AS PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED, THE NEWS GUY IS TAKING THE WEEK OFF.

(Don’t tell anybody, he isn’t even in the state, but in a large city to the south, eating well and going to plays and such.

THE NEXT NEW POST WILL BE MONDAY, MAY 18.

Some folks never learn, do they?

The question, in this case, being valid even if these folks aren’t not precisely the same folks as the folks who made the same mistake earlier. They probably know one another.

The question arises thanks to the return, in Vermont, of the robocall. You remember the robocalls last month, the ones urging the people who picked up the phone to call their legislators and tell them not to vote for same-sex marriage?

Well, if you don’t, you can scroll back to the April 4 post entitled Hold The Phone. But you probably don’t have to do that to remember that the robocall campaign was a flop.

They usually are.

But here they come again.

This week, some thousands of Vermonters answered their phone to hear a voice telling them to call House Speaker Shap Smith to voice opposition to S.109, a bill which would ban flame retardants containing bromine, a halogen element (named for the Greek meaning “the stench of he-goats,” or at least so says Wikipedia).

Combined with other chemicals into polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), bromine is an effective flame retardant, and is used in clothing, plastics, infant care seats and other products. Washington State and Maine have banned some PBDEs after finding that they could retard brain development in children, lower sperm production, and impair thyroid function. In addition, when PBDEs burn, they can produce carcinogenic dioxins. The consequences of this are not pleasing to firefighters, whose organizations have taken the lead in the effort to ban the substance.

Making it a bit peculiar that these pro-bromine phone calls are from an organization called Citizens for Fire Safety, and that the caller identified himself as a former Minnesota fire marshal.

Well, maybe not so peculiar. Because there is at least reason to believe that Citizens for Fire Safety is not a firefighters organization at all, but is actually a front group for the four major bromine manufacturers, established for them by the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm.

We’ll return to the evidence for that contention in a moment, recognizing that it is a contention, not an indisputable fact. What is an indisputable fact is that these robocalls are so politically incompetent that they make the ones against the same-sex marriage bill seem downright brilliant by comparison.

Cobbling together a few second-hand accounts (the News Guy did not receive one of the calls; he is not insulted), the voice on the phone begins by reminding the listener about “environmental extremists” who are “powerful,” and who value “their views ahead of peoples’ jobs.”

Hey out there, Burson-Marsteller or whoever wrote that copy. This is Vermont. It’s spelled V-E-R-M-O-N-T. To be sure, like every other state, Vermont has a constituency that is inspired by distaste for environmentalists.

But it’s a small constituency. Actually, there may not be any states where it’s an especially large constituency, as in, for instance, a majority. But there are states – Texas, maybe, or Utah – where such a message might attract almost as many people as it positively offends.

This is not one of those states. Therefore, your message has not only not done your side any good, but has almost surely done it some harm. Thanks to you, the bill’s chances are brighter than ever.

Which is not to say that it will definitely become law. It has broad support, broad enough to have passed the Senate by 30 to 0, as in, unanimously. But in the final days of a legislative session, a bill can get lost in the confusion, and effectively run out of time.

But if that happens, it is not likely to be the result of the robocalls, which reportedly urged listeners to “press 1″ of they agreed that the bill should be stopped. The anti-gay marriage calls at least provided each listener the name of his or her legislator. This one didn’t do enough work for such precision. It just urged everyone to call the House Speaker.

Not to mention that almost everybody already knew about the marriage debate and had an opinion about it. Who knew about this stuff? The most likely response must have been “huh?” and then hanging up.

As explained in the April 4 post, there is very little evidence in the political science literature that robocalls work at all, either to win elections or to influence legislation. So why are they common and perhaps getting even commoner?

A few possible answers: First, they’re cheap. Second, the firm that does the robocalling doesn’t care whether they work as long as it gets paid. Third, because they are cheap, the companies that pay the robocalling firm probably don’t mind paying, assuming they have money to spare.

