{"id":24138,"date":"2018-07-20T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T15:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=24138"},"modified":"2018-07-16T05:49:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T12:49:05","slug":"the-janus-case-what-freedoms-all-about-or-at-least-thats-what-they-want-you-to-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=24138","title":{"rendered":"The Janus Case: What Freedom&#8217;s All About. Or At Least That&#8217;s What They Want You To Think."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/richardjnewman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/janus-case-foto.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"338\" height=\"283\" \/>At the end of every academic year, my union hosts a dinner at which a group of faculty, staff, and administration put on a musical show, the main purpose of which is to poke fun at ourselves. It\u2019s a wonderful reminder that we shouldn\u2019t take ourselves so seriously that we forget who we are, why we do the work we do, or why it matters that we are a union\u2014one that just this year celebrated its 50th anniversary. I\u2019ve been at the college for nearly three decades and I&#8217;ve been in every show except one, which I missed because of my wife\u2019s graduation. The script is always original\u2014we base it on the issues we\u2019ve confronted during the year, the national issues that have been impinging on us, and the eternal issues that all teachers and students face\u2014but the songs we sing are spoofs on well-known Broadway melodies, on standards from the American songbook, or popular music.<\/p>\n<p>For the past two years, I have played Donald Trump, and the narrative of our show has been built around the conceit that this best president, with the best ideas, who can make the best deals, and who knows more about everything than anybody else was the best choice to solve the (very real) problems that have been plaguing our college for the past six or seven years. In last year\u2019s show, I sang \u201cI Am The Very Model of a Model College President\u201d\u2014based, of course, on Gilbert and Sullivan\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/zSGWoXDFM64\">I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General<\/a>&#8220;\u2014and this year I sang our version of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/p3Pw-_rnPnU\">Just in Time<\/a>,\u201d by Jule Styne, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, about how I\/Trump arrived just in time to deal with the campus&#8217; most pressing problems. Here\u2019s a montage from this year\u2019s show, in which you can see me briefly in my Trump wig:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Montage from the NCCFT End of Year Cabaret\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YBrLTJ6WGbg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As you might imagine\u2014we are an academic union in an agency-fee state\u2014the then-still-not-decided <a href=\"http:\/\/richardjnewman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scotus-janus-decision.pdf\">Janus decision<\/a> figured prominently in our thoughts this year. In my capacity as union secretary, I\u2019d written five posts about the case for our blog, and so I was charged with figuring out how to work the case into the show. The third post in that series, <a href=\"http:\/\/nccft.org\/2018\/04\/23\/preparing-for-janus-3-what-were-up-against\/#fnref:2\">Preparing for Janus: What We\u2019re Up Against<\/a>, zoomed out to look at the case from a national perspective, and what I learned from researching that post was what I tried to channel as I wrote the monologue that would be spoken by our version of Mark Janus. Now that I\u2019ve read <a href=\"http:\/\/richardjnewman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/scotus-janus-decision.pdf\">the decision itself<\/a>, what I wrote seems to me even more apt than it was when I wrote it.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s satire, of course, which means it\u2019s unabashedly partisan, so it\u2019s not a fully fleshed-out argument; and, despite what my Mark Janus says, Donald Trump actually has very little to do with how the Janus case ended up before the Supreme Court, though Trump has been very useful to the right wing billionaires and ideologues who\u2019ve been working for at least 15 years to make it happen. Still, I thought the monologue worth sharing:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Hello, my name is Mark Janus. Your new president, Donald Trump, has asked me to speak to you about why it\u2019s so important to make Right-to Work the law of the land. President Trump\u2014successful, self-made man that he is\u2014truly has his finger on our nation\u2019s pulse, and he understands why it\u2019s important for working men and women to be able to find jobs, regardless of whether they get paid fairly, whether their working conditions are safe, whether they can get fired for no other reason than slapping away their boss\u2019 hand when he\u2014or she; have to be careful not to be sexist\u2014started massaging the wrong inner thigh under the table at the company dinner no other employees were invited to\u2026truly, you have no idea how lucky you are to have as your college president a man who really gets it, who will make sure that stuff like fair pay and fair treatment don\u2019t get in the way of your right to work.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>So why did he ask me to come here to speak with you? After all, I\u2019m just an average guy from Illinois. Well, I\u2019m also the plaintiff in that Supreme Court case you\u2019ve been hearing so much about. The one where the Court\u2019s going to decide once and for all whether or not average people like us can be forced to pay a union for services that union provides us. I\u2019ll give you an example. I work for the Department of Health Care and Family Services in Illinois, and I\u2019m represented by AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. They negotiated a fair contract. I get paid pretty well for what I do; I have a good benefits package; a path for promotion if I want to take it; a retirement plan. The contract also helps guarantee that my workload stays reasonable, that I have recourse if I\u2019m treated unfairly; and I stand fully behind my right to all of that, and to the union\u2019s role in making sure that contract isn\u2019t violated\u2026and you know what? So does my legal team, and those wonderful Koch brothers, and all those other conservative organizations, who are paying for my legal team. In fact, I don\u2019t know a single person on my side who doesn\u2019t say, \u201cSure, if there are enough people who want to form a union, they should do so; and if they want to go ahead and negotiate a fair contract for everyone in the bargaining unit, then, hell yes, they should go ahead and do just that. If it makes them happy, it makes us happy.\u201d We just believe that if they\u2019re the ones who want to be a union, they\u2019re the only ones who should have to pay for being a union. That\u2019s what freedom\u2019s all about, isn\u2019t it? Not having to pay for something when you can get it for free.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Here\u2019s another example. When I was hired, even though I said I didn\u2019t want to join the union, the union still deducted from my salary what it calls a \u201cfair share fee.\u201d Yeah, I know, that money is supposed to compensate them for the work they have to do to negotiate for me, to represent me\u2026but do you know what they then had the nerve to ask me to do? Lobby for a soda tax! Can you believe it? First, what the hell does that have to do with education? More than that, though, they put me in the position of having to say no, of having not to show up for that rally or whatever\u2014because, frankly, I think a soda tax is stupid; if people want to get fat on soft drinks, that\u2019s their business\u2014and putting me in that position was just so unfair! What good are all those benefits, who cares about \u201cthe work they do on my behalf\u201d if they\u2019re going to treat me like that? <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>So that\u2019s why I\u2019m here. Because your President Trump knows my name has become synonymous with the kind of freedom of choice you need to polish the jewel this college is, the kind of freedom on which our great country was founded\u2014though if you study ancient Roman mythology, you also know I was named after Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, and so I am asking you to help me make this the beginning of the end of the unions\u2019 left-wing stranglehold on our nation&#8217;s politics\u2026 (Here, Janus was interrupted by other characters who sang a pro-union song.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At bottom, that&#8217;s what the <a href=\"http:\/\/nccft.org\/2018\/04\/23\/preparing-for-janus-3-what-were-up-against\/#fnref:2\">Janus case was really about<\/a>. Nothing more and nothing less.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the end of every academic year, my union hosts a dinner at which a group of faculty, staff, and administration put on a musical show, the main purpose of which is to poke fun at ourselves. It\u2019s a wonderful &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=24138\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-union-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24140,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24138\/revisions\/24140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}