We begin this morning with some inside baseball.

Barring unexpected obstacles, and perhaps delayed due to a brief hiatus on the part of the fellow in charge (see note at end), something new is likely to appear on these pages within a week or so: Advertising.

Present plans are for the ads to appear underneath the “Log in” selections but above “Archives” in the column over there on the right.

These ads will be text. Just words, no logos, picture or other graphics, at least not for now.

The purpose of these ads, like the purpose of all advertisements in all news operations, is to provide said operation with revenue.

In this case, the revenue to be provided is likely to end up somewhere between paltry and minimal. Indeed, the mere appearance of the ad provides not a penny. The pennies (and we are talking pennies) start to flow only if a reader clicks on an ad.

(No, don’t click just to create revenue for the News Guy. That’s not cricket. Click only if you are interested in the good or service being advertised).

For the foreseeable future, then, the financing of this web site will continue to depend largely on: (1) the personal resources of its proprietor-publsisher-writer-editor-researcher-floorsweeper; (2) donations from readers.

Of late, the News Guy has been gratified by the noticeable increase in the number of people who have registered so they can get ‘Twitter’ updates about the posts and so they can comment should they wish.

Alas, this increase has not been matched by a concomitant increase in the number of donors. All who have not donated, are hereby invited to do so. Just hit “Donate” (under “Pages,” top right) and follow directions.

The News Guy accurately quoted the fellow who said the $112,000 that would be saved by hiring union workers for the new Lake Champlain bridge amounted to less than one percent of the roughly $1.7 million that could be saved by instituting a Project Labor Agreement (See “Non-Union Blues,” April 28)

But as a couple of readers pointed out, $112,000 is more like 6.25 percent of $1.7 million.

That’s still a small percentage of the total projected savings, but the News Guy should have thought to check the numbers. (And did, briefly. That post was written the evening of the big snow, in constant fear of losing Internet connection if not electricity, so it was written and published hastily. But that’s not really much of an excuse).

In another recent post (Political Health, April 24) the News Guy promised to explain soon why a single-payer health care system, whatever it advantages as a nationwide system, might be disastrous if adopted in one state. Herewith, the explanation.

In a single-payer system, health care is paid for with tax money. That’s actual tax money, from the taxes we call taxes, not the ‘taxes’ we call health insurance premiums.

Here’s an undeniable fact about taxes: it’s hard to raise them. People don’t like tax increases. Neither do politicians, who try to find some alternative. Any alternative.

There is no reason to think that health care costs will not continue to rise. Single-payer advocates argue that universal service itself will restrain costs. They’re probably right. But no one has presented persuadable evidence that simply covering everyone in and of itself will be enough to keep health care from getting more expensive.

So every once in a while, the Legislature and the governor will have to raise taxes to pay for the higher cost of health care. Or try to find an alternative.

One alternative is all but sure to be reducing pay to providers. That’s jargon for paying the doctors less. We know that this is likely because it is  what Congress has done for years; as health care costs rise, Congress regularly reduces provider pay for Medicare and Medicaid services.

Doctors don’t like it, but what can they do? They can’t go anywhere. Where would they go? To Canada? But Canada has a single-payer system. To Mexico? Not likely. In fact, almost nowhere in the world do doctors earn nearly as much as they do in the United States. It’s one reason U.S. health care costs so much more per person than it does in the rest of the world.

A few doctors refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. But not many. That’s an awful lot of patients to give up.

But if Vermont starts cutting physician fees, it’s no trick for physicians to go elsewhere. Many of them wouldn’t even have to move, residentially speaking. They could stay right in their present house and just move their practice to New Hampshire, New York, or Massachusetts.

In other words, if Vermont all by itself adopts a single-payer system, Vermont all by itself could find itself short of doctors in a few years.

