Des Moines, Iowa UPDATE!!

I promised the family of the man murdered at the Royal Motel, this year, that I would do this story.  I don't feel the need for this, since I've already posted something about it at my other blog, Americas Deadly Sins:

http://themightyswordamericas26deadlysins.blogspot.com

Instead, this post will address the need to shut down this hotel, due to its ongoing reputation for drugs, prostitution, robbery...and now murder, since the 1980's.  There's a story, recently run by the register, that tells of a member of the city council FINALLY expressing a need to shut down this hotel...and others like it.  But here's the thing, there are no others quite like it.  Since the beginning of the crack days back in 1984, this hotel has seen it's share of prostitution and drugs run through it's doors, and everyone knows this is the most notorious of the bunch, by far.  Of course, any extended stay type hotel is apt to be full of the same types of problems, but this one is KNOWN for it, famous even.  Most know to avoid it like the plague, along with others of its ilk, namely the Cozy Rest, Hawkeye and the Motel Relax.  Some, though, that were mentioned, although not the BEST choices of places to live, aren't all that bad, as long as you mind your own business.  Others, like the Royal are even suggested if you want find trouble.  Those are the kind you want to shut down, not the remainder that aren't generally mentioned as very troublesome.

If you're trying to bring about the end of every extended stay hotel...I wish you the best of luck.  Since America's on-going recession, and the crash of the housing market, let alone things like bank foreclosures on middle-class citizens; these things will only serve to fuel the market..  Transient Americans are becoming more commonplace, and, since no lease is involved, and deposits are often low, the extended stay hotel is going to become an American staple, in the years to follow, unless things improve, starting with our economy and the job market.

The Royal Motel, however, is a place that has been overlooked and ignored, primarily, for quite some time.  Sure, they bust the place up on occasion, just to say they have, in order to appease the neighborhood; but it remains open, and now has a murder to include into its legacy.  This is unacceptable.  Leave the majority alone, the people in extended stay motels generally aren't leasable; due to evictions, or stupid rental conditions being adopted by the real estate market, like forcing viable tenants to prove that they make three times what the rent they're being charged, is.  They pay a deposit and rent that is equal to most more reasonable apartments in the community, and the apartments they live in are fully functional, complete with full service kitchens, free cable and free Internet.  The royal is just a dive motel, with normal crap rooms, that has a reputation the entire city knows about...and promptly ignores, allowing the owners to continue renting rooms to the people who flock there, knowing they can get away with just about anything.  Ask anyone where the worst hotel is, or where you are very likely to find drugs or prostitution right in the room next to you, and they all pretty much point in the same direction...South, sometimes, sure....but the most known of the bunch is the motel that has the blue crown as its most notorious logo.

Des Moines, Iowa - Part III, #6 - Best Cities To Raise a Family

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eddf45edgee/no-6-des-moines-ia/

Wow...As mad as I am America, I can hardly believe I managed to miss a day, but America's Deadly Sins was in bad need of posts, and I still haven't finished up...I owe 'em one more Price is Your Rights cartoon, as well as another full post.  S'ok tho, I'll catch up soon enough.

Now...today's Ranking to be utterly stomped on is this one:

#6 - Best Cities to Raise a Family (Forbes Magazine, 2014)

Ok, FINALLY, a source that might be good to trust!  One I've heard of even!!  The validity of this ranking though, as well as any value it might contribute to this city, is yet to be shown.

I'll reiterate for sure though, and say that I've lived here on and off (more on than off) for over 37 years.  I was here during the OK years; let's just say those were from 1975-1984.  I have to say that those were indeed some of my better ones in this city.  Then, if you'd like to maybe stretch it somewhat, you could almost say that some more good years might have been from 1992 - 2000.  Other than that, I can rarely, barely and scarcely say that any of the remaining ones were all that beautious, or grandiose, either nor.

Not long after I first got here, well, I wouldn't have exactly considered this a great place to raise a family.  Johnny Gosh had just disappeared, and it would seem that I was one of the next ones to follow.  Fortunately, I managed to get smart and run.  As I remember, when I returned to Des Moines for a while to stay, I wouldn't have exactly called this a great place to raise a family either, in 1982.  There were dirty book stores and gay bars right downtown for all the world to see, and the Register sported a FULL complement of escort services.  I should know, I happened to manage the biggest one, at the time.

