Smart Cities, DeeCee, and Kitchen Table Conversations

Last night as I was channel surfing between snaps of the Patriots-Jets bash in Foxboro, I was momentarily distracted when I reached one of the local, Tampa area stations. They had a graphic up and were talking about the "Smartest Cities" as determined by Portfolio dot com. Boulder, CO was number one, Ann Arbor, MI at two and Washington, DC was third. I can't say I found any of these all that surprising given the criteria Portfolio used:

Portfolio.com followed Census Bureau guidelines in designing an educational ladder. The following are the five rungs, with average annual earnings for all workers, both full-time and part-time, at each level (as of 2007) in parentheses:

* Advanced degree ($61,287), including professional, doctoral, or master's degree
* Bachelor's degree ($46,805)
* Associate degree or attended college without any degree ($32,874)
* High-school graduate ($26,894)
* High-school dropout ($19,405)

Portfolio has a pdf download available that lists the top 200 in case you're interested.

However, I would contest the declaration of Washington, DC as the "third smartest city" even though it probably does fit the description based on the stated criteria. Educated? Yes. Smartest? Not hardly.

Jobs, Elections, Corporate Cluelessness, and Reading the Tea Leaves

Have I mentioned recently that I NEED a FREAKIN' JOB?

Whew. OK, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's move on to the top stories of the day.

It seems there were some elections yesterday of the Primary type nature with the results being a confounding mess primarily to those Beltway Villagers who sit and talk amongst themselves about how wonderful all their fellow eaters of cocktail weenies are but have no clue about life out here in the rest of America.

So we get to read the "analyses" from the pundits who latch onto the easiest theme that reinforces what they already felt, regardless of reality (such an unreal concept reality is). Hint: the elections in KY, PA, and AR were NOT purges from the left or right.

Let me see if maybe a few headlines from today's news sites on the web can maybe explain a bit of the disconnect. From the NY Times we have this

Teaching Candidates Aplenty, but the Jobs Are Few

and this:

Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals

From the Washington Post comes these gems:

Voters' anger at Washington may overpower any fixes

Dodd backs off alternative derivatives proposal in overhaul bill