Old AmrapinVA

Spike Lee said that the National Guard was going to have to come to Cleveland the first time Miami arrived. He also said it would be a scene out of 1964 Birmingham. A bit over the top, even for him.

I had a feeling that wouldn't be good enough for you. I've sent tweets to other semi-important people like Windhorst and gotten responses, so yes, sometimes it does work. But it doesn't matter. As much as I'd like to change perceptions and see less of these articles written, there's not much that I can do, because nobody important cares. Cleveland and Ohio have an image, as developed in large part by the media, and it's easier to just keep perpetuating that image, even if it's way off-base. We'll see more crapping on "poor old Cleveland' from the national media next week if the Heat win the championship, count on it. I agree 1000%. In fact I'm inclined to believe that the indignation by some national sports media folk at the Indians hot start was because it didn't fit with the "Cleveland sucks" storyline planned if the Heat win it all. Of course nothing will beat last summer when the Cleveland area was a portrayed as a dying rust belt area even though it had an unemployment rate 2% below Miami and actually was posting job growth when Miami was still in recession. Or when Cleveland was considered "racist" even though its residents elected the first black mayor of a major US city while the city was 75% white and places like Atlanta were just integrating their bathrooms. Spike Lee lost all my respect with his accusations of Cleveland after the LeBron move. Then again, who cares about the truth when you are scripting a storyline in order to boost TV ratings. It's all WWE antics for an audience thinking it's getting actual journalism. Sorry, rant over.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lebron-james-just-followed-a-trend-leaving-ohio/2011/06/02/AGPEqMIH_story.html I wasn't aware that Ohio's population was approaching zero.

I understand the point and I'm not dismissing the graph. I'd just like to a see a similar comparison with a more worldwide perspective. Most of the fastest growing cities in the world aren't in Europe, North America or Australia. I'm sure there's energy consumption data for large cities in China, India, Thailand, South Korea, South Africa, Mexico, etc. I mean they found data for Moscow when it was still part of the CCCP! Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

How is Moscow more dense than Tokyo? Even in 1989 I find that hard to be true. Singapore has a similar density to Vienna?!? Most of the densities make sense but some are very odd. Also, the chart is extremely Eurocentric. What about Bangkok, Chennai, New Delhi, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Kuala Lampur? Hell what about Mexico City, Bogota, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires? Cape Town, Nairobi, Cairo, Lagos? It's a great looking chart but it's missing a lot of the world largest cities.

The Cleveland MSA unemployment rate for April stands at 7.6%, a full percentage point below Ohio's 8.6%. Job growth slowed from March, mainly due to a contraction in the financial sector. www.bls.gov Check Areas at a Glance

Team NEO is about 6-9 months late on this story....but at least the PD picked it up. To be fair though, the Cleveland MSA needs to gain about 150k jobs to get back to the all-time employment peak from about a decade ago.

Team NEO is about 6-9 months late on this story....but at least the PD picked it up.

The commenter on the lack of aesthetics was on a roll, until he/she said they felt back East when they visited Columbus???? Huh? A lot of our new construction features siding and sheeting, while Cbus goes with brick. She has a point there. Queens?!!?

I think you are right. If you look at Labor Statistic data (even the revised 2006 info) it shows the Cleveland MSA labor force bottoming out around June 2010. After that it starts reversing trends and by the end of the year growing at a fairly decent clip, in fact it shows growth not seen since the 1990's. I don't know if that's going to reflect in the Census data right away but I have a feeling the bleeding may at least abate with the 2011 data.

New York-Philly-Hartford! 29.8 mil! Wow! I bet Philly folks wont like being NY's Oakland or Akron. The total population figures seem low for almost all the metros. Are they getting rid of rural areas of counties as part of the MSA and reassigning the standard to just urban/suburban areas? I didn't have time to read the text.

It's much more complicated than the article implies: While recent delays are due to outsourcing, most of the original delays were due to events at Everett. First, the composite designs were "unstable" leading to fractures in the wing. Then there was the strike. That ate up about 2 years of the initial launch. Boeing killed the ambitious schedule before China ever did. It behoves Boeing to blame it on outsourcing. All Nippon Airways (ANA) has been waiting, fairly patiently, for the 787 for four years. Now they're not so patient. Boeing management didn't mention Japan as one of the "evil" outsourcing countries partly due to the fact that it's initial customer is a Japanese airline. It feels like Boeing is doing a bit of spin for the U.S. media in order to pass blame and play on some nationalist feelings. Also, EADS (Airbus) does most of it's work in five Western European countries yet has had loads of cost overruns and project delays just like Boeing. The A380 was an electrical engineering disaster and the components were not made by low-wage workers in the Far East they were made by high-wage workers in France and Germany. Boeing needs to tread carefully on how far they blame outsourcing: Brazil, Canada, Western Europe and Japan are all making quality commercial aircraft. China will probably be added to that list by the end of the decade. Competition will only make it harder for any airline to keep all components in house.

