How’s business?

Terrible, of course. There’s a recession going on. Workers have been laid off,  home prices are down, companies are cutting back. If anything, it’s worse in New England than in most other regions, at least as reported in the last version of the “Beige Book,” the Federal Reserve System’s round-up of what its regional banks are reporting.

But you know where business is…well, not good, but less bad than it is in most other places?

Vermont, that’s where.

Let’s not get too carried away with that employment report that showed Vermont one of only two states (Montana being the other) that gained jobs in May. That could have been a one-month anomaly, especially after the big layoff at the Ethan Allen plant in Beecher Falls last week.

But that was only one indication that Vermont is not suffering from the recession quite as much as most other states. Having avoided the worst excesses of the housing “bubble,” Vermont has not been hit as hard by the bursting thereof. Thanks in part to tighter regulations, the state’s foreclosure rate is just about the lowest in the country.

(Yes, that did say thanks to tighter regulations; sometimes they can be good for business).

In May, despite, the Recession, 38 businesses commenced operations in Vermont, while 20 closed ,according to a report from the Secretary of State’s office. In the first five months of the year, 174 businesses opened, and 133 closed. If that pace continues, slightly more businesses will open in 2009 than in 2008, and just about as many will close.

Then there are all these accounts of specific businesses starting up. As evidence goes, this is anecdotal, and therefore inconclusive. There are also businesses shutting down. Still, under the circumstances, the determination of some entrepreneurs to set up shop (and the willingness of banks to lend them the money to do so) indicates that, at least in Vermont, the “green shoots” or impending recovery may be more than wishful thinking.

Boloco, the regional burrito chain, has one location in downtown Burlington, and according to the Burlington Free Press, owner John Pepper is thinking of opening four more in the state.

This month, the  new Fairfield Farms Artisan Cheese company will begin operations at the old , state-owned, Plymouth Cheese Factory, located at the President Coolidge State Historic Site in Plymouth, according to a press release from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development.

It’s an interesting mix of the old and the new. The factory was built by Calvin Coolidge’s father in 1890. The state bought it from Coolidge’s son, John, in 1996. The new owner of Fairfield Farms, Jesse Werner, a native Vermonter educated at Brandeis and in Prague, plans to operate his business as both a cheese retailer and a tourist center.

With, needless to say, interactive facilities. Visitors will be able to ask questions as they watch the cheese being made.

And check Business People Vermont on line., Last month, it reported the openings of Copierworks of Vermont in Colchester, home furnishing store Feathering the Nest in Bristol, a third location of Mendy’s clothing  in Middlebury, the new law firm of Walsh and Monaghan in Burlington and St. Albans, Button Professional Land Surveyors in Richmond, a new coaching business called Your Year of Transformation in Shelburne, and several more new enterprises.

These are not big businesses. That new cheese factory will employ four people, and perhaps all the businesses started last month won’t employ as many workers as Ethan Allen just laid off. But there is something close to a consensus among economists that smaller firms with niche markets are the ones most likely to prosper now and in the future. And these new entrepreneurs  seem to be more upbeat about doing business in Vermont than many in the state’s business establishment.

“When I look at Church Street, honestly, I see a well-kept secret that the rest of the world doesn’t know about. It’s a real destination,” Boloco’s John Pepper told the Free Press.
No griping about regulations or taxes. It isn’t that there may not be some merit to the gripes. But the younger businesspeople seem to have absorbed a lesson some of their elders may have forgotten: If you make more money, you end up with more money, even where the tax rate is somewhat higher, than you end up with if you earn less money. And because there are people in Vermont with money, you can make money here.

There was another important and encouraging piece of economic news last month, though it was not classified as economic news. Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca noted that a survey in Education Week magazine by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that Vermont had one of the best high school graduation rates in the country.

The survey found that in 2006, 78.7 percent of the students who had started high school four years earlier graduated on time. The national average was 69.2 percent. Only New Jersey and four states in the Midwestern “Education Belt” - Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota had higher percentages than Vermont. Nebraska was tied.

Jill Remick of the Vermont Education Department said the report used estimates so it could compare the rates by state even though the states use different methods to gauge their graduation rates. By Vermont’s accounting, she said, its four-year graduation rate is 85 percent, though its comparative standing is still about the same because some of those other states probably have higher figures, too. Either way, Vermont’s rate is among the highest.

