Regular readers should be aware that it is the News Guy’s policy not to take sides in public policy disputes.

Taking sides is not the reporter’s job. Explaining is the job, also analyzing. That analysis may include critiquing, but the criticism should be applied impartially to all sides of the debate.

This site, then,  expresses no conclusion over whether  Gov. Jim Douglas or  the Legislature is wiser in their conflict over taxes and the budget (though it might hint now and then that neither side is all that wise), or whether the state should force the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to set aside money now to pay for its eventual disintegration, or whether the state should tamper with the market price of sun and wind power.

Even the most emotional, personal, confrontation of the year in Vermont over same sex marriage, was the subject of several posts which attempted to acknowledge the bona fides of  both sides and to ridicule neither. Or, perhaps more accurately, to ridicule either when warranted.

(A digression: In the interest of bi-ideological ridicule, the News Guy here subjects left-of-center Sen. Bernie Sanders to the same scorn he visited yesterday on Republican Douglas. In a statement released by his office yesterday, Sanders said, “In nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, I very much appreciate that President Obama is attempting to address…blah, blah, blah.”

No, Senator, Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor. You did not nominate anybody. But you said you nominated her, using the same kind of  dangling modifying clause Douglas used in his statement about Auditor Tom Salmon’s offer to mediate the budget dispute.

Pay attention class (this includes governors and senators). “Walking down the street, the man thought the flowers were beautiful,” is correct. “Walking down the street, the flowers were beautiful,” is not, because it says the flowers were walking down the street, which is unlikely. Public officials have a responsibility to the language. End of digression)

But sometimes a proposal comes along which is so inane, so out of synch with common sense, so absurd, that, in Linda Loman’s words, attention must be paid.

Especially when no one else seems willing to pay attention, even those who understand the foolishness of the proposal. Even more especially when the general public seems enthusiastic about it. Their enthusiasm helps explain why the politicians are reluctant to speak out. An explanation is not an excuse.

The proposal comes from the Governor. He made it last year, and brought it about. Now, in the budget “alternative” he outlined last week, he’s at it again. He wants another summer weekend “sales tax holiday,” when shoppers could buy anything that costs $2,000 or less without paying the six percent state sales tax.

This is, without doubt, one of the stupidest ideas in the entire history of humanity. Mind you, it is not one of the most destructive ideas in the history of humanity. Just to take a few examples, the  Crusades, Communism, and artificial turf were stupid ideas that caused substantially more harm (the last of those only to knees and aesthetic sensibilities). Still, for out-and-out pluperfect dumb, it’s right up (down?) there with the worst of them.

To be sure, it is not stupid for shoppers to take advantage of this weekend should it come about. If, for instance, a shopper wants to buy one of those fancy flat-screen television sets for $1,000, it makes perfect sense for her to buy it on that weekend and therefore not pay the $60 in sales tax. Good for her. She’s now saved sixty bucks.

But in almost every case, she’s only buying what she was going to buy anyway. She has saved some money, but the state’s economy has not gained a penny. Yeah, she’s got the 60 smakaroos to spend elsewhere. But then the state does not have the $60 to spend, and the state is one of the state’s biggest consumers.

Humbly, the News Guy consulted an economist, one who does not live in Vermont and so has no dog in this fight. His reply? “People will just spend on that Saturday or Sunday what they were going to spend on any Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Net gain to the economy? Zippo.

In fact, Vermont economist Tom Kavet, in a message to the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office, reported that, “there is no credible literature…that suggests such holidays result in anything but net revenue losses at the state level, and therefore produce no net stimulus to the economy.”

But wait a minute. Isn’t it possible that some people, inspired by the tax-free day, will buy something they were not going to buy anyway?

Yes, because some people are almost as dumb as the holiday idea. He who spends a thousand bucks on something he didn’t need or really want to save 60 bucks is he who is not hitting on all cylinders.

Well, let’s not be judgmental. It’s his business. If he wants to throw his money around, let him throw it.

But from the point of view of the state’s economy, it makes no difference. This careless shopper would then have a thousand dollars less to spend on other stuff. And he would spend it. People spend their disposable income. That thousand dollars was going to be spent on something, almost surely in Vermont. And most of that other spending would have been taxable, so the state would have more money to spend. Last year’s sales tax holiday cost the state $2 million, just what it saved the consumers, according to Kavet.

Again, net gain to the state’s economy: Bupkiss. In fact, according to Kavet, there was probably a net loss.

Let’s deal with the final objection. Wouldn’t the state gain if the sales tax holiday attracted a whole lot of non-Vermonters to come into the state and buy their flat-screen TVs, fancy sofas, or riding lawnmowers?

In theory, yes. In actuality, not hardly.

First of all, no one has even claimed that many out-of-staters took advantage of last year’s holiday. And from whence would they come? Not from New Hampshire, which has no general sales tax at all. Not from Quebec because the currency exchange (a Canadian dollar was worth about 89 cents yesterday) would cancel any savings even if it were legal to bring all that merchandise back into La Belle Provence, which it probably is not.

There’s Massachusetts and New York, but northwestern Massachusetts is sparsely populated, and so is eastern New York except for Plattsburgh and environs, and it makes little sense for a Plattsburgher to schlep to, say, Tafts Corners, to go shopping, even to save a few bucks. The round trip by land is 175 miles and takes almost four hours, according to Mapquest. Depending on the wait, taking the ferry might take less time, but for two adults the round trip is $24. Hardly worth it.

