THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: MAD MONEY
A Broke America Can't Afford Wars, Tax Cuts
Credit has dried up. The stock market is disintegrating. Unless someone pours money into capital markets, everyone agrees, we could wind up like people in Baghdad, fondly remembering the day five years ago when they pushed the handle and their toilets still flushed. Only one "someone" has enough cash to fix the problem: the U.S. government.
The Bush Administration and Congressional Democrats want taxpayers to pay $700 billion to bail out failing banks. Progressives would prefer to bail out homeowners facing the imminent foreclosure of their homes, as well as those in danger of being foreclosed upon during 2009, at a cost of $1.3 trillion.
Never mind which approach is better. Where will the government find the money?
There are two elephants in the room: war and Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. We can't afford either. Yet, to abuse the animal metaphor, everyone acts like they're sacred cows.
When you think about it, it's sheer madness. The city marshal is at the door, brandishing a shotgun, ready to evict you and your family for nonpayment of rent. But while your kids are screaming in terror, you're at the computer, wasting thousands on online gambling. You could pay off your landlord instead. You could make the marshal go away. All you have to do is stop. But you keep on keeping on. Click, click. More money squandered.
What the hell is wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with us?
In 2007 the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the final cost of our biggest national compulsion, the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, could total $2.4 trillion, or $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country. That's twice as much as the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf Wars combined. It's also two-thirds the cost of World War II. Yet no one--not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not the media, not even the left--insists that we get out.
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I've studied World War II. World War II was a worthwhile war, one that freed millions from tyranny and set the stage for the U.S. to dominate he global economy and become the wealthiest nation in history. Iraq and Afghanistan? They're no World War II. As wars go, they're not as worthwhile as the invasion of Grenada.
"The CBO estimates assume that 75,000 troops will remain in both countries through 2017, including roughly 50,000 in Iraq," reported USA Today. If anything, that's a low-ball estimate. More than a half century after the fighting ceased, we still have 37,000 troops in one tiny country, South Korea. And both McCain and Obama promise to send more troops to Afghanistan. That means more taxpayer money.
Nearly two out of three Americans think invading Iraq--where the lion's share of war funding is being spent--was a mistake. The Afghan resistance is kicking our butts. Both wars have been a complete, total waste of money, effort and lives. As surely as the sun will rise in the east, we will lose both. At a total cost of at least $2.4 trillion. Ridiculous.
$2.4 trillion is nearly twice the $1.3 trillion it would take to save every home in danger of foreclosure. That would keep many banks afloat, and act as the biggest economic stimulus in history. Can anyone sane tell us why we shouldn't bring our troops back home? Can anyone justify wasting $2.4 trillion at a time when the U.S. economy is staring into the abyss of total collapse?
The other national obsession is the tax cuts Bush pushed through in 2001 and 2003. "The surplus is not the government's money," Bush said at the time, apparently unaware that the economy was already in a recession. "The surplus is the people's money." Remember surpluses? Such a Clintonian word. Anyway, Democrats in Congress--still in full-on wuss mode following 9/11--went along with Bush's tax cuts. But, bless their wimpy little heads, they did manage to extract a concession: In 2011, tax rates would revert to what they'd been in 2001.
Believe a Republican once, shame on you. Believe a Republican twice, what were you thinking? Now so-called conservatives are complaining that "the largest tax increase in history" will occur in 2011 if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to expire.
Making the Bush tax cuts permanent would codify the most regressive tax change in history. "After-tax income would increase by more than six percent for households in the top one percent of the nation's income distribution, two percent for households in the middle 60 percent, and only 0.3 percent for households in the bottom 20 percent," found a Brookings Institution study.
Making the rich richer will cost the Treasury an arm, a leg, and the better part of a torso.
"Combined with a minimal but necessary fix to the government's Alternative Minimum Tax, making the tax cuts permanent would reduce federal revenues by almost $1.8 trillion over 10 years--and that's in addition to the $1.7 trillion of revenue losses already locked into law."
$1.8 trillion. Again, allow me to remind you: $1.3 trillion is the amount we need to stave off imminent financial catastrophe.
That sound you hear is the door breaking down. The marshal is coming down the hall. Get off the computer. Fix the problem. Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Let the tax cuts expire.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Morning After
Actually, the evening after. After the election, that is.
I'll be joining Lizz Winstead and other pundits to discuss the bloody aftermath at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of whatever's left of Manhattan. Info, including advance ticket purchase, is below:
"We Have a Winner"
Wednesday, November 5
8:00 PM
92nd Street Y
New York NY
Moderated by “The Daily Show” co-creator and acclaimed political humorist Lizz Winstead, “We Have a Winner” will take a look back, forward (and sideways) at the Presidential Election and State of the Union with some of the most insightful and hilarious political minds today – with Roseanne Barr, Monica Crowley, Robert A. George, Baratunde Thurston and Ted Rall.
Click here to buy tickets.
Actually, the evening after. After the election, that is.
I'll be joining Lizz Winstead and other pundits to discuss the bloody aftermath at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side of whatever's left of Manhattan. Info, including advance ticket purchase, is below:
"We Have a Winner"
Wednesday, November 5
8:00 PM
92nd Street Y
New York NY
Moderated by “The Daily Show” co-creator and acclaimed political humorist Lizz Winstead, “We Have a Winner” will take a look back, forward (and sideways) at the Presidential Election and State of the Union with some of the most insightful and hilarious political minds today – with Roseanne Barr, Monica Crowley, Robert A. George, Baratunde Thurston and Ted Rall.
Click here to buy tickets.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: BUSH, CONGRESS PARTY LIKE IT'S 1929
Save People, Not Bankers
Seat belt laws embolden drivers to drive faster, causing a net loss of life. It's the law of unintended consequences, also known as the Peltzman effect: the safer you feel, the more risk you take.
Sam Peltzman, the economist after whom said effect is named, says that government bailouts like the Bush Administration's $700 billion attempt to stave off economic collapse are no more effective than "pouring money down a rat hole." Moral hazard--rewarding reckless people and companies while allowing responsible ones to fail (hello, Lehman Brothers) may avert one economic crisis while planting the seeds of a worse one down the road.
"In the long run," says Peltzman, "you're just laying the groundwork for more because you're giving people an incentive to take too much risk, where a big part of the risk gets laid off on the taxpayer."
I don't think much of the laissez faire, magic-of-the-marketplace, let-'em-eat-flat-screens school of Darwinian economics flogged by the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman once reigned supreme and Peltzman is a professor emeritus. But I think he has a point here--with a twist. Government intervention is appropriate and necessary during tough economic times. But not if you bail out corporations.
