OK,  This is it. The 345^th Vermont News Guy post.

And the last.

It’s been just a few weeks short of two years. It’s been fun. It’s time to stop while it’s still fun. A good rule is to quit doing what you like while you still like it.

My thanks to all readers. My special thanks to regular readers. My specialer (yes, I know that’s not a word) thanks to subscribers and comment writers, and my specialest (ditto) thanks to the two or three of you who appointed yourselves occasional editors, correcting typographical and other errors.

Everybody needs an editor.

Speaking of which, one last short correction. The last post said details on the connection between wind power entrepreneurs and environmental organizations could be found in last Wednesday’s entry. It was actually in the post of Monday, November 15.

A harsher editor would have insisted that this site not shut down until its proprietor dealt with some of the things he said he’d deal with – the persistence of poverty, for instance, or the truth no one will discuss about the importance of campaign money. (It fools the American people, who are more foolable than one is supposed to admit).

Sorry, time just ran out. But you know what? The News Guy is no more. I (dropping the droll, remote, third person act here) survive. In one platform or another, I may still be heard from in Vermont journalism. Stay tuned.

A note to my Facebook “friends,” the quotation marks needed here for those of you who are not my actual friends, in the pre-Facebook definition, for the simple reason that we have never met:

I’m going to unfriend you. Don’t take it personally.

Come to think of it, I may drop Facebook entirely. I hate Facebook. On it, my “friends,” some of whom I’ve never met, keep telling me they’ve just had a cup of tea. Or wasn’t the sunset beautiful?

As Rhett Butler once said, “frankly my dear…”

I hate Twitter, too. I have nothing worthwhile to say that can be said in 140 clicks.

Neither do you.

So enough. Assez. Basta. Gornish.

As it happens, though, events have conspired to render it useful, if not irresistible, to provide one more analysis of a current Vermont squabble – the recent suggestion by Attorney General Bill Sorrell to levy a tax on sugared soft drinks, a suggestion widely reviled as an assertion of “The Nanny State.”

It certainly is.

But what isn’t?

Almost nothing, despite the general inclination to ignore that fact.

Or, more accurately, to deny that fact. Americans like to call governmental intrusion they don’t like “The Nanny State.” Governmental intrusion they do like (highways, state universities, airports) they call…something else.

In this case, the connection is direct. Too many people, especially too many kids and most especially too many poor kids drink too much sugared soda for several reasons. One is their own foolishness; nobody holds their mouths open and pours Coca-Cola down their gullets.

But another reason is The Nanny State. Markets work. Products that cost less will be consumed more, especially by low-income people. Sugared sodas are cheap. In fact, they are cheaper (in “real,” meaning inflation-adjusted, terms) than they were in the early 1970s.

That’s when President Richard M. Nixon and his Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, turned farm policy on its head, transforming it from a system that subsidized farmers to one that subsidized production of crops, mostly corn.

Plant it “fence row to fence row,” Butz told the farmers. Effectively (the details are a little more complicated) the Government (The Nanny State) said to farmers: “what you can’t sell, we’ll buy”.

The result? Lots of corn.

The result of that (remember, markets work)? Cheap corn. Meaning, also, cheap high fructose corn syrup, the sweetener now used in most sodas, which explains why they cost so little.

Whether public policy, or The Nanny State as it is sometimes known, ought to be used here to offset the negative consequences of earlier public policy, or The Nanny State as it is sometimes known, is one of those many questions on which reasonable people can disagree.

But don’t take seriously the guys who kvetch than Sorrell’s proposal is an example of The Nanny State. Not, at least, if they drive their cars on the public roads, eat food inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or fly in planes which do not bump into one another in the air. It’s all Nanny State all the time.

Stay loose. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Write if you get work. Never try to fill an inside straight. Throw strikes.

First, the announcement:  A final decision will not be made for another week or so, but this web site is probably in its final days.

The election is over, the year is coming to an end, and so, most likely, is the News Guy.

It has been fun. It may have done some good. But with the election over, the year coming to an end, perhaps it is time to go.

A few weeks ago, the proprietor of this site woke up and found himself 70. No problem. There is but one alternative to getting older, and as long as most systems are functioning adequately, getting older is the preferred option.

But it is a reminder that if one is going to do something different, one had best get to it. Being the News Guy isn’t all that different from previous activities.

It isn’t much less time-and-effort consuming, either, and at least in the old days, the time and effort was compensated for with…compensation. At best, this web site breaks even. Happily, under the present circumstances, profit is not necessary. But neither is expending all that time and effort, enhancing the appeal of either (a) spending the time and effort at something potentially remunerative; or (b) not spending the time and effort at all.

