Kids need to spend more time at the kitchen table

Among the points historian David McCullough made while he was being interviewed on “60 Minutes” was that young people are for the most part historical illiterates.

I propose that it would be rare to find a teen-ager today who off the top of his or her head could pinpoint the decades of the Civil War, the Great War and World War II.

Nor could he or she define the importance of D-Day, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the Battle of the Bulge.

I think this is what he was talking about. Part of the problem, he reasoned, is that kids don’t sit at the dinner table with their parents anymore. It was there that a lot of knowledge passed between the generations.

I’m simplifying his thoughts somewhat, but McCullough is right. In my home, my dad was the ultimate purveyor of knowledge.

“Read this,” he’d tell me while pushing the Plain Dealer or Press in my direction.

I guess you might call that an unreasonable parental command today, but it worked. I grew to enjoy learning about current events, which, by the way, become historical events the next week.

Oh, yeah, and I ended up working for a newspaper. Who would have figured?

***

Some 1,800 provisional ballots in Tuscarawas County are holding up results in two races – the commissioner’s race and the state representative’s race – and the vote over a new fire truck for Dennison.

Seven different circumstances will force the Board of Elections to hand a provisional ballot to a voter, not the least of which is because he/she hasn’t voted in four years.

Running elections would be far easier if everyone would just follow the rules. Or vote in every election.

***

I’m working on a Twinkies recipe in my test kitchen. If you people are really serious about giving me thousands of dollars for a couple of Twinkies, I am your man.

Check back with me in about a week.

Aside to the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union: Yes, companies who threaten to pack it in, or shut down a facility, because of a work stoppage have been known to actually follow through.

***

I saw on the TV this week the faces of children who are currently enduring bombs bursting overhead in their little corner of the world.

I am really thankful my boys, now 3½, don’t have to hide from war in their basement.

I think this is still a pretty good country despite what the naysayers and the sore losers say. After the election, some were even talking about leaving the union. That’s not a real creative way to deal with problems. You think?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Read more of Dick Farrell at TuscBargainHunter.com.

Limb breaks; pundit crashes, burns

My trusted editor, Sandy Stewart, e-mailed me after the election.

“Did you get hurt when the limb broke?” she asked.

Huh?

I’m older now, so it took me a few minutes. Then I remembered: I blew the prediction.

I wrote a few weeks ago that I would go out on a limb and predict that Mitt Romney would be victorious in Ohio.

Not surprisingly, I was wrong. I’ve been wrong before with political predictions. And I’d like to think that when I’m wrong, I have enough guts to admit it. Not like Karl Rove, the Republican guru who beat up his own Fox News because, he said, it predicted prematurely that Obama would take Ohio.

(And a hats-off to Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who asked Rove on election night: “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?”)

Late on Tuesday, when everyone in the free world – heck, the whole world – knew that Obama took Ohio, Rove was holding out.

“Karl, Karl! Get a grip. It’s over. Romney lost!”

***

Now what?

The folks in Congress had better get along and fast.

Here’s a list of tax deductions, courtesy of the New Philadelphia accounting firm Rea & Associates, that have or will expire by the end of 2012. There’s always the possibility that some will be extended if not for 2012, then in 2013, if and when Congress actually gets back to work.

Maybe a little e-mail message from the constituents would help…

– Reduced Social Security tax rate (also known as the Payroll Tax Holiday)

– Reduced long-term capital gains rates

– Reduced dividend rate

– Alternative minimum tax patch

– Option to deduct state and local sales taxes

– Tax-free treatment for forgiven principal residence mortgage debt

– Charitable donations from IRAs

– Favorable child credit rules

– Favorable earned income credit rules

– Favorable dependent care credit rules

– Tax breaks for adoptive parents

– The American Opportunity Higher Education Credit

– Higher education tuition deduction

– Favorable student loan interest rules

– Favorable Coverdell Education Savings Account contribution rules

– Section 127 educational assistance plans

– $500 energy-efficient home improvement credit

– Larger salary reduction opportunity for transit passes

– $250 deduction for teachers’ school expenses

– Deduction for home mortgage insurance premiums

– Charitable qualified conservation contributions

***

The rest of us – those of us not serving in Congress -- would do well to turn off Fox News and MSNBC. You know, get away from the propaganda.

Fox News president Roger Ailes underscored the problem in this country when he said Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would be held at least partly responsible for Obama’s re-election because Christie was complimentary toward the president during the Hurricane Sandy crisis days before the election.

That kind of stuff makes me crazy. Both men were doing their jobs – finally – without allowing politics to get in the way. And their reward is they are criticized. Sometimes I think the country has gone bonkers.

Wait a minute. The political parties and Super PACs spent $2.5 billion on the presidential campaigns -- $5.8 billion if you include the congressional campaigns.

Oh, yeah. And someone in the Republican party thought Josh Mandel would make a good candidate for U.S. Senate.

Yes, the country has gone bonkers.

Read more of Dick Farrell at TuscBargainHunter.com.

Trying to be prophetic before knowing who won

I write this without knowing the results of Tuesday’s general election, so I am something at a disadvantage when it comes to figuring out what we need to do next as a country.