The 1979 Chrysler bailout is a perfect example. Jimmy Carter's $1.2 billion loan sent an unwholesome message to Detroit: don't change a thing. If you get into trouble, the government will rescue you. The Big Three kept selling gas guzzlers. Nimble foreign automakers that spent the 1980s and 1990s developing hybrid technology are crushing them now.
More recently, the government bailed out the airlines after 9/11, notably by limiting negligence lawsuits by relatives of victims. It's hardly a coincidence that the major carriers haven't done much to improve security. Similarly, it's hard to see how U.S. taxpayers will benefit by lending my former employer Bear, Stearns $29 billion to facilitate its sale to JPMorganChase. Bear's corporate culture, reeking of the testosterone-drenched arrogance of its seven-figure-salaried executives, led it to fib about the worth of the collateralized debt obligations that supposedly guaranteed the payment of its subprime mortgage hedge funds. When traders learned the truth, confidence in the firm collapsed, sealing its fate.
Or would have, if the feds hadn't come along. Letting Bear go under might have prompted caution among future wannabe Masters of the Universe. If capitalism survives this debacle, we'll see more like it as a result.
Democrats are asking for some laudable amendments to Bush's plan. They want to give bankruptcy court judges the power to reduce monthly mortgage payments, cap executive salaries, and increase Congressional oversight of the financial services companies involved. Good ideas, but none go far enough. Besides, they'd expire at the end of 2009. Does anyone think the economy will be booming by then?
At least four million people--nine percent of all homeowners--have fallen behind on their payments or are in foreclosure. And 6.5 million more could go down the tubes next year. "People with poor credit have been defaulting on mortgage payment in large numbers for more than a year," says Douglas McIntyre, an editor at 247wallst.com. "Now the problem has moved to homeowners with reasonably good credit."
Each family that loses their house creates a ripple effect. Empty homes lower their neighbors' property values. Some dispossessed workers, unable to find a new place near their jobs, become unemployed. Savings are wiped out. Forced to move, parents pull children out of school, disrupting their education in ways that will hurt them and society decades from now. Banks are burdened with the costs of maintaining property they don't want until they can unload it at a reduced price--further depressing real estate prices. Society, even renters, has an interest in preventing foreclosures.
The unpredictable nature of the current real estate price plunge has created another set of problems. Tobin Harshaw of The New York Times sums up a complicated mess as nicely as anyone I've read: "There are a whole bunch of mortgage-backed securities, the value of which is not known, because nobody knows what the default rates on the underlying mortgages are likely to be." Investors can't set prices, much less invest, without reliable information. So credit markets have seized up.
Americans are peering into the abyss, a.k.a. the End of Everything As We Know It. So whom are we counting upon to save the day? The same Bushist dead enders and Congressional layabouts who let Osama bin Laden live and New Orleans die.
So yeah, we're toast. But let's talk about what should be done:
1. Declare a Bank Holiday. As FDR did in 1933, Bush should shut down the financial system--banks, stock and currency exchanges--for a week or so to avoid panic selling, cool down market volatility, and give Congress time to craft carefully considered legislation rather than the spend-a-thon slapped together over the last Black Weekend. It bodes ill that liberals and conservatives alike have so little faith in the plan. Take some time; get it right.
2. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. The current mortgage meltdown couldn't have happened without Senator Phil Gramm, now a key economic advisor to John McCain. In 1999 Gramm led the repeal of the Depression-era legislation that had separated commercial from investment banks, allowing Citigroup and other companies to sell mortgage-backed securities that blurred the line between Main Street and Wall Street. Let the financiers handle derivatives, structured investment vehicles, and other arcane financial instruments. Banking should return to its dull, staid roots as a business that pays interest on deposits and collects interest on loans without imperiling those deposits.
3. Bail out homeowners, not lenders. Stop doling out hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars, to a few banks and issue the cash to the disaggregated tens of millions of Americans who will spend the money and stimulate the economy instead. Which brings us to…
4. Abolish predatory interest rates. Millions of people in danger of losing their homes would not be in trouble if their banks weren't charging usurious interest rates. Every primary homeowner should be automatically refinanced to a floating 30-year mortgage, with the interest rate set at 1/4 percent point above the fed funds borrowing rate. Similarly, all consumer credit card debt should be refinanced to prime plus 1/4. The same goes for student loans. Secondary and vacation homes don't qualify. Unemployed homeowners can apply for hardship deferrals, allowing them to skip mortgage payments until they find a job. Payday loans ought to fall under similar guidelines. In Utah, the average interest rate on payday loans is 521 percent! Of course, reforms will cut deeply into lenders' earnings. Many banks would be at risk of going under, which is why…
5. Banks that fail should be nationalized. As should investment banks and any other institution that needs federal taxpayer money to avoid failure. If we the people fund 'em, we the people own 'em. If and when the economy recovers, the Treasury collects the spoils and cuts our taxes.
6. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and slash defense spending. Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, tells USA Today the government may have to cover $1.4 trillion in bad mortgage debt. That's a lot of money, but I have good news: we can get it. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq would cost at least $2.4 trillion through the next decade--even more if Obama or McCain keep their pledges to send more troops to Afghanistan next year. Cutting our losses and cutting the $515 billion a year Defense Department appropriations budget would help finance the clean-up of the mortgage meltdown.
(C) 2008 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.
Save People, Not Bankers
Seat belt laws embolden drivers to drive faster, causing a net loss of life. It's the law of unintended consequences, also known as the Peltzman effect: the safer you feel, the more risk you take.
Sam Peltzman, the economist after whom said effect is named, says that government bailouts like the Bush Administration's $700 billion attempt to stave off economic collapse are no more effective than "pouring money down a rat hole." Moral hazard--rewarding reckless people and companies while allowing responsible ones to fail (hello, Lehman Brothers) may avert one economic crisis while planting the seeds of a worse one down the road.
"In the long run," says Peltzman, "you're just laying the groundwork for more because you're giving people an incentive to take too much risk, where a big part of the risk gets laid off on the taxpayer."
I don't think much of the laissez faire, magic-of-the-marketplace, let-'em-eat-flat-screens school of Darwinian economics flogged by the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman once reigned supreme and Peltzman is a professor emeritus. But I think he has a point here--with a twist. Government intervention is appropriate and necessary during tough economic times. But not if you bail out corporations.
The 1979 Chrysler bailout is a perfect example. Jimmy Carter's $1.2 billion loan sent an unwholesome message to Detroit: don't change a thing. If you get into trouble, the government will rescue you. The Big Three kept selling gas guzzlers. Nimble foreign automakers that spent the 1980s and 1990s developing hybrid technology are crushing them now.
