2012-02-05 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Pitchers and catchers report soon, you know. And after last week's balmy weather, maybe it's not so hard to believe. Back in the day, I was a huge baseball fan — a huge Pittsburgh Pirates fan. I lived in Pittsburgh for a few formative years in the mid-1970s and became a ......
2012-01-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I was curious to see the immigration "audit" at Kreider Farms, where the feds earlier this month identified 100 employees — one-third of the workforce — as having "invalid documents." Which means they may have been here illegally, and are ineligible to work in the U.S. Kreider......
2012-01-27 11:35:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Gil Smart says that a vote for Newt Gingrich is a vote to banish "family values" from our political discourse.......
2012-01-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I try not to pay too much attention to U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts because if I did, my face would be permanently planted in my palm. Case in point would be a speech he gave here last weekend. Speaking in Manheim, he said President Obama needs to get off the dime and sign off on the K......
2012-01-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
As I write this, Republicans are voting in New Hampshire. So by the time you read this, Rick Santorum's presidential aspirations might be toast. One can hope. Nonetheless, and even though writing about Santorum two weeks in a row is more ink than he deserves, I was struck earlier this m......
2012-01-12 10:35:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2012-01-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I see where Rick Santorum won in Iowa. Well, of course Santorum didn't actually "win," if you define "winning" as getting the most votes. He came in second to Mitt Romney, by a hair. But you wouldn't have known this by the breathless media coverage, which plastered his face......
2011-12-31 19:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The Friday before Christmas I took my oldest son and a friend to the movies at Regal Manor Cinemas. I expected it to be a madhouse; a shopping center less than 36 hours before Santa's arrival? Normally I'd rather be tortured than deal with the crowds. So I bought our tickets online......
2011-12-24 16:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The Kris Kringle thing ended for me the year I heard a commotion in the hallway late Christmas Eve, peeked out my bedroom door and saw my dad descending from the attic, arms loaded with presents. I was older — I might have been 10 or 11 — and I was one of those kids who ki......
2011-12-23 12:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-12-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Item: An article in the (U.K.) Independent newspaper on how Russian scientists have discovered "dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane — a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide … bubbling to the surface" of the Arctic Ocean.
"This is the first time tha......
2011-12-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So you might be watching the debate in Washington over the fate of the payroll tax cut, which President Obama wants extended and expanded, and which Republicans ... well, I can't quite figure out what Republicans want. Some, including Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, appear game. But others......
2011-12-08 10:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-12-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Ah, so I see the Fed has saved the world. Last week came news that the Federal Reserve and five other central banks decided to lower the interest rate on dollar liquidity swaps. I bet that phrase makes your eyes cross. Mine too. Basically, the idea is to ensure there are ......
2011-11-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The supercommittee was always a lame idea. Instead of making tough choices during the debt ceiling fight, we punted — thinking that somehow, this elite group of Very Serious Legislators would magically come up with a plan everyone could agree on. We tell ourselves a lot ......
2011-11-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
If leaders want to summon voters to sacrifice for the benefit of future generations, those sacrifices have to be seen as broadly shared. If, however, leaders try to load all the sacrifices onto just a few voters — while exempting or even rewarding others — the targe......
2011-11-18 17:03:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-11-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Once upon a time my wife worked for long, lost Bank of Lancaster County — in the mortgage department, in fact. So in a way, I had a front-row seat to the go-go 2000s, when BLC, and every other lender, was riding high atop the housing bubble. But in an ironic twist to the......
2011-11-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Back in the day, I would have been all over the Herman Cain business. I would have chuckled at the revelation that the National Restaurant Association settled complaints of sexual harassment against him when he was its president and CEO, reminded Republican readers that Bill Clinton's pre......
2011-11-03 10:24:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Gil Smart says that if the extreme weather scientists think is indicative of global climate change continues, get ready to open up your wallet.......
