Mark Knows It All

Of all the words in the English language that I have learned to fear and despise, the phrase that sends chills up and down my spine the most is "new and improved."   The new part is probably right, at least partially, but the improved is open to question.   It usually translates to confusion, work, and money.   This is especially true of the computer geeks at Google, You Tube and Facebook, along with all of my stock programs.   Those are particularly aggravating because I actually pay a monthly fee for some of these digital age gems. What is wrong with these people?   Do they take delight in terrorizing hundreds of millions of people by making them figure out how to get a program or site to do what it used to before they made it better?   Case in point is Google, the most used search engine in the world.   Google does everything for you now but go to the bathroom, and it can probably give a print out for that too.   I think it can actually predict when you will belch.   It t

The other night I was browsing through some choral music selections I could recommend as possible songs for my community chorus next year. I came across one of my favorites. It is called Seasons of Love from the award winning Broadway musical Rent. I always thought it was a catchy tune, but never paid much attention to the words. So I listened, and it hit home. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes How do you measure, measure a year; In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. How do you measure a year in the life? How about love? Measure in love! Seasons of love! How will you measure this past year? We have many standards. I have a friend who measures how far he has pedaled his bike. I have another friend that looks at golf scores. I might look at how much money I made or what professional accomplishments I have achieved. Others look at how their favorite sports team performed. We all have different standard

I'm not really a Christmas person. I have come to the conclusion that Christmas is the one holiday in the year that the cards are stacked against you. Too much money, too much food, too much work, too much decorating, and too much depression as different people come to different ends of impossible trying to achieve the ideal. It's tough, and I have been at the fuzzy end of the lollipop one too many times. But.... If there ever was a season for a joyful noise, Christmas is it. And those of us who live in the Mahoning Valley do our fair share of noise making. So put aside the Christmas drudgery and go buy some gift cards, forget the diet, stop the decorating, and screw unpleasant and difficult family and friends. Sample what this area has to offer. It has an embarrassment of riches. We are so fortunate to have access to some of the best events in Ohio at a level of excellence those of us who live here don't truly appreciate. It doesn't get any better than right here. T

There are 350 million people living in the United States. So for all of you folks who are afraid of offending someone….GET OVER IT!! With 350 million people, I can guarantee you that no matter what you say, no matter what you do, or whatever your good intentions, you will offend somebody. Even if it is just getting out of bed in the morning, you will offend somebody. And therein lays the fallacy of a politically correct Christmas. What is wrong with people? The facts are simple. Accroding to ABC news, 83% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Although we don’t have an official religion, Christianity and the Judeo/Christian ethic permeate our society. It is the basis of our consumer society. The financial success or failure of much of our economy rests on the last five weeks of the year. “Holiday” shoppers aren’t shopping for the hell of it…they are shopping for Christmas. So can someone please tell me why the liberal types have to bastardize Christmas with the fear of offend

Last week I had the privilege of attending a seminar on social media and mass marketing. It was sponsored by the local Power of the Arts and the Wean Foundation and ostensibly aimed at non-profits. It was moderated by Tyler Clark of Tyler Clark consulting and held at the Youngstown Business Incubator. I went expecting a ho-hum seminar, more curious about the Incubator than the seminar topic. Was I wrong!!! The topic was fascinating, and was probably the most informative 1 1/2 hours I have spent over the last several years. Mr. Clark did an outstanding job in presenting difficult material. To often with tech savvy folks, the assumption is the person to whom they are talking is the know much more than they actually know to start out hence losing everybody's attention within the first five minutes. Mr. Clark was patient with those in attendance who obviously had only a limited grasp of how these things work, and answered more technical questions in a concise manner. The subject mat

During the next weeks you will notice a change in Western Reserve America and Mark Knows It All . We have been working to establish Western Reserve America Group as a 501-(C)-3 non-profit corporation established for the purpose of promoting conservative education in Northeast Ohio. Donations to Western Reserve America will be tax deductible. The stated purpose is as follows: 1) Establish an endowed chair for Constitutional Studies at a local university. 2) Develop a supplemental curriculum for secondary schools emphasizing conservative political thought. 3) Develop in-service materials for educators demonstrating the importance of teaching personal responsibility in the classroom. 4) Establish scholarship funds for conservative high school students who demonstrate excellence in governmental studies and wish to pursue a degree in journalism or education. A major fund raising campaign will begin mid-January upon completion of the paperwork. In order to comply with IRS standards, w

