Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision requiring Wisconsin to go ahead with in-person voting today is one of the worst in a recent series of ignominious rulings. Its five member Republican majority is playing its partisan role—suppressing votes for a party that cannot command a majority in fair elections. As Heather Cox Richardson explains in today’s Letters…
Author: Maurice Cunningham
Professor Cunningham Ph.D., J.D., is author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization. He retired in 2021 as associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston but he continues his research into dark money in politics. His two reports on the dark money threat to public education are available on the Network for Public Education website: Merchants of Deception: Parent Props and their Funders, and “A Citizen’s Guide to the School Privatization Movement” (forthcoming). His work has been distributed through the Independent Media Institute and has appeared in The Bucks County Beacon (PA), Shepherd Express (WI), Alternet, Tampa Bay Times, The Daily Progress (VA), Idaho Education News, New Hampshire Bulletin, The Detroit Free Press, and The Portland Press-Herald (ME), and at Diane Ravitch’s Blog, dianeravitch.net.. His work on dark money in Massachusetts has earned him the 2017 Distinguished Public Service Award from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees and the 2018 MTA President’s Award from the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Education historian Diane Ravitch has named Professor Cunningham to her "Honor Roll" on her education blog. He can be reached at maurice.cunningham153@gmail.com.
Publications that focus upon Massachusetts Politics include two co-written chapters in the edited volume The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Reputation Meets Reality. He has also written “Defeating ‘Death with Dignity’: Morality and Message in a Massachusetts Referendum” in American Catholic Studies (2014); “Massachusetts Politics 2012” in New England Journal of Political Science (2012); “A Christian Coalition for Catholics?: The Massachusetts Model,” Review of Religious Research (2009); and “Massachusetts Republicans: the 2004 Challenge to Democratic Legislative Hegemony,” in New England Journal of Political Science (2008).
Politics of Coronavirus: Democracy or Oligarchy?
Never listen to anyone tell you to put aside politics in a time of crisis. The politics of coronavirus provides another battleground in the American contest between oligarchy and democracy, a fight oligarchs have been winning for decades. This is on my mind today having just finished reading Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won…
Trump and Voter Suppression
An odd byproduct of Donald Trump being extremely stupid is that he sometimes says the quiet parts out loud. He did that the other day when he all but admitted that Republican electoral prospects depend on voter suppression. From the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake: In an interview on “Fox…
The Masks Roll In, The Masks Roll Out . . .
Two big stories greet us this morning in coronavirus politics and government. Let’s take a look at images of these stories and see what we can make of it: The masks roll in, the masks roll out. In this tradeoff, America only comes out 279 million masks down. As Heather Cox Richardson points out in…
Coronavirus Politics: Follow the Money
Politics doesn’t recede in times of crisis it accelerates, because crisis provides ideologues and interests the opportunity to advance their pet policy prescriptions. Just scrolling down Twitter this morning provides a sense of this. Read this retweet from that unmatched source of education information in Massachusetts, Tracy Novick: OMG, taxes on…
Coronavirus and Charlie Baker’s Party Problem
Back in the serene days of fall 2019 some in the Massachusetts political class were discussing whether Governor Charlie Baker should remain a Republican, go Independent, or even start a new party. The coronavirus crisis has exposed an even knottier conundrum for Baker. That has to do with the state’s need for federal aid. In…
‘The beauty of the 501(c)(4)’: Why We Should Care About Dark Money
“I think the play here is to set up an independent expenditure committee for your re-election, specifically with a goal of raising two million or something. . . . the beauty of the IE, it’s a 501(c)(4) corporate donations are allowed and they’re unlimited. . . . I can put in a million or two…
The Waltons Are Winning the Debate Over the Boston Public Schools
Here’s a small exercise I thought of in light of today’s James Vaznis story in the Boston Globe concerning what to do about the Boston public schools. I tried to rank the responses of those interviewed from left (status quo, send more money) to right (state takeover). Out there on the right fringe is the…
Globe Mentions MassFiscal’s Hidden Money. But Why Talk to Them At All?
Today Matt Stout of the Boston Globe continued the healthy habit, when reporting on the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, of stating that it hides its donors. (See Baker’s Push to Curb Emissions Draws a Familiar Foe: His Own Party). But since no one can say with any accuracy whose interests MassFiscal represents, why include it in…
Power Outage: Right Wing Attacks on Black and Latinx Political Power in Massachusetts
Yesterday’s post on the Boston Globe’s suggestion of a future state takeover of the Boston Public Schools discussed Domingo Morel’s Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy. Morel’s research shows that state takeovers of school districts usually (not always) bring about the political dis-empowerment of communities of color. Unfortunately we’ve seen several attempts to restrict representation…