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People wildly overestimate the number of gay Democrats and rich Republicans

When you survey Americans, they estimate that a staggering 38 percent of Republican Party supporters earn more than $250,000 a year. This is impossible, because only 1.5 percent of Americans live in households that have incomes that high. It's even more off base when you consider that rich people are actually much more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. So overall, the total share of Republicans who earn more than $250,000 a year is quite small.

Conversely, Americans also say they believe that nearly a third of the Democratic Party's supporters are gay or lesbian, and that something like 40 percent are African-American. Again, this is another wild overestimate, because fewer than 4 percent of Americans identify as gay, lesbian, or transgender, and only about 20 percent of Democrats are African-American.

People misperceive the composition of their own party somewhat less than the composition of the opposite party, which is about what you would expect. But the really important — and somewhat frightening — conclusion of this survey is that these misperceptions get worse, not better, among people who pay more attention to politics.

Barbara Anderson, RIP

My state of Massachusetts owes much of its relative fiscal sanity to this woman and her Citizens for Limited Taxation and Government, the only political organization to which I have ever donated. CLTG passed Proposition 2 1/2, a tax roll-back, and helped beat several attempts to convert the flat income tax into a graduated one.

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"This may surprise you but I think she's probably, in the history of Massachusetts, the most important woman ever in terms of her effect on the citizens of the state," said Ted Tripp, a longtime friend of Anderson's and chairman of the North Andover Taxpayers Association. "She was a champion of freedom and of less government. The two of them went together to her." [...]

The success of Proposition 2 1/2 came just months after she was made the group's executive director.

Proposition 2 1/2 limits the amount a community can levy in property taxes to 2.5 percent of the full and fair value of real and personal property in that community. It also restricts the rate of increase of the levy limit to 2.5 percent annually, plus new growth. The law includes provisions for voter-approved overrides or debt exclusions. The legislation also cut the auto tax rate from $66 to $25 per thousand of assessed value and removed compulsory binding arbitration for police and fire unions. It also ended school board fiscal autonomy, under which school committees had to be provided with whatever they demanded for a budget.

Virtually every political organization in the state lined up against the effort, saying it would have a crushing effect on communities, particularly schools. But it passed, and the state eventually grew stronger economically.

Full article here.