This Map Shows You The Richest Politician In Every State

Did you know that George Washington was so rich that he wanted to reject his presidential salary? Wealth has always been a part of American politics, but, recently, political wealth crossed a new milestone (most Congresspeople are millionaires).

This map from HowMuch.net shows the richest politician in every state, and reveals just how rich they really are.

Source: HowMuch.net

There are 34 states with Republicans as their richest politicians, 15 with Democrats, and one with an Independent. Interestingly, every single one is in Congress. There are no executive branch politicians, including governors, whatsoever.

Geographic Influence

In many places, the results were predictable. No richest-in-state Democrats can be found in the South, but there is a cluster in New England.

There are a few surprises, though. For instance, the richest politicians in Democratic strongholds California and New York are Republicans. The Midwest is split evenly. And despite being severely outnumbered, there are a few very wealthy Democrats in the top five on this list.

Top 10 Richest Politicians in Each State

1. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) - $330M

2. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) - $313.6M

3. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) - $238.2M

4. Rep. John K. Delaney (D-MD) - $232.8M

5. Rep. Dave Trott (R-MI) - $177.1M

6. Rep. Vernon Buchanan (R-FL) - $115.5M

7. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) - $81.7M

8. Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) - $75.3M

9. Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) - $66.4M

10. Rep. Thomas MacArthur (R-NJ) - $64M

The 50 politicians on this map are worth just under $2.5B altogether. These ten officials have a cumulative net worth of nearly $1.7B by themselves.

Gender Disparity

We already know that the gender pay gap is pervasive. This remains true in politics.

Of the 50 highly paid politicians on our visualization, only six are women. We couldn’t find any patterns explaining why these states had such wealthy female politicians. Among the women, there is a 4:2 Republican advantage and they are scattered across all parts of the country, from Hawaii to New England.

The wealthiest among them is Tennessee’s Republican Representative, Diane Black ($75.3M).

Political Wealth vs. General Wealth

While some politicians are very wealthy, not all are. Over 100 members of Congress actually have negative net worths, and a handful are right around zero. (Check out Roll Call’s Wealth of Congress Index for a deep dive into Congressional finances.).

We also found that political wealth pales in comparison to the state-by-state wealth of non-politicians. Nearly every state’s richest person is a billionaire, but no politicians (aside from Donald Trump, who doesn’t represent a single state) have reached that pinnacle.

Editor’s Note: Al Franken, the junior Senator from Minnesota, has announced his resignation, after being accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Until his resignation is official, he remains the wealthiest politician in Minnesota, with a net worth of $7.1M.

Source: HowMuch.net

"The Incredible Shrinking Yard": Growing McMansions Are Increasingly Devouring Backyards

America"s obsession with the ever-growing McMansion, combined with a perpetual lack of funding for said McMansion, has resulted a unique phenomenon which Trulia has dubbed "The Incredible Shrinking Yard."  Analyzing public records to compare residential lot sizes to home footprints, Trulia says that homes built over the past two years occupy a staggering 25% of the land on which they sit, compared to roughly half that amount in 1975. 

Here are some of Trulia"s key findings:

• Nationally, single family homes occupy 17.4% of the lots on which they sit, regardless of the year they were built.

 

• Homes built since 2015 occupy 25% of the land on which they sit, while homes built in 1975 occupy just 13.9%. This is being driven by a combination of lots shrinking by 36.2% and home footprints growing by 15.2% size.

 

• Meanwhile, some of the oldest homes in the country, built in the early 1800s, occupy less than 5.0% of the large lots they are built on. The last time lot usage was nearly as high as it is now was during the early 1900s.

 

• Don’t mind the neighbors? Single family homes in places like Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which are both geographically small but dense, have the highest lot utilization at 57.7%, and 44.2%, respectively.

 

• Want plenty of yard space? Head to New England. Three Connecticut metro areas, Worcester, Mass., Hartford, Conn., and Bridgeport, Conn. make up the places with the smallest amount of house occupying lot space, at less than 7.5%.

 

• While most metro areas have seen lot usage grow since the mid-70s, with Oakland, Calif., and Miami seeing the largest upward swings, six metros have bucked the trend with San Francisco, Memphis, and Long Island, N.Y. moving toward less lot usage.

When national home price growth charts start to look like an Amazon stock chart, despite the fact that wage growth remains non-existent, but you know your family of 4 can never find a way to survive in a house even an inch smaller than 4,000 square feet, it only makes sense that lawn sizes would have to shrink to keep purchase prices somewhat "reasonable"...and by reasonable, of course we mean below FHA lending limits so that those McMansions can be purchased with minimal money down and backstopped by the American taxpayer.

