Mark Knows It All

John McCain is an honorable man, and he will do this country no harm. For that reason, he has my support for President. I cannot say the same thing about Barack Obama. This year, if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee, I may have been tempted to vote for her. John McCain was not my first choice for president, or my second, for that matter. The McCain/Feingold Bill on campaign finance reform was one of the most un-American pieces of legislation I have seen come out of Congress in many years. It is ironic that McCain, himself, is now suffering the consequences of his own folly. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. By promising John McCain that he would accept public campaign financing, then reneging, Barack Obama snookered John McCain at his own game. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is also snookering the American public. A fawning press decided a year ago this is who it wanted to be President. The biasness in the press turned from “wink-wink- nod-nod” into something much more one...

This is reprinted from the Wall Street Journal. It is about as clear an explanation of Obama's tax proposals as I have read. Please note, that under Obama, the number of Americans paying no income tax would rise from 38% to 48%. Do you really think a country can sustain 1/2 its population paying no taxes, being supported by the other half. When it comes to taxes, the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain is arguably as wide as it's been in a presidential race since Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale battled in 1984. Sen. Obama is proposing to raise taxes more than any recent candidate, while Sen. McCain wants to cut them substantially. Most of the campaign debate has been over whose taxes would be raised, and whose cut. Here are the facts: Mr. Obama would roll back the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for taxpayers in the top two brackets, raising the top two marginal rates of income tax to 36% and 39.6% from 33% and 35%. The 33% rate begins to hit this year at incomes of $164,5...

Please visit Mark Knows It All, the web site, by clicking on the link at the top of the adjoining column. On Wednesday morning I watched Fox News, NBC News, and CNN to see how the election is being covered in relations to issues I feel are important. At the top of my list were Joe Biden’s comments from Monday about the possibility of an “international incident” within 6 months of Barack Obama assuming the presidency, should he be elected. Biden said Obama is an unknown factor and will be tested. He made reference to John Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis as an example. Kennedy was an unknown factor, inexperienced, and it showed in an earlier meeting with Krushchev, where the Soviet Premier concluded Kennedy was weak. Even scarier were Biden’s remarks to the Obama donors in attendance that they will have to stand by Obama/Biden as the response to whatever the incident happens to be will be perceived as “wrong,” whatever that means. Biden is right. I wrote several times this past yea...

Please Visit Mark Knows It All, the Web Site, by clicking on the link at the top of the adjoining column. John McCain has run a terrible campaign. He has failed to connect the dots defining Barack Obama’s beliefs and political ideology in ways that the American public can understand. Last night’s debate at least got him off the mark towards that direction, but I suspect it is too little, too late. On the other hand, one never knows. In Bill Clinton’s first campaign for the presidency, the phrase that turned the tide was “It’s the economy, stupid!” This campaign’s icon is Joe, the Plumber, and Obama’s off the cuff comment to him that he wants to “spread the wealth around.” It is giving the voters pause. Here is a blue collar worker who wants to live the dream, and knows that taxes on small businesses will prevent him from achieving that dream. Joe can do the math. No small feat given the state of our public schools. Whose wealth does Obama want to spread around, and to whom? I don’t dou...

To quote the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, America’s chickens are coming home to roost. Use whatever euphemism you want, the events in the nation’s financial markets indicate that the party is finally over. In the late 1990’s, Bill Clinton rode the crest of the computer productivity wave to a national surplus. Contrary to the politicos’ efforts to make you think it was his economic policies that generated the surplus, it was the explosion of productivity resulting from the digital age. Bush came to office as the Clinton boom was slowing down, and presided over a terrorist induced recession, resulting in an easy-money monetary policy and the now collapsing housing boom and resultant financial crisis. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around for the Freddie and Fannie mess, the unintended consequence of the Community Redevelopment Act as amended under Clinton and reinforced under Bush. It required lenders to loan money to nonqualified borrowers in the government’s noble, but now fai...