photo by Dave

Once again, the Vermont Legislature decided not to pass any legislation this year dealing with drivers who chatter away on their cell phones while speeding along the Interstate or weaving through the hills on country roads.

No surprise. Nobody is really pushing for such legislation. Vermont has no organized interest group lobbying for auto safety at all.

The pubic at large seems to support restrictions on driving while phoning. In State Sen. Bill Doyle’s unscientific but widely cited Town Meeting Poll last March, a whopping 75 percent of some 7,500 respondents said drivers should be “prohibited from using cell phones while driving.”

But absent a well-organized (and, preferably, well-heeled) lobby, mere majority support doesn’t always get very far.

Nor is the Legislature’s reluctance to limit cell-phone use at all unusual. No state prohibits motorists from using their phones while driving, and only California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and both Washingtons (State and D.C.) ban the use of hand-held phones, according to the National Institute for Highway Safety.

(Several states prohibit school bus drivers from using cell phones, and 13 outlaw text messaging by drivers).

But in the last week or so, new information and new revelations have rekindled the movement to restrict – if not simply outlaw – driving while talking on the phone everywhere, even in Vermont.

“There will be a stronger consideration of it (next) year,” said Sen. Richard Mazza, the Grand Isle Democrat who chairs the Transportation Committee. “I hear more and more complaints on a daily basis. We’ll certainly have a hearing and listen to all points of view.” He said he would be most receptive to proposals to outlaw text messaging, which seemed to him to be more dangerous than merely telephoning.

Mazza’s outlook is important not only because of his chairmanship but because he has been one of the lawmakers reluctant to push for any restrictions beyond banning novice drivers from using cell phones.

“I had some questions,” he said. Now he is “open to any suggestions.”

Like almost everyone else involved in the cell-phone-while-driving discussion, Mazza has seen or read about the new reports that appear to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that a driver who is talking on the phone is far more likely to get into a serious accident.

As likely, say the studies, as a driver who is drunk.

The studies by universities, government agencies and insurance companies refute almost all the arguments made by opponents of restrictions on phoning from behind the wheel. A driver talking on the phone, the studies say, is more likely to get into an accident than one who is drinking a cup of coffee or eating a sandwich or applying make-up or trying to find the right CD to put into the player.

Nor does it make any difference whether the cell phone is hand-held, the studies say.

That’s because, according to a lengthy article in last Sunday’s New York Times, the damaging – and often fatal – diversion is not to the driver’s hands, or even eyes. It’s to the mind. A driver talking on the phone, say the research scientists, is more likely to “see” in his mind’s eye the person to whom he is talking, or whatever they are talking about, than the road in front of him.

Wouldn’t an intense discussion between the driver and passengers produce the same result? No, say the researchers. Even while talking, the passenger provides another set of eyes on the road, and conversation tends to ebb in heavy traffic or bad weather.

Some of this information has just become public because the Bush Administration reportedly pressured the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration not to release the results of much of its research, and not to conduct more comprehensive studies.

After the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones Magazine wrote about the research last year, two consumer groups, Public Citizen and the Center for Auto safety, filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for the documents. The New York Times, which wrote about the apparent cover-up earlier this week, has posted the documents on its web site.

There does appear to be one statistic that calls into question the conclusion that cell phone driving is inherently dangerous: the number of accidents is actually going down, even as cell phone use increases.

But the researchers point out that antilock brakes, better steering systems, and safer roads are responsible for the decline in accidents, which would be steeper were it not for cell phone use.

The researchers do admit that they wished they had more data. No one is really sure how many accidents are attributable to cell phone use because the accident forms of most states, including Vermont, don’t list phone use as a possible reason for the accident.

The Vermont form does list “technology related distraction” as one of many possible contributors to an accident. But Mary Spicer , the Transportation Agency’s Supervisor of Highway Research, said most law enforcement officers found that category “hard to prove, because there might be other causes.”

Spicer said once a year a Traffic Record Coordinating Committee made up of law enforcement officials and legislators meets to revise the accident report.

