The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” is cross-posted from HuffPo“
It is easy to get discouraged about the American political scene. Billionaires and big business keep spending absurd amounts in buying up politicians and making sure they win elections. Republicans keep moving to the more and more extreme edges of the right. A lot of Democrats are either bought off by Wall Street, ineffectual, or both. The Supreme Court is as conservative and pro-big business as it has ever been. The media is cynical and all too often in bed with corporate interests. Gridlock reigns over all.
And yet…somehow, some way progressives are breaking through and winning some really important victories. It is like running a marathon while having to go the entire way steeply uphill, yet still winning.
Let’s start with the astonishing concession by Walmart to raise the minimum wage it pays its workers to $9.00 in April and $10.00 next year. Walmart is one of the richest and most powerful corporations in the history of the world. They have ruthlessly squashed every union organizing drive ever mounted against them, and they are happy to buy off government officials around the world whenever they need to. The Walton family, the wealthiest in the world, are for the most part very right wing, supporting politicians and organizations opposed to the minimum wage and to any discussion of economic inequality. And with the Republican party having swept the last election and in control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, they certainly aren’t feeling heat from the government to do more for their workers.
Beyond all that, Walmart’s entire business model has always been about keeping the wages of their workers and the workers of their product suppliers as low as possible, both to keep their costs as low as possible and to drive down wages overall so that more people would need to shop for the low cost goods they offer. Remember how Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers so that they could afford to buy his cars? Walmart’s philosophy has always been a sort of reverse-Fordism- drive down wages so that the only place people can afford to shop is Walmart’s.
The bottom line here is that this wage concession is a huge change in the way they do business. Their ideology and entire business model scream against doing it; their history is to resist any such concession in the ugliest kind of way; their immense power and the electoral trends certainly don’t suggest they would have had to do it. And needless to say, they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their collective corporate hearts. So what gives here? Well, simply put, the 99% are starting to rise up, and it is creating a very big problem for even so powerful a company as Walmart. The incredible organizing work of UFCW, Change to Win, the AFL-CIO, My Walmart, the Corporate Action Network, and the Netroots movement has lit a fire that continues to build. No matter how many times they were slammed down, no matter how many politicians sided with Walmart, no matter how many years Walmart tried to ignore them and brush them aside, the organizers of this movement didn’t give up. And now with the media finally beginning to cover the issues of low wage workers, with so much anger rising that even Republicans are starting to talk about the problems of low wage work, the executives at Walmart saw the writing on the wall. Their brand was taking a beating; their workers were getting more and more feisty. They had to do something to take the pressure off.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t nearly enough. Walmart wages and benefits are still way too low. And if the pressure doesn’t stay on, Walmart will start looking to quietly roll back even these small increases. But this was still an important victory, and it shows what persistent, gutsy, creative organizing can do.
Let me add one final note before moving on to the next big victory: this was done without government’s help. Reporters, pundits, and progressive movement strategists themselves need to be very clear on the fact that the progressive movement’s goal is not a bigger government or the electing of more progressive politicians. Instead, our goal is to improve the lives of everyday folks through collective action. We didn’t get this victory because government passed a new law or regulation, or because politicians pressured them to do something. Government had nothing to do with this victory. We won because progressives and workers built a movement and sustained it through hard times over a long period. Would it be a good thing if government was actively on the side of Walmart’s workers? Hell, yes. But even when they are not, progressive organizing can win improvements in people’s lives. Collective bargaining, civil disobedience, community organizing, consumer boycotts, and online pressure have won major concessions from the powers that be without the help of government many times over the last century, and until government starts being on the side of working people more aggressively again that is how many of our victories will have to be won.

