 Show of hands, if you were to consider from an independent Vermont Republic perspective, put ourselves kind of in that position, let's assume that Vermont was its own country right now. How many of you would vote as Vermonters in your own Vermont to join the United States today instead of remaining independent? So look around. I'd like to start with this question because I think it's telling. Yeah, most Vermonters I know across the political spectrum when I ask them this question like, no, I don't think I'd vote to do that. Which then sort of begs the next question, this is what are we waiting for? Why don't we get busy? I mean, we are getting busy. There's a lot going on. But I want to ask you what questions, thoughts, ideas do you have so far from what we've talked about? Yeah, please. How would it affect your federal benefits like Social Security and so forth? Yeah, excellent question. And we can read the room on this one. Social Security. Yeah, so Social Security as you probably all know better than I do is an individual contract that each of us have with the federal government. And those benefits are paid out regardless of where a U.S. citizen lives in retirement. So in other words, I could move to Barcelona and still expect to get my Social Security benefits, right? Whether the United States would honor those if Vermont absented itself from U.S. Yeah, so how would that roll over? It's a great question. And the best answer that we've come up with is that individual kind of contractual answer. But obviously no one can know for sure. So that's definitely a consideration. Yeah. Yes, I love that idea. Yeah. Why couldn't we be citizens of an independent Vermont and citizens of the United States or for that matter, any other country? The U.S. is all stingy with allowing dual citizenship, as you may know, but lots of other countries allow dual triple citizenship. So I love that idea. Vaughn, thanks. Yeah, good. I have a daughter who was born in Spain for a long time. She was a dual citizen. And did she make the decision to change her? Was it wasted? As soon as we got back to the States, we went to court and got a certificate of citizenship just so there would be no question that she was a U.S. citizen. Got it. Maybe a reason we're riding on the wall there. Good. But you know, to Priscilla's question, the bigger sort of unknown here, of course, is how would the United States respond? How would the U.S. government respond to a peaceable secession bid from any state? If you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in California, but the Californians are way ahead of us on this. All of a sudden, like it really was kind of the Trump bubble, right? I mean, Trump kind of put California over the edge, right? We're a little bit more thoughtful in circumstance here in Vermont. We sort of make the case for a bipartisan empire, we think we're right about that. But yeah, all of a sudden, a lot of people ask me about this, and I was like, let California take the heat for a while. We've been taking the heat for some time. Let big-bag California deal with the fed as they are, right? It's getting more and more interesting by the day. And we in Vermont will quietly slip away. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny you asked that because I thought about this. And with the current guy in there, I envisioned something like it might happen in Spain with Catalonia. I really think that that's what his reaction would be. Well, that's the other sort of interesting case study right now is what's been happening between Catalonia and the Spanish government. And Carlos, President Carlos of Catalon, of course, if you don't know, fled Catalonia and basically went to Brussels when the Spanish government sent in basically a pair of military troops to crack heads when Catalonia held a peaceable election to determine whether they should leave Spain. And that sort of begs the question. Would the United States government send the military? Would they roll tanks into Montpelier? Would they napalm all the maple trees? I mean, I'm asking in all honesty, right? Or would they, as my friend Jim Consular is fond of saying, would they be so consumed by their own problems they wouldn't even notice when we left? Which is kind of what I'm hoping, right? I think the U.S. wouldn't care about the law economically. If it were a precedent, Ramon could do it with 35 million people. And the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world. Yeah, George, I tend to agree with you. Yeah, I mean, the U.S. really, I mean, we're just kind of a pain in the butt, right, with the United States. I mean, think about, you know, Ramon's always, you know, up here making noise about one thing or another. So yeah, maybe it would behoove the U.S. to kind of shuffle us out. But on principle, I think that's kind of the biggest question. We don't have a whole ton of resources that the U.S., other than maybe a little bit of Canadian border, which we could probably control better than the U.S.'s economy. But other than that, that's, by the way, why this