are talking some serious financial help for us.  And keep our message going.   We do not want to wind up broke at the end of the campaign.  So we are pushing hard for this.  If anyone here wants to have a little fund raiser at your house, let us know.  Brian will take your name and we will get our fund raising director to come and talk with you.  The two things we need most is your hard work, which I know you are capable of, and your resources, your finances.  We need your help.  I know times are tough, I know they are.  I’ve talk to a lot of people who got hit by the hurricane, besides the down economic times we are in, but if we are going to make it better you got to invest in good government.  You gotta invest in making a change up there in Washington, DC.  So, help me if you can…  palomboforcongress.com
Check it out as soon as you can.  Click on one of those two buttons.  Send me 10 bucks or whatever you can afford.  You have heard of 999, Cain’s plan; well, our plan is 10,10,10; one better than the Cain plan.  It is 10 of you, getting 10 of your friends, and all of you contribute $10 a piece.  That is the plan.  Thank you all very much for getting me into this, I think!   You all are great and I appreciate what you do.  Thanks for your time tonight and this guy here (BOB) – he works hard as any 10 guys I know, which fits into my 10,10,10 plan.’
BOB said he could iterate how important financing is to a campaign.  Them little stupid yard signs, like you stick in your front yard with the wire hoop, they are about $4.00 a piece.  When you are trying to blanket 22 counties, trying to use a 1000 signs even here in Carteret County they would be so stretched out you would hardly see one here or there.  So it runs into money real fast.  Just look at our advertising in the local paper for the Voter Registration data – 8 times was almost $1600.  These guys running for office, they have to get their message out and keep it out.  You can’t just run an ad one time and assume everybody in the County read the paper that day.
Frank asked if he could do a “Did you know kind of thing?”  We talk about my capabilities as a candidate and that is really important when we talk about my background and history and all that.  But one of the things we talk about too is a ‘did you know’.  When we talk about Walter Jones’ voting record – and we talk about did you know about this and that, sometimes even people who strongly support Walter didn’t know because they didn’t follow and the latest did you know is (and you have to hear this because I don’t think you are going to believe it).  Any of you heard of the Veterans Opportunity to Work Act?  It was passed by the House 418 to 6 – (6 no votes). A bi-partisan bill.  Went through the Senate, zinged right through and is going to be signed by the President.  No problem.  Know who voted against that bill?  Walter B. Jones.  This is strong on the military – there’s over a million GI’s out of work right now and this bill will do a lot to help those people get work and this is one of those did you knows.  The reason Jones voted against it is there is a provision in the bill that was supposed to reduce fees on home loans, (filing fees, and some other fees),  It wasn’t going to increase them – it was supposed to reduce them and because of the budget and because of financing, that fee stayed the same, it didn’t go up, it stayed the same.  His thought process was ’because that fee did not go down, he voted against the whole bill’.  That bill is going to put people back to work.  We can not worry about the minutia of some of these things.  This is ridiculous and I just wanted to give you another did you know.  Thanks.
JERE GEURIN wanted to know if anyone knew where Jones stood on the HR2 (Right to Carry Act – Concealed Weapon across state lines).  He said he emailed Jones today but had not heard back yet.  TOM HARMON asked ‘didn’t they vote on that today?’  JERE said it was on the floor, but he had not heard anything yet.

BOB asked if everyone had seen the latest edition of Crystal Magazine.  Maybe the guys hadn’t since it was a sexist magazine ‘for women only’.  Several comments were made jokingly.  Anyway HOWARD and PEGGY’s granddaughter (actually great granddaughter) Catie, is featured in an article.  He asked PEGGY to tell the group about why Catie has been honored by the magazine.
PEGGY said “CATIE McCABE” started out with us when we started with the TEA Party.  She pretty much grew up with the TEA Party.  She is now 16, has her drivers license, so you all don’t see her anymore.  As long as she was riding with us, she was here.  She started going to a Church here in Morehead and she went to a session in Atlanta where she got interested in ‘human trafficking/slavery’.  It sort of touched her and got her to really thinking about it so she started doing a lot of research on her own about the subject, (magazines, internet, etc) and really got involved in the subject. The lady at the Church has encouraged her a lot.  What she has found out is- they take these young girls and young women also, and turn them into prostitutes and that is all they know.  They are normally in small homes with usually no more than two girls, not big brothels like we usually think of, and keep them captive.  BOB asked if they were girls brought into this country, runaways, or what?  PEGGY said she imagined it would be anyone they could control.  Recently, a woman who was from the mountain area in North Carolina was enticed to come to this area, with the promise of a good paying job, cleaning homes, who was locked up in a trailer/home and used  to make her captors money.  So it is not just illegal girls who have come to the US, it is anybody they can control.  If they are found by the authorities, they are usually placed into foster type homes where as soon as they can get away, they go right back to the pimps who had had control over them; since that is all they know.  They have been brainwashed.  So, CATIE and some others are in the process of trying to raise enough funds to build a home where these girls can learn a trade and find out there is more to life than what they had known, make them feel good about themselves, so they can turn their lives around and become good productive citizens of the community.  CATIE has been named ‘State Coordinator’ for the project.  We are very proud of her and we thank the TEA Party for starting her off on the right track, because you are the ones that gave her her start.  I don’t believe she would have ever come this far without your encouragement.  Something you all do not know is – when she was born she was born with club feet and a speech impediment.  You could turn her feet from facing forward all the way around to facing backwards.  A doctor put her in casts and we were supposed to leave them on for three months.  We finally got her into the Shrine Hospital in South Carolina.  When they removed the casts, gangrene was just before setting in.  If we had not gotten her to that specialist when we did, the probability of her losing both legs was a very strong possibility.  They scrubbed her legs almost down to the bone and told her mother to not put anything on them and keep a close eye on her.  (CATIE’s mom is a Nurse Practitioner.)  As soon as we could we got her into dance lessons, which according to the doctors, was the best thing we could have done, since it strengthened her legs.  I’m sure not one of you here ever noticed anything different with the way she walks.  Right?  And the speech impediment was helped with a speech therapist.  They did a wonderful job – you all have heard her speak at almost every rally we have held.  Didn’t know she ever had a problem, did you?  We are so proud of her.  BOB said ’you should be, we are all very proud of her’.  We feel she belongs to us also.
BOB, speaking of leg problems, asked TOM HARMON  how his wife was doing.  TOM said she was on the mend.

BOB said he guessed we all have heard the news interview with Herman Cain, where he was asked if he thought President Obama had done a good job handling the war
in Libya.  Herman said he didn‘t think he handled it very well, and then he said ‘well wait a minute, let me back up there…rolled his eyes and said he had all this stuff jumbled in his head here…then a long pause, and BOB said he was thinking ‘holy geez‘..  He said Herman was a hell of a nice guy but it is now definite that he is not ready for prime time.  The problem is he is probably trying to remember all the practice and rehearsing of data and rehearsed answers rather than actually listening to the questions.  SUSAN RYNAS said no she thought he was listening to the questions, but just didn’t know the answers.  TOM said ’like Perry, he froze’.  BOB said yeah, it made Perry look intelligent.  It was really a soft ball question.  There was no real reason to screw it up.  BOB feels that put the final nail in the coffin for Cain, what with all the bad publicity (true or false) about the sexual harassment.  The media is going to show that clip over and over.  Everyone seemed to think Cain can not bounce back from this latest faux pas.  BOB said he is now back in the Newt Gingrich camp.  He had said from day one that Newt was the smartest one up there but carried a lot of baggage that the media would expound on as he moved up in the polls.  LOU said he had never left Newt’s camp.  BOB said he was curious who Newt would pick for his running mate… Rick Santorium or Michelle Bachman.  LOU said he would prefer Mark Rubio.  It didn’t have to be one of those running now.  BOB said Bachman had already been tainted badly by the press, so he thought Rick would be the next logical choice.  Several comments were made about the subject of who would be the best candidate.  There are three primary states you have to think about.  Ohio, Penn. And Florida.  From what he could find out, Obama had already lost Florida.  Ohio is going to be a toss up.  If someone gets the nod and puts Santorium (from Penn) in as VP, that could made the difference in carrying the state of Penn.  BOB said he had not thought about it from that angle, but that was a good point.  BOB said up north they do things differently.  They break a big city down into blocks and put someone in charge that knows everyone.  They meet with everyone regularly, give a lot of them like team captain jobs, etc,  and they know how everyone is leaning. They keep everyone in that block involved and on election day they knock on everyone‘s doors and, they will even carry them to the polls, just to make sure they vote. You don’t see that in the south.  Precincts up there are pretty small, not compared to the size of the counties here in the south.  For example Carteret County is like 75 miles across.  FRED said he knew a little about this precinct business, he had about 1400 Republicans in his.  BOB asked where he was hiding them.  LOU said that is because you try harder FRED.  FRED said he had been working on it since 1984.  He said he had told them they needed term limits on Precinct Chairmen.  BOB asked how many of them were dead and still voting.  LOU said you don’t want to go there.

