Candidates 2020 Pledge To Amend Results

Florida Veterans for Common Sense ran their Election 2020 project to educate candidates and the general public on the issues, including the We The People Amendment (HJR 48). They asked candidates running for state and federal offices where they stand regarding amending the U.S. Constitution to make clear that corporations and other artificial entities do not have Constitutional rights and that money is not speech. If elected, how would they use their office to support the Movement to Amend the Constitution?

The results are in.  Drumroll please ...

U.S. House, District 16

• Margaret Good .. will use the office to support the We the People Amendment
  

"I have outlined a reform agenda to get big money out of politics which you can read at margaretgood.com/reform. 

Overturn Citizens United 

The 2010 Supreme Court Decision Citizens United vs. FEC has allowed our elections to be bombarded with billions of dollars in corporate campaign contributions. Much of this spending comes in the form of “dark money” where wealthy individuals and corporations can spend unlimited money without having to disclose who they are.  Read more ...

 Florida State House, District 71

• Andy Mele .. will use the office to support the We the People Amendment
  

1. Craft resolution of support for HJ 48, and follow through with media when it passes/fails, as appropriate.
2. Increased access to opinion pages.
3. Increased public profile in general.
4. Seek a resolution repudiating Citizens United, + build a coalition of other statehouses. 

Florida State House, District 73

• Drake Buckman .. will use the office to support the We the People Amendment

"I support any legislation and speak out against this ridiculous legal construct that corporations have the rights that human beings enjoy."

Local Dark Money - Hot off the Digital Press

Cathy Antunes, local PAC-money detective, just published a must-read e-book, 

Local Dark Money: Citizens United meets Main Street in Sarasota and Manatee, Florida

Most voters realize that government officials are influenced by campaign donations and lobbying.  But as Antunes writes, 

 

What is new is how PAC money - Political Aciton Committee money - has found its way into local elections.  In Sarasota County, Florida, where I live, it's been a game-changer.

...

While voters may underestimate the importance of local elections, special interest groups don't make that mistake. Here in Southwest Florida those special intersts tend to be developers looking for local government to pick up the tab for their project infrastructure, or rubber stamp development applications. Special interests may include corporate charter school advocates looking to support public schools.  

The well-researched graphics illustrate the interrelated complexities of the PAC donations and expenditure network. Here is an example showing a portion of the funding stream for attack mailers against Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash back in 2012.

Image from Local Dark Money:
Citizens United meets Main Street in Sarasota and Manatee, Florida

Antunes follows the trail of Dark Money that has poured into specific local elections in the years since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates in 2010. Click here to view the e-book.

FIXIT - Healthcare

Last night, Manatee/Sarasota Move To Amend screened FIX IT - Healthcare at the Tipping Point.  The documentary took a look at how unaffordable and, in some cases, insufficient health insurance has become for most U.S. residents.  Business owners took stock concerning the difficulty of budgeting with unknowable and ballooning health care costs.  City leaders showed how they had to move funding from their deteriorating or non-functional infrastructure in order to fund rising health insurance premiums for city staff.  A physician limited his practice to Medicare and Medicaid patients, so that he didn't have to deal with the plethora of health insurance company bureaucracies. And then there were the heartbreakers - those whose medical costs had driven them into bankruptcy, even though they were insured.  Finally, the movie showcased the single payer medical system in Canada.

Once we'd all watched the film, Kurt Bateman fielded questions about a Single Payer healthcare system for the United States.  Diane Desenberg tackled the Big Money in Politics side of the issue.  Her research had uncovered PAHCF, The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.  PAHCF is made up of major pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and private hospitals.  They have spent the last several months lobbying members of Congress, running online ads, and working with the media to drive down the popularity of Medicare for All.  This single-payer health legislation been gaining support in Congress.

PAHCF includes some of the biggest names in the healthcare industry, including the American Medical Association (AMA), Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) and Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

The members of this partnership have a lot of money to spend and influence to pedal on Capitol Hill. They spent a combined $143 million lobbying in 2018 alone, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

If you missed the movie, "FIX IT - Healthcare at the Tipping Point", you can view it here

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Corporate Power Trivia Night

It started innocently enough with a question brimming with numbers in the single and double digits. How hard could it be?  

"National governments are typically the highest revenue generators in the world.  But in recent years, some corporations are generating more profits than many governments. How many corporations make it in to the top 25 revenue generators in the world?"  