F-35 conversation is so interesting and important, right? And I don't know if you've heard, but the city of Burlington's citizens voted yesterday, thankfully, to push the city council to reconsider the question of basing those incredibly overpriced planes that don't work properly yet in a three, not one or two, but a three-city residential series of neighborhoods. In fact, in literally 8,000 immediate residents, but everybody who lives and works in Burmont having that plane fly overhead is kind of a scary thought. In my opinion. Good, what else? This is good. Please, and what? Marge. Marge, yeah, please. Did you get a sicker, Marge? No. Oh my gosh, go ahead. Well, along with Priscilla's question about social security, I mean, the whole cragmire of federal funds that we get, I don't expect you to answer this right now, but obviously that's a big, big question. I mean, are we going to... It's the same thing with Quebec, you know, wanting to go independent. Right. And then I had a lot of friends there who wanted sovereign aid. Right. But after a while, they said, you know what? Maybe not, because how are we really going to survive just our own promise? We're so connected to Ottawa. And they, economically, they, a lot of them gave it up. Yeah. Not all my friends. Yeah, no, it's a really important question. And to me, there's sort of two sub-issues there. One is this question of how much Vermont gives to the federal governments versus how much we get back in the current model. But secondly, we're assuming that all financial things are equal when we ask that question. And this is why we put public finance and public banking at the center of our Plan V platform. The state of North Dakota, if you don't know, has run a successful public bank for a hundred years in Dakota. And not coincidentally, the state of North Dakota is the only state out of 50 that's in the black, legitimately right now. And people say, well, ask us a fracking. No, actually, it's been that way for a hundred years. Long before fracking was a thing, right? For 80 years of that hundred. So reclaiming control over what I like to call our fiscal commons is incredibly important. And we're 10% of the way there. If you missed that memo from a couple years ago, the state treasurer, who is not a fan, by the way, of a public bank in the state, Beth Pierce, very smart one. But reallocated 10% of the annual Vermont budget into public financial mechanisms like Vsac, et cetera, which are not perfect. The big difference between Vsac and Vita and a public bank is that a public bank for Vermont would have a legal license to print and deploy money, which essentially gives you all the power you need to, oh, I don't know, rebuild our bridges, we pay our highways, rebuild infrastructure projects. You know, take Bernie's sort of big vision for the country of the United States and bring it down to size here in Vermont. So there are a number of us around the state who are organizing around the idea of a public bank. We've done research, we've done studies, we've commissioned UVM. It makes a ton of sense. But of course, it takes political will as any of these issues do. So back to your original question, I think that a public bank would go a long way to helping us as Vermonters figure out how to navigate that federal relationship. One last thought about that, and I know you can all relate to this because you're feeling the pinch as property-owning taxpayers with public education right now, as we all are. There are a lot of underfunded federal mandates that come down to public schools in Vermont. And frankly, a number of underfunded state mandates as well that we could kind of rethink together as Vermonters if we were able to have some autonomy around those questions. I had a woman come up to me yesterday after town meeting because I stood up at the end. Someone asked me to stand up and talk about the school budget because, you know, it was Australian ballot with a budget which made me sad because I liked that conversation. But she said, no, and she was a woman in her probably mid-60s. And she said, I'd never met her before, but she was my neighbor and lived up the road like three miles on the other side. She said, so, Rob, you know, when I was an elementary school teacher, I taught 41 kids in a classroom with no paraprofessionals. Why can't we do that again? And I said, well, if we became our own country, we could. And I just loved her point. She's like, let's deal with all the money we're spending on, you know, everything. And, you know, I'm an educator by training, but I see it sort of from all sides. So anyway, it's a complicated question, but I think to boil it down, this idea of public finance, which has been demonstrated, not just in North Dakota, but in countries all over the world. Brazil's got public, Germany's got public, Japan's got public. I mean, it's a long list. And that's what this 10-minute thing is about. Not that we have to watch it. There's a great question. Other questions, thoughts, ideas? Yeah. And your name is? Bob. Bob. Years ago, I lived in