I always follow the U.S. News and World Report annual data compilation of Best States to reside because it offers anyone in America a good, objective litmus test and comparison of how states are ranked in making living, a quality of life, and affordability to live there for U.S. citizens. The final tallies are always very telling. Without further delay here is this year’s 2026 overall rankings:
#1 – Utah
#2 – New Hampshire
#3 – Idaho
#4 – Minnesota
#5 – Nebraska
#6 – Florida
#7 – Vermont
#8 – South Dakota
#9 – Massachusetts
#10 – Washington
My home state of Texas usually, well… almost always ranks in the middle half to the lower one-third of the fifty United States. For 2026 they rank #29, the lower half once again. And once again for 6-10 years running our “economy” is the ONLY category that ranks high compared to the other 49 states, with “fiscal stability” ranking 12th; no surprise. But every other category has always been dismally low or barely average for the last 2-3 decades. It begs the question, What changed in Texas in 1994-1995 to the present? Hmmm. 🤔 It’s pretty obvious.
If you would like to see how all the other states rank and their breakdown of why their ranking status go to: Best States Rankings at U.S. News & World Report for an excellent, unbiased assessment. You might be surprised between what is hype and propaganda about states and what is actual fact(s).
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always – Be Objective
I get regular emails from a handful of political outlets that are aligned with my own viewpoints which is left of center for sure. This I don’t mind one bit for many reasons.
I received this email newsletter today:
Dear Member,
It’s barely been a week since the election, but Donald Trump has already made more than a dozen appointments—and they’re exactly the staff envisioned by Project 2025.1 Some of the appointees even wrote Project 2025.
A white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. An insurrectionist and misogynist as Defense Secretary. A conspiracy theorist and homophobe helming the Department of Health and Human Services. An evangelical Christian and staunch opponent to Palestine as ambassador to Israel. A climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.2
And Trump named Elon Musk as the co-head of the effort to “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy” and hand our country’s future over to corporations and billionaires.3
This wave of extremist appointees—who are rife with extraordinary conflicts of interest—is antithetical to American values. It’s overwhelming. It’s depressing. That’s exactly MAGA’s point.
Trump is dumping this deluge of awful appointees and plans for his administration on us in hopes that we will be so exhausted that we won’t fight back. He couldn’t be more wrong. We are already fighting back—in fact, we just had an amazing victory we’ll tell you about in a minute—and we are preparing for four years of nonstop campaigning to stop Trump’s anti-democratic, anti-civil-rights agenda.
Trump’s appointees are a veritable Who’s Who of right-wing extremism, racism, and hate.
To no one’s surprise, white nationalist and architect of Trump’s “kids in cages” plan Stephen Miller is now deputy chief of staff for policy—ready to implement Trump’s mass deportation plan.4
Trump appointed “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, famous for cheering on the January 6 insurrection and saying that women don’t belong in combat, as secretary of defense. Trump also announced plans for appointing a board to weed out any military generals who are not sufficiently loyal to him.5
Other appointees include Mike Huckabee, who believes that Gaza should be eradicated, as ambassador to Israel.6 Climate change denier Lee Zeldin as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.7 John Ratcliffe, who weaponized secure data against Trump’s opposition during his first term, as CIA director.8
And just minutes ago, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, to lead the nation’s public health department.9
His MAGA House of Representatives tried to fast-track a bill through Congress—H.R.9495—that would have granted Trump unilateral power to strip organizations of their nonprofit status if they were accused of “supporting terrorism.” His administration would have no burden of proof or standard to meet—just a stroke of the pen would take down any organization (such as MoveOn!) that he perceived as an enemy.10
The bill had bipartisan support and was assumed to be a done deal, but our members fought back. Thousands of our members called their representatives, and our voice was heard in the halls of Congress as well. Because of the work of you and others in our coalition, H.R.9495 failed.
The American government is one of checks and balances, and we can rein in Trump’s assault on us if we are willing to hold our leaders accountable to those checks. As an organization of millions of voices, we are strong. We are powerful. And as long as we keep speaking out together, we can stop Trump’s attack on our civil rights, on our economy, and on our democracy.
But we must be prepared to campaign around the clock and use every tool at our disposal, which takes vast resources—resources that are depleted in the wake of the most expensive election in history.
Left to right — National Security Adviser – Mike Waltz, Chief of Staff – Susie Wiles, and Department of Government Efficiency – Elon Musk
What are your thoughts? Share them. Did you vote this past election year?
If you did not vote, like far too many Americans did not—approximately 7-8 million registered voters did not turnout at the polls—then your silence was beyond horrendously appalling for such a historically unprecedented election year given what was at stake for our country! That is the sole reason tRump and Republicans won so many positions of government! Sad, very very sad America.
