So state Auditor Thomas M. Salmon offers to play referee in the budget impasse between Republican Gov. Jim Douglas and Salmon’s fellow-Democrats who run the Legislature, and what does he get for his troubles? A lot of grief about engaging in a political ploy.

A foolish attack, for at least two reasons, neither of which is that his offer is not a political ploy. Of course it is. The two reasons are: (1) There’s nothing wrong with political ploys; (2) As political ploy, this one seems just as likely to backfire as to do him any good.

Say this for Salmon, though. At least he put his views about the state budget on the State Auditor’s web site for all the world to see. Contrast this with Douglas, whose 25-page “budget alternative” released last week is nowhere to be found on any official state web site. Oh, if you Google around enough, you’ll be able to find it, so it’s not exactly being hidden. But the Douglas policy seems to be ‘Openness ‘R’ Not Us.’

(The sites of the Legislative leaders aren’t very informative, either, but legislative schemes end up as…believe it or not! Legislation. As in, an actual bill, officially introduced into either the House or Senate, and available word-for-word verbatim, as lawmakers like to say in that redundant way they have, via the Legislature’s web site.)

OK, back to Salmon’s offer, which is easy to describe because it’s vague, and which is not necessary to describe in detail because nothing is going to come of it. It isn’t that his proposal has no substance. It’s that the little bit of substance it has is substantively incomprehensible.

Asked during an interview on WCAX-TV (Channel 3) why he thought his intervention could help, Salmon said , “I think I’m optimistic that in the most difficult environments , when people finally get to a level of simplicity, honesty, and urgency they can fix a problem.”

Everybody got that?

In some ways, Salmon really is neutral. Thus he opposes the one tax increase idea supported by both the Legislature and the Governor. In the statement he posted on his web site May 13, Salmon comes out squarely against “sin taxes” on alcohol (and presumably, by extension, tobacco), citing an un-named  business owner who told him “The last time Vermont added a tax to beer my sales went down 17 percent, we all know where they went; across the river to New Hampshire.”

Well, if this is Salmon the public policy analyst, perhaps we’d all be better off just sticking to the politics of the matter, even though he assured the Channel 3 interviewer that,” I’m not that concerned about my political career. I’m really not”

He should be, and without shame. Politicians perform a service when they engage in political ploys. They send signals about what they think is important. They provide some insight into their intellect and their attitudes. Besides, Americans like a person who grabs an opportunity when it presents itself. Nothing ventured…

Salmon’s problem here is not that he comes across as an opportunist. It’s that he comes across as very platitudinous and slightly Republican. The former is rarely a political liability. Neither is the latter unless the politician who sounds slightly Republican is a Democrat who will one day have to win a primary in his own party.

Salmon’s problem is that the only way anyone can mediate between Douglas and the Democrats is to convince the Democrats to move closer to the Douglas position. That explains why Douglas immediately took advantage of Salmon’s move to tell the Democratic leaders, “Auditor Salmon’s offer provides a great opportunity to come together and get the job done for the people we serve.  As an independently elected statewide official responsible for monitoring state finances, I believe his insight could be very helpful in moving our discussion forward.”

Forget for a moment that this statement proves that our Governor needs an English teacher. Check that second sentence again. In it, Douglas is calling himself the Auditor (“As in independently elected statewide official…I…”). He didn’t mean that, of course. Salmon is the auditor. Douglas is the (semi-literate?) governor.

But for now we’re just looking at the politics. In a stalemate between Democrats and a Republican, a Democratic official has made a proposal which undercuts his fellow-Democrats and is embraced by the Republican.

What the Democrats want to do is override Douglas’s promised veto of the budget bill. Asked by Channel 3’s Kristin Carlson why he doesn’t support his party here, Salmon said, “a budget override may be a short term victory , but we’ve got many, many challenges and you can call them battles. But the sooner we line up as a team on some of this, the better.”

