Mark Knows It All

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 ...

One of the anecdotal indicators of the economy is traffic. If traffic in the Mahoning Valley acts as a local barometer, things must be booming around here. I remember when Route 11 was first constructed. You could shoot a canon up the freeway and hit nothing. It was a consolation prize for Kirwin’s Ditch (the lake to river canal), and for many years it seemed the canal would actually have more traffic!!! Now it's packed. Bumper to bumper during rush hours between Columbiana and Mahoning Avenue; and from 680 to Route 82, it is extremely busy pretty much any time of the day. Have you driven to Akron on I-76 lately? Where are all of those people going? It’s not only car traffic. There are lots and lots of trucks. It seems like every day I am passing an oversized load with an interesting piece of heavy equipment tethered to its flat bed. I suspect that most of it is headed to the new Vand M pipe mill and other related Marcellus Gas Shale endeavors. Some of this st...

It’s time for the NCAA to wake up and smell the coffee. Over the last 18 months at least nine major schools have been investigated for various athletic violations related to amateur status of sport teams. These are big schools including Ohio State, Michigan and USC. Now the University of Miami is in the NCAA’s crosshairs. Did it ever occur to the NCAA with so many “serious” violations of its policies, the trouble may lie with the policies rather than the violations? Reports this past week stated the University ofMiami had consistently and knowingly violated NCAA rules by allowing a donor, one Nevis Shapiro, to shower players over a period of years with money, jewelry and whores. Nice work if you can get it. Mr. Shapiro is now serving 20 years in jail for running a $930 million Ponzi scheme. With friends like that who needs enemies? Unlike Ohio State, the allegations infer that the Miami mucky mucks knew this was going on and looked the other way for years. In the Ohio State matte...

From time to time things happen that absolutely confound me. What is Obama doing in America’s heartland driving around in those black monstrosities that we paid for? What is he doing? He says he wants to talk to America about unemployment. What for? What doesn’t he know after 3 years in office? And by the way, who ordered those black multimillion dollar mass transit vehicles? If it was under Obama, we need to know. If it was under Bush, we need to know. Who else is going to ride in those things? They said “heads of state.” Well, that’s one way to keep the riff raff out of the country. In all seriousness, let’s go through what the tour director of this bus travelogue has done. TARP 1, TARP 2; the trillion dollar stimulus; Obamacare; Quantitative Easing 1; Quantitative Easing 2; NO BUDGET FOR 800 DAYS, and when he produced one, it was so over the top with spending even his own party voted against it. Now he is touring the Midwest at our expense, and will be vacationing in Martha’s...

In that great expanse of America located in what my liberal friends call fly-over country, somewhere in between New York City and Los Angeles, is the little town of Shiloh, Ohio. It is located about 20 miles northwest of Mansfield near the bustling towns of Plymouth, Willard, and Greenwich (pronounced Green Witch). About 10 miles up the pike is the town of Shenandoah (pronounced shawn-a-door), just a little ways from Celeryville. Population is about 850. It has a diner, a Methodist and Lutheran Church, a post office and a bank, and an historical society. My late father-in-law’s barber shop still has the barber pole outside even though the space is now occupied by a beautician. This is America. I have never been one to ascribe some sort of special status or wisdom or insight to life to those who live in small towns, or any one else for that matter. On the other hand, I am not willing to dismiss them as country rubes and racist bumpkins who cling to their bibles and guns because they d...

What kind of ice cream do you like? My favorite is spumoni, and it better be the good…not the Neapolitan Ice Cream stuff you buy at Sparkle Market. Three layers of variably colored layers does not Spumoni make (huh?). Spumoni needs to be made with love. It needs a rich chocolate layer with bits of chocolate throughout. It needs a pistachio layer with chopped pistachios adding texture. It needs a strawberry layer with real dried fruit bits added…preferable soaked in something good like wine or rum. THAT makes good spumoni. Then top it off with some real whipped cream and sprinkles. Spumoni, like all good stuff, is hard to come by these days. There was an editorial cartoon in the Vindicator where a couple driving a car stopped and asked someone at an Internet Café for directions. The guy answered: “A retail bookstore? You drive past the drive-in theater. That’s down where the doctor who makes house calls lives. Turn left at the record store. It’s right across the street from the full s...