Because a few interesting subjects have been put on hold during the election campaign, the News Guy will continue for another couple of weeks. But that’s probably it.

Now to the analysis. Last Friday’s post (The Big Day Dawneth) pointed out that the “downside” of Brian Dubie being governor would have been the constant (and worse! Incorrect) repetition of the mantra about Vermont’s economy being in such bad shape.

But there would have been an upside to a Dubie governorship, too, and one that might have transcended Vermont. That’s because Dubie – his anti-abortion stance and some attacks from the hard-line left to the contrary notwithstanding – is a politician of the center-right.

For instance, he was one of the few candidates in either party, anywhere this year to praise the new health care law. No Tea Partier, he campaigned for tax cuts and budget restraint, but not for decimating or dismantling government. According to office-holders in both parties, he has sometimes shown more flexibility than Gov. Jim Douglas in negotiating with lawmakers and officials.

Some critics argue that political expediency forced Dubie to try to come across as more moderate than he really is, that if he were not running in (sort of) left-leaning Vermont, he would have shown his true, farther-right, colors.

Maybe, but it makes no difference. He was running in Vermont. Had he won, he would have been governor of Vermont, and whatever private agenda he might have had, his would have been a center-right governorship, which is by no means the worst kind of governorship to have.

Especially now, where the center-right is endangered in Vermont and all but extinct elsewhere. The most prominent center-right office-holder in the country, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, is leaving office in a few weeks. With a few exceptions, the Republicans of the impending 112^th Congress can not be described as center-right politicians.

In Vermont, it is not clear whether leading Republicans have quite grasped what the Dubie defeat means for their party. Political fortunes are (in the words of a great poet) “constantly fickle,” so the GOP could rebound quickly. But it’s hard to see how. The party holds fewer than a third of the seats in the Houses, barely over a third in the Senate, and could not find credible candidates to run for either the U.S. Senate or Congress.

‘Credible,’ in this context, means ‘center-right’, the only kind of Republican who can win statewide elections in Vermont. The fact that no center-right Republican made any effort to take on Sen. Patrick Leahy or Rep. Peter Welch – even knowingly playing the sacrificial lamb role to build up some party cred for a winnable race in the future – speaks volumes about the poor prospects for the GOP in the state.

Yes, there are Lt. Gov-elect Phil Scott and re-elected Auditor Tom Salmon. But Salmon has, so far, painted himself farther right as he apparently prepares to challenge Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2012, an uphill battle to say the least. Scott is center-right, and right now seems to be the Vermont Republican Party’s best hope.

But it isn’t easy being lieutenant governor when the top guy is from the other party. It will not be in Gov. Peter Shumlin’s interest to give Scott much opportunity to look good, and the lite gov really has no official duties.

Well, presiding over the Senate, but with the Senate 20-8 Democratic, the presiding of a Republican will be largely ceremonial.

Had Dubie won, he might have helped revive the moderate wing of the Vermont GOP. He might also have been one of only a handful of Republican center-right governors in America (there are a few Democrats who fit that description), along with Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Terry Branstad of Iowa.

And the country needs center-right office-holders. For at least two reasons, even liberals ought to be glad that center-right politicians survive, and sometimes win. First, even when they are wrong, center-right officials keep the center-left from getting carried away with itself, as it is wont to do. Second, center-right politicians are not always wrong.  Because there are so many genuine needs, governments do have an incentive to keep spending money, sometimes more than is wise. Here moderate conservatives, wary of spending but not hostile to government, help restrain excesses.

Alas, other excesses on the right have all but obliterated moderate conservatism. Explaining how and why is beyond the scope of this post, but two examples should encapsulate the problem. Nationally, the conservative mainstream refuses to accept two facts: (1) cutting taxes means governments will have less (not more; less) money to spend; (2) the world is getting warmer, in part because of human activity. A political movement that willfully blinds itself to reason can accomplish nothing more than winning some elections. Winning elections is indeed one purpose of a political movement, and an important one. But so is rational governing.

Those are two Kool-Aid cocktails Brian Dubie did not drink.

Actually, Vermont may have a center-right governor next year – Peter Shumlin. Either winner would have faced the same immediate dilemma: expected revenues next year will be some $110 million lower than anticipated revenue. Though not as ideologically – even viscerally – hostile to higher taxes as Dubie, Shumlin doesn’t want to raise taxes either. It would be bad politics, and bad economic policy (though not as bad as laying off more state workers).