The LA area has only one team, the Clippers don't count as an NBA organization. :D

Cheapest American Cities to Own a Car http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1719/the-cheapest-cities-to-own-a-car/ 1. C-land 3. Cincy 4. C-bus Hmmmmm.....

Here's the actual data table: County data: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t01.htm State data: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.t03.htm

David, I agree with you about sports and weather. People do take it very personally. It's just that Cleveland is above middle-of-the-road for job growth, below the national and state average in unemployment and in the top-fifth of metros in terms of wage growth and it's #10 in the U.S. in terms of misery? Like I said, they had to really "work" some very subjective numbers to keep Cleveland there and even then the city dropped 9 spots. It's becoming an art for them. It'll be harder next year to keep Cleveland on the list as the local economy continues it's march towards faster expansion.

I actually laughed out loud when I read the list. It's like Forbes can't deal with the fact that Cleveland's economy is improving. Unemployment in this country is 9% and our national job growth is amemic yet it still uses factors such as "weather". It also looks like they really had to "work" those numbers to keep Cleveland there. Gainful employment and affordable mortgages vs. sports championships and weather???? Hahahahaha. This list is based in some pre-housing bust fantasy world. My question is: I wonder how many people will be dumb enough to use these rankings to move to a place with a worse local/regional economy? Forbes is soooooo 2000's. I bet they know it too. Oh well. :D

I don't get it: Nevada has lost about 200,000 jobs in the last 36 months which is roughly 15% of its Dec. '07 total. Ohio is not even close to being the league leader in either category. Former PD reporter working at Crain's? :D

Is the growth gone? Or were all the numbers incorrect form day one? Was the trough worse and the rebound still there? It's not like 100,000 jobs went "poof" all at once. There's still the fact that Cleveland's labor force is expanding while unemployment is falling in 2010. If these numbers aren't corrected it usually means people are finding work. I'm very interested to see how this shakes out. Edit: Answering my own question: The correction goes back to Jan. '06 according to the BLS site: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrs2011.pdf So the job growth may still be represented just at a lower base amount. We'll have to see.

The PD business editorial staff should be ashamed in their bias against positive economic news in regards to Northeast Ohio. Seriously, Cleveland is now in the top fifth of US metros in terms of total job growth and in the top fourth in terms of percentage of total over the last recorded 12 month period. When was the last time that happened? The 1960's? You'd never know these changes were happening by reading the business section of the PD. BTW, I don't care if I'm seen as "complaining", it's very a real problem that needs to be addressed by the PD. The PD, like any other media outlet, is agenda driven. Their big agenda over the past 2-3 years was to squash out the previous country Gov't system (no complaints here), and of course pander to Forest City (why the MMart project took so long), and now it appears they're after Union's hard and heavy. Maybe some others on here have a better handle as to what the PD's current agenda is, my best guess is Union's, but could also be something else they're going after.. So they can't report any positive news, they have to keep painting the picture of despair to drive change (in their view). There are basically two ways to get things done, with honey or vinegar. The PD obviously follows the vinegar approach. The problem with the vinegar approach is that its been done by most of the local/national media for over 40 years (with the exception of one period of the mid-to-late 90's). Ever since that damn river caught on fire in '69 there's been no end to bashing of the Cleveland area by local and national news outlets. It would be nice to be served some honey more than once in a half-century! Anyway, moving on....

The PD business editorial staff should be ashamed in their bias against positive economic news in regards to Northeast Ohio. Seriously, Cleveland is now in the top fifth of US metros in terms of total job growth and in the top fourth in terms of percentage of total over the last recorded 12 month period. When was the last time that happened? The 1960's? You'd never know these changes were happening by reading the business section of the PD. BTW, I don't care if I'm seen as "complaining", it's very a real problem that needs to be addressed by the PD.

Labor departement posted metro unemployement stats in November a few days back: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.t03.htm Cleveland metro businesses created almost the same amount of jobs as the ENTIRE STATE OF CALIFORNIA over the last year. Cleveland created the most amount of jobs in Ohio but was 4th in terms of percentage of total behind Sandusky, Mansfield and Steubenville. My, how the 'mighty' have fallen. :D

The rebound of NE Ohio ahead of the rest of the state has been because of growth in areas such as manufacturing and health care. While some of those jobs are low paying they certainly aren't mostly Wal-Mart jobs. And there have been plenty of jobs added this year: 40000 in the Cleveland MSA alone. Again, the types of jobs are in black and white right here: www.bls.gov "Areas at a Glance" With Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and St. Louis recovering better than the nation, the "Rust Belt" is only rusting at its' buckle: Detroit. To be honest, almighty Chicago isn't doing that hot either. I'm not saying times are easy and certainly NE Ohio has lagged behind the rest of the state for about 4 decades until this recovery but at some point things change, like now. :D

www.bls.gov. Look at "Areas at a Glance". I didn't want to post the source because it's already been reposted several times in this thread.