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These Are The "Worst Possible States To Live In" As Ranked By Their Residents
It should come as no surprise that when Gallup recently conducted a poll asking residents to rank if their state is the "worst possible to live in" a whopping 25% of its residents, by far the most of any states, responded Illinois. Which were the other "worst possible" states? The table below ranks them all.
How about the opposite: the best US states to live in? Here is the full list in descending order.
And some commentary from Gallup:
Residents of Western and Midwestern states are generally more positive about their states as places to live. With the exception of the New England states of New Hampshire and Vermont, all of the top 10 rated states are west of the Mississippi River. In addition to Montana and Alaska, Utah (70%), Wyoming (69%), and Colorado (65%) are among the 10 states that residents are most likely to say their state is among the best places to reside. Most of these states have relatively low populations, including Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, and Alaska -- the four states with the smallest populations in the nation. Texas, the second most populated state, is the major exception to this population relationship. Although it is difficult to discern what the causal relationship is between terrain and climate and positive attitudes, many of the top 10 states are mountainous with cold winters. In fact, the two states most highly rated by their residents -- Montana and Alaska -- are among not only the nation's coldest states but also both border Canada.
With the exception of New Mexico, all of the bottom 10 states are either east of the Mississippi River or border it (Louisiana and Missouri). New Jersey (28%), Maryland (29%), and Connecticut (31%) join Rhode Island among the bottom 10.
The results are based on a special 50-state Gallup poll conducted June-December 2013, including interviews with at least 600 residents in every state. For the first time, Gallup measured whether residents view their states as "the best possible state to live in," "one of the best possible states to live in," "as good a state as any to live in," or "the worst possible state to live in."
Few Americans say their states are the single best or worst places to live. Rather, the large majority of respondents say their states were either "one of the best" or "as good a state as any" place to live.
One in Four Illinois Residents Say Their State Is the Worst Place to Live
Illinois has the unfortunate distinction of being the state with the highest percentage of residents who say it is the worst possible place to live. One in four Illinois residents (25%) say the state is the worst place to live, followed by 17% each in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Throughout its history, Illinois has been rocked by high-profile scandals, investigations, and resignations from Chicago to Springfield and elsewhere throughout the state. Such scandals may explain why Illinois residents have the least trust in their state government across all 50 states. Additionally, they are among the most resentful about the amount they pay in state taxes. These factors may contribute to an overall low morale for the state's residents.
Texans Most Likely to View the Lone Star State as the Very Best
Although Texas trails Montana and Alaska in terms of its residents rating it as the best or one of the best places to live, it edges out Alaska (27%) and Hawaii (25%) in the percentage of residents who rate it as the single best place to live.
Texans' pride for their state as the single best place to live is not surprising when viewed in the context of other measures. According to Gallup Daily tracking for 2013, Texans rank high on standard of living and trust in their state government, and they are less negative than others are about the state taxes they pay. The same is true for Alaska and, to a lesser extent, Hawaii, which had relatively average scores for trust in state government and state taxes, but ranked high for standard of living. The three also have distinct histories, geographies, natural resources, and environmental features that may contribute to residents' personal enjoyment and pride in their locale.
Bottom Line
Residents with the most pride in their state as a place to live generally boast a greater standard of living, higher trust in state government, and less resentment toward the amount they pay in state taxes. However, the factors that residents use to determine whether their state is a great place to live are not always obvious. West Virginia, for example, falls far behind all other states on a variety of metrics, including economic confidence, well-being, standard of living, and stress levels. Still, over a third of West Virginians feel their state is among the best places to live, giving it a ranking near the middle of the pack.
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Glad you feel that way.
One less person escaping the other 49 to deal with.
This survey, funded by Gallup and ZeroHedge, helps DHS and the rest of the Government agencies supporting the status quo identify where to place geographically the bulk of its anti-domestic terrorism assets, ordnance and propaganda. In the happier states we have more acceptance of the "BLUE PILL PROGRAM" delivered by our very trusted and reliable TPTB controlled MSM. The unhappy states.....well, they see the reality of the "RED PILL" or never took the "BLUE PILL", so that's where most of the 1.5 Billion bullets we buy per year are going.
I am from IL but have lived in CA and NJ. IL and NJ have high degrees of legalized theft. CA is just stupid. So no sure which is worse in the long run. Clearly CA has better weather but really is it worh it when you look at yor wallet. IL gives new meaning to legalize corruption. Watch out Afghanistan we are coming.
Afghanistan was not that bad actually. I've lived there for three years. One would expect Afghanis to be bitter and hateful, but they're not.
