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Special Guest Blog: Getting Our Bets Down

February 2, 2013•

As we’re just coming into February, I think it’s still early enough in the year to get our bets down for the end of 2013.

Right now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is at just about 14,000. To the usual one-move level of analysis that most of the news programs and print publications display, this means something. Golly Gee, the economy recovered! Right? What’s that? The DJIA by itself is meaningless? It’s like telling a doctor someone’s height (but nothing else) and then expecting a diagnosis of the patient’s health?

But this is how the media works all the time. A quick snapshot of one or two aspects of a significant problem, a simper to the camera, a cutaway to a video of someone on a high school sports team scoring points in a remarkable way, and then roll the end credits.

So how about this year, we get a few bets down now for review on Dec. 31, 2013. Most of us who comment on this site love to put forward our opinions. So let’s get it all down in one spot. If anyone has any theories about what the state of any particular issue will be by year’s end, put it in the comments section. I’d love to see how well we all do.

For me, I’ll make a few guesses right off the top. The DJIA at year’s end will be around 12,400. The U-2 stat for unemployment will be around 6.1%. The U-6 stat for unemployment will be at about 20%. If anyone has any other stat they want to get in, just go ahead. If there’s enough interest in this, I’ll put it all together in a table.

LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Hogwarts Express

January 31, 2013•

Ted Rall

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week: Construction for high-speed rail through the Central Valley is supposed to start in July. But the state of California still hasn’t purchased any of the land along the route. How will the train get from one city to the next? Magic.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Against Philanthropy

January 29, 2013•

Ted Rall

As Hurricane Victims Freeze, Billionaire Mayor Gives Away $1 Billion to Wealthy Med School

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made headlines over the weekend with his announcement that he has donated $345 million to Johns Hopkins University. Added to his previous donations, the media baron has given his alma mater over $1 billion – the largest charitable contribution to an educational institution in US history.

Bloomberg received plaudits for his generosity by the usual media sycophants. Along with death and taxes, another thing you can count on is being told to be grateful when masters of the universe give away some of their loot (even if none of it goes to you.) As pundits fawned, thousands of New Yorkers – residents of Queens whose homes got damaged by superstorm Sandy – were shivering under blankets in heatless homes in 15° weather because restoring electricity and housing storm victims isn’t one of the mayor’s top priorities.

Disgusting.

This was a man, New Yorkers remember, who wanted the mayoralty so badly that he subverted the people’s will, bribing and bullying the City Council into overturning term limits passed by an overwhelming majority so that he could keep the job a third term.

No one should claim that he didn’t want responsibility for those poor cold slobs out in the Rockaways.

If there’s anything more nauseating than watching this rich pig bask in the glow of his philanthropy while the citizens he is tasked with caring for turn into popsicles, it’s the failure of anyone in the system – columnists, local TV anchor people, even Bloomberg’s political rivals – to call him out. For $345 million the mayor could have put his city’s storm victims up at the Four Seasons for years.

Bloomberg’s donation to one of the wealthiest universities on earth, with an endowment of $2.6 billion, serves to remind us that philanthropy is evil.

You could argue that generous rich people are better than cheap rich people. And if you like the way things are, with the gap between rich and poor at record levels and spreading – you’d be right. But most people are not happy with our winner-take-all economy.

No one deserves to be rich. And no one should be poor. Everyone who contributes to society, everyone who works to the best of their skills and abilities, deserves to earn the same salary. Of course, I realize that not everyone adheres to such basic Christian – er, communist – principles. (Anyone who denies that Jesus was a commie never cracked open a Bible.)

But most people – certainly most Americans – agree there’s a line. That too much is too much. People like Michael Bloomberg and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates may have worked hard and created products that consumers purchased in great numbers – but no one can work $25 billion hard (Bloomberg’s estimated net worth). There aren’t that many hours in the day; the human skull doesn’t contain enough synapses; no idea is worth that much.

One of the big problems with charitable giving is that it mitigates the injustice of inequality: sure, maybe it’s a little crazy that Bloomberg has 11 luxurious homes while people are starving to death and sleeping outside, but at least he’s generous. He’s giving it away. The implication, that the chasm between rich and poor isn’t that bad, is a lie. It’s also evil: If inequality isn’t that bad, it’s not important to talk about – much less fix.