2011-10-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I'd seen the idea floating around the Internet. When I saw it on the Forbes website, I sat up and took notice. It's one thing when some guy in his underwear pounding away at his keyboard at 2 a.m. claims a debt jubilee could solve our problems. It's another when Forbes contrib......
2011-10-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
In other words, this street movement is emerging to demand some accountability from the bankers who helped destroy this economy, from the politicians who used our money to save them, from the GOP even now balking at basic regulations on Wall Street to help prevent another crash,......
2011-10-20 10:45:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Gil Smart says Occupy Wall Street has already succeeded in forcing America to talk about income inequality and other issues the elite would rather ignore.......
2011-10-16 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Conservatives appear to hate Occupy Wall Street protests. GOP politicians and media yappers demonstrate the requisite contempt for protesters who, to paraphrase Herman Cain, want to take other people's hard-earned Cadillacs. Yet I know of several self-identified conservatives ......
2011-10-09 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Over the course of the past few weeks, several thousand hardy souls have taken to the streets of New York and other cities to "Occupy Wall Street." These are the "99 percenters," young people with few prospects; their stories, many posted at ...
2011-10-06 15:35:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-10-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
A correspondent sent me some poll numbers, indicating that public confidence in government is plunging. According to Gallup, 82 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job; 69 percent have little or no confidence in the executive branch of governmen......
2011-09-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Sitting in my older son's room the other night, leafing through an old "Calvin & Hobbes" book while he brushed his teeth, I came upon a comic where Calvin — on Father's Day — tells his dad he's trying to live by the values his father has instilled in him. He......
2011-09-21 14:22:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-09-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Well, that was eye-opening. I watched portions of the Republican "Tea Party" debate Monday night, flipping back and forth between that and the New England Patriots-Miami Dolphins game. The Patriots drubbed the Dolphins. Over at the Tea Party debate, empathy took an even harder......
2011-09-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
One of the most insightful things I read about 9/11 was written by Michael Vlahos, a piece titled "The Fall of Modernity," which ran in American Conservative magazine in 2007. In it, Vlahos wrote of how our response to 9/11 was destined to overreach. All successful societ......
2011-09-08 10:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-09-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
My first job was at the Burger King on Lititz Pike in Manheim Township. I was 16 years old, and got paid minimum wage — $3.15 an hour, as I remember it. My labor was worth every penny, which is to say it wasn't worth much. With all due respect to restaurant workers, flip......
2011-08-28 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
We were up in coal country last week — Ashland, right over the hill from smoldering Centralia. It's one of those older Pennsylvania towns that time seems to have passed by. The homes are mostly period pieces, the population a fraction of what it once was. Who lives here? Thos......
2011-08-26 10:00:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-08-21 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
One thing I'd really like to know about the Republican Party, though: if they're so all-fired up about fiscal rectitude and the honest disposition of money, and stuff like that, then how come not a single one of these dissembling ninnies has suggested the investigation and prosecution of the enti......
2011-08-14 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The week was nerve-wracking. Monday, I stayed away from the computer and TV most of the day — it's my day off, and real life called. But after the market plunge the previous week, I — like anyone else with a few cents in a 401(k) — felt compelled to keep an eye......
2011-08-11 11:02:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-08-07 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
From a long-time liberal reader: "Sometimes I just don't know what the hell you're talking about anymore." From a long-time conservative reader who used to disagree with everything I came up with: "It seems like you're starting to get it." Sort of. Maybe. But it's a hard ......
2011-07-31 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
— Paul Craig Roberts
I'm beginning to think ......
2011-07-28 12:43:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-07-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
As you read this, the nuclear crisis in Fukushima, Japan, festers on. It's faded from the headlines, but TEPCO, the company that owns the facility, says it will be January at the earliest before the reactors are shut down. A Japanese official said last week that it could take "d......
