Why is it that an old, retired man out in the boondocks of eastern Kentucky can see these things, but the credentialed media just can’t put the stories together?

• More than 20 Fayette County Public Schools bus routes were canceled for Friday morning: August 27, 2021
• Fayette delays, cancels more school bus routes as driver shortage persists: August 19, 2021
  The district currently has vacancies for approximately 25 school bus drivers and 30 school bus monitors.
• Bus driver shortages are latest challenge hitting US schools: August 22, 2021
• Fayette school cafeterias down 104 positions Thursday; Central Office staff volunteering: August 27, 2021.
  The Fayette school cafeteria worker shortage is so significant that central office administrative employees have volunteered to get a food handler’s permit and work as substitutes.

  Currently, the district has 57 openings for food service staff, which is compounded by absences due to long-term medical leave, illness and COVID-related issues. On Friday for example, the district had 104 vacant food service positions, said spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall. The labor shortage hitting the food-service industry across the nation and state has also impacted school districts.

These things are all related, though the local media don’t seem to want to tell people that. Thanks to a tweet from Heather Long, I found this story:

Ford CEO: Up to 20% of factory workers are out on some days

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN Business | Wednesday, August 25, 2021 | Updated: 9:50 AM ET

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California (CNN)Face masks are required again in major US auto factories and, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley, that has some workers deciding not to show up for work. In some factories, absentee rates can exceed 20%, he said in an interview with CNN Business.

“When a fifth of your workforce isn’t coming in, in a manufacturing operation where everyone has their job and you don’t know who’s going to be missing every day, man, it’s really challenging,” Farley said.

General Motors GM: (%), Ford F: (%) and Stellantis STLA: (%), the company that makes Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler vehicles, agreed with the United Auto Workers union in early August to begin requiring masks in their factories again. That mandate has contributed to the absentee problem, Farley said.

“The economics of staying out of work are getting more attractive during the summer,” he said. “It’s people that are apprehensive. It’s people who say, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask this week.’ It’s a variety of things.”

Spokespeople for GM, Stellantis and Toyota, which was not party to the UAW agreement but also now requires masks in its US facilities, would not share information about absentee rates in their factories.

There’s more at the original, but it boils down to one thing: even at United Auto Workers’ wages, Americans don’t like to be controlled. And CEO Jim Farley said the quiet part — at least, kept quiet by the media — out loud: people don’t want to be muzzled.

This is why Kentucky voters gave Republican state legislative candidates such a huge advantage, as they campaigned against Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) COVID restrictions, and this is why Pennsylvania voters passed a constitutional amendment limiting Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) executive authority, and this is why school boards across Pennsylvania — Governor Wolf asked local school boards to issue mask mandates, but 415 out of 474 school districts declined — and Kentucky — two-thirds of districts voted against them — decided to keep masks optional.

But the credentialed media won’t put 2 + 2 together and get 4, because they don’t want to get 4. Philadelphia instituted a city-wide indoor mask mandate two weeks ago, but now The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that enforcement is very spotty, if it exists at all.

Since Philadelphia’s new mask mandate took effect two weeks ago, at least 102 complaints have been filed through the city’s 311 line about businesses not complying.

But city officials can’t say how many violations have been found, warnings have been issued or even the number of complaints it investigated. They say they don’t keep count, and that any inspection reports regarding mask compliance end up funneled into its cumbersome, often tough-to-navigate restaurant inspection database, ostensibly alongside complaints about cockroaches, filthy restrooms and freon leaks in walk-in freezers.

Business owners at times have chafed at the pandemic restrictions over the last 19 months, but enforcement of the mask mandate is mostly the same as last year. Merchants and companies are largely responsible for enforcing it within their premises, with relatively little oversight or tracking. (Last summer, city officials said they had completed a few thousand inspections and ordered seven restaurants to temporarily close for not complying, but later stopped tracking those numbers.)

Jabari Jones, president of the West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, said it’s unfair for businesses to be held accountable for customers failing to wear masks, and he’s heard from many business owners who say they have “kind of shrugged off” the latest rules.

“There’s just a growing indifference toward some of these mandates,” he said, “because it’s like, ‘Dude, how am I supposed to catch up with all this stuff if you keep changing the rules without any notice or advance conversation with the business community?’”

There’s more at the original, but the point is simple: a lot of people are resisting mask mandates, and even a very blue city like Philadelphia — Joe Biden won 81.44% of the vote there — is seeing the public resist. It is democracy in action, people voting with their bare faces against the orders Our Betters.

The Lexington Herald-Leader will never do the investigative work which would tell us that those food service and bus driver positions are going unfilled because potential applicants do not want to wear face masks, or be subject to mandatory vaccination orders, but that’s certainly part of the problem. The credentialed media, which continually tells us how vital they are to democracy, are not willing to dig deeply into the facts on an issue on which they have already come down firmly on one side.