The Boston Globe recently framed the possible MCAS ballot question as a contest between the “Boston business community” and the Massachusetts Teachers Association. A better frame would be “capital v. labor”–which applies to additional ballot questions this year as well. First, some housekeeping:
I’ve recently been writing about coverage of billionaire-funded K-12 interest groups and the lack of local media, especially the Boston Globe, to offer adequate coverage of these interests. I’ll break up themes for three different (and shorter) posts.
The First part is, This is a contest between labor and capital. (Hang in until the end for a great Abraham Lincoln quote).
Second, The Globe Sports Page Really Does Provide Better Coverage of Sports than the Globe Does of K-12 Education Interests.
Third, The Media Can Provide Funding Disclosure of K-12 Interests. It’s a Choice.
The MCAS Ballot Question, Minimum Wage for Tipped Employees, and Rideshare Driver Questions Are Contests Between Capital and Labor
While the Globe has characterized the potential MCAS ballot contest (and the 2016 charter schools fight, and the 2022 Fair Share Tax fight) as contests between “the Boston business community” and the teachers unions (especially the Massachusetts Teachers Association) the more accurate description is these are contests between capital and labor.
Ballot question costs have exploded. The labor side is funded by thousands of union members. The capital side is funded by a handful of oligarchs. When they fund IRS 501(c)(3) non-profits like Education Reform Now (a DFER analog), or Massachusetts Parents United/National Parents Union, those contributions are tax deductible.
Jeffrey Winters in Oligarchy says oligarchy is the “politics of wealth defense by materially endowed actors.” “Whatever else the rich may care about that divides them, they are united in being materially empowered.” Keeping taxes low on themselves is a particular preoccupation. Page, Bartels, and Seawright concluded in Billionaires and Stealth Politics:
Our data suggest that the great enthusiasm of wealthy Americans for improving the US educational system mostly focuses on improving effectiveness through relatively low budget, market-oriented reforms, not on spending the very large sums of money that might be necessary to provide high quality public schools, college scholarships, or worker retraining for all Americans.
Martin Gilens shows in Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America that the top ten percent of American earners have about a fifty percent chance of having their policy preferences passed in Congress. The bottom ninety percent of earners have no chance except for in limited circumstances, most prominently: when labor is pressing for those more popular positions. Public preferences line up with labor positions fairly consistently.
The teachers unions represent a large, prominently female workforce. The pro-charters-anti-Fair Share-pro-MCAS “Boston business community” is small, wealthy, white, and male.
The post-Citizens United period has produced a political system that skews wildly toward the power of money. Yet democracy requires that we all have some roughly equal chance in a say over the policies that govern our lives. Union leaders are democratically elected and offer the only hope for citizens to band together against the money power of the few to bring about democratic outcomes.
Before we leave this topic, it should be clear that proposed ballot initiatives for a minimum wage for tipped employees, app-based drivers as contractors and labor policies initiative, and unionization and collection bargaining for transportation network drivers are all capital vs. labor issues.
Which side are you on?
“Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”—Abraham Lincoln
“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
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president.“–Jimmy Carter
As I said I’ve posted a few pieces on oligarch-funded K-12 interest groups lately plus the non-existent coverage of them by Boston media, despite at least $24,000,000 in spending from 2017-2022. I hope you will read them: My Letter to the Boston Globe Re K-12 Interest Group Coverage; Banned in Boston Globe: Coverage of Barr Foundation’s K-12 Interest Group Funding; Latest on the Barr Foundation K-12 Interest Group Team; Banned in Boston: Coverage of Walton Family’s Spending on K-12 Interest Groups, 2022 Edition; and Why Is the Boston Globe’s Sports Coverage So Much Better Than Its K-12 Political Coverage?
Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is now in print.]