As Trulia notes, since the mid-70s, when the proportion of lots used by new construction hit a national low of 13.6%, it climbed 11.3 percentage points to 25% of the lot of homes built in 2015 or later. Most metro areas have seen lot usage grow similarly. Oakland, Miami, and Indianapolis have seen the largest upward swing in lot usage, with homes built after 2015 occupying 25.6, 24.9, and 20.3 percentage points more, respectively, of the lots they are built on than they did in the mid-70s.

Meanwhile, 7 of the 95 metro areas analyzed by Trulia managed to buck the trend, with San Francisco, Memphis, Tenn., and Long Island, N.Y. actually seeing a 12.9, 11.6, and 6.0 percentage point decrease, respectively, in the percent of lot usage by homes constructed after 2015 when compared with homes built in the mid-70s.

 

With that, here"s a helpful chart depicted just how small the "American Dream" has become in your neck of the woods:

Mapping The Most (And Least) Valuable States In America

Everyone knows location is the most important part of real estate. You can’t change where your house is (all things being equal). You have to consider school districts, crime rates, commute times—the list goes on and on. It can be much simpler when you’re considering buying a home to compare apples to apples so you can see how the real estate market differs according to location.

So HowMuch.net created a new visualization showing land and housing prices at a glance.

Source: HowMuch.net

The blue dots represent the value of an acre of land, and the red circles indicate the median value of a home. The bigger the blue dot and the larger the red circle, the more expensive it is to become a property owner. Small circles and dots likewise indicate a very low cost of purchasing property. The home values are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Consumer Survey, and the numbers behind the land values come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

As HowMuch.net notes, several things stand out in our illustration.

An acre of land is much more valuable in the Northeast compared to any other part of the country. This is partly because the Eastern seaboard is a very densely populated area with several large cities, most notably New York. It is also a historical artifact that Europeans settled New England first and then moved west, meaning that New York and Massachusetts have some of the oldest modern structures anywhere in the U.S. In other words, Eastern cities are a lot older than Midwestern cities, so there isn’t a lot of farmland for suburban expansion anymore. We should also mention that in terms of geographic size, these are some of the smallest states in the country. Matter of fact, the three states where the cost of an acre of land is greater than the median price of a house are all located on the East Coast, and they happen to be some of the smallest states in the Union (Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey).

Median home values (the red circles) are a different and more complicated story. California has the most expensive houses by far ($449,100). Oregon and Washington boast similarly high housing valuations as well ($264,100 and $284,000, respectively). It is also expensive to buy a home on the East Coast with six out of the top ten states with the most expensive median home values.

But there’s a noticeable dip in both housing and land prices in southern and midwestern states. Prices slowly rise the further you move from east to west. This highlights unique economic developments over the last several years, including the boom in oil exploration in North Dakota and the growth of Western cities thanks to young people,like Denver. Snowbirds also tend to move to Florida and Arizona after they retire, which also pushes up housing prices in those places.

Top 5 Most Expensive States to Buy a Home 

1. California - Value per acre: $39,092; Median Home Value: $449,100


2. Massachusetts - Value per acre: $102,214;  Median Home Value: $352,100


3. New Jersey - Value per acre: $196,410; Median Home Value: $322,600


4. Maryland - Value per acre: $75,429; Median Home Value: $299,800


5. New York - Value per acre: 41,314; Median Home Value: $293,500

Top 5 Cheapest States to Buy a Home

1. West Virginia - Value per acre: $10,537; Median Home Value: $112,100


2. Mississippi - Value per acre: $5,565; Median Home Value: 112,700


3. Arkansas - Value per acre: $6,739; Median Home Value: $120,700


4. Oklahoma - Value per acre: $7,364; Median Home Value: $126,800


5. Kentucky - Value per acre: $7,209; Median Home Value: $130,000

All this shows that the laws of supply and demand are alive and well in the real estate market. You can easily find cheap acres of land where they are plentiful and un-useful (sorry, Nevada), but owning property is a lot more expensive in smaller places crowded with lots of people. As always, location, location, location.

Trump Escalates War With NFL In Early Tweetstorm

Update:  Proving that he was just getting warmed up earlier this morning with his latest rant against the NFL, Trump now seems to want "#StandForOurAnthem" to go viral.

#StandForOurAnthem

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017

* * *

After igniting an NFL firestorm over the weekend with a series of tweetstorms bashing players who refused to stand for the national anthem (something we covered in detail here), Trump is at it again this morning with new tweets highlighting the disgruntled crowds that booed the kneeling players. 

"Many people booed the players who kneeled yesterday (which was a small percentage of total). These are fans who demand respect for our Flag!"

"The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!"

Many people booed the players who kneeled yesterday (which was a small percentage of total). These are fans who demand respect for our Flag!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017

The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017

Some of the loudest such "boos" came for the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium when a number of Patriots kneeled for the anthem.

