We have recently submitted evidence to U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson and U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis regarding the complete lack of oversight of federal government agencies in fulfilling their responsibilities to enforce federal laws. These repeated violations of laws put the lives, welfare, and economic futures of millions of American citizens at risk everyday. We have asked the senators to initiate Congressional hearings to investigate and correct this pattern of behavior before more innocent citizens are harmed. Our evidence exposes grave dangers that have been overlooked in two areas. The first is a preventable, catastrophic natural disaster that could affect millions of lives and cause widespread property damage. The second involves recently discovered, life-threatening, hidden dangers created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which affects the entire population of the United States of America.
Many years of litigation on our part, which was done in an effort to enforce federal laws, has provided us with substantial verbatim, sworn court transcript evidence that clearly proves that our governmental agencies have chosen not to enforce laws meant to protect us all. The Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act have both been routinely ignored by agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. These laws were passed by the U.S. Congress many years ago in an effort to protect the safety of all citizens and visitors to our country. Enforcement of the laws was left to these federal agencies, who have chosen to allow wealthy developers and short-sighted state governmental agencies to get away with repeated violations.
We were recently informed by an EPA official with oversight of the state of Florida, that economic and political factors have led to the EPA choosing to stop enforcing the Clean Water Act. This decision has put the safety and welfare of everyone in Florida in serious jeopardy. Many of our court cases have resulted in sworn court testimony by expert scientists that clearly identified the illegal aspects of the required Environmental Resource Permits, which were being sought in these cases. An internationally known environmental scientist named Dr. Mark Rains became so frustrated during his testimony that he asked in open court in front of a Judge the question of how can the state of Florida continue to get away with violating federal laws. We should all be asking our Congressmen the same question regarding not just Florida, but the entire country.
The recent King Gold Mine disaster in New Mexico brought national attention to the terrible price that must be paid when a federal agency, such as the EPA, chooses to allow wealthy interests to violate the law at the expense of American citizens. Qualified scientists had warned that this disaster was looming, but only after the damage was done did EPA choose to take any action. Many scientists, such as Dr. Rains, have been warning for years of impending, irreversible damage in Florida because of continued violations of federal law. The catastrophe in Florida will, in all likelihood, be much worse than that in New Mexico. Wetlands, which used to recharge the aquifers in Florida, no longer exist because they were illegally destroyed.
Wetlands do not only serve to ensure our drinking water supply. They also function to recharge the aquifer, which is located under the earth throughout Florida. Healthy wetlands are vital to provide stability for the land surface and all structures which lie immediately above the aquifer system. Many years of rampant destruction of wetlands permitted by federal agencies, which are mandated by the Clean Water Act to allow “NO NET LOSS” of wetlands, have led to the very real loss of over 50% of all of the wetlands, which used to be present in Florida. We have seen the tremendous increase in sinkhole activity, which had been predicted by hydrogeologists for many years, secondary to wetland destruction.
Sinkholes can prove to be sudden, unexpected, and deadly–with one example being the case involving a man named Jeffrey Bush of Seffner, Florida, who was killed when a sinkhole opened up underneath his bedroom floor, and he fell 100 feet down while sleeping in his own bed. Scientists believe that Florida will suffer major subsidence events in the future, which could affect square miles of land. The movements of large land masses would likely trigger seismic activity with subsequent earthquake damage. These events have never occurred in Florida because there had always been sufficient water filling the karst limerock, which is the foundation for the surface land in this state. Most people never consider earthquake damage to be a concern in Florida because of this. Highly trained scientists, some of whom work for governmental agencies, have indicated to us that this is a very real threat, which should be taken seriously. Unfortunately, these scientists are afraid to come forward because of job security issues.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also chosen to turn a blind eye to this rampant disregard for our federal laws. This was proven in a document forwarded to the senators that clearly indicates that the Corps official involved in this case chose to derelict his duty by allowing a blatant, dangerous violation of the Clean Water Act to be ignored. This federal official, who was charged with protecting the health and welfare of American citizens, instead chose to submit to the political and economic wishes of Florida officials, much like the EPA had chosen to do.