Like a center-right politician, Shumlin is going to propose budget cuts, possibly deep cuts, possibly deeper than many Democratic legislators can accept. The next session could be a tough one for Democrats. Maybe Vermont Republicans will enjoy themselves after all.

This will be a somewhat abbreviated post because the News Guy moderated a debate among Northeast Kingdom legislative candidates last evening and there is only so much one fellow can do in one day.

Oh, all right. Full disclosure. In addition to this public duty, the News Guy herewith admits another factor. As revealed in an earlier post (the one about Centennial Field and the Lake Monsters Take Us Out To the Ball Game? July 3, 2009)  among the News Guy’s private passions is that exotic past-time known as baseball, to which he devoted the latter part of the evening.

So for today, just a correction or two, a little mopping up, and then a tale, a true story that may or not be cautionary.

Wednesday’s post reported news of an “inter-active map showing poverty rates by state and county in 2009 when the poverty reached its highest levels in 51 No big surprises.”

Obviously that should have been the poverty rate which reached its highest levels in 51 years, period, end of sentence.

A few paragraphs later, the post listed the poverty rates for Vermont’s counties, but left out two of them. Thanks to the reader who pointed out the omission, and for those who read the post early, scroll down. All 14 counties are in there now.

And to the reader who asked what the under-five-year-old poverty rate is by county, stay tuned. The search is on.

Another reader had a good point on that post, and this time it was not just any reader but Doug Hoffer, the Democratic candidate for Auditor. Read Hoffer’s full comment (just go down to the bottom of Wednesday’s post and click on “3 comments,”) but his main point was that it isn’t good enough for Vermont’s poverty rate to be lower than in most other states; ten percent in poverty still too high and we’re all too willing to accept that state of affairs.

An interesting comment which deserves a full treatment soon.

Later in that same post was the report of a poll showing that “45 supported the idea, 36 percent opposed it, and 19 percent were undecided.”

No doubt you all figured this out for yourselves, but just for the record, that’s 45 percent.

The October 11 post, Ethical Quandary, reported that Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie was once a member and chairman of the school board in Essex. It was Essex Junction. Apologies to both municipalities and to Dubie.

OK, now to the tale, in which the names shall be changed to protect the innocent. So let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They live in Charlotte, in the same house they had built more than 40 years ago. It isn’t a big house. Fifteen hundred square feet, Mr. Jones said.

The Joneses are not young. He’s 81. She’s 75. They’re not rich either. Last year, they said – and emailed tax records to back it up – their taxable income was $44,000. Because they own their home free and clear, they no longer have to make mortgage payments. They just have to pay their utility bills, buy food and fuel, whatever clothing they might need, and some incidentals.

Oh, and of course property taxes on their house. This year, their property tax bill is $11,252.

No, that’s not a typographical error. The Jones pay more than $11,000 – one quarter of their taxable income – for property tax.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t Vermont’s property tax system include an “income sensitivity” provision that protects middle-income homeowners from sky-high property taxes?

Yes, but earlier this year the Legislature passed a bill (H 783) effectively abolishing income sensitivity  when “the equalized value of a housesite (is) in excess of $500,000.”

That covers the Jones’s 1,500-square-foot house that they had built in 1967 for $22,000. It is now assessed at $1.4 million

No, neither of those was a typo, either.

The Joneses have made some improvements to their house over the years. But that’s not why its assessment shot up. It was, said Mrs. Jones, the much larger houses built all around them over the last several years that raised the assessed value of all the homes in the neighborhood.

The Legislature acted after some news stories in the Burlington Free Press and the Valley News (for some reason unavailable on its web site) that some residents of opulent homes were paying modest property tax bills based on their incomes.

The Legislature acted out of a combination of opportunism and controlled panic. The lawmakers were scrounging for all the revenue they could find. And they worried about being attacked for coddling the “wealthy,” even if these supposedly wealthy people earned average incomes.

It was not an unreasonable decision. Like the others so targeted, the Joneses will not suffer economically. They can sell their home, probably not for $1.4 million in the Recession, but for several hundred thousand dollars, which will allow them to live out their lives in comfort.

But they don’t want to move.

“This is our home,” Mrs. Jones said. “It’s where we raised our three boys. At my husbands age, moving will be hard on him.”

Surely this is not what the Legislature intended. But nobody has repealed the law of unintended consequences. And legislating on the basis of a few “horror stories” is a good way to activate that law.