The News Guy did not exactly take a President’s Day holiday. But because so many potential information-providers did, and because last Friday’s post was actual news, this seemed like the right time to deal with the housekeeping-clarifying-mopping up function to which Fridays are often devoted.

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.”

A majority of  the people of this state-no, make that a huge if not an immense, majority-favor raising taxes on either tobacco,  the very wealthy, or both, “in order to keep Catamount Health, Dr. Dynasaur and other state health care programs affordable for low income Vermonters.”

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.

Who needs support from the Legislature?

Not Gov. Jim Douglas, according to Gov. Jim Douglas, at least not yet, at least as reported in Sunday’s Free Press. What he has, Douglas claimed, is the support of the people for his plans to control school spending and to alter Act 250.

Because the people will greet his ideas, “warmly,” he said, soon enough the “legislators will come to understand how serious this is.”

How does he know this? He doesn’t, of course. This doesn’t mean he’s wrong. The Democratic leaders of the Legislature who greeted his proposals coolly think the public agrees with them. They don’t know, either.

This assumption and proclamation of public support without the slightest evidence that the assumer/proclaimer in fact has public support is common in Vermont. Not that it’s all that rare elsewhere, but at least in some of those elsewheres assumers and proclaimers can cite some poll numbers. There seems to be relatively little polling here, perhaps because the state is too small to make it worth any polling firm’s while to conduct many surveys.

Polling, to be sure, is not without its flaws, one of which is that pollsters keep measuring the public opinion of issues on which there is no public opinion. One of Douglas’s proposals, for instance, is to replace “de novo” reviews with “on-the-record” reviews when the Environmental Court reviews the Act 250 decisions of district commissions.

Were a pollster to call a random sample of Vermonters and ask respondents whether they favored that change, there is no doubt what a majority would reply: “WHA????”

Of course, the pollster could explain what it all means. But depending on the polling firm’s politics, not to mention its integrity, the explanation could be worded to produce a result favorable to one side or another.  The pollster as disinterested observer/scholar performs a useful service to the public. The pollster as partisan/ideological hack does not.

Absent any polls, it’s close to impossible to know whether Douglas’s conviction that Vermonters agree with him is discerning or delusional. But it does seem likely that he has a slightly better chance to convince people to follow him on the education issue than on his plea for what he and some reporters and headline writers continue to call “permit reform.”

(DIGRESSIONARY NOTE TO REPORTERS/EDITORS/TV AND RADIO NEWS DIRECTORS: HONEST JOURNALISTS CALL NOTHING “REFORM,” DEFINED BY THE DICTIONARY AS “IMPROVEMENT BY ALTERATION.” WHETHER THE ALTERATION IS IMPROVEM ENT OR DEGENERATION IS PRECISELY WHAT IS AT ISSUE.

The reason is that school financing and the property tax that supports so much of it is certainly a situation, and arguably a problem, in Vermont. By almost all standards-cost per pupil, cost per capita, cost per dollar-Vermont spends more on its public schools than most other states. Whether this is a “problem,” at all, or whether Douglas’s proposed solution is the right one, is presumably one of the things the Legislature-and probably the public-will be debating over the next few months.

But it’s highly questionable whether Act 250-the 1972 law that controls large-scale development-is even a situation, much less a problem. Underlying Douglas’s push to change it is an assumption that the law as it stands suppresses economic growth in the state. “We must recognize that a ‘working landscape’ requires Vermonters to be actually working – not simply admiring the view,” he said in his Inaugural speech last week, suggesting that, by stifling enterprise, the law keeps people unemployed.

But not only is there no credible evidence that Act 250 smothers economic growth in Vermont; there is no credible evidence that economic growth is in fact smothered. For years, the state’s economy has grown as fast as-often faster than-the rest of New England. Median income rose steadily, more businesses move into the state than out of it, and unemployment remains well below the national average.

Which is not to say that nothing can be done to get the economy to grow faster. It’s even possible that weakening Act 250 would be a step in that direction. Possible but unlikely. In 2007, more than 99 percent of the 428 Act 250 permits sought by developers were approved, 81 percent of them within four months. Less than two percent of the permits issued on the district level were even appealed to the state Environmental Court.

(OK, these figures come from the Vermont Natural Resources Council, an environmental group, requiring a grain of salt. But while VNRC’s analyses are suspect, its numbers are probably accurate. First, it says it got them from the state’s Natural Resources Board. Second, it would be inane for VNRC to put out bogus figures; it would be caught, and discredited).

Since this examination was made on Sunday, it was not possible to get comment from the other side of the debate, which is basically the real estate and construction industries. But in the past they have pointed out that the law deters some developers from even applying for permits.

Let’s think about that for a minute. You’re a developer with a project that can make you some money. Yes, you have to go through this permit process. But knowing (and if you have half a brain in your head you do know) that the chances of getting the permit are better than 99-to-1, would you (assuming again, that half-a-brain) decide not to apply for it?

Only if you thought there was a good chance you wouldn’t get it. And you would only think that if the project did in fact involve substantial environmental damage.

Which means: That the law seems to be working exactly as intended, stopping projects that would, for instance, destroy wetlands, endanger critical wildlife habitat,  pollute the water, etc.

As intended, and presumably as wished for by the people of the state. Of course, that was in 1972, and perhaps they’ve changed their minds. Absent a poll, we don’t know whether they have, but it seems doubtful.