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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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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Public Banksters - Part IX

Remember when Gwen Hallsmith's Vermonters for a New Economy boasted that they'd gotten a question about public banking on Vermont Senator Bill Doyle's annual town meeting day survey?

"The other really good news is that Washington County State Senator Bill Doyle has agreed to include a question asking people if they support a state bank on his annual town meeting questionaire so even those who live in towns that will not be discussing a state bank as part of the town meeting agenda will be able to weigh in on the question."

After town meeting day the public banksters pumped up the volume on their claim of "statewide" support for public banking and put their supporters in the national alternative press into full spin mode as in this piece from Gwen Hallsmith's California based Public Banking Institute where she serves as executive director,

"As John Nichols reported in The Nation on March 9, "In many cases, the votes were overwhelming... Curiously, in light of the overwhelming support for a state bank displayed in the results of the town meetings campaign, the Barre Montpelier Times-Argus called the proposal "politically unpopular" -- and offered no contextual explanation for that description. "

Whoa! The public banksters unregistered lobbyists have variously described the support in Vermont for a state run public bank as "widespread" and "statewide" without ever providing any proof for such statements. It's a lot like that thumb-on-the-scale study provided by the Gund Institute fellow flunky Gary Flomenhoft. His fictions and falsehoods were directly refuted by the Vermont State Treasurer in her report to the Senate Committee on Government Operations of February 5, 2014. And now we have the results of the Sen. Bill Doyle town meeting day survey that earlier Hallsmith and her allies in the Vermont secession movement were so delighted to have been included in. The results for the public banksters were, um, underwhelming. As the Burlington Free Press' political reporter, Terri Hallenbeck, put it, "Vermonters... are not so quick to embrace a state bank."

First I should say that the Doyle survey is by no means scientific since participants are self selected but as Vermonters know, give a sense of where the public feeling is on an issue. Certainly a better sense than the handful of towns where the public banksters hail from and hold some sway with their neighbors.

So, here are the results of the responses to Doyle's very brief question 11 - "Should Vermont create a state bank?":

23% (yes); 38% (no); 39% (not sure)

The results can be parsed a number of ways but the one thing that stands out is that fewer than 1 out of 4 Vermonters (of more than 14,000 survey participants vs the several hundred that may have attended the handpicked meetings carefully vetted beforehand by public banksters and seceshers) express support for a public bank.

Now let the public bankster spinning begin. Since they were the only group incessantly getting their message out, I wonder how that spin might go. Did the banking lobby buttonhole the Vermont public? If so, it must have been one on one since they mounted no publicity campaign. Did the elected guardians of the state's and the public's financial weal somehow hoodwink the survey takers? More likely it was the poorly run campaign based on fictions, falsehoods and a demonstrated inability to play well with others that led to the perception that the real public has for the so-called state run public bank advocates.

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Public Banksters - Part VI

in the previous five parts of this series there's been a lot on the characters and unregistered lobbyists pushing this proposal and their deep ties to the remnants of the Vermont secession movement.

Today's post will focus on the Vermont State Treasurer's report to the legislature. The links below will take you directly to the League of Women Voters of Vermont website, who sadly seem to have drunk to a little too readily from the vat of Kool-Aid provided by Gwen Hallsmith and Ellen Brown's California based Public Banking Institute. There you can read Vermont State Treasurer Beth Pearce's report and its attachments for yourself. Pearce dismisses out of hand the neo-Georgist Gund Institute (Gary Flomenhoft, really) claim that "concerns about impact on our bond rating (are) unfounded." In essence, with regard to the creation of a state public bank, Treasurer Pearce says like, "Nuh-uh!"

Treasurer Pearce's analysis of the public bank proposal sent to the Senate Committee on Government Operations: http://lwvofvt.org/files/Pearce1.pdf

Also of considerable interest are reports from Vermont's financial advisory firm, Public Resources Advisory Group and the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank. The PRAG "feel('s) that that the establishment of a state bank introduces additional risk to the State, which may in the future negatively affect the State’s credit rating and could increase the State’s cost of borrowing." The VMBB report expresses similar concerns and, like Treasurer Pearce, contests directly the Gund Institute/Flomenhoft assertion that a state bank could be capitalized from unrestricted state assets, saying essentially that such a critter doesn't exist.

