Vermont Secessionist Gubernatorial Candidate Emily Peyton Comes In Dead Last In Republican Primary

Although the results are still unofficial, it appears that the sometimes Vermont secesher candidate Emily Peyton finished in her usual last place dust up with another fringer, Steve Berry in the Republican primary. The current totals for Peyton and Berry are 941 or 6.55% and 991 or 6.9% respectively. An unknown write-in candidate, presumably Dan Feliciano beat their combined totals by 2014 or 14.3%. Republican scion Scott Milne coasted to an easy win with 10,410 or 72.51% of the votes cast.

So it appears that the albatross of secession once again holds true to its dragging its supporters down to a last place finish.

As a reminder of her true thoughts about secession, here is what Peyton said about it in August of 2010:

"We ought to do the groundwork before we secede. That is the basis of my platform, to prepare the foundation for economic survival and integrity, thus that we have legs to stand on when we wish to secede!"

"Of course we want to be an independent republic, what has being a member of the US done for us?. Brought us the pride of being the terror of the world? The dignity of creating the worst pollution per capita ? The joy of having more prisons and prisoners per capita than anywhere else? The hope of being the place where our gross national product is dominated by things that kill other people?"

"With economic stability that my proposals bring, and the economic independence we could actually secede. Right now we would be scrambling for a way to do business as the FED places sanctions on us for doing so. Put the [public] banking proposals I name in place and the VUE, vermont unit of exchange, and we can do quite well all by ourselves. People! Hear this! Please." Source

Pathetic.

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Public Banksters XVI - Montpelier 1, Hallsmith 0

Judge Helen M. Toor ruled last week that Gwen "The Hacker Baiter" Hallsmith is entitled to a new grievance hearing; Hallsmith is to remain fired in the meantime.

The Times-Argus has a story (paywall) but the gist of it is:

"In a ruling Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Helen M. Toor ordered Montpelier to hold a new hearing for Hallsmith that includes an “impartial adjudicator.”

[SNIP]

"Hallsmith said she lost her job “because of my advocacy as a private citizen for public banking in a city where the mayor was a lobbyist for the big banks.”

"Mayor John Hollar, who responded via email Thursday, disagreed."

“The reasons for Ms. Hallsmith’s termination have been well-documented, and they had nothing to do with her public bank advocacy. Her lawsuit against the city doesn’t claim that it was due to my involvement or her work on public banking, so it seems odd that she continues to make that claim to the media.”

"Among other accusations, the city has accused Hallsmith of unprofessional behavior, insubordination and damaging key relationships. In the months after her dismissal, she challenged Hollar for the mayor’s seat. Hollar won by a wide margin in early March."

City officials maintain that the judge's ruling is "procedural" and that no decision has been taken yet to appeal Judge Toor's decision or to proceed with the Court's ordered re-do.

Oddly, Hallsmith continues to maintain a disinformative social media campaign, hardly a smart strategy going into a potential re-do where she seems intent on bringing up the public banking thing. She's used social media to solicit criminal hacking and to solicit a barrage of ultimately profane letters when one media outlet, Seven Days, did not report as she directed. City email records aside, I'm sure that Hallsmith will want to be completely transparent and forthcoming with the "impartial adjudicator" and will provide at least time stamps from private email accounts to prove that the Grand Poobah of Vermonters for a New Economy and the eventual Exucutive Director of the California based Public Banking Institute was not advocating and lobbying for public banking on City time. Heh.

So much drama for what appears to be essentially a solipsistic endeavor. Hallsmith should remember that she remains fired pending any procedural determination or appeal and in that sense the score would be Montpelier 1, Hallsmith 0.

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Perpetual Gubernatorial Wannabe Emily Peyton Backs Away From an Earlier Declared Position in Support of Vermont Seceding from the Union

In a stunning act of verbal and political legerdemain Republican primary candidate Emily Peyton seems to see the light, as in if you outright support Vermont seceding from the Union you are dooming your electoral campaign.

