I did this cartoon for The Sacramento Bee. Governor Jerry Brown, once a famous progressive, has completely sold out to big business. In this example, he fired two principled state regulators because they followed the law and tried to protect the people of California against dangerous injection drilling processes. Amazingly, he’s running around bragging about it.
Just when I thought my opinion of law enforcement couldn’t get lower. Rough cut video documenting police offering drugs to Occupiers and street people near Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis. Basically, the police claim they’re studying how people behave under different illegal drugs. They solicit people, take them to a warehouse near the airport, give them drugs (apparently with no medical staff around or informed consent), then drop them back off stoned or high.
If they’re doing it here, what are the odds they’re doing it elsewhere? (Sorry, I don’t know how to embed video, but the links above and below work.)
Warning: whine ahead!
My Kickstarter campaign is stalled at $6842. Which is awesome! Thanks to more than 100 backers, that’s a lot of money. Still. I need $40,000 and it’s obvious I’m not going to get it.
That gamer strip got $1,200,000.
Lefties always complain that no one is daring enough, that no one is fighting for the Left, but they don’t support their writers and artists. When Rush and Hannity and Coulter put out books, right-wingers support them. At times like this, I wish I was like them and didn’t give a shit about the poor and oppressed.
I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week: A coalition of community groups, labor unions and conservationists is trying to protect funding for Los Angeles city parks, which have been hit hard by budget cuts. Here are some alternatives.
Obama Snubs Hard-Working College Students
Shortly after becoming president, Barack Obama said that he strongly supports continuing education. “If we want to come out of this recession stronger than before, we need to make sure that our workforce is better prepared than ever before,” he said in 2009. “Right now, someone who doesn’t have a college degree is more than twice as likely to be unemployed as someone who does. And so many of the Americans who have lost their jobs can’t find new ones because they simply don’t have the skills and the training they need for the jobs they want.”
Things change.
Now it’s an election year. The president’s reelection team is making a play for the youth vote that was key to winning his first term. He’s visiting colleges and universities, trying to attract support from the 18-to-21 demographic by accusing Republicans of wanting to double the Stafford student loan interest rate from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. (Not really true.)
As Obama brings his rock-the-youth-vote campaign to the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, he wants to be photographed in a sea of adoring youthful faces. And yet, through incompetence or cynical calculus, he’s throwing some of the most inspiring, hard-working students in America under the bus.
Maybe the president still likes the idea of adults going back to school. But apparently he doesn’t want to speak to students over age 21—or be seen with them.
On May 14th Obama will deliver the commencement address at Barnard College, a women’s-only institution across the street from Columbia University in upper Manhattan. Unfortunately no one noticed—or didn’t care—that the elaborate security checks for the president’s visit would bork the long-scheduled Class Day for Columbia’s School of General Studies.
Columbia has four undergraduate colleges: Columbia College, for young (18-to-21) liberal arts students; the School of Engineering and Applied Science, also for traditional students; Barnard College (ditto on ages); and the School of General Studies, which mostly serves older students who are either beginning or completing their bachelor degrees. There’s a big Columbia commencement ceremony where the entire university gathers to receive their diplomas; in addition, each school has a separate event called Class Day.
If President Obama is looking for an example of continuing education that works, he need look no further than Columbia General Studies. It’s a special place, representing the pinnacle of continuing education in the United States. GS offers adult students from age 19 to 79 the chance to study at and graduate not just from college, but from an Ivy League school. Notable GS alumni include Isaac Asimov, Sandy Koufax, Hunter S. Thompson, Ira Gershwin, and Amelia Earhart.
Most importantly, GS has heart. It takes chances on people whom lesser institutions wouldn’t consider. Six years after I was expelled from Columbia’s engineering program, GS let me in.
Like most GS students, I held several jobs at the same time I attended classes, studied, and wrote papers. Also like most GSers, I paid my own way. GSers don’t get much financial aid. Given my history, however, I was grateful for the second chance.
After I graduated—with honors—I got a job in the GS admissions office. One applicant, originally from China, said that she had no college transcripts. She couldn’t even prove that she had attended high school. The records, she said, had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. “Let’s bring her in,” the dean of admissions said. “Let’s hear her story.” To my astonishment, they admitted her. GS’s bet paid off. She worked hard and graduated near the top of her class.
If she were graduating this year, however, she and her parents might not be able to attend her Class Day.
Dean Peter J. Awn wrote in an e-mail to General Studies students: “We were informed last Friday that, if we were to continue with our original plan to have Class Day at 9 a.m. on Monday, May 14, your families would have to arrive at least three hours before the event (5:30 a.m.) to undergo a lengthy security check to attend a ceremony that is not associated with the President’s visit. In fact, neither you nor your families would be able to remain on campus to hear President Obama speak.”