Meanwhile, Tom Brady responded to Trump"s continued attacks this morning saying that he "disagrees" with the President and thinks his tweets are "just divisive."  Presumably, that means that Brady is of the opinion that exploiting his star power to make a political statement is not equally divisive?  Per WEEI:

“Yeah, I certainly disagree with what he said. I thought it was just divisive," Brady said. "Like I said, I just want to support my teammates. I am never one to say, ‘Oh, that is wrong. That is right.’ I do believe in what I believe in. I believe in bringing people together and respect and love and trust. Those are the values that my parents instilled in me. That is how I try and live every day. I have been blessed to be in locker rooms with guys all over the United States over the course of my career. Some of my great friends are from Florida, Virginia, New York, Montana, Colorado, Texas. The one thing about football is it brings so many guys together — guys you would never have the opportunity to be around. Whether it was in college, and all the way into the pros. We’re all different, we’re all unique. That is what makes us all special.”

"Hopefully it brings everyone together. I think that is what unity and love — like I said after the game, those are the things that concern me. When you’re in a locker room full of 53 players, you’re working to a common goal. You support the guys that you play with and you support your coaches, coaches support you. You just do the best you can do. You’re navigating through life. These things aren’t easy. Everyone deals with different challenges in their life and you respect everyone’s opinions and views. You don’t have to agree with everything. It’s hard to agree with your own wife on everything from day-to-day. I have so much respect for my teammates and what we’re trying to accomplish. Hopefully we can keep marching toward this end of the season, keep making improvements, get better and win more football games.”

Brady said he heard the boo"s during and after the anthem from some in the crowd and said people can do what they want to do.

“Yeah, I did," he said. "No, I think everyone has the right to do whatever they want to do. If you don’t agree, that is fine. You can voice your disagreement, I think that is great. It’s part of our democracy. As long as it is done in a peaceful, respectful way, that is what our country has been all about.”

On the other hand, and not terribly surprisingly, NASCAR"s strong condemnation of protesting the national anthem, which Richard Petty said would earn anyone on his team an immediate dismissal, drew praise from the White House.  Per the Associated Press:

It appeared no drivers, crew or other team members participated in a protest during the national anthem to start the NASCAR Cup series race Sunday in Loudon, New Hampshire. Several team owners and executives had said they wouldn’t want anyone in their organizations to protest.

Richard Childress, who was Dale Earnhardt’s longtime team owner, said of protesting, “It’ll get you a ride on a Greyhound bus.” Childress says he told his team that “anybody that works for me should respect the country we live in. So many people gave their lives for it. This is America.”

Hall of Fame driver Richard Petty’s sentiments took it a step further, saying: “Anybody that don’t stand up for the anthem oughta be out of the country. Period. What got ’em where they’re at? The United States.”

When asked if a protester at Richard Petty Motorsports would be fired, he said, “You’re right.”

So proud of NASCAR and its supporters and fans. They won"t put up with disrespecting our Country or our Flag - they said it loud and clear!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017

Of course, it"s only a matter of time until we see if this controversy caused any dips in ratings for the increasingly politicized NFL.

So You Wanted To Be "Long Electricity" Into The Eclipse?

Energy traders who had hoped to make an easy profit by betting that spot electricity prices would climb around midday on Monday – an idea they may have found on this website - were bitterly disappointed when, instead of spiking, prices tumbled because of an unexpectedly large drop in demand.

Utilities and grid operators had contingency plans ready to compensate for the expected drop in solar. But even with utilities’ backup grids humming, supplies were still widely expected to drop. Instead, energy providers encountered something that they hadn’t anticipated – what one trader called “an irregular human behavior pattern.”

Basically, more Americans than anticipated were outdoors during the middle of the day Monday, around the time when electricity demand typically peaks, than grid operators had expected. Therefore, while supplies took a slight dip, it was amplified by a dramatic pullback in demand, which exhibited a weird U-shaped dip over a two-hour period across the country,” according to Bloomberg. Ironically, if traders hadn’t been so distracted by the eclipse, maybe they would’ve realized that millions of Americans standing outside together staring up at the sun for an hour would have a marked impact on demand, and adjusted their positions accordingly.

“This was a bummer for traders who’d bet prices would jump as a whole load of solar-produced megawatts faded to black. “If anything, it was bearish from a trading perspective because people were more busy looking at the eclipse and talking about the eclipse,” said Tom Hahn, vice president of U.S. power derivatives at brokerage ICAP Energy LLC in Durham, North Carolina.

Spot power in California fell to negative levels as the eclipse wiped out and restarted thousands of megawatts of solar power, and they also dipped from Texas to New York. While natural gas demand rose to a one-month high on Monday, spot prices at several hubs weakened versus the U.S. benchmark.”

The dip in Northern California was particularly vicious.