I'll get text up when it becomes available but in a direct question at the VPR gubernatorial primary debate from Vermont Republican Party scion Scott Milne, about whether she supported secession of Vermont, Peyton skated away from the question and eventual sorta answered by saying Vermonters could attain "financial independence" by signing onto her loopy monetary policies.

Here's what she did say, as reported by Seven Days in August of 2010, when the seceshers were in full but utterly fruitless campaign mode, and in her first run for governor she was trying to pander to every fringe voter demographic she could find that I covered in a post earlier this year here:

"We ought to do the groundwork before we secede. That is the basis of my platform, to prepare the foundation for economic survival and integrity, thus that we have legs to stand on when we wish to secede!"

"Of course we want to be an independent republic, what has being a member of the US done for us?. Brought us the pride of being the terror of the world? The dignity of creating the worst pollution per capita ? The joy of having more prisons and prisoners per capita than anywhere else? The hope of being the place where our gross national product is dominated by things that kill other people?"

"With economic stability that my proposals bring, and the economic independence we could actually secede. Right now we would be scrambling for a way to do business as the FED places sanctions on us for doing so. Put the [public] banking proposals I name in place and the VUE, vermont unit of exchange, and we can do quite well all by ourselves. People! Hear this! Please." Source

Text Update at 3:30 PM: +++ Redacted text from the 45+ minute VPR 2014 GOP gubernatorial primary debate first aired in the noon hour of Friday, August 22 +++

In a cross question segment between the candidates, Scott Milne prefaced a question about secession by asking Emily Peyton if her campaign platform had changed over the years. Peyton responded with a definite, "No." Ruh-Roh!

Milne then asked Peyton very directly at the 32:36 minute mark:

Scott Milne: "Emily, in the past you, I believe, advocated that Vermont should secede from the Union. Do you still believe that?"

Emily Peyton: "What I have said, (garble)... we need to get financial independence, uh,...

[SNIP... Here Peyton does the verbal politcal teaberry shuffle while explaining word-saladly an economic "vision"]

... with appropriate monetary policy we'd have the financial independence right now that we do not now, so that's what I have advocated for always."

'Nuff said. Or as Emily herself says, "You have to play the game so to speak." (8/19/14 Essex Republicans debate)

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Public Banksters - Part XV: Gwen Hallsmith's Claim of "Victory" This Spring Takes a Major Financial Hit This Past Week

*** Trigger Warning ***: The following content that may elicit symptoms of Post-Traumatic Public Banking Disorder!

For those of you following the state budget revenue shortfall here in Vermont, it'll come as no surprise that Governor Shumlin is proposing a 2.2% or $31 million dollar cut to the 2015 budget. Consensus is that untried and unproven programs take larger cuts so as to spare programs for elderly, children, the needy, and health related assistance programs. Recognizing this, the governor's office had at first recommended a cut of more than twice the 2.2 rate from the Vermont Enterprise Investment Fund. And if you're not familiar with the VEIF, it's an internal fund of the Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce's office earmarked for business stimulus.

Executive Director of the California based Public Banking Institute and local Grand Poobah of Vermonters For A New Economy, Gwen "The Hacker Baiter" Hallsmith, has claimed it as her "victory" on the little watched Laura Flanders Show back in April which I reported on here. It's the program where the public banksters finally managed to get their beaks wet in the public funds water. But not everyone shares the enthusiasm for an "unproven program" getting parity with assistance programs that are proven to be direly needed and getting just about the same cut as those for needy. Some, like Chris Curtis, an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, suggested via one published report on Wednesday that,

"... Newer programs, such as the $4.5 million Vermont Enterprise Investment Fund to incentivize businesses to remain or locate in Vermont, should be more ripe for scrutiny than established programs with proven track records. The administration has proposed trimming the fund by $250,000 as part of the rescission."

