Goldy

Back in August, Democratic challenger Darcy Burner concluded her unprecedented $123,000 netroots fundraiser with an innovative, Internet town hall meeting on Iraq. Hundreds of concerned citizens from around the nation tuned in to the live stream that afternoon, to hear Burner announce her intention to work with military experts to develop a coherent plan for both pulling out of Iraq, and reconstructing that shattered nation in the absence of our armed forces. On Monday, March 17, Burner will present the fruits of her labor to the Take Back America conference in Washington D.C., along with an impressive group of military experts and fellow challengers.

Joining Burner at the unveiling of the Iraq strategy document will be Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Jared Polis (CO-2), and Tom Perriello (VA-5). Eric Massa (NY-29), Larry Byrnes (FL-14) and George Fearing (WA-4) have also signed on to the plan, with many more to challengers come. It is an impressive and ambitious plan that calls for the sort of diplomatic and economic surge that the Bush administration has ignored for all too long. It is anything but “cut and run.”

One of the criticisms routinely launched at Burner is that she lacks the experience and accomplishments to recommend her to Congress… as if a prior legislative career was ever a prerequisite for higher office. But if this is the type of energy and leadership Burner displays as a mere candidate — bringing together retired generals and other military experts along with congressional challengers from across the nation on such a difficult and divisive issue — just imagine what we can expect from Burner as the congresswoman from Washington’s Eight District.

Yesterday we learned that the NRCC illegally obtained an $8 million loan in October 2006 based on fabricated audits and other financial documents, at the same time it was dumping money into tight races like WA-08. So how much did Rep. Dave Reichert benefit from his party’s shady financial doings?

Between October 9, 2006 and election day, the NRCC reported $2,268,255.08 of independent expenditures on behalf of Reichert, the bulk of it in the form of attack ads on challenger Darcy Burner. That’s $2.3 million they might not have had available to spend, if they hadn’t falsified their books. Every document, every loan, every transfer and every expenditure was signed for by Christopher J. Ward.

All those TV ads portraying Burner as a fiscally irresponsible liberal who couldn’t be trusted with taxpayer money…? They were authorized with the signature of an embezzler who was cooking the books to fraudulently obtain loans.

I’m just sayin’.

“Whatever happened to creative destruction?” That’s the question Sean-Paul at The Agonist asks in response to news that Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest securities firm, is getting an emergency bail-out from the Federal Reserve.

It really is socialism for the big boys but cutthroat capitalism for the little people in this country. In my opinion, Bear Stearns, more than any other firm on Wall Street should be allowed to fail. No handouts, or bailouts from the Fed. If this were 1998, well, we all know what happened when Bear declined to aid in the bailout package of LTCM. So, that’s one reason. But the other is this: the more the Feds prolong a real shakeout the worse it will be when it finally comes.

Democratic efforts to provide universal health care are decried from the right as “socialized medicine,” but for some reason we hear nary a whimper from the free market ideologues when banks and brokerage firms are propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Sign the dotted line on a predatory, sub-prime mortgage, and you’re told to live with the consequences of your mistake… but blow tens of billions of dollars buying high-yield — yet worthless — sub-prime loans, and the Fed rides to your rescue.

Huh. Who exactly are the socialists?

The General has more on Sen. John McCain’s spiritual adviser.

“The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf.”
— Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA), former NRCC chair

Things are going from bad to worse for House Republicans, now that Christopher J. Ward — the “gold standard” of Republican campaign finance experts, and the treasurer of 83 GOP fundraising committees — is now suspected of embezzling millions of dollars from his clients. “Several hundred thousand dollars” were apparently stolen directly from the NRCC over a period of years in a financial fraud that could have far reaching consequences.

