At the local “The Black Cat” (coffee shop) individuals gather and discuss politics while having a hot cup of coffee with a fresh warm muffin (from the local bakery “Ashland Bakery Company“).  In this small town (Ashland) the political conversation is rarely, if ever, pro Palin.

Ashland like Wasilla is a small town (under 10K population) in the United States.  Lets compare Ashland to Wasilla.

Population

Ashland: 8202

Wasilla: 9236

Religion & Voting

Common

• They both are near water.  Wikipedia has two images of the shoreline of Wasilla and Ashland are quite similar.
• Railroads and Fur Trading are an important part of Ashland and Wasilla history.
• Crimes statistics are very similar, low.

Ashland, WI

Wasilla, AK

Differences

• There is public transportation in Ashland (Bart Bus) for about $ 1.00/one way with .18% of the residents using mass transit; Wasilla’s cost is $2.50/one way and less than .00% ridership.
• Ashland has sidewalks, wasilla doesn’t.
• Ashland has two options for higher education (Northland College, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College). There aren’t higher education opportunities in Wasilla (unless you count hairstyling and real estate schools).
• Ashland has a Hospital within the city limits, while the nearest hospital for Wasilla residents is 29 miles away.
• Average home price in Ashland is around $84K with Wasilla’s average is about $226K.
• 92% of the Ashland population work and live within 30 mins of each other; Wasilla under 30% with the majority commuting (one per car) to Anchorage.
  • Ashland residents invest in Ashland.  In fact, Ashland has an good old fashion downtown Main Street with coffee shop, Diner, Movies theater (5 screens), bakery, pharmacy, restaurants, and many shops.
  • Wasilla is filled with boxed stores and franchises including Target, Gap, Banana Republic, Nordstroms, and TGIFridays. It is an outdoor mall connected by a large four lane highway, called Main Street.

Which Main Street would you want?

A

B

My choice: B.  Ashland, WI

Personal Thoughts

How can two small towns be so different, so polar?

Ashland and the United States has a higher percentage of Religious than Wasilla.  That is the complete  opposite of Palin’s public promotion and the public perception of Wasilla. Can it be that Fox News and all those religious programs have been wrong?  Based on statistics it is not the religious that vote republican, it is the wealthy.

Is it because Ashland is more compassionate and sympathetic to the real issues of the United States due to the lower cost of living?  For Ashland residents, is it about the poor, hungry, job security and homeless?

It could be a secular education that produces a more balanced mind?

• Ashland 30% of the population has completed higher education
• Wasilla’s 11% of the population has completed higher education

It also could it be values of the Mayors and his/her leadership?  Asking both if being a Mayor of a small town qualifies to be Vice President or President of the United States:

• Ashland’s Mayor Ed Monroe responded, “No”
• Wasilla’s Mayor Dianne Keller responded, “Yes”

I decided to compare Wasilla to other small towns in the United States (via Sperlings) and found that Wasilla is not anomaly.  I looked closely at other cities/towns that have a population under 10,000, home prices above $215K and less than 50% religious residents.  These cites/towns do have a higher population percentage that votes Republican.  The variable of more or less religious isn’t the fact that affect voting either Republican or Democratic.  The higher income, higer cost of living and higher home values affect the residents voting Republican while more balanced values, educated populous, lower cost of living and lower home prices affect the residents voting Democratic.

God is irrelevant it is all about the pocketbook.

Resources

• City Data
• Wikipedia
  
• Sperlings

Did Sheppard find a problem with Palin’s return?

“Darn right we found a problem,” she writes with her typical flair, “and we’re going to speak directly to the American people about it.” “In 2007,” she writes, “Sarah Palin received $60,441 in reimbursements from the state of Alaska for travel expenses and per diems for days she worked outside the state capital. All of these items were excluded from the Palins’ income. There is a question about whether Palin’s per diems should be excluded from her income, which turns on whether she correctly identified Juneau as her tax home.”

About Palin’s Reimbursement Problem

There is an argument that when Palin decided to spend most of her working time at the Anchorage state office building, her tax home became Wasilla/Anchorage. If so, her per diems for asserted travel away from Juneau to Wasilla/Anchorage would have been improperly paid, because the days spent in Wasilla/Anchorage would have been expenses of living in her tax home and would be taxable to her.

Jack Bogdanski of Lewis & Clark Law School questioned Palin’s argument that Juneau was her tax home when she spent the vast majority of her time working in Anchorage and living in Wasilla. He essentially argues that Palin’s tax home moved to the place where she did most of her work, regardless of Juneau being her official duty station, so that per diems for trips to Anchorage/Wasilla would be taxable.

The Alaska state policy on per diems reiterates federal law and does not automatically assign the employee a tax home at the employee’s assigned duty station.

“Where an employee does not work the majority of their time at their duty station, it becomes more difficult to determine the employee’s tax home, and therefore whether the per diem is taxable,” state policy states. “If the employee does not work at their PCN duty station at least 50 percent of the time (vacation does not count toward time worked at the duty station), then the State must first consider whether the employee works the majority of their time at another location, making this location their principal place of business. If they do, this other location becomes their tax home.”

(Read More . . .)

If you are interested, all the tax documents are available online for each candidate (look here . . .)

In the weeks since the Republicans held their national convention, small-town coffee shops, laundromats and bars have been buzzing with talk about the “pitbull with lipstick” and her sudden rise to national prominence. In dozens of interviews across battleground states in the Midwest and Mountain West, where I’ve been traveling the last couple of weeks, voters’ reactions to Palin were at times surprising. There were plenty of predictable responses: From Palin devotees, “She’s got the balls and the moxie,” and from across the divide, “She’s less qualified than Spiro Agnew.”

But toward the center of the continuum, where most expect this tight presidential race to be won or lost, views of Palin were more complicated. Women identified with the no-nonsense “sports mom” but were turned off by her hard-line views on abortion. Some voters found her far more exciting than either McCain or Barack Obama, but said she was wrong about gay marriage. Some said they ultimately couldn’t go for a candidate so ignorant about foreign policy. Some thought she was just plain “hot.”

(Read More . . . )

“I’ve bought American literally all my life, and I’m proud.”

It turns out that John McCain wasn’t being straight with the people of Detroit-in fact, John McCain owns 13 cars, including a foreign made Lexus, a Volkswagen, and a Honda Sedan-on top of the Toyota Prius that he bragged about buying just last year.

People are free to buy any kind of car they want-that isn’t the issue here. What is the issue is that the American auto industry, and American voters, deserve a president who will be straight with them. If we can’t trust John McCain on something as simple as what kind of cars he owns, how can we trust him when he talks about investing in American jobs.

Buy American can’t just be a slogan that John McCain rolls out when he is in Michigan. It’s insulting to our members. We need a president who’s committed to rebuilding the auto industry here America, not a President who buys foreign cars and then lies about when he thinks autoworkers are watching.

Chafee left the Republican Party last year after losing his bid for re-election and now supports Obama. He told an audience Tuesday at the New America Foundation in Washington that the Alaska governor has revived a “lackluster McCain candidacy.”

“They’ve just thrown this firestorm, this tornado, into the whole presidential election,” Chafee said in response to an audience member’s question about whether the Obama campaign should worry about Palin’s presence in the race.

He said her speech at the Republican National Convention had the unintended effect of energizing Democrats and Obama supporters. “People were coming into my office, phone calls were flooding in, e-mails were coming in, ‘I just sent money to Obama, I couldn’t sleep last night’ — from the left. To see this cocky wacko up there,” Chafee said to laughter.