According to numerous other published and broadcasted reports the committee charged with making the tough choices about what gets cut, the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office, didn't agree with the governor's 5+% cut to what some call his IBM Enterprise Investment Fund (hardly the fund envisioned by the public banksters when the scale of what they were proposing to capitalize a public bank - $70 million - shrank to a nearly $4.5 golden handshake to an existing Vermont employer). The VLJFO quadrupled the cut to the program to nearly 21% or close to a cool million dollars.

As noted on WCAX:

"'Some agencies have a lot of other places to go and some of the smaller agencies have less places to go,' Vt. Finance and Management Commissioner Jim Reardon said."

"Lawmakers vetoed the governor's proposal to reduce assistance for those aging out of foster care and other human service cuts one day after getting an earful from constituents."

"The governor ultimately agreed to quadruple his planned reduction to the newly created enterprise fund, bringing the $4.5 million potential incentive package to retain IBM or bring in a successor company down to $3.5 million."

"'We think that is an important fund, but in the spirit of cooperating... We will concur with your recommendation,' Reardon said."
Source

So, after all the cutting of a program that people in and out of government are calling a fund for "IBM or... (it's) successor," me's a-wondering just what spin the public banksters primary spokesperson and unregistered lobbyist, Gwen Hallsmith, will put on the affair. Perhaps even more notably, the press is reporting that no Vermonter has applied for assistance from the fund.

Great work there, Gwen. All of that work resulted in fund primarily devoted to "assisting" one of the largest, most well healed employers in Vermont. I just can't wait to see what all your "work" gets for Vermonters in the next legislative session. Maybe a new, groundbreaking incentive program to fund Vermont Gas' 40% cost overrun and eminent domain claims that you could call the Vermont Farm & Residence Assistance Fund will get Vermonters closer to that anti-capitalist "new economy" you profess to so love too, eh Gwen? That seems like something that you and Gary "The Rocket Scientist" Flomenhoft" could pull off given your track record. Heh.

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Did The Fringe Just Birth Another Secessionist for the 2014 Vermont Gubernatorial Election?

Two months ago I described the announced secession supporters in this year's gubernatorial race, Peter Diamondstone (Liberty Union Party) and Emily Peyton, here. On Tuesday of this week CCTV in Burlington held a primary debate for the Republican aspirants - Dan Feliciano, a kinda Libertarian ; Emily Peyton (Wingnut-Putney), a secession supporter; and, Steve Berry, who apparently thinks that a vague likeness to Mark Twain, with only half the wit, will propel him to the governor's office and, oh yeah, maybe secession.

When the Vermont secesher ship of state foundered on the rocks of its close association with racist and homophobic hate groups, its leadership desperately sought a new descriptor for the re-branding of their movement, eventually settling on the term "independence." At the debate, amongst other his incoherencies like governing by fiat, Steve Berry said,

"I would surround myself with like-minded people who have a goal to bring back independence."

Apparently, the moderator failed to ask the others about their secesher positions when this opening cropped up so we'll just have to wait for another debate go around to see if the any others in the group will make a grab for the crazy ring.

This could get interesting.

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Public Bankster - Part XIV: Going Postal?

After a brief hiatus, Vermont public banking doyenne and secession movement ally, Gwendolyn Hallsmith, "executive director" of something that calls itself The Public Banking Institute, as well as a principal of a handful of other e-paper hat outlets that exist primarily to exalt its members extremist agenda, has begun posting again.

This time, it's not about public banks (although I'm sure that isn't far from Gwen's mind) but, rather, postal banks.

Hallsmith is promoting, in addition to state run banking facilities, that the post office offer banking services. She points to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-MA) post office bank proposal as the model with a link to an extremist website (where you can also get nifty ideas on how to improve your activism outreach, à la Cosmo, like stenciling streets and sidewalks with your message while riding your bicycle). What Hallsmith doesn't do is any hard research on the topic. If she'd gone just a little mainstream, she might have learned from a publication that practices real journalism that not everyone is so enthusiastic about Warren's idea. She might also have learned that postal banks have been found to engage in the same predatory fee practices as commercial banks. France's La Banque Postal is just one example; in 2010 it shared with ten other banks a 384,900,000 Euros fine for "colluding to charge unjustified fees on check processing," putting the lie to the notion that because something is "public" it automatically becomes "pure."