And now for the answer.  By 2016, of the world’s 25 largest revenue generators, 8 were corporations. What happens if one expands the net a bit and looks at the top 100 revenue generators? Corporations are producing an even larger share of revenue. In 2014, 64 of the largest economies in the world were corporations and 36 were governments. Two years later, in 2016, 69 were corporations and 31 governments.  Annual revenues are of course only one indicator of the size of a government or corporation but it is one metric that enables comparison of the two.

Lest one thinks that some radicals manipulated these statistics to fit their agenda, take note that this data came from the CIA World Factbook and the Fortune 500 listings Chart.

Manatee/Sarasota Move To Amend held the first Corporate Power Trivia Night in March, 2019. There were 7 teams competing. Even the seasoned and well-informed amongst us were surprised by some of the questions and answers. Participants commented that they had learned a lot and were surprised at the depth and breadth of corporate constitutional rights. Topics covered included lobbying, prescription drug legislation, corporate personhood, the Farm Bill, the 14th Amendment, net neutrality, and the We-The-People Amendment.

Manatee/Sarasota Move To Amend would be happy to bring a version of this political Trivia Night to your favorite local group and tailor it to your groups' interests.


Source: http://www.corporationsandhealth.org/2017/10/09/the-100-largest-governments-and-corporations-by-revenue-in-2016/

Florida Legislature vs. Public Schools

Move To Amend member, Carol Lerner, has researched the current crop of education-related bills that have been introduced into the 2019 Florida Legislative Session.  Carol reports on the good, the bad, and the omnibus -

Bills to Defeat:  

Omnibus Bill (number pending): The Senate Education Committee, under the leadership of Sen. Manny Diaz, is putting together a broad omnibus education bill, modeled after previous draconian House omnibus education bills of the past two sessions (HB 7069 and HB 7085). 

 One will include direct school vouchers called Family Empowerment Scholarships which will be funded out of the education budget. Sandwiched between school vouchers

Representative Wengay Newton: We Are Disappointed

Amendments to the U.S. Constitution must eventually be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths
of the states. So at some point, once a proposed amendment has passed either in Congress or by convention, the Florida legislature will need to weigh in. For that reason, Manasota Move to Amend encourages state representatives and senators from Manatee and Sarasota counties to support a 28th amendment - an amendment to end corporate personhood and to state clearly that money is not speech.

Diane Desenberg, one of the members of the Manasota Move To Amend core group, ran into Wengay Newton last week at a film screening. Rep. Newton represents District 70, which includes a sliver of Sarasota and Manatee counties. Diane pressed Wengay Newton for his views on the matter. Diane reports that

Rep. Newton disagreed with the idea of limits on campaign fundraising. He explained that he needed money to win a campaign and that he should be allowed to raise sums from whomever wanted to donate, including corporations.

Manasota Move To Amend is disappointed with such a view. Our political system is increasingly controlled by the wealthy and various special interests. The situation has become so ridiculous that super PACs, which in theory operate independently from candidates, have more money and more influence over campaigns than the actual candidates do. The United States should be a nation in which all people, regardless of their income, can participate in the political process and a nation in which anyone can run for office without begging for contributions from the wealthy and the powerful, in other words a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Rep. Newton, we welcome further discussion of the issue.

Keyan Bliss speaks out

Keyan Bliss, grassroots volunteer coordinator for Move to Amend, spoke to a Sarasota crowd on the anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court Decision.  He outlined the Supreme Court lineage of corporate rights. Keyan also updated us as to the progress made at the grassroots level to pass the 28th amendment. In Manatee and Sarasota counties,over 2,800 people have signed the petition. In Florida, over 17,000 have signed. And nationwide, 460,000 people have signed on. Below is just a quick snippet - a sound bite - to remember to "prioritize people and the planet first and not just corporate interests."

Community Partnership Schools Forum

Shawn Naugle, Amy Ellis, Kylia Carswell, and Carol Lerner
 at the Community Partnership Schools Forum. 
photo courtesy Critical Times

In recent years, school privatizers have been addressing the needs of struggling schools by ...Wait For It... closing them down. In fact, Florida boasts the most privatized state school system in the nation and one of the lowest funded. Unfortunately, public school closures continue. Title 1 schools, which are those with large concentrations of low-income students, are most at risk of closure. However, there are alternatives. Protect our Public Schools Manasota (POPS) recently held a forum about one such alternative - Community Partnership Schools.