Because it is the big guy on the block, the Burlington Free Press has often been the butt of criticism at this web site. So it’s only fair to point out that the paper has committed some first class journalism in recent weeks. Much of it has been the work of Candace Page, who seems to have returned from her recent leave of absence with renewed energy.

But she’s not the only one.  The duo covering the Legislature, Nancy Remsen and Terri Hallenbeck, are doing a good job. Time constraints (two reporters are really not enough for legislative coverage, especially as the session nears its end) prevent them from probing as deeply beneath the surface as some (probably including the two of them) might like. But they get the important stories and they get them right.

Let’s not, however, be too kind to the Freep. One thing its editors should seriously consider is doing away with those “My Turn” columns that regularly run on or across from the editorial page. Sure, it’s a cheap way to fill space (the writers are not paid), but the columns are full of misinformation.

Why wouldn’t they be? There is no requirement that the writers know what they’re talking about. Most are identified only by their town of residence: “Joe Schmoe lives in Colchester.” Living in Colchester is not a credential.

Sunday’s paper provided a perfect example. There one C. Joseph Soper (whose “credential” is that he lives in Burlington) pronounces himself “bemused” over opposition to the possible arrival of the new (and apparently quite noisy) F-35 fighter planes for use by the Air National Guard.

Only  Soper knows what bemuses him, and he may be right that the pluses of welcoming the new plane to South Burlington outweigh the minuses. But when he proclaims that “jobs disappear almost daily” in Vermont, he appears not to know that during this Recession they have disappeared more slowly here than in most states. All he had to do was check the unemployment statistics.

Pointing out that other sites are being considered for the F-35, Soper said, “ I strongly suspect the other installations involved have not adopted anywhere near the response we seem to be reflecting. In fact, theirs is most probably one of great excitement over the prospect of being chosen.”

Well, he may strongly suspect it, but he’s wrong. Some ten minutes of surfing the Internet could have told him that comparable opposition to the F-35 has sprung up in, among other places, Tucson, Key West, and Mountain Home, Utah.

This is not Soper’s fault, at least not primarily. He’s not in the news business, so he doesn’t know that a writer’s strong suspicion is insufficient. The rule is: Check it out. If your mother says she loves you, check that out, too.

But the editors of the Free Press are in the news business. They ought to edit those columns for accuracy or get rid of them. They may be good public relations. They are bad journalism.

NOTE: There will be no News Guy posting Wednesday, and perhaps not on Friday either, due to a death in the “family.” That’s in quotes because the person who died was not a relative, but a dear friend of many years.

But first, some correction and amplification:

Until about 1:15 PM Friday, readers of Friday’s post may have understood that the State Senate was toying with the idea of diverting $6.89, otherwise known as six dollars and eighty-nine cents, from one fund to another.

Presumably most readers of this web site are alert, more alert in this case than is, at least sometimes, the writer of this web site, and understood that what the meant was $6.89 million.

But what’s few zeros among friends? And thanks to the readers who noted the omission.

Also, Sen. Ann Cummings is chair of the Senate Finance committee, not, as Friday’s post said (again, until corrected), the Appropriations Committee. Susan Bartlett is Appropes chair.

Something else was absent from Friday’s post because it was not clear on Thursday, at least not to the News Guy, and apparently not to many legislators. That $10 million to be raised by considering some capital assets – expensive houses, stocks and bonds, etc. – when applying the “income sensitivity” provision on the statewide school property tax is not slated to go into the Education Fund.

Instead, for the first time, money from the school property tax would go into the General Fund.

Like any policy change, this one might be defensible, or even wise. But it does stretch if not violate the understanding that the school property tax would be used to support the schools, not the rest of state government. It’s only $10 million, but when it comes to taxes, experience shows that the first exception is rarely the last.

Now, to today’s main order of business, also inspired by readers who have communicated by email, old-fashioned phone calls, and even older-fashioned personal conversations (you may remember them; the kind where the conversers are actually in the same place at the same time).