The companies that may have money to spare here are Albermarle, Israel Chemicals Limited (ICL), Chemtura, and Tosoh, the last two being Japanese. They produce most of the PBDEs and have been identified as the financiers of  the Bromine Science and Education Forum (BSEF), which is a client of Burson-Marsteller.

That connection does not prove that the public relations firm created the organization. But there is a host of evidence, circumstantial but convincing, of links between the firm and both BSEF and Citizens for Fire Safety, neither of which is forthcoming about where it gets its money.

A bit of caution is required because the evidence has been assembled by Source Watch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, which leans to the political left. But whatever the organization’s opinions, its facts have withstood scrutiny rather well. It may occasionally over-interpret. It does not fabricate.

At any rate, there is nothing unusual about the practice. For at least two decades, major industries have employed public relations firms to set up “astroturf,” (fake grass roots) organizations which pretend to speak for concerned citizens but are really adjunct public relations firms for the industries.

Without doing more probing than can be undertaken in a day, similar caution is required before making a final judgment on the claims that PBDE’s are dangerous, or that there are safer substitutes that provide the fire safety without the health hazards.  The industry has its own web site with citations from World Health Organization  studies concluding that bromine products are safe.

Some of the “evidence” provided by the anti-PBDE faction consists simply of one environmental organization citing the work of another. Thus the assertion by the Environmental Health Fund of Jamaica Plain, MA, that the health hazards of PBDE’s have been documented by “many dozens of peer-reviewed science research papers” is supported by a footnote citing the research of greensciencepolicy.org, another environmental organization.

But the Health Fund’s paper also cites more objective sources, such as the Maine Department of Environmental Conservation Center for Disease Control. And that assertion about the peer-reviewed papers came from a coalition of responsible fire-fighting and health organizations.

Besides, if the industry has such a good case, why does it feel it has to resort to such tawdry tactics?

Right, it’s only Thursday, but for reasons too complicated (and unimportant) to deal with in any detail, today’s post will perform the tying-up-of-loose ends and other site-related matters usually handled on Friday.

STARTING WITH THIS MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: THE NEWS GUY WILL TAKE NEXT WEEK OFF.

Yup, you heard that right. The whole week.

Bad timing because the Legislature will probably finish over the weekend, leaving much to be disclosed and analyzed. But that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Some things have to be done when they have to be done. Next week is when this trip has to be done. The News Guy will not even be back in Vermont until late in the week. As the TV network anchors say, “we’ll see you again…” (this is false, of course; they won’t see you at all) on Monday, May 18.

(But the site will not be totally abandoned; comments will be accepted).

Now to update the fate of some of the legislation discussed earlier:

–As predicted, H. 176, the bill that would effectively register all young men for the draft when they got their drivers licenses was defeated;

–As predicted, HR 446, guaranteeing higher prices to producers of electric power made from renewable energy, passed the Senate. But the 16-to-10 vote was closer than expected, and perhaps not enough to override Gov. Jim Douglas’s likely veto.

If all four senators who weren’t there – Democrats Claire Ayer of Weybridge and Susan Bartlett of Hyde Park; Republicans Vince Illuzzi of Derby and Diane Snelling of Hinesburg – voted for the override it would pass. And perhaps two of the four Democrats who voted no – Richard Mazza of Colchester and Richard Sears of North Bennington – could be persuaded to switch on the basis of partisan loyalty, which in this context is a euphemism for ‘the chance to stick it to Douglas.’

But the other two Democrats – Matt Choate of St. Johnsbury and Robert Starr of North Troy – are probably firmly against the bill. They’re from the Northeast Kingdom, where one wind power project has already been approved in Sheffield and another in Lowell is in the works.

Interesting. The conventional wisdom holds that most people favor wind power projects, and most of the poll results seem to support that conclusion. But smart local politicians – and both these follows would seem to qualify – know their territories.

Worth looking into in greater detail.