After leaving and coming back again, I remember vaguely, turning the corner onto 13th Street, from University one evening back in 1984 to find cars, bumper to bumper lined up and down 13th....as far as the eye could see, and people out on their front porches were waving me in.  I had given a girl I'd known from some time a ride that direction, and she'd been asking to get dropped off around there.  I was flabbergasted.  I couldn't see the houses for the amount of people that were out, that's for sure..."What's up with all this?" I remember asking.  That's when I'd first heard of crack, and our city, which wasn't what I'd call primo anyway, began its decent right down the tubies.  Within a couple months, there was a hooker, a slave to crack and willing to do whatever it took to get more, on just about every corner of the hood, with more walking around Des Moines, then moving to other areas when they were tired of being busted on the usual corners.  I would have to say that the city being a great place to raise families rating had gone down about 25 points in about 3 months, then pretty much remained there throughout the 80's, well into the 90's. I began seeing an end to that rather lowered rating somewhere around 1992; however; the neighborhood was pretty much scoured clean, then done in with yet another clean-up not long after to make certain.  Still, it would be a while, at least in my opinion, before the rating would be anything close to back around the rating it was pre-1983, if it ever bounced back.

Now there was yet another fresh drug out there to mess things up just coming to bear...meth.  Somewhere, just about the time crack was a deader fish, no longer good-tasting and sizable enough to not throw back into the lake when you caught it, well, along came meth amphetamine, and proved that even an illegally fished from lake could be refilled, repopulated, and create more problems than anyone had ever seen to date.  I won't go into the drug (I think we all know more than we want to about it by now), what the drug's made of (hence the funny looks you get when you stock up on batteries for Christmas, and cold medicine for that nasty bug that's been going around your house lately), or how it simply and utterly destroyed the better portion of this city before anything was done to stop the flow.  What I will say is, that if you talk to nearly half the populace in Des Moines; or at least it nearly seems so (they'll try to tell you that number is minuscule...but it's much larger than you know, this town's just very good at shuffling them away from the public view), you'll see an overabundance of missing teeth, recovering addicts, the tell-tale twitching faces and bodies of homeless monkey-backed beggars (half of which are still high from the last time they did it, about 4 hours ago) and you may even notice about 1/5 of your friends that have fallen prey to this wonderful drug as well.  I've done it myself...only I sniffed it first, and dropped it fast, thanks to the fact that it massively interfered with my job...then I came back for a little puffy puffy at later times...and yet after watching it totally destroy the better portion of my previous *friends list* (in all fairness, some gave it up and are really trying hard to stop) I just couldn't imagine myself a true addict, so I gave it up for more sensible hobbies.  If you talk to any one random person here, you will find that somewhere in their closet is either a personal experience, a friend or family member, or some other person they work with or live close to that either does it, deals it, or has had their lives thrown into turmoil by it.

Iowa is smack dab in the middle of the nation.  A central hub for a lot of things, including drug traffic. Innovative Tech Hubs that aren't on the radar?  Nnnnnot so much.  We here in Des Moines have known this for a very long time.  We're also very close to Chicago, whose residents, along with Detroit's and Milwaukee's, have been branching out to find new and clean cities to destroy.  Those, of late, include the likes of Madison, WI, the Quad Cities, and of course...Des Moines Iowa.   You know, the promising and richer types of cities. Davenport and those other cities, well, they aren't exactly rich (except maybe Bettendorf), but they were along the way soooo....what the heck, huh?

Anyway, I don't think it's such a good idea to advertise and put out there how wonderful this place is, even at 6th place, for families and clean living, mostly because that sort of advertising tends to draw UNWANTED attention to go along with the good kind.  I can see that family of neighborhood criminals now in Detroit, sitting in their living rooms, getting on the web and wishing they had more houses to break into where the police weren't always right there to see what they were up to before they could even get going...and seeing Des Moines...and thinking..."Hey!!  That's not too far away!  Hey Jay-Rod...think that Caprice of yours can still make it 400 miles one-way?  This town's gotta be FULL of nice people and suckers!!!"

Thanks to the coming and going (although meth is FAR from gone) of two such devastating drugs, this town is anything but suitable for family habitation.  With the exception of a few major businesses, this town doesn't really boast anything much better than say Cedar Rapids, or Waterloo, and really isn't far off from either one economically.  Believe you me, I can find you TONS of references that will tell you both of those cities are a complete waste of space.

