Fee For Service
There is a political campaign going on right now in Vermont, and we can’t say we haven’t been told about it.
No, this has nothing to do with who’s going to be governor come next year. This is a campaign which ends Tuesday, and while it has regional – perhaps even statewide – ramifications, the electorate is confined to the residents of one town: Lowell, where 550 voters are on the checklist.
Any doubts about this being a political campaign were erased in the Burlington Free Press the Sunday before last, in an excellent front page story by the estimable Candace Page., who explained how Green Mountain Power Co. was employing standard political devices to convince Lowellites to approve a wind power development on three miles of their town’s ridge lines.
Among the classic campaign maneuvers being used: voter registration, direct mail, living room meetings, and a get-out-the-vote campaign including driving voters to the polls.
And what, one may ask, is wrong with any of that?
Not a thing. And there wouldn’t be a thing wrong with it even if the wind project opponents weren’t employing the same tactic (albeit on a smaller scale because they have less money). Among the words that could be applied to this process is ‘democracy.’
But there’s another, to which the Free Press story alludes, but without using the word.
The word is ‘bribery.’
Perfectly legal bribery, to be sure, meeting the dictionary’s (American Heritage Second College Edition) second definition of the word “bribe”: “something offered or serving to influence or persuade,” not the first definition, in which the “something” is given to induce him or her to “act dishonestly.”
In this case nothing is being sought from the recipients of largesse but their ‘yes’ vote, which violates no law. Furthermore, there is nothing covert about the gift. Green Mountain Power is openly offering to give the town between $400,000 and $535,000 every year, which would enable the town to cut its town tax rate to zero or pretty close to it.
Lowell residents and businesses would still pay the statewide school property tax of course. But according to the Free Press’s calculations, the owner of a $200,000 home could save close to $1,000 a year.
Enough, it would seem “to influence or persuade” a homeowner.
All of the above should be taken as observation, not condemnation. In fact, the point of today’s post is neither to censure nor to reveal information kept hidden from the general public. Instead, it is to ponder why information that is known to the general public is so widely accepted by that public under it euphemistic – rather than its real – label: an ‘incentive, not a ‘bribe.’
There’s a difference?
Consider the new wood pellet plant to be created not far east of Lowell, in Island Pond, but only thanks to $10 million of federal loans, $9 million of it guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Or the extra $15 million that a special legislative panel – at the request of Gov. Jim Douglas – added to an economic development program to entice four businesses to move into the state (see January 13 post, VEGI Burgher). Again, there might be nothing wrong with this. There certainly isn’t anything unusual about it. Almost every state, county, and city in America offers loans, loan guarantees, or outright grants to firms who pledge to expand or relocate, even though the evidence that any of this spending creates a single job that would not otherwise be created is skimpy at best.
It may be good policy. But another thing it is is bribery, however legal and respectable. And one thing it is not is free enterprise, at least not as taught in the Economics 101 textbooks. There, firms open or expand because their leaders think they can sell enough goods or services to earn a profit after meeting their costs, which include interest on loans from the private banking system.
Outside the textbooks, some firms, at least, hold out for an inducement from the government, often playing one state or city off against another. The result is a form of socialism which is never called by that name, especially by the recipient entrepreneur, who often spends much of his spare time railing against government profligacy.
Except, of course, when he’s the beneficiary.
As mentioned, this is a national phenomenon, but perhaps especially pertinent to Vermont these days. The national-state connection was evident the other day when President Barack Obama proposed $9.8 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants just as Vermonters debate the future of the only one they have.
Again, let’s stipulate for the purposes of today’s discussion that Obama’s policy is wise, or at least defensible, and that the defenders of Vermont Yankee have a point. There is a case to be made for nuclear power (and against it, as is true with wind power).
But one of the arguments made by the plant’s supporters is that it is unsubsidized, contrasting its independence with the de facto subsidy the Legislature gave “sustainable” (wind, solar, hydro, methane) power last year when it passed a bill granting those producers higher rates.
That bill (H 446) is effectively a subsidy. But nuclear power plants aren’t subsidized? Give us a break. For more than half a century the Price-Anderson Act has limited the nuclear power industry’s liabilities from lawsuits. And all – all – of the initial research and development costs for nuclear power were borne by the taxpayers in a program that was secret at the time but has since become widely known: The Manhattan Project.
This is not an argument against nuclear power. It’s an argument against self-delusion.
