Publishers Weekly Gets It Right

Harold Thomas has written a book. Yawn.

For those of you who don't know Harold (which I expect is virtually everyone) he belongs to that branch of wobbly, somtimes-in, sometimes-not secessionists who live in a Ruritanian fantasy world pining for something that'll never come to be - a regulation free society of oh-so-noble libertarians who will kinda but not so kindly rule, probably with Penn Teller or some other similarly deluded asshole in charge of whatever's left. Harold is a longtime Goldwater-Nixon Repuglican, pro-Vietnam War (before Nixon broke his heart) apparatchik turned Teabagger. When he isn't enjoying his masochist relationship with secesher bigwigs like Kirkpatrick Sale, he's falling all over himself being a League of the South sycophant. Harold calls his tiny nation-of-one the Ohio Republic.

Harold's print-on-demand (read: couldn't find anyone who'd publish even a handful of copies or offer an advance) book that he titled "Governing Ourselves: How Americans Can Restore Their Freedom" got trashed reviewed by Publishers Weekly and for that Harold should be eternally grateful. PW dissed it for the poorly crafted polemic that it is and so Harold is miffed and calls the reviewer's unwillingness to lap up the libertarian flavored Kool-Aid in Harold's contentious and riddled with constitutionally nonsensensical bull to have occurred because the reviewer's own views are, in Harold's opinion, "politically tainted" :

"This reviewer clearly has little patience for reading contrary political views..."

"I have no problem with a negative review. A reviewer has the right and duty to give an honest evaluation of what they read. However, except for the complaint that my book is more opinion than research, I have to wonder what objective standards the reviewer used. Nowhere did they address the clarity of my writing, logical flow of ideas, originality, or any other characteristic of literary criticism we learned about in high school and college English classes."

No, the reviewer had a problem with a book that's short on facts or believable assumptions and that proposes a completely unlikely post-apocalyptic future where libertarian oompa-loompas like Harold provide beneficent guidance.

It isn't that the reviewer "has little patience for reading contrary political views" so much as the reviewer quite likely was incapable of the massive suspension of disbelief required to give Harold's goofy notions about the constitution, such as his fascination with fraudulent proposals like "nullification," to follow Harold down the rabbit hole. The reviewer was more likely so blinded by the idiocy being proposed by Harold that he failed to see any use in pursuing Harold's desired Henry Higgins-like examination for his useless book:

"The French don't care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly."

High schools churn out mountains of well written junk that'll never see the light of day; PW's raison d'être isn't to hand out attaboys for spelling, punctuation, grammar and form.

Harold's book has yet to be ranked at Amazon but when it is I'm sure it'll hover somewhere in the multi-millionth percentile. Amazon, however, had this to say about Harold's book:

"The book is easy to read and requires no previous knowledge of history, politics, or economics..."

Indeed. In fact it's just such a lack of foundational knowledge that is necessary to buy into the junk that Harold's peddling, like his delusional "dismiss(al) of global climate change."

So dream on, Harold, dream on, but look on the bright side - you're not going to get remaindered, ever.

You can find the Publishers Weekly review here. If you're feeling sorry for the sad sack, you can buy a pity copy of Harold's book here.

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The Second Leg of the Vermont Secessionists 2012 Election Cycle's Two Legged Stool

In early July of this year the seceshers began their second attempt at a takeover of the Vermont Senate with the announcement on perennial electoral loser and the self-described "Very Foreign Minister" of the Second Vermont Republic's Denny Morriseau's, and up and coming loser Robert Wagner's, various websites, called grandiosely, The Vermont 30: The Unleashing, here and here.

After their less than successful independent entries for various state offices, where their electoral percentage showing was never greater than a low single digit or, as in the case of their gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, barely more than three quarters on one percent, you'd think they'd want to find a way to suppress somewhat the nearly universal perception here in Vermont that these guys represent the extreme, delusion, irrelevant political fringe.

But that not being the case, the Wagner/Morrisseau tag team followed up a week later with a blistering attack on the Vermont legislature that calls all of its members thieves and corrupt here and here:

"Here’s a quick education on how the corrupt politicians sitting in the Vermont Legislature are stealing from us."