I am a little bit freaked. As I sit at my desk in my air conditioned home office (a table in a second bedroom used either for me or junk storage, depending on the circumstance) they are telling me on television that I am sitting under a heat dome. Lordy, Lordy…what the hell is that? Isn’t it bad enough I am told there are super viruses floating around, the country is going to broke on August 2nd, the cost of gas is going up again, the stock market is going to crash, and that I won’t be able to retire until I am 85…and now I have to worry about a heat dome? Well…that’s what they said in some dogged attempt to explain the hot weather. Of course, there is always that old stand-by global warming. But that is so déclassé. A heat dome is much better. Actually I am somewhat amused by the all of the haranguing around about the heat. What am I missing? It is summer, isn’t it? And it does get warm in summer, doesn’t it? It’s hard to remember this past May when it rained every day and we shiver...

One can get used to anything, even oppressive government. The United States government, trying to save us from ourselves, has become more oppressive these past few years intruding into every aspect of our lives. It’s no wonder, therefore, that we are broke as government has stuck its ugly head into places it ought not to be. 1) Recent do-gooder gurus have proclaimed that child obesity is child abuse, and obese children should be taken away from their parents and put in foster homes. Oh my. Are there that many foster homes available that either don’t have obese children themselves or have obese foster parents? Sounds ridiculous? This is just the type of program the left wing loves. Scales anyone? 2) What’s that? You would like a cup of coffee? The Styrofoam cups are in the cupboard behind the Twinkees. Oh..never mind. Twinkees have been outlawed, and so have Styrofoam cups. In the midst of the debt ceiling “crisis”, Congress has decided to consider banning Styrofoam cups...

Have you ever tried looking for truth in modern America? It’s becoming more elusive as time goes by. The latest example was the Casey Anthony trial. It was fraught with so many lies, the jury finally threw in the towel. Everyone lied. Casey Anthony gets the liar of the decade award. Her father comes in a close second. The prosecutor who trumped up chloroform as a murder weapon with a sniffing machine is right in there. Of course, there is the defense attorney accusing the father of incest. Last place is a tie between mom Cindy and brother Lee who looked amateurish but still put on a good show. Of course the Anthony trial is the most obvious case, but the loss of truth in America is becoming something more insidious. CBS admitted this past week that its broadcast of the 4th of July fireworks from Boston was doctored with phony angles and photo-shopped computer generated backdrops. They photo-shopped 4th of July fireworks and claimed the broadcast was live? Really? Media is sp...

Alright, your howling is coming through my router loud and clear, but what can I say? Six states now allow gay marriage. Whether you personally agree with it or not is up to you. But as a lawyer I can tell my gay friends…be careful what you ask for, you just may get it. In plain terms, the gay community had the greatest gig going on in history and didn’t know it. I can guarantee you there are a bunch of straight guys, and women for that matter, who are sitting around wondering why the hell they got married. But if you were gay with a persistent partner wanting to tie the knot, you had the greatest excuse in the world…it’s illegal. Now, you are just like the rest of us. So get ready for what you don't know!!!  1) THE MARRIAGE PENALTY: Let’s start with tax issues. Yes, married couples are taxed at a lower rate than two incomes pyramided on top of one another. But married filing jointly is always more than if the two individual were not married and filing separately. ...

It’s time for all Americans to take stock of their lives and how they relate to government. Ignorance is the enemy, and unfortunately ignorance is running rampant in the country. What happens in Washington matters to all of us! It is not esoteric. It is not theoretical. It has consequences to our lives, our families, and our pocket books. And it is also difficult to change after some whackadoodle policy becomes law. And there we are left standing…. I have lots of friends who laugh at my blog and web site. To them, I am some sort of a nut who goes off the deep end in caring for what happens to my country. I have always been politically active, but when I started trading securities, I learned quickly that bad government policy has immediate and serious consequences for the country. The stock market it the great  prognosticator. It is saying things aren't so good right now.  Do you really know what is in the health care bill? Do you know that in 20...

I continually pound the table that at the end of the day, the well being of the American economy is directly tied to the cost of energy. The ups and downs in the economy, albeit subject to other forces as well, are directly linked to the cost of energy in a straight forward manner that doesn’t need some academic economic whackadakic scholar to analyze it. When the cost of energy spikes, the economy tanks! It happens every single time. The inevitable recessions are severe. It has been this way since the oil crises in the mid 1970’s. There are those who scream and yell that our government has no energy policy. They are wrong. The United States energy policy is to restrict and prohibit the development of new energy sources within the confines of our borders. Environmental concerns have been raised to a religion. We have put most of the oil reserves off limits to drilling, and have actively discouraged either through deliberate policy, accidental policy, ...

