Rick Roth Updates on Recent Legislative Session

House District 85 Representative Rick Roth, featured at the April lunch, gave us his overview of the recent session in Tallahassee.

Agriculture in the state is declining, he said, with subsidized farms in Mexico taking their toll. The big priority to come will be water – having enough clean and available as the population grows from 20 to 30 million.

The session was dominate by the impact of Hurricane Irma and the Parkland shootings. The Parkland bill was done quickly and is a good first step. Calling it a “massive failure of government” – from BSO to the FBI, the response was bipartisan. $400M was set aside for school safety, resource officers will be added to the schools and more funding will be available for mental health programs.

In the financial area, $170M in tax savings was passed and an additional property tax exemption will be on the ballot in November, along with a proposal to require a 2/3 majority of the legislature to increase taxes or fees.

Through the strong leadership of Richard Corcoran in the House, we passed an $88M budget with additional spending on education, public safety, medicaid, and land conservation. $15K in sales tax savings were granted to nursing homes and assisted living facilities to help with the mandate to buy generating equipment.

On opioids, prescriptions will be registered and there will be new transparency in record keeping.

Some specific bills mentioned were HB37 to allow primary care agreements to not be regulated as insurance, and HB351, which will bring transparency to prescription drug prices.

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Also at the meeting was Baxter Troutman, candidate for Agriculture Commissioner. A citizen farmer and cattle rancher from Polk County, Baxter has been placing people in farm jobs in Florida and Georgia for 21 years. His five top issues for the campaign are: Water resources, the citrus greening disease that has reduced crops by 75%, Labor – finding enough, land – prevent crowding out of farms by developers, and NAFTA, which is killing Florida agriculture.

Next Month, join us on May 23 for Michele and Joseph Assad, the former CIA agents who have written the book “Breaking Cover”.

Authors of “Breaking Cover” at May Lunch

ARE YOU CAPTIVATED by ESPIONAGE? Do you read Spy Novels? Real Life INTRIGUE ? (Ted Bell, Daniel Silva, Nelson DeMille, Ken Follett, John le Carre’)

Bring your Friends May 23 to hear from TWO former CIA secret agents who have walked the walk and lived the life for 10 years—- Joseph and Michele Rigby Assad—who met in school in central Florida, graduated from Palm Beach Atlantic College, finished graduate studies at Georgetown, Washington DC, and were sent by the CIA after 9-11 to countries whose names had to be redacted from Michele’s book, “BREAKING COVER”, for protection.

Michele believes that God/Providence brought her together with Egyptian immigrant, Joseph Assad to direct both their lives in ways she will explain…..how SHE in particular, was forced to blend in to the middle east culture to obtain highly sensitive information helpful to the US Government’s work there.

Michele and Joseph will keep us in suspense as to their project to vet and re-locate a number of Iraqi migrants and their quest to find a country that would take them; in this case, it was Slovakia. There were many ups and downs when the airport closed frequently on the days they were scheduled to leave due to impending air strikes and many checkpoints to deal with. (This was a featured story on ABC’s 20/20). Both Michele and Joseph continue their work as international security consultants splitting time between the Middle East, Florida, and Washington, DC. We are lucky she has this date free for us.

Michele reports on the 3 handicaps of a CIA agent’s experience: “We are Americans; we are non-believers; we are CIA officers: — and for her, “She was a Woman”.

There will be copies of Michele’s book for purchase.

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Michele Rigby Assad is a former undercover officer in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations. Trained as a counterterrorism specialist, Michele served her country for ten years, working in Iraq and other secret Middle Eastern locations.

Upon retirement from active service, Michele and her husband Joseph (also a former agent) joined a group of Americans who wished to aid persecuted Christians. Their efforts resulted in the evacuation of a group from northern Iraq that was featured on ABC’s 20/20 in December 2015.

Michele holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Arab Studies from Georgetown University. Today she serves as an international security consultant, splitting her time between the Middle East, Florida, and Washington, D.C.

Tallahassee Update with Rick Roth

Rick will give us an update on the accomplishments of the 2018 Legislative Session.

