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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Public Banksters - Part XII

This should probably be subtitled as the Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire edition.

Nearly a month ago 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, appeared on the little watched GRITtv's Laura Flanders show. (NB: Even public banking supporters describe Gwen's work as "Lobbying for Public Banking") Flanders is a self described journalist whose interviewing style is to repeat back a program guest's talking points in the form of a question. If you have 17:20 minutes to waste of your life, you can watch the entire interview here.

At the 1:10 mark in the Flanders Show vid Hallsmith says about the non-binding public banking article the she and her little group managed to get onto a handful of Town Meeting warrants,

"It was great to hear all the returns coming in from around the state, 'cause towns all over the state voted for it. It wasn't just a little cluster here or there."

Holy whooper, Gwen! That's precisely what the results showed. Perhaps a "smattering" of towns would have been more accurate. Most of the less than a score of towns (out of more than 200) are clustered in north central Vermont, and in most of those they were only one or two towns in an entire county; no county (that's five or more than a third of Vermont's counties) along the entire New York State border had a town that considered the public banking article. Two towns each in the two southeastern counties considered the public banking article and not all of them supported it.

At the 14:27 mark of the vid Hallsmith delivers another of her misrepresentations that has been soundly refuted by Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce,

"(W)e discovered in our (so-called) study is that existing state lending agencies already have plenty of unrestricted assets that could be used to capitalize the state bank. They have more than what would be required for a state bank. There's no additional bonding or capitalization needed."

Of course, Flanders let this stinker go by without a challenge or mention of the fact that it has been repeatedly refuted by state officials. Treasurer Pearce clearly states in her report to the Senate Committee on Government Operations of February 5, 2014 that,

"Capitalization would be expensive." Source

Also joining Treasurer Pearce in refuting the claims that were then being made by the public banksters in an October 23, 2013 VTDigger piece,

"VHFA (Vermont Housing Finance Agency) director Sarah Carpenter is not convinced about the merits of public banking.

“I’m a little perplexed about how that group thinks they’re going to get the capital,” Carpenter said. “Most of the money comes in as taxes and goes out as paying bills. So I’m not sure how they would have access to long-term capital, which is critical to most lending activities. Source

The so-called "study" that Hallsmith referred to was something pulled straight out of the ass of secessionist political oligarch and rocket scientist, Gary Flomenhoft, who a few years back engineered a seditious plot to supplant the Vermont Supreme Court and judge the work of Vermont's executive and legislative branches using a self-appointed "council" of secesher hacks. One of the hacks, Gaelan Brown, went so far as to suggest capital punishment for errant legislators. Hallsmith herself has had long ties to the moribund Vermont secesher movement. She was a featured speaker at the secesher's 2012 Statehouse Stunt that dazzled tens of Vermonters on a warm, late summer day. (You can read my reports on the 2012 Statehouse Stunt here, here, here, here and here.

At the 8:55 mark of the Flanders Show vid, Hallsmith laid the groundwork for what can only be described as a baldfaced lie when she says,

"I think this year we'll be able to claim some level of victory because it starts to look like the 10% that we talked about, transferring from the Treasurer's account into direct economic lending in Vermont will go through.

They've moved that into a new bill called S. 220 which I believe passed (Ed's Note: No, it hadn't and wouldn't for at least another four weeks, and then in quite a different form than Hallsmith described.) The banking license, however, which of course is part of the tool kit that we (need) to make all of this work is not going to pass this year. But we'll keep working on this next year because I think as the state gets more and more used to this idea of being a bank, they'll start to see the logic and they'll start to see the benefits of it.

Ironically, S. 220 is a bill first proposed by Assistant Minority Leader Sen. Kevin Mullin (Rutland - R), State Chairman of the shadowy ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council as "an act relating to furthering economic development."