The politics of the cell phone motorist dispute are, at the very least, interesting. There is on the one hand (as that Bill Doyle poll suggests) widespread support for more highway safety laws. But opposition to cracking down on cell phone use seems to come as much from the general public – or at least the cell-phoning general public, which by now is most people – as it does from the cell phone industry.

It isn’t that people don’t believe it’s dangerous to drive while phoning. In a survey conducted by the Nationwide Mutual Insurance company last year, far more respondents (48 percent) chose “using technology like a cellphone) as “the most dangerous distraction” than any other. (Next was “reading,” at 18 percent.)

But 81 percent of them said they’ve talked on their cell phones while driving, while almost all of them (98 percent) considered themselves safe drivers.

As contradictions go, this one exceeds the common American inconsistency of insisting on maximum government services but low taxes. That’s a rational contradiction. This one is irrational, sort of like, “stop me before I kill again, but actually don’t stop me.”

In many states, including Vermont, regulating cell phone use is also seen as somehow an infringement on personal freedom. During the legislative debate this year, which also included a proposal to tighten seat belt restrictions, Democratic Rep. John Rodgers of Glover invoked “liberty” and “freedom” as reasons to oppose laws that might make motorists safer.

“If we are truly trying to remove all risks for Vermonters, then perhaps we should outlaw skiing and snowboarding,” Rodgers said.

But the connection between “liberty” and limiting cell phone use in cars is obscure, or perhaps non-existent. There is no right to drive. If there were, drivers wouldn’t need a license. No license is needed to speak freely, worship where one chooses (or nowhere) or be safe against unreasonable search and seizure in one’s home. Those are rights.

The state, which created, maintains, and patrols the highway system may make any reasonable rules and regulations to protect drivers from one another and themselves. Americans are not less free because of speed limits and stop signs. Freedom, which is not the right to do whatever one pleases regardless of the consequences, is not a factor in this discussion.

Which is not to say there are no civil liberties considerations. Any law banning drivers from talking on the phone grants a lot of discretion – arguably too much – to the individual cop, who can decide which drivers to pull over and which ones to ignore. Most law enforcement officers would not pick out those drivers whose looks, or cars, or preferred candidates as revealed by bumper sticker offended them. A few would.

And even some advocates of tougher regulation acknowledge that the issue is complicated.

“It’s an extremely difficult issue,” said Judy Stone of Advocates for Highway and Auto safety, a Washington-based lobby financed by consumer organizations and the insurance industry. “It’s very hard to enforce. We really have the capability of limiting the use of cell phones. .We could make it impossible to use a phone if the car’s in motion. It’s technically possible. Is it politically feasible?

Not now, apparently. But people like Rep. Betty Nuovo, the Middlebury Democrat who sponsored a bill that failed this year, said she and her allies will try again next year to impose at least some restrictions on cell phone use.

“After what I’ve read in the last three or four days” she said, “now we have real information, real evidence. Before it was anecdotal. This is scary. You kill people.”

photo by Bidgee

On this wet and chilly Tuesday, the News Guy was tracking down several interesting stories but catching up with none.

Happens sometimes in the news biz, especially in the summer, when some of the folks who help the tracking process are on vacation.

Never fear, though. The News Guy is a saver of string, enabling him to achieve the goal of occasionally providing readers with information about stuff going on around the world that Vermont’s conventional news outfits tend to ignore though they might one day have some impact on – or at least relevance to – the state and its citizens.

Speaking of wet and chilly, whatever happened to Global Warming? This summer’s weather seems enough to make a person doubt the scientific consensus. But beware of confusing subjective impressions with reality.

John Hinderaker, the Global Warming-denying, Minneapolis-based proprietor of the conservative web site Power Line seems to have insufficiently bewared. The other day he said that, “2009 may go down in history, in some parts of the U.S. at least, as another year with barely any summer. Here in Minnesota and across the Midwest, temperatures are abnormally cold.”

Except that they aren’t. As liberal blogger Nate Silver (with perhaps a touch more glee than needed?) pointed out in his site, 538.com, Minneapolis temperatures this summer have been exactly average.

