Mark Knows It All

All of the talk about the recently passed health care reform act has centered on politics. The press has spent untold hours analyzing who are the winners and losers on the political scene as a result of the landmark bill. The story they are missing is the undercurrent that is reaching people who are typically apolitical. Places where political discussion had heretofore been taboo are now brimming with political dialogue. People are asking questions. People are reading about the founding of the country and the founding fathers and the founding documents. Seventeen states have sued the Federal government over a plethora of issues relating to the health care bill, including special treatment afforded to certain states in exchange for a senator’s vote and states being ordered to provide substantially more services without necessary funding to the point of bankruptcy. But the heart of the constitutional question is the individual mandate. Under the bill, all people are required to have heal...

So the hangover is beginning to lift, and America is basking in its new health care system. One of the talk radio hosts played a recording of a man describing his joy about the passage of Obamacare. He said it was like Christmas. He apparently lost his coverage 4 years ago, and was afraid that he or his family might get sick and incur thousands of dollars of medical expenses. Now he is going to have health care, and he can sleep at night. Well….not exactly. The provisions for his children will go into effect the next few months. Of course, the kids already qualified for an SChip program. He just didn’t sign up for it. As for himself, he will have to wait for about four years. But not really! His wife has a health insurance plan through her work. He just doesn’t want to pay the additional premium to put himself onto the plan. Another sob story gone a-muck! But then again, free is always better. But he is right in one sense. This is like Christmas. There are some really nice presents und...

President Obama is going to propose amendments to the No Child Left Behind Act that is either vilified or glorified, depending on whose ox is being gored. The basis of the proposed changes will be a more generalized statement of goals, with an emphasis shifting from “hard scores” on achievement tests to items like graduation rates and life skills preparation. How that is going to help achievement in Math and Science is beyond me. It looks more like looking for “feely touchy outs” for those who can cut the muster. But that is another story. Here’s the truth. I’m sure there are bad teachers out there just like there is bad everything else. But for the most part, these are good, hard working folk who really want to do a good job. Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind nothwithstanding, the powers that be work against the educators at every turn to the point where many teachers are forced into being nothing more than glorified babysitters…not by choice…but by design of administrators, the cou...

I wouldn’t want to be a newspaper owner in this day and age. With the proliferation of news sources, both national and local, the wonder isn’t that most papers have shrunk to a shadow of their former selves. The wonder is that they are still here at all. One commentator put it this way. People are going to get their news one way or the other. A recent study shows that most people can do without their morning paper and television news. What they worry about losing is their broadband access. That is the pipe through which the information now disseminates…and it goes in all directions. This past week, the Vindicator (aka the Youngstown Vindicator) introduced its new form. It’s more than evident the paper put a lot of effort into dealing with the realities of today’s publication business. It has manipulated its column size substantially reducing the physical width of the paper resembling USA Today. It purchased a bunch of new printing presses to allow it to print crisp, clear full color ph...

In case you haven’t been paying attention, network news is collapsing. The latest in a series of announced cutbacks comes from ABC News which announced that it is closing all of its physical news bureaus across the country except for the one in Washington. It will keep a minimum staff at various locations relying on the local affiliates for staff and bricks and mortar support. This follows an announcement by CBS News, until recently the gold standard for network news, that it will lay off hundreds of employees. The biggest casualty will most likely be anchor Katie Couric, whose contract is expiring. Word has it that CBS is talking to Anderson Cooper to replace her at a substantially lesser salary. The networks claim that this is the result of a proliferation of news sources including the likes of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, other cable television outlets, the internet, yada yada yada. That, obviously, is a great part of the problem. Back in the day, Americans would gather around their televi...

Woodstock (Written by Joni Mitchell; Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) Life’s full circle comes in the most unexpected places. Sometimes I have flashbacks back to the day when I hear a song while driving my car, or when I am in a place that reminds of something from way back then; back to the glory days of bra and draft card burning, unbridled idealism, and the smell of tear gas in the air. This time I found it in my physical therapist's office at 8:00 in the morning. While doing my pelvic thrusts in an effort to rebuild my wasted hip muscles and heal my broken vertebrae, I came across a child of God who was a few years older than me, still walking along the road to Yasgur's Farm. Betty was mid 60’ish and unkempt with waste long frizzy hair, no makeup, second hand store clothes and a mouth that would sink a battleship. She was annoying, and loud, and abrasive. She was the aging hippie personified. I tried to do everything I could to ignore her, but she loved to talk ...

The Ohio 6th Congressional District is a mish mosh of a political entity put together by frustrated politicians trying to eliminate Jim Traficant. Its northern border is Boardman, Canfield, and Poland in Mahoning County, and then sprawls 300 some odd miles down along the Ohio River up to and including Sciota County. Once out of Mahoning County, cities along the way include East Liverpool, Steubenville, Marietta, and Athens, Ohio…home of Ohio University. It is stunning in its diversity, from the white collar suburbs of Youngstown, down along the heavily industrial Ohio River corridor bordering West Virginia and Kentucky making it an extension of Appalachia and its attendant poverty. This is coal country. Coal is mined on both sides of the river and shipped down the Ohio. There is mile after mile of closed steel mills and pottery factories. It is a district that seems to include every modern day horror story of de-industrialization. It is literally a rust belt around the southeastern bor...