“Spot electricity at Northern California’s NP15 hub averaged $21.50 a megawatt-hour at 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., less than half the price for supply secured in advance for the hour in the day-ahead market, according to grid data compiled by Bloomberg. Then at 11:50 a.m. local time - as the sun started to reappear from behind the moon -- the ramp-up in solar power sent prices to a low of minus $15.97.”

Tech firms like Alphabet Inc. helped conserve energy usage during the eclipse, part of a partnership with the state utility commission that helped it cut consumption by about 1,500 megawatts.

“Alphabet Inc.’s Nest Labs unit, which deploys thermostats and other smart home technologies, drew more than 750,000 customers into its Solar Eclipse Rush Hour experiment to cut consumption. They reduced power use by about 700 megawatts nationwide, helping to offset a 10,000-megawatt drop in solar power. In California, Nest and other partners worked with the state utility commission to cut consumption by about 1,500 megawatts.

In hubs from Texas to New Jersey, spot electricity prices slumped. Though in several cases, unexpected cloud cover helped mitigate the drop.

“While that was the most dramatic case of a power-price retreat, there were noticeable dips elsewhere. Cloud coverage in places like North Carolina, Texas and New Jersey had reduced solar output before the eclipse anyway, limiting the magnitude of the loss. The moon’s shadow also reduced temperatures a bit. And then there were all those people playing hooky from work and school.”

There were also “very evident” dips in New England, New York and the nearby 13-state grid managed by PJM Interconnection LLC, said Tom DiCapua, managing director at Con Edison Energy in Valhalla, New York, according to Bloomberg. Con Edison, which manages the largest grid in the US with 65 million people, said demand fell by 5,000 megawatts, or as much as 3.8%, during the event.

“People drove up the day-ahead price thinking that prices would settle higher in real time,” DiCapua said. That was the wrong way to go. “The people who tended to be short tended to make money. You wanted to be short.”

Luckily for traders on the east coast, they will get another shot to clinch the eclipse trade in seven years, when the eclipse"s path of totality is expected to stretch from Texas to Maine.

The Opioid Crisis Is Even Worse Than We Thought

America’s opioid epidemic is now killing more than 100 people every day, fueling a public-health crisis that’s straining state and local resources – even forcing at least one Pennsylvania coroner to increase his freezer capacity to make room for all of the bodies.

And according to one recently published study, the epidemic may be killing more Americans than previously believed. The study, published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, suggests that certain states may have underestimated the rate of opioid- and heroin-related deaths, skewing national death totals by more than 20%. In 2014, the most recent year covered by the study, the rate of opioid-related deaths was, in reality, 24% higher than the official count.   

Meanwhile, data from the CDC released Tuesday show that drug overdose deaths peaked in the third quarter of last year, with 19.7 for every 100,000 people, compared with 16.7 in the same period the year before.

Trump signed an executive order in March creating a national opioid commission to recommend strategies for combating the crisis. The commission, which is being led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, has already urged Trump to declare a national emergency to deal with the opioid crisis. A final list of recommendations is expected by Oct. 1.

"We will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win," Trump said during a press briefing on Tuesday called to address the opioid epidemic. "We will win. We have no alternative."

Discrepancies arise when death certificates don’t specify the class of drug, or the specific drug, responsible for a given death. In certain states, the corrected opioid-related death rates were significantly higher than what had previously been reported. In Pennsylvania, which had the highest discrepancy, the real rate was more than double the official rate, with deaths per 100,000 rising to 17.8 from 8.5. Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana and Kentucky were also guilty of “substantially” underreporting death rates.

According to government data, Pennsylvania had the 32nd highest reported opioid mortality rate and the 20th highest reported heroin mortality rate in the country. But the study found that nearly half of opioid and heroin-related deaths weren’t counted. When the data were corrected, Pennsylvania’s ranking rose to the fourth-highest opioid mortality rate, and seventh-highest heroin mortality rate.

The corrected data also yielded more “coherent” geographic patterns by eliminated discrepancies caused by quirks in how fatality data are collected in each state.

“Specifically, the corrected death rates demonstrate that opioid involved mortality was concentrated in the Mountain States, Rust Belt, and Industrial North—extending to New England—and much of the South, whereas heroin deaths were particularly high in the Northeast and Rust Belt, but less so in the South or Mountain States. The results were less apparent when using reported rates, because high mortality in states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana were concealed by a frequent lack of specificity about drug involvement on death certificates.”

The study, which analyzed data on drug-related deaths collected between 2008 and 2014, found that heroin-related deaths increased more rapidly in most states, except for Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. Nationwide, the increase in heroin-involved mortality was underestimated by around 18%, while the change in opioid-related fatalities was negligible.