What S. 220, passed in the waning hours of this year's legislative session this past weekend, does is formalize through legislation the existing investment in local businesses plan of the Vermont Treasurer's office and provide for discretionary funding for the Governor's office, not unlike many other states programs designed to entice business investment, for both Vermont and elsewhere, far below the 10% boasted about by Hallsmith a month ago. The Vermont state government's capitalistic plan in support of local investment will continue as it has for more than a year and is being expanded to entice out-of-state investment in a way never conceived of by the public banksters. More on S. 220 from VTDigger here.

Vermont public bankster's unregistered lobbyists like Hallsmith and Flomenhoft would be well advised to stop trying to bullshit their way to their goal. This from Seven Days,

"We're very dependent on (lobbyists) for facts. Whereas, in a larger legislature, you'd turn to your staff," says Rep. Chris Pearson (P-Burlington).

But, he cautions, "A lobbyist doesn't get too many chances to get it wrong. If somebody's not trustworthy, you're not going to go back to them."
Seven Days, pg. 33, April 30, 2014

NOTE: An example of the undemocratic nature of Vermont's tiny group of public bank proponents can be found in this hubristic post,

"Erik Esselstyn and Peg Elmer, who were responsible for the Town Meeting votes in East Montpelier and Royalton, made the trip to the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday to represent all the people who voted to tell the legislators to support the legislation for a public bank in Vermont."

I'm not sure how Esselstyn or Elmer can take credit for the votes in some of the smallest communities in Vermont of other Vermonters unless they're making some sort of admission to vote tampering or manipulation or some other kind of voter fraud but I took the time to check both East Montpelier's and Royalton's Town Meeting warrants and neither warrant had the voters consider a question regarding who would represent them before a Senate committee, other than, of course, their own elected representatives in the Senate. Esselstyn's and Elmer's "representation" was of the self-appointed, narcissistic sort.

This isn't the first occasion when Hallsmith's honesty in her presentations has been questioned. When she was fired from her gig as Montpelier's Planning and Community Development Director last fall, published reports mentioned charges of dishonesty:

From Vermont Today: "In his four-page letter to Hallsmith, dated Nov. 6, outlining his reasons for placing her on leave, (Montpelier City Manager Bill) Fraser accused Hallsmith of damaging relationships around City Hall and on the City Council and Planning Commission, unprofessional behavior and insubordination, inappropriate use of city resources, and dishonesty." Source

And

From Seven Days: "City Manager Bill Fraser wrote in a letter to Hallsmith at the time that her dismissal was the result of insubordination, dishonesty and poor relations with colleagues and elected officials." Source

And

From Vermont Public Radio: "“We have a city employee who was terminated by our city manager (Bill Fraser) for a long list of causes relating from inappropriate use of city resources, dishonesty and a few other things,” (Montpelier Mayor John) Hollar says. “It’s matter of public record and if anybody wants to investigate that they can.” Source

It's gotten so that when I read or hear a new misrepresentation of fact from Hallsmith that I'm reminded of the John Lovitz character on SNL, Tommy Flanagan, the Pathological Liar and find myself expecting to hear Hallsmith at the conclusion of her typically dissembling verbal perambulations exclaim, "Yeahhh! That's the ticket!"

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Rob Williams - the Public Banksters Flack

A reader has pointed me to a recent letter to the editor in Seven Days from the publisher of a defunct "journal" that is now little more than an online nest of anti-Semitic, conspiracy addled hate bloggers - that's Rob Williams hatesite, of course.

Williams, a self described "journalist" and "media dude," who, rather than do the right thing by directly contacting the 7Days publishers or editors with his complaint instead engaged in a little flacking on behalf of the recently failed public banking effort in the Vermont Senate by suggesting that that failure should have received notice in 7Days' recent Money issue. This is by no means Williams first beef with Vermont media professionals. He's repeatedly lectured real editors and publishers on how to do news despite his having run his own tiny bi-monthly into the ground a couple of years ago and now proudly proclaims at his remaining hatesite,

"We make no pretense to “Objectivity”..."

all the while considering himself qualified to critique those real journalists about how they should cover what is, or as in this case, what wasn't newsworthy.

"Missing Story?"