…Biden-Harris or their Administration. It’s certainly not persistent “inflation” driven by Democrats as the GOP keep falsely whining about. No, plain and simple, it is Corporate America that is to blame. And here is just one prime example that corporate executives are in so many ways behind the U.S.’s painful price-gouging schemes upon ordinary, struggling Americans.
On a summer day back in 2021, some real estate tech gurus and executives gathered at a Nashville, TN conference hall to gloat and boast about their #1 selling product: software that utilizes a specialized algorithm to assist any and all U.S. landlords to acquire the highest possible rents on tenants. Their meeting in Nashville was by no accident during one of our country’s worst pandemics, and American deaths by it, than ever recorded in our nation’s 248-year history. The vast ripple-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic threw not only the U.S. economy into a nose dive, but also the rest of the world. The affects of the pandemic cannot be overstated.
It isn’t the federal government that fully controls the U.S. economy! Never has; in hyper-capitalism it is impossible for the feds to do anything other than fairly regulate Corporate greed and price gouging
Yet, during our country’s ongoing devastation by an invisible COVID enemy, the top brass of RealPage, Inc., flaunted their massive wealth and orbital profits and revenues by its YieldStar software, as well as the near mercurial profit successes by their 32,000+ landlord clients in the middle of a severe economic recession.
“Never before have we seen these numbers,” said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage, as conventiongoers wandered by. Apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as 14.5%, he said in a video touting the company’s services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked: What role had the software played?
“I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,” answered Andrew Bowen, another RealPage executive. “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.”
— RealPage, Inc., Jay Parsons & Andrew Bowen, ProPublica.org, accessed online 9/3/2024
Across the nation rent was up 9% in September 2022. But before you get excited, it didn’t take long for rent increases to go back to double digits, especially during the latter stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, double digits as we were finally coming out of the worst parts of COVID landlord real estate groups raised and raised their rents. And yes, there are several factors that honestly cause rising rent like an economy heading for recession, supply and demand, and/or high mortgage interest rates. However, an investigation by ProPublica.org found another big player:the rental pricing software YieldStar owned and sold by RealPage, Inc.
How RealPage’s Rent-Gouging Algorithm Works
Gathering enormous amounts of data from their clients, many whom are the largest real estate conglomerates in the nation with over tens of thousands of rental units, RealPage states its algorithm stores “lease transaction data” for almost 14-million units across the U.S. Every single day the software encourages a new rent price for every unleased unit. The following day the rate-cycle repeats rarely going down.
To determine the new rate, it draws from competitor data on the actual rent tenants paid, as opposed to the publicly advertised rent.
The use of private competitor data — though it is aggregated and anonymized — to set prices is one of the concerns experts raised. The practice could allow RealPage to stifle rental competition, they said, driving up rents across the country and, potentially, even violating antitrust laws. Experts said that RealPage also sponsors meetings that gather competitors together to talk about pricing, which could also be a warning sign of collusion.
Kovatch lists five things about RealPage’s YieldStar software that significantly affects renters across the United States. I will only list the bullet-points here, but if you are interested in the details of the rent-gouging software I strongly recommend you read the above article(s) at ProPublica.org. The five key points:
Landlords use RealPage to make a lot more money/profits.
RealPage believes it is driving rents higher across the country.
RealPage discourages landlords from bargaining with tenants over rents.
Critics say RealPage may encourage pricing collusion among landlords.
RealPage says it uses data in a “legally compliant” way.
At the 2021 real estate convention in Nashville, TN, during COVID-19 the gloating and celebrating was more than just common swagger. Over several years RealPage has received feedback from property managers everywhere in the U.S. overly elated with how the YieldStar software has put their profits on steroids and through the roof.
Therefore American voters, this November remember the actual facts regarding the real causes for millions upon millions of struggling middle-class (and below) American citizens who are still barely making ends meet since January 2020. The previous administration in the White House and Congress more than cozied up to Corporate America. Remember the actual factual track-record that shows the Biden-Harris administration has in reality saved America from the downward spiraling trajectory the Orange Orangutan Baby and his MAGA radicals in Congress were leading us down. Also remember what political party is always in bed with corporate interests and always makes Corporate America’s revenues/profits top priority at the expense, the sacrifice of middle- and lower-class Americans barely getting by… paycheck to paycheck.
As I read many sources of opposing views about the condition of the American economy between January 2020 (the start of COVID-19) to the present day, one theme stood out: political finger pointing. The tactics (GOP especially) really do no middle-class or lower-class Americans any good. What “good” might come from the distorting, polarizing rhetoric is the lack of empathy and the recognition of the lack of congressional hard work in favor of ordinary Americans and their benefit through very hard times.