I’m convinced, however, that the average American is fairly uninformed when it comes to knowing basic facts about our country. So, as we try to figure out how to solve some of the problems, we have to have at least a foundation of knowledge:

–We have been involved in Afghanistan – in war – since 2001. That’s 12 years. And this substantial exercise in nation-building is on credit. Cost: $1.2 trillion. More than 2,000 of our soldiers have been killed and thousands more wounded. The war in Afghanistan has been a major contributor to our growing money problems.

–According to the Daily Beast, a conservative online news site, “49 percent of Americans live in a household that receives a government entitlement for ‘health care’ through Medicaid or Medicare, ‘food’ through stamps, disability, Social Security, or a ‘housing’ assistance program.” The Daily Beast says the gap between “promises and anticipated funds for Social Security is $8.6 trillion for the next 75 years. For Medicare, it’s $27 trillion.”

–According to the Associated Press, nearly one in two Americans is considered either “low income” or “poor.” Still, Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the AP he questioned whether some of those people are actually suffering. “There’s no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen,” Rector said. “As we come out of recession, it will be important that these (entitlement) programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work.”

–A USA Today story reports, meanwhile, that one in eight Americans visited a food bank in 2010, while the Feeding America website reports that more than six million households utilized a food bank one or more times in 2011.

–Romney was right when he said repeatedly on the stump that 46 million Americans are receiving food stamps. That number includes college students, many of whom will be poor after graduation as well. Two-thirds of American college graduates carry an average debt of $26,000 for the cost of their education.

–According to the Center for Responsive Politics, $6 billion will have been spent on this year’s elections. That includes nearly $1 billion attributed to Super PACs, which are not directly connected to any particular campaign or political party. They just get to throw money around without having to answer to anyone.

–U.S. federal aid to the world totaled more than $52 billion in 2010. World aid provided by the U.S. private sector totaled $71 billion. (To put those numbers in perspective, the cost of a new high school in Dover has been estimated to be between $30 million and $40 million, including the land.)

–Changes to the nation’s health care laws threaten local control of small community hospitals, along with the care given to senior citizens by physicians, who lose money on every Medicare/Medicaid patient they treat.

–Nearly 8 percent of the work force is unemployed. Thousands of people have dropped out of the work force simply because they cannot find a job to suit their skills. Many manufacturing jobs have disappeared and will never return. Buy an Apple product? It will ship from China.

So, the attack ads have stopped, the robocalls have ended and the political signs have been removed. Thank goodness it’s over.

I hope our country finds some peace in the next four years. I hope the president and Congress find some middle ground.

Read more from Dick Farrell at TuscBargainHunter.com.

We'll miss Robert's; Mitt taking Ohio?

News of the closing of Robert’s Mens Shop in downtown New Philadelphia is but the latest chapter in a story that is more than 50 years old.

You remember the downtowns of 50 years ago, don’t you? They offered a number of retail stores, including a corner drug store with a soda fountain, at least a few restaurants offering home-cooked daily specials, a couple of jewelry stores and, of course, a five-and-dime.

“OMG, what’s a five-and-dime?” a whippersnapper might ask.

Throw in a bank or two, a movie theater, a barbershop, a dress shop and men’s clothing store to complete the 1962 downtown.

Today, small-town downtowns are markedly different. Gone to the inside malls and more recently to those strip developments are most of the retailers who used to call those nostalgic town centers their home.

So, give credit to Mike and Jackie Ley, who held onto their downtown New Philadelphia site for 40 years while most of the others moved on or went out of business.

Mike’s father, according to The Times-Reporter, founded Robert’s in Marietta in 1950. At one point the Ley family owned 13 stores with Mike operating the New Philadelphia location.

Mike Ley reports that attempts to sell the business were unsuccessful. That’s an ominous sign of the times, and it means that New Philadelphia probably will lose more retailers sooner rather than later.

New Philadelphia City Council, if it hasn’t already, might want to put its downtown on some kind of a priority list.

***

Those of us who are still clinging to a landline phone are paying the price.

In the final full week before the election, our home’s peace and quiet was interrupted as many as a dozen times a day by various political campaigns.

Never have I wanted an election to be over as much as I have this one.

The politicians have done their best to turn the process into a despicable circus. Actually, I could come up with a better description, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for a family publication.

***

I’m still thinking that Mitt Romney will take Ohio.

OK, for the record, Tuscarawas County voters have voted for the eventual winner of the presidential campaign in every election since 1964 except once – in 1968 when voters favored Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon.

I think that statistic surely qualifies Tuscarawas County as a bellwether county, although it seldom is mentioned as one.

And this year Tuscarawas County voters will vote for Romney.

Man, am I going out on a limb.

***

The TV weather guys live for a good storm, don’t they?

My favorite from the Sandy superstorm was a guy who was trying to stay balanced on a floating dock in the middle of a hurricane-ravaged bay somewhere in Rhode Island.

I could not concentrate on what he was saying because I was waiting for him to fall into the water, which thankfully didn’t happen.

The best weather reporter is the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore, who seems to never miss a big storm. I mean he’s always at the forefront of the drama. And he’s got a knack for explaining complex weather issues in understandable terms.

I guess you might say that he blows every other weather reporter out of the water.

Sorry. Couldn’t help it.

Read more from Dick Farrell at TuscBargainHunter.com.