Mark Knows It All

When my son was deciding where to go to college for undergraduate school, we looked at a number of universities which were offering him scholarship money. Some of these schools were pricey, with tuition pushing the $30,000.00/year range. Of course, the scholarship money would drop the price down to fifteen grand, but geez. He decided to attend Youngstown State because the tuition was substantially cheaper, and the scholarship money went much farther, not to mention the quality of education at YSU is second to none. But at the end of the day, why would anyone pay $30,000.00 for freshman English, Math, and History? We did not regret our choice. President Obama alluded to making education one of his priorities. Who can argue with that? Public education in this country is pitiful. But in typical liberal fashion, his intent is to throw gobs of money at the problem. That has never been the solution, and never will be the solution. The Feds have been throwing money at education for years, and...

Isn’t always interesting how when the price of oil goes up, the price of gasoline moves in tandem almost immediately even though the gas you were buying was refined from oil purchased at a lower price? It’s even more aggravating when the price for a barrel of oil goes down; the cost of a gallon of gas only creeps down, reluctantly, slowly. But it is downright infuriating when the cost of a barrel of oil is going down, and the price of gasoline goes up. What’s with that? Well, here’s the answer. The Associated Press ran a story written by Chris Kahn and John Porretto about this very issue this past Monday. It was featured on AOL, so those of you read the article, accept my apologies. If you haven’t, you will learn something. The price of oil as reported on the business channels or in the newspaper is a benchmark price for West Texas Intermediate Crude. Believe it or not, it is actually drilled in Texas. I didn’t know that we had any oil left in Texas. Yippee-I-O Ki-a. This is an extreme...

The reason I married my wife was because she was the only girl I ever dated that could eat her half of the pizza. She would fight me over the last piece. And given that I considered pizza to be one of the major food groups, it didn’t take me long to conclude she was the girl for me. How often do you eat pizza? I have it for dinner at least once each week, and probably at least once each week for lunch, not to mention a slice here and there for snack. I eat less now than I did 10 years ago, but then again my stomach is 10 years older so I have to watch now. It likes pizza a lot less than I do. Nonetheless, on a Friday night when we are just too pooped to pop, pizza is the answer, stomach be damned. I eat my pizza with pepperoni. My wife doesn’t like pepperoni, so from time to time I have to surrender to toppings of sausage and black olives. My wife likes Brier Hill pizza…tomatoes, peppers, olive oil and parsley with lots of black pepper….that is way too healthy to be considered pizza. ...

The economy is steadily getting worse, and we have the keystone cops in Washington running the show. Unfortunately, the longer this goes on, the more difficult it becomes to solve the problems, and Congress isn’t helping. It also doesn’t help that Obama is saying one thing, but his Democratic counterparts on the Hill are ignoring what he is saying. It is one of two things: either he agrees with what they are doing but giving the public rhetoric; or, he has lost control. Notwithstanding, in Mark’s humble opinion, here is what needs to be done to fix the problem: 1) The banking crisis is the immediate problem, but the long term problem is energy. It is at the root of our balance of trade problems and was the tipping point that pushed the economy over the edge last summer. The proposed bailout package should provide funding to accelerate development of alternate power sources for cars, including a super battery that can take a car 100 miles on a charge; accelerate development of natural g...