Bending It Like Beck

Last June Thomas H. Naylor made another appearance on an extremist media outlet as head of the increasingly ineffectual group, Second Vermont Republic. This was his second guest spot of Beck's conspiracy addled hour. In that mushy, mangled methaphor way of his, Beck states that he regards Naylor and SVR as evidence that the American "pot is boiling."

BECK: "Columnists in The New York Times will blame me for stirring the pot and they have blamed me for stirring the pot, but I'm just pointing out that the pot is boiling. Instead of reading The New York Times, why don't we talk to someone from an actual group that is actually saying, "boiling water here" and wants to secede from the United States?"

"In Burlington, Vermont, is Thomas Naylor. He is the founder of the Second Vermont Republic (M)ovement. Sir, I believe, Thomas I spoke to you two years ago?"

NAYLOR: "Yes, greetings. Thanks for stirring the pot!"

[snip]

"... the interest in secession has increased rather substantially. We now have about 12 percent of the registered voters in Vermont support secession. That's about 60,000 people. The movement continues to evolve."

Glenn Beck program, June 23, 2009 [1]

Really? 60,000 "registered voters in Vermont support secession?" How did Naylor ever get to that figure? Well, he's spoken in the past about his "extrapolations" from a UVM Center for Rural Studies polls that he commissioned in 2006 and 2007, and, as most anyone knows, when Naylor the economics professor uses economics speak like "extrapolate," that means that he's just making shit up. [2] [3]



Given that Naylor's last political endeavour, undertaken at a time when he claimed to have "60,000 registered voters in Vermont support(ing) secession," was an utter failure, should we expect that with seven or nine announced flakes, er, candidates in his vanity campaign that he's to be seven or nine times as "sucessful" as he was the last time he tried this with Peter Moss? [4] , (What is seven or nine times zero, professor?) It's really hard to say what they're really doing since they have yet to register as a party or organize as required by statute.

As if to drive home the point that the SVR candidates clown car is headed full speed for the cliff/wall/ether, Naylor gives us this new pronouncement about his goals for secession in Vermont:

1. Political independence by 2015.

2. Dissolution of the American Empire by 2020.

[snip]

(and under Strategies) 3. Imagine…Free Vermont. Launch a new political party whose aim is to elect state government officials and members of the legislature committed to Vermont independence. Once the party has a majority in the legislature, a motion will be introduced calling for a statewide convention to consider articles of secession. After these articles of secession have been approved by a two-thirds majority of the convention delegates, negotiations will begin with the United States Government for the peaceable departure of Vermont from the Union. [5]

"Two-thirds?" Within three election cycles? And he's yet to have one of his secession stooges win one office in the 7 years that he's been harping on secession?

Finally, Naylor posted on his website the following brief essay of his intent for Vermonters who don't agree to toe the SVR Vermont Independence Day Party line:

"The Loss of Moral Authority in Vermont"

"Any Vermonter who supports Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, or Peter Welch is personally morally responsible, and should be held accountable, for the death and destruction inflicted by the U.S. Government upon the Afghans and Iraqis and upon the Palestinians through our proxy Israel."

Imagine…Free Vermont
Thomas H. Naylor
February 1, 2010 [6]

That's just creepy.

Naylor's long-standing rep for payback to those who don't slavishly support his secession plan (Sanders, Leahy, DeWalt, Odum, McKibben, etc.) is well known, despite the minimization of his attacks by his flack, Rob Williams. [7]

Really, "what could be more absurd" than making Beck sound like the sane one in the room?

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The Latest Episode of Rob "Wile E. Coyote" Williams vs. Thomas "Road-Runner" Rowley

You can tell that we're approaching the silly season when Rob Williams at "Vermont Commons" makes a transparent attempt to gain some traction in the upcoming election cycle for that clown car that is the slate of vanity candidates [1] for the Second Vermont Republic, by calling out the "John(s)", JD Ryan at Five Before Chaos and John Odum at Green Mountain Daily and, by way of some kind of reference, me.

Much as "Wile E." Rob would like for me to peck away at his explosive powder labeled as birdseed or chestnuts or whatever he's calling it this time [2], that's not going to work... again.

Thanks, Rob, for the invite to your lame attempt to create a media event for yet another of your soon to be failed attempts on the playing field of politics [3] but I'm doing something better that day, whatever day it is. [4] You and "Team SVR" aren't likely to fill a phone booth, if you could find one, for any event you announce but if you landed "Thomas Rowley" for the card, well that might finally get you the notice that you crave so.