Windsor and my landlord and the landlady left Quebec because the landlady thought that René Leveque was the second coming hitler. The anti-crash. And they sold their house and blah, blah, blah. So that's the story of it. So they were immigrants into American Vermont from Quebec. So I got a lot of information about what was going on and how they felt about it and so forth. One of the salient points that they made was that the separatist movement, the people who were leading the separatist movement didn't really tell the residents of the province of Quebec the real cost of separating from Canada. They really didn't put that kind of information out. They kind of were very glib about it. So they never really came forward and really leveled with the people and say, this is going to cost us another $20 billion, whatever the case might be. So it seemed to me that in the parallel reality in terms of Vermont, we really need to be able to tell ourselves the truth about the cost. Yes. Agreed. And we did do a study a number of years ago in which we determined that for every dollar that Vermont gave to the feds, we would get $1.13 back. That was about six years ago. And Frank Bryan always used to say, and I love this, he said, would you rather have, he kind of fractionated those numbers, say would you rather have $10 you could spend the way you decided or $13 but be told how you have to spend it, which is better, $10 or $13 and stipulations on the $13. To that point though, we've really done a lot of good work around the public bank idea and really run the numbers on what a public bank could mean for Vermont, not just in terms of capital and money and debt but also in terms of jobs created and the economic development possibilities for Vermont if we were able to leverage all of the money. I'll give you one example. Right now, the state of Vermont is paying $80 million a year to TD Bank in interest payments and debt servicing on our pile of Vermont money alone, $80 million just on interest and debt servicing. And I just learned this kind of secret that we've been putting a lot of pressure on the state treasurer's office. I don't know why they made this decision but they've actually moved the state of Vermont's money out of TD Bank which stands for Toronto Dominion. Yes, Toronto Dominion. This is not even an out of state bank, it's not a country bank. God bless the Canadians. And they've moved it, I think, to peoples. But they haven't been very transparent about this. Do people have peoples? We're still trying to figure this out because they haven't been very forthcoming. But yes, to your point about transparency and numbers and really being honest about the costs and benefits, couldn't agree more. And if you know any economists who want to help us with this, we would love that. Yeah. Well right now we're going to Brexit to large. Ah, Brexit, yes. Yes. And I wonder what's going to happen with that. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, Brexit is an interesting example of sort of, I don't know, you call it, is it the British succeeding from the European Union? Yeah, there's a lot to say about Brexit. Anybody have any thoughts about Brexit? Yeah. My mind is full of it. Yeah, I mean, what's your take on it? Well, I think they're starting to have a second thought about it, they're trying to deal with it and wonder how it's going to affect them. We got excited about it and the vote was, you know, they were surprised when the vote came out. Yes, they were. The leaders and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the leaders were opposed, just like this trade thing that Trump has come out with. A lot of the people that I don't even know don't think it's a great amount of gear to slap terrorists on a speedo. Yeah. A little. Yeah. And I think, you know, the support for the current occupants of the White House in the United States and the Brexit vote, support for the Brexit vote, I think reflect similar economic realities for working-class people in Britain and the United States who feel like 40 years of neoliberal economics, you know, pro-corporate globalist economics have thrown them under the bonds. And I think that's true in a number of ways. So to bring it back to Vermont, what, you know, I love this, I keep coming back to this question of like, can we run the numbers on public bank and how we could, as an independent republic, economically not just survive the threat, yeah. England has done all of this by referendum, which is a strange concept. Yeah. Would you support a referendum of the monitors that was binding? So here's, I love that, what's your name? Colin. Colin, I love this question. So our proposal, like the mechanism of independence, how would that look like? What we propose is to call a statewide legislative meeting in Montpelier to consider a simple yes or no referendum. Put 180 of our elected officials in a room and have them discuss whether or not Vermont should become its own country again. And to pass, we would argue that that vote should not just be a simple majority, but should be a