BOB said he was really surprised that David Horton lost his bid for mayor of Morehead City.  He thought that the sulfur problem would work as a sure thing for him.  He wanted to know how the voter turnout was.  He was told it was very small.  BOB couldn’t believe it, as riled up as so many people were over that deal at the port.  HOWARD said Jerry Jones’ ad in the last paper before the election was kind of hard hitting and in his opinion there were some untruths in it.  But apparently people believed it.  BOB said Jones and Horton had been going back and forth for weeks with a newspaper war there.  He really thought in the final run the people would remember the sulfur smell and vote Jerry Jones out.  HOWARD said Jones claimed in the ad that if David  got elected, he, David, was going to resign, get Ballou installed as mayor and David take the job of Town Manager.  There were several things in the ad that he thought were down right untruthful.  NANCY BOCK said she understood David only lost by 80 votes.

BOB said while he was thinking about it, Frank Palombo was going to need a phone committee later on to make calls reminding people to get out and vote for Frank.  Frank told FRED he was going to need all 1400 of his people.

BOB asked STEVE how his movie thing went this past week.  STEVE said he was going to have a matinee this Saturday for young kids or even anyone young at heart.  It was going to be an animated movie ‘The Miracle Maker’.  PEGGY said she had heard that ‘Atlas Shrug’ was now out on DVD and she was thinking about buying it and wondered if everyone would go to STEVE’s to watch it; that is if STEVE would agree to show it.  He said he would.  NANCY said if you have not read the book, you need to.  The movie is nothing compared to the book.

BOB told us that on December 6, at our regular 6:00 pm Tuesday meeting, that Dr. Mark Creech, Executive Director of the Christian Action League of NC will be our guest speaker.  He also will be hosting a luncheon at the Golden Corral at noon that day for pastors and also will be available to meet with individuals from 2pm to 5pm.   This is a valuable opportunity to learn more about the work of the Christian Action League, receive a Legislative Update, and discuss the Marriage Amendment scheduled to be on the ballot May 2012.  RUTH PARKER wanted to know if we could get Lockwood to announce that on the radio.  BOB said yes.  That was another thing he had been thinking about – if we decided to do a pig pickin fund raiser, maybe have Lockwood do a live broadcast from there and interview people coming in.  All thought that was a good idea.
BOB said that would be a good way to get free advertising by getting Lockwood to push it for us.

BOB asked JOHN LARSON what he thought of our meeting tonight.  He said he had come to see what we were doing but he still was not quite sure exactly what we stand for.  He had not heard anyone say tonight.  He was going to go to the web site and see what else he could find out.  BOB said ‘before you go to the website, what do you think the TEA Party stands for?’  JOHN said ‘Smaller government’, ‘cutting spending so you do not have a debit’, ‘a balanced budget’, ‘more representation that represents the people’, than the ones that are in office now.  BOB said this whole primary process, you have seen a lot of people rise to the top only to get knocked down.  A primary is like a big boiling cauldron where everybody gets tested by fire.  Some can not take the heat and they get burned up.  Herman got chewed up, Michele Bachman (forgot what her early flubs were but she had John Wayne Gacey (the serial killer) and John Wayne the movie actor mixed up.  RUTH said she wished Elvis Presley a Happy Birthday on the anniversary of his death, which was an unpardonable sin.  Someone said he had been looking on the website for a national TEA Party association.  Are we like a subcomponent of it?  BOB said ‘good question’.  There are several umbrella groups that call themselves TEA Party.  You’ve got the TEA Party Express that has the bus going all around and Dick Army is the Chairman of that group.  They are more of a top down organization.  They have someone in charge that sends out the word to all the other ones.  Then we have the TEA Party.Net, another group.  We belong to a group called the TEA Party Patriots.  It is the largest TEA Party group in the country.  Right now there is about 3500 parties around the country organized under the TEA Party Patriot umbrella.  You can go to their web site (teapartypatriots.org) and it will have a link at the top that says groups, click on that and all the states will drop down and then you can go down and click on North Carolina and all the North Carolina groups will drop down and you will find us there.  If you click on our name it will go to our dedicated web page which we have never used because we have our own web site.  The TEA Party Patriots is an upward organization.  We do not have any leaders at the top.  BOB is a local coordinator.  The state coordinator is Russ Finchum and then we have national coordinators.  These are essentially the eleven people that first started the TEA Party Patriots the day after Rick Santori had his rant on wall street.  Every Monday night we have a call-in web-a-nar for all the local coordinators to call in and they get a legislative update.  They have different members that are tracking what is going through the House and Senate.  Someone else is tracking other things coming down the pike.  They have guest speakers that speak on different things like the Marriage Amendment, Immigration and things like that but one of the things he wanted to emphasize is the TEA Party Patriots have the three core elements; one is fiscal responsibility in the government.  (we understand that we have to pay taxes to the government, but we want the money spent in a fiscally responsible manner.  Don’t waste it.  He just heard today that in Obama’s stimulus package, something like 700 million dollars went to some university to create a computer software program with this intelligent machine that makes its own jokes.  It is a joke machine. (how apropos)).  The second tenant is limited Constitutionally endowed government.  (The Constitution sets up the framework of how we are supposed to be governed.  There is nothing in there about the Supreme Court legislating – they interpret the law, they do not make the law.  All these different agencies creating and over interpreting the law and Congress not doing anything about it.  This also goes into the government overreaching their Constitutional authority.   Health Care Mandate is one example)  The third tenant is promotion of  Free Market Capitalism.  (This is keeping government regulations of our free enterprise system to a minimum.  It is true we have to have some regulations, otherwise we would have 10 year olds still working on assembly lines and a lot of needless deaths because of worker accidents but OSHA has gone over and beyond; as has the EPA gone over and above their intent.  We are a free market capitalistic system and it works best with the least amount of government involvement.)  Those are the three things the TEA Party is based on.  We are not an anti-Mexican group; nor an anti-Gay group; nor an Islamic J’Had group nor an anti-abortion group.  We are a conservative group and most of those things are handled through meeting discussions, with some defending one side and some the other; but they are not what we truly get really involved with.  It is just a forum where we can actively vent what we feel or think on the issues.  Those are the things that will divide us; whereas the three core principles we can all unite around, and they will keep us together.  You are certainly free to bring up any issues that might be on your mind  when he, BOB asks if anyone has anything they wish to bring up from the floor.

Anyway, we meet every week and it has become sort of like a social event for most of us, giving us a reason to get out of the house (and not have to cook that night for some), have a little camaraderie and share an evening with like minds.  LOU – peace, justice and the American way.

TOM brought in a couple of signs and fans “Don’t Believe the Liberal Media”. web site StopTheBias.org.  We got them free of charge and they only ask if we use them maybe at a rally, or something similar,  to please take pictures for their website and promote the organization.  Now is the time to go around and find those campaign signs and “recycle” the wires.  FRED said he had a bunch.  TOM said he would need about 35 or 36.  He had gotten 10 of the big signs and 25 of the small ones.

Don’t forget Dr. Creech will be our guest on the 6th of December.  Everyone please try to attend.

Meeting adjourned at approximately 7:30 pm
Minutes submitted by PEGGY GARNER, Secretary.


CCTPP Minutes, November 8, 2011

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF 8 NOVEMBER 2011

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting was called to order at 6:03 pm by President BOB CAVANAUGH
Pledge of Allegiance was led by ERNIE GUTHRIE
Invocation by JERE GEURIN
No. in attendance – 24

New attendees were:
THOMAS E. VASGAR, originally from Philly, but has been here since 1967.  His mother was from Newport.  Currently lives on the Nine Foot Road in Newport.
JIM AND SUSIE BENDER from Cary, NC.  They are here on vacation and heard about our meeting.  BOB asked it they had a TEA Party in Cary.  Jim said they probably do, but was not aware of one.

BOB said he appreciated everyone’s good wishes and thoughts concerning his absence last week while undergoing a colonoscopy.  He believes it went well, however, he does not remember any of the surgery.