Despite featuring tough admission and graduation requirements, General Studies students are accustomed to being treated like the ugly stepsister of the Columbia bureaucracy. Even so, the Obama snub was over the top. If the initial insult wasn’t bad enough, the president’s inconsideration would have subjected GS graduates and their families to Guantánamo Lite conditions, detained for hours. “We would also be confined to the Butler lawn with no ability to roam around the campus. Frankly, I find that unacceptable,” wrote Dean Awn.
Unwanted, uninvited and evicted from their own space, GS has been forced to move its Class Day to Sunday, May 13th. Which happens to be Mother’s Day. “I realize that, by this point, your families have made their plans and that, not only will this be an inconvenience, but that it also will force you and your families to incur additional expenses,” said Dean Awn.
Jennifer Wisdom, a GS junior, told the Columbia Daily Spectator, “I can’t help but question…if this was happening to Columbia College or the School of Engineering, would it be allowed to occur?”
“It’s the president of the f—-ing United States,” said Reina deBeer, a senior. “The Obama security would have had to know about the measures. It just seems odd.”
They wouldn’t have had to look far. Patrick Gaspard, Obama’s political director from 2009 to 2011, now executive director of the Democratic National Committee, is a General Studies graduate.
The GS Class of 2012 is learning an important lesson: Courtesy and respect are for the little people. One percenters like Obama do whatever the hell they feel like. And if you get in their way, they’ll squash you like a bug.
(Ted Rall’s next book is “The Book of Obama: How We Went From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt,” out May 22. His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2012 TED RALL
If you’ve got a gripe or twenty about Obama’s deep conservatism but still plan to give him your vote, Grumble About Obama Day is your one no-fault day to complain a little before signing up for more of the same.
Do take advantage of it, because such complaints will be completely unwelcome among the “progressive” tribe the rest of the way.
Today’s somewhat-reported story is the one coming out of Cleveland. Five men have been arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and will be appearing in court in Cleveland today, Tuesday, May 1, 2012.
A few things seem to have not been declared in the reporting so far. For instance, according to the FBI’s press release, the men were arrested on the evening of April 30 after setting remote-control “dummy” charges that the men thought were legitimate explosives on the Route 82 Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge.
The bridge in question is a four-lane structure. I don’t claim to have any engineering experience whatsoever, but two C-4 bombs do not seem like sufficient explosive force to take down a bridge that large. The explosions would have shut the bridge down, probably for days, as every square inch would have had to have been checked for more explosives. But the idea that the bridge would have come tumbling down seems a lot like police press conference hype. As is usually the case, the authorities have captured the dullest knives in the drawer (Blowing up a bridge? You’ve been watching too many episodes of Hogan’s Heroes).
A look at these men’s arrest photos reveals a group that, really, does not look all that bright. I know, looks are deceiving. But I don’t think that smart people would have come up with such a lame-brain plot in the first place. This brings me to anther thing that hasn’t been mentioned, even in the stories where the men’s photos are not shown: they all look white, and they all have white-sounding names: Connor C. Stevens, Brandon L. Baxter, Joshua S. Stafford, Douglas L. Wright, and Anthony Hayne. List of terrorist suspects or the next five appointments for a dentist in Manhattan?
I see at least a thousand people like those five every day in New York, either riding the subway, walking on the sidewalk, sitting at the coffee shop, eating an ice cream from Mister Softee, or shopping in a grocery store. It was the same thought I had when Tim McVeigh’s picture was plastered across everything: these guys look a little rough around the edges (a booking photo is rarely a time that you get a chance to look your best), but still, indistinguishable from the teeming masses.
The issue of home-grown terrorists is one the media avoids with a single-minded intensity. Why? Because any article about how, golly gee, all the terrorists lately seem to be distinctly not Middle Eastern, would have to address why a batch of good old American boys would be plotting to blow up bridges. And that’s one conversation the media doesn’t want to honestly address because doing so would certainly ruin the reporters’ chances of getting invited to the next White House Press Corps Dinner.
My Kickstarter campaign for a comix journalism project gaming out revolution here in the United States is at a crossroads. As of now 104 backers have put up $6,291.00, which is amazing, but obviously way short of the $40,000 I need.
This happened last time when I used Kickstarter for Afghanistan—pledges sort of stalled halfway into the campaign. Then as the deadline approached, pledges picked up and the project was successful. I certainly think the results–a daily cartoon blog, unembedded, from some of the most remote places in Afghanistan, proved to be worthwhile. And the book is going to be awesome.
Anyway, we’re now at that point where either people will start pledging in greater numbers or it won’t happen at all. So if you’ve been on the fence, please consider kicking in!
I did this cartoon for The Sacramento Bee. It’s about an attempt by big tobacco companies to block passage of Proposition 29, which would impose an additional $1/pack cigarette tax.