I think CA may soon be the worst - at least the southern bits.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/07/06/SOURCE-FEDS-To-Bring...
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e98_1404573383
I don't get why there couldnt be a moderate consensus - control the border, stop the flood, and we'll give a path to citizenship for illegals already here who havent committed any serious crimes or abused the welfare system....
But neither La Raza, Obama, or the far right are interested in anything like that.
People are gonna start getting killed over this bullshit.
Have you ever done a study on how many young people are in Mexico and SA? The US needs those young to support the future tax roles and establish law & order. It is not far out that you might be horded in a detention center by a military "illegal" doing the .govs work. Yes people will get killed over this, their hopes is that you will lose.
Oh, and just for the record, you can live on the ocean front enjoying beautiful weather year round in San Diego with people you don't like or be in a trailer near a ditch in TN with people that you love and it makes a world of difference.
Dante: All it takes is love (& faith)
So, I'm in Montana. It kinda sucks too, except compared to other places I've lived, TX, WA, NV and CA.
I think Texans are most proud of their postion as number 1 in the country for killing prisoners. Death row is a really big status symbol. Also denial of climate change even as their state burns around them is a big deal to them. It makes them feel good to know that they can teach Biblical pesudo science in schools instead of scientific studies. Oh my Texans are bright! Also just think, everyday they keep poor people from getting health insurance that they can actually afford, means that some will die of various diseases and that means less social cost to the wealthy Texans who control the state. Yippee!
It's monsoon season here in the home of The Bomb. In summer the SUB is closed weekends and 6 PM otherwise. Am there almost every day with trusty old CF52 and ethernet cable to sit by big window looking out at big blue sky and the green leaves on tree right near Steinway grand which anyone can come in and play as long as they don't make a pest of themselves. They don't mind me sitting there on comfy chair with feet on those plus square thingies on 1 GB wired connection ~25 msec latency, which sure beats the guest wifi lasting exactly 3600 seconds. They do check for "homeless people" using it as a home, but they hassled me only once, supposedly because someone complained that I was looking at pictures of guns and so felt me to be a "dangerous-looking person" so campus cops came tried do ID check but I know my rights and was polite about it and the cop probably understood that it really was a case of harassment on account of the fact that some people find the idea of 9/11 being an inside job and A.Q.=CIA with that pic of Anonymi in Guy Fawkes in the middle ... well, you get the idea, because its uber-cool brushed magnesium cover and the PANASONIC covered up by the messages, which are strictly educational, not political message whatsoever. But the cop had his pride hurt from seeing me "get away with" refusing to show my ID and rather "choose to just be going" since I'd hate to bemaking anyone uncomfortable. So after I was clear of the building he yelled out to me from 20 feet: "And don't ever come back or I'll arrest you." Well, then, I'm a practical person and since I had expressed the wish to be on my way and was at least nominallly in full compliance with all legal orders up to that point, I took out my wallet and walked over to him offering it for his inspection. It was no longer an investigatory stop and he had radioed in that it was over and AOK ... and he and his partner were actually on a new call. I knew that my "stop" was over and so did he and his partner, but a crowd had gathered to watch, some of them probably hoping they'd take me away in cuffs. It wouldn't be procedure or even make any sense for him to make a non-emergency broadcast of my info over his lapel radio with no preliminary exchange of context and reason. He quickly mumbled just my name and driver license number into the lapel radio, but his radio was off, and nobody replied. LOL. So I pretended to have submitted to an unwarranted investigatory stop and he pretended to have investigated me. Big pretend, just like most everything in life. Then I went home to eat lunch and an hour later was back there in the same exact spot with CF52 staying much longer than usual, to make a point. Nobody has bothered me there ever since. So if you live here, you know where to find me, literallly.
Monsoon season means that almost every afternooon clouds gather over the mountain and the wind direction changes and we get NWS severe weather alerts telling us who is getting the rain. Last year was a very dry one with only an inch of rain at the airport. And the wettest months are July and August from those afternoon thunderstorms. Almost exactly a year ago one of those storms on Friday evening brought 70-mph gusts with over an inch of precip in an hour and it knocked out electric power for up to a week for many of us unlucky enough to be located in a "small" outage from a blown transformer or just a single wire coming loose. Because we hardly get any rain, many of the homes here didn't have their roofs in tip-top condiition last summer and the combination of heavy rain and some roof leaks combined with the widespread power outages somehow combined to destroy quite a few homes within a few blocks of me. See, when the roof leaks and you don't fix it immediately, it can easily destroy the house, and so these were razed with bulldozers and windrows or whatever and so several huge brand-spanking new homes were built courtesy of homeowner's insurance policy because who can know if that roof was leaking BEFORE the big storm came. It could have been a total dump, but a big one. Damage from flood isn't covered, but high winds and rain are. Replacement Cost is figured by home's square footage and "average sq ft contruction cost" so some of these new homes are two-story monsters that bare-minimum stebacks. Talk about windfall profits.