BOB congratulated everyone on the parade.  He thought it went well.  Everyone agreed. (Round of applause)  He felt we were cheered as much or more that any of the other floats.  HOWARD GARNER said except for Ken Humphrey’s wife.  She just stood there and shook her head, refusing a copy of the Constitution or even a piece of candy.  EULA PARKIN wanted to know where the guitar player came from.  HOWARD said he added a whole lot to our float.   He even had those watching the parade join us in singing ‘God Bless America”.  Only thing anyone knew about him was his first name was ‘Jeff’ and he was from Havelock they thought.  HOWARD said he had heard him say something about being a part of some program in the next few weeks in the Havelock City Park, and Howard thought we should try to find out and support him in return.   TOM HARMON said he thought he had attended one of our meetings about 3 or 4 months ago.  (Secretary’s note:  Checked the minutes back to April this year – no Jeff signed in that I could recognize in the signatures.  Possibly, he did not sign in.  Sorry.  No help.)  TOM said he understood someone had invited him, but he didn’t know who.  HOWARD said ‘Jeff” had talked like he might be here tonight.  NANCY BOCK said she understood that ‘Jeff’ was getting married this coming Saturday.

BOB said he was surprised that SCOTT CARPENTER was not in attendance tonight.  He figured he would have a presentation and discussion on what we did right and wrong for the parade.  We missed SCOTT and his presentation.  Maybe he will be here next week to enlighten us.  Several talked about how SCOTT could take charge and keep things moving.  He could still bark orders and everyone jump.  HOWARD said he had not been out of service long enough to get ‘re-civilianized’.  It takes a while to get that military stance completely toned down.  Everyone agreed he was an excellent organizer.  TOM said he still holds staff meetings.  (Sorry, SCOTT, you have to be there to protect yourself).

BOB called on STEVE BEST for a report on his ‘Cave’.  STEVE said, ‘This coming weekend they are having a Prayer Rally in Detroit – a man named Lou Ingals.  He does it (according to STEVE) whenever the LORD tells him to.  It is a fasting and prayer rally and is going to be at the baseball stadium.  The stadium holds around 10,000 people and they are saying it will be full.  There will be various speakers and musicians.  They will fast, pray and worship for 24 hours.  Pray for the nation, the coming elections, and all kinds of stuff.  STEVE will be showing it in the Cave, through the internet service.  He has everything hooked up so he can show it live and everyone attending will be joining in the praying and fasting from Friday at 6:00 pm to Saturday at 6:00 pm.  BOB said he was cool until he got to the fasting part.  He said after that colonoscopy, he had to refill, couldn’t skip that many hours without eating.

JERE GEURIN said he had talked yesterday to a lady from the Morehead City Police Department and she said they will give a guided tour to any group that wants to get together and go through the new police station.  It is 22,000 square feet.  He thinks that ought to be something to see.  Discussion on size of station.  HOWARD said that would be a little over a ½ acre.

BOB called on EULA PARKIN to scare us again about something….  EULA said she was still wondering if we were reading J’Had Watch everyday.  She had a question she wanted to check us out on.  ‘Who was the top US General who was fired for telling the truth about the Afghan president Karside’s (?) regime’.  The answer was in yesterday’s J’had Watch.  Several members offered possible answers.  She read his comment.  “You might just as well poke me in the eye with a needle.  I’m sorry, but we just gave you eleven point six billion and now you are telling me I don’t really care.’  Here we have one official telling the truth about a leader who has openly said he will side with our enemies and has threatened to join the Taliban and the General gets fired.  Major General Peter Fuller, Deputy Commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan made the remarks in an interview with Politico that was published Thursday.  Fuller told Politico that major players in the Afghan government are isolated from reality.  Fuller acted angrily on claims from Karside that Afghanistan would side with Pakastan if we (the US) went to war with them.  Fuller called Karside’s statements irrational.  It was announced Friday that Fuller was to be released from his duties effective immediately, saying these comments are indicative of our current relationship with the government of Afghanistan.  The Afghan people are an honorable people and statements like these will prevent a peaceful and solid unity with our country.  The article ended with “Fuller will be proven right and we will be proven foolish – you can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish.  Fuller said we are giving them fish while they are learning and they want more fish; and now they say they like sword fish; how come you are giving me cod?  The point being there will never be peace in Afghanistan.  ERNIE GUTHRIE asked if anyone knew the meaning of Afghanistan – it is the ’land of the unruly’.  ERIC BROYLES said we are never going to solve their problems.    BOB said, well we are pulling out of there this year – TOM said that’s Iraq (December before the first of the year) and Afghanistan is 2014.  MARION MERRILL said the only reason Obama is bringing the boys home from Iraq is to help him get reelected.  TOM said they had already started closing up some of the bases  last month.  ERIC asked how many will be left to act as advisors or some other such name.  TOM said his understanding is the only ones who will be left there is the Black Water Group.  A group of 2000 who will be in charge of maintaining ’peace’.?   JIM BENDER said his son is in the Air Force and he trains people how to fuel aircraft and things of that nature.  He is now with a group in Kobal, Afghanistan training the Afghani how to do the same things.  In addition to that they are trying to train the Afghanis how to run their cities, and ultimately how to run their country.  That is part of the United Nations effort and he thinks they are going to be there for quite a while.  BOB said he really doubts we are really going to pull out.  He thinks they will just change names – they will no longer be combat troops.  Same folks, different title.

BOB asked NANCY BOCK, Treasurer, how we were holding out in funds.  NANCY said we have $1,260.00 and owed $230.00 for parade items we had gotten.  BOB asked HOWARD and PEGGY if they had given NANCY a bill for the candy.  NANCY said she had gotten a bill for a little over $69.00 and the GARNER’s would only accept $50.00.  They had paid the difference.  BOB said CLAYTON and GRACE GILLIKIN had bought some candy also.  NANCY said she had not gotten a bill for that candy yet and they are not with us tonight.  HOWARD said we had collected most of the candy that was left in the basket on the float and brought it home with us.  It is in an air-conditioned room and we plan to take all the chocolates out and put them in the refrigerator (over in the double wide trailer that had belonged to PEGGY’s mother).  It is perfectly safe, since HOWARD is diabetic and can’t eat candy.  BOB said he thought we should take the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Tootsie Rolls and bring them to the meeting next week.  He would help us take care of them.    BOB wanted to know how much candy was left.  HOWARD said that tub, we had put the candy in so we could mix it up, was probably half full.  Discussion on what to do with the remaining candy.  Some suggested using it in the Christmas Parade, while others didn’t think we should get involved in that parade; and others said maybe we should look into selling it to someone who planned to enter the Christmas Parade.  No decision was made.  HOWARD said if we needed to hold the candy for any length of time, we could store it in the refrigerator that was in the double wide and he thought it would be alright.

NANCY had found a metal coffee cup that had been left on the float and wanted to know if anyone recognized it.  No one did, so she took it back with her and asked us to let her know if we found out who it belonged to.  She also had a box of candy that had been left in her vehicle Saturday and would like for HOWARD to take and put it with the rest of the candy we had stored.  BOB wanted to know what kind of candy was it.  RUTH PARKER wanted to know if there were any Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in there – BOB would be glad to help us with them.  NANCY said she thought we had handed out about 800 pocket Constitutions and about 400 flags.  She has a box of Constitutions and labels in her car if anyone would like to take them and put the labels on them.  EULA said she would be glad to put the labels on.  She said ‘old teachers never die, they just cut and paste’.

TOM HARMON wanted to know if we plan to buy our own military flags (for each branch of service).  BOB said he thought we should.  HOWARD said there was a guy at the Flea Mall that sold flags for $5.00 a piece he thought.  TOM said he did not want to buy anything made in China, especially an American flag.  HOWARD said he imagined these were made in China, as cheap as they are.  TOM asked if anyone knew about flag depot.com.  He thinks those flags are made by veterans in the USA.  NANCY said she looked it up but she couldn’t remember how much they cost.  She knows of a site where they are $30.00 each plus $5.00 shipping and handling.  (3×5 – $65.00) She thought that was flagstaff.com.  BOB said maybe we should do a Google on flags, wholesalers.  BOB said the law on ‘Made in America’ is kinda crazy.  He thinks it really ought to be changed.  For example: you can have a shirt made overseas,  bring it back to the states and if you sew the label in the back of the shirt, here in the US, you can declare it ‘made in America’.  LYN BAKER said another example would be cotton fabrics  manufactured here and sent overseas to be cut and sewn – you are still getting American fabric.

EULA said changing the subject; she wanted to brag a little, that she had seen in the paper that the Morehead City Veteran’s Day Parade was the largest in the state, with the highest attendance.