Drug-overdose deaths in 2015 killed 52,000 Americans, more than gun homicides or car accidents. Preliminary data suggest that number grew to nearly 60,000 in 2016. In one Ohio county, deaths from drug overdoses – the bulk of which were caused by powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl – surpassed deaths from homicides, suicides and car crashes combined.

And 2017 is expected to be even worse.

Read the full study below:

2017.08.08ajpmopiates by zerohedge on Scribd

"The Lost Generation": Goldman Unemployment Charts Explain Just How Spoiled Millennials Are

This morning, Goldman"s Econ team, led by Jan Hatzius, set out to identify why wage growth has been elusive despite the fact that unemployment rates and other labor utilization measures signal an economy at full employment.  For evidence of labor market "slack" they decided to take a look at how recessionary college graduates handled the post-recession labor market as their lack of skills often make them the most vulnerable to a weak job market.

While the unemployment rate and other labor utilization measures signal an economy at full employment, wage growth has been weaker than expected recently, raising questions about the true degree of slack. To the extent that some pockets of excess slack remain, the cohort that came of age during the Great Recession would seem a natural place to ?nd it, given the pronounced and long-lasting effects of recessions on young workers.

In today’s daily, we review the labor market experience of the cohort graduating college or beginning careers during or immediately after the recession. Unsurprisingly, unemployment rose sharply in this segment from 2007 and 2010. However, since then, jobless rates have improved dramatically on both an absolute and relative basis – particularly over the last year – and the unemployment rate in this cohort is now under the national average. Relative wages have also partially recovered, and broader measures of utilization suggest that minimal excess slack remains in this cohort.

While not terribly surprising, they found that the young folks who graduated in the immediate aftermath of the "Great Recession" suffered relatively steep wage degradation relative to the overall population. 

Average earnings trends in the household survey show a similar pattern of underperformance and subsequent recovery. As shown in Exhibit 3, usual weekly earnings in this cohort declined by 6% relative to the population during and after the recession (on an age-adjusted basis). However, despite a partial recovery, the earnings gap remains: relative wages on this basis have only retraced a third of the post-recession decline (qualitatively consistent with the predictions of the academic literature).

But what is surprising is why those wages haven"t recovered meaningfully despite the fact that unemployment rates among the same cohort have fallen precipitously.  

And while Goldman didn"t point this out, perhaps there are some interesting, if overlooked, clues in the following two charts that lend some insight into the behaviors and attitudes of the current millennial generation as compared to previous generations that came of age during previous recessionary periods.

The chart on the left is particularly telling if you just compare the 1981 recession to 2008.  In the immediate aftermath of the recession, the unemployment gap for young people declined in both instances for the first 4 quarters of the recession. 

That said, the experience beyond Q4 is quite different as the 1981 cohort experienced a massive surge in employment while millennials in 2008 simply continued to decline and only bounced slightly off the lows.  Now, one could say this is an unfair comparison because the 2008 recession was deeper and more protracted than the 1981 recession. But, what we find most intriguing is that the 1981 cohort saw a massive surge in employment despite suffering the greatest wage decline of any of the recessionary periods for the past 35 years, and nearly double the experience of the 2008 recession.

Translation, when recession struck in 1981, Baby Boomers and Generation X got off their asses and took any job at any wage they could find to make ends meet.  But, when recession struck in 2008, millennials simply moved in with mom as opposed to taking a job that didn"t fully reward their extensive skillset garnered from 4 years of rigorous anthropology studies at a preppy New England liberal arts college.

"You Want To Play Chicken? Let's Play Chicken" Maine Governor Threatens Shutdown Over Proposed Tax Hike

Connecticut isn’t the only state in New England that’s facing a budget showdown today. As Reuters reports, Maine is bracing for a possible partial government shutdown on Friday – what would be the first in the state since 1991 - as Republican Governor Paul LePage has warned he will reject any budget deal that does not cut income taxes.

LePage, a second-term Republican who faced national scrutiny and calls to resign earlier this year after making an allegedly racist comment about out-of-state drug dealers worsening the heroin epidemic in Maine, said he would declare a state of civil emergency if a budget is not reached by midnight, which would keep state police, prisons, parks and tax collection services but close most other aspects of state government, according to Reuters.

"I will tell you this: If they put a tax increase, ready for a shutdown. End of story," LePage said in a Thursday interview on Maine"s WGAN radio. "They"re playing chicken at 100 miles per hour and I"m telling you something, you want to play chicken, let"s play chicken."

The conflict at the center of the budget showdown is the issue of funding the state’s schools, as Reuters explains.

“Legislators are negotiating a roughly $7 billion two-year budget, with the main sticking point being how to fully fund state schools. Voters in November passed a measure imposing a 3 percent income tax on state residents who earn more than $200,000 a year, a measure the governor and statehouse Republicans object to.

The Democratic Speaker of the state House of Representatives, Sara Gideon, has blasted the threat of a shutdown, saying earlier this week, "We must find a path forward and close this budget."