The Judge in this case heard an eminently qualified expert witness, namely Dr. Rains, testify that this was illegal, but went on to issue the required Environmental Resource Permit anyway. The Corps of Engineers should have stepped in to enforce the Clean Water Act, but chose not to, much like the EPA because the interests of wealthy developers and well connected political entities mattered more to them than the health and welfare of American citizens.
We have requested Congressional hearings because it has become clear that our courts have chosen not to enforce critical federal laws. The Clean Air Act was meant to assure all Americans that the air they breathe is clean and will not cause them medical problems. A different judge in another court case determined that the Clean Air Act did not have to be considered by developers and state agencies in Florida in reference to the granting of Environmental Resource Permits necessary for construction activities to occur. He refused to allow an expert from the Florida Division of Forestry to testify at trial, even though this individual had been on the witness list for many months, and was present in the courtroom prepared to testify that day.
We had planned to get testimony on the record that proposed excavations near a wetland would likely reduce the water level in this wetland. This would make the likelihood of muck fires to increase. These fires, that break out in organic muck found in wetlands which have become too dry, are nearly impossible to extinguish. Muck fires can continue to burn and release many hazardous, toxic materials into the air for many weeks, which cause serious health problems. The Florida Division of Forestry goes to great lengths on their website describing the extreme difficulty that they must endure in attempting to extinguish muck fires, which can even harm citizens who live in neighborhoods far away from the fires. Life-threatening medical consequences occur because the wind can carry tiny particles, which used to be trapped in the muck, and are now free to be inhaled by unsuspecting people.
This judge chose to keep all of this pertinent information out of the judicial records by dismissing this witness before he had a chance to speak. He also went on to determine that we had filed a frivolous case because we had no expert witness. The reason that we had no expert witness is because the Judge banished him from the courtroom only moments before he was about to testify. The judge also ruled that we should be sanctioned and forced to pay $240,000, which was the amount claimed to have been spent in preparation for this court case, which was only a one day proceeding.
This exorbitant sum of money was clearly meant to punish us for daring to exercise our First Amendment Right to petition the government, in an effort to enforce the laws of the land, which were being violated. The attorneys for the developers offered to set aside the $240,000 judgment if we would agree to sign away our rights to ever challenge any future Environmental Resource Permits, but we rejected their disgraceful offer, and refused to be silenced. The state of Florida, as well as the developers in this case, were complicit in extorting us with this outrageous judgment, as well as sending a clear message to all others who might consider getting involved in efforts to enforce both federal and state laws. Federal agencies, such as the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, continue to allow the state of Florida to intimidate and illegally prevent concerned citizens from exposing their dangerous actions, which threaten both residents and the 100 million visitors who visit Florida annually.
The expert for the developer in charge of wetland evaluation and endangered wildlife studies testified that his fees were so high because he had to spend hundreds of hours preparing for the case. State law requires that this expert must have completed all of his studies before the trial began. He confessed under oath that there were many areas of the property that he had never even visited, which is a clear violation of state law, as well as both the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. These facts should have rendered the permit, which had been approved by state agencies, incomplete and invalid. A fair and impartial judge would have stopped the court proceeding and revoked the permit.
This same expert was proven to have neglected to properly conduct required wildlife studies in another case, which was similar to ours. There is no telling how many permits in Florida have been granted based on studies, which were actually never done. The state of Florida does not want to know how many invalid permits have been issued, which supposedly complied with both federal and state laws. More importantly, they don’t want any of us to know.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District is the state agency that issues Environmental Resource Permits at the state level. The vast majority of all illegally granted permits are not challenged, which helps to explain why most of our wetlands no longer exist, and how all residents and visitors to Florida have been put in danger. Our court cases have resulted in sworn testimony by Water Management experts that they illegally instruct developers to falsify data used in computer models that are meant to predict potential hazards of the construction activities. This is done so that the computer models will erroneously conclude that the public will not be harmed in any way by the permitted projects. Court transcripts also prove that the Water Management District never requires the developer’s experts to verify or prove the accuracy of any of their models.