More recently, the government bailed out the airlines after 9/11, notably by limiting negligence lawsuits by relatives of victims. It's hardly a coincidence that the major carriers haven't done much to improve security. Similarly, it's hard to see how U.S. taxpayers will benefit by lending my former employer Bear, Stearns $29 billion to facilitate its sale to JPMorganChase. Bear's corporate culture, reeking of the testosterone-drenched arrogance of its seven-figure-salaried executives, led it to fib about the worth of the collateralized debt obligations that supposedly guaranteed the payment of its subprime mortgage hedge funds. When traders learned the truth, confidence in the firm collapsed, sealing its fate.
Or would have, if the feds hadn't come along. Letting Bear go under might have prompted caution among future wannabe Masters of the Universe. If capitalism survives this debacle, we'll see more like it as a result.
Democrats are asking for some laudable amendments to Bush's plan. They want to give bankruptcy court judges the power to reduce monthly mortgage payments, cap executive salaries, and increase Congressional oversight of the financial services companies involved. Good ideas, but none go far enough. Besides, they'd expire at the end of 2009. Does anyone think the economy will be booming by then?
At least four million people--nine percent of all homeowners--have fallen behind on their payments or are in foreclosure. And 6.5 million more could go down the tubes next year. "People with poor credit have been defaulting on mortgage payment in large numbers for more than a year," says Douglas McIntyre, an editor at 247wallst.com. "Now the problem has moved to homeowners with reasonably good credit."
Each family that loses their house creates a ripple effect. Empty homes lower their neighbors' property values. Some dispossessed workers, unable to find a new place near their jobs, become unemployed. Savings are wiped out. Forced to move, parents pull children out of school, disrupting their education in ways that will hurt them and society decades from now. Banks are burdened with the costs of maintaining property they don't want until they can unload it at a reduced price--further depressing real estate prices. Society, even renters, has an interest in preventing foreclosures.
The unpredictable nature of the current real estate price plunge has created another set of problems. Tobin Harshaw of The New York Times sums up a complicated mess as nicely as anyone I've read: "There are a whole bunch of mortgage-backed securities, the value of which is not known, because nobody knows what the default rates on the underlying mortgages are likely to be." Investors can't set prices, much less invest, without reliable information. So credit markets have seized up.
Americans are peering into the abyss, a.k.a. the End of Everything As We Know It. So whom are we counting upon to save the day? The same Bushist dead enders and Congressional layabouts who let Osama bin Laden live and New Orleans die.
So yeah, we're toast. But let's talk about what should be done:
1. Declare a Bank Holiday. As FDR did in 1933, Bush should shut down the financial system--banks, stock and currency exchanges--for a week or so to avoid panic selling, cool down market volatility, and give Congress time to craft carefully considered legislation rather than the spend-a-thon slapped together over the last Black Weekend. It bodes ill that liberals and conservatives alike have so little faith in the plan. Take some time; get it right.
2. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act. The current mortgage meltdown couldn't have happened without Senator Phil Gramm, now a key economic advisor to John McCain. In 1999 Gramm led the repeal of the Depression-era legislation that had separated commercial from investment banks, allowing Citigroup and other companies to sell mortgage-backed securities that blurred the line between Main Street and Wall Street. Let the financiers handle derivatives, structured investment vehicles, and other arcane financial instruments. Banking should return to its dull, staid roots as a business that pays interest on deposits and collects interest on loans without imperiling those deposits.
3. Bail out homeowners, not lenders. Stop doling out hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars, to a few banks and issue the cash to the disaggregated tens of millions of Americans who will spend the money and stimulate the economy instead. Which brings us to…
4. Abolish predatory interest rates. Millions of people in danger of losing their homes would not be in trouble if their banks weren't charging usurious interest rates. Every primary homeowner should be automatically refinanced to a floating 30-year mortgage, with the interest rate set at 1/4 percent point above the fed funds borrowing rate. Similarly, all consumer credit card debt should be refinanced to prime plus 1/4. The same goes for student loans. Secondary and vacation homes don't qualify. Unemployed homeowners can apply for hardship deferrals, allowing them to skip mortgage payments until they find a job. Payday loans ought to fall under similar guidelines. In Utah, the average interest rate on payday loans is 521 percent! Of course, reforms will cut deeply into lenders' earnings. Many banks would be at risk of going under, which is why…
5. Banks that fail should be nationalized. As should investment banks and any other institution that needs federal taxpayer money to avoid failure. If we the people fund 'em, we the people own 'em. If and when the economy recovers, the Treasury collects the spoils and cuts our taxes.
6. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and slash defense spending. Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, tells USA Today the government may have to cover $1.4 trillion in bad mortgage debt. That's a lot of money, but I have good news: we can get it. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq would cost at least $2.4 trillion through the next decade--even more if Obama or McCain keep their pledges to send more troops to Afghanistan next year. Cutting our losses and cutting the $515 billion a year Defense Department appropriations budget would help finance the clean-up of the mortgage meltdown.
(C) 2008 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
TED RALL GETS ANIMATED
Here it is--my first animated editorial cartoon: "President Obama's First Day." It is also available at YouTube.
I wrote, drew and designed the characters for "President Obama's First Day," a tongue-firmly-in-cheek look at liberal Democrats' fantasies of how an Obama Administration would instantly change things for the better.
The animation was done by David Essman (see biography below).
There are some great Flash-based edittoons out there, but they take a different approach than I do. I see each animated cartoon as a skit, as a mini TV show. I hope people enjoy watching 'Obama's First Day' as much as David and I enjoyed making it.
I plan to continue releasing Web-based animated cartoons.
Bios, for those who care:
Ted Rall, 45, is President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. A nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, Rall's cartoons have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and more than 200 other publications. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1996, and twice won first place in the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.
David Essman is a 22 year old animator, currently studying at The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have been screened
across the country at film festivals including San Francisco Shorts,
Animation Block Party, and the St. Louis International Film Festival.
Here it is--my first animated editorial cartoon: "President Obama's First Day." It is also available at YouTube.
I wrote, drew and designed the characters for "President Obama's First Day," a tongue-firmly-in-cheek look at liberal Democrats' fantasies of how an Obama Administration would instantly change things for the better.
The animation was done by David Essman (see biography below).
There are some great Flash-based edittoons out there, but they take a different approach than I do. I see each animated cartoon as a skit, as a mini TV show. I hope people enjoy watching 'Obama's First Day' as much as David and I enjoyed making it.
I plan to continue releasing Web-based animated cartoons.
Bios, for those who care:
Ted Rall, 45, is President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. A nationally-syndicated editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, Rall's cartoons have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and more than 200 other publications. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1996, and twice won first place in the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards.
David Essman is a 22 year old animator, currently studying at The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His films have been screened
across the country at film festivals including San Francisco Shorts,
Animation Block Party, and the St. Louis International Film Festival.