2011-07-14 16:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-07-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Welcome to this week's bit, in which I defend the tea party. I'll pause for a moment to let you clean up the coffee that just squirted out your nose. This space has devoted countless column inches to bashing the tea party. And for good reason: It is a movement of extremis......
2011-07-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
Right out of college, I had three credit cards: a Visa, a Discover Card and an American Express.
Amex! That made me feel like a big shot, though I was working two jobs to make ends meet. In my financial illiteracy, I thought the credit cards helped me make ends meet. Instead, they made it......
2011-06-30 16:37:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-06-26 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
One of my best friends in college was Greek. His father owned a hotel in the Greek Isles as well as a diner in New Jersey. It was suggested at one point that maybe I'd like to spend a summer overseas. I would have liked that very much, but I sort of needed to work and save money, s......
2011-06-19 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I want to start his week with a few lines from Michael Hudson, president of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street financial analyst, research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City. He's writing about the Greek crisis; as ......
2011-06-16 09:55:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-06-12 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Last week's bit on school vouchers generated more response than I've seen in a while, and most of it — maybe surprisingly — was supportive. There is, I think, a large numb......
2011-06-05 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So here in Pennsylvania conservative groups like FreedomWorks have been turning up the heat on the issue of school vouchers. According to the Harrisburg Patriot News last weekend, FreedomWorks, the outfit that has financed the tea party rebellion, is in effect telling state......
2011-06-02 12:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-05-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Call it a small ripple in what may become a tidal wave. In a special election last week, New York's 26th Congressional District went blue as Democrat Kathy Hochul soundly beat her Republican challenger. It was "shocking," the Associated Press reported, not just because the sea......
2011-05-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The story was a blockbuster. And already it's vanishing without a trace. In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi pens a scathing piece titled "The People vs. Goldman Sachs," laying out the case the Justice Department might make against the banking giant that stole "more money t......
2011-05-20 10:30:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Correction: City homeowners who make more than $25,000 in improvements to homes they own are eligible for LERTA (Local Economic Revitalization Tax Abatment) tax breaks.......
2011-05-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Elliot Spitzer — who would have received my vote for president but for his hooker problem — had an excellent piece at Slate.com last week on what he termed the "Republican war on the weak." Citing the drive nationwide ......
2011-05-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Eight years after we were lied into war in Iraq, after the falsehoods spun around the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman stories, after years of falsehoods and happy-face stories regarding the economy, the Obama administration last week decided that the news event of the year, the killi......
2011-05-05 10:23:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-05-01 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Flipping through the channels the other night, I came to the pre-crash edition of "60 Minutes" on CNBC, the business network. "Pre-crash" because the topic was the incredible expanding American house, a story of how, before housing tanked, the rich and the nouveau rich were lo......
2011-04-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
It's nice when macroeconomic trends converge on your little corner of the universe, making the abstract real. But "nice" wasn't the word on the lips of the 800 people who converged on the School District of Lancaster last week to protest cuts district officials are considering to close a ......
2011-04-21 10:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-04-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
You always write about problems, but never solutions, you say. Last week's rant about Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's Path to (less) Prosperity was a case in point. Sure, said readers, there may be flaws in Ryan's proposals — we could be here all week listing them. But what would I d......
2011-04-14 11:05:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-04-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
No doubt, you saw Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan's very, very serious plan to trim the deficit, released last week. According to Ryan's calculations, his "Path to Prosperity" — which boils down to cutting entitlements while retaining the Bush tax cuts forever and slashing the c......
2011-04-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
If you've continued to follow the news about the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, you're acquainted with the "Fukushima 50," the group of selfless workers who have struggled valiantly to fix the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex. There are now several hundred workers tryi......
2011-03-31 16:12:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-03-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
What you need to understand about our shiny new war in Libya is that once again, we've gone to war on the basis of a theory. This has nothing to do with the poor oppressed civilians in Gadhafi's Libya and their likely fate had we left Crazy Moammar to his own devices. That's t......