Memo from the Public Resources Advisory Group: http://lwvofvt.org/files/Pearce3.pdf

Vermont Municipal Bond Bank report: http://lwvofvt.org/files/Giroux.pdf

Nothing seems to have changed much since the first legislative review of the public banking proposal in 2010 that seceshers threw such a hissy fit over then: http://lwvofvt.org/files/JointFiscal.pdf

One particular concern repeatedly raised by state officials is the potential for political machinations, cronyism and corruption that would be allowed for in the current proposal by the public banksters unregistered lobbyists. It's happened before with other public banks, most of which have failed, and includes the vaunted Bank of North Dakota which has its own very dirty laundry that was not disclosed by the public bank proponents to the legislature or to Vermonters. In short, the Gund Institute/Flomenhoft fictions just ain't gonna cut it with State officials or the state legislature - again.

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

Public Banksters - Part V

UPDATE 7:03 PM According to the Senate calendar posted a couple of minutes ago, the public banking bill (S. 204) is not scheduled for a Second Reading tomorrow on March 14. That would then seem to mean that the bill is dead unless an extension is granted, which is not very likely to happen. March 14 is the last day that crossover may occur to the House so that makes it doubtful that any bill could be passed in the 2013-2014 biennium. In short, it's probably back to the drawing boards for the seceshers and the unregistered lobbyists in pulling the Vermont economy out of "the Empire." And that'd be two times in recent history that the legislature has properly given the public banking scheme the boot.

Unregistered public bank lobbyist* Gwen Hallsmith, co-founder of Vermonters for a New Economy and the acting executive director of the California based Public Banking Institute, has been shopping around a series of articles on public banking to various online outlets.

One of her more recent forays into meme weaving on the Internets is an opinion piece that she submitted to Al Jezeera America in which she contends that "voters (love) the idea. In 17 towns around the state, a vote to endorse the idea of a public bank passed overwhelmingly last week at the town meetings." What she didn't say was that most of the towns are strongholds of the tiny Vermont secesher community and that they represent as few as 5% of the state's voters or that town meetings themselves normally produce the smallest electoral turnout of Vermont's elections or that the meetings are subject to the hijinks of a small group of activists. She further pumps up the meme with the header, "Vermonters support state public bank, and you should too". Really? And then she adds, "Citizens across state vote to use local dollars to help economy, not Wall Street". Okay, now that's just pure bullshit but, hey, what do they know at Al Jezeera? There was no mention whatsoever of Wall Street in the article presented on the warrant at various town meetings so that's just an outright lie.

Decontextualized fragments of facts is a well worn tactic of the Vermont seceshers and Hallsmith seems to have fallen under the sway of secesher leader and rocket scientist Gary Flomenhoft. The seceshers have a history twisting "facts" of their own creation into a narrative that ultimately is not borne out by electoral results. For years the seceshers claimed that support for secession was growing by leaps and bounds and that as many as 60,000 of the electorate supported secession but when crunch time came more than 99.24% of Vermonters voted for someone other than the secesher gubernatorial candidate, more than 30 times less than their fictional estimate of support. This twisting of the known facts by Hallsmith has the same smell about it.

Significantly, she gave the most personal ink in her piece to longtime secesher propagandist Rob Williams of Waitsfield. That pretty much cements the ties between the unregistered public banking lobbyists and the tiny Vermont secesher community.

