As I posted earlier this week, Harris Teeter ranked among the Top 10 supermarkets nationwide in a just-released survey by Consumer Reports.
Here are a few more details, along with the rankings of other stores that do business in the Triangle.
Can you guess which Triangle supermarkets were in the very bottom of the rankings?
Texas finally has unseated North Carolina as the state with the "top business climate," according to the latest executive survey conducted by Site Selection magazine.
North Carolina had held the top spot in the magazine's rankings for six straight years.
Executives lauded Texas for, among other things: Being a right-to-work state, no state income tax, fewer regulations, incentives programs, the state's willingness to challenge OHSA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and the available workforce.
Rounding out the top ten were: Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Alabama.
For more on the rankings go here.
For the second straight year, North Carolina has been ranked the second best state for business by Chief Executive Magazine.
The news is being touted by Gov. Bev Perdue and Keith Crisco, the state's commerce secretary, as further proof of North Carolina's business-friendly climate and quality workforce.
The rankings are based on surveys completed by 556 CEOs who were asked questions about each state's taxation and regulations, workforce and living environment.
"Not surprisingly, states with punitive tax and regulatory regimes are punished with lower rankings, and this can offset even positive scores on quality of living environment," the magazine notes in a write-up on this year's rankings.
"While state incentives are always welcome, what CEOs often seek are areas with consistent policies and regulations that allow them to plan, as well as intangible factors such as a state’s overall attitude toward business and the work ethic of its population."
Texas earned the top spot in this year's rankings. North Carolina was followed by Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, Virginia and South Carolina.
So what to make of these rankings?
Well, it seems fair to note that CEOs as a group aren't exactly hurting right now.
N.C. State's 11-1 start has drawn some attention nationally. The Wolfpack has jumped into some national polls this week.
What will a tough early season schedule do for a college baseball team. It will make it better in the long run.
And success against tough opponents can improve a team's RPI (Ratings
Percentage Index, a formula that takes into account a team's record,
strength of schedule and other factors). East Carolina, which faced
then No. 2 Virginia and then No. 10 South Carolina in its first two
weekend series, has vaulted to the top 10 in one national poll and is
rated No. 5 in the boydsworld.com RPI, a very accurate unofficial list.
North Carolina has opened the preseason at No. 20 in the USA Today coaches’ poll, which was released this morning.
The Tar Heels are one of four ACC teams ranked in the top 25, three of which are from the Coastal Division. Virginia Tech (No. 7) and Georgia Tech (No. 15) also are ranked in the Coastal.
Florida State (No. 19) is the only team ranked from the Atlantic Division. Defending national champion Florida is No. 1, followed by Texas, Oklahoma, Southern California and Alabama.
The top three schools all return 2008 Heisman finalists at quarterback (Tim Tebow of Florida, Colt McCoy of Texas and 2008 winner Sam Bradford of Oklahoma).
Here’s the entire poll, with first-place votes in parentheses and total points.
From a UNC Health Care blog, an insider's thoughts on a magazine's Best Hospitals rankings.
They're a gimmick, yes. But do they serve a useful purpose?
Read on here.
The personal finance magazine Kiplinger's has released its 2009 list of the top cities in the U.S., and Raleigh is ranked 10th. While most cities would likely be happy with a top ten finish, Raleigh ranked second on Kiplinger's 2008 list and has been the Tiger Woods of municipalities when it comes to these sorts of rankings in recent years. (Raleigh's abundance of accolades has been mentioned as a reason why City Manager Russell Allen was recently given a 5 percent raise.)
Why the drop in the Kiplinger's list? It likely has something to do with the Raleigh area's unemployment rate, which has doubled over the last year to 8.6 percent, as Kipplinger's notes.
If there is a connection among many of the cities ranked in the top ten it is that most are state capitals or university towns, meaning they are places with a large number of relatively stable public-sector jobs. The top ten cities, from one to nine, are: Huntsville, Albuquerque, Washington D.C. , Charlottesville, Athens, Olympia, Madison, Austin and Flagstaff. (Huntsville doesn't have a major university and is not the capital, but it is a major center for the missile-defense and aerospace industries.)
The question for Raleigh and the politicians who love citing the city's rankings is whether Kiplinger's is a sign of things to come or an aberation. These things tend to go in cycles, and it could be that the list-makers are looking for some new city to anoint.
Those esteemed judges of city life over at Kiplinger have announced their 2008 top 10 cities in the U.S. to live, work and play. At first glance, the list appears to be a validation for Raleigh, which ranks second behind the no-zoning utopia of Houston. On closer inspection, however, the list puts Raleigh with some strange company. Among the other cities making the list are Omaha, Provo, Fayetteville, DeMoines, Colorado Springs and Boise.
While we have long ago given up attempting to understand the logic of these rankings, this list seems particularly arbitrary. (Raleigh's ranking isn't all that surprising because the people who make these lists absolutely love Raleigh for some reason. If there was a top 10 list of the best cities located next to rivers, we're quite certain Raleigh would make it.) But some of these other places are not exactly synonymous with playing and partying. A few of them even seem like places that people might try to get away from for various reasons.
We're also highly suspicious of any rankings that rely heavily on this concept of "The Creative Class," which really just seems like an attempt to turn the world into a giant advertising agency where people are either creatives or noncreatives. What we really want to know is do people actually decide where to move based on these lists? Are there lots of recently arrived families in Raleigh that could have just as easily ended up in Boisie or Omaha?
