Can you keep a secret? For the last several months, I’ve been training a clandestine cell of Antifa-Super-Soldiers to think and act like chuds so they can volunteer to “help” The Maine Wire liars get a scoop about Troy Jackson, the next U.S. Senator from Maine.
(Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Troy Jackson since he was a leader in the Canadian border blockade back in the fall of 1998 when I interviewed him, several times, for my then-gig as a radio reporter covering northern New England for the now-defunct Metro News Network. In the decades since, I’ve followed his progress with great interest as he’s proven himself to be a very capable lawmaker and empathetic human. FYI, Jackson has been a longtime UNPAID subscriber to The Crash Report. )
My Antifa-Super-Soldier operatives have been fully briefed on what to say in order to appear legit to their potential Maine Policy Institute bosses. For starters, my secret-moles express undying allegiance to MAGA Daddy and First Lady Natalie Harp. Secondly, they insist the 2020 election was stolen. Thirdly, they don’t care the pedo-protecting president hasn’t released the Epstein Files because it’s all a Democratic hoax. And, most importantly, the high cost of home heating oil, gas and diesel are worth the price in order to own the libs.
Understand, it’s more than just brain games for my Antifa-Super-Soldiers trainees. Each one had set up multiple sock puppet accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Tik-Tok fully mimicking the current Maga-moron belief system. Which means timelines chockfull of Trump-love sonnets, mixed with roll coal videos, Christo-Fash memes and AI anti-vax slop. Also, my troops digitally express fealty to Dept of War Twinkie Hegspeth, injectable peptides and online T.
In addition, my Super-Soldiers will fawn over Lil’ Steve’s guns.
As you’ll read later in this Crash Report, I’ve been doing undercover journalism since the mid-1990s. Gotta say, it was helluva lot different back then. For one thing, you didn’t have to maintain a bunch of bootlicking sock puppets repeating dumbo rhetoric. In the olden days, it was more about your ability to act the part IRL as opposed to running multiple social media accounts via burner phones and proton email e-dresses.
(That said, my 2018 undercover exposé on former state rep. Larry Lockman required multiple social media accounts AND a video submission in order to monkey-wrench Lockman’s racist, homophobic and misogynist Maine First Media “news operation.” I’ll re-publish that tale soon, I promise. Below, a selfie with Larry Lockman, for the lulz.)
The Maine Losers
A lot of people think that Lil’ Steve Robinson runs The Maine Wire. Not so. He’s just a puppet of the real boss, Matt Gagnon, the CEO of the Maine Policy Institute and solo morning show host for WGAN Radio. Gagnon approves what The Maine Wire publishes, including his paid staff’s harassment of refugees, new Mainers, Muslims, school teachers, LGBTQ folks, teens, people with addiction issues and, potentially, anyone with a POV slightly left of Hammer-the-Chud cult leader.
Gagnon, btw, is paid $275,339 plus benefits, annually, as boss of the Maine Policy Institute, the so-called think tank non-profit funding The Maine Wire’s hate crusade. And my pals over at Portland Radio Group (where I worked in the mid-90s as a talk show producer) tell me Gagnon’s annual pay for his WGAN job spewing MAGA talking points, from 6 to 9 am, five days a week, is about $45,000. So the fella makes over three hundred grand each year gurgitating and regurgitating the coda of late stage capitalism, along with MAGA moronity and Trad Catholic heresy.
Any efforts by Gagnon to distance himself from the antics of his staff is hogwash. After all, we’re not talking about an independent free press here. We’re talking about a media blog for a 501c-3, which is financed by Leonard Leo and other dark money gazillionaires. The Maine Wire is solely owned, paid for and operated by the Maine Policy Institute, the pseudonym for the “Maine Heritage Policy Center,” whose two million dollar budget is dispensed by Gagnon.
And let me tell you, as someone who had worked for many low-profit media companies, the MPI non-profit model is only possible because Dark Money is paying the bills. In the real world of journalism, The Maine Wire would never be able to meet payroll.
By this point, it’s clear that MPI has violated IRS’ non-profit rules about fifty-five million times. From the IRS: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”
Obviously, MPI is working on behalf of Susan Collins’ campaign. Thing is, with the pedo-protecting president running the IRS like it’s his bitch, there’s no chance any legal challenge, currently, would impact MPI’s ability to continue to grift as a nonprofit. That’s why Gagnon — and his sugar daddy super-chud Leo Leo — are so desperate for the GOP to stay in power. MPI will be in big trouble when IRS 501(c)(3) rules start getting enforced again. Then, Gagnon’s bloated salary and his job as boss of the racist/homophobic/misogynistic non-profit will be in danger.