Welcome to New York, Sarah Palin.
posted by Susan Stark
I just read the morning paper on my way to work. It appears that Sarah Palin is going to visit my fair city. She will have her hair done, and dine at many fine restaurants here.
In honor of her visit, I would like to recommend two venues that she simply cannot miss.
One is the Museum of Natural History. There, she will see and wonder in awe at a stunning display of evolution at work. Roughly a million schoolchildren visit the museum each year, and they benefit from it tremendously.
The second venue takes place during the night. I highly recommend Ms. Palin attend a Session of Exhibitionism. There, she will watch people having sex without pregnancy as a consequence of such activity. It will truly be an eye-opening experience for her.
Many of the young women and men who perform at exhibition shows are putting themselves through college, and could benefit from her support.
Have a great time, Sarah!
posted by Susan Stark
I just read the morning paper on my way to work. It appears that Sarah Palin is going to visit my fair city. She will have her hair done, and dine at many fine restaurants here.
In honor of her visit, I would like to recommend two venues that she simply cannot miss.
One is the Museum of Natural History. There, she will see and wonder in awe at a stunning display of evolution at work. Roughly a million schoolchildren visit the museum each year, and they benefit from it tremendously.
The second venue takes place during the night. I highly recommend Ms. Palin attend a Session of Exhibitionism. There, she will watch people having sex without pregnancy as a consequence of such activity. It will truly be an eye-opening experience for her.
Many of the young women and men who perform at exhibition shows are putting themselves through college, and could benefit from her support.
Have a great time, Sarah!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE EDITOR
Why Political Cartoons Matter More Than Ever
I could not help but notice the editorial cartoon," complains a Canadian newspaper reader, "which in my opinion was not funny or satirical at all--in the past, the purpose of an editorial cartoon." An editor at the Houston Chronicle disagrees. "The point of satire is not to be funny," he argues. "The point is to be critical."
Who's right? Both. Neither. Who knows? And that's the problem.
For some reason my colleagues have made me President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC), the organization for professional political cartoonists. (I suspect cartoonists' predilection for hard drinking had something to do with it.) Kidding aside, I'm honored. And scared.
As I've written before, daily newspapers--the biggest source of income for cartoonists--are in crisis. Bottom lines dependent on ad revenue, decimated by the migration of advertising money to the impecunious Web, are now getting killed by the recession. Layoffs and buyouts of reporters and other news staffers are at pandemic levels. As circulations have declined, cartoonists have paid a heavy price. At the beginning of the 20th century, most U.S. newspapers had a full-time staff editorial cartoonist, possibly 2,000 or more. In 1980, after many cities had lost all but one or two of their papers, there were about 280. Now there are fewer than 100--six lost their jobs in the last several months.
Alternative weekly papers print political cartoons but pay nominal reprint fees, not real salaries. The Internet doesn't pay at all.
The professional political cartoonist--the man or woman who spends their life living and breathing politics, history and sociology and devotes their career to distilling new ways of thinking about the world with a drawing, could become extinct.
Ironically, this is the golden age of political cartooning. Never has the form been blessed by so many talented artists drawing in such a dazzling variety of visual styles. And never have so many Americans wanted to read them. So why are they in trouble?
The nativist Thomas Nast pioneered modern editorial cartooning 150 years ago, in Harper's Weekly. Today Nast's heirs publish their work in the surviving daily and weekly newspapers, hundreds of free weeklies, a few major magazines and on countless websites. That doesn't include comic strips with political content like "Doonesbury" and "Prickly City" or genres such as politically-minded graphic novels, animated Web cartoons, or The New Yorker covers.
No American can escape elementary school without being taught about political cartoons. We clip them out, paste them up and read them in history textbooks. But few of us understand what they're for, what constitutes a good one, or why they matter.
Most people agree about what makes a great movie. You need a good script, great actors, smart direction, sharp editing, etc. Quality standards are widely accepted, so it's unusual for a truly awful film to win an Oscar or a great one to bomb.
But there's no such consensus about cartoons. That, even more than the dismal economic outlook for newspapers, is why it's getting harder for editorial cartoonists to make a living. It doesn't matter that editorial cartoons are read by more Americans than ever, or that they've never been better, if people don't understand their purpose.
Most readers, for example, assume that an editorial cartoon reflects the editorial viewpoint of the newspaper where it appears. Until roughly 50 years ago, this was often true. No more. Like a columnist, a staff cartoonist's views are his or her own. Mike Ramirez, a conservative, worked until 2006 for the Los Angeles Times, which is liberal. The Washington Post's editorial board is dominated by neoconservatives; Post cartoonist Tom Toles is liberal.
Is a good political cartoon funny or trenchant? Allegorical (labels and symbols like the Democratic donkey and Uncle Sam) or influenced by comic strips (linear and narrative)? Wordy or wordless? Fair or partisan? No one agrees. Editors and cartoonists argue about these questions all the time, never getting closer to consensus.
Among cartoonists, there's one area of agreement: negativity. We love it.
"I don't draw cartoons that support anything," says editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle, who also runs an online compendium by his colleagues. "I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons." But editors love them.
Quality standards for editorial cartooning remain maddeningly elusive. The most widely reproduced cartoons are those reprinted in Time and Newsweek; among cartoonists and their fans, they are considered the worst the profession has to offer. Respected "cartoonists' cartoonists" labor in unremunerated obscurity; some of the most successful figures in the profession, millionaires with multiple Pulitzers on their resumes, are reviled as hacks.
During the 2006 Danish cartoon controversy, The New York Times unwittingly revealed a couple of common editorial errors about political cartoons: that they shouldn't offend and that they're the same as prose, but with pictures. Executive editor Bill Keller decided not to print the Mohammed cartoons next to news stories about them. "On the one hand, we have abundant evidence that a significant number of people--some of them our readers--consider these cartoons deeply offensive and inflammatory," Keller explained. "On the other hand," he continued, "we feel we can quite adequately convey the nature of the cartoons by describing them."
Most cartoonists don't try to offend anyone. But controversy isn't something they avoid. Cartoons aren't and shouldn't be fair or considerate. Picking on an editorial cartoonist for offending someone is like criticizing a boxer for breaking the other guy's nose. It happens. And anyone who thinks there's no difference between seeing a cartoon and reading about it is out to lunch.
As long as there are politicians to insult, political cartoons will be around in some form. Obscene pictures depicting the municipal officials of Pompeii decorate the ruined resort town's walls. It's a fair bet that Paleolithic humans used cave paintings to mock pompous tribal leaders. If present trends continue, however, the art will be deprofessionalized.
