Public Banksters - Part VIII

Gwendolyn Hallsmith has the public banking Sadz.

This past week Hallsmith, supposedly the executive director of the California based Public Banking Institute, posted at Rob Williams' hate blog a ludicrous claim that the Vermont secessionist allies at her Vermonters for a New Economy front group had scored a win in the Vermont Senate. You really can't blame her for trying to make lemonade from such a steaming pile of lemons.

First off, I should explain to recent readers of this blog that Rob's hate blog has long been host to some of the most extreme, hateful thinking centering around the Vermont secesher movement. Back when Rob was co-chairman of the Second Vermont Republic he had on his advisory board an assortment of hate group members from the white supremacist League of the South, the racist and anti-immigrant Lega Nord (Northern League of Italy), anti-Semites like Kirkpatrick Sale and Thomas DiLorenzo (who has written neo-Confederate claptrap for a Holocaust denial journal), along with other lowlifes. Rob's hate blog has included the contributions of anti-Semites like Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau and the castration fixated misandrist Carol Moore, white supremacists like UVM's Robert S. Griffin and a League of the South Board of Directors member (and convicted felon), Franklin Sanders, as well as the anti-Semitic, racist co-founder and baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the still dead Thomas H. Naylor who, along with the Canadian racist and anti-Semite Sebastian Ernst Ronin, was a proponent of a white homeland in northern New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces, and a host of conspiracy theorists including Rob himself - 9/11 Truthers, contrail hoaxers, aliens trading technology with the US military for mineral assets on the darkside of the moon, to, well, you name the nuttiest conspiracy you can think of and it's got an adherent at Rob's hate blog.

Gwen Hallsmith's own particular delusion has to do with her imagining that she can claim a win in the effort to convince the Vermont Senate that her public banking proposal has merit. Here's what she said at the hate blog:

"... it starts to look like we’ll have a modest win on the public banking front as the 10% for Vermont theme struck by Senator Anthony Pollina will likely make it through the legislature, and 10% of the money the state has on deposit will be transferred to the Vermont Economic Development Authority. To win that, it is also likely that VEDA will not get a banking license, but it will still be a step in the direction we all want to go – reclaiming public, democratic control over one of the critical drivers of economic health – the monetary system itself."

Not so fast there, Gwen. That's just the kind of "we-didn't-lose" sort of spin that one expects to hear from a lobbyist, even the unregistered sort like Gwen and her secesher cohort Gary Flomenhoft. Fact is, Vermont has been doing just such a thing for more than a year before the secesher public bankster proposal made it to the legislature but then Gwen and Gary probably already knew that.

In her report the the Vermont Senate Committee on Government Operations of February 5, 2014 the Vermont State Treasurer, Beth Pearce, speaking directly to the 10% local investment plan outlined in the Hallsmith/Flomenhoft plan put forward in the Senate under the bill S. 204 by Senator Anthony Pollina, Pearce advised,

"I want to emphasize that I do support the local investment concept incorporated in S. 204. That said, I differ on significant portions of the proposed mechanics of achieving local investment through the creation of a state bank. The 10% of the state’s cash for local investment in Vermont is something I support..."

"Over the past year we have already made commitments that will get us to $17 million in local investments from our treasury funds (under Act 87). That’s roughly half way to the 10% objective. I am committed to getting us the rest of the way. But as fiduciary I want to address this in a way that is a win-win for Vermont. While I support the concept of 10%, will work to achieve it, and hope to even exceed it, there are portions of the bill that I believe need to be revised to make it a true win for Vermont. Without these changes, I believe there would be great risk—unnecessary risk—for Vermont taxpayers.

Addressing Hallsmith and Flomenhoft's larger plan to morph the Vermont Economic Development Authority into a public bank, Pearce added,

"What I do not recommend is expanding VEDA’s authority to accept deposits from municipalities or other entities, or to engage in banking operations..."