It isn’t that no one benefits from the sales tax holiday. Some shoppers do. And probably so do stores that sell expensive, taxable, merchandise. That’s because some of the money shoppers spend in them on the tax holiday would otherwise be spent in restaurants, or ski trails, or going to the movies, or buying (mostly tax-free) clothing.

So good for the stores. But not good for the state’s economy. In fact, bad for the state’s economy.

Altogether, the sales tax holiday is an idea whose time has never come and never will. But it’s popular. So here’s the question: Will any one of the many government officials who knows it’s a dumb idea have the gumption to say so?

Like maybe one of the Democrats thinking of running for governor? Let’s see if they have any gumption.

And speaking of Friday, because of some still-unexplained computer glitch, the post for that day didn’t actually get onto the web site until almost 10:30 AM. For those who usually check in earlier, and perhaps assumed that we were taking  a holiday then, apologies.

That post is below, the third one down.

Thanks to the readers who emailed wondering what was going on, and to the reader who realized that New Hampshire’s pending budget deficit was probably closer to $100 million than $100 billion.

Looking at those federal budget figures really can fry the brain.

Friday’s post included results of a New Hampshire poll ,and some musing about why Vermont does not have the equivalent of  the Granite State Report polling operation connected with the University of New Hampshire.

If that musing conveyed the impression that the University over there in Durham, N.H., finances the poll, the impression was incorrect. Andrew Smith, who runs the poll, is a political science professor at UNH, but the poll, he said, finances itself. In election years, news organizations put up most of the money. In off-years such as this one,  he gets funding from various sources, including by allowing companies and non-profit agencies to “buy” a few questions in a broader survey.

Just as one of the Vermont polling firms does as discussed in an earlier post (“The Perils of Polling,” on January 27) about how polling results can misinform if the questions are not precisely worded.

The difference is that in the Granite State Survey, Smith edits the questions and changes the wording if he thinks it might affect the way some respondents answer the question.

“In fact, I’m a pain in the butt when it comes to the final wording,” Smith said.

As he should be. Polling questions should be written by scholars trying to discover public opinion. Not by activists trying to manipulate it.

And speaking of polls, here’s a one-question version: Do you give a hoot about whether , when that guy Tribble killed that guy Borello eight years ago. it was murder as opposed to…well, something else?.

What? Does someone charge that the above question was poorly worded, revealing a bias on the part of the questioner?

Guilty.

But not as guilty (of another offense, to be sure) as the Burlington Free Press was by devoting 81 square inches of Page One on Sunday (more than a third of the page’s news hole), plus another 132 square inches inside. That was almost one sixth of the front section news content.

And for what? For the verdict in the second trial of one boring, grouchy guy who shot and killed another boring, grouchy guy some time back. It doesn’t seem likely that very many people care that much. The stories have been ably reported and written by Adam Silverman. But toward what end?

Do not misunderstand. Murder is the ultimate great story. Accounts of it can be fascinating and fun. But this one was just bizarre. It had neither a famous victim (the Lindbergh baby) nor a famous defendant (O.J. Simpson),  nor any social, economic, or political significance. It didn’t even have any sex.

But the Free Press devoted thousands of column inches to the story over the past several weeks, which makes sense neither as news judgment nor as a circulation booster.

Which the Free Press could use. Two years ago, it sold 48,042 papers on weekdays, 56,295 on Sunday. The latest figures are 41,901 and 47,566. Yes, many newspapers are losing circulation and the Free Press did raise its price by one third.

Still, those are big circulation losses, 12.7 percent daily and 15.5 percent on Sunday. Do you suppose if the bosses there employed reporter Silverman’s competence on matters that affected the actual lives of actual people a few more of said people might read the paper?

Just asking.

All right, to some web site business: I am accepting the invitations of all readers who want to be my Facebook friend or to follow me on Twitter except for those trying to connive me into supporting some political cause or candidate.

But I still would like someone to answer this question: What is the point of it all?

On Twitter, for instance, one is regularly asked: “What are you doing now?”

Sitting at the computer, obviously.

OK, maybe I’m being too literal. But suppose I decide to answer that question some evening later this week. I could sit down at the computer and type in, “I’m watching an NBA game.”

That would be accurate. It would not be interesting.

Not to mention that when I clicked on one Twitter-follower, the Twitter company informed me that “this person has protected their updates.”

This company does not speak English. The person involved is clearly a female. Such a with-it firm ought to be able to program its software so it tells us that she has protected her updates. Or if that’s too much trouble it could use “his/her” for everyone. It need not debase the language and the culture.

And speaking of the language and the culture, this one was too delicious not to use to close today’s exercise. A letter-writer to the editor of the Free Press, enraged about the Burlington teachers contract, proposed that they all take pay cuts and that ten percent of the city’s teachers should be laid off immediately, with “the remaining teachers…asked to work extra hours to make up for less teachers.”

Turns out this guy, who will not be identified to protect the guilty, doesn’t even live in Burlington. Hmmm. Maybe if he’d gone to school there one of those well-paid teachers would have taught him when to say “less” and when to say “fewer.”