Below is a piece I originally did for Diane Ravitch’s blog, link here. With billionaire driven phony parents groups like Parents Defending Education, Parents United, Students United, and Massachusetts Parents United around, read this for what is really happening here in Massachusetts and across the nation. Btw, verbal and physical attacks on school committee members,…
SuperPACs: Boston Keeps Not Inviting You But You Keep Coming Back
The Boston Globe is doing a pretty good job (I hope the Globe keeps it up) paying attention to SuperPACs in the Boston mayor’s race, the latest example being Danny McDonald’s SuperPAC’s emerge in Boston mayor’s race, with little objection so far. But regular people do object to these vehicles for oligarchic wealth, and they…
The Globe Keeps Missing a Huge Schools Issue. Why is That?
Suppose WalMart swept into Boston and spent millions to acquire Market Basket. The town would go ballistic. It would be covered every day in every media outlet, front page of the Boston Globe. But the Walton Family Foundation of Arkansas—the exact same heartless* mercenaries—spends millions of dollars to take over public schools and it gets…
Ugh. Another AstroTurf Fake Parents Group: Parents United
In a probably misguided and sadly irreversible decision five and a half years ago I started following the money behind AstroTurf education operations play acting as parent groups while fronting for billionaire privatizers. I’ve seen quite a few phony operations and the new right wing entry Parents United (not Massachusetts Parents United!) has a unique…
Beware! Obsessing Creepy Professor!!!
So here I am a quiet, amiable, kindly old gentleman who tries to keep up with those youngs on the Twitter and such when I see Keri Rodrigues, the CEO of two multimillion dollar corporations, say I’m obsessive and creepy! Why that just placed a dark cloud over my retirement alright. Honestly, how’d this quiet,…
A Better Boston for Oligarchs
June 30 Update: The Better Boston for Oligarchs SuperPAC sent in a new filing with OCPF yesterday and boy, is this 2016 and school privatization all over again. here are the salient updates. Ray Stata is in for $25,000. He gave $125,000 to the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee in 2016. Hilary Gabrieli is in…
The Utter Futility of the MassGOP: Not New, Just More Obnoxious Lately.
The ongoing conflict within the MassGOP between Trumpist wingnuts and politically rational conservatives is as crazy and counter-productive as virtually every political analyst has indicated. It is, indeed, absurd for state Republicans to oppose Charlie Baker’s brand of conservatism. What it is not, however, is surprising or unexplainable. The most interesting thing about anti-Baker wingnuttery…
“Can’t Anyone Here Play this Game?” The Real Jim Lyons Problem
“Can’t anyone here play this game?” cried legendary baseball manager Casey Stengel, frustrated with the incompetence of his 1962 Amazin’ Mets. The Massachusetts Republican State Committee should be asking the same question—not because Jim Lyons is an inept chair but because Lyons is an inept culture warrior. The GOP needs to “reimagine” the chairmanship not…
Baker’s Re-election Depends on Pols, not Polls.
Charlie Baker’s decision about whether to seek an unprecedented third consecutive four-year term in the Corner Office is a lot more interesting and consequential than most people realize. If you really want to know whether Baker will run and whether he would win if he does run, pay attention to the words and deeds of…
What Scot Lehigh Missed Today: The Waltons of Arkansas
If there was ever any doubt of the importance of the defeat of the charter school ballot question in 2016, Scot Lehigh’s frozen-in-time A Time for Real Education Change column in the Boston Globe today reminds us of its importance: a 62-38% shellacking of the billionaire backers of Question 2 by teachers unions. But the…