Mark Knows It All

2013 has been the year of my discontent.  That has extended into Christmas.  For whatever reason, this Christmas, at least to me, has been unsettled.  Maybe it’s because I have been busy.  Maybe it’s because Thanksgiving was so late.  Maybe it’s because the news is so bad and so many people are struggling.  In that kind of atmosphere, it’s hard to find that warm and fuzzy Christmas card experience.  Besides…those of us in the political realm operate on the underside fringe which...well…isn’t exactly Silent Night. One of the challenges for me and my party over these past few years has been to outreach into non-traditional Republican areas.   In the process, I have come to the conclusion the best politicians understand the real meaning of politics.  At its core it is all about helping people.  Good politics is learning about the strengths and weaknesses of a community, and helping those trying to achieve success in a diffi...

Do you yell at the television? I do. I pour myself a VO. Get me some Cheesies. Sit in my chair and turn on the news…and we’re off. It could be five in the morning or three in the afternoon or ten at night. America has been through a lot. So I yell at the television. Like the man said: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” We live in historic times. The Obama presidency has been a disaster. How many lives does this man have to destroy? From healthcare to foreign policy to tax policy to race relations, Barack Obama has made a shambles out of this country…and the press is just now beginning to wake up. Unfortunately, what you see on television is just the tip of the iceberg. His dysfunction is our dysfunction as America has lost her way. Pull up the Drudge report and look at the headlines; drunk driving checkpoints run by Federal contractors stopping cars and demanding DNA swabs and blood samples; schools claiming they don’t have ten seconds to say...

It’s time again for the recurring spectacle of raising the debt ceiling.  CNN is once more orgasmic as it reports the “fatal split” in the Republican Party over whether to shut the government down.  Tea Party types are posturing, and justifiably so, over defunding Obamacare.  Never mind that most of it is already funded!  Obamacare is the single worst government domestic policy since Prohibition.  It is already collapsing around the edges.  Within the next year just about every major company will shift a large portion of its full time workforce into the “exchanges.”  Most service type jobs will be shifted to part time.  Hospitals will be cutting services.  The Cleveland Clinic just announced a massive reduction in workers through layoffs or attrition as it prepares for Obamacare, and it will get worse.  For seniors, who will see the least financial consequences, Obamacare will be experienced through greatly restricted...

America has a sordid history in race relations.  Anyone who denies it doesn’t read the history books.  Slavery was real.  For those of us who live in the north…like northeast Ohio…slavery was just thirty miles down Route 11 across the river.  We may be distanced by time, but not space.  Even during the Civil War, slavery continued in upstart border state West Virginia until the war was over.  It was not isolated to the deep south.    Moving forward, one bumps into reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, institutionalized segregation, poll taxes and literacy tests…and scarier, the KKK and lynching.  Up in the smug north, de-facto segregation took root with red lining, segregated neighborhoods leading to segregated schools, and job discrimination.  It wasn’t pretty.  This week marks the 50 th anniversary of the famous and infamous March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  There were many people b...

Shark Week on the Discovery Channel has become an American institution. Year after year the ratings for this fest of shark movies and shark documentaries keep growing and growing. Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller Jaws gave all of us pause before we stuck our big toe into the ocean. Just before the 9/11 attacks on the Trade Center the lead stories on the evening news were about shark attacks off the east coast. Every year we are subjected to a multitude of stories about swimmers being attacked by these aquatic giants. You won’t catch me going into the ocean…no-siree-Bob. If God had wanted me in the ocean, he wouldn’t have invented ocean view balconies. This year has been exceptionally fun. Sharknado, a movie about tornadoes dropping sharks from the skies, was a ratings hit…and there is going to be a sequel. Oh Boy. The kitchiness of the event hit new highs. Just in case you didn’t see the saga of Snuffy the Seal, here it is. I almost wet my pants.   ...

When did being a-political become fashionable?  Yes, I know the old adage, never discuss politics or religion.  But isn’t there something inherently wrong with that?  Our country is built on political discourse.  We need discussion to prosper.  We need discussion to solve problems.  We need discussion to try to fix things.  Yet when I mention a political topic, heads go down, eyes roll, and people turn their heads.  It’s a dirty business.  Go away.  We won’t lower ourselves to talk of such things. Well, to each his own.  But things in this country are about as bad as I can remember.  Income is down.  Savings is down.  A recent study shows the majority of Americans are living just outside or in poverty.  Violence is up.  Prices are up.   Companies have quit hiring.  And when they do, the jobs are part time. The labor participation rate is the lowest it has ever been.  The rich are g...

 If you are looking for a touchy feely kind of essay about the tearing down of the Paramount Theater downtown, go someplace else.  I can give you a list of sites bemoaning the “end of an era.”  At long last the single biggest eyesore remaining in downtown Youngstown is being torn down.  Not only was it decrepit ugly, it was unsafe and unsanitary.  I hated even walking by it. Don’t get me wrong.  I am an historic preservation type.  Originally built by locals as a vaudeville house in 1918, the then named Liberty Theater was purchased by Paramount Pictures in 1929 which installed state of the art “talky” equipment. Its single architectural feature was its ornate terra cotta façade, a hallmark of many downtown Youngstown buildings,  which was covered up by an appropriately garish marquee and verticle sign. At the end of the day, of all of the Youngstown downtown movie palaces built during the 1920’s and 30’s, the Paramount was the worst o...