Ward is now alleged to have falsified numerous FEC filings. The NRCC apparently had nearly a million dollars less cash on hand than reported to the FEC at the end of 2006, and $740,000 less cash on hand than reported just a few weeks ago. But Ward wasn’t the only beneficiary of his crimes:

Officials told The Post that the NRCC’s problems may be more extensive. Republican lawmakers and former committee staff members now allege that Ward fabricated audits and other financial documents for 2003 to 2006, some of which were turned over to a Wachovia Bank branch in McLean in October 2006, when the NRCC borrowed $8 million in last-minute money for congressional campaigns.

That’s right, NRCC money spent on behalf of Dave Reichert in the final weeks of the 2006 campaign was obtained fraudulently, using “fabricated audits and other financial documents.” Loans obtained based on “outside audits” that were never conducted, were used to buy TV ads that helped put Reichert over the top.

And Republicans accuse Democrats of being the party of waste, fraud and abuse…?

UPDATE:
I’ve just started searching through the FEC reports and already found this NRCC expenditure from Oct. 13, 2006:

STRATEGIC MEDIA SERVICES
1023 31ST ST. NW
4TH FLOOR
WASHINGTON, DC 20007

Purpose of Expenditure: Issue Ad Placement
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: DARCY BURNER FOR CONGRESS
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is Washington in District 08
Date Expended = 10/13/2006
Person Completing Form: CHRISTOPHER J. WARD
Date Signed = 10/13/2006
Amount Expended = $424948.80

Notice the name on the form: “Christopher J. Ward”. So Ward falsifies audits and other documents to obtain an $8 million loan, and then turns around and spends nearly half a million dollars of it attacking Darcy Burner. And I’m guessing there’s another million or so more where that came from spent during the following weeks.

Congratulations Frank Blethen… you just won yourself a tax break!

Yesterday the state Senate joined the House in overwhelmingly approving HB 2585 (only Sen. Rodney Tom voted nay), a bill that redefines for B&O tax purposes the term “newspaper” to include its online editions. The result is that revenue from online advertising will now be taxed at the special discounted newspaper rate of 0.484 percent, instead of the standard 1.5 percent rate currently charged. Although this tax cut will cost the state $3 million in the next biennial budget, I’m guessing Gov. Gregoire will quietly sign it into law, rather risk the ire of the state’s editorial boards during an election year.

Kudos to Postman for risking his annual bonus by posting on this issue the other day, and extra special kudos to him for pointing out his bosses’ hypocrisy:

Allied Daily Newspapers, the newspaper lobbying group, has been making the case for the tax cut. Meanwhile, newspaper editorial boards have been urging lawmakers to save money this year to prepare for lean budget times ahead.

The Times said the state could set aside $1 billion-plus and that lawmakers should cut spending until they have reached that goal.” And the P-I, which is in a joint operating agreement with The Times, has said lawmakers have to prepare for hard choices, “even if that means holding back on some of the new spending being discussed …”

Our state’s newspaper industry already costs Washington state and local governments $40 million per biennium with their sales tax exemption for newspapers, so what’s another $3 million, huh? Meanwhile, we can make up the lost revenue by cutting health care for children, or the fat paychecks of our state’s teachers. It’s all about priorities.

But there’s one more nefarious aspect of this bill that Postman and other Olympia observers have missed (or didn’t seem to think it worthy enough to comment on.) Take a look at the language of the bill, and how it defines a newspaper:

What that means is the Times gets the discounted 0.484 percent rate on ads served on Postman’s blog, while dirty fucking hippies like me have to pay more than three times that!

Now, I don’t generate nearly enough ad revenue from HA to pay a B&O tax, but I hope to someday, and this 20th century definition of “newspaper” secured by industry lobbyists is intentionally anticompetitive. Crosscut bills itself as an “online newspaper,” and has gobs of venture money behind it, but because it doesn’t actually print on “newsprint in tabloid or broadsheet format folded loosely together without stapling, glue, or any other binding of any kind,” its owners must pay more than three times the tax rate as Blethen and his buddies. (That is, assuming Crosscut has any ad revenues. Or, um… readers.) Where is the sense in that?