"I always enjoy reading your weekly newspaper. But did you really just publish a Money Issue [April 9] and not do a stand-alone story on the emerging, grassroots, statewide campaign calling for a public bank for Vermont? That 15 Vermont towns passed town-meeting resolutions calling on the state legislature to create such an entity? The UVM Gund Institute's 40-page research study explaining how a Vermont public bank could create 2,000-plus jobs and reinvigorate Vermont's entrepreneurial, infrastructural and economic landscape? Maybe next time."

The rest of his letter is devoted to not one, not two, but three ways to contact the unregistered lobbyist for the small public banksters interest group, the California based Public Banking Institute executive director, Gwen Hallsmith. Given that Hallsmith is making her out of state media appearances (more on that in another post) stressing her position with PBI, you'd think that Williams might have noted that fact. But that would have undermined his claim that this public banking stuff is a truly Vermont based effort. As for "statewide campaign," there were only two towns in southeastern Vermont, half of whom voted down this dog; none in southwestern and west central Vermont or northwest Vermont. Hell, the remaining dozen and a half towns that passed a non-binding resolution supporting this public banking turkey were none other than the hometowns (past & present) of the public banksters themselves, amounting to less than 5% of the state's population. And finally, Williams does not take the time to mention that a number of the claims from the so-called "study" that he referred to were soundly refuted by Vermont's Treasurer, Beth Pierce, but then by his own statement he's not really "objective" in his representations when it suits him.

"Emerging?" The Vermont secessionists have had this public banking crap on their "to do first" for a half a dozen years and have three failed passes at the legislature to show for it. The "small community" of Vermont seceshers (their description) has said repeatedly that the primary method to extract Vermont from "the Empire" is to disengage economically from its financial institutions, no matter what the financial costs to Vermonters pensions, investments and the State economy.

"Example #1 - If Vermont can form a public bank that allows ordinary Vermonters to reap the benefits, Vermonters will have one less logistical and psychological tie to Wall Street and the Empire it enables."

So now there's an effort underway reframe their repeated failures as a success in this year's legislative session. As I said, more on that soon.

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Public Banksters - Part XI (UPDATE)

In the post below came public bankster and executive director of the Public Banking Institute's Gwen Hallsmith, the failed unregistered lobbyist for a Vermont public bank and the economic guru for the Vermont secessionist political oligarchs, with her sky-is-falling prediction that the U.S. dollar is on the ropes. Well, I thought I'd take a slightly closer look at that doom and gloom prophecy, without using Hallsmith's reliance on anti-Semitic sources; here's what I found:

“Since late January 2013 the ruble is off almost 16 percent against the dollar and 17 percent against the euro,” says Chris Weafer, senior partner at Moscow-based consulting firm, Macro Advisoryw, wrote in e-mail to RT.

And that's from the friggin' Russian television propaganda outlet (previously called Russia Today) RT on January 27 of this year, headlined "‘Mise-Ruble?’ Russia’s currency hits 5-year low". Full piece here.

Now add to that three months of Russian fumbling in Ukraine and today Reuters reports this,

"... the entire development is clearly negative for the market (and raises) renewed fears of another wave of sanctions from the West."

"Russian markets also tumbled. The rouble and Moscow's main stock market were down around 0.7 and 1.5 percent, while the country's key bonds stayed under pressure as the cost of insurance against default increased."

And from Bloomberg News here,

"The ruble slid 0.6 percent against the dollar..."

[snip]

"Russia’s Micex Index fell 1.4 percent, taking its loss since President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into the Crimea region at the beginning of March to 7 percent.

Gwen never lets real facts get in the way of her economic meme weaving but, as with her Vermont legislative campaign in consort with Vermont's "tiny community" of conspiracy addled seceshers, people know bullshit when they smell it.

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Public Banksters - Part XI

I'd thought that enough had been said about the unregistered lobbyists of the public banksters until someone sent me Gwen Hallsmith's Twitter feed from the night before last wherein she's predicting that the "day of the dollar is probably over." Interesting stuff. And what does she base her pithy analysis on? A link to a article that posits the Russian ruble will become the currency du jour through economic alliances with Germany & China.