And, just like anytime you have a problem like meth completely ruin anything good about your city, biases, more stringent hiring policies, and police harassment towards anyone, while looking for drugs or their abusers, tends to become almost ridiculous, especially when you're driving in certain areas...or in our case, almost an entire side of town.  During our crack era, the north side was very nearly evacuated trying to clean it up.  Now the south side is suffering due to the amount of immigrants and meth users that populate it.  There's even rumor (and has been for a lot of years) of the Mexican Mafia operating a branch of themselves here.  I know that, when I lived there, that it seemed to be almost 50% or more Italian populated.  Now you're lucky to spy a Scavo anywhere on that side of town, unless he's just passing through.

This place, a wonderful city to raise families in?  Nooooooo.......I don' think so.  No city over 10,000 people really is, anymore.  In my opinion, the only good place to raise a family is in the country, and only if you're ten miles or better from the nearest town or city.  Clive is MUCH better than Des Moines, though I still truly doubt it.  West Des Moines is around the same.  Urbandale, for the most part beats it out by a mile.  Waukee, same story.  Maybe I should look at the list...maybe those are the first four.  I don't think so, but any one of those could easily beat out, or replace Des Moines.  So I'm sorry Forbes.  Maybe you should invest a little more time into beating the streets of Des Moines to be absolutely sure before next year's rating.

Author's addendum:  I did finally bring myself to espy the list that Forbes put out about this (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2014/04/16/the-best-cities-for-raising-a-family-2/).  The one thing I noticed was, that even though a lot of the choices I thought were pretty well determined, that some were just stupid, and were only put on the list due to the low cost of living (the job market and bad economic overtones of the same were actually brought to the forefront, followed by low cost of living, which we know, for a fact, is BECAUSE of a crappy job market...????) and, in our case, the low traffic flow was even used as a plus.  Not exactly Family friendly stats, if you ask me.  Good reporting there, Forbes.

Des Moines, Iowa - Part II - Under the Radar Tech Hubs and Monopolistic Behaviors

www.catchdesmoines.com/about/

Hey kids, we're BAAAAAAAAAACK!!

You know, leave it to me to not waste any time.  Besides, what do I have left but time, right??  Speakin' of wasting time...let's get to it, shall we?

Now, we're on:

Ranked #2  - Under the Radar Tech Hubs...in the country.  Right about now, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering the the Hell a Tech Hub is, let alone an "Under the Radar" tech hub.  The rest of you, I'm sure, are all wondering how this particular ranking got ahead of obviously more important ranks, such as "Best place to raise your family", or "Best Pay for Blue Collar Workers".  Evidently this is more important.  Well, according to the SpareFoot blog,

http://blog.sparefoot.com/6124-americas-top-under-the-radar-tech-hubs/

whoever the Hell THEY are (and , therefore, why would we care); a Tech Hub is defined as a "innovative startup culture"...for high tech.  An example of a tech hub would be Silicon Valley, in California.  Okaaayyy.....Well, I don't see us getting remotely close to a Silicon Valley rating, anytime soon.

The "SpareFoot blog" also says we have three of these hubs...and that they're all here, doing well...but are under the radar.  To me, the phrase "Under the radar" means, that they're not being noticed...and then they're not all that great a deal to begin with, are they?  Or else, they would be ON the radar, right???  Right there, that ranking then, is BS.  Not very reliable information.  Something I really didn't need to know about, as far as a possible new city to move to.

OK, so maybe that's not enough for you?  Well, we can always jet back to "who is SpareFoot?", and how the heck is it that these people are notable enough to tell me what's so great about my city?  I'd say the point of that question is the answer....they're NOBODY.  Are they nationally recognized as an authority on tech hub rankings?  I doubt it.  Please, if you would, read on.

If that's STILL not enough for you, then let's go with their other rankings.  Their #1 ranking is Boise, Idaho.  They also have just three "under the radar" tech hubs.  How are they better than Des Moines, if they have the same number of tech hubs?  Do they explain why?  Nooooooo.......not exactly.  What about their #3 ranking? That'd be Little Rock AR.  They have two tech hubs.  OK, that one makes more sense - Less tech hubs, lower rating.  #4?  Baton Rouge LA.  So that probably means they have the same number, or perhaps less.  Oh, but wait...they have three tech hubs again...SO WHY ARE THEY #4?  I have no clue...I think I can stop there.  With all that, that ranking is OUTTTTA THERE..Don't know you, don't care, it's a bull-crap ranking, designed, for whatever idiot reason, to draw attention to Des Moines, Iowa, or to get people to move here.  Nice try; please, call again.

