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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Vermont Commons Hate Blog Publisher Rob Williams' Latest Crazy Conspiracy Theory

UPDATE 9.17.13: UN Report Smashes Williams/al-Assad/Putin Lie That Rebels Launched Gas Attack

For months now the Vermont Commons publisher, Rob Williams, has seemingly limited his opining to useless movie reviews of action films that often suggest (really loosely) that there's some oblique secessionist connection, tie or nonsense. But today he added to his list of debunked conspiracy theories the crap that Syrian rebels launched gas attacks against the Syrian people. On Monday (9.9.13) he added to his hate blogger's list of debunked conspiracy theories (9/11 Truthiness, Boston Marathon Bombing, Sandy Hook, etc.) the crap that Syrian rebels launched gas attacks against the Syrian people.

In a piece he wrote attacking the weekly, Seven Days, (no, I won't link to it since he presents zero evidence for his conspiracy theory), über conspiracist Williams critiques Seven Days columnist Paul Heinz thusly:

"Paul Heinz's "Fair Game" column on Syria seemed a slapdash shillfest’ian stinker."

Williams presents as evidence a "slapdash" collection of variously misrepresented historical events near and dear to devoted conspiracy mongrels like Williams; he conflates George Bush's lies as being somehow an indictment of President Obama (gee, I wonder where Rob stands on the birther bullshit). Nothing liking stringing an unrelated group of historical events into a fact starved opinion on a current issue.

Thus Williams, whose hate blog sponsors like-minded conspiracists, anti-Semites, homophobes and has published the work of racist, hate group figures like Robert S. Griffin and Franklin Sanders, to name only two, joins other notable racist nutjobs like Rush Limbaugh, Ron Paul and Joe "You Lie!" Wilson, as well as mass-murderer-now-turned-peacenik Russian czar and virulent homophobe, Vladimir Putin, in promoting absurd fiction. Another notable winger nutjob who's swilling the Williams Kool-Aid is infowars.com supreme asshole, Alex Jones. None of these clowns have presented evidence for their meme du jour, just like Williams. Can Vermont secesher anti-Semite, 9/11 conspiracist and Israeli hate monger, Dennis Morrisseau, be far behind in the rush to irrelevancy?

I'd thought that Williams had aged into a failed Vermont secesher with so little grasp on reality that he can still write,

"Vermont continues to explore independence."

when no community has put secession on its town meeting warrant (although Williams and his klan promised that we'd be constitutionally getting there by 2015, now constitutionally impossible); when no legislator, town official or statewide office holder ever mentions his "explor(ing)" bullshit; the Obama administration has shutdown all hope for a secesher plan; when Williams a half dozen years ago sought to promote the work of notorious neo-Confederate, Lincoln historical revisionist whackjob, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, whose work has also been promoted by the Holocaust denial journal, The Barnes Review; despite each and every one of the secesher candidates having failed spectacularly in their various bids for office; of course, there's also the incredibly bad judgment shown by Williams and his then co-chair at the Second Vermont Republic, Thomas H. Naylor, attending White-A-Palooza events orchestrated by the neo-Confederate Abbeville Institute and the hate group called League of the South, who had members serving on SVR's advisory board, and who were honored invitees to one of Williams' poorly attended "events" (as well as the rabidly homophobic hate group, Christian Exodus); when his faux journal has gone belly up and he is reduced to providing a platform that he promised would be much, much more to a collection of bigoted, conspiracist fools; etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Instead, now he's branching out into self-serving, conspiracist media criticism, so I'd just like Rob to answer one thing, him being a publisher of a failed journal of hate and all:

Why, when you had put your equally inane yak operation up for sale in October 2012, did you not disclose this fact to the people that you "shilled" for contributions for your Kickstarter campaign for a "yak BBQ food cart" (basically, yak burgers and sausage) back in January of this year? Didn't potential contributors have a right to know that you were intending to take the money and run? After all, you did secede succeed in unloading that yak burr, didn't you?

It's been fun, Rob, but I think you and your stream of America hating, anti-vaccine crap and bigoted website bullshit are done now that you're no longer being bankrolled by the still dead Thomas Naylor.

Just sayin'.

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