Don't be fooled by Rauner's finger pointing

Private sector employees who lost their 401(k) retirement money to the economic collapse of '08 were rightfully outraged when it became clear this money was pillaged by the greedy and insidious suits on Wall Street. Now, Bruce Rauner is using the vestiges of that outrage to call for the constitutionally guaranteed pensions of public workers to be summarily stripped of those guarantees and to be sacrificially offered up to those same ravenous and thieving Wall Street mercenaries, who escaped prosecution for their role in the economic collapse.

Rauner's argument is that private employees lost their retirement funds, so why shouldn't public employees also lose theirs? That's fair, right?

Some private employees are buying into this specious logic. Rauner's position doesn't at all help those in the private sector who lost their futures to get them back. His position merely appeases the primal need of those who were hurt in the collapse to exact revenge on someone. Instead of that "someone" being crooks on Wall Street, Rauner has pointed the finger at public service workers, who do not have the safety net of Social Security.

Rauner accomplishes three feats with his pension privatization stance: 1) He deflects blame away from the financial gurus on Wall Street. 2) He magically places that blame onto the shoulders of public service workers. 3) All the while, he slyly recruits votes for himself from middle-class, private workers who will be unwittingly hurt by Rauner's overall vision, but who will gladly cast a vote for him anyway because he offers to quench their justifiable blood-thirst over their lost 401(k)s.

Don't be fooled. If you're a lower- or middle-class private employee, think again before casting a knee-jerk vote for Rauner. Ask yourself not how he will hurt others, but how will he possibly help you?

Mike Fanella

Arlington Heights