two-thirds majority. This is a serious business, right? This is a big decision, right? And some have said, and I'm not sure I feel about this, but I'll lay it on the table, that we should do it two years in a row. Just to make, so people, and this is the way a lot of these work, people can go back, it's like, oh, here's how, you know, to your Brexit example. All right, so we voted yes or we voted no. Let's go back and think about it and talk about it in our communities for another year and then come back and do it again, and see what happens. Are we really sure this no or yes vote is the one we want? And at that point, if we vote yes with a two-thirds majority, we start acting like an inventor. Would you go to a referendum with a simple majority at that point? I think we'd do the two-thirds, I think. But I'm hoping to be persuasive. 50 plus one. Oh, 50 plus one. Right, so if assuming all 180 legislators were in the state house, which I hope they would be, right? That's 91, right? Yeah, please. In all of this, are you assuming we know what kind of government our republic would have? How do we know it's not some sort of fascist thing? Yeah, that's a great question. That's a really important question. We know Google doesn't own it. So our answer to that question really comes back to letting the citizens of Vermont kind of hash out together. And I'm thinking about town meeting again, what our government looks like. We have a perfectly good Vermont State Constitution, right? We iterated it twice, right? But it's now 1793, I think, was the last iteration of the Constitution. We have incredibly sort of fantastic local governance, right, in the form of select boards and school boards and zoning and recreation and conservation commissions. Some, of course, and better than others, right? But that's the nature of kind of elected representative politics. So all of the pieces are in place. And I don't myself imagine that things would be too different in that kind of governance arena than they are now. But that's, maybe that's wishful thinking. Well, I would just add one thing, because somebody said something very nice at our town meeting. This is Plainfield. Yes. And it was a very divisive vote. And it was obviously going to be very close. It was going to be on an Australian ballot. And a former principal came to the microphone and said, you know, about half the people in this room are going to lose. And we have to think about how we're going to talk to each other afterward. Because any one of these big changes, civil war, whatever, there's a lot of losers. Yeah, the rights of the minority, as it were. Absolutely. Yeah, it's really well said. Anybody else at that Plainfield meeting? Was that yesterday? Yeah. Anybody else at the Plainfield meeting? You were there? Yeah. Yeah, our waste field town meeting yesterday was more civil than usual, which was good. But yeah, but you're absolutely right. True point. Yeah, please. And then we have like 10, maybe 15 more minutes. So I'd love to show you this because I've actually not showed it publicly as brand new. Like we just finished it like three weeks ago. But please, go ahead. What about the civil war? Yeah. So there's a really remarkable, so first of all, you know, Vermonters as we know, showed up in spades to support Lincoln's cause. Right? And you know, Vermonters kind of strewn with memorials and battlefields, so not battlefields, but memorials to those who died in that conflict. What are you, Alan, saying? Half of life is showing up. Half of life is showing up. I like that. Did Ethan Alan say that? I hope he did. I don't remember. Yeah. But as a historian, I've done a lot of research on Vermonters Civil War. And there's this amazing moment from one Vermont soldier's diary in which he says, look, I'm going to go down and fight on behalf of freeing the slaves, but make no mistake. I know what Abraham Lincoln, what President Lincoln is up to. And he's taking away state sovereignty and giving it to the federal government. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. And it's sort of this amazing blast from the past. It's like, yeah, that guy got it. And he was killed. It's like, yeah, I forget which battle he was killed in, but I was like 1863. So what would that be? I can't remember. But so, and the, yeah. So I'll leave it at that. Yeah. So let me just say, this is just 10 minutes. So this is kind of the first full episode of our Plan V documentary. And this features a number of folks, maybe some you will know. And then we can talk with you on this then. We'll go. Welcome to Plan V. Take a good look at our Vermont commons. Our commons is all that we Vermonters share. Our beautiful green mountains, forests, lakes and rivers. Our 256 towns spread out over 14 counties. Our seasons, the warmth of summer, fall foliage, the sweetness of snow and the promise of spring. Our common wealth, our land, our labor and our collective investment in our families, our communities, our towns and our brave little state. Our shared history, including our unique story as the independent Republic