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The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will speak before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, will try to convince lawmakers to scuttle a potential agreement being negotiated between Iran, the U.S. and other world powers.
The agreement is intended is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.
It would gradually eliminate worldwide economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for actions that would prevent the country from using its civilian nuclear program to build a nuclear bomb.
In an unprecedented move, House Speaker John Boehner has invited Netanyahu to address Congress without consulting the president — or the Democratic leadership in Congress. The plan for the speech was hatched by Boehner and the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer — a former Republican political operative.
Boehner apparently hoped to score partisan political points by undercutting support for President Obama and Democrats among pro-Israeli Americans. If he is successful, he will shatter a decades-old tradition of bipartisan support for Israel. That, of course, would be terrible for Israel.
But Boehner, Dermer and Netanyahu also have another, even more destructive goal. They hope to tube the negotiations and prevent the potential agreement with Iran — and with it, the hope that Iran can be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon without a war.
In fact, precisely the same crowd of neocon foreign policy hawks that led America into the tragic War in Iraq is behind the current attempt to launch a war with Iran.
The fact is that if America and the rest of the world cannot negotiate an agreement with Iran that prevents that country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, it will be left with two bad options: either accept a nuclear Iran, or launch another war in the Middle East.
The neocon crowd — including Netanyahu — claims that they want us to impose even tougher sanctions. And they insist that Iran agree to terms that they know would never be accepted by the Tehran government. That’s because they don’t want a negotiated deal; they want the U.S. to launch a military strike against Iran that would effect “regime change.” This is exactly the same line of argument that led the U.S. into the Iraq quagmire.
The Iraq War kicked over the sectarian hornet’s nest in the Middle East and created the conditions that ultimately spawned al-Qaeda in Iraq — which didn’t exist before the U.S. invasion. And al-Qaeda in Iraq subsequently morphed into the Islamic State, which is now terrorizing millions of Iraqis and Syrians.
The War in Iraq killed and maimed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It created millions of refugees, cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars, and sullied America’s reputation around the world.
Finally, the War in Iraq massively strengthened the strategic position of Iran.
Brilliant.
The War in Iraq was the worst foreign policy disaster in half a century. Yet unbelievably, the neocons who promoted it are back — attacking the judgment of the president, who had the wisdom to oppose the Iraq War from the start — and holding themselves out as hard-nosed foreign policy “realists.”

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Emma Roller has some very good news in her National Journal post “Can Democrats Ever Win Back State Legislatures? One group is putting $70 million on it happening in the next five years.”
The bad news is it’s going to take some time. As Roller puts it, “Caring about the 2016 presidential race is so over; now all the cool kids are watching 2020…Since 2008, Democrats have lost control of 30 state legislative chambers–totaling 910 seats–and 11 governorships.” Further,

…Today, Republicans control 68 out of the country’s 99 state legislative chambers–every state has two chambers except for Nebraska. That’s nearly 70 percent of the total. So, how feasible is it for Democrats to regain the seats that they lost, in districts that (they argue) have been tailor-drawn for Republicans’ benefit?.

The better news:

Now, one group–the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee–is striking out with an ambitious goal to win many of those state legislature seats back over the next five years. Back in August, the DLCC launched Advantage 2020, a super PAC devoted to rebuilding Democratic power at the state level with the goal of eventually holding the crayons in 2021, when states will redraw congressional district lines.
It’s a quixotic mission, given that many Republican legislatures redrew the maps in 2011 specifically to ensure their party’s continued electoral victory. Still, with the right combination of timing, recruiting, outreach, funding, and dumb luck, Democrats might actually be able to recoup some of their losses.
…The group projects it will spend $70 million on state-level races over the next five years and plans to focus its efforts on six states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, and Virginia. Those states, which draw the lines for 94 congressional seats, are all Republican-controlled at the state level, yet all favored President Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012.

Dems are hoping that next two presidential elections in combination with favorable demographic winds and the DLCC plan will overpower the Republican’s expected gains in the 2018 midterm elections. Roller adds:

For the DLCC, there is a silver lining to the swell of victory Republicans saw at the state level in 2010: term limits. Lawmakers in three of Advantage 2020’s six target states–Ohio, Michigan, and Florida–are term-limited, meaning that many of the seats will be wide open in five years.