Conservatives generally believe that everyone should benefit from a continually expanding economic pie. If government policy encourages private sector growth, the economy will expand at an acceptable rate A rising tide raises all ships. Liberals, and especially the current administration, believes that everyone should receive a small piece of a stagnant economic pie. The end result: those pieces will continually get smaller because the pie won’t remain stagnant, it will start to shrink. Nowhere is that more evident than in Obama's proposed NASA budget cuts; scrapping the renewed effort to put a man on the moon and beyond. The shuttle program is scheduled to end in 5 months, and America will be totally neutered when it comes to space exploration, reliant on the Russians and the Chinese for flights into space to honor our space station commitments. That is pitiful and shameful. To someone like Obama, a liberal academic community organizer, this kind of cut makes perfect sense. Why wo...

Today I have reached the end. I am technologied out. I wrote about this several weeks ago, and I am going to write about it again today. If some uniform standard of compatibility for our electronic gizmos isn’t established soon, this country will be in big trouble. Patent and proprietary rights laws need to be updated and modernized to account for the rapid advancements in digital technology, and the country’s complete reliance on this myriad of non-compatible advancements. One break in this indispensible technological chain could bring this country to a grinding halt. A case in point is my wireless mouse. Two years ago, I bought a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse set to go with my laptop. The mouse has been giving me fits. It is difficult to use and patently unreliable. I go through batteries like water, and it still only works when it wants to. I looked for a replacement, and lo and behold, Microsoft doesn’t make this model anymore. So I went to Best Buy to look for a compatible...

At long last I am beginning to get some relief for my aching back. It has only taken 20 years and a diagnosis of “butt pain” to get me to this point. The spine doctor dude got me into some therapy, and now three times a week I subject myself to the whims of Stefanie. She is a master of multi-tasking handling three of us walking wounded at a time. I am scared to death that she is going to take Mrs. Fuller’s knee kicks and match them up with my hip thrusts, and then I will have a real problem! The therapy room can be a dangerous place. Who knew that pushing my shrinking posterior against a wall for 10 sets of 15 seconds…or is it 15 sets of 10 seconds….could make me feel so good? Who knew that a great part of the solution to my problem was standing on one leg? My body is still leaning 45 degrees to the right. But when I stand on my left leg like a one legged, pot bellied crane, I can see the alignment take place in front of my eyes. Of course, my hip hurts like hell, but you can’t always ...

There are lots of different channels to watch on television these days, and lots of junk that isn’t worth watching. So my channel surfing oftentimes stops at either the Discovery Channel or the A&E Network, or the National Geographic Channel. There’s even a Green Channel now…all environmental propaganda all day. Actually, they have had some pretty interesting stories on the Green Channel, including a wood burning steam engine truck, and a medieval weapons of mass destruction contest. Those guys really knew how to do murder and mayhem. While watching a show on giant machinery the other night, I began to ponder the meaning of life. And between my package of Oreos and a dish of cashews, I began to wonder what I would consider the greatest invention of all time. Oh, there are lots of choices. The archaeological types would probably point to fire, learning to use a rock as a weapon, or the wheel. The metallurgical types would probably point to iron. The scientific types might look to th...

I watched an Animal Planet television program last night entitled It’s Me or the Dog . The program features a lady dog trainer who visits people’s homes to assist in training unruly poochies. Some of the stuff is fairly awful. Last night’s show crossed the line. Four twenty-something girls rented a home together. These were white, middle class chicks who I rapidly concluded personified everything that is wrong with America today. Three of the girls had dogs, and two of the girls had more than one dog. Although the dogs were tiny dogs, all animals must perform certain bodily functions in order to survive, including doing their duty. To put it bluntly, these babes could care less, and allowed the dog to defecate throughout the house. Months of feces was everywhere, including inches on the pack enclosed porch. It was under the beds. It was in every room in the house. The dogs were male dogs, and staked out their territory continually all over the furniture. There were feces on the wall. ...

In what is perhaps a harbinger of things to come, I offer you the pain in my back that I have had for the last 20 years. Orthopedic, chiropractic, and family medicine dudes have all heard me complain about the severe pain in my lower back. X-ray after x-ray showed nothing. Finally, one guy came up with the only diagnosis from any of these guys. He said I had “butt pain.” I dutifully paid him my $75.00, and went forth. But over the past 6 months, it has ceased being a laughing matter. My body has developed a twenty degree tilt to the right, and it is impossible to straighten my body out. When I try to straighten out, I have to lift my right off the ground at least an inch in order to align my hips with my spine. In addition, the pain has become unbearable. I have been unable to lay down now for close to a year. On some days I can barely walk. Even scarier, severe neuropathy has developed in both legs, and now is rapidly descending into my arms and hands. My GP sent me to a neurologist. ...