Maine state law gives the governor 10 days to respond to any budget passed by the legislator. LePage warned on Thursday he planned to wait that long before vetoing any budget that raised taxes. Most of the government would be shut during that time.”

Delays this year in negotiations leave the state, with a heavily tourist-dependent economy, facing the prospect of a partial government shutdown at the start of the long July 4 holiday weekend.”

Concerned about the potential impact of a shutdown, a local advocacy group is preemptively suing the state in federal court, seeking an order that would ensure that public assistance payments continue uninterrupted to the 450,000 people in the state, about one in three residents, who receive them.

To be sure, the stakes in Maine’s budget battle aren’t nearly as high as Connecticut’s. The nutmeg state has yet to pass a fiscal 2018 budget, and the deadline is Friday. Connecticut has the distinction of the third-worst ratings in the country, only behind Illinois and New Jersey after S&P, Moody"s and Fitch all downgraded the state last month in what officials described as a "call to action" for state leaders.

“We’ve been downgraded by everybody in the last six months, and in the last year two or three times,” Senate Republican President Len Fasano said cited by Fox news. “If we don’t pass a budget, I think we will see a further downward spiral.”

Connecticut is currently operating with a $5 billion budget deficit, and according to an analysis by Pew, the state only has $240 million in its "rainy day fund"; just five states have a smaller cushion. Much of the financial troubles are tied to the state’s pension system, which two-term Democratic Gov. Daniel Malloy’s office is seeking to address with a new plan to save the state $24 billion in “coming years.” One solution offered by Malloy is to require new state employees to be covered under a new hybrid pension system. The agreement, which Malloy’s office made with the state union, is tentative and awaiting legislative approval. Connecticut and Maine aren"t alone; Illinois also faces a Friday budget deadline that, if not met, could result in ratings agencies downgrading the state - which is struggling under the weight of unfunded public employee pensions - to junk status, virtually guaranteeing a debt-fueled death spiral that will likely lead to bankruptcy.

The showdown comes as Connecticut’s already narrow tax base has seen some major defections recently as corporations and wealthy hedge funds decamp for states like Florida, which offer lower tax rates, or cities like Boston and New York, which offer a stronger talent pool. Yesterday, we reported that Aetna, the insurance giant founded in Hartford where it has been for the past 164 years, announced it would move its headquarters to New York City despite intensive lobbying efforts by Connecticut officials. That move followed a departure by GE of its Fairfield HQ of 40 years.

Where Is Craft Beer Most Popular In America?

It’s difficult to miss the degree of variety beer lovers can enjoy at this moment in the US. This is due to the explosion of small breweries coming on to the scene, which emphasize experimenting with flavors and styles.

As Priceonomics.com notes, over the past 40 years (thanks to deregulation in the beer industry) the number of breweries in America expanded from a post-prohibition low of under 100, to over 5,000 in 2016. The bulk of this growth comes from small breweries, the most familiar to consumers being the microbrewery.

According to the Brewers Association, a trade group for American craft brewers, a microbrewery is any local and independent brewer that sells fewer than 15,000 barrels of beer per year and sells at least 75% through other bars, restaurants, and liquor stores.

Unfortunately, it’s not the case that you can walk to your local liquor store and choose from 5,000 different breweries to bring home tonight. The reach of small breweries are confined to particular markets as most microbreweries have limited and local distribution. The variety from these small craft breweries is typically limited to the state or metro area the brewery where the brewery is located. The fact is, some areas of the country are just better for beer aficionados who want lots of options.

So where do you have the best chance to sample the greatest variety of beer possible? Which states and cities have the most breweries overall?

We analyzed business listing data from Priceonomics customer Datafiniti to offer some perspective into that. This data set included the listings of craft breweries along with their locations. We combined this with supplementary information from the Brewers Association catalog of breweries, to offer more specific details.  

From our analysis, we are able to find out in what parts of America breweries reign supreme.

So, which state has the most breweries?

Number one is California by a serious margin, with over 600 breweries. Colorado and Washington are the next closest with about 350 each. With 15 or fewer breweries, Hawaii, Mississippi, Washington D.C. and North Dakota are at the bottom of our list. We found that cities in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado are your best bet for finding the most breweries in one place. Cities along the coasts and in the Midwest are also solid destinations. There are also some exciting small cities outside of this trend that should not be overlooked (like Asheville, NC). Vermont is the state with the most craft breweries per capita, while Boulder, Colorado is the city with the highest density of craft breweries.

Looking at the information in absolute terms skews our list towards the larger states with greater population. It’s intuitive that states with more people (and therefore more beer drinkers) would be able to support more breweries.

Understanding the number of breweries per capita will tell us where breweries are most plentiful relative to population...

