From the book "Pennyman - Economic Terrorist."
The speech Pennyman, Herb Trebranch, gave in Kansas City, Mo, 
home of Charlie Carter and the World Talk Radio Network.


"Kansas City Missouri welcomes Herb Trebranch- "

The roar of the crowd at his introduction was as real in his mind today as it was in his ears that night in Kansas City.

For weeks following the first penny shopper movement at the Power Mart He had been called to cities across the country for speeches. First in Montana, then throughout the Northwest, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The offers to pay his expenses to cities across the nation and even into Canada surprised him at first.

But he went.

Several weeks after the first success at closing a Power Mart, he received the invitation to speak in Kansas City, Missouri.

This was the home of Charlie Carter and the World Talk Network. He would get to see his friend Charlie and he knew that Carter would have every media outlet in Kansas City publicizing the appearance. This would be his biggest crowd to date.

He had been a deejay, newsman and talk show host but had never done a lot of public speaking. It was hard at first but was beginning to come easier. The words were there. The flair for drama, the gestures, they were all coming together.

"Kansas City welcomes Herb Trebranch!"

The roar of ten thousand voices momentarily stunned him as he stood in the wings listening to the introduction. As the crowd roared its welcome he stood a long moment, unable to move.

A friendly push from behind and a quiet, "Give’m' a barn burner Herb," finally freed him of the paralysis and he broke into a trot as he headed for the lectern at center stage.

As he came out from behind the curtains the crowd cheered even louder and he had to wait an extra minute or two at the lectern for them to quiet down.

"Thank you, for inviting me to Kansas City, home of The World Talk Network and my good friend Charlie Carter, Thank you."

At the mention of Carter’s name the crowd went wild again and several minutes passed before he could again be heard.

"I have had an opportunity to visit across America since the penny shopper movement began. But I couldn't begin to imagine addressing a crowd the size of this one. You are wonderful and I thank you for coming out tonight to help the penny shopper movement grow in Kansas City.

Thousands of you have walked all the way down to the front of the auditorium to pour your pennies into the penny piles. Each jar that you fill with your pennies tells me that another American is sick and tired of seeing our jobs moved overseas. Each bag of pennies thrown on the penny pile means one more person is ready to take control of their own economic destiny. Every time a small child places a hand full of pennies on the pile I see another father and mother ready to take back America so that these young people will have a nation that belongs to them and not to a multi national corporation owned by a billionaire living in London, Paris, or Zurich.

These pennies are more then a symbol of your frustration with the way things are. They are more then a statement of the pain you feel because you have lost your job to someone who earns forty cents an hour in an off shore factory.

These pennies are more then symbols. They are the weapons that will bring back the economic power we lost to the corporate giants decades ago. These pennies are the weapons that will bring the Congress of The United States of America back under the control of the people who elect them.

These pennies are the weapons that will finally wrest control of our government from the corporate giants and their political action committees.

Many years ago Abraham Lincoln said we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Somehow that changed until we now have a government of the economic elite, by the economic elite and for the economic elite.

How did this happen? How could they wrest control of our government and our economic destiny from us?

You and I once had the power of the people. There were two powers really. The first was the power of the ballot box. It was ours.

For the first two hundred years of this nations history we had the power to elect our neighbors to go to Washington and enact the laws under which we lived.

We elected statesmen to public office. Statesmen like Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Lincoln. They served the nation because they knew their duty and they did it to the best of their ability. Our elected officials governed by the power granted them by the people and they governed for the people.

One day a politician decided that he could make this a full time career. That this was a good job. That he liked it in Washington and had no desire to return home. All he had to do was get re-elected every two years to congress or every six years in the senate. The question was how to assure re election. These early professional politicians discovered that giving people benefits, whether they needed them or not, would enable them to count on a certain number of votes. They looked around for more voters they could curry favor with so they could guarantee their re election and found that all they had to do was enact laws giving people things and they could win even more votes.

As they traveled in the high society circles of government they met the economic elite of the world. The billionaires who ran big multi national corporations. Some of these professional politicians decided they liked this affluent life style and could be sure it continued if they could do something to make sure they would get re elected. If they could just find a way to get more dollars out of these corporate giants who were constantly in Washington looking for government contracts and laws favoring their corporations.

These corporations then set up company political action committees which could funnel huge donations from these corporations into the political war chests of the politicians. These modern day professional politicians even found ways they could use some of that PAC money for themselves. The big unions discovered that they could curry favor and advance their causes if they too set up political action committees and funneled millions of dollars extracted from their members to the pockets of politicians in congress.

This was the end of the peoples power of the ballot box. Politicians no longer needed to worry about the peoples vote. They could buy all the votes they needed through slick ad campaigns and television programs. All they needed were huge amounts of campaign donations from the political action committees. They got what they needed. And so did the corporate giants of this country who also got their PAC money back by owning the media that politicians advertised on. By owning the TV stations they could contribute millions to the politicians, who would then send it back to them during their campaign for re election.

