On Tuesday dark money front Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance will get back into the voter suppression business by hosting a forum featuring Hans von Spakovsky. Could this be the same Hans von Spakovsky found by a federal district court to be not at all credible as an “expert” on voter fraud? Why yes, it is that…
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).
Massachusetts Parents United, National Parents Union, and the Christian Right
Two of the important props of the far right in America are Christian conservatives and economic royalists like the Waltons and Charles Koch. Those ties are becoming evident in school privatization including in financial support the Massachusetts Parents United has offered to a Christian right group and in National Parents Union’s funding from a Koch-Walton…
The Baker-Teachers Union Battle Traces Back to 2016
Could the current conflict between Governor Charlie Baker and the teachers unions over vaccinations be traced back to the charter schools ballot question in 2016? The Boston Globe raises that question in a story today by Adam Vaccaro, Baker, teachers unions trade barbs as educators seek quicker vaccines or delay to full school openings. Here…
National Parents Union: Turmoil at the Top
National Parents Union, funded by the Waltons, Charles Koch, and other oligarchs has churned its leadership in one year so much that it deepens questions about NPU’s legitimacy. Two sets of boards of directors and the departure of a co-founder and board member will do that. Two boards? Yep. When you visit the National Parents…
Rhode Island: Dark Money Backs “Parents Group” for More Charter Schools
The following was posted first on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, and you can find the original here. I’ll only add that it is not uncommon today to find ostensibly “grassroots parent groups” that suddenly find themselves awash in hundreds of thousands of dollars in dark money. Also, if the Boston Globe can have a Rhode Island…
Let’s Try to Help Massachusetts Parents United with “Transparency”
Last week I was mentioned in a news story as leading the charge to scrutinize the funding behind politically active “foundation-backed groups, particularly Massachusetts Parents United.” I need to live up to my press clippings because there is more to the story of Massachusetts Parents United. The mention came in Shira Schoenberg’s excellent Getting a…
MassGOP: The Party of Lincoln, Ignorant of Lincoln
What do you call a political party that claims to be “the Party of Lincoln” but has no knowledge or understanding of Abraham Lincoln and no interest in learning? You call it the Massachusetts Republican Party. The other day the state party sent out an email commemorating Lincoln’s birthday: Well, yeah, I agree we would…
Mass Fiscal Goes RINO Hunting for Charlie Baker
“Bring me the head of David Ismay!” cried out Paul Craney, and it was so. And thus an early skirmish in the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance’s campaign to hunt down and kill off RINO Charlie Baker ended in a decisive rout for the dark money front Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. Ismay was Governor Baker’s undersecretary for climate…
Shirley Leung’s Massachusetts Miracle Depends on Immigrants
Shirley Leung has a fascinating piece in the Boston Globe today, The Massachusetts Miracle is alive and well. ‘There are a lot of potential Modernas’. Those potential Modernas depend upon the brain power of immigrants. Ms. Leung’s piece is about how area firms built on Boston brains are leading the way in the fight against…
The Perfect Gift: Books
Once again it’s almost Christmas and you haven’t yet found that perfect gift for a loved on. The gift that will make their heart skip several beats, make them swoon and go weak at the knees, cause them to realize how lucky they are to have you, to end this awful year with the reassurance…