The title of most breweries per capita goes to Vermont. Even though they only have about 50 in total, since the state is so small, that equates to 8 breweries per person. Montana, Colorado, Maine, and Oregon all have about 6 breweries per person. Overall we see a strong presence of breweries in the Pacific Northwest, New England, and the Midwest.

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The Simple Reason Why A Second American Civil War May Be Inevitable

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

America has always had its divisions, and Americans have never really been a monolith. We’ve always been a nation of many nations. The culture of New England is different from the culture of the Deep South, which is different from the cultures in the West Coast or the Midwest. People living in the cities have different beliefs than people who live in the countryside. Within those areas, there are ethnic, linguistic, and religious enclaves. It’s always kind of been like that (probably to a lesser degree in the past), and somehow we’ve been able to find enough common ground to keep this country together for more than a century.

However, something has changed. You can feel it in the air. Our nation has clearly never been this divided since the Civil War. A lot of people noticed it after the last election, but the truth is that these divisions have been deepening for decades, and they’re just now reaching a very noticeable breaking point. That’s obvious enough when you look at how the left and the right have been going at each other. It used to be a war of words, but it’s turning into something very dark.

Consider what happened last week in Berkeley after Trump supporters and counter protesters clashed for the third time. 21 people were arrested and 11 were injured (that we know of), six of who had to be taken to the hospital. At least one person was stabbed. The police confiscated confiscated knives, stun guns, and poles. One Trump supporter admitted to being surrounded, pepper sprayed, and beaten with sticks by a mob of “protesters.”

But wait, that’s not the dark part. After these groups clashed, the leftist protesters took to Reddit and admitted that they lost this particular battle (I can’t believe I’m using the word “battle” to describe it), and that it was time for them to attain more combat training and better weapons, including firearms.

Do you see what’s going on here? Conservative demonstrations, which used to be placid affairs (remember the Tea Party protests?) are now turning violent as conservatives grow tired of restraining themselves, and are no longer afraid to hit back. Liberal demonstrators are responding by ratcheting up the level of force that they’re going to bring to the next street battle. It’s a tit for tat that keeps escalating, and I shudder to think of where it’s going to end up.

Honestly, I think we’re in the early stages of a second civil war. I can’t say what it’ll look like precisely, but I can tell you that our nation is on this path, and it’s not clear how we can get off of it. In fact, I fear that it may be inevitable, and there’s a very simple reason why.

It’s because Americans have been self-sorting themselves along geographic and political lines for a long time. A book titled “The Big Sort” made light of this trend back in 2008.

Basically what’s going on, is that Americans are moving to communities that align more with their politics. Liberals are moving to liberal areas, and conservatives are moving to conservative communities. It’s been going on for decades. When Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, 26.8% of Americans lived in landslide counties; that is counties where the president won or lost by 20% of the vote.

By 2004, 48.3% of the population lived in these counties. This trend continues to worsen. As Americans move to their preferred geographic bubbles, they face less exposure to opposing viewpoints, and their own opinions become more extreme. This trend is at the heart of why politics have become so polarizing in America.

We’re also seeing the same trend emerge online with social media. Despite the fact that the internet allows us to be exposed to more opinions that ever before, people choose to follow online voices that they already agree with. They’re slipping into digital bubbles that are comparable to their geographic bubbles.

This trend is irreversible as far as I can tell. That’s because it’s tied to innovation. As our country became more interconnected with roads and Americans gained more mobility, we chose to move to like-minded places. We’re given the internet, the greatest source of information in human history, and we use it to seek out only the information that reinforces our current beliefs.

We’re self-sorting at every level. Because of this, Americans are only going to grow more extreme in their beliefs, and see people on the other side of the political spectrum as more alien.

You can see how this is creating the perfect breeding ground for a real, physical war. The polarization makes it easier to dehumanize the other side. The self-sorting creates definable geographic boundaries that are necessary for a war. It spawns two sides with beliefs that are so divergent, that they cannot coexist.

We’re becoming two distinct nations with two competing visions for what the country should be. Two visions that are diametrically opposed. We used to be a nation of many nations that was held together, because there was still some common ground on what it means to be an American above all else. Now we can’t even agree on that.

Once the last shreds of common ground and understanding dissipate, a moment that is rapidly approaching, another civil war will be impossible to avoid. I wish I knew what the solution is, but I don’t. All I can say is, unless Americans go out of their way to listen to people on other side, whatever that side may be, there’s going to be a lot of blood in the streets.

Philly Cinco De Mayo Celebrations Canceled Over Trump Immigration Crackdown

Following the Trump administration"s recent federal illegal immigration crackdowns, organizers have canceled El Carnaval de Puebla, a major Cinco De Mayo celebration in Philadelphia.

This week, ICE announced that 248 people in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia are now in federal custody awaiting deportation after a two-week sweep.