We will also hear from Baxter Troutman, candidate for Commissioner of Agriculture. Baxter is a 4th generation Florida farmer with a lifetime of experience working in citrus and cattle. For two decades Troutman has been chief executive officer of Labor Solutions, a personnel services company that has placed over 50,000 people in jobs throughout Florida.

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BIOGRAPHY OF REPRESENTATIVE RICK ROTH

Representative Rick Roth was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach and he was raised in Belle Glade Florida. Rick graduated from Belle Glade High School in 1970. He went on to study at Emory University where he graduated with a degree in Mathematics. Family life is busy for Rick and his wife of nearly 40 years, Jeanie. Most importantly to him are his children, Lindsay, Ryan and Ashley and his grandchildren, Hannah, Ezra and Ella. He is a founding member of the Truth Point Church in West Palm Beach.

As the President and principal owner of Roth Farms, Inc. and Ray’s Heritage, LLC Packinghouse, Rick has been a driving force of the agricultural community in western Palm Beach County.

Representative Roth has served in numerous leadership roles in his community. He is currently on the Board of Directors for the Western Palm Beach County Farm Bureau, Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida. Rick supports many community organizations, including Florida Association of Food Banks, Farmers Feeding Florida and the South Florida Sweet Corn Fiesta.

Representative Roth’s community service includes work with the Central Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce and Belle Glade Rotary Club to name a few. He is the Co-Founder of Farm City Week for the local Chambers and hosts many educational Farm Tours for Elementary Schools.

Representative Roth was elected to serve in the Florida Legislature as a State Representative for District 85. Rick’s election is a culmination of his 35 years of leadership experience in both the public and private sectors. District 85 covers the northern and central parts of Palm Beach County including the Town of Juno Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Village of North Palm Beach and parts of Jupiter and Loxahatchee Groves.

Committees:

• Commerce
• SubCommittees: Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations
• Agriculture & Property Rights
• Oversight, Transparency & Administration
• PreK-12 Quality

Peter Feaman on the Congressional Elections

“Work like it’s up to us; Pray like it’s up to God!”

With this exhortation, Peter Feaman gave us his views of the upcoming midterm elections.

Peter is the Florida Committeeman on the Republican National Committee and a member of the Rules Committee that presides over the conduct of the national convention and primaries. The RNC is in great fundraising shape this year compared to the Democrats he reports, and is 100% in lockstep with the President on his agenda.

“There has never been a better Republican President than Donald Trump in terms of policy”, he said. Losers like Bill Crystal who predicted that Trump was not a conservative have been proven wrong by his actions.

We are in the middle of a revolution or a civil war though – the left has still not accepted the results of the election. Barack Obama had pulled the country so far off the founder’s roots (and there is so much work to do), it is very important that we don’t lose the House in 2018.

The Democrats and the media would have you believe that they will win big and seek to demoralize our voters and donors, but in fact, the DNC is in debt and has little in the bank while the RNC has raised over $150M in the last year, $12.8M this February alone. We have been building a targeting database since the 2012 election and now have over 3000 points of data on 200 million voters.

The Senate will be tough for the Democrats – Nelson (FL), McCaskill (MO), Donnelly (IA), Heitkamp (ND), Manchin (WV) and Baldwin (WI) are all incumbents in Trump Country and at risk. The GOP can likely pick up 5-6 seats – not 60 but close.

In the House, it could turn over if the Democrats win back 24 seats – not unusual historically, but there are 53 open seats and only 6 (3D and 3R) are tossups.

Regarding our own Brian Mast (FL18), lots of people are mad as hell over his troubling gun grabbing rhetoric, but we still need to support him. Yes, he is not with us 100% of the time, but a Democrat would be against us 100% of the time. Remember: “Principle without Pragmatism is Suicide!”

It is important to remember that regardless of the Congressional Preference polls, the “mood” polls favor Republicans as the President works to bring back Reagan’s “Shiny city on the Hill,” and the tax cuts will certainly help. But ultimately, keeping the House is up to us.

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Please join us next month on May 25th for Florida House Member Rick Roth (HD85), who will give us an update of the 2018 legislative session.