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.