In the meantime, do you think you can ever get around to answering the questions that I've posed here and elsewhere, if not for my sake, then for the sake of political transparency for your so-called campaign(s)?

You remember:

Why were the questions from that phony SVR poll that claimed that 8% of Vermonters supported secession that you posted deleted from the SVR/VTCommons website(s)? [5]

What were the questions to the second phony SVR poll? You know, the poll that you guys say was a "UVM poll" that showed in just a year that "support" had grown by more than 60% but were really the results of some rather sleazy, outcome directing questions that Thomas Naylor had fine tuned and "commissioned" (his word, not mine) and that he bragged about when he was celebrating Confederacy Month with an interview segment (one of two) at the white supremacist web radio program of James Edwards called The Political Cesspool? [6] [7] [8] [9]

How are you doing at getting Vermonters to add a question to their town meeting warrants about secession? You do remember that you couldn't even get 3% of voters to sign a petition on behalf of the question even in the town where you live and where a family member of yours was in town government?[10]

And while we're at it:

As you know, the number of printed copies (10,000 you claim now, down by 30,000 from earlier "circulation" claims for your agenda ridden rag) means squat. How many paid subscribers do you have? No fair counting the giveaways.

While we're talking about giveaways, how many ads have you given away and how many real fully paid for (not discounted) ads do you have?

Since it's the primary political, print mouthpiece for your vanity candidates this year, what's the source of funding for Vermont Commons?

Also, as a Vermont "publisher," you are aware that the Rutland Herald and the Randolph Herald are two very different publications, no? [11] In your zeal to find any kind of new content for your predictable blog and Daily Mewl, you failed to vet this supporter's letter published in the Randolph Herald, consistent with your "Don't Ask, Don't Care" policy when it comes to supporters of secession. [12] You see, within two weeks of you having re-published his letter of support, he'd also had a letter submitted to the US District Court in Burlington in support of no confinement for a "remorse(less)" convicted kiddie porn trafficker who'd been found not amenable to sex offender treatment. David Atkinson of Braintree, VT, indicated in his support letter that he had felt that the convict's offenses constituted a "thought crime."

"He is the last person I would send to prison," said Atkinson in his letter. "Sending John (Perry Ryan) to prison, in my estimation, would be like giving him a death sentence. I request that you allow John to live out his sentence (for a thought crime?) at home."

According to the facts considered at sentencing, the convict, Ryan, had more than 24,000 images of prepubescent children and toddlers being sexually assaulted, in some cases involving some form of bondage, along with nearly 150 similar type videos. This "prolific" trafficker was also found to have engaged in chats that sought "snuff" videos of children and had indicated his own desire to personnally cause harm to such children. [13] Atkinson's plea for leniency for this despicable convict came despite the fact that Atkinson resides in the very same Vermont town where a child was murdered less than two years ago and whose former step-father has been charged with possessing similar kiddie porn in another juridiction. And Atkinson's your supporter too. Go figure.

I'll be looking forward to reviewing the sparsity of information in your candidates' Campaign Reports or likely lack thereof. [14]

I'd also challenge you and Thomas Naylor to authorize UVM's Center For Rural Studies to release all questions used in polls commissioned by you and/or Naylor and/or VTCommons/SVR, as well as all results, published or not.

It should come as no surprise that Naylor refers to the Tea Partiers a "patriots" and that they "will have no other place to turn than to peaceable secession and the eventual dissolution of the Union." [15] That's an apt and unsurprisingly daffy alliance.

Let's see exactly how transparent you and your group intend to be with Vermonters in this campaign. Based on your past misrepresentations and acts, I'd say that's not very probable and that you'll instead launch into spin mode rather than address the relevant questions.

It's been more than two years since my last post. Let's see if it takes as long for you to stir me again.

Beep, beep.

CLARIFICATION: Sunday, March 14, 2010 4:50 PM
In the paragraph above regarding David Atkinson's letter to the editor of The Herald of Randolph responding to Editor M. Dickie Drysdale's editorial of February 4, 2010, [16] Atkinson is identified as a supporter of SVR. In fact, Atkinson wrote in his letter that,

"I am one of the wackos (you [Dickie Drysdale] mention) who is a member of the Second Vermont Republic (SVR) (sending my $25 annual dues) since reading their first copy of “Vermont Commons”..."