Families for Excellent Schools

The new education group Massachusetts Parents United sounds grassroots but it is yet another faux populist proxy for wealthy interests.

The Philanthrocapitalists who spent over $17 million in dark money to buy education policy in Massachusetts in 2016 remain hidden. That can, and should, change.

It's a disturbing fact: when we're talking dark money in Massachusetts politics, we're talking covert money from offshore interests.

Credit: DonnaG, Flickr

The Office of Campaign and Political Finance has the power to force Great Schools Massachusetts and Families for Excellent Schools to come clean about the true source of $16 million in secret cash spent in the charter schools campaign. Massachusetts citizens deserve that day of reckoning.

Twenty million dollars in dark money poured into Massachusetts from New York on Question 2, and all the New Yorkers came away with was a familiar chant.

Will Massachusetts be a democracy or a secret plutocracy? That question doesn't have a ballot number but it is the most important question you'll vote on this year.

Shouldn't voters in a democracy have at a minimum the right to know who is spending millions to influence their votes? Not according the the pro-charters campaign.

Had either the Boston Globe or the governor shown a bit more curiosity about the over $14 million that has already poured into the state on behalf of the yes on 2 campaign, we might know more about who is really behind all those TV ads.

Among the pots of gold exploited by dark money givers to Question 2: the pensions of Massachusetts teachers, and the American taxpayer.

With the release of emails from the Office of Governor Charlie Baker we may be one step closer to identifying the dark money funding the Great Schools Massachusetts campaign.