Ted Rall, Author at Ted Rall's Rallblog

Give the People What They Want

February 24, 2012•

As the Kinks said.

So I’m trying to plan future projects, particularly for Kickstarter. Obviously these will need to be popular enough for people to put up money. So my question is:

What would you like to see me do?

A trip back to Central Asia or Afghanistan?

War correspondency (Syria, Niger Delta, etc.)?

Publish a collection of my political cartoons? Of my essays? A Ted Rall Reader?

A graphic novel sequel to the Year of Loving Dangerously?

Anything else?

Please post your replies in the Comments section.

Help Wanted: Web Designer

February 23, 2012•

Ted Rall

Too wild and crazy to work for The Man?

I need a web designer for an extremely ambitious long-term project designed to revolutionize the news. You, me and other early partners in this venture will toil for free in exchange for equity shares so this would be a good gig for someone who is unemployed.

Our goal is to be reader-supported. Money follows that–if things go well.

The ideal candidate is a brilliant designer and graphic artist who thinks outside the box aesthetically and politically but knows how people interact online.

She or he will design, maintain a website and app, and expand the project’s tech side.

Imagine the most exciting idea you can about news–and this is bigger than that.

If interested please contact me through the contact form on this site with your online portfolio link, a brief letter and a resume.

Computer Fundraiser Update: $750 Raised Out of $2500

February 23, 2012•

Ted Rall

[show_olimometer]

Thank you to everyone who has already contributed! I’ll be in touch soon about your sketches and other schwag.

Someone emailed me with a good question: If I can’t make enough money drawing cartoons and writing columns to earn a living, why should anyone support you? It’s a valid question.

The simple answer to a complicated question is: This is the reality under neo-feudalism. Old media gatekeepers are no longer willing or able to compensate content providers. But the Internet brings our content to more people than ever before. In many ways, this is positive and democratizing. It used to be that you couldn’t see my cartoons unless your local newspaper carried it. And even they didn’t run all of them.

The old gatekeepers sucked. Not only did they exclude a lot of good content for political and judgment reasons, they weren’t very good at knowing what people wanted to read. So let’s not mourn them.

Now all the money is going to aggregators like Arianna Huffington. So if you like a cartoonist, a band, a poet or whatever, you don’t have to spend more money than you did in the old days to support them (by buying concert tix, magazines, T-shirts, etc.). You actually spend less, and you can direct your donations directly to the creators you like best. It’s going to be better in the long run.

First, however, we have to get used to shelling out for art in a different, more direct way. Otherwise the artists we care about will be forced to quit. That’s simple economic reality.

Anyway, if you’re game for donating, please do so! I actually lowballed this funraiser since I have no friggin’ idea how I’m going to buy Photoshop…can’t use GIMP since it doesn’t allow CMYK…

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Another Obama Sellout

February 23, 2012•

Ted Rall

Mortgage Settlement a Sad Joke

Joe Nocera, the columnist currently challenging Tom Friedman for the title of Hackiest Militant Centrist Hack—it’s a tough job that just about everyone on The New York Times op-ed page has to do—loves the robo-signing settlement announced last week between the Obama Administration, 49 states and the five biggest mortgage banks. “Two cheers!” shouts Nocera.

Too busy to follow the news? Read Nocera. If he likes something, it’s probably stupid, evil, or both.

As penance for their sins—securitizing fraudulent mortgages, using forged deeds to foreclose on millions of Americans and oh, yeah, borking the entire world economy—Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have agreed to fork over $5 billion in cash. Under the terms of the new agreement they’re supposed to reduce the principal of loans to homeowners who are “underwater” on their mortgages—i.e. they owe more than their house is worth—by $17 billion.

Some homeowners will qualify for $3 billion in interest refinancing, something the banks have resisted since the ongoing depression began in late 2008.

What about those who got kicked out of their homes illegally? They split a pool of $1.5 billion.

Sounds impressive. It’s not. Mark Zuckerberg is worth $45 billion.

“That probably nets out to less than $2,000 a person,” notes The Times. “There’s no doubt that the banks are happy with this deal. You would be, too, if your bill for lying to courts and end-running the law came to less than $2,000 per loan file.”

Readers will recall that I paid more than that for a speeding ticket. 68 in a 55.

This is the latest sellout by a corrupt system that would rather line the pockets of felonious bankers than put them where they belong: prison.

Remember TARP, the initial bailout? Democrats and Republicans, George W. Bush and Barack Obama agreed to dole out $700 billion in public—plus $7.7 trillion funneled secretly through the Fed—to the big banks so they could “increase their lending in order to loosen credit markets,” in the words of Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican.

