Politicians may not have the insight of Buddhist monks but is anyone less self-aware than Republican 3rd CD nominee Rick Green? He keeps announcing how he will protect democracy in the district, actively ignoring that his dark money front Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance’s mission is to emasculate democracy.
A dark money shop like Mass Fiscal operates in the shadows of campaign finance law, avoiding the disclosure of its fat cat donors. Think Koch Brothers – that’s the model other dark money groups use to debase our politics. They pretend to serve the public good while really ministering to the financial interests of a handful of oligarchs. There is nothing less democratic than a dark money front.
Green is no navel gazer. On Sunday he told the Herald that he favors a recount on the 3rd CD Democratic side to honor the voters’ wishes, but “if this recount becomes a power grab by either side, I intend to hold the Trahan and Koh campaigns accountable for taking advantage of voters and corrupting the democratic process.”
Can anyone even tell me what that means? And Mr. Green, every day Mass Fiscal corrupts the democratic process just by existing. So glass houses, etc.
Then on Monday came the Secretary of State’s announcement that he would take over the recount process in Lowell and Lawrence, which caused Green to puff up again: “The people of Middlesex, Essex, and Worcester counties deserve fair and impartial elections. I am the only candidate running to represent the 3rd district who cannot be bought.”
Again: Dude, you run a dark money front!
Maybe Green was discombobulated by last week’s Supreme Judicial Court decision in 1A Auto, Inc. v. Director of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance in which his corporation, 1A, took up the great civil rights cause of his life: the right of oligarchs to even more political influence than they already have. The SJC, dominated by Baker appointees, unanimously disposed of 1A’s claims. It was an enormous legal blow to Arizona.
Yes Arizona, because even though there are some pretty good attorneys here in Massachusetts, Green’s corporation was represented by the Goldwater Institute from Arizona. And what might the Goldwater Institute be, you ask?
According to Sourcewatch.org, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, the Goldwater Institute “is a right-wing advocacy group” with ties to the Koch Brothers. Among its funders are conservative All-Stars the Bradley Foundation, Olin Foundation, Walton Family Foundation (which funds several organizations that seek to privatize public education in Massachusetts) and the Lovett and Ruth Peters Foundation, the late Lovett Peters being the founder of the Pioneer Institute.
You may look at an Arizona legal center funded by conservatives from across the nation acting for a corporation to undo Massachusetts law and think, ‘wait, conservatives are in favor of states’ rights!’ But you’d be wrong, as Gordon Lafer shows in The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time. The right works assiduously to undermine state laws that protect public goods and workers, especially unions.
Goldwater also has had some notable directors on its board including Rebekah Mercer. Here’s a Washington Post headline about her: Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire backer of Bannon and Trump, chooses sides. Mercer happily backed Bannon’s Breitbart News, until Trump booted Bannon out over disparaging comments he made to an author of a Trump book. Trump ally Christopher Ruddy of NewsMax called Rebekah Mercer “the First Lady of the alt-right.”
Think it can’t happen here? Read Dan Kaufman’s The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics.
And don’t fall for any dark money baron who tells you he’ll protect democracy. Dark money is antithetical to democracy and affronts each citizen’s democratic dignity. Voters have a right to know who is speaking to them behind the gauzy mailers and television ads. Dark money operations hide their donors from voters for two reasons: the wealthy funders know their true aims are unpopular; and they know that if they were identified voters would examine their true motives.
In a few years we could be reading The Fall of Massachusetts.
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
Photo from Pixabay.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money.]