ADDED 3/14: In Hallsmith's Al Jazeera opinion piece can be found another example of the contortionistic juxtaposition of facts taken from their proper context to create a self-serving inference that significantly leaves out all of the relevant facts that would lead the Al Jazeera readers to a different conclusion. In a spin taken from the secesher playbook of how to make something out of nothing Hallsmith would have those readers believe that the votes "of a few (less than 5%) seem like a broad consensus" across the state for a proposal that appears to have died in "the statehouse" Senate Finance Committee. Hallsmith notes that the non-binding public banking article considered at Montpelier's town meeting "got more votes than the mayor did in his bid for re-election" without telling the readers that more votes were cast for the mayor than for his opponent who was Hallsmith! Which then begs the question as to why Hallsmith would leave out such a pertinent fact for the readers to know. Hallsmith's campaign grew to be so nasty that she revealed the incomes of the mayor's supporters in a crass appeal to classism. Oh, and Gwen, if you were from Vermont you might have known that there is no governor's mansion in Vermont, unlike what you said. You must have been thinking of California.

* (Note: I've been queried about my contention that Hallsmith, Flomenhoft, et al are, in fact, subject to the requirement to register as lobbyists. The law seems fairly clear that they are required to register due to their having expended in excess of $500 on their effort to influence legislative action on behalf of their public bank proposal. Under Title 2, Chapter 11 of the Vermont Statutes lobbying is defined, in part, as, "(a) to communicate orally or in writing with any legislator or administrative official for the purpose of influencing legislative or administrative action, and (b) (the) solicitation of others to influence legislative or administrative action." Expenditures may be for items like travel, and by their own admission they've done lots of that to persuade voters to contact legislators in support of their public bank proposal, and for things like studies submitted to influence legislators. They've declared on their website that they spent "months" creating their "study," and any study worth reading would certainly have cost more than $500 to fabricate - the law makes no distinction between cash spent or an in kind contribution by one of the lobbyists.

The Vermont Secretary of State's Guide to Vermont’s Lobbying Registration & Disclosure Law recommends:

"Our conservative advice to all is to err on the side of caution, by reporting or registering in any situations where you have any question as to whether your activities would trigger registration and disclosure."

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Public Banksters - Part IV

(This post is part of a series intended to shed some needed light on the state public banking plan being lobbied for by unregistered lobbyists from the groups Vermonters for a New Economy, The Public Banking Institute (a California based outfit) and the Gund Institute before the Vermont Senate Finance Committee. The earlier posts have generated some considerable interest but rather than authorizing comments I'm urging readers to contact the Vermont Senate Finance Committee Assistant, Barbara Dall, with their concerns bdall@leg.state.vt.us)

To suggest that there is a "Flomenhoft Mystique" is something of an exaggeration. While the neo-Georgist Gund Institute's Gary Flomenhoft, an "educator" and onetime rocket scientist, has been up to his eyeballs in the decision making processes of the Vermont secession leadership and with the public banking lobbying effort, he's not terribly mysterious or mystical, although for some insane reason VT seceshers seem to hang on his every word.

This post might also have been subtitled the Mad Men edition of the Public Banksters series for a few reasons. Certainly the public relations assault being orchestrated by the unregistered lobbyists for a state run public bank is visible for all to see except, of course, for the willfully blind. (The entire effort is being spearheaded by Flomenhoft's comrade Gwen Hallsmith, co-founder of Vermonters for a New Economy and acting executive director of a California advocacy group called The Public Banking Institute, so why aren't these people complying with Vermont's lobbyist registration law?). But it's the past mad, mad, mad, mad history of one central figure in the campaign for a public bank that is the topic of today's post. This isn't Flomenhoft's first time at the rodeo but he's yet to score a victory in any of his entries. Let me cover some of the highlights:

The Vermont Council of Censors

During a meeting in the spring of 2009 at a Goddard College get together organized by secesher deadenders who were trying to find a way out of the mess that had been created by their national alliances with racists, homophobes and anti-Semites of the extreme radical right, alliances which led to the secesher alienation from all levels of the Vermont polity and critical coverage in the Vermont press, Flomenhoft presented his latest idea (well, not really his original idea but I'll get to that): a reconstitution of the Vermont Council of Censors, a governmental organization that was lawfully disbanded by the legislature in the 1870s.

