American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten recently announced a bit of supposedly good news: Confidence in organized labor is still strong!
“Americans have lost confidence in government, religion, but not unions!” she boasted on social media.
Well, that’s quite a thing! Who would’ve guessed such good fortune and favorable public opinion for organized labor, especially considering it was organized labor that fought the hardest to keep schools closed during the coronavirus pandemic?
To back her claim, Weingarten shared a news article published recently by Insider. The story’s headline reads: “Americans have lost confidence in everything from organized religion to Congress, but their faith in unions is staying strong.”
The article, which is based on new Gallup polling data, found the public is not “very confident in everything, with confidence overall across 14 institutions that Gallup surveys on every year at a record low.”
The report adds, “From 2021 to 2022, people who said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the presidency fell by 15%, and confidence in the Supreme Court also fell by 11%. Even organized religion took a 6% hit.”
This is where we get to the data underlying Weingarten’s online announcement (emphasis added): “Of the 16 institutions that Gallup polled on, just one didn’t see confidence drop: Organized labor. In 2021, 28% of respondents said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in organized labor. That was true in 2022 as well.”
Wait. What? Only a measly 28% of respondents said they had either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized labor in 2021 and 2022? Twenty-eight percent? Twenty-eight! This places organized labor far behind organized religion, the medical system, and the police!
This is hardly a metric worth celebrating. The public’s already terribly low opinion of organized labor remains terribly low. Hip-hip-hooray? Weingarten and everyone associated with big labor should be doing everything they can to bury the Insider report, not promote it!
Speaking of which, what is happening at Insider? The article’s headline claimed specifically that the public’s “faith in unions is staying strong.” How does Insider define the word “strong”? Because most people would say 28% doesn’t clear the bar. In Weingarten’s defense, she is a partisan clown. Touting the report as good news, obviously hoping no one will bother to double-check the underlying data, is to be expected from a hack of her stature and position.
But what’s Insider’s excuse? How can it claim confidence in organized labor is “staying strong” when “staying strong” means circling the drain at 28%?
Whoops
Fact-checkers strike again!
CNN’s Tom Foreman claimed last week that Texas’s new anti-abortion law criminalizes abortion even in cases in which the mother’s life is at risk.
This is not true.
“It is now a punishable felony in Texas, which could be life in prison if somebody performs an abortion to save the life of a pregnant person,” Foreman, whose online bio boasts he is an award-winning fact-checker who “leads the network’s fact checking initiative,” said during a live broadcast.
“The argument there is that this is just not a decision they’re going to accept in the court,” he added. “Now, there are concerns there because life in prison, plus a $100,000 civil fine, potentially, even some of the county attorneys general, those groups have started to say we’re not sure that this really will work or this can really be done this way. Bottom line is, it’s stepping up in all the states that are stopping abortions.”
The Texas law, HB 1280, clearly states in its exceptions section that abortions for “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy” are permissible under the new measure.
To CNN anchor Poppy Harlow’s credit, and much to the embarrassment of the network’s award-winning fact-checker, she corrected the record later.
“This morning, abortion laws take effect in three states: Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee,” Harlow said later that same morning, “effectively banning the procedure with few exceptions. In Texas, abortions are now illegal unless the mother is at risk of death or bodily impairment.”
Ah, well. Nevertheless! Award-winning fact-checkers can’t always be bothered to check the facts!
No fair!
The New York Times published a 1,700-plus-word news report last week whose core thesis can be summed up thus: It’s bad when Republicans do it.
“How a Storied Phrase Became a Partisan Battleground,” reads the article’s headline. Its subhead adds: “A touchstone of political and social discourse, the nearly 100-year-old phrase ‘the American dream,’ is being repurposed — critics say distorted — particularly by Republicans of color.”
No, really.
The entire article hinges on the idea that it’s troublesome — bad even! — when Republican candidates use the phrase “the American dream” but good and different somehow when Democrats say the exact same thing.
“Politicians have long warned that the American dream was slipping away, a note struck from time to time by former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats,” writes New York Times national politics reporter Jazmine Ulloa. “What has changed is that some Republicans now cast the situation more starkly, using the dream-is-in-danger rhetoric as a widespread line of attack, arguing that Democrats have turned patriotism itself into something contentious.”
The newspaper quotes Fordham University political science professor Christina Greer, who, naturally, agrees it’s bad when Republicans say the same thing as Democrats.
“The Republican Party is using it as a dog whistle,” Greer told the New York Times. “They are saying here is the potential of what you can have, if we can exclude others from ‘stealing it’ from you.”
Huh?
The article notes former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and “other Democrats” have used the phrase “the American dream” in the exact same manner as Republicans, warning voters it’s “slipping away”! But it’s bad when Republicans do the same? The article quite literally argues only Democrats can use the phrase “the American dream.” Because it’s bad when Republicans do it. But how is it a “dog whistle” when Republicans deploy the phrase but not when Democrats deploy it in the exact same manner?
It’s different because the New York Times says so.
