Floridians, this is an emergency action call to help preserve our Constitution.

[seafan]

Floridians, this is an emergency action call to help preserve our Constitution. This is red alert.


There is a little known Florida commission, first created in 1998, called the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. It meets only every 20 years, but is having its first meeting now. None of these members are elected to this board. They are all political appointees by Governor Crist, Speaker Marco Rubio and Senate Leader Ken Pruitt, all Republicans. One of the commission members is Patricia Levesque, who served as Jeb Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff and also presently serves as Executive Director of two foundations Bush has established to advance his educational goals, namely, the Foundation For Florida's Future and the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Both of these organizations are Jeb Bush's attempt to orchestrate his self-proclaimed "educational legacy" from the shadows, now that he is out of Tallahassee. He pushed like an armored tank while he was in office, to force religious school vouchers into our laws, but he failed. Our Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. He also had "devious plans" to reverse the voters' decision to have smaller class sizes for our students. He failed while in office.

Marco Rubio, Jeb's apprentice, has also been pushing to scale back the school portion of our property taxes and to increase our sales taxes. If these amendments now pushed by Rubio and the rest of these Republican operatives are forced into the Constitution, he will have succeeded before he is term-limited out of office at the end of this year.


Now, this obscure Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, stocked with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio's Republican operatives, is bypassing the petition process for signatures, and is putting these terrible amendments DIRECTLY on our ballot this November. It's already been voted on by the commission and APPROVED. Now 60% of the voters have to approve it and it will become LAW in November. But the egregious fact is that most voters have NO IDEA what has just happened. And they will not likely find out unless we put some fierce pressure on the members of this commission, Charlie Crist, House Speaker Marco Rubio, Senate Leader Ken Pruitt and our elected Representatives.

Jeb Bush, via his operatives on this committee and our rigidly ideological Republican Legislature, will get away with this robbery of our Constitutional protections, just so his rapacious legacy can go on for decades, unless the people stop it.



Floridians, there is a coup in progress against our Constitution.






From Nicole Sandler's radio show from Miami, March 20, 2008:

She is also hopping mad over this.

While the Florida Legislature is in session and making massive cuts to our already anemic education budget, there are other meetings taking place in Tallahassee that should concern you.

Florida's Taxation and Budget Reform Commission is a group that meets every 20 years, and has the authority to come up with constitutional amendments that bypass the petition signature requirement to be included on the November ballot.
These Commission members are not elected by Florida's citizens.... They are political appointees-- all appointed by Florida's Republican Governor and Republican Speaker of the House.

By following the link above (or here), you can go to their website and read some of their proposals. I'm going to point you toward a few that we all need to be very concerned about.

One that has gotten a bit of press is CP0002 RLE Replacement/Sales Tax, which would eliminate the schools portion of all property taxes and replace it with a penny hike in the sales tax and, potentially, new taxes on some services that have previously enjoyed exemptions.

There are a number of problems with this proposal, most notably the fact that the property tax cut would mean more than $9 billion lost to our schools, while the penny sales tax increase would replace $3-4 billion at most!

This coming on the two massive cuts to the education budget this year, and cuts as the legislators put together next years' budget. It sure seems to me that the Republican run Florida administration is trying to destroy our public school system.

When you take that idea and combine it with another two of the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission's proposals, you'll probably get as angry as I am.

CP0002 RLE Replacement/Sales Tax

A large amount of new text has been added by "The Commission".. (See link)




Nicole explains the other two terrible proposals:

These two proposals, CP0020 and CP0040, basically change Florida's constitution to do away with the separation of church and state!

As it now stands, the Florida Constitution provides for great religious freedom and civil liberties by specifically guaranteeing that no Florida taxpayer will be compelled to support churches, synagogues, mosques, or other houses of worship. These proposals would rewrite the constitution to make houses of worship and other religious institutions eligible for millions of public dollars for social service and other contracts and grants. And because they'd undoubtedly receive state funds, Florida taxpayers-- regardless of their religious beliefs -- would be required to fund these entities. They'd also open the door to unwanted religious proselytizing within state-funded programs.

Equally disturbing, as preexisting laws exempt religious institutions from prohibitions on religious-based employment discrimination, these proposals would give houses of worship and other religious institutions the right to hire and fire based on religion for taxpayer-funded jobs!

When I look at these three proposals, and take into account all the recent education budget cuts, the only conclusion I can come to is that the Republican Florida leadership is doing everything possible to destroy public education in the state, with the intention of putting forth a voucher program after it completely fails. These last two proposals, which would effectively remove the separation of church and state from our constitution, would allow for state-funded parochial schools.

By the way, this proposal was written by commission member Patricia Levesque, who served as then Governor Jeb Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff, and is now Executive Director of two foundations Bush has established to advance his educational goals. If this isn't a massive conflict of interest, I don't know what is!

You can find out about Ms. Levesque and the other members of this commission, and contact them by clicking on the envelop icons here.

Tomorrow morning at around 7:35, I'll be speaking with David Barkey, the Southern Area Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League about the ramifications of this proposal.

CP0020 (Revocation of existing church and state separation law of Article I, Section 3)


This text has been stricken:

No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

This text has been added:

Individual or entities may not be barred from participating in public programs because of their religion.

CP0040 (Revocation of existing church and state separation law of Article I, Section 27)


This text has been added:

Section 27. Public services through public and private providers. --
(a) Families and individuals may receive public services, such as health care and education, including public schools and elder care, that meet their unique needs, provide an opportunity for their loved ones to reach their full potential, or be of the highest quality, from public and private providers for publicly-financed programs, when permitted in law. It is, therefore, paramount that no person shall be deprived of the opportunity to select among eligible public and private providers of publicly-financed goods and services in every field, as permitted by law, including, without limitation, health care, education, and elder care. The legislature is not limited from enacting and funding programs using public and private providers, without regard to the religious nature of any provider or participant, notwithstanding the Article, Article IX, section 1, or any other provision of this Constitution.

(b) This section is self-executing and shall not create an entitlement to a publicly-financed program which is not provided by law.

And in today's show with Nicole Sandler:

This morning, as promised, I was joined in the studio at 7:30 by David Barkey, Southern Area Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League. He brought a couple of proposals made by Florida's Taxation and Budget Reform Commission to my attention, and I wanted to make sure you're aware of them as well.

CP0020 and CP0040 would, effectively, do away with the provisions for separation of church and state in the Florida Constitution. Please scroll down to the second half of yesterday's blog entry and read for more information on these two constitutional proposals which just might wind up on the November 4 ballot.

To read what the ADL says about them, visit their website here.

If you want to speak out on the issue, you can write to each of the members of the Taxation & Budget Reform Commission here. You can also write to the people who made these political appointments to the commission-- Republicans Charlie Crist, Speaker of the House Marco Rubio an Senate President Ken Pruitt. You can find all of their contact information, as well as contact info for your Congressional representatives (who you should also sound off to) here.

Please take action, Florida!