And in Vermont? Well, the evenings have been cooler than usual, but daytime high temperatures have been in the 70s and low 80s, just as a majority of them have been for decades.

Besides, at least around here, global warming doesn’t mean hotter summers as much as it means warmer winters. According to a 2008 study by the meteorology department at Lyndon State College Institute of Applied Meteorology, “The temperature in both summer and winter is shown to be increasing… This implies a general warming of Vermont throughout the year… winter temperatures are increasing faster than summer temperatures.”

Looking for a villain to blame for the slow pace of recovery from the recession? Maybe Vermont is to blame.

Not Vermont alone. Vermont and almost every other state, which cut their budgets and increased taxes. Just as the federal government was taxing less and spending more to stimulate the economy, Vermont and the other states did the opposite, diminishing the impact of the federal stimulus.

Vermont is of course a minor offender here; its combined tax increases and spending cuts amount to a few tens of millions. California just cut its budget by $26 billion. Not that any of the states had too much choice. With one exception, their constitutions require balanced budgets.

The one exception? Vermont. But for all practical (and political) purposes, it has to balance its budget, too. (Actually, they all cheat, but that’s a subject for another day).

Maybe the problem is that there are states to begin with. Such is the suggestion of James Surowiecki in this week’s New Yorker Magazine.

“Federalism, often described as one of the great strengths of the American system, has become a serious impediment to reversing the downturn,” Surowiecki wrote.

He has a point. With 50 (sort of) sovereign states, each controlling its own budget, there’s little to prevent them from raising taxes and cutting spending, “amplifying the effects of the downturn, instead of mitigating them.” As Surowiecki said.

He did not suggest that states be abolished. Every once in a while, though, somebody makes that suggestion, and from the purely rational perspective, the suggestion makes sense. It would be much more logical and efficient, for instance, if New York City, northern New Jersey, and southern Connecticut were part of one administrative division – perhaps a “department,” a la France – than for the city to have to depend on appropriations approved by lawmakers from Plattsburgh and Horseheads, as it now does.

But the purely rational, taken to its logical conclusion, becomes…irrational. Vermonters, it seems safe to say, would rather live in Vermont than in some subdivision drawn by experts without regard for the state’s history and culture. Tennesseeans and Montanans no doubt feel the same way about where they live. The states, for better and for worse, will survive.

On the other hand, it’s not likely that any state on its own (or even in cooperation with its neighbors) will ever give serious attention to this interesting idea from author Christopher Steiner, based on the research of economist Charles Courtemanche, which might help make America cleaner, safer, and healthier.

In a book called $20 a gallon, Steiner says that raising the price of gasoline would make Americans so much healthier that it would be worth paying the price.

No, not $20 a gallon, but maybe about six bucks. In an article in Forbes magazine, Steiner said Courtemanche, a professor at the University of North Carolina, “has produced a study suggesting that permanent hikes in gas prices may slash obesity rates. The amount is hardly nominal: A sustained $1 increase in the price of a gallon of gasoline equals a 10% dip in the nation’s obesity rate–that’s about 9 million fewer obese people clogging up health care systems and costing society (and themselves) money. ‘The price of gas is a powerful lever when it comes to medical expenses and mortality rates,’ Courtemanche says. ‘There’s a savings in this for all of us.’”

The secret, according to Courtemanche, is that as gasoline prices rise, people will drive less, walk and bike more. They also won’t eat as many meals in restaurants, meaning they’ll eat less expensively and…well, just less. Considering that almost a third of the adult population is now overweight –which costs society some $117 billion a year in both public and private expenses — less would probably be enough.

To be sure, Vermont, which has little in the way of public transportation and lots of small towns sprinkled throughout the countryside, would be unlikely to welcome this proposal. Welcome or not, though, something like $5-a-gallon gas might be the way it is in the not too distant future. Maybe it’s time to start pondering the possibility.

