As my regular reader (Hi, Jeff!) will recall, I often mention how much I enjoy a weekly feature in Colorado Politics, the Out West Roundup. Skillfully collected and edited by ace reporter Ernest Luning, this column reminds us there is more to the American west than, say, just Colorado and California.

In this week’s installment, I found several stories of interest. In our neighbor Utah, Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and a state legislature with GOP super-majorities in both houses signed a bill that effectively outlawed labor unions in the state for many public employees. Now, as a former career military officer, of course I never was in a union, but I come from a family of public-school teachers, and they have all been union members and have been the better for it. In today’s toxic political scene, the GOP is quick to claim unions are somehow greedy and corrupt organizations that make things worse. The bill outlawed unions “serving Utah teachers, firefighters, police officers, transit workers and other public employees will be banned from negotiating on their behalf for better wages and working conditions.”

Those greedy teachers, right? Demanding crazy things like class size limits so they can actually teach kids effectively. But I digress…

There are some professions, such as my beloved Air Force and the other military services, we can likely agree should never have union representation (for the military members, that is. I’m OK with unions for, say, civilian cooks and HVAC repair technicians). And I agree those who act in public safety jobs (think cops and firefighters) should never have a right to strike, even if represented by unions. But the wholesale banning of unions by law is a step too far.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

What have unions ever done for you? Well, if you are a union member, you likely know. But if not, unions, over the years in the United States have given us things like safer workplaces (give Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” a quick reread if you need a reminder what meat packing plants were like before unions. You haven’t found a human toe in your hamburger? Thank a union). Oh, and unions also got us the 8-hour workday, the 40-hour work week, banned child labor, and other things we now take for granted. Do you support things like Social Security and unemployment insurance? Labor unions played a vital role in creating those vital programs.

The Utah law seems primarily aimed at teachers and teachers unions, as they have been among the most active labor organizations in the state. And again, coming from a family of teachers, this new law is an overt attack on a group that does you and your community a great deal of good. Teachers are, in fact, underpaid. And most, like my own daughter, dipped into their own salaries regularly to provide supplies and food to kids who otherwise would be forced to go without. That adds up to roughly $3.24 billion spent by teachers nationally on their students every year. So, it would take more than $3 billion in increased teacher salaries just to make up for their out of pocket spending on their students. I’m not holding my breath on that getting fixed any time soon.

Two other stories in the Roundup were particularly interesting, one in Wyoming and the other in Oklahoma, two profoundly deep-red states. In Oklahoma (as I type that word, I do find myself sounding out the spelling by singing the line from the musical), hard-right Gov. J. Kevin Stitt, who counts himself among the staunchest anti-immigration GOP leaders, has said he will stop a program collecting the immigration status of kids in Oklahoma schools. He wisely said enforcement should focus on those illegal immigrants who commit other crimes, and not on 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds. Wow, that’s some common sense in action.

And in my old state, Wyoming (my first AF duty was as a “finger-on-the-button” guy in nuclear missiles in Wyoming), a state House committee voted by the astonishing score of 8-1 to not ban electronic voting machines. Recall please the Wyoming state Senate and House are 94% and 92% Republican respectively. Talk about your super majorities!

But in spite of that overwhelming majority, the committee members decided to go with actual real-world data rather than a certain deeply paranoid president’s claims about said voting machines. This is a victory of common sense over partisan nonsense, and it comes in a state where Democrats are almost as rare as jackalopes.

And so, dear readers, this week’s Out West Roundup has something for you regardless of which side of the current political chasm you find yourself, a rare thing these days. I was tempted to also write about the diplomatic debacle we saw last week in the Oval Office, but I’m guessing you are pretty tired of hearing about that embarrassing event. I’ll only mention that back when I was on active duty, Vladimir Putin and his kind were considered enemies of democracy. It is a pity our government now aligns with him. But for now, I’ll let that go.

Stay tuned.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.