Rauner prepares for political battle, so why not McCarthy on his team?

A part of me can’t help but speculate these days if Garry McCarthy, the one-time Chicago Police superintendent who appears to be in desperate need of help in gaining stable employment, will wind up finding a niche within the Bruce Rauner administration.
 

RAUNER: Preparing for political warfare?

For it seems Rauner is shaking up his own staff to be prepared for the upcoming election cycle – one in which he’s going to be willing to demonize everybody around him and claim that only his anti-union ways of doing things will resolve the state’s problems.

I COULDN’T HELP but notice the reports by the Chicago Sun-Times about McCarthy, who hasn’t had a real job since he was dismissed as police superintendent back in 2015.

He’s done a couple of consulting-type things and has been in the rumor mill for some significant posts. Which lead to the current rumors being spread that he’s contemplating running for mayor come 2019.

Apparently, his distaste for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who let him go, remains to the point where he’d want to challenge him and try to appeal to that segment of Chicago that wants Anybody But Rahm. Or Chuy Garcia, or anybody else whose melanin content level is too high for their taste.

In short, somebody who’s going to claim that the current establishment has to go, and that they’re the man who would bring radical change to the way things are done. Although his vision of radical change would be perceived by some as bringing back a conservative white vision of doing things.

 

RASMUSSEN: His general?

WHICH IS WHY I wonder if there would be a place for McCarthy within a Rauner administration. I’m sure including him on the gubernatorial team in some role would appeal to those people who can’t stand Rahm Emanuel because he’s just so Chicago, just like that Mike Madigan character that Rauner has spent the past few years demonizing!

I’m sure a McCarthy would be willing to come up with less-than-kind things to say about the way things are done in Chicago. He could even claim outsider status, being a former New York cop and former police chief in Newark, N.J., and might even try to claim that the fact he was rejected in Chicago was just further evidence as to our hostility to “reform.”

Which, as defined by Rauner, isn’t really reform. But really just an ideological agenda that he wanted to impose upon us, and is now shocked and appalled to learn that the masses amongst us in Chicago have little interest in accepting.

 

McCARTHY: Could he have a role?

Why am I so willing to believe that Rauner would make such a move whose sole purpose would be to irritate people and to try to benefit his own re-election chances?

IT’S THAT I see the move he made for a new chief of staff. The announcements were amongst my e-mail messages when I woke up Monday morning, where we learned that chief of staff Richard Goldberg has decided to return to the world of foreign policy and national security. Unless you think of Chicago as an alien land that is a threat to the rest of us, he really didn’t fit in here.

He was replaced by Kristina Rasmussen, who was head of the Illinois Policy Institute, an ideologue think tank consisting of people who are very inclined to think of Chicago as alien and threatening to Illinois.

Speculation is that Rasmussen will be toughening up the Rauner staff and setting policy for the remainder of this term so as to push the message that we need to re-elect Bruce Rauner to four more years so as to keep the Madigans and Emanuels from taking over everything we hold dear.

Because that is exactly the kind of thinking we’re going to get – those who want to view our governing process as a battlefield where somebody needs to be conquered.

IT WOULDN’T SURPRISE me to see that a place could be found for McCarthy in such a mentality – and perhaps he could then run for mayor in ’19 with financial help from Rauner; should he manage to get himself “four more years” as part of the Statehouse Scene in Springfield.

The problem, however, is that this kind of thinking merely means we’re going to prolong the sense of stalemate that has come over our government – the mentality that resulted in us going for just over two full fiscal years without a budget and has some people thinking we’d be better off if the stalemate were still ongoing.

 

Rauner fans probably think Charlie really kicked the ball

I kid you not, there are those who are so upset about the solution (which is less than ideal, but keep in mind there is no good solution to our state’s financial mess) that they think we should now be on Day 740, and still counting, without a budget.

Which means that the funny pages “philosopher” Charlie Brown may well have summed it up best with his immortal words, “Oh, Good Grief!”

