Look For the Union Libel

 

That's where David F. Brooks was yesterday, too, though he didn't sound quite as much like QAnon as the Senate Republicans do, but with the same child sacrifice theme, in his Times column ("Children Need to Be Back In School Tomorrow"—don't know if he was aware tomorrow was Saturday). In fact, his tack is to explain that the AFT is exactly like QAnon, anti-intellectual:

There’s a wave of anti-intellectualism sweeping America. There are people across the country who deny evidence, invent their own facts and live in their own fantasyland. We saw it in the Republicans who denied the reality of the Biden election victory and we see it now in the teachers unions that are shutting down schools and marring children’s lives.

Which is really kind of libelous, I think, especially if he means that progressive present verb ("are shutting") the way it's usually used in English, and is complaining specifically about approximately one local, the Chicago Teachers Union, which is not currently shutting down anything but rather fighting against Mayor Lightfoot's plan to reopen K-8 schools that were closed 10 months ago by order of Governor Pritzker, and not with the intention of marring children's lives, which I believe most people who have devoted their lives to the not very remunerative occupation of elementary and middle school teaching would not want to do, but in the interest of making the environment safe for themselves, with a more satisfactory testing regime, PPE supplies, adequate ventilation of school buildings, and priority for vaccination for teachers and support staff, much of which the city says it's now ready to do (Lightfoot won't bend on the vaccination, at least outside the hardest-hit zip codes), but that's a genuine matter of dispute:

Labor stuff

300 of the 430 kids at Beckley Elementary qualify for free breakfast and lunch under federal law, and striking teachers are helping to make sure they get fed. Via Today.

The Federalist's David Harsanyi looking for an even bigger audience at National Review Online, à propos Janus vs. AFSCME, the case, for which the Supreme Court just heard oral arguments, involving the union's right to charge workers who are unwilling to join not dues, but a fraction of the dues listed as "agency fees", to cover the collective bargaining from which those workers have benefited, without contributing to the union's political activities, of which the plaintiff disapproves:

Among many significant problems with this arrangement, the most obvious is that it’s an assault on freedom of association. If there is another organization in American life that has a license to compel workers to participate in their nongovernmental organization simply to secure a job, I haven’t heard of it.

The prime bullshit there is that it isn't the union that compels employees to participate in this attenuated way, it's the agreement between the employer and the employees, who have democratically appointed the union to represent them. As a contract it's no different than the managing agent a coop building hires collecting a fee out of your maintenance checks. Or, if the employee status is so special and sacredly different from other relationships, the health insurance plan and if you're lucky the retirement plan your employer forces you to buy. If you're politically opposed to Blue Cross and that's all they've got to offer, you're stuck.