“The Central Ohio Transit Authority experienced an 18 percent increase in bus ridership on its fixed routes for the month of July,” according to Columbus Local News. That’s over July 2007. Stay high, gas prices! Keep these people off the road. Disclaimer: I have never ridden on a COTA bus. (Via RetroMetro.)

Ohio unemployment is now at 7.2%, the highest figure in 16 years:

The figures released Friday show that the number of unemployed workers in July was 430,000, up from 394,000 in June. The number of unemployed people in the state has increased by 96,000 in the past 12 months.

Ohio’s 7.2 percent jobless rate tops national unemployment of 5.7 percent.

Buckblog: “Of course these facts will escape the proponents of the proposed mandatory sick leave law as well as those pushing for a mandated pregnancy leave.”

Good point.

NBC4i on another Whole Foods recall:

The company says its 365 Organic Everyday Value Popcorn, Lightly Salted might contain undeclared milk ingredients, which could cause a severe or life-threatening reaction in people who have allergies to milk ingredients

First last week’s ground beef recall, now this. Quite the string of bad pr.

Despite being a rightie, I just started shopping at Whole Foods amongst the hippies and vegans. (Does that make me a hypocrite?) I go to the one Lane Avenue- which seems to also be called Wild Oats. That’s confusing.

Ohio’s political winners & losers of the week, courtesy PolitickerOH, a neat site if you live and breathe state politics. Gov. Strickland’s a big winner, but the ODP a loser. That’s certainly arguable.

PolickerOH is relatively new site- here’s a good review from bonobo, an initial skeptic. When and if newspapers crash and burn, sites like that will fill the local government news niche.

In the Dispatch:

U.S. foreclosure filings were up 55 percent in July from a year earlier and up 8 percent from June, with Ohio posting the third-largest number as the housing market remained on life support.

In Ohio, 13,457 homeowners received a foreclosure notice last month, said RealtyTrac, a company that monitors default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. That was an increase of 2 percent over June and 1 percent over July 2007.

I’m guessing Ohio rose less because we took a bigger hit earlier: the lowest hanging fruit had already been foreclosed on.

John McCain wrote a letter to Frank Appel, CEO of Deutsche Post World Net, which owns DHL, asking him to come to Wilmington. But DHL’s making noises that it won’t matter:

DHL, however, this week expressed concerns that go beyond Wilmington. Put bluntly: sacrifice the limb (Wilmington) or put the patient (DHL in the United States) in grave danger.

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung yesterday reported that Appel told it: “There’s no real alternative. Otherwise we would threaten our entire express operations in the United States,” and more jobs would be in jeopardy.

Read German? Here’s the FAZ article. And roughly translated.

UPDATE: Sen. George Voinovich and much of the Ohio congressional delegation has also written a letter. They’ve gone over Appel’s head and written to German Chancellor Angela Merkel (DHL’s parent is mostly owned by the German govt DHL is about 32% owned by a German state bank):

“We raise this issue with you not only out of concern for the Ohio workers that will be impacted by this decision, but also because we are concerned that such dismissive treatment by such a significant German company will not be easily forgotten in the United States,” the letter says. “The situation and DHL’s indifference could easily undermine U.S. views on matters such as completing the next stage of the Open Skies, how foreign investment into the United States is viewed, and general U.S.-German trade relations.”

So there.

About 10,000 workers in the Columbus are are covered. The members still have to ratify the deal. Business First:

The Cincinnati-based company began talks with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1059 on July 21 in anticipation of a contract set to expire Nov. 9. Kroger said the union will present the tentative agreement to members for ratification on Friday.

Health care, of course, was one of the main points of contention.

Maggie Thurber writes up the Buckeye Institute’s plan to put Ohio government info online. This is a good idea. Some public websites look like they were made in 1995 and haven’t changed since. Many are difficult to navigate. Cynics would say that the pols want to keep it difficult.

Here’s the Buckeye Institute’s white paper.

A small controversy developed when it came out that the ODP reserved a bunch of spaces for themselves:

Columbus public-service officials blocked off 35 meters this summer outside the Ohio Democratic Party’s Downtown headquarters, not as a courtesy to political allies but because a check for more than $7,000 bought the spaces through Election Day.

City officials said yesterday that Democrats didn’t get a special deal. The party paid 6 1/2 times what the meters usually bring in.

But they did acknowledge that selling off public parking for four months at a time is “unreasonably long.” Public Service Director Mark Kelsey plans to investigate, said Mary Carran Webster, the department’s assistant director.

Now Mayor Coleman wants to examine bulk reservations of public street parking.

If Columbus doesn’t have a policy governing who can reserve public parking spaces, Mayor Michael B. Coleman wants one.

And if a policy — new or existing — doesn’t allow the Ohio Democratic Party to buy time in bulk for the spaces outside its Fulton Street headquarters, Coleman said he wants orange “no parking” bags removed from up to 35 meters.

Yeah, I think public spots should remain public. But more importantly, why are all those Dems not taking public transportation? Next thing you’ll tell me is that all their kids are in private schools.

One fun aspect of this-according to the first link- is that if you park in one of those ODP-reserved spaces, no one will know that you’re not supposed to. There’s no list and no one’s enforcing. So go ahead and park there. At your own risk- don’t bring your parking ticket to me!

This applies to Columbus to a large extent:

But, even if the critics are mostly right–even if the vast majority of cities never see a downtown residential boom of massive proportions–there is no doubt that a demographic inversion, in which the rich are moving inside and the poor are moving outside, is taking place. The crucial issue is not the number of people living downtown, although that matters. The crucial issue is who they are, and the ways in which urban life is changing as a result.

There’s also some mention of the exurbs as slums by 2030, which I’ve heard before. (Via Instapundit.)