By Staff
The nation's most affluent county? Hint: It isn't in the Silicon Valley or the Sun Belt.
With a median household income of $98,483, it's Loudoun County in Virginia, according to Time magazine.
A third of its 255,000 residents arrived in the past five years.
The median house sells for $440,000.
This is the America President George W. Bush means when he mentions eight times in one January speech in Peoria, Ill., that the U.S. economy remains “strong.”
Loudoun County is part of metropolitan Washington, which created 359,000 jobs from 2000 to 2005.
Nearby Fairfax County is just an income notch below Loudoun, with 1 million inhabitants, 600,000 jobs and 1.9-percent unemployment.
Why isn't Gov. Jennifer Granholm studying success stories like these to breathe some life back into Michigan, you ask?
It wouldn't matter. We don't have a rich Uncle Sam, except the one who compels us to send him money.
Northern Virginia has benefited immensely from government outsourcing.
When the tech bubble burst, they moved on to building the homeland-security industry.
Two percent of U.S. economic activity is the product of federal deficit spending.
More than 6 percent is paid for with money borrowed from overseas, so the bill is coming due, but federal spending is a good economic development bet whether Republicrats or Demopublicans control power.
Did you know? Las Vegas isn't the capital of gambling.
The Chinese government in 2002 removed a 40-year monopoly on casinos in Macau.
Gaming tourism mushroomed to 22 million visitors last year.
Speaking of China, I had never heard of its fourth-largest city (after Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou), Chengdu, but at 10.8 million inhabitants it's larger than New York City.
Chengdu's seven Starbucks (more than Peoria, to mention that Illinois city once more) charge $3.30 for a grande latte (even though residents typically earn less than $7 a day).
Wages in the interior city, however, have surged more than 90 percent to more than $2,400.
GM's sales grew 40 percent in 2006. Motorola tripled the number of its sales outlets to 30,000 in just the past 18 months.
The manager of a Buick dealership eight years ago had three competitors. Now it's 15.
Take heart in that, Americans. Business is good somewhere.
The creators of the obsessive “Behind the Wall of Sleep” stalk “Till There was You” with guitar crunch.
Bonus points if you know who Jeannie Shrimpton is, how her hair looked in the '60s or who this Bill Wyman was that she stood like with her bass.
That's 40 million acres, or idling the equivalent of every farm in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio.
Why do we still have farm subsidies anyway?
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt started them during the Great Depression to help ailing growers, but today the bulk of the assistance goes to huge, profitable agribusinesses.
More than 70 percent of subsidies goes to the top 10 percent of producers.
Beverly Hills, the 90210 ZIP Code, has 136 subsidized farmers (plus 62 in Washington, D.C., and 80 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan)!
Meanwhile back at the (fallow) ranch, we can't afford domestic programs let alone war in Iraq.
Russia: The only major power with an interest in high energy prices. Likewise, the only major power with no interest in Mideast stability.
These facts make Russia our biggest hurdle in stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Russians are building the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, plus they won the contract to construct six additional plants.
Russia is an energy empire, with more than a fourth of the world's known natural gas reserves, 17 percent of its coal and six percent of its oil.
Buying the 2008 election: Remember all the attention paid in 2004 to President Bush's Rangers raising $200,000?
Those are the good ol' days.
Mrs. Clinton's top “Hillraisers” are expected to bring in $1 million each.
As a Republican told Time, “You can't get to $100 million at $2,300 a clip (the limit 2002 McCain-Feingold reforms set) by just calling your friends. Nobody has that many friends.”
Klepto-clerics: Two pilfering priests in Delray in the Roman Catholic diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., are estimated to have misappropriated $8.6 million over 42 years.
One father, 79, who retired in September 2003, gave a “girlfriend” $134,000, bought rare coins for $275,000 and owned an oceanfront condominium worth $455,000.
The other pastor, 63, removed in 2005, enjoyed expensive vacations to Las Vegas and the Bahamas, spent $220,000 renovating his residence and made payments to his own “paramour.”
The bookkeeper of his former parish allegedly got $47,000 for credit card bills and her child's tuition.
He was arrested upon returning from a South Pacific cruise.
They both pleaded not guilty to grand theft.
In January a Virginia priest was indicted for allegedly embezzling $600,000 from two Catholic churches - in part to support the woman and three children with whom he secretly lived.
A Connecticut priest was accused of pilfering up to $1.4 million for Audi cars, luxury-hotel stays, jewelry for his boyfriend and a Fort Lauderdale condo.
Last June another priest was sentenced to five years in prison for misappropriating $2 million from a church in New Jersey.
The nation's 19,000 parishes collect $6 billion annually from their congregations.