I am going to be taking some time off next week, so I want to wish all of my readers a Happy Thanksgiving a little early. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It caps a beautiful fall season. It is an eating holiday, so there is no muss or fuss with gifts and cards outside of the preparation of one of the best meals of the year. I’m not a turkey fan, but I love everything else that comes with the dinner package… and my wife makes the best stuffing ever. But mostly Thanksgiving is the only time of the year, at least for me, for some quiet contemplation. We can give thanks to our God for all of the blessings of this life, and hopefully in the one to come. Thanksgiving forces us to look at the good things in our lives, centering on family, friends, health and freedom. And let’s not overlook monetary issues. Even in the hardest of times, as a country we are still better off than most of the rest of the world in our standard of living and way of life. We face challenges. But w

Last week, the Mahoning Valley was shocked to learn that out of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the United States, it has the highest rate of poverty in the country. The Brookings Institute, who compiles data such as this, stated that Youngstown has the nation’s “highest concentration” of poverty. Concentrated Poverty is defined as a population in which 40% live with an income at or below the poverty level, approximately $22,000.00/family of four. 49.7% of the City of Youngstown’s population lives below the poverty level. By comparison, Cleveland has 42% and Columbus is around 27%. Well…what do you with this? The study says this is still a residual result from the loss of the steel mills 35 years ago. I suppose that's part of it. But statistics don’t always tell the story. In addition to being listed as the city with the most poverty, over the past 1 ½ years Youngstown has been listed as the best city in the country in which to start a business, and hold onto your hats, one of t

Issue 2 is a referendum on what is popularly known Ohio Senate Bill 5 (SB 5). To RETAIN Senate Bill 5, you vote YES. To RESCIND Senate Bill 5, you vote NO. This has been a hotly contested issue, so let’s take a look at what Senate Bill 5 does. This is the real poop. I report. You decide. (Did I say that?) 1) Issue 2/Senate Bill 5 has nothing to do with balancing the state budget in Ohio.  It has everything to do with local government and state run institutions. It applies only to unionized public employees. It does not cut veteran benefits. It does not cut senior citizen benefits. It does not apply to the 135,000 nurses in Ohio except if they work in a state run hospital. Mostly these nurses work at Ohio State University. There are approximately 2500 of them and their contract already includes most of what is in SB 5 already. 2) Senate Bill 5 first and foremost prohibits Ohio’s unionized public employees from striking. That was the rule in Ohio up until 20 years or so ago, and is the

The theme for this week’s Business Week magazine was sports promotion. It tackled everything from winning teams that were “bought” (Steinbrenner’s Yankees to DeBartolo, Jr.’s 49ers) to advertising debacles such as Citigroup buying naming rights for a new stadium as the government was bailing it out…hence the name Bailout Field!! Interesting stuff. But more germane to my life was a series of articles preceding the sports section about IT, or for us mere mortals, Information Technology. The first article dealt with “cloud” computing. That means most computer functions and storage are handled through offsite third party servers. This acts as a money saver for big business because they can buy bare bones hardware that only needs as much power and disc space to allow it to connect to these remote servers where the hard core stuff takes place. More efficiency means more bottom line revenue. Makes sense, I think! Cloud computing is also moving down to “retail” clients like you and me who m

There has been a lot of buzz about Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax reform plan, and rightfully so. Of all the candidates, he has articulated with specificity the problem with taxes in America and why our job situation is so dismal. He has addressed the first pillar of my three pillar plan to bring America back to prosperity: Tax Reform / Energy-EPA Reform / China Trade Reform. So let’s look at what the pizza dude has to say. It is a beautiful thing in its simplicity. He proposes to reduce the corporate tax rate to a flat 9%; a flat personal tax rate of 9%; and a national sales tax of 9%. He has stumbled on the obvious. A tax system in which 47% of working Americans pay no tax while complaining while complaining about the 53% that do is not going to work. Everybody should pay something, even if it is nominal. He also realizes that the corporate tax rate in the United States is the highest in the world at 35%. The norm is 25%. Couple that with all of the regulations, high wages, and EPA crap c

Don’t get me wrong. Steve Jobs will go down in history as one of the great American inventors along with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. He took what those two American originals gave to us and stretched the telephone and the radio and recording business into directions unimaginable just twenty years ago. In my lifetime I have gone from 78’s to 45’s to 33 1/3rd rpm’s to reel to reel tape recorders to smaller reel to reel tape recorders to eight tracks to cassettes to transistor radios to CD’s to illegal Napster to legal Napster to burning my own CD’s to I-Pods, I-Tunes and MP3’s to my tunes downloaded to my smartphone. That doesn’t even count Apple Computers…the gold standard by which all computers have historically been measured. Although I have never entered the Apple universe, by both accident and design, Steve Jobs walks with me every day when I am on my PC or laptop or net book or pad downloading music. Books and movies are just a click away as my house is now wired for

