Since I've warned you, it's not my fault if you laugh at the cartoon.

And not my fault if you notice that Ramirez is expressing, in a more extreme form, the opinions of 67 per cent of the respondents in a New York Times/CBS poll.

The Democrats' 1st District Chair, Nicholas Carlson, is acting extremely bizarrely.

As the GOP 39th District Chair, I never would have told a candidate they needed to bow to me. A district chair is no one special, and candidates have no need to genuflect. Sure, it's wise to talk to them, but it's not a "snub" to not do so, except in the overinflated ego that perceives it.

And neither would I claim that a candidate needed to "earn" the right to run as a Republican to my satisfaction. Instead, I would merely expect that Republicans wouldn't vote for someone who hadn't done anything to help the party they were trying to represent, respecting the right of the candidate to run as he wishes, and the wisdom of the voters who will likely find that candidate wanting. I'd advise the candidate he would have little chance without name recognition or support of the party, especially against an incumbent, but I wouldn't tell him whether to run. That's his choice.

I especially love that Carlson says you can't support charter schools and be a Democrat. Tell that to President Obama, maybe?

But the best part is when he makes a "demand" that the fellow stop using the party label. He has no authority to make such a demand. The party does have that right to a limited extent, but Carlson isn't the party, and worse -- in this particular context -- the law is quite clear that the candidate has a right to say what his "party preference" is, which the courts have ruled does not amount to a de facto claim of affiliation with the party. Feel free to tell the world that the guy isn't a Democrat (we've told the world that certain candidates are not Republicans), but you have literally no right to make the demand that they can't say what their party preference is.

Your gripe, Carlson, is not with a candidate you dislike that calls himself a Democrat, but with Senator McAuliffe and other politicians in both our parties that have cheerleaded our downward slide toward the confusion that is now represented by the "Top Two" primary, leading to the various federal lawsuits both our parties have engaged in.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

I use a Community Transit bus from Snohomish County to downtown Seattle most weekdays. I live about 4.5 miles from the bus stop, and as the weather's been improving and my bicycle's been recently tuned, I've thought about how I could manage riding my bike.

At the park-and-ride I use there's six bike lockers. They are a few feet tall and a couple wide and they fully enclose the bikes, with the doors secured by padlock. I thought this would be a nice place to put my bike, but with limited resources, I didn't think one would be available. I looked into it more, and my chances were decreased further: to get one, there's only a one-time deposit of $50, and you keep it as long as you like. I emailed Community Transit and got my name on a waiting list.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that I'd never seen anyone use the lockers that I could remember, and there's probably people who get the lockers but rarely use them, because there's no disincentive to holding onto it without using it. I thought that maybe they should charge a quarterly fee for use, just to encourage people to give up a locker they aren't using.

So last week, I got email that a locker opened up, and oh, by the way, they might start charging $5 a month just to make people more likely to not hold on to lockers they aren't using. The letter noted that if I wanted to not participate because of the extra fee, that would be fine; my response is that -- while of course I want that money -- it's the right thing to do, and I'm glad they are doing it.

It reminds me a little bit of an Obama anti-Romney ad I saw this morning bashing Mitt Romney because he tried to maximize profits, and fired workers. But ... maybe it was the right thing to do. Maximizing profits is good. Firing workers is often a good and necessary part of that. I was fired a couple of years ago, with a bunch of other guys who had been around more than 10 years, because the company thought I cost it too much money. Maybe they were right. I was never once angry at the company or the people who made the decision, though I was disappointed in it, because I understand that they thought it was in the company's best interests: not just the shareholders, but the other employees and customers, too.

I don't want to be fired (erm, "laid off") or pay extra fees, but I do want organizations to do economically right things, and I won't selfishly hold it against them when they do.

Here's his post, where he argues that the Times reporter tried to impose a narrative on our whooping cough epidemic that doesn't fit the facts.

Who's right?  (Extra credit for those who bring personal experiences or actual numbers to the disccusion.)

I read a brief summary of the account of Romney's "disturbing" bullying incident. It didn't sound like anything worth mentioning to me. So I heard people talking about how terrible it was, so I went back and read the more complete account, thinking I must've missed something.

Apparently, I didn't.