Imagine a world without professional journalists--only bloggers. The news would lose its credibility and thus its relevance. The results would be the same if newspapers ran editorial cartoons by amateurs. In California last year, the Vallejo Times-Herald invited its readers: "Are you better at drawing than writing? Now's your chance to show your stuff to the world, with a Cartoon to the Editor." But its pitch revealed the editors' cluelessness; if anything, the writing/idea of a cartoon is more important than the artwork. Moreover, people who draw cartoons on the side can't provide the contextual consistency needed to establish credibility with readers.
If newspapers are to have a future, they need to attract younger readers. The latest attempt to find out how comes in the form of a study by Northwestern University's Media Management Center. One major recommendation is to add "alternative storytelling like graphics." "Humor is a powerful tool, one that 'The Daily Show,' Slate, Politico, etc. use well and it compliments their brand," adds Andrew Satter, an online video producer for Congressional Quarterly. "We have to own engaging explanatory multimedia journalism."
Speaking of graphics and humor, editorial cartoons are the most read--often the only read--feature on a newspaper's opinion page. Slate and the Politico both place a big emphasis on cartoons. It's paying off. Papers out to increase circulation should be hiring professional cartoonists.
(C) 2008 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.
Why Political Cartoons Matter More Than Ever
I could not help but notice the editorial cartoon," complains a Canadian newspaper reader, "which in my opinion was not funny or satirical at all--in the past, the purpose of an editorial cartoon." An editor at the Houston Chronicle disagrees. "The point of satire is not to be funny," he argues. "The point is to be critical."
Who's right? Both. Neither. Who knows? And that's the problem.
For some reason my colleagues have made me President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC), the organization for professional political cartoonists. (I suspect cartoonists' predilection for hard drinking had something to do with it.) Kidding aside, I'm honored. And scared.
As I've written before, daily newspapers--the biggest source of income for cartoonists--are in crisis. Bottom lines dependent on ad revenue, decimated by the migration of advertising money to the impecunious Web, are now getting killed by the recession. Layoffs and buyouts of reporters and other news staffers are at pandemic levels. As circulations have declined, cartoonists have paid a heavy price. At the beginning of the 20th century, most U.S. newspapers had a full-time staff editorial cartoonist, possibly 2,000 or more. In 1980, after many cities had lost all but one or two of their papers, there were about 280. Now there are fewer than 100--six lost their jobs in the last several months.
Alternative weekly papers print political cartoons but pay nominal reprint fees, not real salaries. The Internet doesn't pay at all.
The professional political cartoonist--the man or woman who spends their life living and breathing politics, history and sociology and devotes their career to distilling new ways of thinking about the world with a drawing, could become extinct.
Ironically, this is the golden age of political cartooning. Never has the form been blessed by so many talented artists drawing in such a dazzling variety of visual styles. And never have so many Americans wanted to read them. So why are they in trouble?
The nativist Thomas Nast pioneered modern editorial cartooning 150 years ago, in Harper's Weekly. Today Nast's heirs publish their work in the surviving daily and weekly newspapers, hundreds of free weeklies, a few major magazines and on countless websites. That doesn't include comic strips with political content like "Doonesbury" and "Prickly City" or genres such as politically-minded graphic novels, animated Web cartoons, or The New Yorker covers.
No American can escape elementary school without being taught about political cartoons. We clip them out, paste them up and read them in history textbooks. But few of us understand what they're for, what constitutes a good one, or why they matter.
Most people agree about what makes a great movie. You need a good script, great actors, smart direction, sharp editing, etc. Quality standards are widely accepted, so it's unusual for a truly awful film to win an Oscar or a great one to bomb.
But there's no such consensus about cartoons. That, even more than the dismal economic outlook for newspapers, is why it's getting harder for editorial cartoonists to make a living. It doesn't matter that editorial cartoons are read by more Americans than ever, or that they've never been better, if people don't understand their purpose.
Most readers, for example, assume that an editorial cartoon reflects the editorial viewpoint of the newspaper where it appears. Until roughly 50 years ago, this was often true. No more. Like a columnist, a staff cartoonist's views are his or her own. Mike Ramirez, a conservative, worked until 2006 for the Los Angeles Times, which is liberal. The Washington Post's editorial board is dominated by neoconservatives; Post cartoonist Tom Toles is liberal.
Is a good political cartoon funny or trenchant? Allegorical (labels and symbols like the Democratic donkey and Uncle Sam) or influenced by comic strips (linear and narrative)? Wordy or wordless? Fair or partisan? No one agrees. Editors and cartoonists argue about these questions all the time, never getting closer to consensus.
Among cartoonists, there's one area of agreement: negativity. We love it.
"I don't draw cartoons that support anything," says editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle, who also runs an online compendium by his colleagues. "I just criticize. Supportive cartoons are lousy cartoons." But editors love them.
Quality standards for editorial cartooning remain maddeningly elusive. The most widely reproduced cartoons are those reprinted in Time and Newsweek; among cartoonists and their fans, they are considered the worst the profession has to offer. Respected "cartoonists' cartoonists" labor in unremunerated obscurity; some of the most successful figures in the profession, millionaires with multiple Pulitzers on their resumes, are reviled as hacks.
During the 2006 Danish cartoon controversy, The New York Times unwittingly revealed a couple of common editorial errors about political cartoons: that they shouldn't offend and that they're the same as prose, but with pictures. Executive editor Bill Keller decided not to print the Mohammed cartoons next to news stories about them. "On the one hand, we have abundant evidence that a significant number of people--some of them our readers--consider these cartoons deeply offensive and inflammatory," Keller explained. "On the other hand," he continued, "we feel we can quite adequately convey the nature of the cartoons by describing them."
Most cartoonists don't try to offend anyone. But controversy isn't something they avoid. Cartoons aren't and shouldn't be fair or considerate. Picking on an editorial cartoonist for offending someone is like criticizing a boxer for breaking the other guy's nose. It happens. And anyone who thinks there's no difference between seeing a cartoon and reading about it is out to lunch.
As long as there are politicians to insult, political cartoons will be around in some form. Obscene pictures depicting the municipal officials of Pompeii decorate the ruined resort town's walls. It's a fair bet that Paleolithic humans used cave paintings to mock pompous tribal leaders. If present trends continue, however, the art will be deprofessionalized.
Imagine a world without professional journalists--only bloggers. The news would lose its credibility and thus its relevance. The results would be the same if newspapers ran editorial cartoons by amateurs. In California last year, the Vallejo Times-Herald invited its readers: "Are you better at drawing than writing? Now's your chance to show your stuff to the world, with a Cartoon to the Editor." But its pitch revealed the editors' cluelessness; if anything, the writing/idea of a cartoon is more important than the artwork. Moreover, people who draw cartoons on the side can't provide the contextual consistency needed to establish credibility with readers.