Oh, and just in case you haven't figured out, as yet, who Spare Foot (www.sparefoot.com) is?  It's the world’s largest, simplest and best marketplace for self-storage. They also provide leading web marketing solutions for storage operators. (See Sparefoot.com/about.html)  How, then, does this make these people an authority, where ranking my city as a budding innovative tech hub is concerned?  IT....DOES....NOT!!!! Thank you, have a nice day, and enjoy your life.

I've decided that we need to condense topics somewhat, mostly because some of these "Rankings" are way to easy to refute, per the authority that gives it.  So, for every ranking I can eliminate as not kosher, in 5 paragraphs or less, I'm going to add a SENSIBLE reason to avoid this city like the plague.

Here's one that I happen to know a lot about.  Monopolies.  Now, according to our nationally recognized Federal Law on the subject, Monopolies are VERBOTTEN...a cardinal sin, not allowed to operate ANYWHERE within our borders.  Really?

Ok, then explain to me, why it is, that we had, for easily three decades, only one cab company?  One Energy Provider?  One cable company?  Oh sure, we have satelite companies...two to be exact.  But if you're set on Cable, you only have a single choice.  I've always thought that one to be wrong. Our cable company, Mediacom, has had its foot down on the neck of Des Moines, for a long time now.  I also have a big problem with one energy provider.  But then I always thought energy, like gas, water, etc...should always be free anyway.  It's our earth too, and just because we ourselves in our time weren't bright enough to think of charging for it...should the remainder of us suffer?  The most significant of these monopolies, however, is the Cab monopoly we've had here, for many a decade.  This has ALWAYS been our best story.

John Ruan, the most powerful of Des Moines' residents for many years, finally died in 2010.  His son, of course, took the reigns to this empire.  Ruan Trucking is still going strong, and it's smaller group, the Cab Company, they called it, is still profiting well, now that it's on it's own.  It used to be run, as a transparent monopoly, for a great many years.  See, there were, for the longest time, only two cab companies.  Yellow Cab and Capital cab.  The problem was, the same man owned it.  Everybody knew it, everybody just kind of accepted it.  And he continued to own it, for a long time to come.  Then he sold it to someone else...who also owned the rights to the city, and continued to monopolize it until they FINALLY let others in...under certain conditions.  For one, they had to carry (get this) OVER 1 MILLION IN LIABILITY INSURANCE.

New York City, sporting one of the most expensive licenses in the union?  Only requires that you have $80,000 in the same insurance.  Another concession they required, is that they charge NO LESS than the current rates that the current order charged.  So, no competition.  Another condition was that you HAD to have a central dispatcher, even though the current system of cell phone dispatch is working just fine in other cities.  All of this rests on the City Council, here in Des Moines.  They keep others out, they still make ALL the money.  Now, I don't know about you, but when a current system that keeps out competition is at the head of the class, I don't see that kind of city as a good place to start a Tech Hub, whether it's under the radar or not; or ANY kind of business, for that matter.  Which is probably why these "tech hubs" are STILL under the radar...so they can be like a normal business, without a greedy City Council giving them crap about competitive pricing.  :D

Des Moines, Iowa , Part I - Metro For Economic Strength

http://www.executiveofficespace.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Iowa.jpg

NOTE:  THIS IS A BRAND NEW BLOG FROM THE TWISTED MIND OF THE MIGHTY SWORD.  IT'S NOT GONNA BE FUN (except for me, anyway), NOR WILL IT BE PLEASANT.  FOR YOU WHO SWEAR BY THIS CITY, AS WELL AS THIS STATE, YOU MAY WANT TO A.) BRING A GARBAGE PAIL IN WHICH TO PUKE IN, OR B.) READ A MORE POSITIVE/PLEASANT BLOG CONCERNING THESE SUBJECTS!  SINCE IT'S NEW, THE FIRST POST, AS IN ALL OF MY BLOGS, WILL BE THE LONGEST.  THEREFORE I WILL BE WRITING IT IN PIECES, SAVING, PUBLISHING, THEN COMING BACK AGAIN.  IF IT DOESN'T SEEM DONE, THEN IT'S NOT DONE.