Look, Mitt Romney apparently did something pretty nasty. But he was a young man at a prep school in the 60s. That's not to say everyone would do what he did: I was bullied, and stood up to people who bullied me and others. I hated bullying and I still do. But I also recognize the truth that young men will act this way, and there's nothing we can do about it. It's the responsibility of the bullied to stand up to it and deal with it, and it's the responsibiity of the bullies to grow out of it, and it's the responsibility of the adults to help both of them.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade, I made a conscious choice to no longer give a damn about people who disliked me, for whatever reason. It was as if a massive weight was lifted off my shoulders. I no longer allowed my emotions and view of self to be controlled by what others thought. Granted, not everyone can do this, and it was doubly easier for me: not only do I have a personality that allows me to easily do this, but I was physically larger than most of the bullies, which meant that while maybe I was teased or even occasionally attacked, it was far less for me than it was with smaller kids who were bullied. But the principle still holds: you have bootstraps; use them.

I've occasionally thought about kids who have bullied me and my friends in the past, and with one exception -- one kid who bullied everyone all the time, pretty much, and I stood up to him and got a sucker-punch bloody nose for it -- I can't see how I could possibly hold it against them today in any way, even thinking that it says anything negative about them as grown men. They were boys. That's what boys do. It doesn't mean anything now. Even for the one exception, I like to think he grew out of it, but he was on a pretty bad trajectory for a long time.

At the end of the day, with the kid Romney apparently attacked, it's just hair. If I found out my son did this, I probably would have given him a really terrible haircut with patches missing and made him go to school every day for a week with it, along with apologizing to the other kid, and loss of certain privileges for awhile. And if I found out my son was attacked like this, I'd simultaneously help him deal with it gracefully, while encouraging the school and other parents to take action. These are all learning experiences that happen with boys, and they're pretty well universal.

The only story this story tells me is that Mitt Romney was a young man, which I had already guessed.

Good.

it's a book many more should read, though I will admit that it is not the easiest book to read — for a number of reasons.

Since I read the book last year, I'll take this opportunity to give Dickie some hints on what to look for.  He can find Bill Clinton's part in the scandal here, which regulators failed here (and what they are doing now), and, most of all, Fannie Mae and Friends here.

Most of the Democrats on that list have Obama connections.  Obama asked Johnson to be on his vice-presidential search committee, but dropped Johnson after "it was reported that he had received loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, a company implicated in the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis".  Franklin Raines has also advised Obama, at least informally.  Clinton's wife works in the Obama administration.  Thomas Donilon is currently Obama's National Security Advisor.   Larry Summers was Obama's first head of the National Economic Council.   Robert Rubin is one of Obama's part-time economic advisors.  Richard Holbrooke served in the Obama administration as a special envoy, until his death last December.  Thomas R. Nides is currently Obama's Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.  Peter Orszag was Obama's first head of the Office of Management and Budgeting.

Obama chose at least 2 people on that list to be informal advisors, and named 6 of them to official positions in his administration.  (I think it likely that he would have found a place in his administration for Johnson and Raines, if it weren't for their legal problems.)  It is almost as if helping destroy Fannie Mae and cause the 2008 financial crisis was a resumé-enhancer for our current administration.

Gretchen Morgenson, for those not familiar with her work, writes on business for the New York Times.  Her political views aren't as obvious as those of many other "mainstream" journalists, but she appears to be on the left.

(I haven't read the Mclean/Nocera book and have mixed feelings about Joe Nocera.  Unlike many "mainstream" journalists, he doesn't seem to be a hater, but he doesn't seem to be the most careful observer, either.)

We're committed to getting Initiative 1185 on the ballot to extend the 2/3's vote requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes. It passed with 64% of the vote just two years ago, the 4th time voters approved it. There is a clear consensus on the necessity of extending the 2/3's before the next legislative session. Olympia went hog wild in 2010 during that "2/3-less" session imposing $6.7 billion in higher taxes. They'll do it again next year with taxpayers being targeted with EVEN HIGHER job-killing, family-budget-busting, recession-extending tax increases without I-1185's protection and extension.

Jack & Mike Fagan are working non-stop processing petitions and donations and answering letters, phone calls, and email requests. To supplement our volunteers who are out collecting signatures, we've hired a paid signature gathering company to give voters more opportunities to sign I-1185's petitions. WE ARE FOCUSED ON SUCCESS. Each week, our PO Box in Spokane is packed with petitions and donations from supporters, but THEY'RE NOT COMING IN AT A PACE THAT ENSURES OUR SUCCESS.

There's not much time left to raise the funds and the signatures. So far, we've received lots of regular sized donations (650 individual donations since January) from our regular supporters and we're starting to see a groundswell of enthusiastic support from the business community like I-1053 received in 2010 (the endorsement by the Association of Washington Business last March has really inspired enthusiastic support from a broad cross section of the business community as exclusively reported by the Washington State Wire on April 21st - Business Groups Lining Up Behind Eyman's New Anti-Tax Initiative).