Question: When is it ever good, in this Land of Liberty, Freedom, and Equality, for some Americans to suffer worse than others at the hands of corporate price-gouging in groceries, fuel costs, utility costs, stagnate or slipping wages, and housing? Why does one sector of Americans get to exploit the misfortunes and disadvantages of other Americans… for their own self-interests and corporate riches? I know that answer, do you?
My free-time for WordPress blogging and commenting, on all of my sites, is going to become very short, sometimes infrequent or rare. My soon-to-be 84-year old mother will be going into a full-time Memory Care Assisted Living facility this month or early December. Her Stage 7 Dementia is now into Early Alzheimer’s.
Two other reasons have caused this over the last 4-5 months. First, Mom has fallen twice in the last 3-months. She is unable to get up from the floor or ground on her own if no one is nearby or within earshot. Fortunately, I was home when these last two falls occurred. One of them was around 2:30am when I got out of bed to use the restroom. She happened to hear me and yelled for my help. She had no idea how long she had been on the floor or how she fell/tripped.
The second reason she must go into Assisted Living is because alone by myself, 12-16 hours per day with her, the last 28-months (with no day off every single one of those 12-16 hrs days), has almost killed me. I can no longer manage everything for her life, especially with no respites at all for that long. Mentally, emotionally, and physically… I am fried, spent.
Mom at Mackinac Island, MI, June 2021 (L), and Mom & I at Kerrville Renaissance Festival, Jan. 2023
As a result of these 850+ days and nights of non-stop caretaking, I have developed chronic health problems. My own health has taken a serious nosedive the last 12-14 months primarily due to a worsening of my sacroiliitis, agitated and inflamed daily due to the fact that Mom’s Senior Community apartment is designed for elderly wheelchair residents, i.e. everything, and I mean everything in the bathrooms, sinks, kitchen appliances, pantry, bathtubs, closets, etc, are intentionally installed/built down low, where I must constantly bend over/down or get on one knee or sit on a footstool. Two plus years of doing this daily has three-times dropped me to the floor in the fetal position in excruciating pain.
It can wait no longer. I now have no choice but to greatly improve or recover my own health.
Therefore, my sister and I will be moving Mom into River Point of Kerrville within the next 2-4 weeks. This also means me moving out, perhaps back to Dallas, TX. This is up in the air for the moment. But one thing is certain: I can no longer live in a small country rural town with so many ultra-religious, super-Conservative rednecks and a never-ending sea of LOUD (diesel) monster pickup-trucks that don’t fit inside ANY parking-space in any parking lot! And I won’t go into the intellectual levels or prowess (or lack) of most people in this four-county area. I badly need more brain-stimulations on higher levels, period.
Hence, please excuse my increased absence here, on WordPress and your blogs. Hopefully, when life settles back down and returns (for me at least) to “normal,” after I know exactly where I will be living and working (again), then I shall be back in force. 🙂
Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always
Like many of you I am completely baffled every time Congress members threaten to let our federal government shutdown. And by the way, there have been 21 shutdowns since 1976. And worse, some in Congress right now appear to have no real motivation to collaborate in order to avoid it. Why? Because their Cult leader is commanding them to stonewall not just the House Speaker, but also millions and millions of Americans who desperately depend on Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, and other federal benefits to survive and get by month-to-month! They will be left out in the cold with none of these retirement needs coming in. And I won’t even go into how our military, law-enforcement, federal courts, transportation hubs, NASA and NOAA, disaster responses, nationwide education, and a whole host of other programs and agencies too long to list here.
(AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
How is this possible? The United States is the ninth wealthiest nation in the world in adjusted GDP/capita (2022). The U.S. has the second most billionaires in the world behind first-place China (2023). And furthermore, the United States has the strongest economy in the world over China, Japan, Germany, and India, respectively (2023).
So how is it possible that our federal government does this too frequently and has actually shutdown 21-times and possibly a 22nd time this coming October 1st? How!? Is it because not enough of America’s wealthiest people and corporations pay their fair share of taxes? Why has this “shutdown rattling” (of swords) become chronic in America? For more details:
Addendum 10/3/2023 — My friend Steve Ruis over at Uncommon Sense published a very good post on our government shutdown:A Distinctly American Problem? Really?I recommend checking it out. It’s well worth it.
I have zero expectation that anything I ever say will end someone’s belief in their God. Not my goal or purpose. That alone belongs to the individual. ~ Zoe
'Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it' - Terry Pratchett
The Professor's Convatorium 