There are four core partners in a Community Partnership School and each partner commits to a long-term partnership in order to launch, advance and sustain the particular school. Core partners include -
1) a school district,
2) a health care and other wraparound services provider,
3) a university or college,
4) a community-based not-for-profit

In Manatee County, there are six schools that have received D grades from the State. Two of them  — Daughtrey and Rogers Garden-Bullock Elementary schools — are Title 1 schools.  They are both at risk of closing down or facing charter school takeovers. The Community Partnership School approach might preserve these neighborhood public schools and support the families they serve.

POPS founder, Carol Lerner, goes even further stating,

Every Title 1 public school in Florida should be transformed into a Community Partnership School. Rather than closing down or privatizing struggling schools, schools should be given the funding and the resources to help students thrive. A hungry child cannot learn. Full service community schools involve parents and the community and turn schools into learning hubs.

Read more in the latest Critical Times.

Did Money Win in 2018 Midterms?

Just how transparent is the campaign donation process? I was curious to see if I could pinpoint some specific donations. A good chunk of campaign donations flow in as dark money, which is hard to trace. On the other hand, many of us donate small amounts to the campaigns we care about. I headed over to followthemoney.org to locate my sweetheart's contributions. Amazingly, I found every single one of them since the 2010 election. Not only that, two of the chosen recipients had won their respective races.

Next I turned my gaze toward corporate political spending in Florida. To test the waters, I zeroed in on Mosaic Fertilizer, the phosphate mining company actively destroying sizeable tracts of land near me. I suspected that their greenwashing philanthropy and ads would be hard to trace. Perhaps. But

Candidates 2018 Pledge To Amend Results

Last month, Manasota MTA sent out a Pledge To Amend Candidate Questionnaire.  We asked candidates running for local, state, and federal offices where they stand regarding amending the U.S. Constitution to make clear that corporations and other artificial entities do not have Constitutional rights and that money is not speech.  If elected, how would they use their office to support the Movement to Amend the Constitution.

The results are in.  Drumroll please ...

U.S. House, District 16

• David Shapiro .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

Florida State Senate, District 23

• Olivia Babis .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

Florida State House, District 71

• Liv Coleman .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

Florida State House, District 73

• Tracy Pratt .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

Sarasota County Charter Review Board

• Mindy Simmons .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses
• Krista Lohr .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

Manatee County Commission, District 2

• Dimitrie Denis .. I support amending the U.S. Constitution
    Click to see responses

2018 MTA Leadership Summit

After just a little thought, it becomes apparent that corporate rule impacts nearly every major issue of the day - from climate change to the opioid epidemic, from workers’ rights to gun violence, and on and on.  Frustration concerning the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision energized Lakewood Ranch resident, Jan Runci. She decided to attend the 2018 Move To Amend Leadership Summit in Washington D.C. and then lobbied Florida Senators, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio concerning the We-the-People Amendment.


Jan reports -

I discovered Move To Amend (MTA) at a rally in Sarasota.  As I investigated the organization, I became aware of the Leadership Summit in DC.  When I couldn't find anyone to accompany me to the meeting, I decided to take the leap and go alone.   I am very glad I did.

Dark Money: The Movie

Keeping an eye out for the latest documentary thriller, Dark Money. This film looks at how the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has ruined a century of campaign finance regulation in the state of Montana.  You may recall that the Montana Supreme Court openly defied the Citizens United ruling, but was eventually superceded by the Supreme Court.  Here's the trailer for Dark Money:

Who's to blame for Florida's Coastal Slime?

Green algae along southwest Florida coast, Jason Pim, Facebook, 7/11/2018

Last September, Hurricane Irma churned up farm nutrients that lay at the bottom of Lake Okeechobee. These nutrients had accumulated over decades and were now floating more freely in the Lake. Then in May, it rained. It was one of the wettest Mays ever. Rising water levels put too much pressure on the dikes, and the Army Corp of Engineers decided to lower the water levels. Over the last couple of months, the Army Corps dumped billions of gallons of polluted lake water into the St. Lucie estuary to the east and the Caloosahatchee River to the west. And the green algae bloom is enormous.

Florida's coasts are now under the dual onslaught of toxic green algae and red tide blooms. Beaches

Update on Florida's Efforts to Privatize Public Education

The assault on Florida public education continues unabated in 2018, both by the Florida Legislature and the Florida Constitution Revision Commission.