“For many people, the generosity of these individuals who made so much money eliminates the problem that wealth poses, inequality poses, in the society,” says Robert Dalzell, author of “The Good Rich and What They Cost Us.” “We tend to conclude that such behavior is typical of the wealthy, and in fact it’s not…This whole notion of ‘the good rich’ I think reconciles us to levels of inequality in the society that in terms of our democratic ideology would otherwise be unacceptable.”

It’s better for society when rich people are unlikeable jerks like Mitt Romney. Knock over old ladies, stiff the waitress, talk with a pretentious fake British 19th-century accent, install a car elevator. Bad behavior by our elite oppressors hastens the revolution.

Bloomberg’s billion-dollar gift to a school that doesn’t need a penny illustrates the inherent absurdity of capitalism: aggregating so much wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals. It’s obscene and morally reprehensible to allow a disproportional share of resources to fall under the control of the arbitrary whims of a few quirky rich dudes.

Why should National Public Radio, which received a $200 million bequest by the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, get all that cash while the Pacifica radio network – more avant-garde, better politics – teeters on the edge of bankruptcy? It’s nice that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation fights AIDS in Africa, but who are Bill and Melinda Gates to decide that AIDS in Africa is worse than, say, diarrhea, which kills more people? It’s amusing to hear that the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune gave $100 million to an obscure poetry journal – but again, people are sleeping outside. Why not musicians? Or cartoonists?

People are dying because they can’t afford treatment by a doctor. People have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit and executed because they couldn’t afford a competent lawyer to defend them.

If a government agency were allocating public funds based on the personal whims of its director, there would be a scandal. Under the veil of “philanthropy” billions of dollars that could help millions of people are being spent in a haphazard manner – and we’re supposed to applaud because it’s up to the “private sector”?

In an ideal world no one would have that kind of power. We’d be as equal as the Declaration of Independence declares us to be. We’d make decisions about who to help and what problems to try to fix collectively. The most unfortunate people and the worst problems would get helped first –long before Johns Hopkins.

Our world isn’t perfect. But it is our duty to do everything in our power to make that way. Toward that end, billionaires like Michael Bloomberg ought to have their assets confiscated and redistributed, whether through revolutionary political change or – for the time being – high taxes.

If we can’t pull off nationalization or truly progressive taxation, if we are too weak, too disorganized and too apathetic to form the political movements that will liberate us, the least we should do is to denounce “generous” acts of philanthropy like Michael Bloomberg’s for what they are: arbitrary and self-serving attempts to deflect us from hating the rich and the inequality they embody.

(Ted Rall’s website is tedrall.com. His book “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan” will be released in November by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.)

New Cartoon Auction Up Now

January 28, 2013•

Ted Rall

I have just posted a new original cartoon auction. This week’s cartoons include reactions to significant news stories – the admission of women combat troops and Pres. Obama’s second inaugural address – and as usual I have contrarian takes that are sure to age well. There’s also an evergreen cartoon that is kind of a classic Ted Rall cartoon for those of you who want that sort of thing. Bidding starts at $.99, you can guarantee that you will win by slapping down $150. Warning, this only works at the very beginning.

Bear in mind, you get to choose the original cartoon that you want.

Also, upon request and at no additional charge, I will dedicate it to the person of your choice. Original cartoon art looks great on the wall and it is a wonderful way to support cartoonists.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Weird Times

January 24, 2013•

Ted Rall

In Politics, It’s a Wild Wild Weird World

Hunter S. Thompson said: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” But what do you do when things go from weird to completely psychedelic?

The political landscape at the beginning of the second term of America’s first biracial president – in the usual historical sense, calling him black kind of requires an asterisk – is a messed up, topsy-turvy, bass-ackwards place.

There is the president’s newfound liberal rhetoric, even going so far as to namecheck gays and lesbians in his Inaugural Address. Did anyone tell him or members of the media that Stonewall was an actual riot, that endorsing this landmark of liberation is to endorse violent revolutionary change? He came off as something as a peacenik, implying that he would be willing to talk to, say, Iran. How does that square with his onslaught of drones, a campaign that increasingly looks like a grim Vietnam-style war of attrition?

