Taxpayers in New Jersey and New York always seem to claim crying rights over who pays the highest taxes. Determining who actually is No. 1 isn’t as simple a proposition as it might seem. Are we talking state taxes or all taxes paid in a given state? Per capita or the average tax bill? Are we including local taxes or excluding them? How do sales taxes figure into the equation? Google “highest state taxes” and you’ll find that New Jersey and New York aren’t always No. 1 or No. 2 … or even in the top seven or eight.

Yet everybody knows that our tax bills are an outrage. I thought about this last night while watching the baseball playoffs. Every other commercial featured a politician blaming a politician for the sorry state of our financial affairs. How confusing this must be to voters: year in and year out,  their tax bills creep higher and higher, defying all the expensive campaign advertising. If only there were some correlation between the ads and reality.

There would be less room for false promises if the media (who else?) did a better job of fact-checking and providing voters the basic  information they need to separate the campaign bunk from the real dollars and cents. But in most places, even before the recession claims scores of newsroom jobs, that kind of watchdog campaign coverage was more the exception than the rule.

Hence, even casual baseball fans know A-Rod’s batting “record” in the playoffs or Ryan Howard’s RBI record in post-season play, but when it comes to truths about politics and governance, they mostly have to rely on those grainy advertisements sandwiched in between innings and men’s “bedroom” ads.  Sorry about that.

Here is today’s schedule of Editorial Board interviews with November candidates:

• 2 p.m. North Castle

•  3:15 p.m. Somers

• 4:30 p.m. Putnam County Sheriff

You can watch online at LoHud.com/editorialspotlight.