AFT members paid for Weingarten’s book. She kept the royalties

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten complains that writing her newly released book “almost killed” her. But based on AFT’s own financial records, it’s the union members who suffered the actual injury.Hyperbolically titled, “Why Fascists Fear Teachers,” the book was published last September by an imprint of Penguin Random House and represents Weingarten’s first literary effort. It opens by name-dropping Adolf Hitler three words in, spends its early pages comparing the Nazi occupation of Norway to the current state of American education, and argues that anyone who disagrees with the author’s vision for public schools is, in some meaningful sense, a fascist.

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Weingarten insists her point is “not to label people,” and she’s certainly entitled to her opinion. But just as a matter of full disclosure, it might put things in perspective if readers understood that the money spent to produce and market her jeremiad, all of it, was appropriated from the union’s coffers.

Freedom Foundation researcher Maxford Nelsen combed through the AFT’s most recent Form LM-2 — the annual financial disclosure unions file with the U.S. Department of Labor — and uncovered a detailed accounting of how member dues were spent producing a book that doesn’t even address workplace representation, let alone improve the circumstances of the workers whose hard-earned dues made it possible.