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Illiana? Not when it comes to smoking

It never fails to amaze me how dissimilar the political mentalities are between Illinois and Indiana – considering that in so many ways the two states ought to be among the most similar in the United States.

DeLUCA: Won't ban bacon double cheeseburger



But then, all we have to do is take into account the concept of banning the smoking of tobacco products in public places and we’ll see that State Line Road really has become a barrier as rigid as those walls that the conservative ideologues dream of erecting at the U.S./Mexico border.

THE ISSUE CAME up this week at both of the Statehouses (Springfield and Indianapolis), but with ridiculously differing results.

Here in Illinois, the state laws that restrict cigarette smoking in public places were enacted a few years ago.

Which led to an effort that came up for a vote on Tuesday on a bill that would create a new kind of state-issued license – one by which taverns could apply for if they wish to permit smoking in their establishments.

Which would mean the state would be able to regulate where people could smoke. It also would allow those taverns who are so desperate to have smokers (rather than people who would prefer not to inhale the exhaust from tobacco products) to be able to accommodate those customers.

THE MEASURE ACTUALLY made it through a legislative committee before getting shot down by an overwhelming vote (82 to 30) by the Illinois House of Representatives.

Critics called the measure a way to try to chip chunks out of the smoking ban that was enacted in Illinois to look out for the health concerns not only of the public, but also of the people who are employed in such taverns and would be subjected to breathing in cigarette smoke while working.

BROWN: Bill shredded like burger

Although it strikes me as ironic that the legislator who sponsored this particular measure is state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Chicago Heights, whose legislative district includes such suburbs as Lynwood and Sauk Village – the Cook County towns that border up against Indiana.

Perhaps it is the intermingling of Illinoisans and Hoosiers that takes place on a daily basis at the southeastern corner of the Chicago area that causes an Indiana-style bill to get introduced into the Illinois political mix.

EVEN DELUCA’S DEFENSE that this is supposedly a matter of personal choice to smoke (which ignores the personal choice of those who don’t want to be subjected to the smoke) sounds Hoosier-ish – although I’m sure some will think his sarcastic line in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the next ban being on the “bacon double cheeseburger” is clever.

We may even have people at the Statehouse in Indianapolis thinking similar thoughts these days, as the issue is being considered there – as well.

Only in Indiana, the political pundits are claiming that state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, is somehow tainted by his proximity to Chicago and Illinois. Brown has been the leading proponent for Indiana enacting something resembling a public smoking ban, and it was his bill earlier this week that got chopped up into hamburger (perhaps for those bacon double cheeseburgers).

For his bill got significantly amended by the Indiana state Senate, which was expected to approve their weakened version. Proponents of a ban are hopeful that a legislative committee can reconcile it with an Indiana House version and come up with something tougher.

BUT AS AMENDED, Indiana would ban smoking in public – EXCEPT in taverns, charity gambling sites, nursing homes, veterans homes, retirement centers, group homes and mental health facilities.

When one considers that the Indiana version of a ban already exempted places like riverboat casinos, cigar and hookah bars, tobacco shops and private clubs, the real mystery will be to figure out just where an Indiana smoking ban would actually apply.

And yes, Indiana officials also voted to approve a measure making it clear that local governments do NOT have the authority to impose stricter laws within their own municipal boundaries.

It will be interesting to see how this issue is resolved in Indiana by the time the state Legislature is through with it for this year. For it seems that tobacco rules on the east side of State Line Road.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if we could get an exodus of Hoosiers wishing to look out for their health – similar to those small businesses near the border that have moved into Indiana so they could get away with paying a couple of percentage points less in taxes to the state.

I’d say that would be a good trade, since if all the smokers were congregated in Indiana, their long-term health prognosis would be such that they’d wither away in numbers.

Although on a more serious note, I should say that the people who are most eager for their legal right to smoke in public remind me too much of the childhood bullies who terrorized the schoolyard to get their way. Now, they’ve got some money to afford a pack-or-two habit that they think they have some legal right to inflict on the rest of us.

Which makes me all the more glad I live to the west of State Line Road.

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