History is an odd creature. Although it you can't change it, it is none the less a living and breathing thing. What has happened has actually happened, that much we know, but history can provide the how and the why. And it also provides a means of looking into the aftermath of a historical event.     Take President Clinton and his tryst with an intern. It was an extremely egregious act and he let down many of his supporters, but to be fair, history has shown us that at least 7 presidents before him had their own little escapades and one even made a baby in his trysts. They never had to stand before a judiciary committee and lie about it though, thus we had an impeachment process.     In an impeachment the House acts as a prosecutor and the Senate acts as the jury. The prosecution was led by the House Speaker at the time, Newt Gingrich, who history has shown was at the time cheating on his own wife, the woman who he cheated with while he was marri...

    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 thing...

    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 str...

    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 billi...

    $469 million, That's what been spent by candidates vying to be our next President, and that's just the money spent by the also-rans. The losers have spent nearly a half billion dollars and the only people who don't see a problem with this are the people blowing through the cash. Total in all the candidates and it sits at $889M, and that's just through Feb.     Campaign money comes from two sources generally, the campaign committee fund and pacs/superpacs and trust me , they don't want the general public to understand how these work. There are four different kinds of pacs, connected, non-connected, leadership and super, each with their own set of rules that are rarely followed b/c no one really gives a shit. When the rich want to influence an election they'll find the ways to get it done. A superpac is supposed to be independent of a candidate it's usually people hired by the campaign to run it. While most pac donations must say who the money comes from ...

    While Congress sits on their hands and does absolutely not a damned thing except the occasional naming of a Post Office (and even that's not without controversy, nine House members voted against naming one after Maya Angelou on March 2nd, calling her a communist sympathizer) the state legislatures have been quite busy, although generally not in the best interests of its citizenry. . Alabama    Alabama is the 47th poorest state in the US. For every dollar it pays into the federal government it takes $2.46 out. It has no minimum wage law so it's residents have to abide by the governments $7.25 statue. A person earning min. wage will bring home about $290 per week, minus taxes puts a paycheck at around $200. net. That's $800 a month for rent, utilities and food. Heaven forbid you have kids    The largest city, Birmingham, said enough is enough. We can't survive as a city unless our citizens are paid a fair wage. They decided that a minimum wage of...

  Although my GOP bracket went to hell in a hand basket, and rather quickly, there were some things I got right.     When I put Ben Carson on the list of  candidates who were "in it for the money" I couldn't have hit the nail more squarely, in fact, I greatly underestimated his prowess as a grifter.     Ben raised about $58M for his campaign, $27M in the last quarter alone and by the end of Feb. he was broke. While running a campaign can be expensive most of Bens money never made it onto the campaign trail. He never opened offices in Iowa or New Hampshire and simply relied on his appearances. Sure he bought some hats and t-shirts( ($600,000) and spent some some money on travel and lodging (about $2M). He even bought some balloons ($50) and a couple of books $74.25)     His biggest expenditures? Digital media and web services ($10M), printing and postage ($7M), and fundraising phone calls ($2.4M). While fundraising is important, most...