And now, NBC reports that the annual parade through South Philadelphia has taken place in late April or early May for the last decade and is the city’s largest Cinco de Mayo celebration. Organizer Edgar Ramirez said as many as 15,000 gather from as far as New England and Chicago.

“The group of six organizers decided to cancel unanimously,” Ramirez said. “Everyone is offended by the actions of ICE. They did not feel comfortable holding the event.”

The decision to cancel El Carnaval, Ramirez said in an interview Friday, was “sad but responsible” in light of the immigration crackdown by federal authorities.

“We have people who travel all the way from Chicago, Connecticut and New York. We don’t want anything to happen to them,” he said.

ICE Officer Khaalid Walls of the agency"s Philadelphia office said in an email that "ICE’s enforcement actions are targeted and lead driven. ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately."

As for a return of Carnaval, organizers will decide sometime in the future if the parade once again dances its way through the heavily Latino Pennsport neighborhood, Ramirez said. “Let"s see how things are next year," he said.

The High Life: Here Are The States Where The Most People Are Tokin' Up

After a slew of states across the country have decided to legalize medical and/or recreational use of marijuana, the Washington Post decided to take a look at the impact this new legislation has had on weed consumption by state.  Ironically the map looks a lot like the 2016 electoral college map with the highest levels of consumption per capita coming from the liberal strongholds of New England and the West Coast.  Meanwhile, Montana seems to be the one conservative outlier where people love both their individual liberties and tokin" up on the reg.

Overall, a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that 22 million Americans like to light up on a monthly basis with closer to 37 million admitting they partake at least once a year.

According to one estimate by ArcView Group, a marijuana industry consulting firm, the legal marijuana market rang up $6.7 billion in sales in 2016.

Legal or not, millions of Americans already use marijuana regularly. According to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8.3 percent of Americans age 12 and over -- 22 million people -- used marijuana on a monthly basis in 2015. And close to 37 million people used marijuana at least once that year.

Meanwhile, it"s readily apparent that the highest marijuana use per capita comes from states where the drug has been legalized for medical and/or medicinal purposes.

In the 2014-2015 period (years are paired for state-level data to provide bigger sample sizes), nearly a quarter of people in places where recreational pot is legal -- like D.C. and Colorado -- used some form of marijuana at least once a year.

That"s nearly double the national average, and it"s close to three times the rate for the most pot-abstinent states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Iowa, where around 8 or 9 percent of people age 12 and older use pot yearly.

Generally speaking, the Northeast and the West Coast are the two major marijuana hotbeds in the country. Marijuana use between the coasts is generally lower, with the notable exception of Colorado.

The state-level data shows that places with the most marijuana use generally have some form of legal medical or recreational marijuana available. This is likely a two-way street: places with lax attitudes about marijuana use are more likely to approve legal marijuana, and marijuana availability probably leads to more lax attitudes about use.

Finally, for our entrepreneurial readers, we just wanted to highlight that we see staggering opportunities for new KFC and Taco Bell franchises in parts of Montana, Colorado and New England.

Americans Couldn't Wait To Ditch These 10 States In 2016

With 2016 now a distant memory for most of us, we take a look back with United Van Lines at the migratory patterns of Americans over the course of the year. After a quick review of the data, a few interesting themes emerge:

1.  People continue to flee the indebted, pension ponzi burdened liberal states of New England and the Midwest with New Jersey, Illinois, New York and Connecticut all ranking at the very top of the most ditched states of 2016. 

2.  Obama"s obliteration of the coal industry has pushed people out of Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio, none of which appeared on the list of most-ditched states back in 2008 and 2009 before Obama took office.

3.  Finally, the natural migratory pattern of New England"s liberal elitists seems to be toward cheaper and lower taxed states in the Southeast and Western portions of the country...go figure.

And here is the full, official list of the top outbound states for 2016:

1. New Jersey


2. Illinois


3. New York


4. Connecticut


5. Kansas


6. Kentucky


7. West Virginia


8. Ohio


9. Utah


10. Pennsylvania

Meanwhile, after topping the chart as the most moved to state for the past three years, Oregon had a disappointing 2016 and dropped all the way to number three behind South Dakota and Vermont....perhaps those retirees from New England were a little put off by the liberal snowflake riots that plagued the state after Hillary"s loss two months ago.

1. South Dakota


2. Vermont


3. Oregon


4. Idaho


5. South Carolina


6. Washington


7. District of Columbia


8. North Carolina


9. Nevada


10. Arizona

As a simple recap, Americans are moving from heavily-regulated, bureaucratic, high cost-of-living states with massive indebtedness and failing pensions to more affordable states.  Seems fairly logical.

Finally, here is a handy chart from Van Lines that shows how the migratory patterns of Americans have changed since the late 70"s.