How much stuff hit the fan? Lots.

Including:

• Illinois drivers will be left with the second highest total gas tax burden??in the nation as lawmakers voted to double the state’s??gas tax to 38 cents from 19 cents a gallon. This would??cost the average driver about $100 more per year. Additional??fee increases include those on??car registrations,??electric car registrations, motor homes, parking garages and diesel fuel.
• The budget relies on a number of gimmicks such as fund sweeping, overly optimistic assumptions that may not materialize, and one-time revenue sources from areas such as sports gambling licenses
• Lawmakers filled the budget with millions in wasteful spending for items such as decorative streetlights, construction for parks and gazebos, and exposing ???youngsters to the game of golf.???

Not to mention:

A proposal by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi to reform the crooked and broken Cook County method for assessing commercial buildings failed after an??onslaught against it by special interests.

With governor one of theirs, the ruling party runs with it . . .

Something there is (in Wisconsin) that doesn’t like the world, or has a new way of showing it does like the world, enough to put all chips on living in or near it as something good for all concerned. (Something like that.)

As other religious communities face declining vocations and the need to downsize as a result, the Wisconsin Cistercians attribute their growing membership to young women seeking to live radically for God in a religious vocation, together with the community’s simple, centuries-old silent life of prayer and manual work. In another part of the Madison Diocese, set in the countryside where weather extremes can sometimes feel penitential, the community plans to build their new monastery that incorporates beauty, Cistercian architectural principles and modern environmental practices.

All in for prayer and the simple life for these ladies.

City where do-goodism caused a lot of trouble.

A capsule explanation that has to be one of the best of the many reasons that for making the switch:

A Democrat by birth, Thomas became more conservative in adulthood as reality taught him that dreams of perfecting human society always run smack into human nature.??????

Yesss!

Main target the demon gentrification,

[Ald. Roberto] Maldonado [new chair of caucus] identifies gentrification as the biggest threat facing Latinos in Chicago. ???We are being pushed out at a very fast pace,??? Maldonado said.[Biggest threat? Neither gangs nor crime nor bad schools?] On the Northwest Side, homes in the Puerto Rican stronghold of Humboldt Park are selling for over $1 million dollars as homeowners flip three-flats into single family homes. Wicker Park and Logan Square, once Hispanic strongholds, are now majority white.

And this threatens Hispanic incumbents with loss of elections?

On the Southwest Side, Pilsen has become a nationally recognized neighborhood. [There’s your problem, loss of
anonymity!] That has created a real estate boom [stop it! now!] that???s now spreading to adjacent historically Mexican working class neighborhoods.

???Some of our communities are being completely gentrified,??? Maldonado said. ???We need to stop that, we need to slow it down.??? [Which? Stop it or slow it down! Hey, it’s political
speechmaking.]

Ah socialism.

But wait. Neighborhoods are changing? Egad. As if it’s not probably the oldest internal migration pattern in the city’s history. But this time it’s bad, says the head of the Latino Caucus, flexing its muscles in this brave new world that has come upon us. [It’s
our moment, says Ald. Andre Vasquez of the 40th.]

Wow. people are making money out of building new and better housing or rehabbing the old to make them newer and better. We can’t have that. There oughta be a law. Rent control? Not mentioned these days. It drove NYC’s housing shortages sky high, to provide one example.

Nope. Now it’s government-mandated affordable housing, worthy of immediate close scrutiny because it interferes with the free market and like many such programs makes matter worse, as argued in this 2016 LA Times opinion piece. And discussed frequently at this site.

All in all, if an alderman says he loves to give you things, check it out.

Clearly a socialist ploy.

Not kidding, btw.

Let them get high.

(Apologies to Marie Antoinette, who never said let her subjects eat cake, but most think she did.)

Well gosh, we knew that. Has looked to Benedict for guidance from the start.

Gulp.

. . . Touching.

What happens if you challenge a dictator pope:

This week John Rist, who had been conducting scholarly research at the Patristic Institute Augustinianum, learned that he had suddenly become persona non grata at the venerable Roman institution. He was given neither warning nor formal notice; he learned of his new status only when he was unable to gain access to the parking lot.

John Rist is a world-class scholar, noted for decades of outstanding contributions to the history of philosophy. Among his academic credentials are an honorary doctorate from the Pontifical Institute of the Holy Cross and a chaired professorship at the Catholic University of America. He had been, until this week, a visiting professor at the Augustinianum.

What did Rist do, to prompt the Augustinianum to banish him? He signed the open letter charging the Pope with heresy.

The writer concludes:

The crude treatment of John Rist—which the professor rightly described as “grotesque discourtesy”—highlights a disturbing trend in Rome. Call it the new ultramontanism: the aggressive attitude of the Pope’s overeager defenders, who treat criticism of the Pontiff as a far more serious offense than attacks on the Catholic faith.

All the pope’s men do this.