The question: why, right after the entire United State Government adopts a comprehensive change in the health care financing system, is the Vermont Legislature passing a bill to study comprehensive change in the state’s health care system?

Good question, because it can be answered with one word: politics.

That’s a description, not a condemnation. Politics, the method by which free people govern themselves, is not a pejorative. It’s a reality.

The political reality against which lawmakers have based their political decision to pass S.88 http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2010/bills/Senate/S-088.pdf (in separate House and Senate versions that have yet to be resolved) is that Vermont is home to a politically significant  minority of voters who are convinced of the superiority of a ‘single-payer’ health care financing system—basically Medicare for everyone.

No, that was an understatement. These folks are not merely convinced of the superiority of a single payer system; they are committed to such a system with a fervor approaching that of a religious zealot’s  devotion to his faith, with comparable intolerance toward dissent.

This too is description not (except for the intolerance part) condemnation. Clearly, there is a case to be made for a single-payer system. It is how most civilized (prosperous, democratic) countries finance health care. In those countries, everyone is covered, they live longer, healthier lives than Americans, and it’s all done for a lot less money per person.

The focus here today. Though, is not on the policy, but on the politics, the first requirement of which is, in the words of  Richard J. Daley to “know how to count,” raising the question of how big is this constituency of single-payer enthusiasts.

Not very. Nobody has polled on the matter, but we are almost surely talking about less than 10 percent of the adult Vermont population, though probably more than five percent. For purposes of discussion, then, let’s say seven percent, or about 20,000 voters.

Ah, but it’s a strategically positioned seven percent. Just about every one of them identifies with either the Democratic or the Progressive Parties. Furthermore, just about every man (and woman)-jack of them will vote. Unless the Progressive Party puts up its own candidate for governor, most of them will vote in the Democratic primary in August. In what is likely to be a low-turnout election, this faction will make far more than seven percent. It could come close to a majority.

Obviously, then, two outcomes Democrats – and especially Democratic candidates for governor — want to avoid are: (1) Displeasing these primary voters and (2) Annoying the Progressives so much that they decide to find a gubernatorial candidate of their own, who would siphon off more votes from the Democratic contender than from Republican, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie. Months ago the Progs declared that Democratic support for a single-payer health care system was among their sina qua nons for staying out of the race.

So it should be no surprise that Sen. Doug Racine, one of the five Democrats running for governor, introduced the bill to engage a consultant to study health care reform, with specific directions to look into the single-payer option. No surprise either that few Democrats opposed it.

There is no suggestion here of insincerity or cynicism on the part of Racine or the other Democrats. Racine has long been a single-payer proponent. He no doubt thinks it would benefit Vermont, and he could be right.

(Or not. If there is a strong case for the entire nation to adopt a single-payer system, there is an equally strong case for a single state to avoid it, for reasons to be discussed in another post soon).

Nor is the earnestness of other Democrats and Progressives in the Legislature open to doubt. Judging from a couple of overheard conversations outside the second floor cafeteria in the Statehouse the other day, some of them are so solemn and intense about the subject that they may have lost touch with reality.

But sincerity and political self-interest are not mutually exclusive, and there seems little doubt that whatever else they may be doing, the Democrats are pandering to one of their core constituencies. Absent that intense minority of single-payer enthusiasts, this bill might never have come before the Legislature.

Again, this is observation, not condemnation. All political factions pander to constituencies. Gov. Jim Douglas, for instance,, has of late been pandering to the home builders and the all-terrain vehicle riders. Politicians not only have to pander, but up to a point they should. It’s part of democracy.

The point at which they should not pander, of course, is reached when the interest of the pandered-to constituency is actually contrary to the public interest. But that does not seem to be the case here. The worst that can be said about this consultant study is that it will spend $250,000 that may not have to be spent. As unnecessary expenditure, this is small potatoes, and for a function likely to be more productive than the comparable expenditure on the pointless pornography-detecting software the Douglas Administration is in the process of installing on state computer systems.