Newspaper readership is relentlessly moving online, and there’s nothing the industry can do to stop it; it’s simply a more efficient and flexible way to deliver and consume content. But this shift in media consumption patterns also tears down longstanding barriers to market entry, creating the opportunity for bloggers like me to nibble away at the dailies’ audience and influence, and the potential for new online news ventures to seriously vie for ad dollars with relatively little upfront investment. And so the newspaper industry has convinced the legislature to discourage and disadvantage new competition by charging them more than three times their tax rate.

I am as good a writer as anybody at the Times or the P-I; it is the quality of my writing that has always been the key to HA’s success. That the Legislature should choose to penalize me and other entrepreneurs for publishing online rather than on dead trees is incomprehensible, especially in a state that has led the nation and the world in commercializing the Internet. It is offensive. It is insulting. And it will not stand.

With 24 hours left in the 2008 session, state Sen. Brian Weinstein has issued the following press release:

Today, I communicated to the Speaker’s staff that I’ll agree in principle to Speaker Chopp’s three-point proposal with some minor technical and substantive changes, if he’ll agree to allow a homebuyer to bring a legal action against a builder who has violated a building code after giving the builder notice and an opportunity to fix it.

A builder is already required to comply with building codes, but Washington law affords a homebuyer no rights to enforce the building code. This is a bare minimal right that all Washingtonians must agree a homebuyer should have.

I know the Speaker is a man of his word, and I would only do this with a good faith representation from him that he will work diligently to expand the right of access to the courts to aggrieved homebuyers in the next Legislative Session.

Really… is that so much to ask for? The right to sue a builder if they violate a building code, and refuse to fix it? I invite the pro-BIAW trolls in the comment thread to justify to me why homebuyers should not have this right?

I don’t normally reprint emails forwarded my way without asking permission, but since this email from Attorney Sandy Levy to Rep. Mark Ericks was CC’d to a number of journalists, I think it’s pretty much fair game.

Dear Rep. Ericks:

Boy, was I a sucker. I believed you were an interested, impartial and objective task force chairman, appointed by Speaker Chopp to investigate problems in the homebuilding industry and to report to the Speaker with recommendations. You told me when we met in August of last year that you would convene your committee, bring me in to speak, and bring in homeowners to hear first hand the problems they were having. Instead, you never convened that group, at least not with any homeowners or their representatives.

Now I find out the following article, published today:

While some accounts explain that Chopp (who killed Sen. Weinstein’s bill late last week at the behest of the Building Industry Association of Washington) crafted his alternative proposal (a study!!) with Democratic Rep. Mark Ericks (D-1, Bothell), they fail to report that Rep. Ericks was the guest of honor at last Tuesday’s BIAW fund raiser at the BIAW’s offices in Olympia.

Mark, it’s not as though there were no homeowner groups with real complaints, with visible problems you could have visited yourself. One of them is just a few minutes away from the Capitol, such as the 130 unit Cooper Crest subdivision in Olympia. Yet you and the Speaker misinformed the public that you were leading an independent task force and you were meeting with stakeholders. I don’t know who the stakeholders were, other than BIAW. I know your committee didn’t meet with me, as you had promised. I guess money talks doesn’t it? Homeowners just don’t have the fat wallet that BIAW does to line legislative pockets. From the same article as above comes this illuminating piece of information:

Killing Sen. Weinstein’s bill—which would have guaranteed a warranty for consumers when they buy a new home (allowing consumers to sue contractors for faulty or shoddy work)—was the BIAW’s top legislative priority this year. The powerful conservative lobby—which bankrolls the GOP—also maxed out to Democratic Rep. Ericks last election cycle.

Misleading the public and trying to manipulate public opinion should be grounds for dismissal as a public official. What you have done is a disgrace to democracy. And, my representatives have abetted this trampling of citizen rights. Where is the guiding principle that you disclose any appearance of impropriety, any appearance of a conflict of interest. How do you take money from BIAW, then say you are an independent fact finder on a task force charged with analysis of a problem? Doesn’t that strike you as shocking?