All of the usual caveats apply. But Democrats should be encouraged by what appears to be an enhanced commitment to take the fight to the state legislatures.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Illinois’ new GOP Governor, Bruce Rauner, will personally receive a $750,000 per year tax cut as a result of his decision not to continue the state’s temporary 1.25% income tax surcharge that expired last year.
His taxes were cut by an amount equal to the annual income of 14 families of four making the median income. And remember that after adjusting for inflation, that median income number has not materially increased in about 35 years, since virtually all of the income growth resulting from the massive increase in worker productivity over that period has been siphoned off by speculators like Rauner.
Rauner, who made $61 million in 2013 – or $29,000 per hour – is one of a small group of multi-millionaire speculators who would directly benefit enormously from lower state tax rates. Among them is his friend Ken Griffin, reputedly the wealthiest man in Illinois, who contributed $2.5 million to Rauner’s campaign for Governor – and has also pitched in $10 million to a $20 million campaign war chest that Rauner plans to use to run opponents to members of the Legislature that oppose his policies.
Griffin and his soon-to-be former wife, Anne Dias Griffin, are involved in a high profile multi-million dollar divorce battle. He and Dias are fighting over the control of tens of millions of dollars.
One filing by Dias, quoted by CNBC, gives you a flavor:

Dias said she and their children have come to “enjoy a lifestyle reserved only for the very wealthy,” including houses in Chicago, Aspen, Hawaii, Miami Beach and New York. They also have “unrestricted access” to two private jets “to travel to the aforementioned homes” as well as other destinations.
She said the family has a “large group of staff members assisting the family, including extensive household, security and family office employees,” and their own company that employs staffers, called “Griffin Family Services.”

Dias is asking a million dollars a month — $12 million a year — in child support. That’s right, $12 million per year in child support – you can’t make this stuff up.
Just by way of comparison, remember that a highway worker for the state of Illinois who makes an average income of $49,000 a year laying hot asphalt and filling pot holes, would take about 244 years to make $12 million. But Griffin’s pal, Rauner, says he wants to cut the pay for such workers – claiming they make too much and should be paid something closer to the $39,000 a year he says they make in surrounding states.
None of this seems to bother Rauner one bit, since at the same time he and his friends get that big tax cut, Rauner’s new state budget promises draconian cuts in services that benefit the middle class and the poor.
Rauner proposed six billion dollars in cuts for state spending on universities, health care, local governments and pensions for state employees.
Here are some high points:

• Limiting eligibility for Department of Aging Community Care Programs.
• Cutting health care benefits for homecare workers.
• Slashing funding for the Department of Children and Family Services.
• Eliminating all Department of Children and Family services for youths 18-21.
• Cutting adult dental and podiatry services as well as kidney transplants for undocumented children.
• Eliminating exemptions for drugs for severe mental illness from a state 4-prescription limit.
• Reducing payments to facilities for children on ventilators, supportive living facilities and children with severe mental illness.
• Cutting Medicaid spending by1.5 billion – including735 million in cuts to hospitals serving Medicaid patients.
• Eliminating assistance to families with Hemophilia.
• Freezing intakes on childcare for children over 6.
• Increasing childcare copays for working parents.
• $27.5 million in reductions to community substance abuse programs.
• $82 million reduction to community mental health programs.

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The current criticism of Obama for defining the threat to America as “violent extremism” rather than specifically identifying Islam as the source of violent radicalism has focused renewed attention on the question of the relationship between the religion and the actions of ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
Fareed Zakaria offers an intelligent analysis of the issue in the Washington Post but J. M. Berger, writing in the Brookings Institution Brief, adds a distinct perspective that also deserves attention.
He frames the issue as follows:

A new article about ISIS in The Atlantic has reignited the perennial debate over the relationship between jihadist terrorism and the religion of Islam. The article, by Graeme Wood, repeatedly emphasizes the “Islamic” in Islamic State, calling out what it describes as “well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature.”

Berger argues, however, that the two key characteristics that define ISIS and other Islamic radical groups – a belief in their own superiority and an apocalyptic vision of history — are actually present in extremist groups within many religious and quasi-religious traditions.

