If you look closely, I really tried to not rant and rave here

Seems that I have done some political ranting lately, but nothing else...so I probably owe you some updates. That said, I don't really feel like I have that much to update you about:-) I feel like I have been busy with a lot of random stuff lately, but nothing of note. This weekend, for example, we have a two year old's birthday party to go to - there will be a bouncie house - and another party after that, and then some random errands that need to get done on Sunday. Throw in a soccer game for Munchkin on Friday that I want to get to, and the whole weekend is pretty full.

The girls have decided that they have no interest in sleeping in their beds all night. LK usually gets up at sometime around 3:30 and comes into our room, demanding that Daddy sleep in the living room with her. She falls right back to sleep, she just wants to sleep on the couch with Daddy:-) I probably find that cuter than he does!

In more humorous news...he started P90X this week, which has led to four days of grunting, moaning and overall achy-ness that is, honestly, kind of amusing. On Wednesday, he stood at the sink trying to shave, only he couldn't reach his hands all the way up to his face without help. Watching him try to sit up in bed is also hilarious...it turns into a kind or groaning, half-roll lurch. It's sexy.

Thankfully, he is lucky to have a willing (and slightly mischievous) masseuse as a wife.

I never wrote about it last week (partially because I have been involved in something at work that is dynamically not all that different), but the teacher's strike in Chicago was a pretty big deal. Big because it involved a lot of teachers and a lot of students, because it involved a Mayor who should be a friend of labor (former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel), and because it covered the key issues facing most school systems.

Of course, I have opinions:-) - teachers shouldn't expect bigger raises than taxpayers are getting; asking people to work more and not expecting them to want to get paid more is kind of silly; teachers should be held more accountable than they generally are, but standardized test scores are not a good way to do it; ...and plenty of others.

But that isn't really my big question. My big question is: why are there public sector unions? I understand all of the economic arguments against labor unions, and some of them are valid, but by and large, I don't see industrial labor unions as inherently evil or anti-competitive. But unions of civil workers...? Whole other story.

Unions, as always, exist to represent workers in the ongoing battle between labor and capital. Capital tends to be concentrated in a few hands, so unions provide a means of concentrating the other great economic input and level the negotiating field.

So where, exactly, do police and fire and teacher's unions fit into this? Specifically, in the ongoing battle of labor and capital, who in this equation is "capital"? If no one profits from the operation of the school, and no one owns the school systems as a commercial enterprise, how can anyone be representing the capital half of that dynamic? And the only thing approximating management are elected officials...officials that the labor interests have the right to hire and fire (just like every other voter.)

Well look there...I am already back to ranting about politics...that was fast...