Washington Post

For anyone who needed to gauge just how far the demonization of teachers unions has gone, the final episode last spring of TV's "Law and Order" -- the real one, not the new L.A. knock-off -- was instructive. Bracketed by the customary soundtrack "cha-chungs," the story concerned a loony former substitute teacher bent on blowing up the high school where he'd subbed. But the real heavy was a weaselly union lawyer who blocked the cops' access to the teacher's whereabouts, on the grounds of -- well, something like Marx's labor theory of value, or Walter Reuther's argument for co-determination at General Motors; it wasn't entirely clear which. Said weaselly lawyer crumbled, of course, when confronted with Sam Waterston's righteous rectitude.

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On Saturday, the season's lone march on Washington not convened by a television personality will unfold in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. Sponsored by One Nation Working Together -- a coalition of black, Latino, feminist, gay and lesbian civil rights groups; unions; and environmental organizations -- the march is clearly intended as a counterweight to Glenn Beck's religious-right extravaganza of August. It also has become something between a counterpoint and a complement to the Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert comedic shriek scheduled for late October.

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There are un-Americans among us. They don't share our values, yet they control the most powerful offices in the land. We must rid ourselves of this fifth-column menace.

That's pretty much the Republican and Tea Party line these days. When a right-wing talk show host interviewing Sharron Angle, now the Republican senatorial candidate in Nevada, told her last year that "we have domestic enemies" and that some of them worked within "the walls of the Senate and the Congress," Angle chirped up, "I think you're right."

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This week, committees on both sides of Capitol Hill  will plumb the conundrum of Chinese currency manipulation. The conundrum isn't that -- or why -- China is manipulating its currency: By undervaluing it, China is systematically able to underprice its exports, putting American (and other nations') manufacturing at a significant disadvantage. The conundrum is why the hell the United States isn't doing anything about it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will march up to the Capitol to explain the administration's position, which, thanks to increasing pressure for action, may be growing tougher. There are certainly plenty of senators and congressmen -- and Main Street Americans -- who'd like to see the White House place some tariffs on the underpriced Chinese imports. If the administration doesn't act, Congress may just consider mandating some tariffs on its own.

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On Labor Day 2010, the state of America's workers is appalling.

Millions have lost their jobs. Millions have had their lives put on hold or thrown into reverse.

Granted, it's a global recession. The state of the world's workers -- at least in the advanced democracies -- should be equivalently appalling. But it's not. The Great Recession has taken a far greater toll on our nation's workers than on workers in similar countries, even those whose economies have dipped more steeply than ours.

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Of all the groups in the Democratic orbit, it is labor that has assumed the most demanding role in this year's midterm elections: keeping the white working class from flooding into the Republican column.

"When our canvassers call on our members on their doorsteps, they hear Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly in the background," says Dan Heck, who heads a massive union-sponsored program in Ohio devoted to persuading its members to vote this November for candidates who would mightily displease Beck and O'Reilly.

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