Personal Aside: Jack Franks Has the Right Idea—Zero-Based Budgeting for the State…More Vacillation and Timidity at the USCCB but What’s New?...Finally A Chicago Institutional Showboat Gets His Comeuppance.

Jack Franks.

I have no idea, really, whether State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) will run for the Democratic nomination for governor—but I know this: After an hour being interviewed on my WLS-AM show by me and Russ Stewart, I have the clear idea that this young man has the answer to solving many of our state fiscal problems by installing…if he were governor…zero-based budgeting. Plus he has the guts to implement it without being rolled by the legislature’s Big Wheels.

The only other guy who has the guts to push this would be Ron Gidwitz if he were to run for the Republican nomination. No nonsense stuff. The other candidates on both sides may not be tough enough to impose their will although I think if he wants to, Tom Cross could. The others strike me as public relations pushovers.

Be Not Afraid? Don’t Tell the USCCB.

Bob Novak has the report. A meeting between leaders of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the mitred and crosiered panjandrums who sit in the marble palace in Washington and play UN security council…I mean those pillars of Jello...were set to meet with Sen. John McCain but got cold feet. Francis Cardinal George as head man was to be the host but lo and behold the highly paid p. r. staff got worried that somehow…just somehow..,.the meeting could be misinterpreted as putting the mitered ones in the Republican corner.

And since the highly-paid staffer is a former Jimmy Carter aide (natch) by the name of John Carr, his view was taken as gospel by the uneasy ones who wear the cardinal red to represent the blood they are expected to shed if their courage is challenged. Rather it represents the blood they sweated in fear they will seem partisan—horrors!-- to the cause of a party whose platform and leadership support pro-life in contradistinction to the other party whose platform and performance emphatically does not. So the patsies caved and the meeting was called off at the USCCB’s request. The response was like Elmer Fudd: what-what-whatever you say, Bob. In case you didn’t know, the marble palace is swarming with ex-Dem bureaucrats who as adroit staffers run the joint…much like the Chicago archdiocese where the chancellor was Eddie Vrdolyak’s best precinct captain.

Why the worry? You see one archbishop, Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn got worried and set Carr and the mitered nervous Nellies twittering. Of course Archbishop DiMarzio has no reluctance to share a news conference platform with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Dem Assemblyman Vito Lopez and…of yes…ACORN..,.“to raise awareness” (get that) of the mortgage crisis. Nobody was aware of the crisis until DiMarzio and Schumer tied up together wherein DiMarzio postulated a new right. Yes, a new right. “Housing is a basic human right, not a luxury.”

Oh, I see. Meaning more subsidization by public funds, obviously. Any thought that Catholic bishops through their bureaucratic organization should feel no pressure against meeting with both McCain and Obama was misplaced. The entire outfit should be abolished as Anne Burke believes. At a great saving of money with Carr going back to the DNC where his heart is. And thus DiMarzio wouldn’t have his megaphone as…ahem…chief of domestic policies for the marble palace habitués.

Finally.

For this I’m indebted to one of Jim Bowman’s many readers of Blithe Spirit, the Blog. Finally a major city institution said they had enough with a showboat who has violated the law. Who is that? Fr. Michael Pfleger who has been arrested numberless times and who has threatened a legit gun shop owner with death and being dragged out of his legitimate business “like a rat?” No, you see fear and trembling in the archdiocese with shaky mitres and crosiers could barely muster a suspension which will be over this week. They who can’t muster up the guts to threaten to strip the Catholic designation from DePaul obviously allow Pfleger to run amok with a wrist slap and anyone else on the Left who feels rebellious. Authenticists beware, however. They’re hauled down to 1555 and given hell.

The institution with courage is the one which confronted running back Cedric Benson whose job was waived by the Chicago Bears last week two days after he was arrested for the second time in five weeks.

“Cedric displayed a pattern of behavior we will not tolerate,” said general manager Jerry Angelo. “Everyone in this organization is held accountable for their actions.” Unlike the archdiocese. “Those who fail to understand the importance of `team’ will not play for the Chicago Bears.”

Bowman’s reader commented: “Sounds simple enough, Cardinal George.”