BOB told us about being asked by a teacher to speak to a class at East Carteret on the Beruit bombing in Lebanon.  The 28th of October was the 28th anniversary of the bombing.  He said he put together a power point presentation over the weekend and by the time he got to the school (a little over a week ago), it had expanded into six classes.  Some of the other teachers had found out and he ended up giving six classes; two in the morning and in the afternoon they had combined four classes into two classes.; so they went to the visual center where he gave his talk.  He thought it went really well.  Couple of things that really amazed him was how big high school kids are now days.  They are huge.  The first class were freshmen and they were like ERNIE’s size.  BOB said he would ask questions like ‘who listen to the news every night regularly‘.  No hands went up.  ‘How many know where Beruit is?’  No hands went up.  Anyway the presentation started out with maps of the Mediterranean to show them where Lebanon is and where Beruit is and showed them where the airport is.  He told them, to understand, they needed to go back a little bit and learn about the history of the whole area and find out where they are now.  He went all the way back to the Roman Empire and brought them forward through World War I and everything since then.   About 15% to 20% of the students were really locked up, engaged in, and absorbing the data; but the other 80% to 85%….. some of them, before the presentation ever started were heads on the desks and snoring.  BOB said it may have been the same way when he was in high school.  Several said they doubted it.  BOB said even so, he still enjoyed doing it.  Maybe they’ll invite him back again next year.

HOWARD asked if we had read the letter to the editor criticizing the Chairman of the County Commissioners.  He said he and DENNIS TOMASO had been discussing it before the meeting and they wondered if the person who wrote that letter, who didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to sign their name, was at the same meeting we were; because neither of us had seen or heard it that way.  BOB said he re-watched the meeting when it was re-broadcasted again on Channel 10.  He watched the whole meeting again  and he remembered it the same as the night of the meeting he attended.  It put him to thinking ‘what meeting did these people (C4) go to.  He was kind of appalled that they didn’t put their name to the letter.  MARION said they do sign their names but they ask the editor not to use it.  The editor does know where the letter comes from.  BOB said he realized that but if you are ashamed to admit you wrote a letter then you should not have written it.  HOWARD said most of that letter was untrue; because we were there and heard something different than what they were stating.  He said ‘Ironically, on the way down to the parade Saturday morning, we stopped at Cox’s for breakfast and Doug Harris came in.  HOWARD went over and personally thanked him for the power point presentation and them taking up for the tax payers.  BOB said it was one of the best Commissioners meeting he had ever been to because it was very transparent in the communication between the Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools,  and County Commissioners.  Knowing the background behind it, because KEN LANG had worked a lot with Commissioner Robin Comer trying to get some facts and figures; and then them coming out in the paper about they didn’t have the right numbers.  How many budgets are the schools operating on.  He didn’t like the fact that the Commissioners had released the contingency funds (the $500,000.00).  It was to have been contingent upon the School Board providing them with quarterly financial information (how the money is getting spent).   He was kind of wondering why they released the money since we haven’t even gone through the first quarter of the school year.  He didn’t think the contingency for releasing the funds had been met yet.  HOWARD said Commissioner Holt Faircloth told PEGGY that night, before the meeting started, that they were going to approve it.  They had asked for pertinent information which the school (right or wrong) had provided them.  Thus they had no choice but to release the funds, since it would appear their requests had been met.  BOB said they had had to assume that the figures they had been provided by the Board of Education were the same figures Doug Harris had used in his power point presentation.  Then the school employees and board said they had used the wrong information.  So it goes back to how many dang budgets are they operating under.  Why can’t they get together the “right” numbers and get them to the County Commissioners the first time when they asked for them.  He thought Doug Harris made that front row of school wheels look absolutely stupid.  ERIC said he understood that the Commissioners had not given the school the total amount; that it was prorated throughout the year.  He didn’t think they got it all at once.  BOB said he wasn’t sure about that but according to the paper the $500,000.00 was for paying teacher overtime, sick leave, and school bus drivers‘ overtime.  The state had provided funds for three days of sick leave but the teachers were apparently entitled to 10 days.  His question is ‘surely they (with 700 teachers) have not already gone through 2100 days of sick leave already in the first month of school‘.  He didn’t think they should release the money until the funds already allocated were expended.  He says they got the money and now they will do whatever they want with it, because once the funds are released by the County, they no longer have any control.  The school can spend it anyway they want.  They do not have to stick to the budget, which he thinks is why they are floating around all these budgets, to confuse the issue.  A budget for this group, another for another group, etc.  BOB said Novey says he is trying to get the biggest bang for the buck they can get, but he feels Novey’s modus operandi is just wanting to get as much money as possible, spend all they get, so they can ask for more next time.  He is an empire builder.  We all agreed with that.  BOB said we have new school board elections coming up and we have three members of the board who, the last he heard, were not going to run for reelection, so we need to find some good conservative folks to put on the school board.  Once we can get enough on the board then we can fire Novey.  He said he and KEN were talking to Adele Collins and she said they never had these problems with the previous superintendent (who passed away).  Then they got Novey and since then they have all these problems with the money and where it is going.  Just mass confusion.  The current school board just amens and rubberstamps what Novey wants.  HOWARD said they are violating state law the way they are currently operating.  The Board of Education is supposed to set policy and it is the superintendent’s duty to carry it out.  It is not working that way here in Carteret.  ERIC said this is also being spun by C4.  It’s the same information they have been spinning all along.  BOB said he thought that letter to the editor was dictated and crafted between Al Hill and Novey and given to C4 to send to the editor.  Novey will stand up and make statements and when you go to a C4 meeting they use the same talking points.  HOWARD said he understands that one of the Commissioners is meeting secretly/privately with C4 also.  Others have heard the same thing, so we wonder who’s side he is on.  BOB said he is chairman of one of the parties, also.   HOWARD said he is not a member of that party but he hopes that party will get rid of him next time.  BOB said he thinks he will be un-elected next election.  He told WAYNE WILLIS that since he lost his last election then we might just put him up for Chairman of one of the parties.  WAYNE said ‘you’ll be sorry’.

HOWARD asked BOB if he saw Al Hill riding in the yellow convertible in the VA parade Saturday.  BOB said he didn’t.  HOWARD said he rode by us and shook hands with one of our TEA Party tee shirted Patriots.  PEGGY said she bet it did not register who he had just shook hands with or he would not have done it.

BOB called upon WAYNE to give us an update on the history of his game he had ongoing.  WAYNE said the software is written and he is playing it on his computer now and has been for a couple of weeks.  Why he has been playing it is to make sure that there are no typographical errors, spelling, punctuation or factual errors in it.  Even in the wrong answers he found some things that somehow got changed when they went to put in onto the software.   Somehow some things got changed a little bit and he is trying to make sure that it is 100% correct.  It is a little bit tricky to do because there is a correct answer; there is a almost correct answer, (he has to really check on some of these to make sure that it is not the correct answer – only the near ‘bout); the ridiculous answer and the funny answer.  He’s checking out the pictures (100 images that had to be found that were not copyrighted or have some kind of intellectual property claim to them and the music is another thing.  It had to be cleared to make sure it was all available in the public domain.  The most recent thing he had to do was to come up with a EULA contract.  End User License Agreement.  This is something in that real fine print when you buy software or some kind of product like that.  And when he says ‘fine’ print, he means it.  When you type it out so you can read it, it can be over three foot long.  He called his patent lawyer in Greensboro to ask him would he do the EULA.  He said he was not familiar with that and it will be expensive; which while talking to him, translated into ‘don’t get him to do it because he would have to pay the lawyer to go to night school’.   He charges $350 an hour just to talk to him on the telephone, so when he said it was going to be expensive, he believed him.  So what he did was, he stumbled onto one on a piece of software that happened to be left by Denise, that she had bought in ‘02, that was very similar to what he wanted so he reworded that one and that’s what took up a lot of last week.  He hopes to have something available between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  EULA (PARKIN not the contract) wanted to know how much the game was going to cost.  WAYNE said he did not know yet.  BOB explained about the game that WAYNE had just been talking about to the new attendees.   BOB asked what would entice a teenager to play this game.  Do they get something like a jelly bean every time they get a right answer.  What is the motivation for them to want to get past question number three.  WAYNE said he thought the type of people who would need this game were about like those 80 to 85% BOB referred to in that class he taught.  80% of them would go to sleep.  What WAYNE had done was go to the Board of Education, Matt Bottoms, Asst. Superintendent, about a year ago.  Matt was really enthused with the idea and wanted WAYNE to hurry up and get it ready, because they could use it for a history test.  For those of you who do not know, there are 100 questions and it is multiple choice, with 4 answers to each question.  BOB wanted to know if it was set up for different grade levels.  WAYNE said it was not that sophisticated yet.  BOB asked what period of time was covered.  WAYNE said it started with Plato and came right on up to Obama.  He thinks it will be easy to put other sets of questions in it later.  BOB said, didn’t he say that some nursing outfit was interested in adapting his idea for other purposes other than history.  WAYNE said yes, a nurse he knew was interested in using it to help people understand more about cancer for example.   He had lunch with the guy, that was here at our meeting a couple of weeks ago, that had the patch over his eye because he had had surgery for a brain tumor.  It was his girlfriend that had the connection with Duke University that wanted to use his idea and put cancer questions on it.  It looks like they may be doing that.  WAYNE said for 2 or 3 dollars a piece it won’t break anyone’s budget.  HOWARD said he would need to charge more than that.  At that price they wouldn’t want them.  WAYNE said we will have to talk about that then.  BOB said we are anxious to see this thing so we can start buying them for our kids for Christmas.  WAYNE said, yeah, and making some money for the TEA Party.  That was another thing about the price.  The higher the price the more the TEA Party is going to get, so we were going to have to talk him into charging a higher price.  BOB said he thought WAYNE was going to become a millionaire or billionaire.  WAYNE said no, he didn’t want to be rich.  JIM said with games like that you usually had a measurement on how well you are doing.  WAYNE said there is a scoring system.  You start out with 50 points and you earn 10 points when you answer correctly and you lose 10 when you miss.  The first one to get 100 wins the game.  Then you start all over.  It doesn’t take long to get 5 questions right – but it takes longer to miss 5.  He has left it up to the teachers to provide incentives to encourage participation.

