While it may come as a shock to some regular readers, we here in the Cheap Seats are avid market watchers. Bloomberg is one of the first channels on the TV in the morning, and CNBC is one of the presets for the satellite radio in Cheap Seats One.

We're not market watchers for any financial reasons -- these are the Cheap Seats, not the Luxury Box -- but rather for the wealth of information that financial markets provide on a day to day basis, the type of information you can't get from politics.

Those two worlds collided yesterday with the failed bailout vote in the House of Representatives, and the interplay between the two was not unlike watching first contact between two alien civilizations.

As the "no" vote crossed 218, the market tanked by some 700 points, as financial reporters sat stunned, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.  After the vote, financial types threw around words like "shameful," while legislators opine against "Wall Street fat cats."

See CNBC's on air reaction here.

There's a good reason these two worlds don't understand each other and clashed on Monday.

Wall Street is basically a numbers operation. Risks and rewards are in most cases quantified, known and transparent. For investors, bankers, brokers and other financial functionaries, operations can be reduced to numbers, plain and simple. If the reward outweighs the risk by enough, do the deal. Simple.

Washington, by comparison, is a swamp. The political calculations of 535 legislators and their staffers, interactions with campaign donors, constituents and lobby groups are opaque, seldom open to the public and most often inscrutable. What looks like a good idea may not come to pass if the proper egos aren't stroked, seniority isn't honored and the wrong oxes get gored. The process is often inscrutable, even to the seasoned Washington watchers.

Legislators for the most part aren't experts on things like credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities, TED spreads and other implements in Wall Street's financial lexicon. Meanwhile, financial people are more often than not familiar with Washington at a superficial level, not the deep inner workings of the sausage factory.

With either $700 billion or the fate of the U.S. economy on the line, depending on who's talking at any given time, there's a lot riding on whether or not these two cultures can learn to understand each other.

It's going to be a interesting week.









 

The fight between Republicans in the House of Delegates and Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine continued Friday with no end in sight.

The scrum started on Wednesday, when House Majority Leader Del. Morgan Griffith issued a press release unloading on the Kaine administration for a policy decision that essentially forbids Virginia State Police chaplains from invoking the name of Jesus during public prayers.

Six of 17 chaplains resigned their clerical duties in protest of the order. Find the background in our story here, and a strong Democratic reaction here.

Gov. Tim Kaine was none too pleased with Griffith's initial volley, and fired back a sharply worded letter to the Salem Republican, accusing him of having his facts wrong.

The press release that you distributed yesterday concerning Colonel Flaherty's directive
to his department's chaplains contained a great deal of misinformation, which I would like to clear up.

Find the whole letter here.

Not one to let a letter go unanswered, Griffith fired off his own missive today, claiming it was Kaine that had his facts wrong.

As your letter contained multiple mischaracterizations about the news release issued by my office on 24 September 2008, as well as inaccuracies about the current circumstances surrounding the decision of more than one-third of the Virginia State Police chaplains to resign those duties, I felt it best to reply promptly and thoroughly.

Find Griffith's letter here. An online petition to change the policy went live Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, other pundits watching Capitol Square say the scribbling class is paying entirely too much attention to Jesus, state troopers and the U.S. Court of Appeals, and not enough time talking about the $3 billion budget hole facing Richmond.

From Jim Bacon:

Pardon me for dissenting, but a debate over whether or not state chaplains mention "God" but not "Jesus" in their invocations is stupefyingly not what we need right now.

That may well be the case. But until Gov. Kaine releases his list of first-round cuts, professional Richmond-watchers like those of us in the Cheap Seats are stuck in a holding pattern.

And while it's not the most highbrow entertainment, a good 'ol fashioned fist fight between Morgan Griffith and Tim Kaine is kind of fun to watch.

There's not much coal in the Northern Shenandoah Valley, unless you count a few chicken-on-a-stick grilling experiments gone wrong here at Cheap Seats HQ.

But just over the ridge in West Virginia, and 300 miles down Interstate 81 in southwest Virginia coal is still king. Mining accounted for more than 5,000 jobs in Virginia in 2006, according to the National Mining Association.

The Democratic ticket of Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have spent several days in coal country, both Virginia and Pennsylvania, burnishing their clean coal credentials, hoping to reassure coal voters that their environmental message wouldn't put them out of a job.

This video, in which Biden says "We're not supporting clean coal" and makes it clear he's no fan of new coal-fired power plants, probably didn't help.



Needless to say, the campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain pounced with lightning speed, turning out this web ad this morning.



Team Obama fired back, calling McCain's attack "false." "This is yet another false attack from a dishonorable campaign. Senator McCain knows that Senator Obama and Senator Biden support clean coal technology. Senator Biden's point is that China is building coal plants with outdated technology every day, and the United States needs to lead by developing clean coal technologies," said spokesman David Wade. Election Day is 42 days off.

In a normal year, Virginia's political attentions have long since shifted away from Richmond by late September. Legislators have long since left town, and statewide candidates are out and about drumming up votes, not walking the halls of Mr. Jefferson's Capitol.

But this is no ordinary year. As Congress considers a $700 billion rescue for Wall Street banks choked with toxic debt, Virginia is dealing with its own financial issues -- a revenue shortfall on the order of $2 billion, according to Gov. Tim Kaine.

Taking that much out of a $77 billion, two-year budget is bound gore somebody's ox badly. Which is of course why groups that have a significant interest in the state budget spend millions of dollars to pay lobbyists and organize themselves -- to keep their share of the goring to a bare minimum.