But why is that economic news? Simply because education is the single most important economic development program ever created. There are many reasons why the United States became the richest country in the world in the last century. But none bigger than this one: Starting in 1910, the U.S. “led all other nations in the development of universal and publicly-funded secondary school education,” as Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin  point out in  Human Capital and Social Capital: The Rise of Secondary Schooling America, 1910-1940, a paper they prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Remick said education experts are convinced there is “definitely a very close link” between graduation rates and the quality of the work force. But expertise really isn’t necessary. Common sense reveals that students who graduate in four years are more likely than those who do not to come to class every day, on time, having done their homework; less likely to be sent to the principal’s office, held after school or suspended. They are, in short, more likely to be trained, trainable, and reliable.

That’s what employers want in a work force. This recession will end. If the state’s officials know how to exploit that advantage - or, more precisely, if they spend their energies exploiting it instead of whining - Vermont holds the potential to enter into a period of very substantial home-grown prosperity.

Here is the news about the News Guy that was originally going to be made public last week, but got delayed because…well, you know how these things are.

As the perspicacious among you have no doubt already noticed (and the rest of you-you know who you are!-get sharp) a new icon has appeared on the Newsguy page.

Look up and over to the right, just to the right of the fedora with the press pass. It’s a link to the News Guy’s new partner, the Stowe Reporter, the weekly that covers Stowe and its Lamoille County environs.

If you live around there, give it a click.

Or if you just want to know what’s happening in and around Stowe. And maybe even if you’re not that interested in Stowe. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, the Reporter had a story that should have been (but, we will not be shocked to learn, was not) picked up by the state’s daily newspapers. It turns out that, at least in the Morrisville Office of the Department of Children and Families, the number of children in foster care has gone up 57 percent in  five years. That ought to be statewide news.

So the News Guy is pleased to be entering into a partnership with the Stowe Reporter. We’re linking to its online version, which in turn is linking to us.

Here’s what’s in it for us (Who knows what’s in it for them? The folks there will have to speak for themselves): The arrangement gives the News Guy more exposure in the Stowe area, and in fact several new subscribers from that part of the state have recently signed on. The Reporter has skills that the News Guy lacks. It knows how to promote itself, and therefore presumably its partners. It knows how to sell advertising, from which the News Guy might someday benefit.

(But not yet, and, in all likelihood, minimally. Meaning donations are still welcome, the News Guy having not attained the long-sought financial Nirvana known as breaking even. Look below the “Stowe Reporter” link, under “pages,” and find “donate.” Just click. It’s easy).

Whatever happens financially, journalistically this is an exciting and positive development for this web site, which will nonetheless strive to avoid whatever dangers might arise from becoming respectable.

Any doubts that the News Guy needs help should have been extinguished by careful readers of last Friday’s post (just below), which mentioned “the spruce and fur forests so important to northern New England,” and noted that they mightbe replaced by maple and “beach” trees.

Interesting concept, the “fur forest.” It would, presumably, be made up of trees from which one could harvest the kind of material now found only on  mink, otter, beaver, and similar beasts. Great! Then we wouldn’t have to kill these creatures for their pelts. The development of fur forests would please the animal rights crowd.

For the nonce, however, those who want these furs will have to get them from the skins of dead animals, while the rest of us continue to live among spruce and fir trees.

There are beach trees. They are trees that grow along the beach. The trees that threaten to replace the firs and spruce, though, are beech trees.

That same post began by talking about the kind of world we would all leave to our “descendents.” To the purists among us, you are descendent when you are walking down the stairs. You are your grandmother’s descendant, even when you are walking up the stairs.

The dictionary (American Heritage Second College edition) is less finicky, regarding either spelling as a correct variant of either word. So this was not, strictly speaking, an error.

But you know what? The dictionary is insufficiently finicky here. Distinctions should be maintained. From now on in this space, progeny will be known as descendants, not descendents.

Any discussion of journalistic errors in this state this day is compelled to deal with the really bad story that lead the Burlington Free Press Saturday.

This story was B-A-D Bad, with a capital B. And a capital A-D, too. It was not good. It was…well, you’d have to call it…the right word would be bad. It wasn’t good. It was a bad story.

Many of you no doubt read it. The story explained that many Vermonters were buying carbolic acid (phenol) because it was considered the most effective weapon to use against invaders from the planet Zelfugghhia, hordes of whom were expected any day now.

Oh, no, wait a minute. That wasn’t it. Sometimes we get confused.

Actually, the story was about how Vermonters, like Americans elsewhere, were buying more guns and ammunition because they think President Barack Obama plans to make it more difficult, if not impossible, for them to buy guns and ammunition.