And finally, the reader who calls himself BP asked a perfectly reasonable question based on the assertion here last Friday (scroll down to read it all again) that Secretary of State Deb Markowitz took something of a political risk by boasting of her fund-raising successes on the liberal web site Daily Kos. “The blogosphere’s vibes have their negative connotations,” was how that paragraph ended.

“Maybe you could expand on this?” said BP (perhaps too politely; “What on earth do you mean?” might have been more appropriate). “Is a Vermont Democrat vulnerable for posting something on Daily Kos?”

To expand, which is certainly in order, a Vermont Democrat might be giving his/her opponent some ammunition if he/she is seen as the favorite of the Daily Kos set. Somewhat inaccurately, the site is often thought of as very far left. It isn’t. Its publisher/founder, Marcos Moulitsas Zuniga, is a fierce partisan more than an ideologue. It was probably his fierce opposition to the Iraq war that led some (mostly Republicans) to label the site as extremist.

But Moulitsas also has a policy (similar to the one at this site) of not censoring the comments of his readers, some of whom do hold views outside the mainstream. So with just a little deficiency of intellectual honesty (not uncommon in politics) an opponent can try to paint the Kos-linked candidate as an extremist.

Granted, that’s a harder sell in Vermont than in, say, Alabama. But even here, it isn’t all that hard to get middle-of-the-road voters (and there are many) to wonder whether a candidate might have funny friends.

That’s the chance you take.

Almost all the politicians, professors and journalists who took a look at all that money the Democratic candidates for governor reported raising last week concurred that the big bucks presaged a more competitive race next year, and therefore a longer and more expensive election season ahead

They were sort of right.

Yes, the early start and generous donations to Democrats do indicate that Gov. Jim Douglas (assuming he seeks a fifth term) faces a sterner test than he did in his last three cake-walk re-elections.

But you know what? Even if he didn’t, the 2010 governor’s race would be longer and more expensive.

Nothing can be done about this trend, meaning there is no point in decrying it, as some of the more foolish politicians and commentators did. Vermont in many ways is different from most of the rest of the country; money has not been as major a factor in elections here as in the bigger states.

But no state is an island, and Vermont can not remain immune from reality. Even here, money helps win elections, and every year it has become more important.

That’s why more of it gets spent every year, competitive race or no.

In 2006, Douglas spent $828,038 to whump Democrat Scudder Parker, who spent $633,847, according to the account of followthemoney.org, which compiles state and local campaign finance statistics. Last year, Douglas spent $1,232,216 to beat Democrat Gaye Symington (who spent $485,000) and independent Anthony Pollina (only $250,000).

Nor was it just the governor’s race that got more expensive. In 2006, all Vermont candidates for statewide office and the Legislature spent $3.5 million. Last year they spent $4.9 million.

In almost every case, the candidate who spent more got elected

So all a candidate has to do is spend more money to win the election?

No, as proven right here in 2006, the year big-money politics really came to Vermont when Republican Rich Tarrant spent $7,315,854 (much of it his own), only to lose the U.S. Senate race by a large margin to Bernie Sanders.

But Tarrant, who had never before run for office, turned out to be a very rich man but a very poor candidate. He hired a crew of outside “expert” political consultants who didn’t understand Vermont and launched a series of television commercials featuring harsh personal attacks on Sanders. They backfired. But that only proves that spending a lot of money stupidly can’t guarantee victory. Had Tarrant combined big spending with political smarts, he would have come closer.

He still probably wouldn’t have won. But that’s because Sanders raised and spent a lot of money, too. Because Tarrant was spending so much, Sanders went all out to raise money from all around the country. He ended up with $5,544,466, still quite a bit less than Tarrant, but he didn’t need as much; he was already well-known and popular. Besides, 2006 was a bad year for Republicans all over the country.

The lesson of that campaign was that while a candidate doesn’t necessarily need more money than his opponent to win, he needs enough. Enough to pay a top-flight staff, organize a get-out-the-vote operation, and (especially) to buy enough television advertising to get his message across.

‘Enough,’ in most cases, means ‘a lot.’

And sometimes, more money can mean victory. It may have meant victory for Douglas in his first race for governor, in 2002.