If newspapers are to have a future, they need to attract younger readers. The latest attempt to find out how comes in the form of a study by Northwestern University's Media Management Center. One major recommendation is to add "alternative storytelling like graphics." "Humor is a powerful tool, one that 'The Daily Show,' Slate, Politico, etc. use well and it compliments their brand," adds Andrew Satter, an online video producer for Congressional Quarterly. "We have to own engaging explanatory multimedia journalism."
Speaking of graphics and humor, editorial cartoons are the most read--often the only read--feature on a newspaper's opinion page. Slate and the Politico both place a big emphasis on cartoons. It's paying off. Papers out to increase circulation should be hiring professional cartoonists.
(C) 2008 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.
Monday, September 15, 2008
McCain on Meds?: Let's Find Out
In May the McCain campaign revealed that the Republican presidential candidate is taking a variety of medications. This isn't surprising; many elderly Americans do.
But there's definitely more than eight years separating 2000's Straight Talk Express--the glad-handing, shoot-from-the-hip aging flyboy who liked to shoot the shit with the journos in the back of the bus--and today's carefully calibrated, creepy-smiling control freak. And I think I know what that something is: antidepressants.
Zoloft? Prozac? Who knows? What's obvious is that McCain's personality has flattened. Anyone who knows someone who has gone on antidepressants knows what I'm talking about.
If McCain is taking one of these meds, which are known for serious psychological side effects in some people, the American people deserve to know now. Toward that end, I renew my offer to contribute $10,000 to McCain's presidential campaign (the previous offer expired when he and his toadies were unable to back up his assertion that the U.S. had been created as a Christian nation). All he has to do is take a comprehensive drug test administered by a qualified neutral party in order to determine what, if anything, he is on. In order to qualify for the $10,000 said test should be administered, and its results released, prior to October 1, 2008.
Maybe spending eight years licking Bush's bunghole has transformed the quick-witted, hot-tempered McCain of 2000 into the Stepford Wives robot before us today. But $10,000 says it's more than that.
In May the McCain campaign revealed that the Republican presidential candidate is taking a variety of medications. This isn't surprising; many elderly Americans do.
But there's definitely more than eight years separating 2000's Straight Talk Express--the glad-handing, shoot-from-the-hip aging flyboy who liked to shoot the shit with the journos in the back of the bus--and today's carefully calibrated, creepy-smiling control freak. And I think I know what that something is: antidepressants.
Zoloft? Prozac? Who knows? What's obvious is that McCain's personality has flattened. Anyone who knows someone who has gone on antidepressants knows what I'm talking about.
If McCain is taking one of these meds, which are known for serious psychological side effects in some people, the American people deserve to know now. Toward that end, I renew my offer to contribute $10,000 to McCain's presidential campaign (the previous offer expired when he and his toadies were unable to back up his assertion that the U.S. had been created as a Christian nation). All he has to do is take a comprehensive drug test administered by a qualified neutral party in order to determine what, if anything, he is on. In order to qualify for the $10,000 said test should be administered, and its results released, prior to October 1, 2008.
Maybe spending eight years licking Bush's bunghole has transformed the quick-witted, hot-tempered McCain of 2000 into the Stepford Wives robot before us today. But $10,000 says it's more than that.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
NYC Appearance: Wednesday, September 10th
Along with fellow editorial cartoonists Jeff Danzier, Jimmy Margulies and Matt Davies, I will discuss my work and cartoons about political campaigns in general at the Museum of the City of New York tomorrow night. "An illustrated discussion on the role of political cartoons in presidential campaigns," as the program describes this celebration of the new book "The Art of Ill Will," begins at 6:30 pm. You can find the pertinent info here, but here are the basics:
Cost: $9 (must reserve in advance, click the link above)
Time: 6:30 pm
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008
Location: Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
New York, NY 10029
Along with fellow editorial cartoonists Jeff Danzier, Jimmy Margulies and Matt Davies, I will discuss my work and cartoons about political campaigns in general at the Museum of the City of New York tomorrow night. "An illustrated discussion on the role of political cartoons in presidential campaigns," as the program describes this celebration of the new book "The Art of Ill Will," begins at 6:30 pm. You can find the pertinent info here, but here are the basics:
Cost: $9 (must reserve in advance, click the link above)
Time: 6:30 pm
Date: Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008
Location: Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
New York, NY 10029
Monday, September 8, 2008
THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN:
BRISTOL DID THE WRONG THING
Abortion Should Be Mandatory for Pregnant Teens
You don't need a rich imagination to picture the scene. In the Alaska governor's mansion, a pair of parents and their visibly pregnant teenage daughter sit on a dead bear sprawled across a couch they had to have shipped because there isn't an Ethan Allen in Anchorage. On a second sofa, on the opposite side of a glass coffee table festooned by the exoskeleton of a giant crab, fidget a second set of parents and their son, a.k.a. The Extremely Nervous Boyfriend. Heads of dead animals line the walls.
"Levi, Levi, Levi." The governor pauses, reveling in the others' discomfort. Moments like this are how she earned the sobriquet Barracuda.
She leans in. "You little s---. You knocked up my daughter. Do you know how close your little sexcapade came to screwing up my plan for global domination? Now you're going to do the right thing."
A few days later, Extremely Nervous Boyfriend blinks under the bright lights of a stage in St. Paul, elevated to the even more challenging role of America's Unhappiest 18-Year-Old. I met a guy the night before he was executed. Levi Johnston had the same look in his eyes.
Sarracuda's 17-year-old fry was nearly as miserable. "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby," the McCain-Palin campaign claimed in its press release. Did the daughter of the mother of all anti-choice governors really have a choice? Well…
By pro-life standards, Sarracuda is an extremist. Parting ways with five out of six Americans, she's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. For Bristol, doing the "right thing"--carrying the baby to term, getting married, being paraded across 37 million TV sets--was the path of least resistance.
In reality, Bristol is doing the wrong thing. She's having the kid. She's marrying the father. Three lives will likely be destroyed.
Even pro-choice liberals are afraid to speak the truth: teen marriage and parenthood are disasters for everyone concerned. I have serious problems with well-off married couples who decide to terminate their pregnancies for frivolous reasons. Conversely, abortion ought to be mandatory for people under 18. Twenty-five would be better. Teen marriage should be banned.
Anyone who went to high school knew a student couple where the girl became pregnant. What the unlucky couple decided to do about it would determine their future. The girls who had abortions went on with their lives. They graduated from high school and, if they were headed that way before the dipstick turned pink, continued with college and careers and all the other stuff young people are supposed to go on to do.
Then there were the girls who kept their babies. With few exceptions--I've never heard of any, but I imagine they exist--it was the wrong decision. Their lives were ruined.