Never happened.

Three years after TARP “tight home loan credit is affecting everything from home sales to household finances,” USA Today reported. “Many borrowers are struggling to qualify for loans to buy homes…Those who can get loans need higher credit scores and bigger down payments than they would have in recent years. They face more demands to prove their incomes, verify assets, show steady employment and explain things such as new credit cards and small bank account deposits. Even then, they may not qualify for the lowest interest rates.”

Financial experts aren’t surprised. TARP was a no-strings-attached deal devoid of any requirement that banks increase lending. You can hardly blame the bankers for taking advantage. They used the cash—money that might have been used to help distressed homeowners—to grow income on their overnight “float” and issue record raises to their CEOs.

Next came Obama’s “Home Affordable Modification Program” farce. Another toothless “voluntary” program, HAMP asked banks to do the same things they’ve just agreed to under the robo-signing settlement: allow homeowners who are struggling to refinance and possibly reduce their principals to reflect the collapse of housing prices in most markets.

Voluntary = worthless.

CNN reported on January 24th: “The HAMP program, which was designed to lower troubled borrowers’ mortgage rates to no more than 31% of their monthly income, ran into problems almost immediately. Many lenders lost documents, and many borrowers didn’t qualify. Three years later, it has helped a scant 910,000 homeowners—a far cry from the promised 4 million.”

Or the 15 million who needed help.

As usual, state-controlled media is too kind. Banks didn’t “lose” documents. They threw them away.

One hopes they recycled.

I wrote about my experience with HAMP: Chase Home Mortgage repeatedly asked for, received, confirmed receiving, then requested the same documents. They elevated the runaround to an art. My favorite part was how Chase wouldn’t respond to queries for a month, then request the bank statement for that month. They did this over and over. The final result: losing half my income “did not represent income loss.”

It’s simple math: in 67 percent of cases, banks make more money through foreclosure than working to keep families in their homes.

This time is different, claims the White House. “No more lost paperwork, no more excuses, no more runaround,” HUD secretary Shaun Donovan said February 9th. The new standards will “force the banks to clean up their acts.”

Don’t bet on it. The Administration promises “a robust enforcement mechanism”—i.e. an independent monitor. Such an agency, which would supervise the handling of million of distressed homeowners, won’t be able to handle the workload according to mortgage experts. Anyway, it’s not like there isn’t already a law. Law Professor Alan White of Valparaiso University notes: “Much of this [agreement] is restating obligations loan servicers already have.”

Finally, there’s the issue of fairness. “Underwater” is a scary, headline-grabbing word. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Tens of millions of homeowners have seen the value of their homes plummet since the housing crash. (The average home price fell from $270,000 in 2006 to $165,000 in 2011.) Those who are underwater tended not to have had much equity in their homes in the first place, having put down low downpayments. Why single them out for special assistance? Shouldn’t people who owned their homes free and clear and those who had significant equity at the beginning of crisis get as much help as those who lost less in the first place? What about renters? Why should people who were well-off enough to afford to buy a home get a payoff ahead of poor renters?

The biggest fairness issue of all, of course, is one of simple justice. If you steal someone’s house, you should go to jail. If your crimes are company policy, that company should be nationalized or forced out of business.

Your victim should get his or her house back, plus interest and penalties.

You shouldn’t pay less than a speeding ticket for stealing a house.

(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)

Help Wanted: Web Designer

February 23, 2012•

Ted Rall

I am looking for an experienced, ambitious and brilliant web designer to become a full partner on a start-up business venture.

You must be extremely energetic, self-motivated, have a strong sense of graphic design and aesthetics as well as intuitive sense of how people interact with the Internet. You should be a voracious consumer of news in all formats and media. You will be responsible for designing a game-changing Big Idea website, maintaining it and growing it into the foreseeable future.

You will be working directly with me. Also joining our team will be brilliant out-of-the-box thinkers from the world of journalism, cartooning, politics and the arts. We will all (yes, including me) be working gratis as full equity partners, with a view toward being able to paying ourselves salaries in the not-distant future. If I could pay you, I would. But I’m broke. The fact that I’m broke led to me to begin pursuing this new idea.

Since there will be no money for many months, this would be perfect for someone who is unemployed and looking to do something new and exciting. If we pull this off, we may literally change…everything. If not, well, it will have been fun. And interesting.

Commitment is not short-term. We’re only looking for someone ready to kick ass for at least a year. Mostly for no or little cash.