The late polls that year showed that then-Lt. Gov. Doug Racine (now a Democratic state senator and running for governor again) had a small lead over Douglas. When Douglas won, the conventional wisdom was that the pollsters had goofed.

They may have gotten a bum rap. Racine’s lead was small and the polls showed quite a few voters still undecided a few days before the election. It’s just as likely that, for three reasons, almost all of them broke to Douglas.

Reason one was that there was a nationwide (remember, no state is an island) swing to the GOP in the final days of the campaign. Reason two was that Racine wasn’t really saying anything except that he was a decent, enlightened fellow, and it was his turn. Decent and enlightened he seems to be, but it’s never a candidate’s turn. He has to convince the voters.

Douglas was saying something. He was saying, “Jim = Jobs.” Not true, as it turned out; even before the Recession, private-sector job growth under Douglas was anemic. But perhaps effective.

Reason three may have been money. Douglas had more if it, and he kept spending it on radio and TV ads and automated phone calls to voters right through election day. Racine couldn’t compete.

This gets a bit delicate. The obvious suggestion is that voters – yes, even Vermont voters — who were undecided, even some leaning toward candidate A, can be persuaded to vote for candidate B by a few 30-second or 60-second ads repeating a meaningless slogan. Are the American people sheep?

No. Sheep don’t make political decisions. But people are persuadable. “Men are convertible,” Emerson said. He meant they could become better, including more rational. But conversion can go either way, and there are a lot of people spending a lot of money to “convert” folks to buy products, hold opinions, and support or oppose candidates.

Advertising works. If it didn’t, businesses wouldn’t be spending at least $150 billion a year in the U.S. alone to convince consumers to buy their brand. Nor would politicians and interest groups have spent more than $2.6 billion trying to convince voters to support their causes and candidates last year, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

All that money doesn’t persuade most voters. Partisans, ideologues, and well-informed independents know who they’re going to vote for and why. But many – maybe most – swing voters aren’t all that well informed. They tend to decide on the basis of personality more than policy. They are the one who are the targets of most of the political ads.

Which is where most of the campaign money goes. Candidates also hire workers, pay for targeted mailings (often to raise more money), finance their travels from town to town to make speeches. But in almost every competitive race, a substantial majority of the money goes for advertising – on radio and over the Internet, but mostly on television, because those commercials are both more expensive and more effective.

What this means is that in many close races the pivotal voters are the least informed, the least interested, the most receptive to hucksterism which can be meaningless if not downright dishonest. There are no truth-in-advertising laws for campaign ads. That would be unconstitutional. So the candidate with the biggest bankroll – and the fewest scruples – has a big advantage.

It is considered impolitic to discuss this phenomenon because it demeans the American people – or at least a sizeable subset thereof. Obviously, politicians never want to suggest that the American people are anything but wonderful, and for some reason most commentators have gone along. Perhaps for good reason. Suggesting that at least some of the American people are clods is probably not effective marketing.

But impolitic or not, it is true. Some American voters are clods. Some American elections are effectively determined by the flightiest, the most ignorant, even the most mean-spirited segment of the electorate. After all, is it not the couch-potato who is most vulnerable to the distorting appeal of the clever commercial?

Furthermore, big spending and flashy (and perhaps dishonest) advertising could play a part in next year’s Democratic primary, even though primary voters tend to be well-informed, and most of them are at least comparably partisan.

But there is not much ideological difference among the prospective Democratic candidates, all of whom are centrist liberals. The campaign, then, could get personal and divisive, just the kind beloved by political consultants who write and produce campaign ads.

And don’t suppose that centrist liberals are any less inclined to create misleading or dishonest campaign ads than anyone else. That’s why it was important that Secretary of State Deb Markowitz is raising the most money, but also that Racine seems to be raising enough to counter any attacks on him that her campaign decides to put on the air.

No assumption here that things are going to get nasty. After all, this is Vermont, where that kind of politics hasn’t worked.

But don’t think it can’t. All that money is going to be used, most of it on television, for good or for ill.