Sandy Levy

The emphasis is Mr. Levy’s.

My personal outrage has never focused solely on the bill itself; there isn’t a session that goes by in which I’m not disappointed by the death of bills that didn’t even get a hearing, let alone a floor vote. Rather, my outrage, like that expressed by Levy, stems from the manner in which this bill has been consistently blocked by the militia-funding orca-killers at the BIAW, without anybody on the Democratic side having the balls to acknowledge the truth. I expect to be disappointed by the Democratic majority either because they genuinely disagree with me on issues of policy or on political strategy; I just don’t expect them to be shills for the enemy. I’ve got nothing against builders or contractors or their industry, but the organization that represents them is viciously anti-Democratic, and politically amoral at best. The BIAW is an organization dedicated to legislating the labor movement out of existence, and opposing all and every environmental regulation. And they have given every indication that they will stop at nothing to achieve their agenda.

If Rep. Ericks has a reply to Mr. Levy, in which amongst other things, he can defend his appearance as a “guest of honor” at a BIAW fundraiser, I’d be happy to post it here. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine what that defense might be.

The DCCC announced today its first round of “Red to Blue” challengers, and not surprisingly, Darcy Burner has made the cut:

Kay Barnes (MO-06)
Anne Barth (WV-02)
Darcy Burner (WA-08)
Robert Daskas (NV-03)
Steve Driehaus (OH-01)
Jim Himes (CT-04)
Christine Jennings (FL-13)
Larry Kissell (NC-08)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24)
Eric Massa (NY-29)
Gary Peters (MI-09)
Mark Schauer (MI-07)
Dan Seals (IL-10)

During the 2006 cycle the Red to Blue program raised nearly $22.6 million for 56 House challengers — an average of $404,000 per campaign — three times the total raised in 2004. There’s no reason to expect those numbers not to continue to trend up, depositing a hefty chuck of change in Burner’s campaign coffers.

Our local media prefers to mostly ignore her, but Burner has quietly become one of the most talked about Democratic challengers in the nation, both within the national netroots and the Democratic Party establishment. Expect big things to come.

UPDATE:
Red to Blue candidate Larry Kissell has a diary up on Daily Kos, which gives a great explanation about what this race is really about.

Beer, vulgarity and erudite chit-chat flowed freely last night, as we begin to get back into our Podcasting Liberally groove.

Me (Goldy), Lee, Dan, Carl, and John provide live coverage of Hillary Clinton’s big win Barack Obama’s disappointing 23-point victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary, a philosophical discourse on the intersection (difference?) between politics and prostitution, the tanking prospects of Sen. John McCain in WA state and what this means for Republicans down-ticket, plus a conversation with EOI Executive Director John Burbank, a candidate for WA’s 36th Legislative District. Tune in and find out what would have made the life of this particular downtrodden white boy so much easier and more successful.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_march_11_2008.mp3]

The show is 47:56, and is can be downloaded here as a 43.9 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Darryl for producing the show, and Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

Much ado has been made recently over a proposal by a group of local business “leaders” to save the Sonics and keep them in Seattle. The local group proposes buying the Sonics and investing $150 million of their money in renovating Key Arena, conditioned on an additional $150 million in matching taxpayer funds.

This is by far the most reasonably reasonable arena proposal pitched thus far, or at least it would be if not for a handful of obvious stumbling blocks: A) the Sonics’ Oklahoma City based owners insist the team is not for sale; B) NBA Commissioner David Stern has promised that Seattle would not get another franchise if they allowed the Sonics to leave; and C) there was no chance in hell the tax authorization legislation could make it out of Olympia this year, coming just a week before the end of the session. And oh yeah… D) a substantial majority of Seattle voters don’t seem to give a shit whether the team stays or leaves.