So, Gwen claims credit for that which the Treasurer has been doing for more than a year. Pret-ty chees-ey. And to suggest that the 10% local investment plan came about because,"(t)o win that, it is also likely that VEDA will not get a banking license" is nothing but a straight out lie. There was no quid pro quo and Hallsmith damn well knows that. She not just spinning here, she's bullshitting in a way that shows complete contempt for the ability of average Vermonters to know better.

As for Gwen's reference to Pollina's theme, here's what he's said that's being repeated by public banksters around the country,

"it 'doesn’t make any sense for us to be sending Vermont’s hard-earned tax dollars to some bank on Wall Street which couldn’t care less about Vermont or Vermonters when we could keep that money here in the state of Vermont where we would have control over it and therefore more of it would be invested here in the state.'”

Treasurer Pearce directly refutes Pollina's untruthful assertion by stating in her report to the Senate committee,

"The Treasurer recently sold just under $25M in bonds to Vermonters and approximately 80% of VMBB financings are sold to Vermont investors. Other instrumentalities have significant local investment. We hope to do even more with local investors. Further, when we sell bonds to investors outside of Vermont, capital actually surges into the state and then trickles back out as principal and interest are repaid. Replacing this outside capital with the state’s operating cash would actually represent a loss of state financing resources."

The truth here is that the Hallsmith/Flomenhoft/Pollina public banking proposal scored no "win" or change to existing state investments policy. The proposal died in committee and no action was taken on any part of Senate bill S. 204.

For anyone keeping track at this point, I'd predicted nearly two years ago on April 9, 2012 that Gary Flomenhoft's economic hokum would come to naught when brought again before the Vermont legislature. I'm making the same prediction today should he and Hallsmith take another stab at it with the legislature. And just to make it interesting, I'll predict that Hallsmith will be just as unsucessful in her new scheme to liberate Detroit from the clutches of government and capitalism.

Gwen Hallsmith, buh-bye.

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Public Banksters - Part II

A fundamental part of political persuasion is propaganda. Contrasting and comparing is an elemental part of the charade meant to convince others that one "product" is superior to another. Proof is irrelevant. And any well oiled lobbying effort is very aware of this.

Repetition is an essential element of the propagandist, coupled with endorsements from important figures like politicians. Both of these were missing from the first go around by Vermont secessionists in their pursuit of economic separation from "the Empire." The first effort relied considerably on bluster, argument and a large dose of imperiousness. They were on a learning curve. Now they've hit the basics both with endorsements from political mouth breathers and a more than year long propaganda effort that's been supported by a single source of truth that is controlled solely by themselves in the form of the Gund Institute.

The Gund Institute is committed to the fanciful economic theory first espoused by Henry George in the late 19th century known as Georgism. The problem is that where it's been tried Georgism has always failed to deliver on its promise. Marx saw Georgism as a socialism-capitalism hybrid while capitalists have seen Georgism as Stalinism-lite. Both are right and wrong. The Georgists at the Gund Institute have been peddling the failed crap of Georgism for years with little success. The secessionists have been hanging on Gund Fellow Gary Flomenhoft's every utterance for years and have had similarly sad results. I'll have more on Flomenhoft's sorry record in a future post. And Flomenhoft isn't the only Gund honcho with ties to the secessionists; there's also a then Gund boss Robert Costanza, a past editorial contributor to the defunct secesher rag once known as Vermont Commons.

The point here is that with this go round the secessionist leadership that has been primarily in charge of the state bank proposal has adhered to propagandist principles in a more disciplined way. So they present conjecture as fact while ignoring facts that raise serious questions about the efficacy of what they propose. As they work to achieve a bandwagon effect with little public support - the petition of support at longtime secesher Jim Hogue's website has gotten a whooping 19 signators, although that may say more about Hogue's following than it does about support for public banking - they disparage their opponents in a way intend to exclude them from the discussion; you know, state public bank lobbyists good/commercial bank lobbyists evil. One has to wonder why public bank lobbyists have failed to register as such with the Vermont Secretary of State's office as is required by statute.