2011-03-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I was 11 years old when Three Mile Island became a household term, my brother 9, my sister two months from being born. We fled to New York to stay with my grandparents. I didn't understand the complexities of what was happening; what child could? But I had the creeping sense of run......
2011-03-17 11:20:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Gil Smart says the nuclear disaster in Japan should give Americans pause, but won't because we're too dependent on nuclear energy.......
2011-03-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Reading the text of Gov. Tom Corbett's budget speech, I couldn't help but think of the line from the Pink Floyd tune: We don't need no education.
And Corbett's budget is indeed another brick in a toppling wall. Our new governor is balancing Pennsylvania's budget on the ba......
2011-03-10 12:05:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
Gil Smart says Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's budget makes a mockery of his assertion that "everyone" needs to embrace austerity.......
2011-03-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there is still a standoff in Wisconsin, with Gov. Scott Walker continuing his attempts to bust the state's public unions, and public unions continuing to fill the state capitol with protesters. It is, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka last week, organized labor's last s......
2011-02-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
To me, one of the seminal moments in the "Battle of Wisconsin" came in a New York Times piece about how the budget impasse — and Republican Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to break the public unions — has split Wisconsin's middle class. On one side are those who think the unions a......
2011-02-24 08:27:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-02-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
As I write this we're still some 30 hours from settlement. Anything could happen. But then, the buyers have been receiving mail at our old house for more than a week now, a reassuring sign. The place is theirs now, not ours. We sold it. In this market. It was on...
2011-02-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
A few months back, in discussing something moderately intelligent that actually came out of Sarah Palin's mouth, I noted that food inflation up to that point had not been significantly higher than the average. Which is to say that through the first nine months of 2010, according to......
2011-02-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I've spent much of the past two weeks watching the events in Egypt unfold, and wondering just how much of a role our own country had in it. In many ways, the spark that set off the political unrest was economic in nature. Mubarak is absolutely a dictator and his regime corrupt, but the po......
2011-02-03 09:44:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-01-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.
— President Obama, Jan. 25
So these are metrics for success, eh? The stock market came ro......
2011-01-28 09:53:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-01-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
In the doctor's office, waiting, nervous. Pick up Time Magazine; read article on "Where the jobs are." Furious. Mostly because the piece, in the Jan. 17 edition of the magazine, is based on the same assertions and assumptions we hear repeated time and again. There are lots ......
2011-01-20 09:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-01-16 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
First: Sarah Palin did not kill those people in Arizona last weekend, she did not pull the trigger that murdered six and wounded 14 others, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Accused assailant Jared Lee Loughner seems more nihilist than political partisan. ......
2011-01-09 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
There's an essay in the new edition of The Atlantic Monthly that you really ought to read, a piece by Chrystia Freeland on the rise of the new plutocrats, those whom we might call the Lords of the New Economy. These aren't your father's rich people. They owe their wealth to globalism and ......
2011-01-07 10:24:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2011-01-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So a new year, and new leaves to turn over. I've lost 25 pounds. Let's just say I saw some photos of myself at my 25th high school reunion and was embarrassed. That was August. Since then I've slashed the calories and joined a gym — and I've actually gone. People notice.......
2010-12-26 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
We don't have a lot of Christmas traditions in our house, but one thing I try to do every year is watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve. Unless the boy convinces me to tune to "Phineas and Ferb's Christmas Vacation." Holiday classics ain't what they used to be. "It's a Wonde......
2010-12-23 14:55:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-12-19 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
For me, the worst aspect of the tax deal is the payroll tax cut. Don't get me wrong, I'll be happy to accept whatever cash falls into my lap. We'll put it to good use, you can be sure. But how is it that everyone agrees that Social Security's finances are already precarious to begin with,......
2010-12-16 11:59:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-12-12 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
If you've followed the WikiLeaks saga, you may have noticed an interesting contradiction. In recent years Americans have revolted against the idea of monolithic, opaque government. Government grown too large and too powerful, we are told, threatens individual liberty. And......
