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I decided to flip through the Massachusetts Voter Guide which reminded me that November 4th is coming up fast! First of all, it’s not too late to register to vote! The deadline is October 15. To register, go to City Hall, fill out a form and keep the receipt. Official acknowledgement should arrive in 2 to 3 weeks. Mail-in registration forms must be postmarked October 15.

Next, I read the arguments for and against Question 1, the proposal to repeal the State Income Tax. As we’ve mentioned before, this is a bad idea for many reasons (dramatic cuts in state aid which will drive up property taxes, drastic reduction in state funding for schools, police, fire protection, lack of funds for infrastructure, etc). Reading the arguments for the proposal as put forth by the Committee for Small Government, the claims, besides the obvious one of more money in your pocket, is that

“Your “Yes” vote will NOT raise your property taxes NOR any other taxes.”
“Your “Yes” vote will NOT cut, NOR require cuts of any essential government services.”

This seems ludicrous to say the least! Certainly, in Lowell we will have to raise local taxes just to maintain a minimum of services, and I don’t even want to think what will happen to the school system, which relies heavily on State money. Perusing their website (just search Question 1 and it will pop up on google), I couldn’t find anything to back up the above assertions. They also have a carefully worded statement in the Voter Guide: “‘41% waste in Massachusetts state government’ reveals survey.” The survey appears to be a web poll, which their readers respond to, and 41% is the “mean, average response.” What, they can’t come up with any real statistics? On government waste??? They then proceed to use this “statistic” to make their argument: “with 41% waste, a 17% cut isn’t enough to remove even half the waste in state government spending.” Isn’t this – using a biased sample to prove a point – a logical fallacy of some kind?

For more about this group, see Tony’s interesting post about their funding.

Quote above: attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and taken up by Mark Twain, who said:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am and is filed under In the News, Money Matters, State Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.