Here in the Cheap Seats, we're looking forward to a rash of e-mails and TV ads along the lines of "Tell Gov. Kaine and the General Assembly that [generic interest group goes here] is vital to Virginia's future." Kaine is due to announce his cuts on Friday, so stay tuned.

And while the onus will be on Kaine to make immediate cuts, legislators will be back on the hot seat in January to propose amendments to the two-year plan and balance out the differences.

Combine that with the tales of financial woe and ruin flowing out of the Commonwealth Transportation Board in recent weeks, a gubernatorial and House of Delegates election that kicks off for real in January, and 2009 starts to look like a real barn burner on Capitol Square.

We're headed to the Hob Nob!

While it's not quite the Wakefield Shad Planking, the Top of Virginia Chamber of Commerce's annual HobNob in the Valley is the Northern Shenandoah Valley's biggest annual confab of political types by far.

With Virginia in play for the presidential race, today's event should be an affair. On the presidential level, Attorney General Bob McDonnell is slated to speak for Republican candidate John McCain, while Kevin Griffis, the communications director for Obama for Virginia, will speak for the Democratic candidate.

UPDATE 1: Rain has forced the event inside the Dunn School of Pharmacy building, which has compressed the festivities in more ways than one. The good news is that the rain forced the invited speakers to parade through a media gauntlet, which made interviews much easier (for the media, anyway). YouTube links to follow as soon as the video uploads.

UPDATE 2: Kevin Griffis, Obama for Virginia communications director.



UPDATE 3: Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell



UPDATE 4: 10th District Democratic congressional candidate Judy Feder



UPDATE 5: Incumbent 10th District Rep. Frank Wolf. Note: there's a bobble in the video because the idiot camera guy (me) stopped and started the video quickly. There's a crossfade that covers about 10 sec. while I hit record again.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Gilmore is up and running with his first TV ad, and he's not pulling any punches.




Gilmore is a bit late to the television party in this race, though. Democratic nominee and fellow former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner has been on the air for three months ... and managed to turn around a response ad in just a few hours.



It's going to be quite a ride to November.

Democrats in the House of Delegates have decided to take their message to the Internet, announcing late last week that they've started a podcast. Find the initial verbal missive here, or on their website here.

Reporters are often of two minds when covering a long running story like the one of former Republican state Senate candidate Mark Tate.

For some, it's an exciting ongoing challenge that promises interesting copy no matter what the day brings. 

But for those who live in the Cheap Seats, bringing a long-running story to an end looks a lot like the end of "The Lord of The Rings." Having barely escaped the Crack of Doom with his life, Frodo looks to Sam and realizes with sudden relief that his task is over.

But even as you lie on the rocks and wait for the eagles to come and carry you back from the courthouse to Cheap Seats HQ, it's a good idea to remember that you'll never make everyone happy.

Over at Too Conservative, commenter NSVGOPER takes me to task for not asking some critical questions of Tate. Read the whole post for context, but in a nutshell, the commenter wonders if I asked some critical questions of Tate.

Before you assume he is innocent, someone should ask him some questions? Garren Shipley never did - or at least he has never mentioned it in his articles. Here are some questions to be asked:

1) Mark - did you ever deposit campaign checks into your personal account?

2) Did you report loans from yourself to your campaign that were not actually made?

3) Did you ever report loans or contributions from others that were never made? For example, from your attorney?

4) Did you ever write any checks to yourself from your campaign account?

5) Were you ever interviewed by the Sheriff's Office and shown what their case was about?

Ah, but I did ask all of those questions more than once over the past year once we managed to find out what exactly Tate was being charged with -- which turned out to be no mean feat. So, without further ado, questions and answers.

I broached the subject of converting campaign funds to personal use during our "exit interview" earlier this week, and Tate said in no uncertain terms using words that I can't print here that no, he didn't. It's worth pointing out that none of the indictments charged Tate with converting funds to personal use, either.

As to loan issues, they were resolved to be either computer errors on the part of the State Board of Elections or paperwork errors, which have since been corrected, by Tate.

As to contributions that were reported incorrectly, they were legion. Tate admitted that from day one, as we've reported to no end. The checks from his lawyers Edward MacMahon were logged incorrectly. Tate's team says that has all been corrected to the satisfaction of the State Board of Elections.

NSVGOPER's fourth question has also been asked and answered. Yes, Tate wrote checks from his campaign funds to his restaurant. But that's a lot more common than most people realize. When a candidate owns a business and uses business resources for the campaign, they have two choices -- report it as an in-kind donation, or reimburse their business.

Some candidates take the practice a step further and reimburse themselves for campaign expenses paid out of pocket. I've read thousands of Virginia campaign finance forms, and it's not uncommon to see candidates write themselves a check for several tanks of gas, cell phone bills and other expenses they incur.

Question five is a bit touchier than the others. Tate has said time and again that his first contact with Loudoun County Sheriff's Office was a call the night before the indictments were handed down in 2007. Special Prosecutor Matthew Britton backed that up in open court, telling a judge that the sheriff's office had no notes nor any other written investigative materials to present to the defense.

If the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office interviewed Tate about the case, then the investigator took no notes during the interview, or somebody's not telling the truth.

At the end of the day, there's always more information about any story than we can cram into a small space and still interest the general public. Hopefully this helps to settle any lingering questions about the whole affair.

Maybe it'll get that eagle over here faster, too.