2010-12-05 00:02:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The video was shot Black Friday inside the front doors of a Target store near Buffalo, N.Y. At 4 a.m. the doors opened and the crowd surged forward. Black and white, men and women, everyone struggled t......
2010-12-02 11:44:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-11-28 02:00:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
"Our world isn't about ideology anymore. It's about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate willpower to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand,......
2010-11-21 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I don't watch much television outside pro football. And even if I did, I doubt I'd be watching "Dancing With the Stars," which seems to me to be an updated version of the "Battle of the Network Stars," without Gabe Kaplan and Scott Baio. Or have they danced on the show yet? Th......
2010-11-19 10:18:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-11-14 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Sit down. Are you sitting down? Good. This may seem weird. But I actually agree with Sarah Palin on something. Palin — the GOP's 2012 presidential nominee, mark my words — came out last week against the Federal Reserve's decision to implement a second round of "quantitati......
2010-11-11 11:55:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-11-07 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I suppose that's what a tsunami looks like. The Republican Party cruised Tuesday night, and quite a few conservatives wrote to say — pace Nelson Munz of "The Simpsons" — HA HA! Which is fine. Politics is a sport and I suppose my "team" lost. Taking it further — a......
2010-11-05 10:32:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-10-31 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I stumbled across a story about a tea party event in Harrisburg earlier this month, remarking on what a family fun event it was. There was face-painting, horseback riding, pumpkin-carving, and a small-caliber shooting range. Perhaps so no one had to lug the jack-o'-lanterns home with them....
2010-10-28 09:54:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-10-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
First things first: After an inartfully worded bit in last week's piece, I think I heard from every other waiter or waitress in Lancaster County. Citing Oregon gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley's declaration that servers who make tips plus minimum wage — $8.50 an hour in Oregon &......
2010-10-21 11:40:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-10-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
In the summer of 1984 I was young, thin and thought Ronald Reagan was totally awesome. How things change. It was also the summer my parents said: Get a job. The Burger King at Golden Triangle Shopping Center had just opened; I was hired at the princely sum of $3.15 per hour, minimum wage ......
2010-10-14 11:21:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-10-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
This, I think, hits the nail directly on the head: "The social changes in America since World War II — in which a college education is the only path for rising above our stagnant middle class and yet that opportunity is unaffordable for millions — is part of a caul......
2010-10-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Lost in the maelstrom surrounding Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin and other Spawn of the Tea Parties is the fact that one of the most radically conservative candidates this election cycle is right here in Pennsylvania. Former U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey is challenging Democrat Joe Sestak for......
2010-09-30 11:23:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-09-26 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Sometimes I wonder how we'd do it without Amelia's. Which is to say we buy our groceries from a variety of different supermarkets and produce stands. But when it comes to bang for you buck, it's hard to beat a discount grocer like Amelia's, or Aldi's, or Shop-Rite — there are many a......
2010-09-23 09:45:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-09-19 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Last week in this space I wrote of my family's search for a new home in a housing market where prices, for the most part, remain unrealistically high. I've been writing this column for more than a decade, and would like to say nothing surprises me anymore. But what happened next did take ......
2010-09-16 09:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-09-12 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So we are looking for a house. It began when we found out that Baby Boy was on the way. For more than a year, we've dragged our real estate agent around to house after house and checked the online multilist every day, sometimes more than once. Hope springs eternal, I guess, though so......
2010-09-09 08:39:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-09-05 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I followed Glenn Beck's homage to faith, "honor" and himself last weekend, and I must admit: It was quite the crowd. CBS News hired experts who pegged the throng at about 87,000, give or take 6,000. That, of course, ticked off the right-wingers. Beck subsequently suggested there were h......
