The ingredients of a bad public culture are hard to pinpoint with precision. But, in the case of the police squad that beat Tyre Nichols to death, the factors include inadequate training and police union collective bargaining agreements that allow experienced officers to avoid the street duty where experience is most needed. Walter Katz at Arnold Ventures has insightful notes on how things go wrong. Here are columns by Mona Charen, Angela McArdle, and Rachel Koning Beals, citing Not Accountable, that describe how unions block any effort to reform police culture.

More broadly, Not Accountable, published last week, seems to have struck a nerve. Reviews by Michael Barone and Mark Pulliam have been widely republished. Observers in the nearly-insolvent state of Illinois see the constitutional flaws as perhaps their only hope. Since Friday’s newsletter, there have been a number of new interviews, excerpts, reviews, and columns, some listed below. The interview by C-SPAN CEO Susan Swain, interspersed with clips showing union officials in action, is worth watching.
 
Perhaps the key takeaway from this commentary is the realization that public unions suffocate any hope of good government. Failing schools can’t get fixed. Abusive police cultures can’t be rebuilt. Public waste is institutionalized in absurd work rules—like burning money. As Steven Malanga in City Journal concludes in his review of Not Accountable: “What government unions have created is unsustainable, and we know what happens to unsustainable things.”
 
We hope you will read the book, and help us spread the word. Political leaders will be reluctant to take on government unions without broad public support.

• In the Daily Beast, Philip Howard makes the liberal case against public unions.

• Howard Husock reviews Not Accountable for the New York Sun.

• Reason magazine runs an excerpt of the book.

• Steven Greenhut interviews Philip for the Pacific Research Institute.