FPL is also one of the biggest political spenders in the state.
And that is how FPL has been able to gouge working class Floridians over
$1.5 billion dollars in rate increases over the next couple of years.
>> Just keep in mind that Florida's utility companies couldn't do this without
the help of the state's Republican party and Ron swamp dweller DeSantis.
Let's watch more.
>> An FPL can't blame these high bills on inflation because the company also leads
the nation in shareholder and executive profit.
>> Well, when Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida announced his campaign for
the governorship back in 2018, much like Trump,
he pledged to drain the swamp in the state of Florida.
And then he proceeded to do the exact opposite, just like Donald Trump,
just like Donald Trump.
Let's be clear about that.
Now, shortly after he was elected,
DeSantis aggressively began raising money from businesses and
business interests before actually entering the office.
So he's campaigning, he's collecting all this money from business interests
while simultaneously claiming he's gonna drain the swamp.
So what did he actually do once he was legally bribed by these business entities?
In particular, what did he do when it came to the utility companies within Florida?
That's right.
He assisted them in price gouging ordinary Floridians.
So let's get to the details.
In November of 2021, Florida's Public Service Commission PUC issued
a memorandum allowing electric utilities to stop disclosing their shut off data.
Now, the memorandum reversed the commission's September 2020 decision
to collect the data to track the pandemics effect on utility customers.
And that was an important thing to track because clearly the coronavirus
pandemic had an economic impact on ordinary Americans.
There were closures, there were layoffs,
all of this happened through no fault of their own.
And so in September of 2020, they decided, we're gonna go ahead and
track this to see just how much of an economic impact this has had on Floridians
because if they're not able to pay their utility bills, that's a big problem.
Well, they reverse that, okay?
They reverse that with the help of Ron DeSantis.
But more importantly, that happened at a time when less
than a month after the commission members approved the largest rate
hike in Florida's history for the utility companies, right?
So electric companies within Florida,
like we want to increase rates by as much as 20%.
And the commission with the members of course,
who were appointed by Ron DeSantis himself they helped them out.
There like, sure, yeah, go ahead and do that.
We're going to stop tracking the number of Floridians who are dealing with shut offs
as a result of their inability to pay these astronomically high utility bills.
And then on top of that, we're gonna green light,
the utility companies plan to increase rates by as much as 20%.
So what you have is a double whammy.
You have the pandemic hurting Floridians and Americans overall by the way, but
this is a story about Florida, hurting Floridians economically and
the utility jacking up prices regardless of that.
And they've enjoyed record profits in Florida as a result.
Now, to avoid backlash,
the utility gets to withhold the information on shutoffs and
Ron DeSantis along with the individuals he appointed for this,
government agency aided and abetted this effort, okay?
And the end result is Floridians paying way more than they should for electricity.
So with that said, I do wanna go to the next video because more
perfect union did a fantastic job tracking the story,
covering the story and it gives you a sense of who butters.
Ron DeSantis's bread.
Let's watch.
>> Many of Florida power and
lights political contributor are shuffled through shady LLCs and big business PACs.
But even just from the public numbers, we know that FPL has spent over $18
million on political campaigns in Florida since the 2018 election cycle.
And it's probably a lot more than that.
2018 was a blue wave across the nation.
But here in Florida, thanks to millions of dollars from FPL, Republicans were able to
secure a stronghold on the state, putting Governor Ron DeSantis in the governor's
mansion and securing a supermajority in the state legislature.
FPL also spends millions on lobbying to make sure that that
company gets more than its money's worth from DeSantis and the legislature.
>> We're about to get real specific about the campaign money that Ron DeSantis and
his cronies accepted from the utility companies in Florida.
Before we do though, what about those shutoffs?
How widespread were they?
And which companies are at play?
Let's get to the details reported by the Lever, of course,
because there one of the only outlets that actually does journalism these days, but
let's get to it.
NoxtEra, the parent company of Florida's largest utility, Florida Power and
Light disconnected 738,000 Floridians in 2021, and
get a load of this, 1.1 million Americans nationwide since 2020,
according to a report from Bailout Watch last month.
Now, that is the information,
that is the type of information that the utility companies don't want you to know,
which is why the reporting standards were changed by Ron DeSantis and his cronies.
But let me continue there's more.
If that disconnection rate continued, noted the report,
NextEra would have shut off 1.2 million customers in 2022.
But we do not know the total because the DeSantis appointed
Florida PUC allowed them to hide the data.
Something else you should know about, and of course the Lever reports this as well.
Another utility company operating in Florida, Duke Energy,
has cut off power to over 600,000 customers since 2020.
Nationwide utility shut off power 5.7 million times since 2020.
I mean, they gotta make their profits.