2010-09-02 12:20:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-08-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The news last week was dire, though by now we should be accustomed to dire news. Existing home sales plunged in July by 27 percent, to the lowest level in 15 years. New home sales fell 12.4 percent, though some analysts had expected a modest increase. There was no word on what these analysts......
2010-08-26 11:45:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-08-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I know, I know. I said I was going to try and stay away from this sort of thing. But when a caller last week left a voice mail suggesting I write about the proposed community center and mosque near Ground Zero — which, he said, is akin to "putting swastika flags up at war camps ov......
2010-08-19 14:25:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-08-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
First, an apology. Over the years in this space I've tackled a broad range of issues — everything from our never-ending wars to religion, gay marriage, illegal immigration and beyond. Lately, though, I've turned into a one-trick pony; the topics here have been almost exclusivel......
2010-08-13 09:01:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-08-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The New York Times ran a story about Harley-Davidson last month that caught me by surprise. As we know right here in the Susquehanna Valley (as WGAL might say), times are tough at the Harley plant in York County. In June, another 200 workers lost their jobs, as the plant reduces its union wo......
2010-08-05 13:03:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-08-01 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The column was sent to me by a conservative with whom I disagree, courteously though completely. He thinks I'm a socialist, I suppose; I think that, like too many, he's been hoodwinked into supporting an ideology that actually impoverishes him, his family and ultimately his nation. Never,......
2010-07-29 16:20:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-07-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
My father-in-law is an interesting guy. And let's leave it at that. I admire his sense of thrift. He has lived in the same house for nearly 40 years; it's long paid off. When he buys a new vehicle, he pays cash. I'm not sure he has any credit cards — maybe one in case of em......
2010-07-15 16:08:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-07-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
What cracks me up when we talk about "austerity" is the fact that many Fox News middle-class conservatives seem to think that all the sacrifices are going to be borne by someone else. "Someone else" being the poor. There's a great rhetorical War on the Poor being wage......
2010-07-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So here it is the Fourth of July, the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air all proving that our flag is still there. But what of our country? Most people would acknowledge that things aren't going so well right now. "The economic rebound might be hitting the skids,&......
2010-07-02 08:46:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-06-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
A few years back for a history class I had to read a slim book titled "Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England." It was an environmental history.I'm sure THAT will be fascinating, I thought, cynically. Actually, it was. William Cr......
2010-06-24 12:46:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-06-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The president's speech Tuesday night was depressing, frankly. We're doing all we can, which isn't enough. We'll make BP pay, though it can never fix the damage And we'll talk more about alternative energy — but as was the case with health care reform, the president himse......
2010-06-18 11:07:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-06-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
This, from CNNMoney.com, might have been the saddest news of the week, if not the most predictable: "Jobs may be coming back, but they aren't the same ones workers were used to. "Many of the jobs employers are adding are te......
2010-06-10 16:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-06-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
As the depression we refuse to call a depression grinds on, I've been thinking about teachers. Teachers and cops, maybe firefighters. Public employees. They are the new economic bogeymen in this age of austerity. They make too much money, and they're greedy greedy greeeeeedy. They ge......
2010-06-03 15:23:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-05-30 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Beach vacation is set for July, and I'm desperately looking forward to it. Or I was, until someone said: Do you think the oil will be there by then? Er ... "Crude from the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has now entered currents that will carry it out into the Atlantic Ocean a......
2010-05-27 11:25:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-05-23 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
And now, for something bipartisan. If that's possible.Ross Douthat had a fantastic column in the New York Times last weekend lamenting the fact that American government and society keeps growing ever more complex. The populist fury dominating the headlines, he wrote, tends to obscure t......
2010-05-16 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
What in the world is going on in Arizona? Hot on the heels of the new round-'em-up immigration law comes another measure that, in one of the most ethnically diverse states in the union, basically bans ethnic studies. The bill, signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week, &q......
2010-05-13 15:40:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-05-09 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there's a new book I need to pick up, "Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture" by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, which addresses the question of whether states where "family values" are strongest politically actually exhibit the stro......
