The payoff for helping to undermine organized labor influence in Illinois?

I’m sure some are going to accuse me of being overly cynical. Why can’t I appreciate the honesty of someone fighting for their personal ideals, they’ll say about me.

JANUS: W/ Honest Abe looking over his shouder

Yet I couldn’t help but snicker a bit at the weekend news reports about Mark Janus.

HE’S THE CHILD care specialist with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services who allowed his circumstances on the job to be used by the partisan ideologues who were anxious in filing a court case to try to undermine the influence that organized labor has within Illinois state government.

When the Supreme Court of the United States last month ruled in his favor, it was Janus’ name that got national attention. I’m sure for some people, the name “Janus” is now as big a deal as the names of “Roe” and “Wade.”

As in the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that tossed out all the state laws that considered abortion to be the equivalent of a criminal act, and not a decision that was truly a woman’s personal business.

Janus is a long-time state worker who claims he enjoyed his job. But he also has personal views that make him object to having a labor union being involved in his employment.

HE PARTICULARLY RESENTED the notion that even though he didn’t want to join the union (Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), union dues were deducted from his paycheck to cover the cost of the work the union did in representing his on-the-job rights.

That was the basis of his lawsuit, and the high court has ruled in his favor.

Now, the Illinois Policy Institute has offered Janus a job – one he plans to accept and will begin work at come Aug. 1.

Some will forevermore view "Janus" as a bad word

Which probably benefits Janus, since he’ll now be doing blatant partisan political work (a senior fellow speaking out on behalf of workers’ rights, from the social conservative perspective). He’ll probably be happier that way.

BUT IT REALLY comes across as Janus getting his payoff for helping partisan ideologues undermine organized labor – which many state employees do rely upon to ensure the state doesn’t run roughshod over their concerns.

SHAKMAN: Will Janus name gain similar aura?

For the point of this lawsuit is to spark an effort by which many government employees get swayed (or possibly strong-armed) into thinking they should drop out of the AFSCME labor union.

A significant loss of membership would result in a financial loss if it means the union has less in membership dues to fund its work. Get enough people to go along with such talk, and you could start to have a movement for revoking recognition of the union altogether.

Which is the real goal of the ideologues who engage in such rhetoric. Make those “lazy bums” on the state payroll realize they ought to be grateful anybody bothers to employ them. Even though anyone with sense realizes treating employees with a modicum of respect is the real way to get efficient labor from them.

JANUS, WHO IS now 65, likely wasn’t far from being able to retire. Although I’m sure his financial future is significantly stabilized, what with private sector employment that he gets largely because his name was used as the legal basis for the Janus v. AFSCME lawsuit.

Of course, I’m sure those people who think more highly of organized labor will feel he sold them out, so to speak. But I’m not out to put the “Judas” label on Janus. In fact, I’m fairly sure the state payroll would no longer be a pleasant place for him to be employed in the months and years following his involvement with the lawsuit.

How will AFSCME recover from partisan court ruling?

All I know is that a part of me wonders if there’s any truth to the rhetoric being spewed by AFSCME types saying that not many state workers are looking to quit paying dues, and a significant sum of state workers who hadn’t previously joined the union are now doing so!

Janus’ name is going to be remembered for his partisan action far more than the work he did on behalf of children. It will be interesting to see what kind of taint, in coming decades, that will develop. Or if it develops an aura similar to that of "Shakman" (as in Michael, the attorney/activist who inspired the lawsuits that heavily restrict government hiring for partisan political purposes) which I'm sure Janus thinks is likely.

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McCain, Rauner taking opposite ends on Trump ties – who will prevail?

Who’s to say just what is the appropriate tie that a political person ought to maintain to the doofus whom we, the people of this nation, have given the title of president and commander-in-chief of our military forces?
 

TRUMP: Political millstone, or savior?

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is getting his share of praise these days for being one of a few Republican political people who voted “no” to the latest crazy scheme by which President Donald J. Trump wanted to do away with the health care reform proposal whose biggest drawback was that it was an accomplishment of former President Barack Obama.

YET JUST AS some political operatives are wanting to say that Republicans will now start distancing themselves from the president (the Chicago Tribune went with a front-page story Sunday headlined Republicans rethink their reticence to resist Trump), there are those political people who seem to be making their moves to a hard-right in hopes of ensuring their political future.

Take Gov. Bruce Rauner, whose hard-lined ideologue moves are managing to offend the large segment of Illinois’ voters who live in or near Chicago.

Rauner in recent weeks (ever since losing his two-year fight to pressure the Democrat-led General Assembly into backing his anti-organized labor desires) has canned many of his gubernatorial staffers.

In many cases, they were replaced by people who had spent the past couple of years working for the Illinois Policy Institute – a conservative activist group that was about the only portion of the Illinois electorate who thinks Rauner was being responsible in putting state government on hold just to try to score a partisan victory.

RAUNER: Soon to engage in Trump talk?

MANY OF THESE Institute types are from the segment of Illinois that gave its support in the 2016 election cycle to Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton for U.S. president. I have no doubt it means many of the people who now will be the basis of Rauner’s voter support for re-election come 2018 will be the kind of people who want to see Rauner move closer to Trump on various points.

Which is a radical change, since Rauner during his two years as governor has gone out of his way to distance himself from the president. He doesn’t come out and criticize him, or praise him, on anything!

Even when Illinois-based interests come out and criticize Trump for his latest nonsensities, Rauner maintains silence – almost like a submarine in wartime goes quiet so as to try to avoid being detected by the enemy's sonar equipment.

McCAIN: Voting his conscience?

But it could turn out that with the Chicago metro population (about two-thirds of the state’s people) potentially turning more and more hostile to Rauner, he’s going to need all the ideologue Trump-ites he can find so as to avoid an Election Day blowout come next November.

WHICH COULD BE just the opposite of McCain, who is now getting the praise of many people who were eager to lambast him back in 2008 when he ran unsuccessfully for president against Obama.

Back in that campaign, McCain made the hard-right adjustments so as to try to get the votes of the conservative ideologues. Particularly with regards to immigration, where he had been a GOP supporter in the past of some serious reform measures but in that campaign backed away from his past talk on those issues.

Now, he’s willing to express some support for serious immigration reform (which excludes anything whose prime focus is to increase the number of deportations from this nation). And he went ahead and took the vote last week that keeps some people (possibly even myself) remaining with some form of health insurance.

There are those who say that the bout of cancer that McCain is coping with these days (he made a special trip to Capitol Hill to be on hand for the negative – from Trump’s perspective – vote) gives the senator the ability to vote his conscience on the issue.

WHILE IT ALSO is leading to many snide comments on the Internet from people whose idea of a sense of humor is to say that McCain can’t die fast enough – on account of him selling out the ideologues on this particular issue. I’m not about to become a McCain apologist. I was offended enough by his reversal back in ’08 on immigration reform that I will forevermore be convinced I made the right choice in backing Obama.

OBAMA: Trump trying to erase his memory

But it was impressive to see that some people were capable of putting aside their politically partisan ties to vote in a way that the bulk of the people wanted. Only the ideologues are all that worked up about repealing the Affordable Care Act.

After all, if it has its flaws, they’re mostly because of the ideologues who have spent years trying to thwart its implementation and who probably deserve the blame for not trying to revamp it into a more formidable policy.

Those ideologues will have to settle for the electoral chances of Rauner in Illinois – who could always wind up victorious if problems arise amongst his Democrat challengers. We’ll have to see whether backing, or backing away from, Trump is the appropriate stance for the future.

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