True, and it wasn’t as though reporter Matt Ryan got anything wrong. He accurately quoted gun shop owners and he cited the statistics on background checks indicating that gun and purchases have been rising.

Fine. But here is what else belonged in the story: The plain fact that the likelihood that Obama (or anyone else) is about to outlaw guns is roughly comparable to an invasion by creatures from the planet Zelfugghhia.

In fact, the story presented a wonderful (but ignored) opportunity for the Free Press to convey a civics lesson, explaining to these gun-buyers how America works.

Obama, you see, is merely the president. He can propose laws. He can not promulgate them. Only Congress can pass laws, and it can not do so secretly. Nor can Obama propose them secretly. He can’t file legislation. Only members of Congress can do that. So Obama or someone on his staff would have to urge one of those members to introduce a bill. If he did, we would all know about it. He has not.

Right now, there  are 11 bills in Congress relating to guns. Only four (three sponsored by Democrats, one by a Republican)  tighten restrictions on gun ownership. None of those four has gotten out of committee.

That means they ain’t goin’ nowhere.

Nor has the Obama Administration endorsed any of them.

Absent this information, the story fails to be truthful. It is, then, dishonest.

Were it actually honest (as opposed to merely being not dishonest), it would also have dealt with the political efforts designed to make some people think that Obama is trying to take away their guns, and the serious (in some cases fatal) consequences of these efforts.

In what is obviously a step to keep their members riled up and contributing, organizations such as the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America have been - to put it mildly - exaggerating Obama’s hostility to gun ownership and owners.

The NRA screed is excessive but not totally irrational. A an Illinois State Senator, Obama was a stronger advocate of gun control than he is now. With no political considerations, he might revert to that viewpoint. But of course there are political considerations, and at any rate he never supported banning guns altogether.

The Gun Owners of America, on the other hand, are so irrational that they might be worrying about that invasion from the planet Zelfugghhia. At one point their web site charges that the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials, designed to prevent drug smugglers from transporting weapons across national boundaries in the hemisphere, would somehow outlaw gun clubs.

Of course the folks on the other side of this debate, the pro-gun control set,  also like to rile up its members to keep the contributions coming. So far, though, their efforts have not had any spillover effect. But the gun lobby’s excesses may  have contributed, if indirectly, to the murder in Pittsburgh in April of three police officers, allegedly by someone who feared a government plot to take away his guns,

All that should have been in the story.

For the record, because people get so intense about the gun issue and are so quick to pigeon-hole anyone who comments on it, the News Guy has always held that law-abiding citizens have a right to own guns, and that hunting is a socially and environmentally healthy pursuit, which ought to be encouraged.

He just doesn’t like bad journalism.

If you live in Vermont you should be forgiven if you are unaware that the United States Government just released a major report about how the world is getting warmer, will continue to do so, and in the process leave our descendents a hotter, wetter, and very different part of the country.

Such absolution is called for because the state’s news media paid scant attention. Not that they ignored the report completely. The Montpelier Times Argus did run the Associated Press story out of Washington when the report was issued last week.

And Vermont Public Radio aired a good story by reporter John Dillon about the report’s projection that higher temperatures could endanger two of the state’s iconic industries - skiing and sugaring

The VPR story quoted one of the lead authors of the report, Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, saying that according to some forecasts, “maple trees are expected to decline rapidly in the Northeast, perhaps spelling the end of maple sugaring all together in this part of the U.S.”

But that was about it.

Let’s not be too hard on our journalistic colleagues. One could argue that the report was not “Big News,” as conventionally defined; it didn’t tell folks what they didn’t already know. Aside from the few who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept the overwhelming weight of the evidence, people know that fossil fuel emissions are making the world warmer. Furthermore, the report was not based on original research.

But the “authoritative scientific report “(in its own words) - 196 pages supported by 563 footnotes - did  aggregate an extraordinary amount of existing research as reviewed by scientists from 13 government agencies.

For at least three other reasons, the report deserved more attention. There was the political reason. As the AP story noted, the report contained “the most urgent language on climate change ever to come out of any White House,” a polite way of noting that the Bush Administration, even after it abandoned its climate change denial shtick, tried to act as if it were a minor annoyance rather than a cosmic crisis.

(And, as we learned Thursday, shamelessly hid evidence that water contaminated with coal ash posed a serious health threat to thousands of people).