But it’s his timing I can’t figure.

Back in 2009, when he came into the White House with an overwhelming mandate for radical change in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, when he enjoyed Democratic control of both houses of Congress, when the Republicans were so whipped that opinion writers for the Wall Street Journal wondered aloud whether there was a future for the GOP, he tacked right. Now that obstructionist Republicans control the House, ordinary citizens have settled into a grouchy state of permanent discontent amid downward mobility and shrinking expectations, when there’s absolutely no reason to expect to get anything big or bold accomplished, the dude is breaking out as some sort of crazy progressive?

Then there’s the bizarre realignment of the two major parties.

Leading Republicans, spooked by the election results, polls that show that the voters of the future are liberal on gays, abortion and other social issues, and possibly from finally having picked up dogeared copies of the prescient tome The Emerging Democratic Majority at Books-a-Million, are freaking out in the weirdest possible way. Something has to be done! But not if it requires compromising on our core values. Um, guys…white guys…old white guys…the problem is that the voters don’t like Republican core values. Or you personally. So what is to be done? Something!

You almost have to feel sorry for Republicans. Sure, they started a bunch of crazy wars that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and they opened a string of concentration camps around the world, and they rolled back 800 years of cherished civil liberties that go back to the Magna Carta. But it’s sad to watch the mighty crash like a dictator’s statue pulled down by invading Marines. Not only is a sorta black man in the White House, all the GOP’s classic election-stealing tricks – corrupting the Supreme Court, bullying recount officials with paid thugs, moving voting booths out of minority neighborhoods – aren’t enough to close the growing gap between their obsolete stances and an increasingly left-leaning electorate. Now they’re so desperate that they’re even flirting with rejiggering the Electoral College, an institution that historically benefits Republicans, in order to suck out two or three more terms with them in control of the House – forget the Senate – before fading away into Whig-like oblivion as the Democrats retaliate.

Not to say that the Democrats are walking the straight and narrow road of sanity.

Americans of all political stripes say there’s one issue that consumes them most. One thing that they think about all the time. Something personal, something that affects everything else. Happily, it’s something that the government not only can do something about, but has been able to address many times in the past. I am talking about, obviously, the economy. Unemployment. Underemployment. The fact that there are no jobs. And that the jobs that are being created are all crappy. Or are in another country. Americans have been remarkably consistent about this. It would be hard to think of another time when people told pollsters for four years in a row that the same issue was the number one issue in the country. Whatever his other challenges, President Obama certainly doesn’t have to wonder about what’s on our minds.

So what is his second-term agenda? Given that his laissez-faire approach to the economic collapse throughout his first term basically involved golfing a lot while hoping that magical market forces would revive on their own, you might think that he would focus in like a laser-guided drone on the economy – you know, the number one most important issue to most Americans – this time around. But no, everyone’s telling us that Obama’s ambitious second-term agenda is – wait for it – gun control, immigration and climate change.

Don’t get me wrong: one of the great tragedies of the last dozen years was that Al Gore, one of the few American politicians who understands the gravity and imminent threat of global warming, didn’t get to exercise the presidential powers he earned at the ballot box. Though I will be shocked! shocked! shocked! if Obama’s proposals rise above the level of the usual too little/too late/too vested in corporate profits to curb industrialization, it’s nice to see the issue get lip service. Restoring sanity to America’s immigration system – can’t get in legally, so sneak in and hide out for 15 or 20 years until the next amnesty – is long overdue. Though, again, I wouldn’t be surprised if we just end up with another Reagan-style amnesty that doesn’t open up the doors to a lot more legal immigrants. Gun control of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, of course, is just boilerplate post-Sandy Hook elementary school massacre reactionism.

Fortunately, at least one of these issues will probably resolve itself. Already there are fewer illegals trying to sneak into the United States across the border from Mexico because the economy here is so terrible. Who is going to want to come to an impoverished nation full of gun nuts shooting at each other underwater?