2010-05-07 09:08:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-05-02 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So I see where a group of conservatives are gonna git their guns and take symbolic potshots at the tyrannical liberal notions that are killing freedom. This would be up in Manheim during LiveFreePA, a day to "celebrate the freedoms we enjoy and the ones that are coming under attack,&quo......
2010-04-30 10:49:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-04-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I was talking to a conservative friend — you'd be surprised — when the subject of financial reform came up, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission's charges against Goldman Sachs, filed just ahead of the big congressional push for new regulation of the financial i......
2010-04-23 10:00:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-04-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The story, on the front page of Tuesday's newspaper, infuriated me. It chronicled Manheim Township School District's surrender in its brief standoff with Brethren Village, a retirement community that no longer wishes to pay taxes on its considerable holdings in the northern end of......
2010-04-16 07:26:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-04-11 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The caller has left several messages over the past few months, each time noting that he never reads our paper, and never reads my column. Yet somehow he always manages to know exactly what I write on any given Sunday. Funny how that works. Another feature of his angry voice mails......
2010-04-08 09:34:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-04-04 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
After a brutal winter that set snowfall records, April blew in like a pride of lions last week, with temperatures approaching 80 degrees, close to another record. Who knew global warming could be so darned pleasant? Up in New England, however, it was a different story. Rhode Island, the......
2010-03-28 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Stop for a moment and consider how much better the health care reform bill might have been had Republicans participated in the legislative process, rather than stood in the proverbial hospital door. Tort reform, for example, might have been part of the mix. There are plenty of liberals/De......
2010-03-25 17:00:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-03-21 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
One of the things that has fascinated me about the financial crisis is how so many have sought to heap the blame upon society's least fortunate — rather than its most fortunate. The point was underscored by an interview with author Michael Lewis on "60 Minutes." Lewis ......
2010-03-19 10:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-03-14 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Over the course of the past few months this space has indulged in what you might call variations on a theme. It's a theme of crisis, and the subsequent crisis of confidence. The stark realization that the United States of America has hit a wall — and who's to blame? "Why d......
2010-03-12 11:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-03-07 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So the news last week was that Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, was re-enacting the famous Tiananmen Square scene where the lone guy stood in the way of all those battle tanks. Bunning's move was less dramatic, though in the eyes of some, no less heroic. For several days he sing......
2010-03-05 13:15:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-02-28 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there was a new poll out last week by the Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research showing that Pennsylvanians are ready for a tea party. Sixty-two percent of the 1,143 people polled knew or had heard something about the tea-party movement; 39 percent said they suppo......
2010-02-26 10:30:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-02-21 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Associate Editor
Interesting back-and-forth these past few weeks on the topic of the social safety net, and whether we ought to be strengthening it — or letting it fray. Conservatives are complaining, as usual, that I've completely mischaracterized their position by suggesting they don't rea......
2010-02-19 12:14:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-02-14 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
At the end of last week's rhetorical body-slam of the tea party movement, I noted that conservatives are constantly demanding that government spending be cut — but never provide specifics. It's real easy to shriek about government overspending without having to identify, spe......
2010-02-12 10:45:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-02-07 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So there's a riot goin' on, a big old Tea Party convention that ends today in Nashville. People have gathered to express their OUTRAGE over Obama and his socialist communist fascist government agenda and demand that we take back America by electing Sarah Palin president or some godawfu......
2010-02-05 11:38:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-01-31 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
When I first started writing a newspaper column, I quickly discovered that the third rail of commentary — at that time — was WGAL. Criticizing WGAL, as I did in one of my first columns (following a huge 1996 snowstorm that I thought could have been reported better) brought a deluge of......
2010-01-28 17:26:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-01-24 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I'm in the doctor's office just after 8 a.m., plowing through the morning newspaper when a woman bursts in and announces she's there because of an "emergency." Emergency? The half-dozen people in the waiting room glanced up at her: Nothing appeared to be wrong. But s......