But those worries didn’t stop Gagnon having lots of fun during a week-long junket last month to Japan, the favored destination for white chuds who admire the mono-ethnic ethnostate’s cultural uniformity and strict immigration rules.
In case you’re wondering who's the boss of Gagnon, I found this handy pictorial at the MPI website.
Flashback #5
(This piece was originally published in the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly on Oct. 27, 1994.)
The battle to replace Congressman Tom Andrews, which had the potential to be an exciting race, sucks. Wondering why, I volunteered with both campaigns for one day to see why they were so bland.
In the process, I almost became Jim Longley’s fat cat.
David Flaherty, a Republican Party operative from Washington D.C., called me after hearing I was interested in campaigning for Longley, the Republican son of famed Maine indie gov James Longley. Flaherty wanted me to demonstrate against Democrat Duke Dutremble during the Vice President Al Gore fund raiser at the Embassy Suites Hotel in South Portland in late October.
“We’ll have people in tuxedos handing out fake money with Dutremble’s face on it,” Flaherty told me. “Someone will be in a cat outfit showing that Dutremble is a fat cat.”
I told him I wanted to be that cat. He promised me I could.
But, like most Republican promises, this one fell apart.
The next day, a glum Flaherty told me on the phone that it seemed like, due to a GOP operative manpower shortage, it would just be the two of us protesting the vice president’s visit. Then he told me I’d have to speak to the press because, as Flaherty put it, “We don’t want anyone to know that the Longley campaign is involved.”
But even the two-man demonstration failed to materialize because Flaherty couldn’t get his hands on a cat costume. I still wanted to do something: answer phones, hang up signs, anything. But, a week and a half before the election, the Longley campaign had nothing planned.
A suggestion to the Longley campaign: Get some rental cars, slap on some “Dutremble for Congress” bumper stickers and start running down people in parking lots and speeding away. If you’re going to run a Nixonian dirty tricks campaign, go all the way.
You know it’s a bad race when the Republicans are running the more interesting campaign. Weekend plans for Dutremble supporters included distributing 20,000 flyers throughout the 1st District and a $250-a-plate dinner with Mr. Excitement, Al Gore. They could have at least had me dress up in a snake costume and have Duke wrestle me to the ground while his supporters chant, “Longley is a snake!”
But instead, I headed to Westbrook with 500 flyers and another volunteer. My canvassing partner was more interesting than anything Dutremble has ever said. She works for a local nonprofit and moonlights as a part-time hand model.
“Fifty bucks an hour,” she told me. Perhaps you’ve seen her work. In the new Brookstone catalog, she’s the one with the carrot peeler. I told her that her hands were really attractive and she blushed.
Anyway, distributing flyers wasn’t too bad for the first 15 minutes, then it was hell. I could attach the flyers to some doors easily, but those with just plain old regular doorknobs were a real pain. I thought about sticking the flyers in mailboxes, but I remembered it was against federal law and wasn’t about to mar my nearly-clean police record just so Dutremble could become congressman. I ignored houses with doorknobs.
I was on Pleasant Street when I ran into an older woman, about 70, sitting on her porch and smoking a cigarette.
“Duke Dutremble for Congress,” I said to her, smiling and handing her the flyer.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “I wish the elections were over.”
Me, too. After a couple of hours, I was bored silly and my legs were getting tired. I started using the Press Herald white tubes whenever I faced a long driveway.
Finally, after getting rid of the last 100 flyers at an apartment complex, I was done. I met up with my partner and we compared notes as we headed back to Dutremble headquarters. I knew I would probably never see this woman again, but I wanted remember her hands, so I could pick them out in ads. They weren’t so pretty now, all stained with the blue ink of the Dutremble campaign.
A suggestion for the Dutremble campaign: Replace the slogan, “He’ll make us proud” with “Duke will make them tremble.”
Epilogue: Longley went on to defeat Dutremble by ten thousand votes and serve un-remarkably for two years before Tom Allen kicked his ass in 1996. Also, Duke Dutremble is fine Mainer, not a fat cat. And a proud Franco-Mainer, he was the first of his heritage to serve as President of the Maine Senate.
I’m still working hard on the Fake Shaman true crime podcast. The story keeps developing with new facts and allegations about the 36-year-old woman from Connecticut who came to Maine with dollar signs in her eyes and psychedelic mushrooms in her Coach bag. Paid subscribers to the Crash Report will get early access and ad-free episodes of Fake Shaman. To support independent journalism that goes places other media won’t, please become a paid subscriber for seven bucks monthly or seventy-five smackers for the whole year.
