It's been hard to resist…

…abandoning my general dislike for what the initiative system has become. Taxing the rich, legal pot and Costco vodka all have their appeal. Still, if that's what the people want, there's nothing in any of them that couldn't be accomplished by a more courageous and representative legislature, and an engaged electorate pressuring them to do the people's business as the people see fit. It's called "representative democracy" and I'm old-fashioned enough to think it's worth a try.

It's kind of reassuring, then, to see big oil lining up behind Tim Eyman's latest tax craziness. The Big Oil Initiative (that's what we're going to call it, right?) should be a big enough target for my hostility that even if I can't bring myself to wave the flag for the apparently good guys, I can leave 'em mostly alone.

My peeps!

Via Strange Bedfellows…

A KING5/SurveyUSA poll found that 56 percent of respondents thought legalization was a good idea.

Time to make the upper left the higher left?

On yet another issue…

…my Representative represents me. My own personal Congressman, via The Hill

“Clearly, people all over the country are using marijuana. We have filled our prisons at enormous costs...and we have no money for education….We spend more, and more, more money in [the Drug Enforcement Administration], and rounding up people, and spraying fields, and all this stuff. And, from a social policy, I don’t see any reason not to legalize it, control it, sell it, [and] tax it.”

Me neither, Jim, and thanks for speaking out.