Besides, the process might do some good. The consulting firm is likely to look at the possibility of replacing the fee-for-service method of paying doctors. Many health care economists consider fee-for-service second only to the high price of prescription drugs as an explanation for why health care is so much more expensive in the U.S. than elsewhere.

But the consultant report will not pave the way for Vermont to adopt a single-payer health care system. That’s because Vermont, on its own, is not going to adopt such a system, not now, and possibly not ever. Federal law forbids it until at least 2017, and while Congress could theoretically grant the state a waiver from the prohibition, the prudent Vermonter would be advised neither to hold his/her breath nor to bet next month’s mortgage payment on that outcome.

The real – if not, it should be stressed, the intended — purpose of this legislation is not to change Vermont’s health care system. It is to send a signal to a small but potent constituency. It seems to have worked.

The News Guy is hot on the trail of several complicated and controversial stories, none yet ready for public consumption.

But fear not. He will not leave you in the lurch, There are always some tidbits, none worth a major take-out on its own, but interesting in small doses.

Consider, for instance, the recent meeting of the Rural Sociology Association in Madison, Wisconsin. Like most gatherings devoted to rural America, this one seemed pitched mostly to the South and the Midwest; lots of talk about the pros and cons of ethanol. But there was also some information that could apply to small towns and rural areas everywhere, even in Vermont.

As reported by Bill Bishop in The Daily Yonder, several of the sociologists reported that their studies found that while rural and small town residents want to make money (who doesn’t?) that wasn’t all they wanted. It wasn’t even what they most wanted.

Terry Besser of Iowa State University studied “thriving small towns” which, she said, were more likely to be in remote areas than close to cities. That seemed to be because the more remote areas required more community involvement.

“You may have less income if you’re more remote, but you will have more connections,” she said.

Rural people who lived near a city were likely to work in that city, meaning they had longer commutes as well as weaker ties to the town they lived in.

Incomes were higher, but she said there was a sense that “people were just living in a place,” rather than really belonging to it.

On the other hand, residents of the tiniest towns and villages seemed less content than those who lived in slightly larger municipalities. In very small towns, she found (according to Bishop) “people burned out working on their communities. Communities of at least 5,000 residents ‘have an advantage over those 1,500 and below,”Besser said.

Similarly, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel of the University of Nebraska found that people moved to small towns in that state seeking “a slower way of life,” and closer ties with relatives. Only a third said they moved to take a higher paying job.

No doubt that’s true of many Vermonters. Not that anyone wants to be poor, or even low-income. But apparently a great many people have figured out that – contrary to what one reads in some circles – it isn’t necessary to be all that high income, either.

The lesson being that in pondering “economic development,” its costs, as well as the benefits ought to be in the mix.

Speaking of costs and benefits, here’s an item that the boys in biz school would probably warn against, as it comes under the heading of free advertising for the competition.

But have you noticed that there’s a new, on-line, newspaper in the state? It’s called vermontdailynews.com, and you are invited to Google away for it.

It isn’t really competition, since it: (1) concentrates on Chittenden County rather than statewide matters; and (2) seems to do little (or maybe no) actual reporting on its own. It aggregates nicely, though, and the photography is superb. Word has it that the guy who runs it is a photographer, but for some reason he doesn’t identify himself (or anyone else) in the “About” link.

Don’t be shy, fellas. Tell us who you are.

The health care debate is nationwide, and not specifically a Vermont issue, especially because it’s pretty clear that a substantial majority of Vermonters favor the Obama/Democratic approach to changing the system, if not changing it even more (you will note absence of the word “reform,” a word honest reporters ought not use; “reform” means “to improve by alteration.” Whether the proposed alteration is an improvement is precisely what is at issue).

