Poor Cleveland. Once again they try to rise above above the stigma as an ugly city and end up getting the long end of the shit stick.     It's not often that a city gets to showcase itself on the national stage, let alone on an international stage, and it was their hope that the GOP convention would do just that. Now their moment to shine is losing it's luster on an almost daily basis. It's a damned shame really. I've always had a good time on every visit to Cleveland, whether it was for concerts or football. The people are friendly, they have great working class bars and it's pretty easy to get around. The GOP convention doesn't deserve Cleveland. And Cleveland definitely doesn't deserve the crap headed it's way.     With the convention comes some Federal money for crowd control equipment and Cleveland saw this as a great opportunity for some much needed things they could use well past the convention. Congress approved $50 million for such things

    Our Governor loves to tout HIS job creation in Ohio, but some, no a lot, of HIS jobs can be traced back to central Ohio and the policies our local government put in place well before he became Governor. Make no mistake our state unemployment has fallen during his tenure but so has the nation and two of our border states, Indiana and Michigan, have done even better.     Our current state unemployment stands at 4.9%, not too shabby and it mirrors the national rate, but at the county level the numbers seem a bit skewed. There are 88 counties in Ohio but only 19 are below that 4.9% threshold. Some basic math would say there's no way you can have 69 counties out of 88 over the average to arrive at that number. To make it even more interesting there are 5 counties with over 10% unemployment and 35 of our 88 counties have an unemployment rate over 7%. It sure helps even the numbers when the county with the largest work force stands at 4.4% with job creation so strong that it bleeds o

    A quick look at how the new North Carolina Freedom to Discriminate bill is working out for their state.     Over 100 CEOs signed a letter calling for the repeal of the bill. It's a who's who of businesses, including the largest in the state, Bank of America. http://hrc-assets.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com//files/assets/resources/NC_CEO_Letter_%283%29.pdf     Four states have banned nonessential  travel, New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Washington. NYC, San Francisco and Chicago have also, and many more are considering it.     Film and TV production companies. are either having second thoughts or, in at least one case, moved their production to Canada. A&E network;  "Production on 'Six' is already under way, however we will not consider North Carolina for any new productions."     High Point Market is a furniture trade show organizer and the states largest economic event. It brings in $5.8 billion and generates 600,000 visitor hours. They rel