Still, it’s disconcerting to watch smug Democrats lord it over clueless Republicans when the only difference between the two parties is one of tone. Republicans let you know that they hate you. Democrats talk nice and then let you down. Neither party gives a damn about the fact that you haven’t gotten a raise in 30 years. How can they? Their contributors are the top executives of the corporations who’ve been lining their pockets at your expense.

One of these days, you’ve got to think that the people are going to notice.

Journo Trade Rags Whitewash Cartoonist Plagiarism Scandal

January 24, 2013•

Ted Rall

The scandal over cartoonist Bill Day’s plagiarism, recycling of his own previous cartoons and self-plagiarism is a teachable moment: an opportunity for cartoonists to reassess basic standards, readers to see that editorial cartoonists police their own, and for editors and publishers – not to mention prize committees – to begin to understand the difference between high-quality artists with integrity and cheating hacks. Unfortunately, the main news outlets that cover the world of editorial cartooning and journalism are falling down on the job, alternatingly muddying the waters with stories that imply that clarity is impossible in such situations, or – in at least one case – deliberately obfuscating and downright lying about the facts.

Many of us were looking forward to the coverage of the Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, who writes the Comics Riffs blog for the paper in the nation’s capital. Unfortunately, Cavna buried the lede in a piece that put my friend and colleague Scott Stantis’ wondering aloud about a New York Post cover at the top of an article that should have emphasized Bill Day’s perfidy, and then gave an excessive amount of space to disassembling by Daryl Cagle, Day’s syndicator and champion in an attempt to raise $35,000 via Indiegogo in order to subsidize the below-standard low rates that Cagle pays to Day.

Over at Poynter, another leading trade industry source pretty much everyone in the field, Andrew Beaujon didn’t just fumble the ball – he threw it away:

“Unauthorized interpolation? Ham-fisted aggregation? Media-blogger-baiting transgression? Whatever it is, it seems like a lesser light to shine on Day’s work.”

What the hell? What can you call a cartoonist who finds a piece of artwork online, one that is clearly labeled with copyright and credited information, Photoshop’s the image while stripping out the credits and bylines, pastes it into his own work, adds a smidge of his own drawing, and then has the gall to sign the thing? He isn’t an unauthorized interpolator or a ham-fisted aggregatoe or a transgressor. He is a plagiarist, pure and simple. Well, maybe not so pure.

But by far the most shameful dereliction of duty is by the once widely-respected trade magazine Editor & Publisher. For, for the days of David Astor, a gentlemanly scribe who steered the magazine through several decades as newspapers and the syndication business crumbled. Astor has been put out to farm, relegated to writing for a local newspaper in New Jersey, and his old spot is now occupied by Rob Tornoe, a cartoonist, blogger and – wait for this – employee of Daryl Cagle. Yes, that Daryl Cagle. The guy who syndicates Bill Day.

According to reliable sources, Rob is a de facto full-time employee of Cagle Cartoons. In an email to me he categorically denied this, but the argument appears to hang on semantics. In order to avoid paying full benefits, Cagle, like many other American employers, deems Rob to be an independent contractor. But the fact that he gets a 1099 instead of a W2 at tax time doesn’t change the fact that he derives a substantial amount of his income – probably most of it – from a person he covers in the media. Not only has he written about Cagle and his cartoonists, he wrote about the Bill Day fundraising campaign without informing his readers of his fiduciary relationship.

When the scandal broke 12 days ago, E&P suddenly went silent. Of course, no one should really wonder why. After all, according to those same sources, Rob himself originally conceived of and personally loaded the Day fund-raising campaign up to the website of Indiegogo. They further allege that Rob continues to play a leading role in managing not only the campaign but the post-plagiarism scandal crisis response. For example, after I posted a comment about the scandal to the Indiegogo page Rob apparently mentioned to Cagle that it was possible to delete it. It has since vanished.