Many never graduated from high school, much less college. Their futures were grim: low educational attainment doomed them to dead-end jobs in the low-wage service sector. Married too young and under pressure, most wound up divorced. Many never remarried, or married stepfathers who barely tolerated their children. Their kids, raised in poverty in families led by single, stressed-out young moms, were themselves likely to repeat the cycle of downward mobility by getting pregnant in their teens.
Obviously, there are exceptions: teen pregnancies leading to lifelong partnerships with high school sweethearts, loving stepparents, daughters of 15-year-old parents making $1 million a year. But in most cases, studies confirm the anecdotal evidence.
Having kids and getting married too young are a prescription for unhappiness.
Teen moms are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school. "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reports that less than 40 percent of women who have a child before the age of 18 will graduate from high school, compared to a high school graduate rate of 75 percent for those who delay parenthood until their early twenties," law professors June Carbone and Noami Cahn wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Teen brides are ten times more likely to plunge into poverty. In 2005 University of Rochester economist Gordon Dahl found that "that a woman who marries young is 28 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older." A 1993 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation determined that only 8 percent of women who finished high school, married before having a child, and married after age 20 became poor. 79 percent of women who didn't do these things wound up poor.
As the daughter of a possible future president, Bristol Palin probably won't be poor. (Although prominent figures, like Bill Cosby and Alan Keyes, do disown their children.) Even setting aside Levi's famous MySpace page ("I don't want kids"), his pending marriage to Bristol is probably doomed.
When teenage girls become pregnant, eight out of 10 of the fathers never marry them. One can hardly blame the runaway grooms, considering the probable outcomes. A 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that 59 percent of couples who marry before age 18 split up within 15 years. But waiting a few years markedly increases a marriage's odds: 64 percent of couples who get hitched after age 20 are still married 15 years later.
I'll say it again: There are exceptions to every rule. Guys smoke two packs a day and live be to be 100. I've driven 115 miles per hour and I'm still here. But neither smoking nor speeding are smart choices. One should be illegal; the other is. Society sets rules and regulations and laws to cover common situations and typical outcomes. On the matter of teen pregnancy and marriage, the typical outcome is terrible.
Those who keep silent about Levi and Bristol's bad decisions--especially those marketing them as examples to be emulated--are doing society a disservice. Levi and Bristol are about to compound one tragedy (unplanned teen pregnancy) with another (involuntary marriage). They're setting a terrible example for other teenagers who will find themselves in their situation.
Congress should act to protect these kids from themselves--ban teen marriage, mandate teen abortion.
(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
BRISTOL DID THE WRONG THING
Abortion Should Be Mandatory for Pregnant Teens
You don't need a rich imagination to picture the scene. In the Alaska governor's mansion, a pair of parents and their visibly pregnant teenage daughter sit on a dead bear sprawled across a couch they had to have shipped because there isn't an Ethan Allen in Anchorage. On a second sofa, on the opposite side of a glass coffee table festooned by the exoskeleton of a giant crab, fidget a second set of parents and their son, a.k.a. The Extremely Nervous Boyfriend. Heads of dead animals line the walls.
"Levi, Levi, Levi." The governor pauses, reveling in the others' discomfort. Moments like this are how she earned the sobriquet Barracuda.
She leans in. "You little s---. You knocked up my daughter. Do you know how close your little sexcapade came to screwing up my plan for global domination? Now you're going to do the right thing."
A few days later, Extremely Nervous Boyfriend blinks under the bright lights of a stage in St. Paul, elevated to the even more challenging role of America's Unhappiest 18-Year-Old. I met a guy the night before he was executed. Levi Johnston had the same look in his eyes.
Sarracuda's 17-year-old fry was nearly as miserable. "Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby," the McCain-Palin campaign claimed in its press release. Did the daughter of the mother of all anti-choice governors really have a choice? Well…
By pro-life standards, Sarracuda is an extremist. Parting ways with five out of six Americans, she's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. For Bristol, doing the "right thing"--carrying the baby to term, getting married, being paraded across 37 million TV sets--was the path of least resistance.
In reality, Bristol is doing the wrong thing. She's having the kid. She's marrying the father. Three lives will likely be destroyed.
Even pro-choice liberals are afraid to speak the truth: teen marriage and parenthood are disasters for everyone concerned. I have serious problems with well-off married couples who decide to terminate their pregnancies for frivolous reasons. Conversely, abortion ought to be mandatory for people under 18. Twenty-five would be better. Teen marriage should be banned.
Anyone who went to high school knew a student couple where the girl became pregnant. What the unlucky couple decided to do about it would determine their future. The girls who had abortions went on with their lives. They graduated from high school and, if they were headed that way before the dipstick turned pink, continued with college and careers and all the other stuff young people are supposed to go on to do.
Then there were the girls who kept their babies. With few exceptions--I've never heard of any, but I imagine they exist--it was the wrong decision. Their lives were ruined.
Many never graduated from high school, much less college. Their futures were grim: low educational attainment doomed them to dead-end jobs in the low-wage service sector. Married too young and under pressure, most wound up divorced. Many never remarried, or married stepfathers who barely tolerated their children. Their kids, raised in poverty in families led by single, stressed-out young moms, were themselves likely to repeat the cycle of downward mobility by getting pregnant in their teens.
Obviously, there are exceptions: teen pregnancies leading to lifelong partnerships with high school sweethearts, loving stepparents, daughters of 15-year-old parents making $1 million a year. But in most cases, studies confirm the anecdotal evidence.
Having kids and getting married too young are a prescription for unhappiness.
Teen moms are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school. "The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy reports that less than 40 percent of women who have a child before the age of 18 will graduate from high school, compared to a high school graduate rate of 75 percent for those who delay parenthood until their early twenties," law professors June Carbone and Noami Cahn wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Teen brides are ten times more likely to plunge into poverty. In 2005 University of Rochester economist Gordon Dahl found that "that a woman who marries young is 28 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older." A 1993 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation determined that only 8 percent of women who finished high school, married before having a child, and married after age 20 became poor. 79 percent of women who didn't do these things wound up poor.
As the daughter of a possible future president, Bristol Palin probably won't be poor. (Although prominent figures, like Bill Cosby and Alan Keyes, do disown their children.) Even setting aside Levi's famous MySpace page ("I don't want kids"), his pending marriage to Bristol is probably doomed.
When teenage girls become pregnant, eight out of 10 of the fathers never marry them. One can hardly blame the runaway grooms, considering the probable outcomes. A 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that 59 percent of couples who marry before age 18 split up within 15 years. But waiting a few years markedly increases a marriage's odds: 64 percent of couples who get hitched after age 20 are still married 15 years later.
