Mark Knows It All

This past weekend some friends of ours asked them to join them at the Mount Carmel Festival at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church. They picked us up, and my buddy took Market Street downtown driving through Youngstown’s South Side, and the Uptown district. It was pitiful. Outside of government buildings, a random well fortified convenience store, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Buildings, it was void of much of anything. Empty storefront was followed by empty storefront. Scary people walked on the sidewalk. Sitting on the stoop of one vacant building was a lady dressed in pink…obviously stoned out of her mind. It was fairly depressing. Looking at this mess, it struck me why I am a conservative. Youngstown has an unemployment rate of about 12%. Right now, it is a little higher than usual, but not by much. Since the mills closed in the late 1970’s, our unemployment rate has always been high. What is disturbing is that many of these folks are not only unemployed, but unemployable. They have b