There's a billboard along a road I've driven several times recently, urging readers to vote for a bond issue. Not one I need to have an opinion on.1 The part that caught my eye was the bit that promised readers "NO TAX INCREASE!" I started musing about the limits to that claim. I mean, you can't take on arbitrary debt without finding a way to raise revenues and the money making options for counties and municipalities that aren't taxes are thin on the ground.
Presumably the claim is defensible under some set of assumptions and hopefully the assumptions are data driven and sane. But it's not like anyone enforces factuality in those contexts. Obviously they can't fit the details on a billboard, and a large fraction of the intended audience may not care, but the big-sceince/industrial-R&D team-player in me can't help but feel that there should be some kind of link on the bottom of the frame saying where to get the details.
1 It's a local issue in a different district than mine. And besides, I voted early this last week (short wait and no trouble, thanks for asking) and only noticed the board afterward.
No comments:
Post a Comment