Last weekend, the Seraphim Chorus under the direction of Kris Harper, made a quantum leap from traditional and stodgy choral stuff into the world of pop and performance doing a boffo choral concert showcasing the music of the 1960’s. It had a WOW factor as we tuned up to sing some Mamas and Papas, some Association, some bubble gum fluff, some folk music, some peacenik music, and some inspirational freedom rider music from the civil rights song book. It was a ride down memory…and who knew that we had it in us??? It was supplemented by some talented musicians from Westminster College and the one and only Jim McClelland of The McClelland's fame.  Add into the mix some outstanding commentary by local activist Staughton Lynn (you might not agree with him, but he walked the walk), the concert was a home run. It was also one of our more difficult performances. Pop musicians use rhythms and harmonies unfamiliar to those of us growing up singing standard SATB fare in h...

How’s this recovery working out for you? Good? Glad to hear it. Tell the rest of the country. In all seriousness, the economic indicators reported last week are abysmal. If this isn’t a double dip recession, it sure feels like it. Housing prices still continue to fall. The private sector only produced 53,000 jobs last month. It needs to produce about 200,000/month just to keep the unemployment rate steady (break even). The unemployment rate is up to 9.1%, but in reality is closer to 19% taking into account discouraged workers. Productivity is anemic. The chronically unemployed are at a higher percentage rate than during the Great Depression. Housing prices as a percentage of value have fallen more than in the Great Depression. America’s credit rating has been downgraded to negative. And last, but not least, the stock market is sliding. What’s really scary is the Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, said on CNBC last week that HE is afraid. If this guy is losing sleep ov...

It was with great regret peppered with some anger that I watched the news from Columbus. Jim Tressel resigned as Ohio State’s football coach. What a pity. What a shame. But he is another in a long line of Mahoning Valley favorite sons to bite the dust. I wrote several weeks ago that the NCAA crossed the Rubicon in using “amateur” players to enrich itself and its member schools years ago. It is a crime that the NCAA and its members have built a billion dollar business on the backs of often times broke students who are willing to indenture themselves for a 1 in 500 chance of playing in the NFL. Although I am an Ohio State fan, I much less so now than I was when I was younger. Big time football has always been a business, but lately it has turned into something much more ugly with luxury boxes and tickets that are out of reach of many of the fans. This is especially true in the state schools. This isn’t pro football. At the end of the day schools like Ohio State are t...

These past few months I have had the privilege of doing some supplemental singing with the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church choir. The director of Seraphim, my community chorus, is Director of Music at St. Patrick’s, and arranged for some of us individually and for the whole chorus to do some singing in this magnificent church. This year St. Patrick’s celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding. It is a big gothic old style Catholic Church located in Youngstown’s south side. In a city built on steel, the neighborhood was ethnic, blue collar and middle class. They even considered making it the Cathedral for the newly formed Diocese of Youngstown (a function it temporarily served when St. Columba’s Cathedral burned down in the early 1950’s). But the neighborhood has been in decline for years and years, and has been long considered classic inner-city surrounded by urban blight. But like several other old neighborhood Catholic churches in the area, the faithful who moved to the sub...

These past few months have seen an unprecedented attack on public employees. Never in my life have I seen anything quite like it. Salaries are being posted. Implied derogatory descriptions about benefits are in newspaper articles, blogs. I have even experienced some “critical” questions from acquaintances relating to my wife’s benefits, a teacher who has just completed her 33rd year of teaching. My son is also a public employee. He is the financial officer at the Board of Elections. When he took the job, I got many raised eyebrows from some folks along with some surprisingly smart ass comments that verged on insulting. His credentials were actually pulled by the local press. He has a Masters Degree in Accounting from the Ohio State Fisher School of Business after graduating from YSU with a degree in accounting and a 3.9 GPA. That’s the last we heard of that. Of course, nothing is said about the benefits and pay guaranteed by the government for the auto workers whos...

Last night we went to see the Easy Street Production of Forever Plaid. It was an encore performance from a few years ago. I saw it then and it worth going to see again.  Unfortunately, with Tim McGraw at the Covelli Center, Canfield High School's Senior Class Play, and the Boardman High School's  spectacular fundraiser featuring scenes from past Senior plays with the people who originally played the roles in high school….the Ford Recital Hall was only ½ full.  If you haven’t seen Forever Plaid, it runs for one more weekend .  GO AND SEE IT.  As always, you will see no better version anywhere as you will with Todd Hancock and company. The story deals with a vocal quartet called the Plaids killed on the way to a gig at the airport lounge by a school bus filled with parochial virgins in the early 1960’s. But the Plaids are given one more chance to give the performance of a lifetime before gaining permanent entrance to the afterlife, reali...