Bring Kids Back Massachusetts is pushing Governor Charlie Baker to reopen for face-to-face instruction in the fall. As with the ongoing Reopen Massachusetts operation, Bring Kids Back ignores the 7,694 deaths and 102,469 cases in the state. Just old people. So what do we know about Bring Back Kids MA? Well, the website is very nicely done—some money spent there. They’ve got a Facebook page where folks can sign their support. They’ve had stories in both the Boston Herald and on WHDH. So the PR is being professionally managed. In the Herald story it is “a coalition of local parent groups” and WHDH describes it as a group of parents. The Herald (sort of a mimeo sheet for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance these days) doesn’t identify any groups in the coalition, only a woman from Holliston, and WHDH interviews a man from Holliston. There is a letter to the governor on the Holliston folks website, but no actual humans have signed it. Odd.
And that’s about what we know other than the group is being pushed on Twitter by Jennifer Braceras, who is a board member of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. And it is MassFiscal, a dark money operation, that has been at the forefront of the Reopen Massachusetts agitation. It sure looks like MassFiscal is a beard for Charles Koch, who is behind the litigation to undermine Governor Baker’s emergency powers and reopen the state without consequence to public health.
As for Reopen Massachusetts, a war of words has broken out at CommonwealthMagazine. First, Koch’s attorney (fronted by the New Civil Liberties Alliance) spelled out the suit. Then Professor Lawrence Friedman, who actually did write the book on the Massachusetts Constitution, explained why the suit is likely to fail. My piece showing the Koch connection also appeared on CW. So the reopening folks are back this time with a weird piece from David R. Geiger, a partner at Foley Hoag.
The Geiger piece hits the usual grab bag of conservative talking points—coronavirus is sort of trivial, masks are an infringement on our liberties, the virus only hits the old folk, etc. (Why do conservatives hate us old folk?) He writes that “the governor’s orders have no reliable scientific basis.” Speaking of science: How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them”.
I really can’t leave you without this bizarre passage from Geiger’s article:
It is unclear what induced the governor’s radical measures. Perhaps it was fear of the unknown, the lockdown examples set by China and Italy (one a totalitarian state and the other with a history of fascism and communism), or the news media’s unceasing coverage of the latest possible catastrophe to destroy the world.
There you go. Charlie Baker is like either commie or a fascist. Right wing logic fully developed.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money.]