Since I got into following the dark money business with the 2016 school privatization ballot question in Massachusetts, I try to stay up on newly arising organizations that serve as fronts for the plans of billionaires. One such group is the National Parents Union, which is not national, not parents, and not a union. I…
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).
National Parents Union, a Unit of the Billionaire Boys Club
Last week I explained how the National Parents Union is not a union, not national, and not about parents. Today we’ll go into more detail about what NPU is: a political unit of the Billionaire Boys Club. Education scholar Diane Ravitch popularized the term Billionaire Boys Club in her 2010 book The Death and Life…
National Parents Union: Not a Union, Not National, Not About Parents
One unsurprising characteristic of the Walton family sponsored National Parents Union is that it has so few parent members. Here is how NPU describes itself on its website: I wanted to look at two aspects of NPU’s claims, that it is a parent organization and that it has members in all 50 states. It seems…
Why Lt. Gov. Polito Should Add Workers to the Reopen Mass. Advisory Panel: It’s in Her Own Best Interest
In Baker’s Reopen Advisory Panel: No Place for Heroes I called for workers to be added to the advisory panel on reopening the state, headed by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito. That call went nowhere. Let me try again. Lt. Gov. Polito, putting workers on the panel is in your own best interest. Apparently the absence…
Baker’s Reopen Advisory Panel: No Place for Heroes
One of my students works at a grocery and he’s scared. So I looked over the advisory panel on reopening the state appointed by Governor Charlie Baker to see who is looking out for my student’s health and well-being. The answer is: no one. Not a single solitary member is looking out for workers. No…
Republicans Sprint to Place Democracy in Chains (with a Boston Liberty Rally Postscript)
With the likely defeat of Donald Trump in November and a possible Democratic takeover of the Senate, Republicans must quickly exploit the coronavirus crisis to reorient American democracy toward oligarchy—the supremacy of property. Some of the sharpest writing on American politics has come from historian Heather Cox Richardson. In her April 19 Letters from an…
The Growing Koch Presence in Massachusetts
There is an essential piece in today’s Washington Post about the ReOpen America campaign, Inside the conservative networks backing anti-quarantine protests and no quote is more important for Massachusetts than this one from Professor Robert Brulle, who exposed the Koch Brothers funding of the climate denial industry: “The involvement of the Koch institutional apparatus in…
Politics of Coronavirus: The Globe’s “Typical” Parent Happens to Head Privatization Front Massachusetts Parents United
Today in Frustrated with Home Schooling, Parents Declare: Class Dismissed the Boston Globe transmits the story of a typical parent struggling with educating kids at home. But the parent is actually a highly paid privatization advocate on the Walton family’s political payroll. How does this happen? Obviously it’s a real story. Parents are stressed, especially…
Politics of Coronavirus: “And the courts gave them justice as justice is given by well-mannered thugs”
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…
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…