Assuming that means anything at all, it’s a plausible policy outlook. What it is not is a good strategy for winning a primary. In Vermont as elsewhere, the primary voters in both parties tend to be the truest believers. With a few exceptions, that means the most conservative Republicans and the most liberal Democrats. Right now, those liberal Democrats are solidly behind their party’s legislative leaders and solidly opposed to Douglas on the budget fight. Actually, so are the mildly liberal Democrats. Salmon has made no friends among them.

But isn’t Salmon being a careful moderate, and therefore appealing to the middle-of-the-road voters – the ones who decide elections – the ones who really want Democrats and Republicans to work together and to avid partisan bickering?

Maybe. But first of all a candidate doesn’t get to try to appeal to those moderate middle-of-the-roaders until he’s won his party’s primary. Besides, those folks may simply not be paying very much attention to what’s going on right now. Even in relatively sophisticated Vermont, state government and politics is an insiders game. The politicians, the lobbyists, the interest groups, the reporters and a devoted but rather small band of political junkies pay attention.

Everyone else? Probably most of them do not know who Tom Salmon is. Or House Speaker Shap Smith, either. Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin might be a bit more recognizable because he’s been in office longer and once ran for lieutenant governor. But he’s hardly a household name, either. Most of those middle-of-the-road voters are probably paying more attention to the recession, the President, the North Korean nuclear test, even the NBA playoffs and the Red Sox than they are to the state budget impasse.

It isn’t that people are entirely indifferent. Almost nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But by now they might have figured out that under either the Douglas or the Democratic plan, most of them won’t. Besides, according to national polls (and there’s no reason to think Vermonters differ on this point), most people are about as opposed to budget cuts in most social programs as they are to tax increases.

If the Democrats succeed in overriding Douglas’s veto, Salmon’s offer to mediate will be irrelevant. If they fail, Salmon’s offer will almost surely be…just as irrelevant. Neither Smith nor Shumlin nor any rank-and-file Democratic lawmaker has shown any interest in taking the Auditor up on his offer.

As befits an auditor, Salmon is a CPA. Perhaps, for his own sake, he should have kept that green eyeshade on and stuck to his ledger books.

Has this web site come of age?

It better have, because in the weeks since we last reported its doings to you loyal readers, the site has become the target of pornographic spam.

Not soft-core, either. Out-and-out raunchy stuff, entirely without subtlety, (and, therefore, entirely without erotic appeal; you’d think they’d have figured that out, whoever they are). The photo above, for instance, is tame by comparison.

Why have we been so honored?

Who knows?

The first few entries were from gay porn sites, arousing (perhaps the wrong word to use in this context) the suspicion that it was the several posts about the same-sex marriage issue that got their attention.

(Yeah, “attention,” is the wrong word, as it implies some human reaction and/or decision, which is not what happens. It’s all web site to web site with no human involvement. We anthropamorphize the cyber world as we do the animal world).

But never underestimate the tenacity of kinky heterosexuality. Before long, its sites glommed on also.

None of this ever gets on Vermontnewsguy.com, and you may rest assured that it never will. Your (outwardly) proper proprietor clicks the “spam” option on his site administrator “dashboard” (a realm only he can enter), and “poof!”  the porn entries disappear.

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After a draught of several weeks, the News Guy has again received a few donations. Many thanks to the donors, and a subtle hint to those who haven’t gotten around to it yet: You are welcome to do so. It’s right up there near the upper right hand corner under “pages,” just beneath “about me.”

At the outset, this site’s economic aspiration (which will not be called a “business plan” so as not to offend those of you who may have actually created one) was to break even.  Not that there is any passionate objection to some actual compensation for time and effort. But that seemed to be asking too much. A simple balance of cash in and cash out would suffice.

