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Archive for the ‘property values’ Category

Top political books of 2011 – The Arena | POLITICO.COM

www.politico.com11/24/11

… of obesity, incarceration, homicide, mental illness, drug addiction, infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, and low rates of social mobility, trust and life expectancy. The U.S., tragically, has some of the highest rates of …

Obesity, Drug Abuse Biggest Problems in US Youth

www.inquisitr.com8/16/11

“The perception of drug abuse as a big problem matches recent national data showing increasing use of marijuana and other drugs by US teens. Meanwhile, although obesity remains atop the list of child health concerns for …

I just came across the following map and stats, and whilst I found the whole thing interesting, I wondered if it was really accurate.

So I just spent a couple of hours checking out the sources, and as far as I could see, everything is 100% accurate.

The majority of the stats were taken from either:

America’s Health Rankings

or The US Census Bureau

And if they weren’t, then an alternative source is quoted.

So Here They Are

1. Alabama: highest rate of stroke (3.8 percent) (tied with Oklahoma).

2. Alaska: highest suicide rate (23.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2004).

3. Arizona: highest rate of alcoholism.

4. Arkansas: worst average credit score (636) – TalkBusiness

5. California: most air pollution (15.2 micrograms per cubic meter).

6. Colorado: highest rate of cocaine use per capita (3.9 percent total population).

7. Connecticut: highest rate of breast cancer – State Health Facts

8. Delaware: highest abortion rate (27 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44).

9. Florida: highest rate of identity theft (122.3 reports per 100,000 people).

10. Georgia: sickly based on highest rate of influenza.

11. Hawaii –highest cost of living (tied with California) CNBC States With The Highest Cost Of Living

12. Idaho – lowest level of Congressional clout – NewWest

13. Illinois: highest rate of robbery (284.7 incidences per 100,000 people).

14. Indiana: rated the most environmentally unfriendly by NMI solutions – Environmental Leader

15. Iowa: highest percentage of people age 85 and older (1.8 percent) (tied with three other states) StateMaster

16. Kansas: poorest health based on highest average number of limited activity days per month (3.5 days) StateMaster

17. Kentucky: most cancer deaths (227 per 100,000 people), and Kentucky also has the highest rate of tobacco smokers – 25.6 percent).

18. Louisiana: highest rate of gonorrhea (264.4 reported cases per 100,000 people) StateMaster

19. Maine: dumbest state claim based on lowest average SAT score (1389) Commonwealth Foundation

20. Maryland: highest rate of AIDS diagnosis (27.6 people per 100,000 people) Avert.org

21. Massachusetts: worst drivers claim based on highest rate of auto accidents The Auto Channel

22. Michigan: highest unemployment rate (13.6 percent).

23. Minnesota: highest number of reported tornadoes (123 in 2010) Woodbury kstp

24. Mississippi: highest rate of obesity (35.3 percent of total population).

* Mississippi ranks last in the most number of categories.

Including the highest rate of child poverty (31.9 percent), highest rate of infant mortality (10.3 percent).

Lowest median household income ($35,078).

Highest teen birth rate (71.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19).

And highest overall rate of STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases).

25. Missouri: highest rate of bankruptcy (700 out of every 100,000 people) BSC Alliance

26. Montana: highest rate of drunk driving deaths (1.12 deaths per 100 million miles driven) HelenAir

27. Nebraska: highest rate of women murdered annually.

28. Nevada: highest rate violent crime (702.2 offenses per 100,000 people)and Nevada also has the highest rate of foreclosure (one in 99 houses).

29. New Hampshire: highest rate of corporate taxes New Hampshire Watchdog

: the link went dead. So what’s NH bottom at? Email me!

30. New Jersey: highest rate of citizen taxation (11.8 percent) The Retirement Living Information Center

31. New Mexico: antisocial claim based on lowest ranking in social heath policies Los Alimos Study Group

32. New York: longest average daily commute (30.6 minutes) StateMaster

33. North Carolina: lowest average teacher salary Facing South

34. North Dakota: ranked last in ugliest residents report as chosen by The Daily Beast

35. Ohio: nerdiest state claim based on highest number of library visits per capita (6.9) StateMaster

36. Oklahoma: highest rate of female incarceration.

37. Oregon: highest rate of long-term homeless people.

38. Pennsylvania: highest rate of arson deaths (55.56 annually) StateMaster

39. Rhode Island: highest rate of illicit drug use (12.5 percent of population) EconomicMix

40. South Carolina: highest percentage of mobile homes (18.8 percent) StateMaster

41. South Dakota: highest rate of forcible rape 76.5 per 100,000.

42. Tennessee: chosen most corrupt state by The Daily Beast

43. Texas: lowest high school graduation rate (78.3 percent) Statemaster

44. Utah: highest rate of of on-line porn subscriptions Desert News

45. Vermont: infertility claim based on lowest birth rate of any state (10.6 births per 1,000) (tied with Maine) StateMaster

46. Virginia: highest number of alcohol-related motorcycle deaths The Virginia Biker

47. Washington: most cases of bestiality (4 reported in 2010) Pet-Abuse

48. West Virginia: highest rate of heart attack (6.5 percent of population).

49. Wisconsin: highest rate of binge drinking (23.2 percent of population).

50. Wyoming: highest rate of deadly car crashes (24.6 deaths per 100,000) AutoInsuranceQuotealer

The bottom line is, if you do find any errors then please let me know and I’ll make the updates.

Early Jobs Projections Could Haunt Obama in 2012 – NYTimes.com

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com11/4/11

Friday's tepid jobs report brings a fresh reminder of the stubborn difficulty President Obama and his team face in overcoming the argument that his administration has failed to address unemployment.

