Mark Knows It All

We bought our house 12 years ago from my ninety year old aunt as she entered the nursing home. It is a nice house; a three bedroom ranch. It was built in 1972, the year my wife and I were married, by my aunt who was then in her seventies, and her husband who was in his eighties. It was built by old people for old people, excuse me: senior people for senior people. It has no steps, except a very tiny one to get into the kitchen from the garage. It has an abundance of closet space, always a nice feature. We bought it because we thought we could grow "senior" in it over the years, and not have to move. The only problem was that the last improvement to the house was in 1972. So for the past 12 years, the house has been a work in progress as we got rid of the dial telephones, installed cable television, got rid of the 1951 oven that that was brought over from their previous house, and the companion refrigerator!!!! Replaced the roof! Replaced the kitchen counters! Upgraded the bat...

Riding high on the top of State of Ohio news is the pending bill in the state senate that would gut Ohio’s collective bargaining laws for public employees and neuter teacher unions. It is sponsored by Senator Shannon Jones from Springboro, Ohio. It has drawn the wrath of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Public School Employees Union, and just about every other union that exists in the great State of Ohio. It is a dangerous bill with ramifications which will destroy education in Ohio. By way of full disclosure, both my wife and son are public employees. My wife is a teacher retiring at 35 years in 2013. My son is employed by the Mahoning County Board of Elections as its financial dude. If my remarks seem sympathetic to the cause, it’s not because I disagree with the basic premise of Governor Kasich's goals. It’s because I have seen with my own eyes what goes in the public sector. What they are contemplating in Columbus will not fix the probl...

This year’s Super Bowl commercial highlight was the Imported From Detroit; Chrysler’s two minute homage to the rebirth of the American auto indusrty. If you haven’t seen it, it is the embedded video at the top of the MKIA page. Starring Eminem, it takes us on a gritty tour of Detroit with the message saying the hardest steel is forged from the hottest fire. Given our own history in Youngstown, it was ultra appealing to me, even giving a serious tear to my eye. We get it! The question is does the rest of the nation? Detroit comes to us with a lot of baggage. Ford is experiencing resurgence with numerous top notch auto entries, and gets kudos for not needing a government bailout. It is a long way from “Fix Or Repair Daily” days. General Motors has a hit with the Cruze. The efficacy of the Volt has yet to be proven, but Buick is breaking out as a major brand, especially in China. For the first time in its history, GM has made more money overseas than in the United States. Chrysler is maki...

If you were born between the years 1946 and 1964, congratulations! You are a baby boomer just like me. There is some question as to whom coined the term. But popular consensus gives credit to one Sylvia Porter, who was a financial columnist with 40 million followers, who in 1951 wrote: "Take the 3,548,000 babies born in 1950. Bundle them into a batch, bounce them all over the bountiful land that is America. What do you get? Boom. The biggest, boomiest boom ever known in history." Well, there you are. Us members of the Baby Boom generation have been both blessed and cursed. Because of the demographic bulge in the population, most boomers faced a shortage of just about everything. For example, as the boomers entered grade school, there was a shortage of classrooms as well as a shortage of teachers and books. In what would be a nightmare to today’s education do-gooders, boomer class sizes usually ranged from 35 per class in public schools, to between 50-60 in a class in paroch...