In the small number of town meetings where the seceshers were able to get their question about a public bank on the warrant (accounting for less than 7% of the state's population - in one town only about 15 voters were needed to make the mark). Expect much to be made of a piddling showing on their question. Many of the small number of towns involved are the hometowns of individual seceshers (Rob Williams - Waitsfield; Jim Hogue - Calais; etc, ad nauseum; funny thing though, the point guy Flomenhoft wasn't able to get the needed signatures in his hometown, Burlington, which says loads about the groundswell of support that is supposedly growing day by day, eh, Gary?) who have a sufficiently number of friends to get to the 5% threshold needed to be considered for the ballot, although in some cases a simple majority of the town's governing board is all that's need.

The recent kerfuffle over the firing of one the public banking lobbyist's, Gwen Hallsmith, from her government job included her accusing her supposed tormentor, Montpelier mayor John Hollar, as being an evil commercial bank lobbyist - horrors! Unfortunately for the public banking lobbyist and former Montpelier community development director, Hallsmith, the Vermont media has extensively reported on her effort to enlist Vermont's governor in a scheme intended to intimidate the commercial bank lobbyist, unsuccessfully I should add. It also raises a valid question about who's really the evil one. You can read two of the better stories by Seven Days VT's Paul Heintz and Vermont Public Radio's Peter Hirschfeld here and here. The whole soap opera aspect to this hasn't been missed by the pols looking at the public bank proposal and as a part of the propaganda effort it can't be doing the public bank lobbying team much good.

So look for more the propagandist's tricks and tools to be put to use by the public banking lobbyists in the coming days - faulty cause and effect based on shaky "facts," repetition, testimonials, name-calling, transference, and emotion laden words - but it's definitely not looking especially good for them. At this point the best outcome for them just might be that they not get a Second Reading by the Senate Finance Committee.

But ya never know how these things are going to turn out. Maybe after all these years of one loss and defeat after another, the secessionists are on the cusp of their first success. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

Next up: The Flomenhoft Mystique.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.

Public Banksters - Part I

For those of you who may be unaware (and that would be most of you) the Vermont secessionists are at it again.

They're making their second attempt at getting a public bank established in Vermont. In 2010 the seceshers first started making noise about creating a public bank, eventually bringing a plan to the Vermont Legislature to create their dream bank. At that time they grounded the public bank plan in the debunked economics of Henry George, a late 19th century, charismatic contemporary of Karl Marx. The legislative committee tasked to dealing with these clowns heard them out but left their scheme "on the wall," the legislative equivalent of a graveyard.

This year they're back and they've learned a thing or two about horse trading and are leaving their lightening rod members in the background for the moment. But make no mistake about the fact that the seceshers have made public banking their number one priority since they see it as the first step to disengaging economically from "the Empire."

The Senate bill, S. 204, would create an advisory committee that would forward recommendations for implementation of the public bank plan in 2015. The bill does not address capitalization issues related to creating the bank that estimates for range from thirty to as much as seventy million dollars. I'm sure that the Finance Committee will be able to find that in-between the cushions of the Senate chamber since where they're not likely to find a loose 30-70 mill in the budget. One of the Senate sponsors' longtime hobbyhorse, a Vermont state credit card, is embedded in the next to last page of the bill (that's an example of the horse trading that I mentioned above) and that is likely to prove to be a poison pill for this bill since the bonding necessary to let this bird fly will probably come in at a conservative quarter of a billion dollars - minimum.

This whole public bank shebang has a few ways that it can go but rather than speculate I'm going wait to see what direction the Senate Finance Committee takes. It's safe to say though that this probably hasn't much of a chance of surviving the committee smell test.

UPDATE: 5:28 PM the Senate has just published its calendar for tomorrow, February 28, and no Second Reading of the bill is scheduled - tick, tock.

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For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.