What followed was a long attack on their Vermont neighbors, many of whom, unlike Wagner or Morrisseau, have contributed untold hours, days, weeks, months and years of selfless service to their community rather than spending virtually all of their time condemning the many contributions of their neighbors. (And no, Denny, offering to pay for one way tickets to rid Burlington of its homeless population doesn't strike most as public service, any more than your plan to cap assets, income and population for Vermont)

In his post, Wagner describes a "letter" he received from Matt Hawes in Virginia:

"Here’s a letter that I received from Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, illustrating how Montpelier’s brand of sleazy politics has been adapted to Texas…"

The misleading use of word "letter," as well as a loosely correlated assessment of the similarities of the Texas and Vermont legislatures (not even remotely the same), for what was a blast email from an operative of a Tea Party group for whom Hawes serves as Vice President and Executive Director, Ron Paul's Tea Party organization, Campaign for Liberty, reveals Wagner's craving for importance and relevance. In truth, thousands of teabaggers like Wagner received this Tea Party spam.

Wagner's is a head shakingly sad attempt to fool Vermonters and inflate his importance to the national teabagger movement by saying he had received a letter email from the organization of a "flagrant racist," Ron Paul, the so-called "Godfather" of the Tea Party. If Wagner had spent just a few minutes looking into the Virginia teabaggers associated with Hawes' group, as I did, he'd have learned that they'd been involved in multiple acts of political intimidation and, some say, terrorism, when a VA blogger and Tea Party county capo doubled down on an incident tied to his release (mistakenly) of a Democratic party congressman's relative's address in March 0f 2010 by less than two months later calling the congressman "a target." Or maybe Wagner did check and found such rhetoric so compelling that it inspired his own inflammatory, broadsided attack on every legislator in Vermont.

It seems that the Wagner/Morrisseau campaigns are off to the start of another campaign that may prove to be just as disastrous as their last, where their underlying strategy seemed to be to insult and malign virtually every office holder in Vermont. Kinda like when Wagner went to an opening ceremony for the new bridge in Middlebury to piss all over a local, community effort that built a new, needed bridge and which created local jobs - not exactly a savvy, classy or particularly smart, vote getting move.

In closing, I was stunned yesterday to a see a huge, garish campaign sign for Wagner's 2012 campaign on a trailer parked in the state right-of-way in front of The Gathering Inn Hostel on Rte. 100 in the tiny hamlet of Hancock, VT, with the sign nearly protruding into the roadway. Readers of this blog will recall Wagner's announcement of his creation of a "provisional capital" for a secesher Vermont last fall. The innkeeper at The Gathering Inn, Kathleen Byrne, was reported by Wagner to have conducted a ribbon cutting of some sort for the "provisional capital" and/or "Center" or whatever last December here.

A huge campaign sign on a road traveled mostly by people who can't vote for Wagner certainly isn't the smartest campaign strategy but to do it more than 15 months before the election... Really???

Hopefully, despite it being one of the rules of "the Empire" that Wagner so despises, it is a campaign law none the less that he can abide by for the safety of all Vermonters and, so, "respect the rule of law" as he demands of our legislators as a part of our "government" that he so despises. (The Guide to Placement of Political Campaign Signs for Candidates is available for public viewing at the Vermont Secretary of State's website here.)

Oh, and no sign of the seceshers registering their legislature PAC yet.

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Vermont Commons Blogger's Conspiracy Worries: First They Came For Our Bike Paths...

Last August The Denver Post's Christopher N. Oshner wrote of a Tea Party candidate's worry that a UN agency's "(b)ike agenda spins (US) cities toward U.N. control." The Teabagger, Republican gubernatorial candidate, Dan Maes said that at first he thought that:

"the mayor's efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes "that's exactly the attitude they want you to have."

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said.

"He added: "These aren't just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to."

Ah, yes, he wasn't going to be fooled by the supposedly benign assistance of a UN group of present day, freedom hating Blue Meanies who are coming here to "do everything they can to oppress the place."

Vermont Commons blogger and sovereignty movement legal type, Simha Bode, noting that "Burlington, South Burlington and Brattleboro have membership with the (UN's) International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), throws in his own deep concerns,

"Personally I don't want to be represented by this "International" NGO. If you are a public official, council, committee or planning board member within an ICLEI membership town, be aware you are infringing on the sovereignty and constitutionally protected rights of US citizens, by breaking Article 1 Section 10 of the US Constitution. If you have made an oath to uphold the constitution, you are also breaking your oath."

Sure. For eighteen years this agency in Denver, devoted to evironmentally sound alternatives had worked quietly on behalf of bike paths in Denver and suddenly, as a Republican constituency, the automobile dealers feel the pinch, there's a conspiracy afoot to take away our freedoms!!!

Bode then gives us oddles of links in his post to conspiracy addled groups that confirm his "suspicions."

OY! Leave it to "Vermont Commons" publisher Rob Williams to find a looney tunes conspiracist like Bode to round out the group over at VTCommons.

Be warned of "(t)he commie UN conspiracy to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, with bicyles."



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