This July 4 th , Independence Day, celebrates America’s 237 th birthday.  It also marks an equally momentous event in our nation’s history…the 150 th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg fought July 1-3, 1863.  The sleepy town of 7,800 people located in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania is being inundated with hundreds of thousands of Civil War aficionados who will re-enact several of the battles capped with a guided walk across the field where the failed Pickett’s Charge sounded what is widely believed to have been the death knell at Southern efforts at cessation.    It was the bloodiest battle in American history with upward of 51,000 casualties, north and south, consecrating the most sacred of American ground.  This in turn gave rise to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which many view as the third most important statement of American principles after the Declaration and Constitution…   this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of f...

Barack Obama’s impassioned speech to Ohio State University graduates marked the high water point of his administration.  He implored the students to ignore those who would have them believe that government is evil and can’t be trusted.  He said that government was us and having faith in us is the same as having faith in government.  Anyone who knows human nature and history understands the fallacy of that argument.  Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  People are people.  One is never surprised by people’s benevolence and goodness.  One is never surprised by the evil that men do.  As he walked out of Ohio Stadium, one wonders whether that was his swan song…whether he knew about the scandals about to break and was making a last impassioned argument extolling his love of government. The fall of Obama’s credibility has been swift and dramatic.  Any scandal or two can be explained away.  But when a ste...

The scandal surrounding the Internal Revenue Service is centered on the scrutiny of a group of organizations better known as “nonprofits.”  Section 501 of the Internal Revenue code provides special tax treatment for these organizations.  All of these organizations are "tax exempt" which means they pay no income tax, but they have to be formed for specific purposes and approved by the IRS. Most folks are familiar with 501(C) 3 organizations.  These are groups like the Cancer Society or the Symphony or various foundations.  Not only do these groups pay no income tax, if you make a donation your contribution is tax deductible.  These are set up for educational or charitable purposes and can only engage in minimal political activity. But there are other types of 501 (C) organizations.  Those in the news today are known as 501 (C) 4’s.  Traditionally, they are defined as civic leagues, local employee associations, and groups that promote the so...

Over this past weekend I attended two weddings.  Both were poignant in their own way, directly touching the question of life markers…especially “getting older” life markers.   A long time friend of mine married a great lady on Sunday.  It was a second marriage for both but they had maintained a relationship for several years.  They finally decided to make it official.  These are good folks who, like me, are approaching the short end of middle aged.  I am glad that they have someone with whom to share the rest of their lives.  Both of these folks are no nonsense salt of the earth types, my kind of people.  It was a beautiful wedding.  It was a lot of fun.  It was an affirmation that love knows no age, and that we still have a few good years left!!!!  Hopefully more than a few good years!!!!! The second wedding hit a little closer to home.  My first cousin twice removed got married on Friday.  For thos...

Last week my wife and I were doing some shopping in a garden shop in Cleveland. It’s one of my favorite places to go with lots of pots and such to look at. The music being played over the speaker system was some “ really boss” music from the 1960’s.  As I was looking at some fertilizer it started to play MacArthur Park sung by Richard Harris. You know… MacArthur Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing running down. Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it Cause it took so long to bake it And I’ll never have that recipe again…Oh no!!! What an uplifting little ditty. Well…not really. But it was one of my favorite tunes back in the day. I used to play it on the piano driving my parents’ nuts, especially the rock bridge between the main melody lines. It was a long song lasting almost eight minutes. It gave the DJ’s a chance to use the facilities, so to speak. I remember there was a lot of controversy whe...

I went to a fund raiser the other night that required that I wear denim. I haven’t owned a pair of jeans since I was in elementary school…literally. God didn’t make this body for denim, stretched, eased, pre-shrunk, relaxed, or otherwise. So I girded my loins and went forth to purchase a pair of blue jeans. Here is what I found. I am classified as a “big” man. I have a 48” inch stomach, but my hips are 44” which I means I need a pair of pants with a 46” waist which allows me either hike up or pull down, whatever the situation requires. I went to Dillard’s where I usually have success in finding clothes that fit. In the Men’s Department the kind lady in rather loud voice told me I had to go to the Big Man’s section of the store. How humiliating. I could have crawled under the display case…which wouldn’t have worked because I am too big!!! After slinking my way to the Big and Tall section of the store, I found that there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff from which to choose...

Those of you who know me know that I was raised Catholic. My wife was a Lutheran. When we got married in 1972 we joined the Episcopal Church as a religious compromise and have considered the Episcopal Church as our home church ever since. But Catholicism has strong ties that bind and old habits die hard. Many Protestant ministers will tell you that their best church members are lapsed Catholics. As they say…once a Catholic, always a Catholic. At heart, most mainline Protestants have at least a degree of interest in the workings of the Catholic Church much the same way many Americans have an interest in the British royal family. The Catholic Church was the mother ship of all Protestant churches just as England was the mother ship of the United States. The history is there, good or bad depending on your point of view. We may pretend to have no interest in a discarded heritage, but we still watch!!!! And we watched some history this past week with the election of Argentinea...

 I was surprised to hear that Pope Benedict decided to throw in the towel and retire to a convent on the Vatican grounds. Good for him. It’s about time someone had the good sense to realize that it probably takes a younger guy to lead a billion and half Roman Catholics. Of course, when it comes to Popes, young is a relative term. There are only two criteria. You have to be breathing…and you need a healthy prostate. When you are up up on that altar in St. Peter’s and you gotta go…there is no place to go. There is no “excuse me I will be right back.” Kyrie Eleison takes on new meaning. I have always found pope transitions interesting. Pope John XXIII was elected as an interim pope after the death of Pope Pius XII (who was pope WAY too long), and changed the entire religion. He moved the church into the 19th Century. Pope Paul VI was boring. Then there was John Paul I. They picked the wrong pope and it gave birth to the Godfather 3 movie.  We needed a Polish...