Hey kids!  Never thought you'd see me over here didja?  Hehe.  Well, come on in.  Please wipe yer feet. Grab some fresh made popcorn.  That's the way.  Now, pull up a chair, and enjoy my story.  For those of you just joining in, I write a rather good blog (or so I'm told...I could be horribly wrong) on the other side of this site called "America's Deadly Sins".  It, not unlike the plans I have for this one, will never be all that nice, never all that sweet, and definitely, without question NOT kind.  Everything you see here is cut and dried, as honest and straight up as I can make it, and it is, undeniably, the truth.  All opinions, of course, are my own, but will be backed up as much as possible by data, pictures, etc., and will be up for debate, should you leave comments.  Unlike the other blog, I will be going out of my way to give credit where credit is due.  I'm not a guy with a lot of time (considering this country is on it's way to becoming a distant memory), so it's been hard to give ALL credit.  In this one, I will...most certainly.

That other blog, by the way?  http://themightyswordamericasdeadlysins.blogspot.com

The Mighty Swords Credentials:  I've lived in Des Moines since 1975.  In Iowa since 1968.  I have plenty of schooling, and a 147 I.Q.  I am not a felon, a major criminal, a moron, nor am I a fool.  My other blog, since March, has garnered 5,318 followers, including Senators, Lawyers, Models, Patriots of every political view, Musicians of every type, Campaign managers, Editors from CNN, Politicians, Comedians, Military types...you name it.  And the best part?  I didn't ask for a single person to follow me, nor did I pay a single dime for anybody.  What's more, I never solicited, asked, or begged for even one.  They saw.  They read.  They followed.  Simple as that.  I don't advertise either, to drive anyone to that blog.  I must be doing something right, with nearly 302,000 Google Plus views and upwards of 49,000 Blogger views...in 12 countries circling the globe.

See, the deal is, that Iowa...no, no more importantly, DES MOINES, Iowa, is ranked pretty high in this state, and in our country too!  Makes a citizen proud to be here, it does...or, at least, it SHOULD!!  Let's rattle off the numbers, shall we, per whatever weirdo unknown companies they're using to come up with these ranks.  We'll begin with what's probably due to be my favorite of all of these ranks, the first one, Economic Strength.

The number?  Ooo, I just know our founders would just be plumb proud of this one...

#1 - Metro for Economic Strength.  This city.  Of all.  The cities.  In this country.  Is.  #1.  In Economic Strength.  Right.  I'm sorry, who's the collector (as well as the respected publisher) of this particular data again?  Policom Corporation.  2014.  Sorry folks.  Never heard of ya.

OK, well, let's begin with the list of everything I'm going to be referring to in this new blog of mine, since this would be the most glaringly obvious flaw in the overall logic of displaying a list like this.  Huh? Ohhhhh......Now I know what I just said!  What I said was, THIS LIST IS BOGUS!!!

I'm pretty sure that I won't be finding this list anywhere but on the City of Des Moines website, except maybe on the State of Iowa website.  If we were to send a copy to the Government, we might take things too far.  They might have to investigate these findings for themselves.  See, just about every ranking, you may notice, has a different listing as to who comes up with these numbers, with the obvious exception of Forbes Magazine, which is listed five or six times.  There's something that just HAS to click, in the mind of practically anyone who would sport an intelligence level of more than 6th Grade.  Not only is this list BOGUS, it's BIASED!!  Yes, that's right, biased, one-sided, leaning towards the left or the right...you get the idea.

What about last year?  The year before?  And who is this company, exactly?  What's their track record, as far as being right and wrong?  What about the remainder of this data?  How many years has this company been in business?  Let's find out, shall we?

OKOK...they've been in business 19 years.  That's a good start.  For those of you that would like to follow along, you may.

http://policom.com

They are, however, an INDEPENDENT "Economic Development Consultant".  I'm not a true fan of that word, INDEPENDENT.  Independent to me equals CORRUPTIBLE.  It also means NON-REGULATED.  This means that I could, feasibly pay you for good results, and that the company could feasibly take that money.  But hey, who's counting?  I'll move on from that one.

Then there's the fact that they're in Florida, nearly 1500 miles away.  I have to wonder how many of their reps live in Iowa.  I don't know, exactly, but I'd sure like to find out.  If it wasn't anyone in Iowa, how long did they spend in Iowa to collect their data, and what's the amount of give and take with their accuracy?  What are their sources?  I'd like to know these things.  How about the rest of you?