2010-01-21 13:20:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-01-17 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The gradual purpling of this space has been the subject of numerous e-mails in recent weeks, as avowed conservatives who insist they never read anything I write somehow managed to catch my published doubts about Obama. And they wished to cheer my revelation that all things blue are not wonderful.......
2010-01-15 13:02:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2010-01-10 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I know, that headline's a real doozy coming from someone like me, who's spent the past decade-plus lambasting the right in all its outraged glory. For a long time the concerns of this country have seemed to fit — and how conveniently! — into the classic left-right paradig......
2010-01-03 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
As I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve, it dawned on me that Mr. Potter just didn't get it. If you've seen the movie, you know the aging, embittered banker derides Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey for making loans to the "riffraff" — the ......
2009-12-27 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
It's been a rough Christmas season for reasons both private and public. The snow last weekend was a metaphor, I thought. It was nice at first, but ultimately a problem both for people needing to finish preparing for the holidays and the retailers who were hoping against hope that you and I mi......
2009-12-20 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The VCR died. Now what? It was 20 years old; my wife owned it when I met her. And it served us quite well. I used to tape "Seinfeld" with it; more recently I taped "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" for the boy. But the other night I turned it on: nada. Time to up......
2009-12-18 18:13:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-12-13 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
A few years before the kids came along we took a vacation to California, flying into San Francisco, driving down the coast and flying out of Los Angeles. I recommend it highly, though I might advise against the driving part. I'm well-acquainted with the D.C. Beltway, I've driven in a......
2009-12-11 13:39:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-12-06 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Everyone wants to talk about the deficit. And rightly so, though we're all a bit hypocritical about it. The tea partiers raging in the street about government spending forget that one of their great heroes, Dick Cheney, once said that, "Deficits don't matter." And now, o......
2009-12-04 07:01:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-11-29 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Sarah Palin fascinates me. She's a one-woman political litmus test, the obvious heir to the populist political tradition in this country, with a crucial twist: Her populism is exclusively cultural. Her Darwinian economic beliefs are the very policies William Jennings Bryan and Huey Lo......
2009-11-27 17:20:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-11-22 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
The figures came out Monday, and they made me ashamed to be an American. The U.S. Agriculture Department released its annual Household Food Security report, showing that in 2008, 14.6 percent of U.S. homes — 17 million households, totaling 49.1 million people — had difficulty ......
2009-11-20 13:46:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-11-15 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Ah. See, the thing is, I don't understand. That was the overwhelming response to last week's bit where I wondered just which "freedoms" Obama and the Democrats were usurping with their health care bill. With the exception of a few libertarians who wrote to say that our......
2009-11-13 12:10:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-11-08 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Help me out on this one — and I know conservatives will: When the right wails that its "freedoms" are being usurped by the evil, socialist, communist, fascist Kenyan in the White House — what are they talking about? The word "freedom" brings to mind th......
2009-11-06 10:50:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-11-01 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
I haven't written much about religion lately, mostly because with a Democratic president and Democratic Congress, the impact of what we might call the Theocons has been diminished. More on that in a moment. Still, I've always gotten very interesting feedback from evangelicals and ......
2009-10-30 11:45:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-10-25 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
Last week's bit about Fox News being unfair and unbalanced brought all sorts of mail from people outraged that I would dare impugn Fox. After all, Fox's ratings are going up as newspaper circulation drops and right there's proof that Fox is getting it right where everyone ......
2009-10-23 11:32:00
GIL SMART and CASEY KREIDER
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2009-10-18 00:01:00
GIL SMART, Smart Remarks
So last week the Obama administration stepped up its war on Fox News, with White House Communications Director Anita Dunn asserting that Fox operates as an arm of the Republican Party. The right shrieked its outrage, and media analysts cried foul, saying demonizing the press never works &......