But along with the other northern tier states, Vermont gets a little attention because it borders Canada, whose health care system is held up as a paragon of virtue by one side and as a sinkhole of horrors by the other. Many a Vermonter knows both: (1) a neighbor who sneaks over to Canada for less expensive prescription drugs; and (2) a wealthy Canadian who has come to the U.S. for elective surgery (paying for it out of pocket) rather than wait months to get the same treatment there.

How pleasing then to find a peer-reviewed, intellectually honest , comparative study of health care in the two countries by American and Canadian physicians and policy experts. It was actually a study of studies, and here’s how we know it’s intellectually honest: it says that for some ailments Canadians seem to get better treatment, but for others it’s the folks South of the border who get better results.

Anyone who resists the temptation to oversimplify and overstate his/her case should be taken seriously.

The study was limited to examining whether there are “differences in health outcomes (mortality or morbidity) in patients suffering from similar medical conditions treated in Canada versus those treated in the United States.”

Neither country “won” in every category. Even these folks, though, have to conclude that by and large the Canadian system serves its people better, not to mention a lot cheaper.

“Despite the limitations of the available studies, some robust conclusions are possible from our systematic review,” the report concluded. “These results are incompatible with the hypothesis that American patients receive consistently better care than Canadians. Americans are not, therefore, getting value for money; the 89% higher per-capita expenditures on health care in the United States does not buy superior outcomes for the sick.

“Canadian health care…produces health benefits similar, or perhaps superior, to those of the US health system, but at a much lower cost.”

But we knew that.

Mt. Mansfield. photo by Jared C. Benedict

Today’s opus will be presented as three un-related chapters, each with its own title, as follows:

1—Vermont the Healthy?

Among Vermont’s other distinctions, it seems to be Number One in health-consciousness.

In the latest Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Vermont scored 69.1 on the “healthy behavior index score,” higher than it did last year and 1.3 clicks ahead of second-place Hawaii.

This does not prove that Vermonters are healthier than anyone else. In fact it doesn’t prove anything; it’s survey research, which provides indications, not incontrovertible fact.

The indications are that Vermonters take care of themselves better than other Americans. They are less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise, most likely to eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that being best in America does not necessarily men being very good. Overall, the survey found that the “nation as a whole (is) dropping substantively on the Healthy Behavior Sub-Index, from 63.7 in 2008 to 62.6 in the first half of 2009.” In fact, “Mississippi, whose score ranks among the bottom 10, is the only state to record a statistically significant increase in its healthy behavior score.”

So there’s little justification here for Vermonters getting a swelled head about their (relatively) good habits. To begin with, there doesn’t seem to be all that much specifically “Vermontish” in these results. Almost all the states in the Northeast scored reasonably well, as did the Rocky Mountain states and the West Coast (except Washington State and Nevada.). To some extent, then, being health-conscious is a regional habit.

And probably an educational habit. More than 35 percent of adult Vermonters graduated from college, more than in all but five other states. College graduates tend to be more health conscious, not to mention more affluent. Not only do they know that they ought to go to the gym, they can afford the membership.

On the other hand, Vermont is the most rural of the states in the top ten, and there is ample evidence (such as this 2005 study in Pennsylvania) that rural residents don’t have the healthiest habits. They are more likely to smoke, less likely to exercise, and they gobble up lots of fried foods.

Meaning that perhaps it is the residents of Chittenden County and a few others outposts who take good care of themselves. But the survey didn’t get down to the county or town level.

The Gallup survey says it provides “a daily measure of people’s well-being…based on the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as not only the absence of infirmity and disease but also a state of physical, mental and social well-being.”

Whereupon we segue, as the TV folks would say, into……

CHAPTER TWO: VERMONT THE GOOD?

One way lots of Vermonters stay healthy is by doing stuff outdoors. That’s not in the Gallup survey, but we know from many sources that people in this state are more likely than most other Americans to hike and camp out, to paddle a kayak or canoe, to work in their gardens or in the woods.

