Two recently released documents offer insight into dark money sources that reach into Massachusetts. Let’s take a look at the donor list from the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Job Security and to the program from the annual meeting of the right wing State Policy Network. After years of legal battles the Center for Responsibility and…
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).
Annals of Money in Politics: Wayfair Breaks No Politics Policy with Checkbook Activism
The Massachusetts Majority Independent Expenditure PAC is getting some attention as a beard for the political interests of Governor Charlie Baker. So who’s giving? At the top of the list are Wayfair’s founders at $50,000 each. What’s the politics policy over there, anyway? I ask because Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah declared in September that he’d…
The Walton Family’s Massachusetts Political Team, 2019
The Wednesday vote in the House on the Education Funding bill is a crucial test for interest groups opposing the Senate version, and all of them are influenced or controlled by the Walton Family of Arkansas. Let’s meet The Walton Family’s Massachusetts Political Team, 2019. The selected groups all have some political purpose and all…
The Waltons and the Politics of Education Funding
The three interest groups pushing to undermine the Massachusetts senate’s education funding bill are all Walton funded, two of them essentially full-time agents of the Waltons. They have to solve a problem for the right-wing Wal-Mart heirs: not that funding public education might fail, but that it will succeed. The Waltons, who contributed over $2…
Giuliani’s Pals Indicted on Marijuana Licensing Scheme. Could It Reach into Massachusetts?
Today’s indictment of Rudy Giuliani’s two business partners is a disgusting tale of illegality and greed—and it’s worth wondering if it involves any effort to infiltrate Massachusetts’ marijuana licensing program. I’ll tread lightly here. There is no allegation in the Indictment that Massachusetts is involved. In all likelihood there is none. But state regulators should…
“Arkansas Billionaires Fight to Change Massachusetts Education Policy.”
Arkansas Billionaires Fight to Change Massachusetts Education Policy.” Interesting headline, and true. No Walton family of Arkansas, no Massachusetts Parents United. No Walton family of Arkansas, no Democrats for Education Reform of Massachusetts. It’s that simple. But the Boston Globe and MassLive, among others, simply ignore that fact. It’s the politics of pretending. Readers deserve…
Headline: Arkansas Billionaires Fight to Change Massachusetts Education Policy
“Arkansas Billionaires Fight to Change Massachusetts Education Policy.” Interesting headline, and true. No Walton family of Arkansas, no Massachusetts Parents United. No Walton family of Arkansas, no Democrats for Education Reform of Massachusetts. It’s that simple. But the Boston Globe and MassLive, among others, simply ignore that fact. It’s the politics of pretending. Readers deserve…
Bullshit, Coup, Treason, Civil War. Words Matter.
“I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.” With these words, President Abraham Lincoln ended a letter to Louisianan Cuthbert Bullitt on July 28, 1862. We see far different words these days from President Donald Trump: “coup,” “treason”, and “civil war.” Words matter and they matter most…
Special Climate Strike Day Edition of Dark Money
From Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, pp. 205, 207, study by Dr. Robert Brulle: Mayer climate change denialism
CommonWealthMagazine Answers Reader Questions
Last week I posed a Reader Question to CommonwealthMagazine and lo and behold, CW answered the question. I wondered if online polls (CW had a story on one) are reliable. And the answer, according to CW’s Steve Koczela and Rich Parr, is yes. I recommend Koczela and Parr’s Polling, like everything else, is moving online…