Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Now that this has hit on The Huffington Post, I find it necessary to inform you all that although there are no fewer than three Mike Antonuccis in this video, none of them is me, or related to me. It is, however, my strangest Antonucci encounter since discovering a family of Antonuccis living on the Via dei Malcontenti in Florence.

Over at Labor Notes, Jane Slaughter pitches the idea that Massachusetts union anger at their national affiliates and Obama led to Coakley’s defeat.

According to those on a January 14 conference call with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, Massachusetts state fed President Bobby Haynes exploded in anger, blaming top union leaders for a terrible health care bill and for losing the Massachusetts election—and thus the Dems’ 60th Senate seat, needed to ensure the health care bill’s passage (and the rest of labor’s agenda, labor law and immigration reform).

Evidently, some unions weren’t too thrilled with the excise tax deal either.

The deal announced by Trumka and his counterparts at Change to Win and the National Education Association would have exempted those in union-negotiated plans and state and local employees from the tax until 2018…. But in the end unions bought extra time for their members at the cost of making themselves look self-interested. The deal will create awkward moments for union health care activists who’ve spent years trying to build broad coalitions.

At the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger discusses an overlooked aspect of the Kennedy legacy – public sector unionism.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy’s order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.

This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers’ National Education Association.

They broke the public’s bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members’ dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.

Henninger also adds this little factoid:

What an irony it is that in the same week the Kennedy labor legacy hit the wall in Massachusetts, the NEA approved a $1 million donation from the union’s contingency fund to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. It is this Kennedy legacy, the public union tax and spend machine, that drove blue Massachusetts into revolt Tuesday.

Where does the Wall Street Journal pick up these gems of information?

Meanwhile, NEA issued a statement congratulating Senator-elect Brown, saying, “We are hopeful that U.S. Senator-elect Brown will continue the tradition of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of making support for public education a top priority.”

I have no idea.

And, I suspect, neither does any of the 250 million people offering commentary this morning who had never heard of Scott Brown or Martha Coakley until last week, nor do the national and state political parties who failed to even contemplate what might happen if Coakley lost.

So I’ll sit and wait for data… such as Dennis Van Roekel re-editing his health care public message.

Click here to read:

1) EIA Exclusive: NEA Loses Members for First Time in 27 Years

2) NEA to Send $1 Million to Kennedy Institute

3) Guam AFT President Resigns Senate Seat

4) Last Week’s Intercepts

5) Quotes of the Week

National Journal asks about Randi Weingarten’s “New Path Forward.”

I look back to old paths left behind.

John Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News moderated a Pennsylvania State Education Association gubernatorial candidate forum over the weekend and provides us with a behind-the-scenes look at how these things always go.

“The candidates agree that education is good,” he writes.

If you prefer candy coating, here’s the PSEA press release.

These days you can invoke the memory of Martin Luther King for all sorts of things: from applying for a concealed weapon permit to brokering a backroom deal with special interest groups.

In a web-posted press release to announce that the 16 million employees represented by unions would be exempt from an excise tax (until 2018) imposed on the other 114 million U.S. employees, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel concluded with this:

I believe it is significant and worth noting that we reach this point of progress with the nation’s celebration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the horizon. He dared to dream big dreams for America – dreams that at the time, many thought impossible. We take this giant step forward toward the dream of health care reform – a dream that has been pursued in this nation for more than 50 years by seven presidents. We move forward in a manner that treats working Americans fairly – they will not be penalized because of gender, age or where they live. I believe all of this would be pleasing to Dr. King.

So today, I challenge us to be as bold and courageous as Dr. King and dream big. We will not stop, we will not turn back – we are firmly committed to harnessing the collective power of labor organizations, representing 16 million working Americans, to work for the passage of health care reform legislation that is fair to working families and moves our nation forward to compete and succeed in the global economy.

However, in the video version of the same statement, all references to Dr. King have been, um, excised.