Last month (in this post) I blogged about Doug Henwood's great interview with Jane McAlevey and her comments about billionaire Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and his relentless campaign against labor. Since then, Rauner has been handed some stinging defeats, which is great news.
First, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the state's 2013 pension overhaul (under the previous, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn) is unconstitutional. From the NYT piece (Illinois Supreme Court Rejects Lawmakers’ Pension Overhaul):
All seven members of the state’s highest court found that a pension overhaul lawmakers had agreed to almost a year and a half ago violated the Illinois Constitution. The changes would have curtailed future cost-of-living adjustments for workers, raised the age of retirement for some and put a cap on pensions for those with the highest salaries. But under the state Constitution, benefits promised as part of a pension system for public workers “shall not be diminished or impaired.”
“Crisis is not an excuse to abandon the rule of law,” Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier wrote in an opinion. “It is a summons to defend it.”
So even in our plutocracy, if the state constitution says, clear as day, that you can't do something, then you can't do it. Here's the article on this from the Tribune: Illinois Supreme Court rules landmark pension law unconstitutional.
Our friends at the Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG) rightly view this as an opportunity to push for the "Lasalle Tax," a Chicagoans call the transaction tax, aka Tobin tax, applied to Chicago trading. Here's CPEG's Ron Baiman (via the CPEG email list):
D&Shere
I don't think there is any viable solution left that could raise the multi-billions needed to dig the state and city out of their financial holes other than a LaSalle Street tax (see: http://www.cpegonline.org/2015/03/22/restoring-chicagos-fiscal-and-economic-health-a-cpeg-report-on-options-for-the-citys-next-mayor/ ). Again, the link above explains in great detail why an LST would not cause the traders or exchanges (or their switches) to move out of state and would be perfectly legal (New York State already has a local FTT - though it unfortunately gets rebated back). The LST would be the least painful, most practical, most politically popular, and fairest and most beneficial in terms of economic justice and restructuring the overall economy, of any option that I think of.
The other great defeat for Rauner's anti-labor agenda was that right-to-work, which Rauner was trying to impose on public workers at the county level, was rejected by the Illinois house. From the Sun-Times: Right-to-work goes down in flames in Illinois House with zero yes votes.