I spoke to Peter Mercier a Catholic Musician about his album Catholic Heart at the 2024 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference at the DCU Center Worcester MA
You can buy the Album at Amazon here
Archive for March, 2024
Voices of the 2024 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Peter Mercier Catholic Musician
Posted: March 19, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, special eventsTags: 2024 catholic men's conference, catholic, catholic music, have fedora will travel, music, Peter Mercier, wqph radio 89.3 fm
Pennsylvania: Democrats can’t pay the bills
Posted: March 19, 2024 by chrisharper in UncategorizedTags: 2024 election, datechguy's magnificent seven, Pennsylvania governor
By Christopher Harper
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, faces a fundamental problem: the state doesn’t have enough money to pay for programs he promised in his campaign.
The choice is obvious, either reduce the budget or raise taxes. But he wants to avoid making the tough calls. Instead, he wants to spend $3.5 billion to stabilize transit systems, fund a K-12 education overhaul, and expand the state’s economic development programs.
Pennsylvania has what’s known as a structural deficit. The state’s annual costs, such as paying public servants and providing health care to people who can’t afford it, exceed its yearly tax revenue.
Unlike the federal government, Pennsylvania cannot go into debt to cover its operating expenses. The state constitution prohibits the commonwealth from taking on debt except in a few specific scenarios, such as disaster relief.
Spotlight, an independent news operation, notes that the conundrum will not go away soon. “If Pennsylvania had to rely solely on the tax revenue the Shapiro administration projects to bring in over the next few years, it wouldn’t be able to cover the tab,” the news organization said recently.
The issue affects Pennsylvania’s local governments, which would have to pick up much of the tab. Perhaps more important, the state, which hovers between Democrats and Republicans in presidential contests, may put the Democrats in a bad light in the 2024 election, particularly in the Trump-Biden contest and a U.S. Senate race.
“If you’re serving a larger population with the same number of workers, or if you have costs that are going up and your budget stays flat, often that means that effectively public services have been reduced,” said Josh Goodman, a researcher with the Pew Charitable Trusts.
When the state refuses to increase funding for education and other services, the costs are passed on to counties, school districts, and nonprofits that rely on state dollars, said William Glasgall, senior director of public finance at Volcker Alliance, a good-government group.
“Even without new initiatives, you have rising costs,” Glasgall said. “And if the projection of revenues does not match that, you have a structural deficit.”
Pennsylvania’s failure to address its structural deficit may also have severe consequences if it needs to borrow money. Glasgall said lenders could increase the cost. Even now, the state has one of the worst fiscal ratings in the nation.
Pennsylvania’s divided executive and legislative branches have used various techniques that experts say hide the real cost of government. These include accounting gimmicks, delaying payments to state contractors, leaving job openings unfilled, or flat funding key programs to make the numbers work.
If the Democrats can’t offer their constituencies the usual goodies, the party may face a significant backlash. Alternatively, a tax increase would also not sit well with both parties.
Voices of the 2024 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Rosalie Berquist Mass Citizens for Life
Posted: March 18, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, special eventsTags: 2024 catholic men's conference, abortion, have fedora will travel, mass citizens for life, massachusetts, wqph radio 89.3 fm
This weekend I attended the 2024 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference now in it’s 33rd year at the WQPH 89.3 FM table collecting prayer requests and getting so many names for the April Indulgence Calendar that I was able to fill half of May’s
I also conducted several interviews you can find most on Rumble and I will be posting them here this week but today we’re going to start with the one interview I did that was audio only. Rosalie Berquist of Mass Citizens for life
It’s a tough task promoting life in a state that celebrates the culture of death but as Christ said, it’s the sick who need a physician.
Chicago Teachers Union molding Soviet-style Young Pioneers
Posted: March 17, 2024 by John Ruberry in education, election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politicsTags: brandon johnson, chicagdo, chicago public schools, chicago teachers union, communism, Da Magnificent Seven, datechguy's magnificent seven, history, homeless, homelessness, leftists, lenin, soviet union, unions, USSR
Mrs. Marathon Pundit, third from left, at Young Pioneers event in Sece, Latvia, in 1976.
By John Ruberry
On Friday, the far-left Chicago Teachers Union organized a rally for voting age Chicago Public School students, during school hours, the “Student Power Forum.”
They might as well have called it the Young Pioneers march.
The event was co-sponsored by Bring Chicago Home, which is working to pass a referendum, also called Bring Chicago Home, that will increase Chicago’s real estate transaction tax on properties selling for more than $1 million.
Election day in Illinois is Tuesday.
Proponents call Bring Chicago Home a “mansion tax,” but many retail storefronts and apartment buildings, and probably all skyscrapers, are worth more than that. I call it a jobs killer and a rent raiser. Funds from the tax hike, if voters approve it, will aid the homeless. No specifics are given as to how the homeless will benefit from Bring Chicago Home.
Of course, Chicago’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, enthusiastically supports Bring Chicago Home. Johnson, who prior to his election as mayor, had no executive experience, but he’s a former CPS teacher and a longtime Chicago Teachers Union organizer.
The rally, argues the center-right Illinois Policy Institute, likely violates CPS ethics rules, and the group quickly filed an ethics complaint. CTU called that move “racist.”
Now that Johnson is mayor, it’s difficult to ascertain a difference between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union. Johnson, besides being a former CTU employee, appointed six of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education. Johnson is a mentor of CTU president Stacey Davis Gates–she has a son attending a Catholic high school–and she recently suggested, as collective bargaining between the two “separate” entities could end up costing taxpayers $50 billion. I hope she was joking.
CPS and CTU will be negotiating against itself. Let’s call them CPS/CTU.
Let’s return to the Young Pioneers. Regular readers here and my own blog know that Mrs. Marathon Pundit was born in Latvia when it was part of the Soviet Union. Enrollment in the Young Pioneers was mandatory after children turned nine. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Vladimir Lenin’s wife, was a driving force in the creation of the Young Pioneers. Similar groups were founded in most of the other communist states.
Krupskaya recognized that young minds are malleable and vulnerable to manipulation. So does the Chicago Teachers Union.
Some of the Young Pioneers activities were similar to what the Girl Scouts enjoy, Mrs. Marathon Pundit told me, but there was some communist indoctrination that she had to endure.
These are the four leftist education Rs: Reading, writing, arithmetic, and radicalism.
CPS/CTU is heading in that direction in regard to kids.
As for the first three Rs, CPS/CTU is doing a wretched job in addressing them. In both reading and mathematics, only about 20 percent of CPS seniors perform at grade level.
There is some good news. Chicago conservatives–yes, they exist–found some surprising allies in opposing CPS/CTU pulling voting age students out of school to attend the Bring Chicago Home rally. Former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson, as well as journalists Eric Zorn and Laura Washington–all liberals–have decried the move.
As I mentioned earlier, there are no specifics on how Bring Chicago home revenue will be spent, assuming the referendum passes. But the Chicago Teachers Union has an idea. According to a leaked document obtained by the Illinois Policy Institute, CTU will be making a not-so-surpising demand as part of its focus on housing, which it says, “begins now with Bring Chicago Home on March 19.” At the top of the CTU list is this shakedown, “Financial assistance for CTU members to live & work in the city.”
Are there homeless CPS/CTU teachers?
Chicago’s high school “Young Pioneers” are what Lenin called “useful idiots.”
There could be five Rs in Chicago schools soon, rent assistance for teachers would be the fifth.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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