Utility companies, especially private companies that seek to make a profit,
don't care about your economic troubles.
They don't care about this pesky little pandemic that might have put you
out of work.
And so they don't want to deal with the backlash either as they are seeking
profits.
And so they, of course, legally bribe politicians to provide cover for
them, to do away with reporting standards on their behalf.
And that is exactly what happened.
So let's go to the next video, and actually no, before we go to that,
let me give you some more details on some of the bribes that took place.
So of the 9.5 million that has flowed into the Republican Party of Florida
from electric utilities and their affiliated PACs since 2019, $2 million has
come in the past nine weeks as DeSantis preps a widely anticipated run for
the presidency as the main GOP primary opponent to former president Donald Trump.
Now, roughly 1.5 million of that total amount flowing to Florida Republicans came
from the associated industries of Florida AIF, a utility backed political committee.
Florida utility companies NextEra, Tampa Electric, Gulf Power, and
Duke have funneled more than 1.6 million to AIF since 2019.
So that gives you a sense of just how much the utility companies are involved in
this organization that funnels more money,
more legalized bribes to various politicians including Ron DeSantis.
By the way, there's more, I'm not done yet.
Since the 2020 election, NextEra and
Duke have additionally contributed more than $760,000 and
$180,000, respectively, to the Republican Governors Association,
which donated more than $21 million to DeSantis' re-election campaign,
Florida campaign finance records show.
So this is how the game is played, right?
The person who ends up or the people who end up paying the price or
ordinary Americans in this case, ordinary Floridians.
And, by the way, when it comes to what else these utility companies do with their
profits, of course, they do the stock buybacks, of course they do the dividends,
all of that stuff that's even have to share that with you.
I mean, that should just be common sense at this point.
But the other thing that they do is destroy the campaigns of politicians
who might actually look out for ordinary Americans, in this case, Floridians.
And more perfect union had an incredible report on that.
Let's watch.
>> Back in 2019, FPL's CEO, a guy by the name of Eric Silagy, was furious
with a Democratic state senator from Miami named Jose Javier Rodriguez.
He was an environmentalist.
After Rodriguez filed yet another solar power bill, that Silagy didn't like,
Silagy personally emailed his lobbyists and
told them to make Rodriguez's life a living hell.
And that's exactly what FPL's paid consultants did.
They provided the money for
what's become known in Florida as the ghost candidate scandal.
>> Growing list of investigations into ghost candidates.
A scheme to run Sham candidates in three Senate races.
>> These FPL consultants and other Republican operatives ran hundreds of
thousands of dollars through dark money organizations to advertise these
random people who had been put on the ballot as spoiler candidates,
allowing the Republicans to swoop in and win all three races.
>> We are ruled by companies and corporations.
Let's just keep it real.
As long as we allow for this system to move forward where corporate
money is considered political speech, we're done.
I mean, how are you supposed to persuade any lawmaker who takes legal bribes to
look out for your best interests as opposed to the best interests of
the companies that are bribing him?
And how is this draining the swamp in Florida Ron DeSantis?
You are aiding and abetting the utility companies in your state
as they price gouge the very people who voted for you by the way.
But that's the thing.
I mean, do Ron DeSantis supporters know it?
I would venture to say they don't.
How many media outlets cover the scandals that we just shared with you?
How many news outlets cover the legalized bribes?
And what Ron DeSantis is really up to?
There's a lot of attention on the culture war stuff for good reason.
What DeSantis pushes for in Florida, what right wingers push for in other red states
is horrifying and it brutalizes certain communities that are already powerless.
So I don't wanna minimize that.
But while the national focus seems to be on the culture war issues and
nothing more than that, what ends up happening is Americans end up getting
screwed over by private companies that have legally bribed these politicians.
And finally, there's a reason why they do it.
It's cuz they're greedy and it's cuz they want to maximize profits and
you can see it in the numbers.
Top executives at NextEra gave themselves a 59 percent raise between 2020 and 2021.
Both Duke Energy and NextEra spent 8.3 billion on dividends from 2020
through the third quarter of 2022 according to the Bailout Watch report.
So if you wanna make a difference, help to uplift this kind of reporting,
help to amplify videos like this one,
share it with people who might not know about what's really transpiring.
Help people understand how this system really works because when they get that
energy bill and they're wondering why all of a sudden it's
far more expensive than what they previously paid, they should know why.
They should get some answers.
They're not gonna get the answers from elected officials in their state.
But there are decent journalists out there like those at the Lever who draw attention
to stories like this.
And so let's not only help them out by spreading the work that they do but
help out ordinary Americans who are constantly abandoned by their elected
lawmakers, by elected officials who care far more about the companies that
are bribing them than they do about the ordinary Americans who actually voted
them into positions of power in the first place.