Mark Knows It All

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...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...