The answer, by the way to the previous question, is one.  One person.  Oh, and not just one person; one person who has also evaluated 700 other economies as well.  He's also the presenter of these reports.  He does 700 reports on the economy every year.  That's a lot for one guy.  I'd say, considering the average time would be around 2 weeks per report, that his margin for error, whether documented or not, is pretty large.  Before he did these findings, the man was the VP for a large land development company in Florida, for seven years.  I don't really know about the rest of the world, but I'm most certainly not trusting of too many land developers.  Why, I can't really say.  Might have something to do with people who sell ocean-front property in Arizona, or who sell the government toxic waste dumps so that they can make Army bases on them, then let a town build up next to it without telling them what the dangers are, then shuffle through and allow hundreds of naive military entrants to train there, for almost 30 years....Oh, yeah, I trust land developers all right.  Just the kind of guy I want giving me economic data (for more on that military base, which I served on for 6 months, Google Ft. McClellan, AL, or Aniston, AL, the town that cropped up next to it.  Be sure and look for what they've done for the veterans that trained there, over the years).

Oh, but that man has HUNDREDS of loyal clients in his list.  Among these?  For Iowa?  There are only two.  If nothing else on earth will make you skeptical of this guys data, then nothing will.  They are:  The Iowa Banking Association, and Iowa Professional Developers.  And, those results are OUTTTTTTA THERE!!!!!!  'Nuff said, and good luck convincing me of the truth of those results.

I'm done with this company.  Let's go on.  What about last year, who was the number one Metro For Economic Strength for last year?  I don't really know.  Nor do I care to look.  See, I think the whole thing goes something like this.

If there's a promising metro area that's just not bringin' it in like it used to?  I think that the City Councils in these areas go on a hunt for companies that will lie to boost their numbers, or that they can pay for better numbers...or at the very least will SAY that their numbers are good.  I think just the one I mentioned is more than enough proof of that.

Now, being a 37 year resident of this town, I think, more than qualifies me as an expert on the "Economic Strength" of Des Moines Iowa.  Here then, are my own personal results, which I imagine are at the very least 50% more accurate than Policom's results.

Since I've been here, I have never had a corporate position in this town's main business, insurance.
Since I've been here, in Des Moines, I have never held a corporate position, for ANYONE.
Since I've been here, in Des Moines, I have never EVER gotten a job from Iowa Workforce Development.
Since I've been here, in Des Moines, I haven't been able to get a job ANYPLACE, since 2002.
Since I've been here, I have never made more than $10.00 per hour.
Since I've been here, just about every friend I've had is now gone.
Since I've been here, just about every business I've ever remembered that was here in 1976 (with a few notable exceptions - Mostly banks, insurance companies, one versatile and smart publishing company, Meredith, and one clothing Department store, Younkers) Is gone, moved away, or closed it's doors, permanently.

OK, well, so what kind of a person am I?  Sure, I've been in trouble a couple of times (that I was caught for).  I have a shoplifting charge...from 2002.  I have a misdemeanor prostitution charge (funny story, that one) from 1986.  And last, I have a drug possession charge from 1982 (which was from an incident in 1979, another funny story).  The first two charges have never ever affected my being hired for a position anyplace.  The last one, however, the shoplifting charge, has stopped me from getting hired anyplace for 11 years.  I have plenty of experience in an awful lot of fields, and I have nearly two college degrees (I didn't get to college until nearly 2010.  My hatred of colleges and education systems is multi-pronged in its complexity, and so is the dependency of this city of those degrees.  It would take entirely too long to beat it over the head now.  I do relate much about that in my other blog, listed above).

I'm jobless, very nearly homeless, I have no cash to speak of, so, of course, I have nothing better to do with my time, these days, but blog about the state of the nation, and the condition of my home of nearly 37 collective years.  Do I believe in the Economic Strength of this city?  HELL no.  Every time I move away, I can usually get a job in 3 days or less, make a lot more than $10.00/hr., and live quite well.  As soon as I come back, my life goes right down the tubes, I can't get a job to save my ass, and all I can think about is where I'm going to move away to next.  So as long as things remain the way they are, then watch out; because my plan will be to single-handedly prove Des Moines, Iowa to NOT BE the place to live in this, or any other century.  Am I bitter?  Sure am.  Full of hate and revenge on its businesses and people?  Damned straight.  Wrong about any of it?  I doubt it.

I will be going through the ENTIRE list of the rankings concerning this city.  After that, I plan to rip apart each and every thing about this city that's idiotic, criminal, or just plain wrong.  If you stay, well hallelujah, welcome to the land of truth and honesty.  If you'd like to, however, scoff and walk off...well, good luck.  Lemme know how your life works out for you in a few years.  Add to that, we'll always welcome you back over here with open arms, once your opinion is more in line with ours.  :D