With the communications act of 1996, Congress turned the broadcasting industry over to the corporations. There were no limits to the number of stations they could own. Soon some corporations owned hundreds of radio and TV stations. Radio, the voice of the people, had become the Radio the voice of the huge corporations. The exceptions were the small town AM stations which were not big enough for the corporations to bother with. These were the basis of the World Radio Network which brought Charlie Carter’s program to the nation.

That was the sweep of power from the people to the corporations. Our ballot no longer had the power that our founding fathers meant for it to have. Corporate dollars meant more to the politicians then their own constituents vote.

Next we lost the second power that once belonged to the people. We lost control of our economic destinies.

There was a time in America when a man went to work in a mine or factory or on the farm and was assured of a job for life. People worked hard for the companies they were employed by and the word loyalty was used by both sides.

Then a few years ago, with corporate stockholders demanding instant success and instant profits for new companies and new products, CEO's discovered they could increase their compensation by taking advantage of workers in third world countries. Workers who lacked the protection of governments or unions. Workers who were so desperate they would sell their own children into bondage to provide food for the rest of the family. Those in control of the companies saw this opportunity to force American workers to take less money in order to keep their jobs, and finally, even taking less wasn't enough for the multi national corporations and they completed the movement of their companies out of the free world nations.

The money masters of the world have now reached a new and powerful level of control over our government and of the governments of other free world countries.

They now have NAFTA, GATT and CBI, as well as other tools with which they can complete the denigration of the economic power of the people.

Our government has given them the tools and the tax money they need to build new factories in countries where they pay a fraction of the wages they pay in the USA. You know this because you have heard Charlie Carter talk about it so many times on the air.

Through the abdication of our national sovereignty to organizations like the United Nations we no longer have any say about tariffs or import taxes of any kind. Even our military is sometimes subject to the command of foreign military commanders.

Our legislators have caved in to pressure from every source even to the point of making our tax money available to the corporations to build their new overseas factories.

These pennies piled here on the floor of this auditorium tonight are the tools we are using to take back the power of the people.

By shutting down a PowerMart store for ten days each month we cut their gross income by one third. Their profit for the month is gone. If Power Mart does not make a profit they can't place new orders with their distributors.

If the distributors lose their profit they can't place new orders with the factories in China where the goods are allegedly made by virtual slave labor or in prisons, or in other countries where these products are made by 12 year old children working 14 hour days in sweat shops, or by fathers and mothers earning twenty or thirty cents an hour.

If these distributors cannot sell their products to Power Mart they cannot buy them from the factories.

When we close a PowerMart or a Welco discount store for ten days each month we are pledging our solidarity with the working people of the world.

The money masters of the world, who own these low cost high profit factories in third world countries depend on a huge cash flow to keep their economic empires from falling. That cash flow comes from the masses. It comes from us.

If we slow the flow of money into their cash registers from a flood to a trickle we can once again take control of our economic destiny.

The pennies in this huge pile in front of the stage are the weapons that are slowly bringing back the power of the people.

Thomas Jefferson said it for all of us in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

He said that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men receiving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This consent of the governed has been usurped by the millions of dollars flowing into the pockets of the professional politicians in Washington through the political action committees operated for the benefit of the economic elite of their world. These elitists have bought and paid for governments around the world, ours included.

These pennies represent our best chance of taking it back.

When the discount giants, their distributors and their manufacturers begin losing their profits the screams will be heard all the way to Washington.

When members of congress find the flow of money from political action committees has dried up they will have to turn once again to the people for their power.

At that time they will again have to receive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

If our government is failing us, perhaps that means that we are failing our government. We must take control of that government.

We cannot do it at the ballot box because of the power of the political action committees and their million dollar bank accounts, so we must do it through economic power.

Penny Power!

The time is right! The time is now! The place is here!

I ask you tonight, who will take back the power of government?"

The roar of the crowd shouting "We Will! We will!" was the most powerful moment in Herb Trebranch’s life.

He shouted again, "Who will?"

The crowd responded again, "We will!

For a full five minutes Herb asked the question and the crowd roared their answer.

Read the book Pennyman, Economic Terrorist, ask for it at your library.

To Purchase Click Here for the Pennyman Estore at CreateSpace.com (An Amazon.com company)
Pennyman - Economic Terrorist

Contact: Pennyman@MtSky.com

There are those who would champion freedom, by shutting down the dissenting opinions expressed on AM Talk Radio and controlling Citizen Journalism on the internet. John F. Kennedy speaks to them in the following quote!

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  John F. Kennedy

Liberty has never come from the government. 
Liberty has always come from the subjects of government.
The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  Woodrow Wilson

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

The fact, in short, is that freedom, to be meaningful in an organized society must consist of an amalgam of hierarchy of freedoms and restraints.  Samuel Hendel