Climate Change Threatens Our National Security
Florida Veterans for Common Sense believes in a strong national defense to protect the life, liberty, equality, and human rights of all Americans. Climate change threatens our national security in ever-increasing ways, in addition to threatening our economy and the health of human beings throughout the world. Coastal military installations are threatened by flooding, terrorist threats are being multiplied by unwanted migration of people who can no longer live on their land, and extreme weather events create more challenging operational environments and divert limited personnel and resources to manage emergency responses.
There are two main ways to deal with climate change. The first is adaptation, managing what we cannot avoid. This approach concerns protecting existing infrastructure, homes, and people from rising seas, fires, stronger weather and other changes that are happening and will continue to happen until the threat is stopped. The second is mitigation, avoiding what we cannot manage. That means finding ways to stop climate change before it reaches the point of no return. Mitigation must happen because adaptation alone is costly, and it is eventually only temporary. Since human use of combustion energy, with its release of heat-trapping gases, is a principal cause of climate change, mitigation can happen on many levels. Individuals should maintain what they have and replace what they can with the most energy-efficient products they can find. Organizations should do that plus pool financial resources for larger energy-efficient projects. Governments at all levels should incentivize the change to more energy-efficient ways of living.
Local governments should improve building codes and growth planning rules to promote better energy use. They should encourage natural landscaping and local farming, and they should divest from fossil fuels. State governments should encourage the use of solar and other non-combustion forms of energy and discourage all exploration for and production of fossil fuels. The federal government’s best kind of mitigation is to pass comprehensive legislation that puts a fee on fossil fuels to discourage their use and gives the monies collected to consumers, who then stimulate the economy.
Florida Veterans for Common Sense believes that elected officials and the public should understand the threats posed by climate change, and work towards effective solutions to these threats.
A Constitutional Amendment Is Necessary To Repeal “Citizens United”
The Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) believes the Supreme Court’s ruling in
Citizens United v Federal Election Committee, January 21, 2010, (Citizens), is a direct assault to our representative form of government and demands that it be overturned. In the political arena, Citizens created a legal fiction, a make believe, that corporations are “persons” in the political process and incredibly entitled to the same First Amendment rights as you or me, essentially ruling that money is speech. As a result of this ruling, Citizens has unleashed a flood of special interest money, including from foreign corporations that distort the political process by spending massive amounts of money on candidates or issues favorable to the corporations. Corporations can now dominate and overwhelm the political process with a large influx of money . . . some call it “pay to play”.
A Founding Father, Thomas Paine, wrote: “The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote and no more in the choice of representatives. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.”
In Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819), Chief Justice Marshall wrote: “A corporation is an arbitrary being, invisible, intangible and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the Charter of its creation confers on it”.
Dissenting in Citizens, Supreme Court Justice Stevens wrote: ”Corporations have no conscience, no beliefs, no thoughts, no desires. … they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established”.
There is no reasonable basis for the ruling in Citizens other than to tilt our fragile democratic process in favor of corporations. We demand that our representatives do the right thing to protect our democracy and immediately initiate proceedings leading to a constitutional amendment that would effectively overrule the Citizens decision.
Veterans’ Treatment Courts Need Full Funding
Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) was founded by several Viet Nam combat veterans who are also lawyers experienced in the criminal and civil courts. Accordingly, FLVCS members know the long-term adverse consequences of combat suffered by our military members that have served in conflict zones worldwide.. Particularly, they know how traumatic combat experiences can result in behaviors that lead some veterans to become ensnared in the criminal justice system.
To insure that our returning military members receive the treatment and support they need, when their sacrifices for our nation have created mental and emotional problems severe enough to result in a criminal arrest, FLVCS strongly supports programs intended to provide support and treatment for those veterans.
The Florida Legislature has passed laws authorizing our Florida Courts to establish veterans’ treatment court programs that meet these needs. However, the budgeting of funds to serve these programs has not been effectively managed, leaving judges (who whole-heartedly support these programs) to scramble for funds to pay the cost of personnel needed to run our veterans’ treatment courts. FLVCS calls upon all citizens to let our state and federal legislators know that they should support the full funding of our Veterans’ Treatment Court programs.
Medical Marijuana Should Be Available to Veterans
Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) supports veterans having legal access to marijuana and marijuana products to relieve pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, sleep issues, and other ailments.