The second reason is that, unlike some “studies” from both government agencies and private advocacy groups, this one backs up it claims. All those footnotes are not just there for show. So when the report says “the climate of the Northeastern U.S.” has already begun changing in noticeable ways,” it gives readers the source of that statement (in this case, an article called Past and future changes in climate and hydrological indicators in the U.S. Northeast, by Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech university and nine other scientists in the journal. Climate Dynamics, Journal Number 28(4), pages 381-407).

The third reason  is the report’s regional specificity. Though it is  about”global climate change,” it is explicitly about its “impacts in the United States,” and it explained in some detail what those impacts would be in different regions, including this one. It all but laid out a road map so editors and news directors could find the “local angle” they so love.

Since they missed the ball, we’ll kick it around here.

Since 1970, the report said, the annual average temperature in the Northeast has increased by 2°F, with winter temperatures rising twice this much.”  For those seeking a silver lining in the cloud, there is one: longer growing seasons.

But also more “heavy downpours,” dirtier air leading to “increasing problems for human health,” and “severe flooding.”

Oh, and less snow. Perhaps a lot less snow.

Over the next several decades, those winter temperatures could rise at least another 2.5 degrees, perhaps as much as 4 degrees.

“The projected reduction in snow cover will adversely affect winter recreation and the industries that rely upon it,” the report says. “The length of the winter snow season would be cut in half across northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine…Winter snow and ice sports, which contribute $7.6 billion annually to the region’s economy, will be particularly affected by warming.”

In the woods, the report noted, the spruce and fur forests so important to northern New England are “declining already,” and are likely to continue doing so, replaced by maple and beach trees under the “lower possibility” of climate change, by oak and hickory under the “higher possibility.”

In addition, “large portions of the Northeast are likely to become unsuitable for growing popular varieties of apples, blueberries, and cranberries under a higheremissions scenario.”  As for maple trees and their prized sap, conditions suitable for maple forests “are expected to shift dramatically northward…eventually leaving only a small portion of the Northeast with a major maple sugar business.”

And if the grandchildren of today’s sugarers have to look for alternative sources of income, they’d be wise not to count on producing milk or running ski lodges. “By late this century,” the report says, “all but the northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont are projected to suffer declines in July milk production under the higher emissions scenario, (and) warmer winters will shorten the average ski and snowboard seasons, increase artificial snowmaking

requirements, and drive up operating costs.

“While snowmaking can enhance the prospects for ski resort success, it requires a great deal of water and energy, as well as very cold nights, which are becoming less frequent. Without the opportunity to benefit from snowmaking, the prospects for the snowmobiling industry are even worse. Most of the region is likely to have a marginal or non-existent snowmobile season by mid-century.”

OK, now here’s the good news. The report does not present a “worst case” scenario, but it is based on the present case, and it does not assume that new steps will be taken to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Congress is now considering such steps, and while no one can be certain that it will pass any bill, much less an effective bill, the bleak future projected in the report might never come to be.

“It’s not too late to act,” said Jane Lubchenco,  a marine biologist who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as she briefed the press about the report last week. “Decisions made now will determine whether we get big changes or small ones.”

The report itself noted that, “reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would lessen warming over this century and beyond. Sizable early cuts in emissions would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change.”

Cutting emissions, though, is not easy, not even in Vermont, or maybe especially in Vermont. Interestingly, this assessment comes from an environmentalist, Ann Ingerson, an economist for the Wilderness Society who works from her Craftsbury Common home.

“Vermont’s in an odd position because we don’t use a lot of fossil fuel for our energy, except for transportation,” she said

The state gets most of its electricity from nuclear or hydro power, and many Vermonters heat their homes with wood,  not nearly as harmful a greenhouse gas as coal or oil.

But Vermonters drive a lot, Ingerson noted.

“We’re very rural, with people living all over the place,” she said. “It’s not very efficient to use public transportation because we’re scattered,”

There are steps Vermonters can take, she said, such as participating in the forest offset plans she’s working on, in which “forest land owners (are encouraged) to accumulate more carbon in their forests” (essentially by leaving them alone) in return for payments from people or companies that want to reduce their “carbon footprint.”

But perhaps the most effective step Vermonters could take, Ingerson said, is a step they rebuff - living in town or in a village center instead of out in the woods.

“Everyone says we should develop in compact villages,” she said, “but then everyone wants their own little place in the country.

Including, she acknowledged, herself.

Including, he is now shamed into acknowledging, the News Guy.

Remember what Walt Kelly said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”