Alas, the aspiration has thus far not been satisfied. Indeed, only a little more than  half of the initial investment (roughly $1,000 to get the site designed and created) has been recouped. On top of that,  going back and forth to Montpelier several times and some office supplies and the like have cost another few hundred bucks, and some other expenses loom over the next several months  before this project celebrates its first anniversary in December .

So far, donations are the only source of income. What about advertising? Well, people who know about these matters say there are now enough regular readers of the site to make it worth-while for someone to buy an ad on it. This, however, requires that someone know how to sell an add on it. And there’s nobody here but us chickens, none of whom has the foggiest idea of how to go about such a task.

Talks are going on, however, and in one way or another (we’re not free to divulge all the details yet) you may see advertizing here eventually. But for the foreseeable future, we depend on donations.

The possibility of advertizing, of course, raises an interesting policy question. Should the site accept any and all ads?

Why not? If it’s legal to sell, it should be acceptable to advertise. OK, those pornographic web sites mentioned above, along with their attendant merchandise,  would be an exception. But perhaps the only one. The News Guy is not a moralist, and were he, for instance, to refuse advertising for tobacco or alcoholic beverages, he would be acting as both a moralist and a hypocrite, considering that a pre-dinner cocktail (or two) and a post-dinner cigar are not unheard of in this precinct.

The trickier dilemma would be whether to take ads from political candidates or advocacy groups. Would some readers think, “Ha! He’s pulling his punches or shifting his analysis of this issue because he doesn’t want to lose the revenue from the American Society for the Perpetuation of Oak Trees?”

Could be. Suggestions from the greater world will be considered.

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Next week looms as a lively one. On Wednesday and Thursday, committees of the Legislature will hold public hearings on the budget impasse. They are not likely to be even-handed proceedings. The official notification to the state senators from their leader, Peter Shumlin of Putney, said the hearings would deal with Gov. Jim Douglas’s “proposal to lower tax rates for the wealthy and increase Vermonters’ property taxes,” and ” to make devastating cuts to human services and housing and conservation.”

Not neutral language.

The News Guy plans to attend at least one day. There have also been some political shenanigans that need to be discussed.

But, after careful consideration and much meditation, he has decided to take Memorial Day off. One reason really has to do with honoring the day, and the soldiers who are still being killed on our behalf. The News Guy is himself an honorably discharged veteran of the U.S. Army, and though the closest he got to combat was one fistfight in the barracks during Advanced Infantry Training (nobody won), serving was sufficient to create a lasting sense of solidarity with the folks who wear the uniform.

Besides, you’re all going to sleep late and then spend the day outside. You don’t want to be sitting in front of some computer. See you Tuesday. Time now for one of those cigars.

Now that the two (somewhat) detailed budget documents are public, a couple of conclusions are possible, a couple of questions are irresistible.

First conclusion: The big difference between the Legislature’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget and the alternative that Gov. Jim Douglas put forth Tuesday afternoon is not the money. The Douglas Administration wants to spend some $24 million less than the $4.5 billion in the budget passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and raise taxes by $13 million less than the Democrats would.

(Or so it seems. The 25-page “Alternative Approach to FY 2010 Budget” released by Douglas’s office was long on rhetoric, short on statistics, with no total tax or spending figures)

But even if the figures above are a little off, the money difference is not all that big. Were this squabble really about the money, it could easily be resolved.

First question: So what is the big difference?

You could say it’s ideological except there are no real ideologues involved. Maybe Susan Bartlett, the Lamoille Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, came closest when she said the two sides were divided by “a fundamental, philosophical difference.”

That’s sort of like ideology, but with boundaries.

The boundaries don’t render the “philosophical differences” meaningless. They are substantive, as will be examined just below. But they are not polar. Douglas does not intend to grind the faces of the poor into the dirt any more than the Democrats are trying to socialize Vermont. Partisans on both sides may argue that this is exactly what the other guys really want. The grownups among us need pay them no mind.

Ah, grownups. The very mention of adulthood leads inexorably to our second question: Does the word describe our leaders?