of Vermont from 1777 to 1791. For Vermont to become an independent and self-governing republic once again, as we once were. We Vermonters must get serious about creating an independent Vermont public bank. So, our Plan V proposal begins with public finance. A public bank to serve the people of Vermont. The most important thing that Vermonters need to understand about money is that it's not fundamentally a governmental service at this point. It's a private service. And it's owned by the banks. It's owned by private banks. Even though it has all those pictures of presidents on it and lots of government seals and signatures, it's fundamentally a private institution. And the benefits for issuing money go to the private institutions and are largely responsible for the growing gap in income inequality. Banks provide 98% of the money in circulation worldwide using a little-known accounting trick not available to any other business. In doing so, banks make vast profits for their owners at the expense of nature and the rest of humanity. For many years, the state of Vermont has deposited the money it receives from Vermont taxpayers in an account with TD Bank, Toronto Dominion. A Canadian company with trillions of dollars in derivative exposure that dwarfs its real cash reserves. Canada's TD Bank invests our Vermont dollars in projects that don't always serve Vermont's interests like tar sands and oil pipelines. Three TD employees complain they are under intense and constant pressure to squeeze profit from customers by selling them products they didn't need. I feel bad. I feel bad for what they're making me do. Our tax money goes to big banks and those big banks can use it for what they choose. One of those choices that TD Bank is making is to invest in fossil fuel industry and in fossil fuel infrastructure which is destroying the environment, undermining indigenous culture. While Vermont's money is invested outside of the state, we Vermonters receive less than a 1% return on our deposits. A public bank for Vermont could help meet the $28 billion renewable energy shortfall while accruing more money and interest back to us Vermonters. What I'm not understanding is why you're not building a public bank to keep this Texas in your state. Additionally, when the state of Vermont borrows money for infrastructure needs or other critical projects and services, we pay tens of millions of dollars in interest every year to out-of-state banks and bondholders. By borrowing from a public bank chartered by our state, our debt service would be much lower and the interest paid on these loans to the public bank could be reinvested in the state reducing budget shortfalls and cuts to vital programs. Vermont needs a public bank now because right now we're drowning in debt. The reason that we see increasing austerity measures in the legislature and programs cut every single year. A Vermont public bank is not a radical or wacky idea. Dozens and dozens of countries around the world have their own public banks. Right here in the United States, the state of North Dakota's public bank started by progressively-minded prairie farmers fed up with Wall Street monopolies has successfully operated for 100 years, supporting hard-working North Dakota farms, small businesses and tax-paying homeowners. And not many Vermonters know that Vermont used to have its own public bank. We did? Yeah, that's right. During the early 19th century, we Vermonters operated our first successful public bank. We 21st century Vermonters could create a public bank once again. People have noticed that the big banks are looking for financial instruments nobody understands to make more profit. So what we do is we only do what we understand. So maybe we'd have been a bit more boring, but we are safer. The response that we've gotten from the legislature would make you think it was something completely crazy. What? You know, the banking lobby has smashed our legislation on multiple occasions. State Treasurer is very wary of talking about it. The chairs of various committees have refused to even talk with us or allow us to give testimony. So it really kind of makes you wonder whose interests are at heart here in Montpelier. According to a recent research report conducted by Vermonters for a new economy in partnership with these organizations, here are seven good reasons why we Vermonters should create our own public bank. A Vermont public bank could create more than 2,500 new Vermont jobs. Instead of sending our tax dollars out of state, we'd be keeping it in state where businesses could use those investments to grow and to hire more Vermonters. A Vermont public bank could increase gross state product by up to $324 million. It's to make things happen in the economy for the people of that region. A Vermont public bank could save Vermonters tens of millions of dollars a year in capital spending interest fees currently paid to out-of-state bondholders. Private banks do not serve the people and in fact sometimes do the opposite. A Vermont public bank could provide low-interest loans to