I'm not poor but most everyone around me is. If you're poor this is a good place to live. A 70-yr-old friend of mine is on just SSI and he told me in amazement that his dentist told him that this is one of the very few places where if you have Medicaid, not Medicare, that Medicaid covers full dentures for poor people with no price limit, with the state paying his well-regarded denture specialist about $5 K for the dentures that last him five years. And other health care fo the poor can also be of the highest quality. We take pride in the fact that we always vie with Mississippi for being poorest state in the nation, but unlike them we treat our poor well, and racism here is practially unheard of being the melting pot with all our indigenous tribes and the age-old dominance of Hispanics in our political machines and business communities. This is the same place where there was a veritable insurrection where a judge was killed in a coutroom in the early 1970s in the north of the state in a case that had its roots in longstanding violations of an old treaty with Mexico and a huge land grant. It was La Raza and they were armed, and they shot to kill. So that's part of living here, having that history.
You can go up there to that courthouse and fish for trout nearby and see the exact same places that made O'Keefe and Steiglitz come here. Rent a car by the week. It might be the best and the cheapest vacation you ever took, but you'd need two full weeks. There is no risk of insurrection. As everywhere else, the people have been pacified.
If you're sick of where you live now, the best time to come here is October, but it's a zoo during balloon fiesta the first full week in October and the weather often stays perfect until early November. October 15 to November 15 is probably the best time to visit here with weather so perfect the statistics don't give you any idea of how nice it is because the sky is a perfect deep blue and the air is clear and cool ... usually for over 30 days in a row, and the college students are back and the SUB is open late every day of the week. The weather usually turns cold and rainy just about Thanksgiving.
Three years ago in October we had the Occupy Wall Street thing happpening here with people living in a park until the police threw them out and arrested a few people for criminal trespass on the state property of the university. That "movement" has beeen totally destroyed.
Two years ago we had Gary Johnson running for president and on the ballots of 48 states as Libertarian candidate. I did my own campaigning for him, took a big yard sign and made a strapp so it was easy to carry while riding my bike over to the U. which was a polling place to sit just shy of the miniumum distance from the entry doors and politic with people coming to vote. Now there is an entity that calls itself the LIB part of this state and it's supposedly sanctioned at the national level, but for the life of me I can't figure out why that allowed that to happen. It's basically just one guy who has his friends come and vote for him in caucus and his current agenda is to implement a state-wide voter ID law after he and his right-wing conservative Republican friends managed to get voter-ID on the books as a city ordinance. Anyone should know that libertarians are against unwarranted government intrusions, both against a country's own residents, and everyone else too, regardless of who or where they are. Some libertarians would like to be able to drive a car without need for state-issued driver's license because they think they would take responsibility for their actions, such as paying out of their own pocket for any damages they cause when driving if they chose to forego car insurance. The fact of the state chair of the "libertarian party" working to implement a state-wide voter ID law at the same time Russia annnexed Crimea and U.S.-backed forces in Syria began moving on Iraq and all they cared about was state-wide voter-ID is proof positive that Doublethink is everywhere and affects almost everyone. There were about 10 people at that gathering in the back rooom of the Frontier on a 6:30 PM thursday evening regular meeting you can easily find with an internet search. I was the only one there who noticed the cognitive dissonance and told them that they were anti-libertarian frauds on my leaving. And you can easily find the name of the person mentioned and call him up to ask if this story is true.
And last fall? Big blank. Maybe this year it will be better, because the rumblings of discontent are growing louder.
Drop me a line if you're curious. The only "thought police" are the people telling me to "watch out for the thought police." I'm not causing any trouble or stirring up any insurrections by mentioning that fact that pretty much everyone seems to be a zombie after I started reading Harry Elmer Barnes. There, that should make most people steer well clear of him and http://bookator.net/?p=695441 , and most would probably even be fearful of clicking on that link to just look at the page and not even download what is probably the most important book from the greatest social scientist of the 20th century, who, amazingly enough, seems to have been erased from common knowledge not by any authoritarian Ministry of Truth, but by scared sheeple who ostracize anyone who dares to present original ideas and Truth with a capital T. No, most people don't want to have anything to do with truth or those who tell it.