Now comes evidence that all this activity not only helps make a person healthier. It can him or her a better person – kinder, more generous, less selfish. Contact with nature, says a new study “brings individuals closer to others, whereas human-made environments orient goals toward more selfish or self-interested ends.”

A bit of skepticism is in order here. Psychology lacks the precision of physics. Studies such as this one – conducted by psychologists Netta Weinstein, Andrew K. Przybylski, and Richard M. Ryan – sometimes conclude with the conclusions the studiers wanted to find before they started.

But these folks have credentials – Weinstein is a clinical psychologist at the University of Rochester – and their findings sufficiently intrigued the editors at the interesting, lively, new Miller-McCune Magazine that they wrote about them in an article called “Immersion in Nature Makes us Nicer.”

Why would it? Writer Tom Jacobs reports that “Weinstein and her colleagues suggest the answer lies in an enhanced sense of personal autonomy. ‘Nature affords individuals the chance to follow their interests and reduces pressures, fears, introjects and social expectations,’ they write.

Introjects? A term the meaning of which seems to be in dispute but is related to making too big a deal of oneself.

If both un-confirmable and un-refutable, the notion does seem to make some sense. Not there aren’t some very nice couch potatoes and a few avid white-water paddlers who are real stinkos, but connecting with the natural world (and this includes spending time with your house plants)would seem to reduce stress, encourage a contemplative outlook, and keep one on an even keel (except, literally, in that kayak in white-water).

And speaking of even keels, we segue to….

CHAPTER THREE: ET TU JACOBE?

Did everybody note that even Gov. Jim Douglas would not come right out and say what he (almost surely) knows is true: that this business about “death panels” in the proposed health care legislation is some combination of dishonesty and insanity?

Asked about it at his press conference last week, the Governor, as reported by Terri Hallenbeck of the Burlington Free Press in the paper’s Vermont Buzz blog, would only note that the argument was “an example of the kind of rhetoric that’s distracting us from fundamental reform.”

“But he did not come out and denounce the death-panel debate nor would he say he felt confident the proposed legislation didn’t include death panels,” Hallenbeck wrote. “He said that like most members of Congress he had not read every word of the legislation.”

No condemnation here of Douglas, who was doing what he had to do. Oh, it would have been admirable for him to have said (in somewhat more diplomatic language), “this stuff is crazy.”

But that would have been dangerous, and what is interesting is why it would have been dangerous.

In the latest polling on the subjects (NBC News/Wall Street Journal), 45 percent of the respondents said they thought the health care proposals before Congress “Will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly.”

Those proposals will allow no such thing.

Checking the polls’ “internals, “ it’s reasonable to conclude that the percentage in Vermont is smaller, probably closer to a third, roughly the percentage of Vermonters who voted for John McCain last year.

In other words, that third is Douglas’s base. A politician can not afford to tell his base that they are (not to put too fine a point on it and using the term in its colloquial rather than its clinical context) out of their minds.

Or, more gently, that they have allowed themselves to believe outright lies.

But maybe “allowed is less accurate than “affirmatively chosen” to believe outright lies, which leads to the question of why so many people would so choose.

A complicated question, perhaps pursued another time. Meanwhile ponder what it means that a sane and responsible governor fears to suggest that some of his constituents are acting in a manner neither sane nor responsible.

It’s in a poll. The poll was taken by Macro International of Burlington, a respected firm whose surveys have been used by businesses and advocacy groups in Vermont for years.

Here are the results: Seventy-seven percent of those surveyed would support a temporary state income tax surcharge on those earning more than $500,000 a year. Eighty-two percent would support raising the cigarette tax by a dollar to subsidize the health care programs.

That sounds impressive. Actually, it sounds unbelievable. It’s hard to get a 77 percent majority-much less 82 percent-for almost anything. Asking a random sample of people whether they approve of motherhood and apple pie would probably get more negative responses than these two questions did.