…What is the relationship between Christianity and Christian Identity? What does being German mean to Nazi ideology? What about the neo-Nazi movement Golden Dawn, a Greek identity movement heavily influenced by German Nazism? How does Hinduism inform Abhinav Bharat, and how does Abhinav Bharat inform our understanding of Hinduism? The 969 Movement in Myanmar is led by a Buddhist monk, and its very name refers to the Buddha and his teachings. It is very Buddhist. But is its xenophobia very Buddhist?
…Whiteness and white supremacy are, in fact, intertwined, and it was Germany that gave birth to the Nazi movement. Islamic extremists arise from the Muslim world, and there is no question that a variety of conditions in the Muslim world have contributed to the problem.
Understanding whiteness is relevant to understanding white supremacy, just as understanding Islam is relevant to jihadism. And to be sure, religion matters to ISIS. A lot. But the concept of an exclusive identity matters far more, to the point that ISIS will engage in virtually unlimited theological gymnastics to justify it.

Berger argues that, regardless of the particular religion that is pressed into service as an ideological rationale for violent extremism, what unites such movements are two key elements: an exclusionary identity and a millenarian vision of being a chosen group that will survive an apocalyptic disaster

…While radicalization is a multifaceted process, with many dimensions and attendant complexities, the establishment of an exclusionary identity group is a nearly universal characteristic, whether the extremists are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist, and whether the extremists are religious, racial, or nationalist.

… Millenarian sects may (or may not) rely on religious texts as importance sources, but their defining quality, and what makes them dangerous, is an unshakeable belief that history is coming to an end. Millenarian beliefs are often wedded to identity-based extremism through the narrative device of a chosen group that will triumph in an apocalyptic war or survive an apocalyptic disaster. Again, the traits of these groups are remarkably consistent across a variety of belief structures. Their commonality is their Millenarianism, not the theological background from which those End Times beliefs are derived.

Therefore, Berger concludes:

To understand and counter ISIS’s threat and appeal, frame it properly. Identity-based extremism and millenarian apocalyptic cults provide a far more useful framework for understanding ISIS than Islam does.

Reading Sean Sullivan’s “Democrats seek star recruits to try to win back control of the Senate” leaves an impression that Democrats are in fair to good, not great, position in their struggle to win back a senate majority in 2016.
Sullivan argues that the Dems’ “bench” is thin, lacking in exciting candidates. It may be a little early to make that call, but yes, candidates need to be getting in position right quick, raising funds and recruiting campaign personnel.
But Democratic Senate candidates may be poised for creating some excitement nonetheless. The most encouraging thing in Sullivan’s report is that Dems have a number of impressive women considering 2016 candidacies for Senate, including Rep. Tammy Duckworth (IL), Gov. Maggie Hassan (NH), A.G. Kamala Harris (CA) and former Sen. Kay Hagan (NC), who lost her senate seat by just 1.7 percent in 2014. If Hagan passes on the race, Democratic state Treasurer Janet Cowell may take the challenge. Marc Caputo reports at Politico that FL Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is also considering a senate run in 2016.
The Democratic party should be able to leverage some added credibility with women voters if all those candidates run, especially if a woman wins the presidential nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren will also be campaigning in their behalf, rallying new women voters and the Democrats’ progressive base voters.
Twenty women now serve in the U.S. Senate, 14 Democrats and 6 Republicans. If the aforementioned women run and win and other Democratic women senators hold their seats, the new total could be a record 25 women U.S. Senators, including 18 Democrats. There is still a little time for more women to join the fray, but not much. To put the numbers in historical perspective, only 44 women have served as U.S. Senators in American history (the first in was elected 1932).
What is certain is that Democratic women candidates for the presidency and U.S. Senate will likely generate more media coverage and discussion than ever about women in American politics. That can only encourage more women to run for office across the U.S. and showcase the Democratic party’s inclusive image.

The following article is cross-posted from DCorps.
This report makes recommendations based on three distinct research projects executed by Democracy Corps for WVWVAF over the last month, including a national survey of 950 likely voters, focus groups with white working class voters in Tidewater, Virginia, and dial testing and on-line focus groups conducted during the 2015 State of the Union Address.
This multi-pronged wave of research makes very clear that the Democratic presidential majority is back. The Obama coalition arrived intact and Hillary Clinton begins this election cycle with a 6 point lead over Romney – who had not yet withdrawn and was the GOP’s strongest candidate – and 12 points over Bush.
However, that presidential majority is not deep or broad enough to break the Republican hold on Congress and key states. It is not producing wave elections. There are three inter-related reasons for the shortfall:

• Some parts of the RAE could be giving Democrats bigger margins and turning out in bigger numbers, including unmarried women;
• Democratic presidential candidates (including Clinton) are only getting about a third of white working class voters;
• Those who are living with the restructured, new economy are struggling and turned off by elite (and presidential) talk about the great macro economy.