Now E&P – or more accurately Rob – is finally breaking his silence about the scandal in an article whose dishonesty is so over-the-top that you either have to laugh or give up on journalism as an honest profession. To start: “(Full disclosure: I am a Cagle.com contributor)”

Hilarious! “Contributor” implies that his cartoons or columns are distributed through Daryl’s syndicate. No, Rob. Rob actually works for them. Whether he works 40 or 20 or 10 hours a week, this is the sort of thing that every writer knows he or she is supposed to reveal. Readers deserve and want to know when there are conflicts of interest. Why E&P continues to employ Rob is baffling beyond belief. Sort of like Cagle himself. Why is he keeping an acknowledged plagiarist on the syndication list?

By the way: the anonymous blogger who maintains the That Cartoon Critic Tumblr blog continues to post new examples of plagiarism. Right now we are at number 56.

Rob’s piece is a masterpiece of obfuscation, smoke and mirrors: “Further clouding debate…others see it as simply an opportunity for time-constrained cartoonists to take a shortcut…even Walt Disney employed similar time-saving methods.” Newsflash: editorial cartooning is different. No editor who subscribes to a syndicated editorial cartoonist expects to get recycled rehashed crap. And if you’re going to send out recycled rehashed self-plagiarized crap, the least that you can do is label it as such.

Those of us who oppose plagiarism and hackwork aren’t even being allowed to comment in response to these sleazy articles. I tried to post the comment below, and was repeatedly blocked – either by a name block recognition program or because the comment section had simply been disabled by E&P:

Of the many lame excuses that have been given to justify cartoonist Bill Day’s brazen acts of plagiarism, recycling, and self-plagiarism – no, there is absolutely nothing unclear about any of this, not if you’re honest and/or willing to pay attention – this one is one of the more nauseating: “…in a perfect world, editorial cartoonists would produce original and excellent new cartoons on a daily basis. But clearly, with cutbacks and layoffs adversely affecting the ranks of political cartoonists, such a perfect world doesn’t exist.”

The recession that has devastated the American economy and impacted journalism and print media exceptionally hard is no excuse to cut corners on basic journalistic ethics and integrity. If you don’t have the time or energy to produce high-quality original work, auction off your drafting table on eBay and go away.

Bill Day is a newcomer to the world that I and many other younger editorial cartoonists – I use the term loosely, since I will turn 50 later this year – been living in for decades. Bill Day has held numerous staff jobs, neither I nor any of the young generation of cartoonists ever have or likely ever will. He has won prizes that no member of the young generation ever has. In other words, he has had every advantage, yet he has squandered the accidental benefits of demographics – to be a baby boomer was to be able to walk into almost any newspaper and score a job – and wallowed in a cesspool of repeated ethical lapses.

I am broke. I don’t have a staff job. Never have. I might lose my house. But you won’t catch me plagiarizing, repurposing or self-plagiarizing my work. I do the best that I can with the talent that I have and let the chips fall where they may, as do many other hard-working impoverished cartoonists. We don’t ask for much, but it is disgusting to watch excuses be made for and prizes awarded to people who betray the basic standards that are universally accepted within our craft.

Even though it feels a lot like spitting in the wind to try to save a profession that doesn’t really seem to want to save itself, I will continue to do so because I love editorial cartooning and American journalism and I know that there are readers and cartoonists and others who care. This stuff matters.

LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Caretaker Senators

January 24, 2013•

Ted Rall

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week: Due to a quirk caused by redistricting, 4 million Californians will not have an elected state senator until the year 2014. Until then a caretaker senator from a neighboring district will take charge of these no man’s lands. How on earth are constituents supposed to pressure their fake senators?

Bill Day Again

January 23, 2013•

Ted Rall

I have posted this to the comment section of the build day fundraising campaign on Indiegogo:

As an early contributor – cartoonists need to stick together – I am disgusted that Bill has accrued nearly $38,000 as he was being unmasked as a serial plagiarist.

Far from being one of the best of the best, it turns out that he is one of the worst of the worst. He should never draw again. I want my $100 back. Everyone else here should demand the same.

Details: http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2013/01/15/plagiarism-allegations-hit-bill-day-in-closing-days-of-fundraising-campaign/

New eBay Auction

January 23, 2013•

Ted Rall

This time I am auctioning off the original artwork for my next three cartoons. The auction runs a full week, and don’t forget, this is an opportunity to support an actual real living artist while he is still actually really living. So bid now and bid generously.