And Gwen's sources for this economic bombshell? A piece in the notorious publisher of thoroughly debunked anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with the occasional descent into Holocaust denial nuttery, globalresearch.ca, written by a contributor from the Voice of Russia, and a second piece by the longtime peddler of anti-Semitic crap, The Financial Times (paywall). The New Republic has a good piece on the Jew-baiters at FT here. Both publications subscribed to the anti-Semitic trope that Jews control the world's banks, the media, Congress, world governance, President Obama, yada, yada, yada...

The size of the economies that would continue use the dollar dwarf the supposed axis of Russia and China (Germany, no way) 20 to 1.

Projecting that sort of wishful insight probably explains some of Gwen's employment "issues." Or not. Who, other than Gwen, really cares at this point?

Why is it not surprising that someone who has hitched her wagon so tightly with the oligarchs of the Second Vermont Republic secessionist movement, who have extensive past affiliations with white supremacist secesher hate groups and their own extensive track record for anti-Semitic bile, would rely on such dubious sources?

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Public Banksters - Part X

Ya know, there're times when I wonder how deep the stoopid goes with secessionists like Gary Flomenhoft and his kinda newish allies in the national public banking movement. Do his public banking colleagues have any idea as to who this asshole really is? And why didn't they do their homework before hooking up with the the faux economist and promoter of the junk, failed and bankrupt economic hokum of Henry George.

Their bill to establish a state run public bank, S. 204, died in the Senate Finance Committee in part because of its reliance on falsehoods presented in a report written by Flomenhoft in his role as a propagandist for the Gund Institute and the Vermont secessionist goal of withdrawing from the economy of "The Empire." Here's how the Vermont public banksters are framing the narrative at Jim Hogue's Vermont Bankster Partnership website of their complete failure to advance a public banking bill to any degree in the Vermont legislature:

March 26 Update

"The Senate Finance Committee did not advance S.204 by the deadline for crossover on March 21. [Ed. Note: Crossover date was March 14 for non- budget items and this bill was not included in the state budget] That means the bill is effectively dead for this session of the legislature. At the one and only hearing on the bill held by the Finance Committee, Chris D’Elia, President of the Vermont Bankers Association, the (Vermont) State Treasurer (Beth Pearce) and the CEO of VEDA, all opponents of a state bank, and Anthony Pollina, who is a supporter of a state bank were asked by the committee to testify. People who had worked on the town meeting campaigns had to practically beg to be given an opportunity to testify."

"The Government Operations Committee (sic) had previously taken testimony on the bill and sent a memo to the Finance Committee urging them to adopt the 10 Percent for Vermont Program and move 10 percent of Vermont’s unrestricted funds to VEDA which would use it to foster economic development and renewable energy initiatives and to create the authority described in S.204 to continue to look into the creation of a state bank." [Ed. Note: Untrue; this is just public bankster fluffing of what the legislative process used means. This meme weaving is so lame that the writer didn't even get the name of the committee - the Vermont Senate Committee on Government Operations - right. This inattention to detail and real facts is also a fundamental weakness and flaw of the "study" manufactured made up by Hogue's colleague, Gary Flomenhoft.]

"In spite of the fact that the bill died in the Finance Committee, support for a state bank has been steadily growing. [Ed. Note: There is no factual basis for such an assertion. There has been no polling done that would scientifically support such a statement. The writer's engaging in wishful thinking, at best, and can provide no real proof for such an opinion.]. We will continue with efforts to increase support to the point where the powers that be can no longer continue to ignore us. [Ed. Note: Again, untrue; "the powers that be," that is, the elected representatives of the people, a station never even remotely achieved by the many secesher aspirants to legislative and statewide offices, did not ignore this citizen request for self-serving legislation. The senators properly received it, properly reviewed the representations made by the proponents, and then properly let such a faulty bill die in committee.] Keep checking for what we are up to [I will.] and ways that you can become involved. We will also continue to send updates containing more reasons why we need a state bank and events concerning our efforts."