Local Democratic elected officials are in a pickle. The Mahoning Valley is obviously a bed of union activism, but not as much as it used to be. Outside of GM and the public employees unions, there isn’t a whole lot going on. As the area shifts to being a center of natural gas and oil production, the question arises as to when the area will actually shift Republican. Forbes Magazine mentioned the wealth that will be pouring into Eastern Ohio over the next ten years, but it is from a product which is not only frowned upon by today’s Democratic Party, it is downright demonized. The stated intent of Barack Obama and Democrats like him is to put the fossil fuel business out of business. An article in the Youngstown Vindicator unintentionally demonstrated the dilemma facing local Democrats. Jason Wilson, son of former Congressman Charlie Wilson, currently represents the Ohio 30th Senate District in Columbus. But he has been redistricted out as a result of Ohio’s loss of population. Unlike

Today marks the autumnal equinox. It’s the first day of fall. For SAD sufferers like myself, it means a rapid descent to long nights and short days. On the other hand, in just ten weeks, it starts to stay light later again. But that is a column for another time. New Years Day may be January 1st, but for those of us who are teachers or are married to teachers (like moi), the real start of the new year is the beginning of September. Labor Day marks the end of summer and beginning of a new season of everything. There are new television shows. There is the new theater season. There is the new NFL and NCAA football season. School starts anew, and we once again ready ourselves for a “new year” based on how we live rather than a day on the calendar. For those of us involved with politics, it marks the beginning of the active political season, especially as we approach a presidential election year. Debates are all over the place. Television commercials begin in earnest for candidates and iss

The Federal Reserve reached the bottom of its bag of tricks today when it announced it was going to extend the term of its short term debt in the hopes of driving down almost non-existent interest rates even lower. Here is a little secret fellows. Come closer and I will whisper it in your ear. IT WON’T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. Low interest rates are not the problem. The problem is nobody will loan money. Business is slowly grinding to a halt. Obama’s incendiary speech on the debt and jobs this past week is the real problem. One can’t tell whether he doesn’t have a clue, a firm possibility, or completely understands and just doesn’t care, the more probable possibility. Until this guy is out of office, nothing will get better because nobody trusts him anymore. He is a liar, and will say anything to advance his ideological agenda of income redistribution, solving global warming (also income redistribution), and global government. That is his agenda. When one views increasing dependence on g

In my Mark Knows It All column, I mostly try to do non-political or semi-political pieces. This time I can’t hold back any longer. The Chicago Tribune ran an editorial today saying Obama should not run for re-election. Partial tongue in cheek notwithstanding, I agree, especially after the speech Obama gave relating to spending cuts and tax increases. Does this guy have a clue? His plan incorporates billions of dollars in spending, and claims it is paid for through “cuts”. Those cuts mostly stem from walking away from the Iraq and Afghanistan (already accounted for in budger calculations), and lower interest rates. Oh yes, he wants to cut reimbursments to nursing homes, doctors and pharma companies. Now there's a plan. And those war savings? Smoke and mirrors. Our troops are leaving, but are being replaced by private contractors paid for and trained by us, the taxpayers. Even more irritating is his so called Buffett tax plan. Warren Buffett, who is worth approximately $55 billion

So it’s 1980 and Ronald Reagan is running against Jimmy Carter for President. In Youngstown, the steel industry has collapsed, and the area has lost tens of thousands of jobs in a very short period of time. If the American economy was bad, it was catastrophic here in the Mahoning Valley. In the midst of the campaign, Reagan decided to make a pit stop in our lovely valley. He visited St. Rose Church in Girard, and visited several of the closed down steel mills. I got a phone call from some of my Republican friends and asked if I would like to drive some of Reagan's staffers in the motorcade. I was thrilled to death. Reagan had been one of my political heroes for years. Then came the edict. At the time I was driving an Oldsmobile 98, a pretty big car that I bought used from my parents. My Dad was driving a two seat sports car, and my mother had this big, freakin’ white Lincoln Continental. The word from the Reagan people was we were to drive them in nothing more than a Chevy, Ford,

In April of 2001 I was having dinner with my family at Smaldino’s Restaurant on Market Street Extension. All of a sudden a horrible feeling of foreboding came over me. My wife looked at me and asked what was wrong. I said there was something wrong, something was wrong in the universe. The morose went straight to my core. I had never felt anything like it my life, and it lasted for several days. I never felt anything like that again…until the morning of September 11. My wife had started back to school leaving for work around 7:00. As is my habit, I would leave for work at the same time. It was a glorious morning with a crystal blue sky and bright sunshine. As I made the left turn from Lockwood Blvd to 224 that feeling of foreboding came over me again, only this time it was stronger. It was so strong I had to pull into a parking lot along the road in order to regain my composure. Something was wrong. As the feeling partially subsided, I finished my drive to work. We had a dispute in th