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Tennessee became even more Republican and even the Ozarks look inviting. (via Screed blog et al)
Cookeville, TN is high on the list of my daydream retirement sites. Maybe I should reconsider, because they just raised property taxes.
US News and World Report has issued their declaration of the best places to retire. This is what’s wrong with each of their editor’s top picks:
- Bozeman, MT – Why would I want to go anywhere colder than here?
- Concord, NH – Same as above, with high property taxes.
- Fayetteville, AR – Can’t the get Clinton stench out of the linens. Tornadoes.
- Hillsboro, OR – Earthquakes, volcanoes and rain offset the lack of sales taxes.
- Lawrence, KS – Tornadoes, terminal flatness.
- Peachtree City, GA – Will be swallowed by Atlanta within 10-20 years. Expensive.
- Prescott, AZ – Too hot, too dry and on the front line of the next war with Mexico.
- San Francisco, CA – OMG, you must be kidding.
- Venice, FL – Too many hurricanes. I don’t have enough money.
- Smyrna, TN – Just a skosh too close to Nashville. Best choice of the 10, though.
Gritty, smelly, crime-ridden New Orleans had a population increase of 40,000 from 2006 to 2007. Dallas gained 2.5 Waukeshas in that time. Brett Favre retired. The weather sucks. The taxes are high. We are boneheads.
Other than believing that I was going to wake up this morning frozen to death, the worst part was that the electricity went out during the “Reveal” of Ghost Hunters International and now I’ll have to wait for next week’s rerun to find out what the ghosts were saying on the EVPs at Frankenstein’s Castle.
- Kudos to the men and women of WE Energy for diagnosing and fixing the problem in below zero weather in less than three hours.
- 6400 customers means, what, 20,000 people without heat? It could have gotten extremely nasty. What if Weenergy found the problem and told officials that it would take a day to fix, rather than three hours? How would the city notify all those people that they would need to find somewhere warm?
- I worried more about Watson than I did about myself. I could go to a motel, but what do I do with him?
- My alternate plan was to go to the condo, but they had no power either. It probably would have remained warmer longer, though.
- This is yet another reason to move south. If the power goes off and the temperature never gets below 40°F, you won’t freeze to death.
Death to the infidel ground hog. Snow blowing done again and again the axle bolt has either sheared or the nut has come off. I quit for tonight. My ruler says I got a foot and it’s still snowing. Plus, the wind has picked up and it’s getting colder. Haven’t seen a panhandle hook like this in years.
I’ve just spent the last two hours snow blowing, then reattaching the bolt which secures the axle, then snow blowing again, then reattaching the bolt which secures the axle then snow blowing, then reattaching the bolt which secures the axle and now I’m waiting an hour or two to snow blow again.
To quote one of my favorite authors, P.J. O’Rourke, “What the ****? What the ****ing ****?”
Forbes has created a misery index for metropolitan areas and Detroit wins the prize as the most miserable place in the United States.
Since the Forbes article doesn’t list any communities out of the top (bottom?) ten, naturally I was interested where Milwaukee would place. I went to the library and got one of the source books, Cities Ranked and Rated. All the library had was the first edition based on 2002 information and I notice that there is now a 2nd edition, so the figures may have changed in five years, but how much is the question?
First of all, the book follows the U.S. Census Bureau’s practice of combining Milwaukee and Waukesha into one metropolitan area, while leaving Green Bay, La Crosse, Wausau and Racine, amongst others as some of the other Wisconsin metropolitan areas. We deserve our own metro area, dammit! What results is that Milwaukee grades out better than it otherwise would have. Still, even with that fact, out of the nine categories the book rates, Detroit was ranked higher than Milwaukee in five of them: climate, economy, transportation, leisure and cost of living.
Out of 331 metropolitan areas in the United States:
Economy and Jobs: Detroit 75 – Milwaukee 164
Cost of Living: Detroit 273 – Milwaukee 287
Climate: Detroit 197 – Milwaukee 279
Education: Detroit 133 – Milwaukee 121
Health and Health Care: Detroit 262 – Milwaukee 175
Transportation: Detroit 78 – Milwaukee 84
Leisure: Detroit 16 – Milwaukee 47
Arts and Culture: Detroit 30 – Milwaukee 10
Based on the book’s rankings, the best places to live in Wisconsin are (national ranking):
- Madison (37)
- Green Bay (108)
- La Crosse (115)
- Appleton-Oshkosh-Neenah (117)
- Janesville-Beloit (131)
- Eau Claire (135)
- Duluth-Superior (148)
- Milwaukee-Waukesha (198)
- Sheboygan (199)
- Wausau (208)
- Kenosha (224)
- Racine (307)
Congratulations to Racine as the only Wisconsin city to finish behind Forbes’ most miserable city, Detroit (263).
- Under a certain temperature, you can’t get any colder without being dead. Don’t worry about whether it is 1°F or -15°F, it’s all cold, but it’s not getting any colder. Wind chill ceases to have any meaning at -15°. If you’re still breathing, you’re not dead yet.
- 0° marks the lowest temperature Wisconsinites wear jogging shoes. You should not wear jogging/tennis/basketball shoes below that temperature either. The rubber soles will shatter.
- Despite the fact that Saturday might be the coldest day of the year, you will notice that it is a cultural imperative that every Wisconsinite leave their warm houses and drive around. Even if they don’t have anywhere to go, they will drive around. Many of them will go to the grocery store. Others will stop to fill up with gas and get a lottery ticket. This is done for three reasons:
- We believe a car should be run every day in sub-zero weather or the oil might freeze.
- We have to be able to say that we were outside on the coldest day of the year or we are barred from voting.
- We believe that if we go out when it is below zero, everything else feels warm. It helps us get through the rest of the winter.
- Smokers will still go outside in Wisconsin to smoke even when it is below 0°. Of course, Wisconsinites are still able to smoke in the corner tavern. For now.
- 0° is cold. That “absolute zero” you heard of in high school science is any temperature below 0° when your car doesn’t start.
When you see New Hampshire on the TV it looks like Mom, Apple Pie, Robert Frost, Norman Rockwell, New England. You find out it has no income tax, that its state motto is “Live Free or Die” and you think, “Hey. Why not there?”
So I looked at a modest house in Keene, NH in the western part of the state. MLS #2689491. “Immaculate 6 room, 3-br, 2-ba ranch located in a great West Keene neighborhood on a dead end street.” It’s a 1200 sq. ft. modular pre-fab, at least 8-years old, but probably twice that old, has a ¼ acre, a two car attached garage and it’s reasonably priced at $229,900. Then you get to the 2007 property taxes: $6,184.
People are fleeing Wisconsin.
A soon-to-be dwindling population of overtaxed people too dim to know when to leave and move south.