Federal agencies such as the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are supposed to monitor illegal state activities and step in to ensure that federal law is always obeyed. These agencies have consistently chosen not to perform their duty. Congressional hearings would seem to be the only way to correct the current situation, which threatens all of us.
Further specific details about the corruption of our courts regarding these matters, including shocking, never before seen, sworn court transcript documents providing evidence of at least 40 federal and state laws being violated, can be found at:
http://dangertoeveryoneinflorida.org/
The legislature of the state of Florida has taken the unprecedented step of passing statutes that eliminate expiration dates on Environmental Resource Permits. We have already explained that many of these permits were granted in violation of federal law. Permits at least used to have expiration dates, which usually were between 5-7 years in length. This meant that if the construction was not completed by this time, that the permit would become invalid and new studies must be conducted in order to be issued a valid permit. The current Florida statutes remove the expiration dates, meaning that development can proceed regardless of the age of the permit. The conditions of the wetlands, presence of endangered species, as well as aspects regarding the Clean Air Act may have changed drastically 10-20 years after the original studies were done. This is no longer a concern for developers in Florida. The legislature admitted that they removed expiration dates only as an effort to stimulate the economy by helping wealthy developers and corporations to proceed more rapidly with their construction activities.
The net result is that permits, which were illegally granted in the first place, now remain valid and in effect for as long as the state of Florida chooses. We sent copies of this legislation to the senators to make them aware of this action. Once again, the federal agencies charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act have chosen to do nothing about Florida’s latest act of defiance and slap in the face of not just the agencies, which should have jurisdiction, but also the American citizens and taxpayers.
We have described this complex situation to you in an effort to explain the reason that Congressional hearings may succeed where legal procedures have failed. Any attempt to convince the government of the state of Florida would also fail, as elected officials have proven that they are more concerned with satisfying wealthy, potential campaign contributors, than in protecting the residents and visitors to the state of Florida. We urge all citizens and concerned groups to contact Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Bill Nelson, as well as any other elected officials in Congress, to demand that these issues be completely investigated and brought to light before further irreversible disasters occur.
We also provided information to the senators from Florida regarding aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, which we have become aware of from the standpoint of new threats posed to all of our citizens, regarding their lives and health. Large hospitals across the country, which are predominantly owned by corporate giants, are now required to justify their nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, in a much more extensive way than in the past. They must prove that they are providing a community service by reaching a predetermined quota of patient contact counts, which has put the lives of everyone who ever contacts 911 regarding a medical problem in jeopardy.
The potential loss of nonprofit status could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the medical corporations. We have proof that multi-billion dollar hospital conglomerates have gone to great lengths to ensure that they can achieve the patient counts necessary to maintain nonprofit status, but it comes at the risk of patients’ lives and health. This includes making illegal arrangements with local law enforcement agencies to deliver patients directly to one of their non-hospital locations, which have no laboratory facilities or doctors on hand on a 24 hour basis. The fact that critically ill patients should be taken directly to the closest licensed hospital available is ignored in an effort to accommodate the powerful hospital corporation to steal patients away from other local competing hospital corporations. In this way, a patient’s closest and preferred hospital of choice is denied to them by law enforcement officers who refuse to call Emergency Medical Services to take the patient directly to the closest Emergency Room. This activity violates hospital federal antitrust laws and puts the lives of patients at risk.
Sheriff’s deputies are being trained to identify patients to be transported to only the particular non-hospital location that their agreement is with. The deputies essentially abduct people and refuse any evaluation by trained medical personnel, such as Emergency Medical Service technicians. The police are conducting these illegal activities on a regular basis, which threatens the lives of innocent citizens, who had contacted 911 believing that they were going to get EMS response, but instead find a Sheriff’s deputy knocking on their door.
