Lance Dutson Story. (link)

Here is the long-awaited tape of the beginning of that Augusta meeting about Pay-per-Click.

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It seems that Lance Dutson has removed every single post about Mr. or Mrs. L. or the Maine Office of Tourism from his blog. (No matter, I have them all)

He must be getting scared that the truth is finally going to come out and bite him.

Too bad about the damage that he did to so many innocent people.

I’m reading a book by Jean Hay Bright about Susan Collins and the tactics that she used to win her senate seat in 1996.  (See this)

This rang bells in regards to a similar tactic she used only recently(accusing Tom Allen of “Spying on her by taping a speech.) But it especially resonated with the tricks that Collins webmaster Lance Dutson used to gain notoriety in the Blogosphere.

It seems they both know how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of some people.

And neither one is ashamed to use that knowledge. (Notice Dutson’s use of Collins’ classic “Victimization Stance” in these letters from Nancy Marshall. Dutson accused her of terrorizing him and his family) I’ve pulled this post from another blog:

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[This text is from 2006, in response to the mendacious smear campaign against the MOT]:

Not too long ago, a Maine blogger and web developer named Lance Dutson was quite accidentally thrust into the spotlight following an ill-advised lawsuit against him by Maine’s ad agency, WKP. Dutson had made a completely erroneous charge about the Maine Office of Tourism’s use of Google Adwords (PDF – slow to load)

visitcamden.pdf

and he repeatedly attacked them with flaming rhetoric, accusing the MOT of many serious though non-existent crimes.

Both the director of this office and Maine’s public relations agency tried very hard to get Lance Dutson to the table to discuss these charges. But Dutson, who had been allowed to rant unchecked for 5 months by his wife, Camden National Bank’s main branch manager Janet Dutson, refused.

At the time, she was acting director and media liaison of the Chamber of Commerce whose website her husband had hijacked to post the above bogus press release. It was her job to monitor this feature for inappropriate content. But even though there were no fewer than 6 attempts to contact her (this slow pdf letter was one of six similar letters from just this one agency) and get either her or her husband to the table, she brazenly ignored all rational pleas for sanity, and allowed her husband Lance to rave on.

So Lance Dutson kept loudly and falsely accusing the MOT on his blog -falsely citing multiple threats and deliberate snubs against him by these people – when actually, the exact opposite was true.  But when Dutson finally did agree to a face-to-face meeting with the MOT, he stayed for 5 minutes, then panicked and ran out the door.

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Here is the real truth about Google Adwords (link), as was presented at that meeting.

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When Lance Dutson was publicly exposed as a fool and/or liar by the MOT, Dutson apparently lost his cool, and became so irate that he started a vicious, lying smear campaign against the Lewis’. Dutson publicly blamed the MOT for the lawsuit, about which Dutson had already publicly complained: that it was over too soon, and that he had hoped to get more mileage and ergo, more notoriety, out of it.

On March 21, 2006, the MOT met with Mike Lawrence, Executive Vice President of (link) Cone, Inc (617)227-2111, who advised that the group of people being slandered by Maine Web Report should do nothing other than ignore the blog, or if palatable, engage the blogger in some sort of dialogue. xxxx got on the phone to WKP, and expended a good amount of energy trying to convince Warren Kremer Paino Advertising to back off of any type of legal intervention.)

Dutson began making up countless vicious accusations against the MOT director and his wife, and repeated them ad nauseum. His  blood-thirsty groupies swallowed every lie, never once asking for any proof or corroboration. Sometimes the “evidence” he presented even contradicted the charges in his headlines. But nobody ever even bothered to read that far.

He obtained emails – some of them embarassingly private, and publicly posted these emails, editing out parts that would disprove his accusations. When people tried to point out the truth in comments on his blog, Dutson merely deleted the comments.

The MOT’s director had been gagged by his superiors in Augusta (Maine’s capital), and hearing nothing to the contrary, people believed Dutson. Eventually, even mainstream Maine media  picked up the nonsense … and still, deafening silence from Augusta.

A few opportunistic Maine politicians saw all of this as a chance to feather their own nests and sadly, dignified the lying Lance Dutson, granting him interviews speckled with self-serving misinformation,  and stroking Dutson’s huge internet ego. Maine’s tourism director was unceremoniously removed from his position, with less than a week’s notice and no severance pay.

Both Dutson and the mainstream media gratuitously sneered that he had been “fired” for allegations of “corruption”. The blogosphere erupted into cheers that the little guy had won.

Lance Dutson crowed from the rooftops.

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Lance Dutson continued his attack, even after the director was replaced.

Let’s hope that the truth about both Lance Dutson and Susan Collins will become known, with the help of the same blogosphere which had so unjustifiably elevated him to celebrity status in the first place.

(Continued here)

 

Augusta, stop the misinformation, and do the math….

I have resurrected this blog post because I am so frustrated with the disinformation I have seen revolving around this justifiably unpopular tax. If only someone would do the math.

If you are one of the fortunate 14,000 people who have Dirigo health coverage, of course you want the rest of us to pay for your health insurance. But the truth is just that, even if it is subsidized by all of us, it will still be far too expensive for most of us.

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New England has a bad deer tick problem – these are the critters that cause debilitating Lyme Disease.

I’d been walking the woods the last few days and was horrified to discover a deer tick attached to my leg. (I’m usually on better terms with the universe, but my head had been in a bad place lately).

I was very fortunate to find a walk-in clinic in town that could take me at only a few hours notice, since time is of the essence in these cases.

I had hoped to be gainfully employed by now, but the economy went sour (in case nobody noticed). Hence I have no insurance yet.

There is something in Maine called “Dirigo Health” which is Governor John Baldacci’s supposedly “affordable” health insurance plan.