Droves Of Democrats Balking On Obama 2012 | Politicons

politicons.net11/14/11

Radioactive Obama… Politico has a piece highlighting the droves of Democrats that are refusing to back Obama in 2012. …

Just one year from the 2012 election and President Obama is in an extremely perilous political situation.

The poor economy he inherited hasn’t recovered and has most likely worsened.

Published unemployment is stuck above 9% with real unemployment being around 18.5%

Long-term unemployment is at record post-war levels.

The housing sector, where most people’s personal wealth was and is concentrated, remains mired in deep recession.

The scandals surrounding Republican-led investigations into Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious are deepening.

Obama Had Overwhelming Majorities In Both Houses Of Congress

Although the President had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in his first two years, he has only two major legislative achievements to his credit:

The stimulus bill.

And Obamacare.

The stimulus bill is generally perceived as having been worse than a total failure, because it’s perceived as having been motivated more by politics than economics, and because much of the $800 billion was directed towards public service union members and liberal causes; i.e. "green energy", rather than real economic recovery.

Obamacare also remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.

The Economy And America’s Status

Budget deficits soared during the Obama years, with three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row.

And this has caused the national debt to swell to a level that, relative to GDP, has not been seen since the end of World War II and for the first time ever, the United States lost its AAA credit rating, which was a deep embarrassment for the country and also the administration.

Obama’s Ratings

So it shouldn’t be surprising that under these circumstances, that the President’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline, with some of his key supporting groups, including the youth and Hispanic voters to a greater or less degree abandoning him.

Obama’s Re-electability

No recent President was re-elected with unemployment above 7.8%, and that was in 1984, when unemployment was falling rapidly as a major economic boom accelerated.

So What Happened?

How did a man who three years ago won a higher percentage of both the popular and electoral vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide almost fifty years ago find himself fighting such uphill odds to keep the White House?

The answer to that seems to lie in the somewhat exceptional circumstances that existed during the 2008 election, and Barack Obama’s personality which fitted the times.

In 2008, the American electorate was thoroughly tired of both the Bush administration and the Republican Party, which had lost its majority in Congress in 2006 for the first time in twelve years.

The Republican field of presidential candidates in 2008 was a weak one, with the eventual winner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, widely perceived as being too old for the job.

So Obama, who was only forty seven years old, seemed in contrast, like a breath of fresh air.

He seemed personable, articulate (nobody had yet focused on his TelePrompTer) and he was the first ever bi-racial candidate for a major-party nomination with any serious chance of winning.

His biggest opposition was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate who also had a serious chance of winning, but she was already well known to the American people, having been First Lady for eight years; and she carried a lot of baggage from her husband’s administration.

Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate and to some extent still is because of the main stream media which is still protecting him.

Obama Hid His Tracks

Obama only served a little over three years in the US Senate, where his record was thin, and he mostly voted "present” rather than take a stand on issues.

Which we can now see was because he didn’t want evidence that could later be used against him.

How Obama Won

The Obama campaign used his lack of Washington experience to the fullest, much like Herman Cain is using his now.

They cultivated an image of a new kind of president, one who would cut through the old Washington merry-go-round of partisan bickering and special-interest pandering.

He would be post-partisan, a President who would throw the special-interest moneychangers out of the temple of the nation’s capital.

Obama’s biggest advantage in the 2008 election however, was that the mainstream media, failed to reveal any of his major negatives, such as having been and active member of the New Party (communist) and promoted all of his seeming positives; simply because it so desperately wanted to see an extreme left-wing, bi-racial candidate elected.

So What Happened To Candidate Obama’s Promises?

Running for President and being President, are two entirely separate matters however, and once in the White House a new Obama emerged, one who was quite different from the post-partisan, special-interest-bashing one.

What metamorphosed, was a hyper-liberal ideologue who attended to his special interests, such as labor unions, as assiduously as any other Washington politician had ever done before.

And what’s more, an arrogance and a rigidity that had not been seen in the candidate before, became increasingly evident, and expressed itself in such things as his State of the Union speech in January 2010, wherein he publicly criticized the Supreme Court, many of whose members were sitting in front of him for one of its decisions, which was totally unprecedented behavior.

Soon Gone Was The Bi-Partisanship

"I won the election”, he bluntly told Rep. Paul Ryan when the latter tried to negotiate regarding Obamacare, and it resulted in his two major pieces of legislation passing with almost no Republican votes in either house.

The Tea Party

What happened next was a groundswell of opposition to the Obama administration’s big spending ways which quickly became known as the Tea Party, and it’s something that Obama naively or arrogantly ignored for too long.

Obama Vainly Ignored The Clear Writing On The Wall

Republican candidates did extremely well in the off-year elections of 2009, winning the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia with control-the-spending campaigns, and even greater evidence of voters’ dissatisfaction was when Scott Brown, who was a little known Republican, won the special election to fill the Senate seat of Democratic icon Ted Kennedy in deep-blue Massachusetts in January, 2010.

Obama Has Been Slow To Learn

Obama simply made a few token political adjustments, and in November, 2010, a tidal wave election gave decisive control of the House back to the Republicans and added seven Senate seats to their column, with Republicans also winning races for governor and state legislative seats across the width and breadth of the country.

Obama did admit that he had taken a shellacking, but he seems no more willing to change his ways than before because his latest plan to stimulate the economy is little different than his first one, and it has no chance of being enacted.

Can Obama Win Reelection?

Unlikely unless:

The economy turns around.

The Republicans nominate another weak candidate, which is possible.

The Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, or avoids making a decision before the election.

Obama’s biggest problem however seems to be that he’s totally egocentric and believes that his way is the only right way.

It’s highly unlikely that he’ll change, and increasingly likely that he’ll be a one term president, which is something that he said that he’d prefer.

"I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president".

And if that comes to be, then he’ll be able to say that he was right about that too!