The increasing numbers of veterans who have committed suicide or have attempted suicide is stunning. After returning from the battlefields, many service personnel are suffering from PTSD. Still others, with the advancements in life-saving technologies, are surviving wounds that would have been fatal in previous wars. But they have discovered that advances in pain-management have not kept up with the life-saving skills of medical staff.
The Veterans Administration (VA) treats these issues with a wide assortment of powerful medications that adversely affect the quality of life for many suffering veterans and recovering military personnel.
A growing number of active duty personnel as well as veterans have discovered that marijuana gives them relief and helps them deal with flashbacks, anxiety, hypertension, sleep issues, and pain without the side effects of the VA prescribed drugs, which often are addictive. Some have even used marijuana to wean themselves off of the powerful drugs prescribed by the VA.
In December 2017, the VA allowed its physicians to discuss marijuana with their patients. But they are not allowed to prescribe marijuana because it is a Schedule 1 drug.
FLVCS members urge Congress and the Executive Branch of our government to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule 1 drugs in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 so that the
VA and armed services can immediately prescribe it and the onerous restrictions on medical marijuana research can be lifted.
Assault Weapons Should Be Banned in Society
Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) implores Congress to pass legislation to ban possession of assault weapons by anybody other than law enforcement officers (who are on duty) and military personnel (who are on duty). In 1994, the Justice Department defined assault weapons as semiautomatic firearms with large capacity magazine capability that were designed and configured for rapid fire.
The FLVCS believes in, and very strongly supports, the Constitution of the United States. Banning assault weapons is well within the boundaries of the Second Amendment and is consistent with the Founders use of the words “well regulated”. They realized that an orderly and civil society needs some regulation. The courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have ruled that the people do not have an unbridled right to possess weapons, and, in particular, that the 2nd Amendment permits appropriate regulation of the right to bear arms. In fact, many regulations in that regard are in force, but they have proven inadequate to deal with the harms caused by assault weapons.
We recommend that the Federal Government institute a buy-back program, to compensate owners of legally purchased Assault Weapons. The cost of such a program would be relatively minor when compared to the potential costs to people and property of not doing so.
FLVCS believes in the greater good. The benefit to many outweighs the wants of the few. Society as whole has the right to domestic tranquility. This ban would help insure that right. February 2018 polls show two-thirds of Americans are in favor of banning assault weapons and even more are in favor of placing restrictions on them.
From Dec 2015 through Feb 2018 there have been 26 mass shooting incidents in the United States. In seven of those shootings assault weapons were used. In the 19 shootings in which other types of weapons were used there were 180 people who were killed or injured. In the seven shootings in which assault type weapons were used there were 795 people killed or injured. These numbers underscore the gravity of the issue. It is time to pass legislation banning assault weapons before there is more senseless carnage.
We Support Amendment To Restore Voting Rights
Florida Veterans for Common Sense (FLVCS) believes veterans have a duty to help forge the future of our country. As veterans, we support the founding principles of the United States of America. We hold these to be liberty, equality, human rights, and democracy. We support these values without regard to partisan politics. We support the right to vote as a fundamental pillar of these democratic values. Proposed Amendment 4 to the Florida Constitution, which will appear on the ballot on November 8, would restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences, completed parole or probation and paid restitution. Murderers and sex offenders are excluded. The FLVCS membership wholeheartedly supports this Amendment.
As veterans who have served our country to protect and defend democracy and the right to vote, we find it simply wrong that more than a million Floridians, including many veterans, are disenfranchised and excluded from participation in our democracy. Florida currently leaves all decisions on the restoration of voting rights to an Executive Clemency Board subject to the Governor’s veto. This system, which originated in the 19th century to keep freed slaves from voting and as currently implemented, allows yearly only a trickle of individuals to regain their voting rights. It is rife with opportunities for discriminatory and arbitrary actions.
The courts have ruled that this system, which gives the Governor unbridled discretion, is unconstitutional. FLVCS agrees with U.S. District Judge Mark Walker’s ruling, “No standards guide the panel. These citizens are subject to the consequences of bills, actions, programs, and policies that their elected leaders enact and enforce. But these citizens cannot ever legally vote unless Florida’s Governor approves restoration of this fundamental right.”
In addition, voters should be aware that Florida is one of only a very few states to bar citizens with felony convictions from ever voting, no matter how long they are crime free.
Felons who have served their time, and who have met their post-conviction obligations, cannot be fully reintegrated into society when they are denied the opportunity to be wholly engaged citizens in our democracy. Felons who have fulfilled their post-conviction obligations should have their voting rights restored.