BOB said Herman Cain is probably done with his news conference by now.  Curious as to what the fall out is going to be about that.  WAYNE said seeing as how Herman has been wounded and if mortally wounded from this ‘Anita Hill II accident’ or episode or whatever you want to call it, who do you all think is going to be in line to take his place?  Most in attendance said they hoped it would be Newt Gingrich.  WAYNE said he just wanted to know what we all think.  Discussion followed.  HOWARD said he has found out how he can run in the next election and get free advertising.  He has set up a deal with Christy (a waitress here at the Golden Corral) for her to charge him with sexual harassment.

BOB said our next project was going to be a rally in the spring.  We want to have it before the primary which will be sometime in mid May.  It will be one of those ‘get out the vote’ type things but also gearing up for the November elections also.  So, let’s put our thinking caps on and come back next week and decide when we want to have it, a theme, and all the other things connected.  DENNIS is concerned how we are going to afford a rally when we only have $1200.00 in the kitty.  BOB said that would be part of the discussion also.  We are going to have to have some type of fund raiser….a car wash, sell WAYNE’s games or something to make some money.  He asked NANCY if she had a ball park figure of what it cost for the last rally….insurance, porta johns, speaker system, etc.  We will need to buy insurance again for this rally,  won’t we?  NANCY said yes, she thought it cost us around $700 for the year last year, which was good for up to three rallys.  He asked her to compile all that information together and give a report next week.

JIM said he was kind of new at this and they came tonight to learn more about TEA Party groups.  He wanted to know if there was any place where they could learn more.  BOB said if they will go to TEA Party Patriots.com (or .org) you can order a packet with information on organization and all kinds of materials for getting started.  You can also send an email to them asking for a North Carolina coordinator to get in touch with you.  BOB offered to get in touch with Russ (?) and ask him to get in touch with JIM.   When he contacts you, just tell him you are interested in getting a group started up around the Cary area.  There may already be one up there.  JIM said he had seen our float in Saturday’s parade and thought it was very impressive.  In fact he thought the whole parade was impressive.  BOB said if they wanted to start a TEA Party and wanted a cohesive group, he would recommend they meet every week.  The TEA Parties that he is familiar with that have once a month meetings, unless there is some hot topic/burning item like health care, or something like that that gets everybody riled up, the group kinda drops by the wayside.  If you have weekly meetings…he thinks that is the secret that keeps us going…it sorta becomes like a social thing for us so we can get out of the house once a week and have dinner together and discuss topics of mutual interest.  ERIC said he thinks by meeting each week we become more involved in things going on around us.  BOB informed JIM and SUSIE that we have also started a second group here in the western part of Carteret County.  We refer to it as our Wild West Tea Party.  We are trying to get one started in the down east part of the county, but so far have not been successful.  They will all be under our umbrella.  When we have rallies, it will usually only be one rally, not one in each locale.  Our county is so long, a lot of people do not want to travel so far to attend our meetings here at the Golden Corral.  JIM said from what he has determined we were more inclined in keeping our Country more toward it’s charter, as opposed to a more liberal leaning.  BOB said our core values are Limited Government, Fiscal Responsibility and Promotion of Free Markets Enterprise.   JIM said those were similar to conservative ideals.  The TEA Party is basically trying to bring the Republican Party back to those principles.  BOB thinks we need to deny Democrats public office until they move back to at least center; because they currently are so far left they are totally unable to compromise.  HOWARD told them they could go to our website where our minutes are posted.  They are sort of like a newsletter detailing what goes on at our meetings and you can keep up with what we are trying to do.  BOB advised them to stick to the core values and not tackle subjects like abortion, gay marriage, Muslims, etc.  They are things you can talk about in your meetings, like we could stay here all night and talk about this Occupy Wall Street stuff, but there’d be no sense in it.  Someone pulled out one of our cards and gave it to them for our website address.  ERIC  wanted to know if we didn’t need some more business cards, since it would appear most of us were out.

TOM said, talking about elections, we need to watch out for Elaine Marshall, Secretary of State.  George Soros wants Democrats in the Secretary of State positions and he is paying out big money to get them that position; and then he will have control of them.  If Elaine Marshall gets back in there again Soros will have a big foothold there.  We have to do our best to keep her from getting elected.  BOB said we need to do like we did in 2010 and come up with our voter recommendation guide, articles in the paper, man the polls, and have those handouts.  He feels that was the best thing we came up with last time.  TOM said he had an article that he would send to KEN to get on our website that explains the Secretary of State, George Soros and how he is paying these people to run.  HOWARD said we are going to have some commissioners here in the county that are not going to run next time that we need to be thinking about.  TOM asked who and HOWARD said Holt Faircloth had told him he had no intention of running again.  BOB asked why….burned out or what.  HOWARD said probably, but he is disgusted with the way things have gone.  Rumor mill has it that Renee Coles, with the C4 group, is campaigning for the Board of Education but he has been told that Greg Lewis was trying to get her to challenge Holt.  Holt had told HOWARD he didn’t care because he was not going to run.  We definitely do not want her.  BOB said if Greg is pushing her, then we need to push him out too.  HOWARD said Greg was trying to straddle the fence and play all sides.

STEVE said he needed to set up a date to show the movie “Turning the US into a Socialist Country” about Agenda 21.  Maybe one Saturday evening or something.
The movie runs about an hour to an hour and a half.  With all that is going on now, Thanksgiving, Christmas holidays; maybe we should wait until after the first of the year.

EULA said, as we knew, she was in Charleston, SC a couple of weeks ago to an annual meeting of the Coast Guard Courier.  Her husband had been stationed aboard it.  She was surprised to find out, that as a widow of a service man, she was the only one there that knew about the new ribbon that has come out.   If you serve anywhere on the water (Atlantic/Pacific or anywhere) there is a new ribbon that you can send for and get.  Apparently, most do not read all the letters and papers sent out.  She said they all thanked her for keeping them informed.  She did not know how many of our members were retired military and got quarterlies, but she thought we should know of this new ribbon.  BOB said in his 21 years of military, he had managed to stay off a boat.  BOB asked how many here tonight were retired military, asking them to raise their hands.. A round of applause and thank yous followed.

BOB said he was going to adjourn the meeting and head down to Rib Eyes in Cape Carteret for the celebration (they hope).  KEN and DIANE are going to be there and Dave Fowler, Richard Hunt, Renna,  They are going to have an after the election get together.

WAYNE said he read where a town that an Occupy group was holed up in, the word got out that they had not had to get a permit to be there.  The TEA Party had been charged recently for a permit for them to protest, so they are suing to get their money back.  HOWARD said it was Richmond.  DENNIS said there were two issues on the ballot in Ohio we need to watch… one opting out of Obamacare and the other overturning the Governor’s ruling on the union dues.   Also they are going after Governor Walker for recall in Wisconsin.

BOB said he thought a letter to the editor thanking those who came out and cheered on the TEA Party float would be nice.  It really made us feel great.  It also gives us incentive to keep on keeping on.

TOM asked if anyone found his truck keys Saturday.  He had lost them somewhere during the parade.  HOWARD and PEGGY took him back to Newport so he could get his wife’s keys and then took him back to Morehead.  When we drove up to his truck he found someone had evidently found them and placed them in the door handle of his truck.  He would like to find out who did it so he could thank them.  If anyone hears who it was, please let TOM know.  He plans to write a letter to the Editor thanking them.  He said he had been praying that his truck would still be there when we got back.  He was going to cry if it were gone.  BOB said they must have walked around pushing the button until they found where they belonged or else it was someone who knew him and knew he had lost his keys.

