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TODAY

Tuesday 10 February 1998

Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Inconvenient Public Opinion

We like to keep in touch with Beltway pollsters for a mix of spins. The tendency around Liberty Tree World Headquarters is to presume that markets need frequent nudging for environmental purposes ("Adam Smith and Automobile Efficiency") so we rely on libertarian analysts to remind us that government can be a meddlesome problem-maker and that American voters are not so enthusiastic about a gasoline tax as the Dutch.

A particular favorite is Public Opinion Strategies, an Alexandria firm that specializes in Republican clients (one of its partners is Gene Ulm, who appears in the Five Questions feature of our Newsroom section). POS recently sent us a copy of its Perspectives newsletter. POS advises GOP candidates, for example, that "focus should be on teens and drugs -- not cigarettes." "A colossal 83% of the electorate," POS says, "indicate that they are personally concerned about the increase in drug use which has taken place during the Clinton years -- more than mention health care, education, the environment, taxes or retirement."

Well, maybe. People like to say the right thing to pollsters. Still, it's interesting to read some of the data. Voters were asked: "Just suppose you had a 14 year old teenage SON/DAUGHTER, you were cleaning out his/her pockets to do laundry and found one of the following items. Which one would be most upsetting?" The choices:

Herb wins going away, winning 60% in the most-upsetting-substance-in-the-pockets-of-sons category and 49% in the most-upsetting-substance-in-the-pockets-of-daughters. Condoms are worth a big scene if found in Jane's pocket (19%), but not in Billy's (7%). Least upsetting? Tobacco: 6% for sons, 5% for daughters.

Actually, the most upsetting thing for me would be the idea that I would bother to clean out my kids' pockets to do laundry. No. The crumpled homework assignments, the hall pass, the loose change -- they all end up at the bottom of the wash cylinder, or waterlogged in the pocket they came in, or (in the case of tissues) applied to the surface of the garments themselves.

Maybe the environment isn't as important as drug use, but we just will not believe that teen reefer matters more to voters than family purchasing power (FPP). And the hot-button public issue most effectively linked with FPP is taxes. POS cites a recent CNN/Gallup poll that 94% of the electorate thinks the federal tax system should be changed.

Which is what environmentalists think, too. For years a small network of economists and analysts have been trying to assess the ways in which the national tax code can be reformed to serve environmental purposes. Could the country enact a "tax shift" that rewards savings and efficiency rather than waste and pollution?

The problem, as POS makes clear, is that everybody wants a big change in the tax system until you make it clear what big change you're talking about. Carbon taxes are unpopular by a big margin. But there also majorities against a flat tax and against a national sales tax. Almost half the flat-tax supporters want two different levels of flat (17% for typical incomes, 25% for the upper echelons) and less than half the voters want to do away with home mortgage deductions. "There is no consensus even among tax-minded Republican voters," notes POS wistfully.

It is highly unlikely that Al Gore or any other candidate is going to go before the voters in two years on a platform that includes a tax overhaul to spur efficiency and help meet the Kyoto quotas. But sometime -- maybe just sometime -- the libertarians and the ecologists could spy enough of a common interest to foment a good debate.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

In this week's installment of "In Other News...," Tom Turner reviews a review. What happens when a reviewer in a medical periodical sharply criticizes a book on toxic contaminations without revealing that she is in the employ of one of the alleged contaminators? An unpleasant, illuminating controversy from the usually genteel precincts of the refereed journals.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

2/9: Remember Penn Station
2/6: Adam Smith and Automobile Efficiency
2/5: Clean Water, Naturally
2/4: Roll, Storms, Roll
2/3: Land Purchase Fever
2/2: Groundhog Day in the Persian Gulf
1/30: Trees and Hormones
1/29: Things To Come (2)
1/28: Things To Come
1/27: 'Bye, 'Bye Brazil
1/26: Jaywalking and Jaydriving
1/23: Good Biotech, Bad Biotech
1/22: No More Roads
1/21: Swordfish
1/20: Electromagnetic Sleuthing
1/16: Good News Way Down Under
1/15: Twenty-Four Forty or Fight!
1/14: Your Tax Dollars at Work
1/13: Johnny Mobil Appleseed
1/12: Superbowl, Scientific Uncertainty, and the Future of Al Gore
1/9: Goodbye, Delaware
1/8: Leaf Blowers, Old Cars, Class Conflict
1/7: The Great Improvement That Didn't
1/6: Proactive, Shmoactive
1/5: Mediocre Landscapes and Hope for the Planet
1/2: The Greatest Environmental Cause of the Year
12/31/97: The Top Twelve Environment Stories of 1997

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.