On Sunday the Boston Globe’s Metro columnist Yvonne Abraham wrote The face of opposition to Question 1 admits proposed tax wouldn’t hurt him much: ‘I’m not struggling.’ The face of opposition was Leo Cakounes who made some standard conservative talking points about government and then Ms. Abraham got to the important point:
Fair enough. But instead of making these arguments, opponents of Question 1 are hiding behind people like Cakounes. Of course, the phenomenally rich people funding the No campaign, including Suffolk Construction chief John Fish, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, New Balance chairman Jim Davis, and Paul Edgerley of Bain Capital, among others, would be fools to appear in their own ads. Obscenely wealthy magnates complaining about paying 9 percent tax on their earnings over a million dollars are hardly going to engender sympathy.
I wish I wrote that.
Thanks to Office of Campaign and Political Finance issuing a series of decisions forcing dark money donors to disclose after the 2016 ballot question Dark Moneygasm there has been a lot more transparency about the true sources of the money in ballot question spending.
As I wrote in my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization in 2016 when the privatizer ballot committee Great Schools Committee raised millions from (at the time) secret donors, GSM’s tv ads identified:
The top five GSM contributors were listed from among Great Schools for Massachusetts, Expanding Educational Opportunities, Education Reform Now Advocacy, Strong Economy for Growth, Families for Excellent Schools Inc., and Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy.
Nothing of use to voters there, just as oligarchs prefer. But as my Table 2.2 showed once OCPF forced disclosure of the true donors, the real money came from a handful (you could fit them in your kitchen) of Boston oligarchs:
Klarman, the Bekensteins, and the Jacobsons are members of Strategic Grant Partners, which had been funding Families for Excellent Schools Inc. We can’t know for sure where the FESI money came from but we do know that Edgerley (also an SGP member) donated $1,000,000 to FESI in 2016 (grabbing the tax deduction).
Klarman, as a minority owner of the Boston Red Sox, is a business partner of Red Sox and Boston Globe publisher John Henry. If I went to six on the list I’d have reached WalMart heirs and cousins Jim and Alice Walton of Arkansas, who put in $2,000,000. The Waltons continue to be the largest funder of school privatization fronts in Massachusetts, followed closely by Hostetter’s Barr Foundation, which has also has funded some of the Globe’s education coverage in the recent past.
Davis funded the SuperPAC backing Annissa Essaibi George in the 2021 Boston mayoral contest.
I’d like to see the top five highest donors have to rotate disclosure on these ads, like : ‘I’m Robert Kraft and I approve this ad.’
So far as I’m aware none of these oligarchs have shown any accountability to the public in explaining how their millions have gone to causes that would save each of them many more millions in taxes that otherwise would go to the public good. I apologize if I missed those public explanations, let me know and I’ll correct the record.
Why the secrecy? I’ll let Ms. Abraham explain. The oligarchs:
would be fools to appear in their own ads. Obscenely wealthy magnates complaining about paying 9 percent tax on their earnings over a million dollars are hardly going to engender sympathy.
“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. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves.”–Jimmy Carter
[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.]