NANCY said just an item of interest….Has anyone heard of the website ’I am the 53%’.  It is a response to the Occupiers who say they are the 99% who represent the people.  This is the 53% that say they pay their taxes.  She said it was very inspiring.  There are a lot of people with hand written notes who post pictures of themselves.  One of the articles …..   “I have lived through most poverty times.  My wife and I decided in ’96 that we were sick of poverty, so we went back to school and earned degrees and got three jobs.  No one handed that to us…we earned it, we did it.  I did not go through all that struggle while raising three children so that I could support lazy people who want nothing but government handouts.  You want to occupy something…occupy a job and start contributing….. There are a lot of comments like that.  You will enjoy this website. Google “I am the 53%”.   It is not just a website in itself but a lot of blogs.

BOB asked if anyone heard Neil Bortz today on the radio.  He had one of his folks down interviewing people at the Occupy group in the city he reports out of.  He had some maniac who could not carry on a complete sentence without throwing the “F” word in  so they had to edit that out in order to broadcast his remarks.  This guy said ‘I don’t care if we have a 9-11 another 9 hundred and 11 more times‘.  RUTH PARKER said she heard on Lockwood’s program on the way to the meeting that they were going to clean out Washington’s Occupy group tonight.  The police are going to make them move out.  BOB said the homeless in Sacremento want the Occupy crowd out because they want their home back.  Lockwood also said the ones in Raleigh were upset because they had no place to plug in their ipods, computers, etc.

PEGGY said everyone here remembers Catie, our great granddaughter, right?  Well, she had to brag a little tonight.  Catie was supposed to be on Lockwood’s program last night for two hours, but Lockwood had forgotten he had already scheduled a special Veterans Program, so he has postponed until next week his two hour session with her starting at 5:00.  It will be just Lockwood, Catie and people calling in.  BOB explained to our new comers that Catie, who is now 16, had been very active with our group until recently when she got her drivers license.  Catie has gotten interested in a subject most of don’t even think about ’human slavery’.  Young girls are held in captivity and made to serve as prostitutes.  If anyone is able to get them free, there is no place readily available for them or able to keep them for any length of time, so as soon as they are allowed to go, they run right back to their pimp, because that is all they know.  Several groups in the state are looking into getting together and building a home to house these young girls and help get them on the right path again.  Catie has been named State Coordinator for this project.  NANCY and BELVA MANNING both said they had seen a magazine in their doctors office in the last day or so with Catie’s picture and an article on her in it.  PEGGY said she knew about the article, but had not seen it.  Catie was supposed to get a copy for her.  PEGGY said she was quite proud of her granddaughter.  The others said she was like their granddaughter also.   HOWARD said he saw on TV last week where two males and a female recruited a woman, telling her they had a good job cleaning homes where she could make good money.  They brought her to Greenville and kept her locked up using her as a prostitute.  The reporter said it was suspected that the female that had helped get her here also operated several brothels just like that.  Catie had told him that from her research, they are all small with just a couple of girls in each brothel.  It is a big operation but done in small doses.

RUTH said Lockwood’s program last night with the high school and community college students (Catie was there for that) was on the ‘death of chivalry‘.  How boys do not open doors for girls anymore.  The girls said they didn’t want the boys to hold the doors…it embarrasses them.  PEGGY said we are training them wrong then.  RUTH said she was thinking ’what is wrong with you girls’.  ’Where is your mother?’  HOWARD said he was at the bank the other day and held the door for a young lady and she refused to walk through the doorway with him holding the door.  RUTH said well you should have promptly turned around and smacked her.  BOB said that would have been sexual harassment.  NANCY said kids today do not know how to date like we used to.  It is more of a hookup culture.  The boys do not know how to go to someone’s house, be introduced to the parents, and take the girl out to a movie, or pay for a meal.  They do not do that anymore.  It is really sad.  RUTH said she raised her boy…open the door, pullout the chair, hold her jacket.  NANCY said yes they do have to be taught.  TOM said he had had a guy come up to his house and honk the horn.  As his daughter was going out the door, he asked her where she was going?  She said her date was…TOM said oh no.  He went outside and asked the boy what he was doing.  He said he was waiting for his daughter.  TOM told him he could do that down on the street where the hookers were, not here.  If you want to date my daughter, then get your butt up to the door and introduce yourself.  PEGGY said something very similar happened to her years ago.  A boy, who was extremely shy and bashful, finally got up nerve enough to ask her for a date.  He drove up to her house and blew the horn.  Her mother like to have torn the front door off the hinges as she flew out of the house and walked up to the boy’s truck, shook her finger in his face and informed him we did not give curb service here.  If he wanted to see her daughter he was to come inside.  Well, he came in and about five minutes later, he got up, said he would see me at school and left.  He never asked me for another date, but I bet he never blew the horn in front of another girls home either.  BOB wanted to know if it was HOWARD.  HOWARD said no that was before his time.  BOB said he wished parents would raise their kids differently today.  They abrogate their responsibility to the school and others.  He doesn’t know how we can change that.  He said years ago (probably 25 or more) he was listening to the radio and Paul Harvey said the biggest problem we have nowadays is the government.  He said in the 1950’s the government took one out of every fifty dollars you made in taxes, on an average.  He said now they take one out of every five dollars you make in taxes.  He said this is causing a lot of problems.  The government has been the biggest drain on the family income overriding the electric bill, rent, etc.  We used to be able to get by with one wage earner households, where the father went out and worked and the mother stayed home and raised the kids.  Now the mothers have to go out and work too.  It is the mothers who pass on culture to the children.  They are the ones that tell the tales, teach the dances, stories, and traditions. BOB said it was like, WOW, I never thought about it in those terms but sure enough, he was right.  The only way he can ever see us getting back to where parents are parenting is somehow set it up so that women don’t have to work.  They can work if they want to but the way it is now many folks have to work to make ends meet and the kids are the ones losing out.  However, it is our own fault.  We have become so spoiled … have to have two cars, a TV in every room, dine out several nights a week, have to have this and that.  Another thing about the government causing us to live beyond our means…back before Jimmy Carter we were able to deduct interest paid on our homes, cars, credit cards, etc. off our taxes.  Jimmy Carter put the stop to that.  By then everyone was up to here in debt and once you got to there you could never recover.  In the meantime all the kids learned ’hey, just get the credit card out’.  THOMAS VASGAR said it was Ronald Reagan that did that, not Jimmy Carter.  BOB said he was going to have to check that out.  It didn’t sound like Reagan.  He was going to have to trust and verify.  ERNIE said those values that people used to hold dear and cherish are not there anymore.  That is part of the plan…Agenda 21…When socialism was first formulated they tried to sit down and figure out why communism did not materialize all over the world.  They found the answer was the values of western society were so deeply engrained that the middle class would never fall for it, so instead of coming at it from an economic angle, they needed to come at it from a cultural angle.   If we can change the culture of America we can rebuild it in a way that we will have the power.  BOB said he thought it didn’t catch on because most countries had a middle class and Russia did not.  ERNIE said they discovered you had to tear down those principles.  Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves if they saw what was happening today.

STEVE reminded us of the shut down of all communications for a test tomorrow.  BOB said that scared him to death.  He thinks they are testing out a weapons theory because back in the sixtys  they launched two A6 Prowlers, one from Florida and one from Maine and they flipped their jammers on and blacked out the whole east coast for radio and TV transmission.  They were checking to see if they could take out a whole area if they wanted to.  He feels they are testing out another system that covers a broader range.  Either that or it has something to do with the whales’ sonar system off the coast.  Thus ending the meeting.

Meeting adjourned at 7:25pm.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER


CCTPP Minutes, November 1, 2011

CRYSTAL COAST TEA PARTY PATRIOTS MINUTES
OF 1 November 2011

Meeting was held at Golden Corral, Morehead City, NC
Meeting called to order at 6:00 pm by Vice President ERIC BROYLES
Pledge of Allegiance was led by LOU KUKULINSKI
Invocation by EULA PARKIN
No. in Attendance – 23

ERIC reported that our president BOB CAVANAUGH had a medical procedure done today and was unable to be with us tonight .

No new attendees tonight.

Treasurer NANCY BOCK reported that we have $1,186.00 in the treasury.  She has paid Eula $25.00 for the Islamophobia Books BOB had asked her to order for the group since our last report.