Based on the past "successes" of secessionists Hogue, Flomenhoft and the publisher of the Vemont secesher hate blog, Rob Williams in the pursuit of a breakaway republic of Vermont, it's fair to conclude that these hoople heads will deliver in appreciably the same way - much ado about nothing.

One can't help but wonder why the national public banking proponents have thrown in their lot so firmly with such an unsuccessful group like the Vermont seceshers whose track record is so awful. It says much about the thoughtfulness of those running the national group.

Note: in recent months the Vermont seceshers have been scrubbing their websites of some of their more egregious, hateful posts. Of more immediate interest is that the website created by Flomenhoft for his seditious group, the illegally re-constituted Vermont Council of Censors that I reported about nearly three and a half years ago and have also reported on in this "Public Bankster" series has now been taken down. Ever the internet bonehead, Flomenhoft seems unaware that his crappy website and its links are readily available here.

Finally, the perennial "find Rowley" search has been underway again during the past few weeks. Must be that the Public Banksters series has gotten a few knickers into a twist. I hope the searchers won't be too surprised to learn that they too can be spoofed by e-breadcrumbs. Or that at the length truth will out, no matter what.

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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 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 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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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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Matt Cropp, Who is Perhaps the Second Vermont Republic's Most Incompetent Organizer...

... is to speak at the SVR third Secesher Statehouse Stunt this Friday in a group in which economic and political loser Gary Flomenhoft will also be speaking.

Figures.

Matt Cropp has established a reputation for failure and irrelevance that's hard to beat.

He's one of those campus radicals that makes your head hurt if you hear he's going to show up where you're headed.

He was one of the participants in the super secret, highly controversial 2009-2010 Free Vermont listserv. The searchable mirror may be found here.

Cropp was campaign manager for the profoundly unsuccessful (99.24% of Vermonters voted for someone else) Vermont secessionist gubernatorial candidate Dennis Steele. Under Cropp's management, the Steele campaign embraced imagery associated with the self-professed murderer Che Guervara. Despite promises from Steele and Cropp to remain involved with Vermonters in very specific ways, both disappeared faster than guys who weren't able to get laid on a date. Cropp set up a secesher website and did nothing discernible with it. Green Mount Militia commandante Steele's just plain gone.

Cropp was one of the founders of a new, secesher provisional capitol in Hancock, VT where he and a colleague spoke of modeling their effort after Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. Heard of that? Yeah, well no one else has either.

Last year Cropp ran for the Board of Directors of the City Market/Onion River Coop, another big loss for him there.

More tragically, Cropp was part of Second Vermont Republic's Thomas H. Naylor's embedded leadership in the Occupy Burlington group at Burlington City Hall Park. A day after the Occupy Burlington group notified the city in writing that it was intiating a program of care for Burlington's needy and homeless at the park, a homeless individual died in the park camp structure maintained by Occupy Burlington.

Then Cropp laid plans to takeover credit unions in Vermont and across the country. The short story is that he lost his bid for a Vermont Federal Employees Credit Union board seat (yeah, like the Onion River Coop) but, get this, Cropp had called his takeover group the “Vermont Federal Credit Union Members Assembly.” He'd obviously been seeking to piggyback on the VFECU's name but, incompetent as he is, forgot to do one thing - register the name. He probably would have lost a legal challenge to the name usage but, silly boy, didn't even register the tradename properly, which the VFECU promptly did in early July. Despite being notified to cease and desist use of the VFECU trademark, Cropp continued the tradename usage on a blog he maintains as recently as Aug. 27.

Perhaps Cropp's economic plans to be outlined at the Secesher Stathouse Stunt that they're calling the Vermont Independence Party will have less lethal results than his Burlington City Hall Parl escapade or be less incompetent than his political campaign and credit union takeover schemes - we'll see.

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