Many people could be exhibiting symptoms of life-threatening illnesses, which police officers are not capable of recognizing, yet they are making critical decisions and preventing doctors and trained medical personnel from examining a patient, which could be near death. The hospital corporations have created locations, which they refer to as “recovery centers,” which are actually a non-hospital, centralized collection point for police officers to deliver people that they have abducted, in some cases directly from their homes, in order to prevent the other, nearby competition hospital corporations from receiving these patients. These “recovery centers” are not equipped with any medical diagnostic equipment and have no physicians whatsoever on duty to examine a critically ill patient brought in after hours on weekdays or all weekend long. The facilities are open seven days a week and 24 hours a day to accept deliveries of people, but are staffed by untrained medical personnel during the many hours that a physician is not onsite. The difference between life and death for innocent citizens across the country may well lie in decisions made by untrained police officers, and not properly trained medical experts. If this type of illegal activity is occurring in the Tampa Bay area because of the new requirements of Obamacare, then it is most likely happening throughout the entire country. All other nonprofit hospital corporations are also affected by Obamacare and quite possibly have been permeated with their own hidden schemes in order to meet required patient quotas. All Americans are at risk.
We have reported this illegal activity to the Internal Revenue Service and have officially been given whistleblower status regarding this dangerous situation. Our investigation has led to another violation of federal law by the Morton Plant / BayCare Hospital corporation who has control of most of the hospitals in the Tampa Bay area. They have chosen to violate Section 9007 (a) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This law requires the creation of a Community Health Needs Assessment report, also known as CHNA, which must be made readily available to the public. This 372-page report had been online until Morton Plant / BayCare chose to abruptly and illegally remove it from public view after we initiated our investigation. We have contacted both the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to report this further violation of federal law.
The CHNA report that was taken offline detailed the arrangement that had been made with the Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff’s officials were quoted in the report as being ready, willing, and able to assist the corporations in their efforts to increase patient counts. The corporation developed a system to send money back to the Sheriff’s Office from one of their subsidiaries. This money was sent in the form of grants to be used supposedly to assist police in their efforts to reduce crimes in the community. Many Sheriff’s Departments around the country are constantly pleading with their County Commissioners for more funding to operate their agency. They routinely have their budgets cut due to economic shortfalls and must look for other sources of revenue. Multi-billion dollar medical corporations are only too happy to provide such funds so that they may maintain their nonprofit status with the I.R.S. The medical suffering of critically ill patients and the loss of life of many that could have been saved are merely acceptable losses in an effort to increase the net profits of the corporations.
We have also urged the senators to bring up these concerns in Congressional hearings to protect victims who are completely unaware of this dangerous situation. We have contacted attorneys across the country and have found very few that are aware of these aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many of these attorneys specialize in healthcare and Civil Rights and are still completely unaware of this problem. Clearly, the average citizen is not going to have any idea about this matter. We hope that the media attention generated by Congressional hearings will bring to light this serious and dangerous threat.
For more information regarding this dangerous aspect of mandatory increased patient count quotas in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also commonly known as Obamacare, as well as to read a true experience involving the horror of a person who is near-death and being denied access to an Emergency Room by a law enforcement officer, visit this webpage on our website:
http://dangertoeveryoneinflorida.org/conflict-of-interest/
We hope that you will recognize the grave dangers that we all face due to the life-threatening violations of multiple federal laws, and that you will feel strongly in support of these issues. Please join us in our efforts to bring these concerns to the attention of the American public, which is currently unaware of the dangers that lurk around us everyday. We urge everyone to contact our elected officials and encourage them to initiate Congressional hearings to investigate these matters and to correct these situations.
To contact Senator Marco Rubio’s office:
http://www.contactsenators.com/florida/marco-rubio
To contact Senator Bill Nelson’s office:
http://www.contactsenators.com/florida/bill-nelson
To contact Representative Gus Bilirakis’s office:
https://bilirakis.house.gov/contact
To also contact your own senator:
http://www.contactsenators.com/
For information on contacting representatives from the United States House of Representatives:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
Thank you for your support. Please feel free to share this information with your friends, families, and colleagues, as well as to post it on social media sites.