ERIC asked NANCY  about how many of our tee shirts did we have currently in inventory; especially the long sleeve ones since it is starting to get cold.  The cost of the long sleeve is $20.00 each.  SCOTT CARPENTER said he had been looking at the results from our 4th of July parade and we had run out of the Xlarge and 2X sizes.  Did we ever procure anymore of the sizes we were short on?  NANCY said we have plenty of short sleeve with the exception of the mediums and 2XL.  We do not have a lot of the long sleeve shirts.  We do have some XL she believes.  She has them in her car tonight if anyone is interested.  She had emailed BOB wanting to know if he wanted her to order more but had not heard back.  Not knowing if we planned to sell shirts at the Veteran’s Day Memorial Parade, she had not restocked.  She did not want to take it upon herself to place an order without permission and approval.   Since we are planning to change our sponsorship, she figured we probably would not order anymore right now.  ERIC wanted to know if there was a minimum order size; like 25 or 50 an order.  NANCY said we usually order 50 at a time, but she did not think there was any minimum.  ERIC wanted to know if we order 50 how much it would cost us.  NANCY said for short sleeves about 6 or 7 dollars each or $300/$350.00.  ERIC wanted to know cost of long sleeves.  NANCY said it would probably run a couple of dollars per shirt more.  ERIC asked NANCY to take an inventory and report to our next meeting.  NANCY said she currently has all the tee shirts and hats we have in inventory in her car tonight to turn over to whoever is planning to set up a sales table at the parade.  TOM HARMON said he was hoping to sell what we have, so when we have to reorder it will be with the logo(s) of our new charity(s) we decide to sponsor.  Since we are changing from the Wounded Warrior Project to another(s), we really do not want to buy anymore right now.  ERIC asked NANCY and TOM to give us an account after this weekend as to what we have left.  SCOTT wanted to know if the hats came in various sizes or did one size fit all.  ‘One size fits all’, they are adjustable.  NANCY thinks we may have 30 to 35 hats in inventory.  SCOTT wanted to know if we thought that would be enough for this weekend.  ERIC said it would have to be since we do not have time to order now.  NANCY said we did not sell that many hats at the 4th of July parade, so she thought we would be good to go for this weekend on the hats.  TOM wanted to know if we had any bumper stickers to sell and NANCY said yes we do and if he thought we could sell them she would get them to TOM also.
TOM wanted to know if anyone had found out where they were supposed to set up our sales table.  ERIC said all he knew was someone said something about there was going to be a food sales area and they thought we might possibly be allowed to set up near that.  ERIC said he didn’t know whether we had to pay to get in there or what the setup was.  TOM said BOB said last week that he was going to let us know exactly where we were to set up.  ERIC said the best response he had for that was for us to pay close attention to our friendly website, because he thinks there is going to be a “couple” of pieces of information that hopefully will be published in the next day or two, finalizing this event.  SCOTT wanted to know if we had any of those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ stickers.  NANCY said she had a lot of yellow oval shaped about 4×6.  SCOTT asked her to bring those also to try to sell.  TOM said he would try to sell anything we could get.  NANCY wanted to know if it had been approved by Morehead City that we could sell stuff.  No one was absolutely sure, so SCOTT said “let’s go on the assumption that we do have permission and if not; ask for forgiveness afterward”.  CLAYTON GILLIKIN said the worse thing that could happen would be for them to come and ask us to close up and go home.  Probably by then we could have possibly have made a couple of hundred dollars, so we would still be ahead.  LYN asked if it had been decided where we were going to meet.  FRED DECKER said he had called Barbara over at the VA office, and apparently had called her before the deadline of signing up for the parade had arrived.  He had asked for location information but they had not finalized the lineup yet.  She promised to call him back and give him the information.  She has not returned his call yet.  He would call again tomorrow and call PEGGY and KEN LANG and let them know what he found out.  He thought it might be on Evans Street about a block or two from the St. Egbert Church.    ERIC said for those attending, after finding out where our float is supposed to go in the lineup, we will meet at 9:00 to decorate and set up the float.  SCOTT wanted to know if we had a contact list of names of members and those wanting to be a part of the group, to advise of the latest information.  ERIC said KEN usually sends out an email to all the addresses that have been given to him.  FRED was asked about parking and he said ’that would be the hard part’.  They usually park on the other side of Arendell on the side streets, but it would only be a couple of blocks to walk.  ERIC asked everyone to please watch our website for any new and current information.  He realizes that this is not the best way (and time) to inform people, but a lot of the problem is not anything we can control.  Check your emails and the website and try to keep informed.  FRED will call PEGGY and KEN just as soon as he finds out anything.
ERIC said as far as he knew BOB would be pulling the trailer like he did at the July parade.  Asked HOWARD GARNER about the ball for the trailer hitch.  HOWARD said all taken care of – it is in the back of his truck along with the chairs for the float.  ERIC said he understood BOB had asked HOWARD and PEGGY to get the candy and asked how much they had gotten.  HOWARD said they had gone to WalMart this morning before the sun came up, gotten 30 bags at a cost of $69.00.  The trunk of his car was over ½ full.  FRED said he had been in a store today where they too were marking their Halloween candy down and he had bought himself a couple of bags.  PEGGY said  WalMart had been priced at 50% off and more.  Most of the bags had run $2.65 or less.  ERIC said he thought probably just about everybody had at least a couple of bags left over from Halloween.  ERIC said he didn’t know about anyone else but he only had about 4 or 5 ‘attackers’ at his house, which left him with a few good snacks for himself since he had bought the kind of candy he liked.  HOWARD said if anyone wanted to see what kind of candy we had gotten, he had it in the back of his car and they could look at it and see.  SCOTT said candy was one of the problems we encountered at the 4th of July parade; we had run out before the end of the parade.  PEGGY said the reason for that was there were about 15 or 20 people throwing the candy and they had started off at the beginning of the parade throwing double hands full…which equated to about 30 to 40 hands full of candy being thrown at the same time.  We either need fewer people throwing the candy or ration the amount thrown.  A lot of the first kids had more candy than they could hold in their hands before the second throwing.  ERIC said maybe we need only one person on each side of the trailer throwing candy.  EULA said she had been involved in several parades with the girl scouts and had found that they did not approve of throwing candy.  Kids could run out into the street to get the candy and not look where they were going and run under the wheels of the floats and vehicles.  Others said it appeared that there had been no problem at the 4th parade and the kids really looked forward to getting the candy.  ERIC said he understood that we planned to have 6 walkers, 3 on each side of the float, two passing out pocket constitutions, two the special TEA Party flyers and business cards if we have them, and two carrying our sign.  SCOTT said no the last two were serving as gofers to resupply those handing out the constitutions and flyers.  He was told that we were out of business cards and needed to get another batch made up; that DENNIS TOMASO had made the last ones.  Someone asked about getting a stamp made up with our TEA Party information to use to stamp the next batch of constitutions we get in.  NANCY said there usually was not enough readable space to stamp the information; that a sticker worked better.  TOM HARMON said he would get up with DENNIS and ask him to make up 600 stickers to put on the backs of the constitutions we currently have (estimated about 600).  We will put the stickers on the backs of the constitutions while waiting for the parade to start (after we finish decorating.)  All agreed that we need to have something on the back or inside of the constitutions to remind people later where they came from.  ERIC said we need to have “Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots, our website address and if room time and dates of our meetings (both here and the Western group)”.  LOU said as long as we had the website on there we didn’t need the rest of the information about our meetings.  They could get that from our website.  TOM stepped out from the meeting and called DENNIS and asked him if he would run us some stickers.  He reported back that DENNIS told him he would have them tomorrow.
ERIC said he had just gotten a stack of the pocket constitutions this week from Sen. Burr he thought.  Knew it wasn’t from Sen. Kagen, since he never got a response from her.  HOWARD said she would respond, but it was always with a ‘canned/form’ letter.   Basically, if you write her a letter about something, she explains what you had written about and that she is looking into it.  That is just about the gist of it.           SCOTT is going to print about 600 of the flyers he made up listing our Core Values and Philosophy for handing out.
LOU said you all realize this is the largest Veteran’s Day parade in the state.  ERIC wanted to know if we thought we would have enough.  (No time to get more at this late date – have to make do with what we have.)
ERIC asked how many here tonight are planning to attend the parade.  Almost everyone there raised their hands.  TOM said he and JERE would not be walking or riding in the parade since they would be setting up and working  the sales table.  PEGGY said she would need at least four to hold the posters she had made.  Only hopes it doesn’t rain, because the posters are on cardboard and she would hate to see them ruined as much work as she has put into them.  ERIC said he thought they made some kind of coating to maybe spray on to protect them.  He thought they may have something at Michaels.  HOWARD said according to the weather report the rain is supposed to be over by parade time.  (Keep your fingers crossed.)
ERIC said he knew the weather had turned cooler and we probably would prefer hot coffee or chocolate, but did anyone plan to bring a cooler and bottled water?  RUTH PARKER said she had one she would bring and a case of water.
CLAYTON said he and GRACE went to WalMart this morning and they got $75.00 worth of candy.  ERIC asked to bring it with him in case we need it.  CLAYTON and several others said we can save it for the Christmas parade in case we decide to enter that
also.  Everyone agreed that was the way to go.  CLAYTON said if we think we may need more, then we wait until they mark it down again and then go buy more.  He thinks all that is not sold in three or four days, will probably be marked down to 75% off.  We could go in and get another $100 or so and always have plenty of candy on hand for whatever we may need it for.
SCOTT said another thing we had talked about after the July parade was having music.  NANCY said she didn’t think we would need music for this parade since most of the county high school bands and the Marine Corps band would be entered and playing.
ERIC said then that covers everything we can do tonight.  We are all square – 9:00 am, Saturday morning, November 5, we are going to meet in the area that FRED is going to find out and notify KEN and PEGGY so they can let everyone else know via the website; hopefully some table information up there too (where we are going to put them); (LOU said maybe we need to do it by lantern, one if by land, two if by sea), and (TOM said he wondered how long before he and Jere get arrested.  HOWARD said not to worry, we have an in with the Clerk of Court.)  STEVEN BEST wanted to know if we were going to show up if it rained.  HOWARD and several others said the weather report doesn’t call for rain on Saturday.  ERIC said if we were concerned then just bring an umbrella.

