This Week’s Cartoon: Politics 101 – It’s the System, Stupid
If I only had a dollar for the number of times someone has accused me of hating the rich or wanting to punish success, I'd be a card-carrying member of the 1%. OK, I exaggerate slightly. But it's simply not true that that's where I'm coming from, nor is that the motivation behind OWS.
A couple weeks ago, the NYT published an article interviewing several wealthy people who had grumbly things to say about the Occupy movement. The quote that stuck in my mind was one from Adam Katz, the founder and CEO of private jet service Talon Air.
To many, 99 vs. 1 was an artificial distinction that overlooked hard work and moral character. "It shouldn’t be relevant," said Mr. Katz , who said he both creates jobs and contributes to charitable causes. "I’m not hurting anyone. I’m helping a lot of people."
It may well be the case that Mr. Katz is a decent person who's done a lot of good. But I find myself wondering: how does he vote? Does he support politicians who make it harder for ordinary people to be successful like him? Who appoint Supreme Court justices who seem hell-bent on creating plutocracy? Does he have any concern at all about our Gilded Age levels of inequality? Does he support the carried interest tax break that allows Mitt Romney to pay only a 13.9% income tax rate? These policies, and the arrogance, rationalizations, and excessive self-congratulation that lead to them are the things I hate. Not the rich. (Props, by the way, to the Patriotic Millionaires.)
Out of curiosity, I did a little digging about Katz's political contributions. According to this site, things ain't lookin' good.
This Week’s Cartoon: “Romney Straps Worker to Roof of Campaign Bus”
I assume most people have heard about Mitt Romney's dog-on-car incident, especially now that even Newt Gingrich is attacking him over it, but to recap briefly: back in the '80s, Mitt stowed the family pooch in a carrier on the roof of the family station wagon for the duration of a 12-hour drive to Ontario. After several hours, the dog, an Irish Setter named Seamus, developed gastric distress that made itself evident on the windows of the station wagon. Mitt stopped at a gas station to hose down the dog and the car, and continued on his merry way, Seamus still riding aloft.
As I drew Mitt's bus, I got to thinking about the Romney campaign logo. I find the symbolism of these things fascinating. The Romney logo divides the "R" into red, white and blue stripes. It sort of looks like three people standing in a row, or an abstractly-shaped waving flag. But what I see most is an R within an R within an R: the rich protecting the rich protecting the rich.
Out of Touch
Tagg Romney recently tweeted this:
Har! Just a fun-lovin', booty-stealin' marauder! I'm sure these guys would get a real kick out of it:
Above video via a Plum Line post about a conservative laid-off mill worker who says Romney (and Bain Capital) destroyed his life.
This Week’s Cartoon: “Makin’ it With Mitt”
So Mitt Romney has taken to giving speeches chock full o' sound bites for the Tea Party, invoking Cold War paranoia and demonizing people who, god forbid, need to use the social safety net during hard times. An excerpt (via Washington Monthly):
"[Obama] seeks to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people to enjoy truly disproportionate rewards are the people who do the redistributing — the government."
What's remarkable about that quote, aside from the fact that it is ludicrously false, is that Romney and the rest of the Republicans seem hell-bent on destroying what little meritocracy is left in this country, and replacing it with aristocracy. Would Mitt be running for president today had his father not been CEO of American Motors and Governor of Michigan? What if George Romney had been a victim of corporate restructuring instead? Would Mitt still have joined Bain Capital, and would he still be passing on that cool $100 million to his sons? And the fact that son Tagg touts his interest in "private equity" in his Twitter profile... surely that's just meritocracy in action, having absolutely nothing to do with the Romney legacy whatsoever.
I really enjoyed drawing Mr. Perkins as Mitt, by the way. I think he plays the part well!
This Week’s Cartoon: “Protest Pointers With Eric Cantor”
I wasn't sure which aspect of Cantor's comments, made at the Values Voter Summit in Washington DC, was more troubling: the hypocritical dissing of Occupy Wall Street protesters in language that could very well apply to the Tea Party, or the more general pooh-poohing of street protest in the age of Citizens United. When you have a Supreme Court that considers unfettered corporate cash to be "free speech" every bit as much as a protest sign scrawled with a Sharpie on a piece of torn cardboard, ordinary Americans are up against some tough competition in the political expression department. Maybe we could funnel money to fly-by-night front groups like the big boys if only we had decent-paying jobs. Until then, Mr. Cantor, I suppose we'll just have to be uncivilized.
On a purely artistic note, this was my first time drawing Cantor's bony skull-face. I knew this day was coming, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. He and Rudy Giuliani should have a skull-face face-off. Not sure how that would work exactly, but I'd rather not think about it too hard.
For more on Cantor's ties to the financial industry (among other things, his wife was a VP at Goldman Sachs), check out this WaPo article.
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