If wind power is less popular in the Northeast Kingdom, perhaps part of the explanation lies with the behavior of the wind power companies. Reading over his posts of Monday and Tuesday (Sun, Wind and Noise) the News Guy feared that perhaps some readers thought he concurred with the renewable energy community’s view of itself as local, environmentally responsible, and generally admirable, as opposed to those impersonal corporations such as Entergy, which owns Vermont Yankee.

No doubt some are. But not all the solar/wind developers are Vermonters, or even Americans. And when it comes to arrogance, high-handedness, and…well, let’s just say a disinclination to be candid, Massachusetts-based First Wind, which is about to put wind towers on a mountaintop in Sheffield, is right up (down?) in Vermont Yankee’s league

Since last Thursday’s post (Vermont is Homeless) the News Guy has been excoriated in comments, by e-mail, by phone, and once (though most courteously) even in person, for suggesting that two studies about housing in Vermont over-stated the extent of the state’s housing affordability problem.

One criticism was right on the money. The post stated that “Clearly… the authors of  “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” (did not know) this little fact: At least 71 percent of the people of Vermont — more than in most other states — live in owner-occupied houses.”

Tough talk, huh? Too bad it was wrong. Right there on its very first page the report says, “Vermont can boast a robust homeownership rate, 72.8 percent in 2008.”

How could anyone miss that? Possibly (this is explanation, not excuse, there being no excuse) the result of reading on the screen instead of on paper. Whatever the reason, apologies to John Fairbanks who wrote the report for the Vermont Housing Awareness Campaign.

And the criticism (bless it) keeps coming. Yesterday’s argument was that if anything the studies understate the difficulty Vermonters have in buying or renting decent digs because they assume that it’s OK for folks to pay 30 percent of their income for housing and utilities, and 30 percent is too much.

It is. The News Guy is old enough to remember the slogan, “a month’s rent should be no bigger than a week’s pay.”  One’s rent or mortgage payment should be closer to 25 percent of one’s income. Otherwise, people are paying too much for shelter, and don’t have enough left over for food, clothing, transportation, and fun. Fun is important.

But the News Guy is not about to withdraw his conclusion that in some ways the studies painted a bleaker picture than is warranted. What they did not include was any correlation between income and age.

There is such a correlation. By and large, younger working people earn less than older working people. They are also more likely to be single or childless, and therefore not to need the two-bedroom apartment that the studies (quite reasonably) used as their yardstick. If a 25-year-old single person, or a 25-year-old childless couple, can’t afford that $914-a-month two-bedroom apartment, who cares? They’re just fine in a one-bedroom or a studio apartment, which perhaps they can afford.

What the studies failed to demonstrate was that there are a large number of people who need a two-bedroom apartment who can’t afford one. It’s possible that those figures are unattainable right now, just one year before the next Census gathers the latest data. But in that case the reports should have noted the absence of the information.

Two more quick points: Nationally, there is a housing glut, with declining prices. Now these reports tell us there are not enough houses in Vermont, and they’re too expensive. That’s not entirely inconsistent; Vermont had the smallest housing “bubble,” with less overbuilding. Also, as “Between a Rock and  Hard Place” did point out, most of the decline in housing prices is in the more expensive houses, little help for the middle-income family that wants to buy a house.

And what about discussing the likelihood that houses are too expensive because they’re too big? All over the country,  yes, even in Vermont, contractors are building huge houses; bigger profits that way. Obviously, the builders are meeting the demands of their customers. But in this country, demand for almost everything – cars, clothes, houses – is to some extent created by the producers, the advertisers, and the culture. Together, they have succeeded in convincing some people that they “need” a semi-mansion for the benefit of…what?  Their standing in the community? Their self-esteem?

Either way, these houses are expensive to build, buy, heat, and light. Not to mention that they are UGGG-LEE (the picture above is from Florida; but you get the idea). They look like they were designed by a computer program; perhaps because they were. Somebody should write a report about how, along with the shopping mall, the office park, the Urban Renewal-created chain hotel/civil center/parking garage complex that has ruined scores of American cities, the luxury residential subdivision is transforming America the Beautiful until one of the ugliest countries in the world.