The question applies to the leaders of both parties, but today especially to Douglas and his minions. Start with James Reardon, the commissioner of finance and management. One of  Douglas’s ideas for lower spending is to reduce state Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals. When Democrats pointed out that the doctors and hospitals would simply charge more to treat other patients, thereby raising health insurance premiums, Reardon said,” it is very possible (health care) providers have the ability to reduce costs.”

Almost anything is possible. Stretching matters a bit, perhaps almost anything is “very possible.” But Reardon appears unaware that hope is not a plan. A responsible (or grown up as it is sometimes known) public official does not base policy on hope, or on a “possibility” that someone else will do the hard work.

Hope is part of the Democratic plan, too, specifically the hope that a second round of federal stimulus next year will fill the projected gap in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. This gap could be as much as $67 million, though like all such projections ,the precision of this one is open to question.

As it happens, the Democratic hope does not seem forlorn. Word down in Washington is that another federal stimulus next year is more likely than not. Still, it would be nice if the Democratic leaders at least showed some candor – or even some interest – in discussing the possible long-range deficits that might result from their spending plans.

Most of the debate until June 2, when the Legislature is to reconvene , is likely to be on the short-range impacts of the budget alternatives, and the debate could be challenging for the grownups. That’s because the rhetoric is likely to get more intense and more personal, blurring that distinction between “fundamental, philosophical difference” and ideological extremism.

But the distinction is more real than the rhetoric. The Democrats are not out to expand Vermont’s version of the regulated welfare state, merely to preserve it. And Douglas does not want to unravel it, merely restrain it.

Here, on another level, the difference is money. Not money in a big batch, as in the total amount in the budget, but money in (comparatively) small amounts, as in who gets and who gives. It is, in short, a matter of how income will be redistributed. How, not whether. With revenue shrinking because of the recession, some redistribution is necessary.

In brief, the Democrats want to take a little more from the state’s richest people to avoid giving a little less to its poorest. Douglas wants to give a little less to its poorest to avoid having to take much more from its richest.

Again, the “little” is as important here as the “less” and the “more,” If the Governor gets all the health and welfare benefit cuts he wants, Vermont’s poorest will not go hungry. Don’t bet next month’s rent that any of them will even give up their cable TV service. And if the Democrats override Douglas’s budget veto and their tax plan becomes law, Vermont’s richest will not become noticeably less rich. If a few of them get so miffed that they move away, the preponderance of the evidence indicates that they will quickly be replaced by newcomers with just as much money (and perhaps a more generous outlook).

This redistribution debate has been discussed. Another has not. That’s the one by which Douglas wants to give the poorest a little less so that he can give some wealthy folks a little more.

The name of this policy is “economic development.” It’s one of the few budget items on which Douglas wants to spend more than the Democrats, about $7 million more to help businesses start or grow.

Good idea, if it creates lots of good jobs. But whether economic development programs creates jobs that wouldn’t have been created anyway is debatable. What is not debatable is that on its way to creating jobs (or not), economic development is a subsidy to businesses, which tend to be owned and controlled by relatively affluent people. It is, then, another redistribution of income upward. Here Douglas does not simply want to hold steady the tax bills of the wealthy; he wants to give some of them money.

To the Democrats, Douglas’s budget does not hold anyone’s taxes steady. They argue that by shifting more financial burden from the General Fund to the Education Fund, and by lowering the” income sensitivity level ” (the household income below which property taxes are paid by income, not home value) from $90,000 to $75,000, the Governor’s plan would require a large increase in property taxes.

Not so, says Douglas, at least not if the schools would do what he wants them to do and hold their per pupil spending level for the next year or two.

That is, to his credit, a specific proposal. Whether it’s a realistic proposal or just another way of shifting the tough choices and the political danger to someone else while he poses as the taxpayer’s friend, is today’s final question, one that will be examined in the near future.