[Vision2020] Courtney's Numbers [and dishonesty]

Tue Mar 20 17:56:23 PDT 2007

Keely,

You should not be surprised at anything the treacherously phony Courtney 
does.  His web-blots are full of misquotes and quotes taken out of context 
as well as a logic instructor's dream site for mining fallacies.

There are too many oblivious problems in his column to waste much time with. 
However, I will mention a two to illustrate his dishonesty.

Courtney writes:

"Fifth is Moscow's already insatiable appetite for more property taxes. 
Recall that a city's revenues are a combination of the assessed value and 
the tax rate. According to Moscow Realty's Web site, the average cost of a 
residential home in Moscow is more than $235,000. If your assessed value has 
doubled, then you are already paying twice as much in property taxes even if 
your salary hasn't increased."

Due to the way assessed values are calculated, if someone's assessed value 
doubled, there is a very strong probability that almost all other's have 
doubled also.  Hence if the tax rate says about the same, property taxes 
would stay about the same.  The may even go down since new, not before taxed 
properties are constantly being added to the rolls faster than old 
properties of lesser values are being taken off.  This happened to my 
property taxes this year.  My assessed value went up, but my property taxes 
went down.

Hence, Courtney's claim that "If your assessed value has doubled, then you 
are already paying twice as much in property taxes even if your salary 
hasn't increased." is just an unmitigated lie -- and he knows it.

To compare staff and administrative increases and enrollment decreases in an 
honest way, the figures need to be adjusted for at least two factors over 
the time frame the numbers are taken from: 1. Inflation and 2. New unfunded 
state and federal requirements.  Courtney does neither.

But who should be surprised that an elder from the Christ Church Cult would 
be a blatant liar.  The whole hierarchy is a coven of liars modeling their 
leader Cultmaster Douglas Wilson.

Many of us are not totally happy with public schools, but the alternatives 
are even bleaker.  With public schools, however, we can exercise our citizen 
rights to attempt to improve them, something we cannot do with private 
schools spewing superstitious dogma.

Further, I am guessing that many Moscow citizens are disturbed that Logos 
and NSA are turning out creepy graduates who believe they are the chosen, 
and those of us that disagree with them should be stoned to death.  Not much 
different from the Taliban or the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
To: <thansen at moscow.com>; <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Courtney's Numbers

> Tom, this is amazing.  It's one thing to hide behind stats and data 
> because
> your real viewpoint is too odious for people to accept -- but to use them
> with such carelessness, not knowing or not caring that they're out of 
> date,
> is really disappointing.
>
> Even from Dale Courtney.  And I've regrettably set that bar pretty damned
> low.
>
> The fact remains:  There isn't a levy rate, enrollment gain, test-score
> result, graduation rate or anything else that would make Dale Courtney
> support a public schools levy, and I appreciate the bravery you show here,
> Tom, in exposing Dale's chicanery.
>
> keely
>
>
> From: "Tom Hansen" <thansen at moscow.com>
> To: "Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Subject: [Vision2020] Courtney's Numbers
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:35:17 -0700
>
> Greetings Visionaires -
>
> Concerning this year's school levy . . .
>
> I have just glanced over several of Dale Courtney's on-line files 
> concerning
> his argument against the 2007 school levy located at:
>
> http://MoscowLevy.com/March2007.htm
>
> and compared them to the on-line files concerning his argument against the
> 2005 school levy located at:
>
> http://MoscowLevy.com
>
> I know that this is the site he used to argue against the 2005 levy, since
> it clearly states at the top of the page:
>
> "Here is a resource to which you can turn for information about the Moscow
> School District levy on 26 April 2005."
>
> I was interested in finding results of recent research that he may have
> conducted.
>
> Primarily I reviewed the files dealing with "Administrative Bloat".  He 
> not
> only is using the same numbers from 2005.  He is using the same files. 
> The
> most recent data in the files that I reviewed was for 2004/2005.
>
> He didn't event bother copying, renaming, and pasting the files into a 
> 2007
> directory.  The links within his 2007 levy web pages are the very same,
> identical links found in his 2005 levy web pages.
>
> His property tax information, located at:
>
> http://moscowlevy.com/waste.htm
>
> is almost five years old.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Stay tuned.  More to come.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
>
>
>
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> _________________________________________________________________
> It's tax season, make sure to follow these few simple tips
> http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/PreparationTips/PreparationTips.aspx?icid=HMMartagline
>
>

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