Gotta love Instapundit
GilfordGrok is our local blog - we generally try to keep posts specific to Gilford and the surrounding areas...after all, there's generally lots to comment upon! However, this caught my eye from Instapundit observing what is going on in Massachusetts.
At InstaPundit:
DEATH SPIRAL: Property tax bills soar as services fall. This is the inevitable result of a bloated and inefficient public sector. I doubt that Deval Patrick will do anything much to de-bloat it, though.
UPDATE: Heh.
The first link goes to Boston.com, the online presence of The Boston Globe (the power of linked Internet!):
Residential property taxes rose an average of $161 in cities and towns across the state in the past fiscal year, as home assessments hit historic highs despite declining market values.
[snip]
Since 2000, property taxes have shot up nearly 50 percent, from $2,679, far outpacing gains in wages, which climbed 30 percent statewide over the same period, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past seven years, the average annual property tax hikes for homeowners have ranged from about $150 to nearly $215.
You know, the above would be a great research project for here in Gilford. Given that I have seen math projects around the idea of "social justice" themes, I wonder if any of Gilford's math classes would conduct a research project around the idea of "taxpayer contributions"?
Continuing on to InstaPundit's HEH (almost a trademark symbol of "this is funny!") was this at Charlie Foxtrot:
I did like the hidden factoid in this paragraph, can you find it?
Internet riffing and expanding!"Since 2000, property taxes have shot up nearly 50 percent, from $2,679, far outpacing gains in wages, which climbed 30 percent statewide over the same period, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past seven years, the average annual property tax hikes for homeowners have ranged from about $150 to nearly $215."What? Wages have increased?? By 30% since Bush took office????? I thought that wages were stagnant or falling. Isn't this the main premise of "The Two Americas"?
Somebody call John Edwards...
Note:
For those of you who don't do a lot of blogs, Instapundit (Prof. Glen Reynolds teaches law in Knoxville, TN) is one of the largest and most credible blogs in the blogosphere. While his style is far different than mine (almost named this blog "Can't Write Short") in that he generally writes one or two sentence post, many look upon him as the Granddaddy on the Internet. Once you have ben "InstaLaunched", you know you have finally arrived (an Instalaunch is where a single link from Instapundit to a lesser known blogger [and generally crashing that blogger's site from the huge spike in traffic] - GraniteGrok has been Instalaunched twice in the past year).