The goal of progressives now is to get more support and engagement from the RAE, including white unmarried women and Millennials, and to broaden support with struggling white working class voters, both men and women: RAE+.

• Understand and identify with the economic challenges that a majority of people are experiencing – even as the elites and perhaps Democratic leaders celebrate the macro economy.
• Target both parts of the Rising American Electorate, especially unmarried women but perhaps also millennials, and parts of the swing electorate, including white working class voters. We know from this research they share a lot.
• The economic agenda must be led by government reform. Target groups are disgusted with politics and government because of the role of big money, perceptions of waste and special interest spending. A reform agenda opens up these targets.
• Champion a middle class economic narrative that seeks rising incomes for all and opportunities for all that make the effort. That narrative is 20 points stronger than the conservative, small government narrative.
• Champion a middle class economic agenda that starts with protecting Social Security and Medicare, reforming government, long term infrastructure investment that creates jobs, help for working mothers, equal pay for women, and making college affordable
• Recognize that white unmarried women and non-college women and men share common feelings about what is happening and what needs to change. They want to protect the existing social safety net of Social Security and Medicare, reform government and help working families.
• Recognize that specific references to helping “working women” or gender-directed issues such as pay equity do not alienate white working class men.

Read the full memo here.

The following article by Bill Scher is cross-posted from Campaign for America’s Future:
Over at Real Clear Politics, I responded to the John Judis essay in National Journal, in which he argues that there is an “Emerging Republican Advantage” that could give the GOP total control of Washington in 2016.
While some have argued that demographic changes will usher in an “enduring Democratic majority,” Judis contends that any gains with people of color voters will be undercut by white workers who – despite the economic populism of the blue-collar and the social liberalism of the office-dwelling – have viewed President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act and Recovery Act as too redistributive, an “expansion of government at their expense.”
I take Judis’ point that these groups have had a long-standing suspicion of government, and that they haven’t been bowled over by Obama’s record to date. But perceptions can change.
Demographics alone were never going to create a generational partisan and ideological recalibration of the country. Performance matters. Republicans discredited themselves under Bush, and have yet to prove they’ve learned any lessons from the debacle. Obama was given the opportunity to show Democrats deserve to be trusted by cleaning up the Republican mess and getting the nation back on track. The question for the public is if Obama passed the test, or should both parties be rendered disappointments.
Judis argues that Obama won’t receive the kind of credit for saving the economy from crisis that Franklin D. Roosevelt earned. But I as detailed at RCP, at this point in FDR’s term, a backlash led to a horrible midterm election that gave a bipartisan conservative majority control of Congress.
Knee-jerk punditry might have presumed that FDR’s ambition to move the country leftward was a bust. But things looked very different in 1940. And Harry Truman’s 1948 victory proved that support for the New Deal went beyond one man.
The public won’t fully render its judgment until the Obama presidency is over. Obama still has two years left, and the economic performance of those two years will greatly impact public perception.
Will white workers still hate the stimulus if the economic recovery it helped spur begins to raise wages, as happened last month? Will they still hate Obamacare if it wins the fight against health cost inflation? As Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald notes, “Health care costs, which for decades were subject to near-crippling inflation, are growing at the slowest rate since 1960. Between March 2011 and April 2014, the Congressional budget Office’s projections for health care spending by the federal government through 2021 dropped by $900 billion. The decline is larger than any deficit reduction package advanced by Republicans in Congress.”
Of course, the campaign for the hearts and minds of white workers, and everyone else, won’t be solely fought on the basis of the past. But past credibility matters in assessing plans for the future. Whatever weaknesses may remain in the Obama record will pale in comparison to the disaster left by the Bush Republicans, a disaster for which they have never taken responsibility, explicitly or implicitly.
Enough white workers grasped that point to return Obama to the White House in 2012. Don’t be surprised if they keep doing it, so long as Republicans refuse to change.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Last fall, Illinois GOP candidate Bruce Rauner spent $63.9 million — $27.3 million of his own money — to buy the right to occupy the Illinois Governor’s mansion.
