Sunday, October 5, 2014

The Maine Reason Lee County, Florida is So Corrupt


“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
― Winston Churchill

By Tom Drummond

If you were watching Jeopardy and one of the answers was "This Man Currently is the Mayor of Southwest Florida" and one of the contestants proceeded to answer "Who is Governor Paul LaPage?", you might be justifiably dumbstricken. But, you shouldn't have been alarmed, for you would have finally arrived at a sort of reality.

In the beginning of this year, Politoc Magazine dubbed LaPage the "craziest" governor. Here are some of the reasons--

The mural below used to be at the Department of Labor in Maine, but Lapage had it removed because the suffering from corporate excess, voting, striking, and demonstrating depicted were compared to North Korean propaganda in an anonymous letter. Clearly, when commoners think they should have any rights, or benefits from their labor, we're in the territory of pure communism. Solidarity, yikes!


LaPage also told the NAACP "kiss my butt" when he refused to attend a Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast, and quipped that "some women may have little beards" when he decided to allow BPA, an endocrine disruptor, back into baby bottles. This was included in a wish list of his that rolled back state environmental regulations in favor of weaker federal laws.

An interesting item on this environmental wish list was evidence it originated with Preti Flaherty Belivei & Pachios's. This is a law firm at One City Center, Portland Maine.  

This same firm set up Strategic Advocacy which runs the campaigns of several Florida State House representatives, under the authority of Laurene Wilson-McNerney, of Preti Flaherty Beliveau, and Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers. Other players were Roy Lenardson, Jonathan Piper, Ann Robinson, and Anthony Buxton.

Strategic Advocacy runs the campaigns of several Florida State House Representatives, at least 3 of which represent Lee County, Florida: Ray Rodrigues, Matt Caldwell, and Dane Eagle. They officially pay Action Point Campaigns for the service of being run by these Maine guys.



Now, some would have it that it's not Governor LaPage that's running Southwest Florida, but, rather, these guys that are running Governor LaPage...and Southwest Florida. Or maybe it's sort of both.
There's a definition of fascism which states it's the union of corporate and political power. Could that be what this is?

Well, there's a lot of evidence indicating that Governor LaPage, as well as our local representatives, outsource the writing of legislation to Preti Flaherty Belivei & Pachios, and it serves to get laws into place for corporate interests. These corporate interests, in turn, help secure the career of the politician, providing funding, advertising, and perhaps other, more covert, forms of  assistance. And it's all good because jobs, freedom, democracy, and cheap gas.

Either way, it's very difficult to imagine a group of lawyer and public relations operators from another state are highly concerned with We the People of Southwest Florida. Why is it we need to outsource campaign management from another state? And management consisting of lobbyists and legislation ghost writers at that?


Another lobbying group LaPage is fond of is Pierce Atwood.  LaPage named Patricia Aho of Pierce Atwood as head of the Maine DEP, and Pierce Atwood will soon be hosting an event promoting natural gas (ala fracking) in Maine.



Perhaps you didn't know that FPL, now officially NextEra, owned dams in Maine? And Pierce Atwood represented Brookfield which purchased some such dams? And that, when she worked for Pierce Atwood, they were representing FPL? And a 7 month investigation indicated she was really still working for FPL, so to speak?

It's a small world. Maybe Florida runs Maine, never mind.

But luckily, NextEra is actually a transnational, so it all evens out.

And we, luckily, have a DEP Secretary, Herschel Vinyard, who only worked for BAE Systems, so we need not worry about such conflicts of interest. BAE Systems only makes weapons, like HAARP, beam weapons, planes with healing skin, that kind of thing.

And, also, BAE Systems cares about environmental sustainability, so whew! Except for these BAE Systems fracking jobs, but those aren't really fracking jobs.

I guess those hundreds of rules were erased for good reasons, just like that mural.And Herschel Vinyard isn't a lobbyist anyway.


Full Text of Strategic Advocacy's Filing.

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