Here's a couple of recent emails:

From: Larry Jensen
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 7:07 PM
To: Tim Eyman

hi tim, i have been sending one filled petition a month and am putting one in the mail today. thanks for your efforts. we voted last night to send $1000 from the skagit farm bureau. larry
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bruce Beckett
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 9:22 AM
To: Tim Eyman
Subject: I-1185

Tim, The Washington Restaurant Association is sending $25,000 today to Voters Want More Choices. Thank you for your work on this important initiative, we appreciate it.

We also received two $100,000 donations from BP Oil and Conoco Phillips (not hard to guess why: Plan for oil-barrel 'tax' dies, SEATTLE TIMES, February 2, 2012, It would have cost taxpayers $2.75 billion and is the largest tax in Gregoire's $3.6 billion proposed tax package. "(Senator) Haugen said a barrel charge probably would be declared a general 'tax' by Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, and there's no way it could win a two-thirds legislative majority for tax hikes, as required by Tim Eyman's Initiative 1053).

And we are deeply grateful for and impressed by the donations received during the month of April and reported on May 7th by the "Association of Washington Business Political Action Committee" with some of their funds being used to I-1185 -- they filed as a "continuing" committee with the PDC (I would guess that this $5.1 billion tax increase in 2010 likely inspired their support for I-1185):

* Washington Realtors $25,000
* Port Blakely Tree Farms $10,000
* Equilon Enterprises $50,000
* Tesoro Companies $100,000

We are deeply grateful for this groundswell of support from our regular supporters (650 so far) and the business community -- a broad coalition of supporters who understand that united we stand, divided we fall -- but it's still not enough to guarantee I-1185's success. We need a lot more contributions and signatures during the months of May and June to ensure that voters get their 5th opportunity to approve the 2/3 protection.

There is no limit on how much a person, company, or association can contribute to an initiative campaign because the voters will have the final say. Personal checks, company checks, association checks are fine:

Voters Want More Choices -- Save the 2/3's
PO Box 18250
Spokane, WA 99228
Campaign phone number: 425-493-8707

Street Address: N 7020 Wall St, Spokane, WA 99208

Tax ID # for Voters Want More Choices is 76-0713455

Checks made payable to "Voters Want More Choices -- Save the 2/3's"

I want to hear from you. We've been asking for contributions since we started. We are asking that you all participate and be as generous as possible.

Help us make this initiative a success (and help pay back Tim's leftover loan to I-1053 from a 2nd mortgage on his home).

Go to our website to help.

In a much more realistic accounting of the quality of business opportunities in Washington State than the 7th best spot Forbes offers, ChiefExecutive.net named Washington the 37th best state for business.

In part, the discrepancy is likely due to Forbes not considering Washington's unique taxation system for business, and at least some underestimation of the negative impacts of regulation in the state, but that's not the whole story. There's a very clear difference in bias between the organizations where Forbes favors generally liberal, Democratic states much more highly than it does more conservative, Republican states (and ChiefExecutive.net, vice versa).

Whether this is an intentional bias on the part of one or both organizations, or bias in how the various criteria are chosen, or some other reason, the results are striking: Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, and Minnesota are all more than 20 spots higher in Forbes than in CEO. And Indiana, Nevada, Florida, and South Carolina are more than 20 sports higher in CEO than in Forbes.

Mapping these results to E.C results or party control is left to the reader.

President Solyndra O'Foodstamp brought his traffic-scrambling entourage into Seattle today for a $35,000 brunch with the 99% and a $1,000 per ticket Dave Matthews concert for the other 99% of the 99%.

The Seattle Times was all giddy over the President's support for gay rights, which he refused to support (publicly) until yesterday, and his support for "women's rights to make [other people pay for] their own health-care decisions."

Left out of the Times article is the President's admission that "Sometimes I forget" about the magnitude of the recession.

In all fairness to President Spread-the-Wealth-Around, it's only human to forget how tough times are if one's family gets to enjoy millions of dollars worth of vacations around the globe at other people's expense.

Fortunately, I don't have to pay much attention to Seattle's traffic problems — but those who do have my sympathy — so I will pass this question on to readers who do.  His fund raising locations and timing look almost certain to cause massive traffic problems, but he probably could improve them.

For instance, could he make traffic even worse by leaving just a little bit later?  Or changing one of the locations slightly?

(There's a description of his plans in this Seattle Times article.)