Now that he’s in office his first moves have confirmed that he is the poster boy for the War on the Middle Class.
Rauner is a hybrid of the worst traits of Mitt Romney and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. In fact, you could say he personally embodies the reason why — even though our economy has grown 77% in the last 35 years — the wages of ordinary Americans have been stagnant or actually declined.
For those who are unfamiliar with Rauner, all you need to know is summed up in one brief story. Early in the GOP primary, Rauner made it clear that he wanted to reduce Illinois’ minimum wage — and at one point even indicated he wanted it abolished entirely. Yet last year Rauner himself made more than $25,000 per hour — fifty-two million dollars per year. That’s right, he made more than an average minimum wage worker makes all year long in less than the first hour of the first day of the year.
Now, by the way, in the face of the overwhelming passage of a referendum calling for an increase in the state minimum wage, Rauner has grudgingly agreed to support an increase — of twenty-five cents per hour per year over seven years. That’s barely more than the rate of inflation.
Much like Romney, Rauner made his money as an investor and speculator. After he bought many of those businesses, he bled them of cash.
His companies moved over 4,000 jobs abroad.
One of Rauner’s companies, Trans Healthcare Inc., owned over 200 nursing homes. The firm had judgments issued against it for over $2 billion for patient neglect. Rather than fix the problems and pay the claims, Rauner’s investment firm sold Trans Healthcare to a company that then declared bankruptcy and dodged paying the claims of the abused residents.
Now that he is governor, Rauner has proposed draconian limits on the collective bargaining rights of unions representing state employees, cutting back on their pay, prohibiting workers from being able to negotiate over wages and benefits, and transferring all future state pension benefits into risky 401(k) plans.
And he has declared war on middle class state employee salaries.
Rauner brazenly claims that state employees’ average wage of $64,000 per year is simply too high. This from a man who makes $64,000 in two and a half hours.
To justify his claims, Rauner argues that many state employees make more than their counterparts in the private sector or surrounding states. For instance, he claims that Illinois state highway workers make $49,000 per year, which he says is more than the $36,000 average paid to state highway workers in five neighboring states.
That’s right, a guy who last year made $25,000 an hour speculating and flying around on a corporate jet, is furious that someone who works 40 hours a week pouring concrete, laying hot asphalt and fixing potholes — serious physical work — makes as much all year as he does in two hours.
Rauner’s first major assault on the middle class was an executive order giving state workers who are covered by labor contracts the choice to benefit from those contracts without paying a “fair share” contribution to support the union that negotiates and administers them.
Rauner — and other anti-union ideologues — claim that workers should not be “forced” to join unions against their will. In fact no one is forced to join a union. The provisions in labor agreements with state unions — in many states — require that after state workers have democratically chosen a bargaining agent, that employees who do not wish to join the union should pay a “fair share” contribution to support the portions of the union’s operations that negotiate and administer the provisions of the labor contract from which they are benefiting.
Note that they are not required to contribute to any of the political activities of the union.
This is the same principle we use at all levels of democratic government. Once an election is held for mayor and the city council, you can’t refuse to pay taxes to support the functions of the government from which you benefit. City government produces what economists refer to a “public goods”. They engage in activities that benefit everyone, even if you don’t “pay” for the products and services. That’s why we have taxes. Otherwise there would be perverse incentive for “free riders” who would benefit but don’t contribute.
The same is true with unions.
Rauner’s actions have nothing to do with giving employees a “choice”. They have everything to do with reducing the resources that are available to unions — which he is determined to destroy.
Since unions — and collective bargaining — are the major weapons every day people have to raise their wages, his assault on unions is a direct attack on the middle class and its future in America.
It’s not just that Rauner drips with hypocrisy. His view of the world is emblematic of the massive difference in perspective between most ordinary Americans and the privileged .01%.
Remember that America is richer today than any other society in human history. Our per-capita GDP increased 77% over the last 35 years while average incomes of ordinary people flat-lined. That happened because virtually all of the increases went into the pockets of the top 1% — guys precisely like Rauner.

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