Perhaps if Hallsmith had perused the Internet beyond her usual extremist feeding grounds, (and, yes, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal are legitimate sources of insights that aren't rubber stamp references of her particular prejudices) she'd have found, say, The Motley Fool's snarky take on the postal bank proposal:

"Somehow an institution that can't profitably deliver the mail will do a better job handling people's money."

But, no, that'd be too apt to disrupt Hallsmith's anti-capitalist meme. No, she'll more likely convene a meeting at, say, The Donella Institute, invite a coterie of supporters and propose a "study" be done by a promoter of her hobbyhorse - I'm looking at you Gary "The Rocket Scientist" Flomenhoft - who'll retire to his own "institute" and generate a fact biased "study" that'll be peer reviewed by no one and will confirm that Hallsmith's "idea" is the best thing since Ben & Jerry's. Yeah, that's the ticket!

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Public Bankster - Part XIII: Gwendolyn Hallsmith Solicits a Crime!

A friend of this blog forwarded disturbing Twitter posts by a would be public official, the Executive Director of the California based Public Banking Institute and unregistered lobbyist for a small group calling itself Vermonters for a New Economy, Gwen Hallsmith, who is also an erstwhile Montpelier, VT city employee who'd been fired from her previous public position over what has been loosely described as her inability to play well with others.

It seems that now she's soliciting openly, via Twitter and her Facebook page, for hackers. Exactly who it is that she'd want hacked isn't made entirely clear. During the past year she's tangled with Montpelier's mayor, city council, city clerk and the Finance Committee of the Vermont Senate, so there's no shortage of targets for her intended crime. Certainly I've been a critic of her loopy ideas and misrepresentations. And surely the targets of her lawsuit against various Montpelier city officials should take note of her proposed criminal enterprise since it goes to the whole character issue which seems to be the very heart of Hallsmith's shortcomings.

First she posted these two Tweets,

"Hackers wanted for troll expedition. Cash bounty for documentation. Secure contact only - send details. It's a race! fb.me/6SMCzpSrL
10:57pm - 29 Jul 14

And, shortly followed by...

"Hackers wanted for troll expedition. Cash reward paid for documentation. Secure contact only - send details. It's a …"lnkd.in/dvZReYA 11:02pm - 29 Jul 14

Oh, my!

Doesn't the failed Montpelier 2014 mayoral candidate and inept architect of a supposed public banking scheme know that it's a crime to solicit, especially for hire, others to commit a crime at her behest? Hackers go to jail and do real time. So do those who hire them.

Vermont statutes pertaining to computer crimes are here:

Title 13: Crimes and Criminal Procedure
Chapter 87: COMPUTER CRIMES - 13 V.S.A. § 4102. Unauthorized access
"A person who knowingly and intentionally and without lawful authority, accesses any computer, computer system, computer network, computer software, computer program, or data contained in such computer, computer system, computer program, or computer network shall be imprisoned not more than six months or fined not more than $500.00, or both. (Added 1999, No. 35, § 1.)"

"Retrieving" information from a "hacked" computer may be punished as a felony. And it is a crime to solicit the commission of such a crime, should it occur.

Hallsmith would not be the first secessionist fellow traveler to call on hackers to commit offenses against the websites of critics. Gary "The Rocket Scientist" Flomenhoft, who was Hallsmith's partner in this year's ill-fated and contrived public banking proposition, did so in the comments section of Rob Williams' hate blog years ago, as noted in the "What Secessionists and Their Supporters Say About This Blog" section of the column to the right of this post.