So anyway, if this sounds like you, please get in touch. A resume and portfolio would of course be useful. Left-wing politics helpful but not required.

Please Read! Support My Computer Fundraiser

February 22, 2012•

Ted Rall

[show_olimometer]

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the meltdown in print media and the collapse of the economic support for cartooning. The Herblock Foundation recently issued a white paper about the crisis of American editorial cartooning, to which I contributed one of several essays that explain the situation in detail. Columbia Journalism Review did another piece that explains how editorial cartooning has been reduced to hobby status. (Irony alert! Shortly after this piece appeared, I lost my gig cartooning for CJR.)

In 2000 my cartoons appeared in TIME, Fortune, Silicon Alley Reporter and Bloomberg magazines, along with some 140 newspapers. It was a nice living, and I had no complaints. Now I’m in no magazine whatsoever, in but a fraction of the newspapers I was in, and those papers pay less than 25% each of what they paid then. Double irony alert! I have never been as widely read as a cartoonist, but my income has been reduced to where I was in the early 1990s, when I was just starting out.

My situation is typical. Now that print media is no longer willing or able to pay salaries or even modest reprint fees to cartoonists, the only way cartooning can continue as an actual job is if cartoon fans support it directly.

Is this feasible? I don’t know. Certainly fans of gamer comics have provided more than adequate support for the cartoonists who draw about role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragon to make a living. In one breathtaking example that has the political cartooning community shaking its collective head, an unknown, novice gamer cartoonist whose work appears primitive to outside eyes just raised $1.2 million on Kickstarter to reprint a book–in other words, to do no work whatsoever.

Why did this cartoonist do so well? His readers care about gaming and they’re willing to support the artists who document their scene. The question for fans of my work now is—and I thought I would never ask this—do you care enough about what I do to help support it?

Unless I figure out some way to replace the catastrophic loss of income I have lost to the censorship I have suffered since 9/11 by the right as well as pseudo-liberal outlets like Mother Jones and The Nation, which have moved to the right as well, as well as the general print media downturn, I am going to have to find other work. And I don’t mean in 10 years. I mean soon.

Of course there will always be amateur and hobbyist cartoonists. But I don’t have the time to draw for free. I need to earn money to pay bills.

We have already lost great cartoonists like Lloyd Dangle, David Rees and Mikhaela Reid to the cartoon industry collapse. Most others are teetering on the edge of disaster. I am one of the latter.

Some of the ways I reach out directly to readers are through the Ted Rall Subscription Service, auctioning off the right to select my ideas, and even auctioning off dinner and drinks with me.

I recently asked you to consider supporting my computer fundraiser. Like other cartoonists, I need a laptop to take on the road and a desktop computer for home.

I’m halfway there! Thanks to everyone who contributed, my modest but beautiful 15-inch MacBookPro just arrived:

If you’d like to kick in toward the desktop computer–I’d like to get an iMac–here’s what I’m offering in exchange for contributions:

$50 – rough sketch/drawing

$200 – original syndicated editorial cartoon

$500 – three original syndicated editorial cartoons

$2000 – five original syndicated editorial cartoons plus an original cartoon just for you, drawn to your specifications, about anything you want (you can choose the dialogue and everything)

To contribute simply click below:

And thanks!!! It’s been a nice run, and I’m very grateful whatever happens.

Computer Fundraiser: Halfway There

February 20, 2012•

Ted Rall

[show_olimometer]

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the meltdown in print media and the collapse of the economic support for cartooning. Now that print media is no longer willing or able to pay salaries or even modest reprint fees to cartoonists, the only way cartooning can continue as an actual job is if cartoon fans support it directly.

Some of the ways I reach out directly to readers are through the Ted Rall Subscription Service, auctioning off the right to select my ideas, and even auctioning off dinner and drinks with me.

I recently asked you to consider supporting my computer fundraiser. Like other cartoonists, I need a laptop to take on the road and a desktop computer for home.

I’m halfway there! Thanks to everyone who contributed, my modest but beautiful 15-inch MacBookPro arrives next week.

If you’d like to kick in toward the desktop computer–I’d like to get an iMac–here’s what I’m offering in exchange for contributions:

$50 – rough sketch/drawing

$200 – original syndicated editorial cartoon

$500 – three original syndicated editorial cartoons

$2000 – five original syndicated editorial cartoons plus an original cartoon just for you, drawn to your specifications, about anything you want (you can choose the dialogue and everything)

To contribute simply click below:

And thanks!!! It’s been a nice run, and I’m very grateful for it, but I seriously have to consider giving up cartooning unless your support continues.