Trouble is, even if you’re an individual who makes little enough to get an 80% discount, your monthly insurance cost is still over 1/3 of your take home pay (which is already pretty tiny in that income bracket). Ergo, it’s only “affordable” by those who can afford to pay +/- $1400 a month and still make expenses. And there’s a long waiting list even for that.

[In fact, after several years, there are still only about 14.000 people who use Dirigo, and most of these folks already had insurance. There aren't very good prospects that this number will grow in the foreseeable future. ]

Anyhow, there’s a free clinic in town, but they could not see me until next month. This is why I consider myself very lucky to have seen a doctor.

The cost for 10 minutes in the clinic? $281. Plus $6 apiece for the doxycyline capsules. By Maine standards this is a bargain.

However, I am told that this money is not to pay my bill. It’s to pay for the Mainers who are not affluent enough to afford Dirigo or the clinic.

Now, what does this have to do with beer, you ask?

Well, I just learned that the (go figure) unpopular tax that the dem Baldacci administration just snuck through (in a late night session) on beer, wine, soda (including syrups), and flavored WATER. (my drink of choice) is intended to further fund the relatively wealthy Dirigo recipients.

Please note that is is not to make Dirigo available to a broader range of incomes, but only to maintain the dysfunctional status quo.

I would gladly pay this tax to see the much needed repairs on Maine’s bridges and roads. But now I must pay extra tax on my cranberry/lime seltzer, so that wealthier folks CAN afford their health insurance.

I’m subsidizing yuppies.

This craziness even surpasses the act of suing a blogger for criticizing his own government. And right wing media such as Fox 23 are having a perfect field day with it.

The tax has been applauded by these folk, whose reasoning seems to be that if we can no longer afford beer, wine, or soda, then we will be driven to purchasing hard liquor, of which the antiseptic properties will render us less prone to infection. Some even call it a “Sin” tax.

Is it sinful to drink Cranberry Lime seltzer??

So if all this is enough to drive you to drink, better make it the hard stuff.

When I heard all this, I had a short flashback to grammar school and the Boston Tea Party. But don’t expect to see anyone throwing beer into Casco Bay. More likely you’ll be watching them throw Democrats.

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EDIT 8/4/08

I admit I’m confused. I just saw a man on public access TV extolling the virtues of Dirigo. He claimed that the 14,000 people who use it are all quite happy with it.

!!!

Of course they’re happy. They’re getting insurance for quite a bit cheaper than they were paying before.

But this 14,000 are relatively upper income. This number represents about 1% of Maine’s population, and a high paid 1% at that.

Apparently this man would have us believing that Dirigo is terrific because it makes a few rich folks happy. That’s like saying that high gas prices are wonderful because they line the pockets of the oil speculators.

Or like saying that corporate crime is great, since it makes all the corporate criminals happy.

He oddly never mentioned those people in Maine – nearly quarter of the population (probably much more) who have no insurance at all, and would never be able to afford Dirigo.

And apparently, it’s for the happiness of this privileged 14,000 that the other one and one third million plus people in Maine should be very happy to subsidize them via the beverage tax. (8 cents on every 12 oz can of cranberry/lime seltzer).

We should be happy to be ripped off.

OK. I’ll remember that.

Who’s afraid of John McCain?

Looks like Edward Albee might have been channeling Sentor John McCain and his wife Cindy when he wrote his famed play. After finding no fewer than 48 pages of hits about McCain’s infamous temper, I was finally compelled to stop at this little clip, which seems to simmer for itself.

From “Wonkette”:

Hey look, John McCain had an acid flashback to his days in the Mexican Hanoi Hilton and yelled at poor human condition-chronicler Elisabeth Bumiller of the NYT. Why? Because she asked about his conversation with John Kerry in 2004 to become his running mate. About halfway through the video, you can hear Cindy McCain throw a gin tumbler at the plane’s wall, just before McCain’s aides were able to feed her her Xanax/Oxycontin cocktail coated in strawberry cream cheese. [via The Caucus]

I’m so naive, I’d still like to believe that we might try to avoid a Whitehouse that more resembles a crack house.

Apparently both the man and his “Trollop” wife (his words, not mine) routinely pull the psycho act – whether the provocations be clinical or chemical.  You do have to wonder how else this poor woman could manage to live with the man outlined in just these first few links:

[Calling his wife the C-Word just makes him gross. Calling her a "Trollop" means he doesn't know which century he's living in.]

More here

…and yet more

…ad infinitem…

And some comic relief.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful of people with mental handicaps, but please let’s get real.  A McCain presidency should not even be under consideration, even if he is only a straw man. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to light a match around him.

See this video.

Looks like the Bushies are up to their old tricks. They’re spending a small fortune on an ambitious  campaign to spin Straw Man John McCain into their very own golden boy:

“Governor Dean wrote to you this week about the $120 million fund to remake John McCain and destroy Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.

As part of their plan, John McCain will start a “Compassion Tour” next week designed to position him as a different kind of Republican.

He’ll be going into inner city neighborhoods and economically depressed towns, trying to reach out to voters his party traditionally ignores.

Sound familiar? Know any other Republican politicians who have claimed to be a “compassionate conservative”?

We’ve seen this campaign before: a Republican candidate who holds a dangerous and wrong opinion on Iraq, supported by piles of lobbyist and special interest money, who works non-stop to look folksy and compassionate; a Republican candidate who knows nothing about jobs and the economy, fixing health care or a rational foreign policy.

We’ve also seen how it turns out. They’re able to use their money to get the White House — and Americans are left with four years of a dangerous Republican president.”

Will America’s couch potatoes finally put down their corn dogs long enough to see how they’ve been manipulated?  Or will we soon be seeing John McCain on “America’s Most Extreme Makeovers”?