The Vermont Council of Censors was a group that met at 7 year intervals to report of the constitutionality of the actions of the legislative and executive branches of Vermont government. These duties had come to be covered more regularly and effectively by the judicial branch, thus obviating the need for a redundant organization that met less often. While the original council members were elected to the office, Flomenhoft and his secesher pals proceeded to self-appoint themselves to their conjured Council with the only apparent qualification being that one be a secesher.

The problem with Flomenhoft's idea turned out to be that this was another example of the seceshers ties to the goals and thinking of the radical right. Oh, and that I found out about it.

The first proponent of the creation of a Council of Censors was a Nebraska conservative, Republican party county chairman and Teabagger, Glenn Freeman, who created the National Council of Censors in 2003. Like Freeman, Flomenhoft eschewed any democratic form of creation; he just issued his report/statement/claptrap, like Freeman and created the unelected and supposedly reconstituted Vermont Council of Censors. It's a Teaparty kinda thing so Flomenhoft was attracted to it like a moth to a flame. The national council has done pretty much nothing; after a feisty start that was basically a few meetings and a website, Flomenhoft's Vermont group also came to a screeching halt when I posted about their seditious creation here.

Flomenhoft's Council of Censors proposal and his appointment process of seceshers only reveals his contempt for both judicial review and participatory democracy. Flomenhoft's embrace of a flagrant malapportionment designed to give him and his secesher allies an unwarranted amount of power in state governance pretty much gives you all that you'd need to know about how the seceshers would rule Vermont if they succeeded in their effort, although I'll go into more of his and the other seceshers power delusion in the section following this one.

The Free Vermont Listserv

Later in 2009 Flomenhoft was one of the earliest members to what he and the Vermont seceshers called the Free Vermont Listserv, a place where they believed that could chat in private about the upcoming 2010 election. It didn't turn out to be quite so private.

On the listserv the chat proceeded from Flomenhoft recommending that secesher candidates, like secesher gubernatorial candidate Dennis Steele, keep their policy position vague so that voters wouldn't zero in on items they might take issue with to some really whacked out stuff that anyone in their right mind would take issue with, such as: racism; anti-Semitism; violence laced misogyny; homophobia; appointing themselves minister of this and that; conspiracist claptrap like the notion that the U.S. Is receiving advanced alien technology in exchange for resources being mined on the dark side of the moon; putting members of Vermont's law enforcement community on trial for who knows what; making legislators subject to capital punishment if they don't live up to secesher standards for participation in governing; and on, and on, and on. You can read their chat for yourself at the Free Vermont Listserv provided at the end of this post or this earlier post of mine here.

The Creation of a Provisional Capitol for the Secessionist Second Vermont Republic in Hancock, VT

Perhaps my personal favorite of the lunacy that Flomenhoft has for years been a central figure of is when, hot on the heels of their crushing 2010 defeats for guv, lite-guv and a smattering of legislative seats, he and a small group of confederates met at a ramshackle B&B in Hancock, VT and declared the place to be their "provisional capitol." Dickie Drysdale's Herald of Randolph had a piece on the affair here.

'Nuff said.

Now is often the point when Flomenhoft or one of his pals scream ad hominem! That is, however, a fallacy. What's really happening here is that Flomenhoft is presenting himself as an economic expert without revealing his true agenda - separating from the economic construct of "the Empire" to further the effort for secession - or without revealing that on every occasion that Georgist economic principles have been applied to a community the effort has failed. Flomenhoft's track record for nutty proposals that come to naught speak directly to his credibility as an authority, not unlike the spiteful mayoral candidacy of his colleague and similarly unregistered lobbyist for the lobbying group Vermonters for a New Economy. The character of the proponents of a plan that so radically alters the Vermont economic landscape with the real goal in mind of secession is valid to consider.

This is by no means all of Teh Crheyzy that permeates Flomenhoft's secesher activism but what's significant is that the Vermont Senate Finance Committee has even given this last secesher pipe dream, a plan that the remnants of the Second Vermont Republic have cited on their hate blog as their #1 priority intended to escape economic entanglement with "the Empire," as much attention as they have.

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