Bubblehead’s Questions Without Answers

Bubblehead has some questions for Bill Sali. Some are good. Some, however, are combative. He may get an answer, he may not. It’s a busy campaign for Congress. At this point, Larry Grant’s campaign has blocked my Trackbacks, so so much for opposition presence in politics. A few of these questions, I’ll address here, as best I can. Not being Bill Sali, I can’t read his mind, but I can make reasoned suppositions:

4) On TV last Friday night, a clip of Rep. Sali was shown where he said that those who opposed the Governor’s plan (paraphrasing here) “apparently think it’s OK for people to lose their houses because they can’t pay property taxes.” It was fairly obvious to essentially all interested observers that the opponents of the plan favored an alternate plan that would have similarly reduced property taxes for homeowners (along with no increase in the sales tax). Does Rep. Sali actually believe that those who opposed the Governor’s plan really want people to lose their houses because they can’t pay the property tax, or was he “fudging” the truth in his floor statement? If he does believe that was the case, is that an indication that Mr. Sali didn’t really follow the issue? Can we expect him to do better as a Congressman?

I think the question to address is what was actually before the House. Was the Democratic alternative before the House? No. While I would wish it were, it wasn’t. The reason: Democrats introduced it in a partisan way. I think you could have gotten some Republicans on board, but the way they brought it out was incredibly combative. It was an attack on Jim Risch and the “special interest session.” The bill was not seriously managed. It was meant as a publicity stunt. If it was seriously considered to be passed, you’d have seen a different tone. You’d have seen Democrats calling Republicans and saying, “What can we do to work together?” Instead, the Democratic motive was to make political hay and to gain an issue to use against the Republicans. So, with or without Bill Sali’s vote, the Democratic plan would not be considered.

The question then goes to what is actually before the House. What was before the House was a bill to reduce property taxes and to increase sales taxes by a somewhat smaller amount. The only real option before the House, if the Governor’s measure was not approved, was to do nothing. The result of voting “no” on the underlying measure was to deepen a bad situation this December. In addition, with the likelihood of the Democrat backed Proposition 1 passing in the Fall, sales taxes would go up anyway, and people could still be priced out of their homes.

Now onto his next two questions:

5) Regarding the Vice President’s recent fundraising visit to Boise, most media observers estimated that there were 150-200 contributors in the room. The Sali campaign put out a statement saying that there were “approximately 200-250″ people there. It’s been a couple of weeks now, so I’m guessing you’ve gotten the final numbers of contributors nailed down. How many people were actually there? Did you count Secret Service agents? Will those numbers be confirmed when you submit your next disclosure of campaign contributions? If not, why?

6) Regarding the recent fund-raising breakfast in Post Falls headlined by the Speaker of the House, Rep. Hastert, media observers said the Sali campaign initially stated that there were 120-140 contributors attending, but later issued a press release indicating that there were 150 contributors there. One person reported on the Spokesman-Review website that he estimated there were only 80 contributors in attendance, outside of the Speaker’s group and the Sali campaign staff. How many people who paid the $35 to get in were really there? Will these numbers be reflected in your next campaign contribution disclosure? If not, why? And why aren’t there any reports about the event on your website? I know if the Speaker of the House came to an event in my honor, I’d write about it.

These two I can answer without working for the campaign. In regards to campaign reports, they will not indicate how many people were at either event. Federal law requires all contributions over $200 to be itemized. Contributions under $200 are listed in bulk under unitemized contributions. To get in to see the Vice-President, tickets were $125 and to see the Speaker, tickets were $35. So no, you’ll never know how many people were there. It’ll just have to be one of those great unanswered questions.

As to numbers, look, once you get above 20, you run out of toes and it gets hard to count. In Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” the total estimates are between 200,000 and 500,000. That’s a pretty wide berth, wouldn’t you say? If they’re puffing from 200 people to 250, what’s the point? Does that really impress the public? Some issues are just not worth debating and this one is so much inside baseball, that it really devalues the more valid questions he asks.