If you are over 50 and reading this, congratulations! You have stuck your big toe into the digital age. Approximately 74% of those between the ages of 50 and 64 actively use the internet. But if you are over the age of 64, it’s a different story. The number drops dramatically to 35%. That is a stunning figure, showing that a large and important segment of our society operates in a different world than the rest of us, to their strong disadvantage. But it’s more than whether one has access to a computer or the internet. I consider myself more tech savvy than most people my age. But that isn’t saying a whole lot. I inherited my mother’s old Bose radio, and I saw that Bose had CD changer that could be hooked up to it. I brought it to the Bose store and was told the radio was too old to handle the Bose hookup, but that it did have the connections to handle any other CD changer. So I went to Radio Shack to see what was on the market. I was so depressed when I left the store, I had to reach f...

I have always overdone it at Christmas. At one point in our lives, my wife and I would put up five Christmas trees, including a brown one with orange lights and orange bird ornaments. It actually was my favorite tree, but a bit much. As the years have gone by, so has our motivation. Add that to being just plain too pooped to pop, we have cut back a lot. Of course, cutting back is a relative term…and for the most part our house still looks like it has barfed Christmas, not to mention a completely filled cabinet of Christmas CD’s! This year has been marked by significant losses in my family, the latest happening at 7:30 PM yesterday, Christmas Eve. It is hard for people from large families to “downsize.” As my family has died off, or moved away or moved on away from me by choice, this is the first year I face the holidays without an extended family…just us chickens, so to speak. I am fortunate that I have a great wife and son. I also have great in-laws who will be visiting us this Sunday...

Do you understand the importance of freedom? If you think you do, try to express it in your own words. Having difficulty? I am not surprised. The word Freedom is ingrained in us and our culture at an early age. We are Americans. Of course we are for freedom. Okay, then! Tell me what it is. Webster’s Dictionary defines “freedom” as follows: “The quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous." If we are a free people, can anyone explain to me what is going on today? It is with disdain and concern that I watch the mentality in our country today. How much freedom are you willing to give up…and for what? Let’s start with the health care proposal in the Senate. If it passes, the government will then tell the health insurance companies what kind of insurance ...

This is the season of Advent. It’s a peculiar time in the church calendar because although it marks the beginning of the church year, the lectionary readings assigned to Advent for the first two weeks focus on Christ’s second coming, and then morphs into anticipation of his birth. The Feast of Christ the King celebrating Christ as the all triumphant King of the universe, falls on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, right before Advent. The Advent readings almost act as an epilogue to the church year looking at the end times, and the origin of times. I am the Alpha and Omega… Included in the story mix of end times and Old Testament Messiah prophecies, we hear the story of John the Baptist, Matthew’s voice in the wilderness. This leads, in turn, to many ministries using this as a teachable moment, a time for new baptisms and baptism reaffirmation by those already baptized. This past Sunday, my church did just that. The baptismal font is set up right in front of the altar so all can w...

I was sitting at Panera’s in Austintown the other day, when I noticed a local politico chatting with one of the area’s elite. It was obvious that the politico was pitching the community pillar for some iron (cash) for an upcoming election. The pillar, himself, was a retired gentleman; but still prominent in the community. The discussion was rather loud, so it was hard not to overhear. (…and I am nosey), when the retired community pillar asked the politico: “Are you Swedish?” I almost spit the hazelnut coffee right out of my mouth. That, my friends, is the ultimate Mahoning Valley question! What are you? The politico was taken aback as his name wasn’t even close to being Swedish. I thought maybe German. And I have known the retired guy for years and years…and he is about as “Mediterranean” as they come. But in this town, inquiring minds want to know. That is just how it is! When my wife and I first moved back here in 1975, she was continually asked “What are you?” She had no idea what f...

Nothing is more American than a good old fashioned auction. I have attended many auctions over the years, but I viewed them as kind of a novelty, being from the city and all. I remember going to my first auction in Kalida, Ohio, when I was in law school at Ohio Northern University in Ada. This was small town America just east of the Indiana border…the heartland personified. We bought a beat up old table for a buck, and refinished it. We still use it today. My brother used to buy a cow at an auction each year at the Canfield Fair. The poor bovine was the project of some 4-H’er, and was born to grace my brother’s dinner table as pot roast or strip steaks. He got his picture taken with the cow after he bought it. Then hung the picture in his dining room…the founder of the feast so to speak! He gave some of the meat to me. I didn’t like it. These pampered cows were 100% grain fed, and massaged. The meat had a different taste to it, and was loaded with fat. Put the burgers on the grill and ...

It’s that time of year again. There are only 49 shopping days to Christmas. The carved pumpkins are just getting tossed out with the garbage. Halloween candy is getting stale in the cupboard. Kraynak’s has been operating its Christmas Tree Lane for several weeks already…it’s Kraynak’s time of year!!! And my mail box is being deluged with catalogues. This year Christmas won’t be near as much fun because nobody has any money. But that makes looking through the catalogues that much more enjoyable as one yearns for the go-go days of the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, then the oil bubble. Pop goes the bubble!!! Maybe one day when the Republicans are back in office, we might be able to afford to buy something again. But I digress!! One of my favorite catalogues is the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. The first time I saw it I thought they were selling Nazi memorabilia. But to my delight, I found it is a high end gadget catalogue with something you can’t afford for just about everybody o...