I probably wouldn't have even brought this up since Hallsmith's record of successful completion of much of any of her pet desires is one of such failure but her very next Tweet eleven hours later was of a poem written centuries ago by one Thomas Rowley, um, perchance? Anyways, here is the twit's tweet:

"On Intolerance
It was the case in former times,
That men were punish'd for their crimes,
For lying, stealing,..." fb.me/2Oa9fLZKR 10:02am - 30 Jul 14

The complete poem, along with other Rowley poems, may be found here.

So, in the way of a back'atcha, Gwen, I offer, with apologies to Baroness Emma Orczy, Julia Neilson and Fred Terry:

"Thet seek him here, they seek him there,
Those Seceshies seek him everywhere!
Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?
Where is that damn elusive Pimpernel (er, Rowley)!
He gives the Seceshies nothing but frustration
Popping in and out each week!
... LA! What cheek!"

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Vermont Secessionist Losers and Their Trail of Broken Political Promises and Bullshit

"Never give up, Never give in, Never surrender"
"Senator" Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner, November 13, 2012

With those words, two time loser for an Addison county Vermont state senate seat, closed his 2012 campaign, seemingly promising to rise again from its ashes to wage another fruitless campaign. He even immediately renamed his Facebook page, "Robert Wagner for Vermont Senate 2014" where on March 13, 2013 he wrote,

"I remain your candidate..."

Well, maybe not so much. That was the last thing he's posted on the matter. More than a year later, June's 2014 filing date for independent Senate candidates came and went with no petition submitted by Wagner. Even his "Senator Wagner" website has gone dark.

Likewise, Wagner's self-described "friend," the proudly misogynist and the inveterate anti-Semite at Rob Williams' hate blog, Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau, also failed to register for an independent run for a Rutland county Vermont Senate seat but he still has a 2014 campaign website. Go figure.

Morrisseau was the architect of plan to replace each and every one of Vermont's senate incumbents with secesher Kool-Aid drinkers. I guess that's now on hold too.

In a fashion similar to Wagner's, Vermont's 2010 secesher gubernatorial candidate Dennis Steele, while acknowledging that more than 99% of Vermonters voted for someone else, pledged,

"Today represents a beginning, not an end. When I agreed to take on the difficult and exhausting task of running for Governor as an independent this year, I did so with the hopes that my actions would serve to help lay the foundations for a robust, grass-roots movement that will carry the message of a Free Vermont forward. Towards that end, I’ve been collaborating with several supporters to found a democratic, state-wide organization. Dedicated to spreading the ideas of Vermont Independence, providing support for Independence-minded candidates for public office, and organizing volunteer activities that both serve our neighbors and help lessen our communities’ dependence on the Federal Government, it will serve as our movement’s new center and engine of growth. It will be organized by county, and I encourage anyone who supported my campaign to get involved in their county committee."

And since then no one has heard shit from Dennis Steele. According to one published report, it indicates that he's presently engaged in peddling an addictive and possibly carcinogenic substance in the NEK. So much for "serv(ing)... neighbors" and reducing "dependence," eh?

After their miserable showing in 2010, the seceshers declared their "independence" and established a provisional capital in the sparsely populated central Vermont town of Hancock. Most of the VT secesher movement's luminaries attended the convening session of their, uh, congress - their hate blog publisher, Rob; Gary "The Rocket Scientist and Public Bankster" Flomenhoft; Matt "Never Won An Election Yet" Cropp; you know, the usual suspects.

A promised run by a Fairfax, VT secesher insider has also failed to materialize. Secesher outliers like "Terry" Jeroloman, Gus Jaccaci, James Merriman and Gaelan "Aliens-NASA Conspiracy on the Dark Side of the Moon" Brown are again sitting this election cycle out.

The fact is that the only secession supporters left running are kooks like Ben Eastwood, Emily Peyton and Peter Diamondstone (who raised secession in a debate with Bernie Sanders in 2012), and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any one of them will eke out more than a low single or fractional digit electoral result.

It's beginning to look more and more like Thomas Naylor's dream of an independent white homeland called the Second Vermont Republic or Novacadia or some such nonsense, is nearly as dead as he is.

"Ex nihilo, in nihilum"

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