ERIC said several weeks ago we had mentioned the TEA Party by-laws.  Has everyone had a chance to look at those.  They were supposed to be posted on the website.  He is going to try to get them up again for everyone to read.  In the next few weeks we are going to be making a decision on what part of these bylaws do we want to adopt, because we do have to have elections ever so often for officers and the bylaws do spell that system out clearly….the elections process and what positions will be available.  LYN wanted to know if this was something that came from the TEA Party Patriots.  ERIC said no, this was something he had come up with.  TOM wanted to know if the bylaw information was in the PDF format.  ERIC said he was sure he had sent it out that way.

ERIC said on the 15th of November Frank Palombo will be attending our meeting.  He is running against Walter B. Jones.  Mr. Palombo has spoken to us previously (prior to announcing his candidacy).

Anyone interested the TEA Party Patriot website, (the national website) they will be launching a new website in the near future….TeaPartyPatriots.org.  They have not put out a specific date.  It could be tomorrow or next week. Keep an eye out.  SUSAN RYNAS wanted to know what the relationship was between this organization and the TeaParty.net.  ERIC said there were many various Tea Party organizations, all with pretty much the same principles that we do.  Conservative government, etc.  TOM said there was one on the West Coast he hears a lot about; but they get more involved in political races (backing a lot of candidates).  Some do a lot of fund raising.  RUTH said in fact one group was talking about going to be up there in Ohio about that vote (about the union).  Continued discussion about the various groups.  ERIC said the governor in Wisconsin is looking at having some problems, because after a year they can hold a recall election.  If you recall he also stood up against the union there.  He would not be surprised if they did not attempt a recall.  ERIC said he recently saw where the federal government was taking on even more states (they’ve taken on Arizona, Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia on immigration and now they are suing South Carolina about immigration.) He has never seen the federal government sue so many people before in his life.  HOWARD said there are a lot of lawyers out of work and Obama is just trying to help create more jobs.  TOM said what they have come up with is the state governments are hindering the federal government from doing their job.  The federal government is saying they are only going after felons, and if the state government arrests all kinds of illegal aliens, then they are hindering the DOJ from going after the felons.  That is their whole case.  They are saying if he is a felon, then we are going to kick him out, but if you keep sending us all these DUI’s that are here illegally, then you are hindering our efforts to get rid of the felons.  That is their justification for the case.  SUSAN said what scares her is Obama using his executive orders to go around Congress.  And even if we are unfortunate enough to not be able to get Obama out of the White House, we do need to get more Conservatives in the Senate, so we can override Obama’s vetos.  FRED said there are 33 Senators running in the next election and 23 of them are Democrats, so that is going to be our chance to pick up some.  ERIC said he hopes we can pick up enough to control the Senate anyway.  CHARLES TARPLEY said Obama is totally and completely out of control.  He insists on getting what he wants, when he wants and anything he wants.  He thinks Obama is doing all this on purpose, because he knows he is going to lose and be a one term president…even some of the Democrats are shying away from him.  He is going to do as much damage as he can before he gets kicked out.
LOU said he emailed Walter B. Jones today and wanted to know when he was going to start impeachment procedures.  He does that once a month.  When are some of the rest of you going to start doing that?  Discussion about who should be involved in getting this started…Senate or Congress.  LOU said he sends the same message to Burr and Burr
says it starts in Congress (House) to impeach.  If passed it goes to the Senate and gets tabled so it goes no where.  LOU said he doesn’t give up, he continues to send his emails to Jones and Burr monthly.  ERIC said from what he can come up with, Jones does believe Obama can be impeached for some of the things he has done.  Jones says he has tried to push it to the other representatives but they are of the feeling that Obama is going to be thrown out anyway.  ERIC said just like Bill Clinton, he got impeached by the House but not by the Senate, so it went nowhere.  Obama is, right now, involved with the Occupiers of Wall Street and playing right into their hands by saying OK we are going to come out with a way to get loan forgiveness on your education loans.  We will come up with a way that you can get your loans forgiven; we are going to find a way to wipe out the debt; etc.  LOU said he is doing all that by executive order and all that can be rescinded.  ERIC said but the thing is he is getting all these young people jumping on the bandwagon because they are thinking they are going to get a free ride.  LYN said she bets less than half of those people sitting out there Occupying Wall Street will actually vote.  ERIC said the sad part is that the other half might.  Remember, Obama only won by a small number last time.  TOM said Obama does not have the support on campus like he did last time.  Much vocal discussion followed as to whether Obama will have that young support again or not; the outrageous voter fraud in the last primary, and other topics.  ERIC interrupted the mass conversation to encourage all of us to call our congressmen and senators and ask them to come up with a game plan and make public as to how they are going to deal with these mortgages and student loans.  The way he looks at it is Obama is out there giving them a quick sale.  LYN said as far as the student loans go, if Republicans take over they can put it back into practice.  That is what they are going to do although it may be too late to completely undo it.  LOU asked if anyone saw where Fannie and Freddie wheels got pay raises today.  LYN said they are getting Christmas bonuses also.
ERIC said someone had just given him a paper on the Occupy Wall Street backers   and listed several, ie International Socialistic Org., Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, (he was surprised to not see Harry Reid’s name listed).  ERIC asked SUSAN where she got the list and she told him “The Tattler”.  If anyone is interested in checking this out go to http://pjmedia.com.
ERIC asked if anyone had anything else they would like to bring up before adjourning the meeting.  SUSAN said she knew Solis back in California before coming to Washington and on Obama‘s handpicked/non-Congressional approval).   Acorn was putting up posters that read “If you pay any kind of tax, you should be eligible to vote”.  One of the bilingual kids she taught came to school and said he had voted.  She said she didn’t know he was a citizen and could vote.  He said he didn’t have to be a citizen.  He paid sales taxes and therefore was eligible to vote.  She had complained about the signs misleading and they would not take them down.  Next thing she knew she was pretty much booted out of there. Solis was only on the school board then and now look where she is.  It has probably been 8 or 9 years since that happened.  ERIC said at that rate, they could bring half of Europe over here and as long as they paid one penny of sales tax, then they could vote.  Actually there are some bills (immigration for example) just about as ridiculous that he has been looking at recently. The Democrats want to grant them all amnesty so they will be able to vote in the next election.  (Buying votes again)  FRED said one of our biggest problems is the Union.  They do not want to take a cut regardless of the problems we are encountering.  Someone said, just like the teachers, they don’t want to take a cut either not even to prevent job layoffs.  That is a selfish mentality but it prevails.  ERIC talked about the problems in Europe and especially Greece.  He understands they are going to take the problems to the people and let them vote.  We all know how that is going to go.  Don’t take my bennies away.  Take more from the rich.  He is afraid it will only get worse and those people over there don’t play, they kill people.  The leaders are going the voting route because they know how the vote will go, and then they can say, don’t blame us, the people got exactly what they wanted.  ERNIE GUTHRIE said we are fortunate here in the US because over there if they would do as we do and speak out against their socialist policies or whatever, they might be killed.  LOU said they’ll want to do that here if we don’t get those sitting up there in Washington right now – out.  ERNIE said that is the path we are on right now.  ERIC said they disarmed their populace in most of those countries.  They are trying to do that here in the US also.  ERIC said the Second Amendment was the most important amendment we had – even more than the freedom of speech.

LOU said can you believe the United States is giving foreign aid to China!!  We are probably borrowing the money from them to give back and then have to pay interest on the money we borrowed.  Something just doesn’t sit right here.  We have to be brain dead.

ERIC said ’one final thing, next Tuesday, don’t forget to vote.’  He wanted to know if we wanted to cancel our meeting here next Tuesday since it was election day.  HOWARD said we could have our meeting and then go home and listen to the returns.  Decision was made to meet as usual.

Meeting adjourned at 7:00 pm.
Minutes submitted by Secretary PEGGY GARNER.


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