Hey, guess what energy company with a Vermont connection hired actors to attend and disrupt a series of New Orleans city council meetings on the company’s new gas-powered generating plant and electric rates?  Yes, Entergy,  (soon-to-be former) owner of Vermont Yankee – the  decommissioned nuclear power plant – hired “rent-a-crowd” actors supplied by a company based in Los Angeles. And it was a special performance directed to support the fossil fuel power supplier: One of the demonstrators, Keith Keough, said he was paid to clap, “every time someone said something against wind and solar power.” 

Poynter.com reports on the investigation done by The Lens, a non-profit investigative organization. Poynter.com makes clear the last thing they want to do is give oxygen to conspiracy nuts and hoaxsters who claim mass shootings and terrorist attacks are the work of crisis actors and “fake flag” operations. (And contrary to the beliefs of right-wing internet conspiracy nuts, factcheck.org shows there were no paid “crisis actors” among the Parkland shooting high school demonstrators.)

But in New Orleans, paid actors disrupted a city council vote that will affect every person in that community who pays an electric bill. […] Lens reporter Michael Isaac Stein writes. “They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a ‘speaking role,’ which required them to deliver a pre-written speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.”

Several rent-a-crowd companies here and overseas are identified in the article. One company executive draws a line at supplying a crowd for hate groups. But reportedly rented crowds are often hired to “swarm people like paparazzi in order to make people feel good to give them the celebrity experience.”

We now know, but always suspected, Vermont Yankee’s owner Entergy to be the kind of corporation that would resort to hiring supporters and hacks to its cause, but what kind of public figure would be so insecure as to hire an “adoring” crowd?

Oh, wait we know that too: Donald Trump, of course. In January 2017 the FEC concluded, after he denied it, that Trump paid actors to attend his 2016 campaign launch.

Well, we always knew that Entergy couldn’t be trusted to deal in an up-front, honest, and straightforward manner. This is just a reminder: Let the state and the buyer beware! And pay no heed to that crowd applauding the deal – some of them could be actors, you know.