Vermont's college and university students. I think that money should be a public utility, not a means of further consolidating wealth. A Vermont public bank could provide more capital to our Vermontrepreneurs, our hard-working friends and neighbors. And the reality is if we could work within the system by borrowing money at a fraction of what we borrow it at now, that would really be of the biggest help. And that's kind of the bottom line. It gives us a chance to borrow money cheaper. A Vermont public bank would allow our Vermont cities and towns to fund much-needed public works projects, rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, investing in renewable energy projects and dealing with issues like water pollution. And it's gotta happen. We're gonna lose this lake. Best of all, public banks are able to lend money into the economy to counteract the impacts of natural and economic disasters, whereas private banks pull back credit in tough times, making economic downturns much worse. Number seven, a Vermont public bank will reduce the tax burden for all Vermontrepreneurs, providing a reliable revenue stream just like the Bank of North Dakota does for its citizens. So why don't we Vermontrepreneurs have a public bank to serve the people of Vermont now? Well, I think it's pretty clear that right now we invest in private banks and Wall Street and others make the money off of our money that we could actually do a better job of having that money stay in Vermontrepreneurs' pockets. We've come to take this austerity budget for granted. There's no questioning in the state legislature that I've seen about why are we paying all of this in debt service to private entities when we could be doing it and paying it ourselves. In 2018, the following cities and states are exploring public financing options to benefit their citizens and communities. One question you may ask if it's such a good idea. Why hasn't it been done again? Good question. I think the bank lobbies have pushed back on it. Here's a better question. What do we Vermontrepreneurs need to do to make a 21st century Vermont public bank a reality? I'm going to ask you if you're ready to take a stand that goes to the heart of runaway inequality and climate change and call for the establishment of a Vermont state bank. Yes. This is not a particularly radical idea. North Dakota has had it for the last, what, since the 1920s. I mean, and the goal here is that, you know, a lot of money goes through Montpelio. People pay taxes, et cetera. And what we want to do is try to get that money, recycle that money back into the community into the decent jobs protecting agriculture, protecting our environment. So rather giving the money to Wall Street to do whatever they will do with it, which will in almost every instance be a negative, I do believe that we should use that money to improve life here in the state of Vermont. Beginning in 2018, the state of Vermont will transition its core bank accounts from TD Bank to People's United Bank based in Connecticut. While the state legislature has yet to commission a study exploring public financing for the citizens of Vermont. So, what do you think? Where do you stand? What we really need is we need Vermonters to get involved in a public bank campaign because, again, we feel like it's central to making Vermont more independent. We're not ready to secede yet, frankly, right? We're not ready. Is there any kind of a serious discussion going on in the legislature? So, here's what happened. We introduced legislation last year in 2017 and the heads, sorry, the chairs of all relevant committees on both the House side and the Senate side in the legislature refused to take testimony on legislation simply calling on the creation of a commission to study a public bank. And many of them are Democrats. So, we have set up shop in the state house and we're beginning to be a very visible presence there. As you know, it's the second year of the biennium. So, we're really kind of gearing up for next year, for the next two-year cycle. And if any of you are interested, that's how you reach me. And I can put you in touch with the Vermonters for a new economy. I understand Gwendolyn Halsmuth was here speaking and I'm guessing some of you know Gwen. She's, I mean, forgotten more about public banking than I'll ever know. I mean, she's brilliant on this and has written books as I'm sure you know. So, part of our job at Vermont Independent is to find those Vermonters who are doing the kind of hard thinking on all of these questions related to independence and sovereignty and pulling those together here at the website and through these films and through the writing that we're doing to try and sort of get us all as Vermonters, regardless of our politics, to really focus on how we can improve life for the majority as many of us as possible within Vermont. And ultimately we think that means we have to sort of face the hard fact that the United States is, as I said earlier, an empire. And again, I'm not super happy about that but I think that's where we are.