The questions  on the income tax surcharge the cigarette tax were inserted into a broader survey that Macro takes four times a year on behalf of various clients, according to Stephanie Ezzo, the company’s assistant research manager.

“I bought these two questions,” said Peter Sterling, the Executive Director
Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security.

Sterling bought them and wrote them. He is an advocate, not a pollster.

“It is not a neutral question,” Sterling acknowledged. “The question is worded in a way that elicits a greater understanding of the issue. I honestly say that because I don’t believe people think about their taxes going to specific programs. They think their taxes are going to some guy sitting behind a desk.”

The wording of the questions breaks one basic rule of polling-asking respondents only if they would support the higher taxes. A polling question should ask whether the respondents support (or favor)  or oppose. Presenting only the favorable option “leads the respondent by suggesting the position … of an authority with which it might be difficult for the respondent to disagree.”

That’s the fancy language  the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) uses to explain that some respondents, when hearing only one option, tend to assume that it is the “correct’ or expected choice.

In addition, the questions linked the proposed tax hikes to Catamount Health and Dr. Dynasaur, two of the most popular programs in the state. Dr. Dyanasaur, which has provide health  coverage for low-income children for more than a decade, has acquired a reputation in the state close to that of…well, motherhood and apple pie. Catamount Health is much newer. But according to a poll taken for the state by Lake Research Associates a year ago, it is overwhelmingly popular.

Had the questions just asked about “health programs for low-income people”  without mentioning the popular Dr. Dyanasaur and Catamount Health “brands,” the results might have been different.

Furthermore, respondents can be influenced by the questions that came earlier in the survey. These are not being released. Stephanie Ezzo said she could not divulge the other questions in the survey, taken for other clients, mostly businesses. She would not even say whether any of the earlier questions had dealt with health care, poverty, or tobacco, subjects that could have altered the outlook of some respondents.

“Other clients can participate so (the survey) oftentimes jumps from subject matter to subject matter,” she said.

According to the AAPOR, earlier questions can set up a “context effect.”  For example, according to its web site, “if you ask questions about a specific issue like the economy before asking what the most important problem is facing the nation, respondents will be more likely to name the economy in that subsequent question then they would have been without having that context set up for them.

In that statement, the AAPOR was talking about deliberate distortion. That is not the case here. Neither Sterling, who said his organization paid $1,000 to get the two questions in the poll, nor Macro International is guilty of unethical conduct.  Sterling does not seem to have been trying to pull a fast one. He apparently did not know the basic rule about asking “support or oppose.”

Nor does there seem to be any reason to doubt Ezzo’s assertion that “everything we do is methodologically sound.”  Macro International is a reputable company, and “piggy-backing” questions into a larger poll seems to be standard practice in Vermont.

It’s just that the results aren’t really credible thanks to the flawed wording and the mystery about what questions may have preceded the two about tax hikes and health care.

From various polls it’s reasonable to assume that a majority of Vermonters-but not three quarters or 80 percent majorities — would in fact favor both those tax increases to keep the health care programs affordable for poor and low-income people. In neither case would the tax hikes violate the fabled wisdom of the late Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana, for years the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The typical American’s tax preference, Long said, was “Don’t tax you. Don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.”

Most people in the state do not smoke, and only a tiny percentage earn close to $500,000 a year. Few, then, are that fellow behind the tree.

And clearly most Vermonters are pro-health care. That Lake Research Partners study found that a large majority agreed that “the state should help people get affordable health coverage if they cannot afford health coverage on their own or get it through a job.”

Still, Vermonters, like other Americans, retain a visceral distaste for higher taxes, even if they are not the ones being taxed. So the huge pro-tax margins in this poll seem…well, too huge.

But Sterling did at least try to find out whether voters would consider some selective tax increases to finance social programs. On the other side of the debate. Gov. Jim Douglas and his aides simply keep asserting that Vermonters are opposed to any and all tax hikes, making no attempt whatever at providing anything resembling evidence.