Last year, HB7069 was signed into Florida law. This bill was more of a package of laws, including the expansion of vouchers, allowing for Schools of Hope to replace low performing public schools, and requiring capital outlays to charter schools. These statutory changes were not without consequence locally.  With more favorable conditions for charter schools, Academica’s Pinecrest Academy is applying for charter school status in Sarasota County. The Miami Herald analyzed Academica back in 2011, and the amount of state dollars flowing to this private company was staggering even then. At that time, Academica had 44 schools in South Florida. They now list over 110 schools in Florida.In Manatee County, Daughtrey and Oneco elementary schools may be threatened with Schools of Hope corporate charter school takeovers, if they don't improve their school grades next year.

This funneling of millions of tax dollars to private and corporate charter schools accelerated in 2018 with HB 7055. HB 7055 will

March For Our Lives & the NRA

The Corporations-Are-NOT-People banner stood out at the Sarasota March For Our Lives. Last Saturday, Sarasota students raised their collective voices to make preventing gun violence a high priority. How corporations have intervened in the gun debate is up for debate. Is the National Rifle Association (NRA) a big player in our state and national legislatures? And who provides the largest chunk of NRA funding - is it millions of individual members or a handful of gun manufacturers? The answers are more complex than you might think.  To start with, there are six non-profits that make up the NRA. And it just gets more complicated from there.

The Scourge of Unfettered Corporations

The Sarasota/Bradenton Nation Group provides a local forum for political commentary and activities that hope to shape and inform public discourse and political outcomes in line with the Nation Magazine. Sarasota resident, Bob Goldschmidt recently presented "The Scourge of Unfettered Corporations" to The Nation Group. Sarasota is fortunate to have many local people willing to stand up and speak out about corporate power as it is exercised in the United States today. Bob laid out his thoughtful perspective, paying close attention to the issues of employee wages, automation, the impacts of information technology, corporate media, and the downsides of monopolistic corporations.

Bob held one pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma, up for detailed scrutiny. The beginning of the opioid crisis can be traced back to the release of OxyContin, which is Purdue Pharma’s best-selling drug. The nationwide overdose epidemic has hit Manatee County especially hard. Back in December, the city of Palmetto joined municipalities across the state in potentially filing a lawsuit against big pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors for their alleged role in the current opioid epidemic that has killed an estimated 200,000 Americans in the past few years. Last month, perhaps in response to lawsuits, Purdue Pharma announced it will stop marketing its painkillers to doctors. Bob's talk delves a bit into the historical context of the growth of Purdue Pharma.

The Q&A following Bob's talk was animated, but not included in the video.

End Corporate Rule: Legalize Democracy

March for Democracy

People loved signing the oversized 28th Amendment at the March For Demcracy. Thank you Jaime Canfield for inspiring the crowd!

Ending Corporate Rule & Building a REAL Democracy Movement

On Martin Luther King Day, George Friday treated Sarasota to her inspirational stories and ideas. George is one of the co-founders of Move To Amend and shared her clear vision of just how insidious corporations are in our day-to-day lives. She has worked tirelessly over the years to build movements for justice and peace. Her good news is that we can all join in and we will be successful, but only if we strive for authentic, diverse, and democratic participation. We all get to participate and we all have a role. George spoke about the strategic use of privilege. If I have white privilege, then it is up to me to point out racism and attempt to dismantle it. If I am wealthy, then it is up to me to use it help those who are in poverty. If I have more education and knowledge, then it is up to me to spread that information and to make sure that it is accessible to those who may not have the same level of education. And remember to be easy on yourself - to take time for forgiveness, comfort, and joy.

Martin Luther King Day and the Very, Very Tall Amendment

The 22 foot tall banner of a 28th Amendment to the Constitution was an eye-catcher on Martin Luther King Day.  The 37th annual Sarasota MLK Day Celebration, presented by the MLK Celebration Committee in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee and Temple Emanu-El featured several events honoring King’s life and legacy. Following the MLK Memorial Breakfast, many joined in the march to MLK Park, where Manasota MTA had set up the larger-than-life Constitutional Amendment proclaiming that

  1) Money is Property, Not Speech

  2) A Corporation Is Not a Person

Many folks agreed and signed the imposing document that was as tall as the nearby palm trees.