According to a March 3, SurveyUSA/KING-5 poll which seemed to fly under the media and political radar, 77% of respondents said they opposed spending public funds to renovate Key Arena… about the same percentage of voters who approved Initiative 91 in 2006, a citywide measure that barred exactly that. Only 37% of respondents indicated they even care if the Sonics leave Seattle in two years, and a full two-thirds of respondents believe the team’s move to Oklahoma City is already a done deal. Hardly a popular uproar demanding the Legislature to drop all their current business and push through an arena funding bill.

Not that the folks behind this proposal ever believed they’d get a bill out of the current session. These are savvy folk. Rich folk, who’ve spent plenty of money on Olympia lobbyists in the past. They know how the system works, and they know that any proposal pitched during the final week of the session isn’t a serious proposal at all. Why they pitched it at the very last minute, I don’t know, but before any of you diehard Sonics fans get too excited by media efforts to hype this proposal into genuine hope, take a look at the facts. No bill is going to pass this session to rebuild Key Arena, and until we hear otherwise, no NBA team is available to play in it.

I’m not saying the proposal isn’t for real, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the local group eventually gets the taxpayer money they seek — if they can actually produce a team — but I’m guessing the sudden display of urgency is mostly intended to impress their fellow billionaires at the upcoming NBA owners meeting. And while I suppose it is interesting to watch the intricate mating rituals peculiar to the strange birds who comprise our nation’s moneyed elite, I’m just not so sure that us average folk really care all that much anymore.

When I snarkily commented a while back that while the rest of the presidential field was flying around on chartered Boeing 737s, only Sen. John McCain was campaigning from a French built Airbus A320, I had no idea that McCain’s choice in aircraft was anything more than symbolic. But in the wake of the controversial Air Force refueling contract, we’re learning that McCain’s connections to both Airbus and the tanker contract are closer than anybody imagined.

It was McCain who authored an amendment undermining “buy American” rules that formerly required military equipment to be manufactured in the United States, and McCain who “prides himself in the role he played blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing.” And now we learn that three of McCain’s current top aides have been lobbying the Air Force — and presumably McCain — on behalf of Airbus.

Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain’s campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain’s national finance chairman.

[…] McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, has been a key figure in the Pentagon’s yearslong attempt to complete a deal on the tanker. McCain helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus.

McCain’s campaign claims that “they never lobbied him related to the issues,” so I guess those two letters McCain wrote the Defense Department were purely coincidental.

In December 2006, just weeks before the Air Force was set to release its formal request for proposals, McCain wrote a letter to the incoming defense secretary, Robert Gates, warning that he was “troubled” by the Air Force’s draft request for bids.

The United States had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Airbus unfairly benefits from European subsidies. Airbus in turn argued that Boeing also receives government support, mostly as tax breaks.

Under the Air Force proposal, bidders would have been required to explain how financial penalties or other sanctions stemming from the subsidy dispute might affect their ability to execute the contract. The request was widely viewed as hurting the EADS-Northrop Grumman bid.

The proposed bid request “may risk eliminating competition before bids are submitted,” McCain wrote in a Dec. 1, 2006, letter to Gates. The Air Force changed the criteria four days later.

Rep. Norm Dicks called the removal of the subsidy language a “game changer” that “tilted to Airbus.”

“The only reason that they could even bid a low price is because they received a subsidy,” Dicks said last week. “And Senator McCain jumped into this and said that (the Air Force) could not look at the subsidy issue — which I think is a big mistake, especially when the U.S. trade representative is bringing a case in the (World Trade Organization) on this very issue.”

And it’s not just partisan bloggers like me who are questioning the intersection between McCain’s interference in the tanker contract and his close ties to Airbus lobbyists.

“The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency,” said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. “Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition.”

Damn right they are. (And if any Boeing advocates want to forward me some ammunition, I promise strict confidentiality.)

