Maurice Cunningham is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in unmasking the influence of billionaires’ dark money. “Dark money” is money that is contributed with the expectation that the donors’ name will not be disclosed. I wrote about the role of Cunningham in exposing the dark money behind the 2016 effort to pass a referendum to expand the number of charter schools in Massachusetts; his exposes alerted voters to the vast sums spent by out-of-state billionaires like the Waltons and Michael Bloomberg to buy education policy in Massachusetts.
As he demonstrates in this article, the Waltons–who cumulatively are worth about $200 billion–are still funding pro-charter, anti-union groups in Massachusetts, still pushing their anti-public school agenda. The Waltons’ vehicle of choice is the “Massachusetts Parents United” group, which claims to be just a lot of concerned moms while collecting millions each year from the Waltons and other oligarchs.
The leader of the Walton-funded parent group is collecting, according to tax records, nearly $400,000 a year. Not a bad gig.
Cunningham reviews a story in Commonwealth Magazine that compares funding for Massachusetts Parents United with funding for the state’s teachers union.
But there are crucial differences, Cunningham writes:
Stories like this tend to equate spending on organizations like MPU with the unions. They’re not comparable. Union funding comes from members’ dues. The unions are democratically organized. My local voted out an incumbent last year, as have other teachers’ unions. MTA term limits its president (a good thing, as Barbara Madeloni was far tougher than her surrender-prone predecessor Paul Toner). There is no democracy to MPU. The Waltons are from Arkansas and probably couldn’t find Chicopee or Tewksbury on a map; never mind getting Alice Walton to pronounce Worcester or Gloucester. The Waltons just write checks and measure ROI–return on investment. MTA and Massachusetts Federation of Teachers members live here. Want to hold the Waltons accountable for the vast changes to Massachusetts education policy they seek through MPU? Good luck with that.
If you’ve gotten this far let me say a few words about why I care about this stuff. We simply do not have a functioning democracy when the vast wealth of a few oligarchs sets the policy agenda and gains influence by showering money on upbeat sounding fronts like Families for Excellent Schools and Massachusetts Parents United. Nor do we have a functioning democracy when the true power—the men and women behind the curtain—remain unknown to the public and uncovered by the media. In Dark Money, Jane Mayer talks about “weaponizing philanthropy.” In Just Giving, Rob Reich points out the “plutocratic bias” enjoyed by the foundations. (Hey, did I mention all these public policy altering contributions by oligarchs are a valuable tax deduction to them? Yes, you’re subsidizing them to change your state’s policy. Never give a sucker an even break). Huge investments in policy change and hidden money threaten rule by the people.
And that’s what MPU is—a tax deductible front for oligarchs weaponizing their philanthropy in a campaign to privatize public goods. The Waltons, Koch, and other oligarchs don’t want us to peek behind the curtain. It is our democratic obligation to tear that curtain down.
Gotta love this:
“The Waltons are from Arkansas and probably couldn’t find Chicopee or Tewksbury on a map; never mind getting Alice Walton to pronounce Worcester or Gloucester.”
Or Leicester!
I lived in Mass for many years and could never figure out why they said Wuhster* and Glowster, but not Duhster (for Dorchester)
*Wuhsta and Glowsta, to be more precise
And “Lestah”! Lived in Wuhstah in the mid 80s. First son born there.
Dorchester has three consonants in a row. The others don’t.
There is nothing a billionwhore wants more than another billion … or two … or three …
If they can turn the whole of public education into a wholly-owned private industry with the power to tax its consumers, well, don’t think they aren’t already well on the way to that goal.
that most damaging truth: the billionaire ends up competing with other billionaires simply to prove they have more billions
Yes, it begins as a professional athlete sometimes says, “I’m having so much fun, I’d play for nothing.” Bill Gates, the joy of co-founding Microsoft.
Busy, they don’t notice their bank account beginning to swell. I’m getting rich., I’m getting richer. I’m getting wealthy. Hey, so is Jeff Bezos.
The human competitive spirit kicks in. I can accumulate more wealth than he does.
Uncontrollable greed comes next. I can be the richest man on earth.
Bill Gates was taught by his mother at a very young age to consider himself a worthless loser if he lost a competition, no matter how small, like a sibling race to the front door from the garage. It’s a common mentality among megalomaniacs, not at all sane, but common. It gets worse when they compete against each other for bragging rights at the yacht clubs. One might say the malady of hyper-competitiveness is the billionaires’ common core.
a very nice play on words: the billionaires’ common core
Looks like he became what his mother warned him about because he lost to Diane Ravitch (even though he’s too egotistical to ever recognize it)
Loser!
The Fog Lifter
The billyanaire was beaten
By lady with a blog
Who managed to defeat him
By dissipating fog
SDP,
I don’t know if you ever saw this article by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, which was an interview with Bill Gates, published in November 2010.
The comment about me and Gates gave me a hearty laugh.
https://www.newsweek.com/education-top-priority-gates-70045
Title: “Education Is Top Priority for Gates”
Alter wrote:
Gates hardly has all the answers: he spent $2 billion a decade ago breaking up big high schools into smaller ones and didn’t get the results he’d hoped for. Today, he’s too enamored of handheld devices for tracking student performance. They could end up as just another expensive, high-tech gimmick. But you’ve got to give Gates credit for devoting so much of his brain and fortune to this challenge. His biggest adversary now is Diane Ravitch, a jaundiced former Education Department official under George H.W. Bush, who changed sides in the debate and now attacks Gates-funded programs in books and articles. Ravitch, the Whittaker Chambers of school reform, gives intellectual heft to the National Education Association’s campaign to discredit even superb charter schools and trash intriguing reform ideas that may threaten its power.
