Demos caught in budget gaffe: Open mike picks up faction's talk of profiting from a crisis (Lynda Gledhill, July 22, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle) The state's budget crisis took a surreal turn Monday after a frank discussion by a group of Democrats on the budget and its impact on their re- election was accidentally broadcast throughout legislative and reporters' offices. Members of the Assembly Democrats' progressive caucus were heard making candid, if not intemperate, statements such as one by Los Angeles Assemblyman Fabian Nunez that they may want to "precipitate a crisis" over the budget this year. That might persuade voters to lower the two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass a spending plan, he reasoned. "It seems to me if there's going to be a crisis, the crisis should be this year," Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said during the meeting. "What you do is you show people that you can't get to this without a 55 percent vote." The unintentional broadcast was interrupted when someone informed the group that a microphone was on. "Oh s--," Goldberg said as the sound was cut. Is there a sitcom on TV as amusing as the Democratic Party is these days?

Gotta love those Dems. If a financial crisis doesn't exist they're creating one.