Meanwhile, as WA’s Democratic congressional delegation has been noisily defending Boeing and cheering on their decision to officially protest the contract, our region’s lone Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, has been awfully damn quiet about the loss of 9,000 local jobs and the role of the man he’s endorsed for president. But then, what do you expect from the 419th most powerful man in Congress… a man who lost his bid for a coveted Appropriations Committee seat to an Alabama congressman who had just days before publicly endorsed Airbus over Boeing?

Geez… the only thing more damaging for Reichert than campaigning with President Bush might be campaigning with presidential wannabe and French aerospace enthusiast John McCain.

Earlier today I accused Democratic state legislators of spouting BIAW talking points in defense of their opposition to SB 6385, the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, and I stand by my accusations. I know some of these legislators personally, I value their support on other issues, and I certainly don’t expect them to agree with me 100% of the time. But when they align themselves with the likes of the BIAW, they are doing their constituents and their party a great disservice.

The BIAW is as determined and effective a foe of progressive causes and Democratic candidates as there is in Washington state, an early financial backer of the Northwest militia movement, and an emphatic and relentless critic of environmental protections. These people play hardball, and when they win, they’re not shy about kicking us while we are down. On the election of Jim Johnson to the State Supreme Court, the BIAW’s Erin Shannon once kvelled, “It was a big ‘Fuck you!’ to all the liberals out there. […] We are kicking their ass. How many years have we whipped labor?” And these were the carefully chosen words of the BIAW’s PR Director, talking to a reporter. Message sent; message received.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and we can’t always choose our allies (hell, even Dori and I couldn’t avoid agreeing in our mutual opposition to puppy tossing), but when you adopt the BIAW’s talking points you grant them a credibility that they do not deserve, and help them further an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the interests of your constituents and to that of Washington’s Democratic majority. For if those anti-6385 talking points are presumed authoritative and evenhanded, why not the many other talking points the BIAW spews forth on a regular basis:

“One of my priority goals as the 2008 President of the Building Industry Association of Washington is to replace anti-small business and antiaffordable housing Governor Gregoire with her pro-small business and affordable housing challenger Dino Rossi. […] I am therefore not upholding my oath if I do not speak the truth about Gregoire’s record and do everything in my power to defeat her. She attacks affordable housing, and BIAW members are in overwhelming need of relief from her onslaught of attacks against the homebuilding industry. […] BIAW and its members are Rock Solid behind Rossi.”
— BIAW President Brad Spears, January 2008

“I urge you to call on President Bush to fire John McKay, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington. […] I presume Mr. McKay has adamantly refused to investigate because he’s a Democrat… I thought the process by which Mr. McKay, a Democrat, was appointed was reprehensible… Please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, Letter to Rep. Doc Hastings

“Yellow-booted thugs at DOE have shut down builders because some dirt ran off their job sites. […] These self-anointed priests of nature and the bureaucrats who encourage them are using tactics similar to those used 70 years ago in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, September 2007

“There’s an apocalyptic pessimism which seemingly runs through Seattle liberal environmental advocates. […] This attitude and this pessimism likely explains in part why Seattle has lost its children. For those optimists who look for a silver lining in everything, conservatives are having babies and liberals are not which means that eventually conservatives will outnumber liberals in Washington State.”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, September 2007

“Is this Gregoire’s new plan to revamp her Hillary Clinton-esque image of a heartless, power-hungry she-wolf who would eat her own young to get ahead?”
— Building Insight Newsletter, January 2008

“I’d like to see Frank Chopp run for Governor,” says Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington, which has spent millions of dollars supporting conservative causes and Republican Candidates. “I have a great deal of Respect for him.”
— Seattle Times, July 2006

That is the wit and wisdom of the BIAW, the folks some Democrats are looking to for rhetorical guidance in discussing this issue. The only thing more arrogant and politically dangerous than McCabe and his crew is the delusion Speaker Chopp and other Democrats seem to hold that these are people they can work with. You don’t need to watch your back Frank, because when the time comes, McCabe will thrust that knife in so deep that you’ll see the blade emerging from your chest.

Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer of New York, who once prosecuted a high-end prostitution ring as Attorney General, has apparently been uncovered as a customer of one as well. “Sources” expect his resignation is imminent.

Of course, we do not yet know the details of the investigation, or whether Spitzer is legally guilty of anything more than the misdemeanor of hiring a prostitute (if that), so I’m not prepared to comment on whether he should or should not resign. I am, however, deeply disappointed in Spitzer, who I had viewed as a rising Democratic star.

That said, I would like to take a moment to comment on the difference between the way Democrats and Republicans (the “family values” party) react to sex scandals. Spitzer has immediately come forward with a personal and public apology, but that hasn’t halted a wave of demands for his resignation from progressive bloggers, legacy media types and fellow Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans Larry Craig (soliciting sex in a men’s room) and David Vitter (diaper-wearing john) both still serve in the US Senate, while former Rep. Mark Foley’s Republican colleagues covered up his sexual predation for years, leaving House pages at risk. Republicans Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain all infamously engaged in adulterous affairs without apparent harm to their political careers… while Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob.

If Democrats want to demand higher personal standards from our own politicians than Republicans obviously demand of their’s, well, that’s up to us. No doubt Spitzer has admitted to a supreme act of hypocrisy. But if Republicans and the “objective” and “impartial” media want to join in and demand Spitzer’s resignation, they better demand the resignation of Sen. Vitter as well, lest they be branded equally hypocritical.

In defending their opposition to SB 6385, the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, several Democratic representatives have been responding to constituents with BIAW talking points, but by far the most transparently silly is this line of defense, which has been put forward in one form or another by multiple legislators:

A law passed by the legislature years ago to protect condominium owners had an unintended consequence of creating an “insurance crisis.” Because insurance for building condominiums was not available, the town center of Mercer Island has 400 plus apartments!

During the last five years, the legislature, through passage of “Cure,” “Affirmative Defense” and “Condominium Act” reform, began the process of bringing back predictability to the contractor insurance market that had been damaged from earlier Legislation. This was in response to the lack of insurance available to builders–especially condo builders.

SB 6385 would undo all that has been gained and would force medium and small contractors out of business because they would not be able to obtain third-party warranties and general liability insurance. At the very least, the cost of housing would dramatically increase for all new homebuyers.

Forget for a moment that this “insurance crisis” was created by damage claims arising from crappy construction, and that if builders and insurers had wanted to avert this crisis they could have implemented a construction inspection program instead of waiting for the Legislature to mandate one. And disregard the fact that SB 6385 merely gives single family homebuyers the same protections currently granted condo buyers today, including those reforms of the last five years, so the bill doesn’t actually “undo” anything.

Forget all that. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that the statements above are irrefutable fact, and if so… wouldn’t that imply that Speaker Frank Chopp and the other conscientious defenders of affordable housing should be working their asses off to repeal the condo warranties? Don’t condo developers deserve the same immunity from lawsuits currently enjoyed by developers of single family homes? Isn’t anybody going to protect our state’s vulnerable builders from the predatory practices of their own customers? Mercer Island already has (gasp) “400 plus apartments” for God’s sake… when will this savagery end?

You see where I’m going.

Unlike others, I don’t entirely blame the Eastside Democrats who are doing the BIAW’s dirty work; they either believe the talking points they spew, or they’ve made the shrewd political calculation that this is what they need to do to hold office in their swing districts. (Or, perhaps, some combination of the two.) But the Dems don’t need their votes to pass this bill in the House, so in the end, it all comes down to Speaker Chopp. So what is it Frank…? Who deserves your protection more, homebuyers or condo builders? Because if you’re gonna stand by and quietly watch your members repeat BIAW bullshit like this, you are laying the groundwork for the latter.