I did a fist-pump when I read that. He considered me his “biggest adversary”! I, armed only with a computer, he armed with billions and an adoring media.
In the past 11 years, Bill Gates has continued to wreak damage on American public schools and to demoralize teachers with his wacky, ill-considered ideas.
Bill Gates is very very very rich.
But he is a LOSER.
“I, armed only with a computer, he armed with billions and an adoring media.”
In fairness, Diane, Gates paid for that adoring media, while you got your followers the old fashioned way: you earned them.
“Billioncare$”
The billionaires have billioncare$
And target$ in their sights
The public schools with public jewel$
Are worth a billion fight$
Fences and Gates
Fences and Gates
Are all they need
To seal our rates
And feed their greed
Seal our fates
Good fences make good neighbors. Gates-ed communities are fenced in, however — not good fences. Data make poor fences.
Fences , Gates and Guns
Fences Gates and guns
Are all they really need
And ammunition (tons)
To fortify their greed
The Gates are always barred
Except to pass a servant
Who has a special card
With cameras observant
And bots patrol the grounds
With guns and laser beams
And ammunition rounds
An army, so it seems
Make that
“spots patrol the grounds”
It’s kind of humorous.
The CEO of Boston Dynamics, the maker of Spot the robotic dog, got very upset when a group of artists made the exhibit called Spots Rampage.
He claims he doesn’t want his robots used for killing
And yet they sell their robots to the military — only for humane purposes, of course. Delivering tea and biscuits to the troops on the battlefield?
They make another robot, Atlas, that looks — and performs — like something out of a Terminator movie.
I bet the military generals are quite literally drooling over that one.
If we don’t see Atlas on the battlefield in the not do distant future, I will eat my computer tablet.
Spot Spotting
If spotted by a Spot
You note a laser dot
You’ll know that you are caught
And friendly IT is not
His bite is worse than bark
And Spot makes not a sound
And sees you in the dark
But laser says “You’re found”.
Looks like Boston Dynamics may not be selling so many Spots to the military after Spots Rampage
Spot now has a spotted performance history.
It can’t even battle with a bunch of dead statues.
Looks like a worthless piece of junk to me.
https://sports.yahoo.com/spot-rampage-art-project-ends-194634458.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMqrotAllSq9H9tPGiLiGHZ3SEY1SaOpH8rtu2JLIvJ6aR8RdWlfg1gnF3XERAizrGjvK5ri-ls3_ePGNwiDU0L0EOjfucs11jSKhw90qy-lvHh_rufViASrfwhekO9yJNHJNKkKVyCqPUW296GlOyz1gGc_wh18rMK6rAc9HzfG
It also makes me wonder about the truth of the videos of robodancing.
How many video takes of the robots keeling over did they have to reject before they got bits that they could piece together for the final video?
Dishonest sales hype?
I would not doubt it.
See Spot fall.
Fall spot fall.
See Spot twitch.
Twitch Spot, twitch
The Roomba robocleaner doesn’t break when it bumps into stuff.
And it only costs $250, vs $75,000 for Spot the robodog.
Democrats continue to introduce legislation to attempt to require disclosure of dark money. They started in 2010 with the Disclose Act. The latest version called “For the People Act” that has been introduced is an attempt to control foreign money flooding into political campaigns. The trouble with the Democrats is they offer lots of spin, but very little movement forward.https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/01/for-the-people-act-democrats
posted at OEN https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Maurice-Cunningham-How-Bi-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Agenda_Diane-Ravitch_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-210227-111.html with 2 comments taken from your blog.
I wonder if the Walthon chapter schools are “anti -woke.”
Most people are experts at schooling. After all almost everyone went to school and at least half of them never were student of the month even once. And…of course, if you are a billionaire, you must be right!
When you’re rich, YOU really think you know
It might be too many words for the right wing……but fans of newly-rich media pundits need to be told that the first amendment is too complex to be employed to fill what is needed with a couple of words.
Wow! I thought right-wingers were the only resentful, angry polemicists. I guess this former teacher, charter supporter with no Dark Money to spend, but who believes weaknesses in our education system are a part of the mentality that spawned Trump and January 6 is just an ignorant pawn of Walmart.
The ed weaknesses to which you refer, are they responsible for Trump’s support among American men like Rush Limbaugh, Steve Bannon, Bill Donahue of the Catholic League, Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus (former legislative aide to Jesse Helms), etc.? There’s a demographic that is desperate to preserve its entitlement.
Walton heirs, Bill Gates and other vulture philanthropists use politicians who pander to the disenfranchised to further their goal of Walmart shelves filled with for-profit digital schools-in-a-box. Predatory capitalists embrace opportunities to further bankrupt Main Street and to exploit the middle class and poor.
Actually, this “average parent” is not an “ignorant pawn” of Walmart. She is very clever. She has monetized her position and hauls in about $400,000 a year.
While she gets interviews with local and national media (NYT) as she decries lazy, overpaid, teachers and their unions.
We don’t hear much about Amway’s co-founder whose daughter is politically active. Barb Van Andel-Gaby lives in Georgia where she homeschooled her 6 kids. The Guardian reported she gave campaign funds to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Guardian’s bio for Barb reports she is chair of the board of the Koch’s Heritage Foundation.
Small world- Betsy’s appointment as ed secretary clears up any question that Charles Koch got the President he wanted- Trump.
Barb’s married to Richard Gaby, CEO of the Peters Island Resort in the British Virgin Islands. The wrath of God devastated the island in the form of Hurricane Irma in 2017.
Richard Gaby provided financing for the campaign for charter schools in Georgia.
And, as easily predicted, there are links to opposition to same-sex marriage.