I'll say it again: There are exceptions to every rule. Guys smoke two packs a day and live be to be 100. I've driven 115 miles per hour and I'm still here. But neither smoking nor speeding are smart choices. One should be illegal; the other is. Society sets rules and regulations and laws to cover common situations and typical outcomes. On the matter of teen pregnancy and marriage, the typical outcome is terrible.
Those who keep silent about Levi and Bristol's bad decisions--especially those marketing them as examples to be emulated--are doing society a disservice. Levi and Bristol are about to compound one tragedy (unplanned teen pregnancy) with another (involuntary marriage). They're setting a terrible example for other teenagers who will find themselves in their situation.
Congress should act to protect these kids from themselves--ban teen marriage, mandate teen abortion.
(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Susan Stark's Foney Nooz
posted by Susan Stark
This just in . . .
ALASKA--A big, giant runaway glacier about the size of Manhattan broke off and created havoc for anything in its path, including the home of Governor Sarah Palin. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the house was flattened to splinters. Read more here . . .
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26529937/
posted by Susan Stark
This just in . . .
ALASKA--A big, giant runaway glacier about the size of Manhattan broke off and created havoc for anything in its path, including the home of Governor Sarah Palin. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the house was flattened to splinters. Read more here . . .
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26529937/
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
THIS WEEK'S SYNDICATED COLUMN: SARAH PALIN, QUEEN OF THE NOBODIES
Experience is Overrated. What About IQ?
Until four years ago, no one had heard of our current Democratic nominee. "Who is Barack Obama?" asked CBS News after he was picked to deliver the keynote address at the Dems' 2004 confab. "Not exactly a household name." Four years later, that speech remains his biggest achievement. No landmark legislation bears his name. His claim to fame is his gift of gab.
But Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's newly-minted fame makes Obama, saddled with a resume so thin he pads it with the entry "community organizer," look like an elder statesman. Governor of one of the nation's least populous states for a mere two years and the ex-mayor of a municipality that's home to 7000 souls, Palin is now positioned to be a proverbial heartbeat away from the ability to order ICBMs fired at Russia. (On January 20th McCain, a cancer survivor and hardly the picture of health, will be two years away from the average life expectancy for an American male.)
At least Obama went to law school. Along with a solid background in history, knowledge of the law is essential for a president.
Palin is a total unknown. A McCain adviser admits to The New York Times: "The campaign’s polling on Mr. McCain's potential running mates was inconclusive on the selection of Ms. Palin--virtually no one had heard of her."
Welcome to the year of the nobody, when people you've never heard of can blog or reality-show or, in the case of the political class, schmooze their way to fame and fortune. My favorite nobody of 2008 was a kid named Efraim Diveroli, the fast-talking 22-year-old president of a two-man arms trading outfit by the name of AEY, Inc. (Speaking of thin resumes, his business partner was a masseur by trade.)
On the strength of a charming smile and the lowest bid, the Pentagon awarded this joker a $300 million federal contract to supply munitions to the U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan. Three hundred million dollars!
"By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY's president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment--weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines--for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere," reported The Times. Alas, all good things end. Diveroli's firm sluffed off a bunch of repackaged, outdated and substandard Chinese-made shells from Albania to the Afghans, who knew enough about war materiel to complain to their American masters.
Lest I make myself misunderstood, I'm not claiming that experience is a reliable indicator of performance. The members of George W. Bush's cabinet had collectively spent more than a century of their lives serving in federal government. That didn't prevent them from bankrupting the treasury or standing by passively as a hurricane destroyed New Orleans. Nor am I impressed by fancy credentials. As many financial services workers can attest, few employees are more poorly prepared for real-world economics than those with MBAs. Journalism schools produce stenographers, not journalists.
Resume entries aside, history shows that certain personality traits--especially intelligence and open-mindedness--make for better presidents. Also helpful are a variety of life experiences, such as familiarity with other countries and cultures and overcoming tough times.
By most measures, Palin is a weird choice. Like Geena Davis in the 2005 TV series "Commander in Chief," she could wake up one morning to find that McCain has shuffled off to the great POW camp in the sky. We would probably be in trouble.
As far as we know, Sarah Palin faced her biggest personal challenge a year ago. According to official accounts, she learned that she was pregnant with a child with Down Syndrome. She decided to keep him. It has to be heart-breaking. Still, as a right-wing opponent of abortion rights, however, the decision not to abort had to have been simple to make. Also on the knocked-up front, she and McCain actively attempted to cover up the fact that her 17-year-old daughter has a bun in the oven. Icky, icky. Zero integrity points for sucking up to the Christianist Right.
Palin's teen daughter intends to carry the child to term--a decision one hopes she was able to make free of pressure from her ambitious mother.
More worrisome is an incurious intellect that dovetails regrettably with Palin's past as a beauty queen. "Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States," reported The Times. "In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait." Yet Anchorage is a major hub for flights to Japan, Korea and China. She never felt like checking out Canada?
Asked about rumors the Alaska governor was being considered as McCain's running mate, she told CNBC: "As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I'm used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we're trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question."
"Working real hard"? Doesn't the University of Idaho require its graduates to learn English? Does she know that she isn't running for VP of Alaska? Or that the VP presides over the Senate? With the nation facing enormous economic, political and military challenges, do we need another numbnut in the White House?
At least Palin knows something many other Republicans don't. "We are a nation at war," she told Business Week, "and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources." Palin has grammar trouble. But she knows why we're in Iraq.
Two of Palin's opponents in the 2006 Alaska governor's race were baffled at Palin's lack of substance. "She wouldn't have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her," Republican-Independent Andrew Halcro told The Times. "[Democratic candidate Tony Knowles] and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn't about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people's most basic instincts: 'I like you, and you make me feel good.'"
God bless America. We're going to need all the help we can get.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
Experience is Overrated. What About IQ?
Until four years ago, no one had heard of our current Democratic nominee. "Who is Barack Obama?" asked CBS News after he was picked to deliver the keynote address at the Dems' 2004 confab. "Not exactly a household name." Four years later, that speech remains his biggest achievement. No landmark legislation bears his name. His claim to fame is his gift of gab.
But Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's newly-minted fame makes Obama, saddled with a resume so thin he pads it with the entry "community organizer," look like an elder statesman. Governor of one of the nation's least populous states for a mere two years and the ex-mayor of a municipality that's home to 7000 souls, Palin is now positioned to be a proverbial heartbeat away from the ability to order ICBMs fired at Russia. (On January 20th McCain, a cancer survivor and hardly the picture of health, will be two years away from the average life expectancy for an American male.)
At least Obama went to law school. Along with a solid background in history, knowledge of the law is essential for a president.
Palin is a total unknown. A McCain adviser admits to The New York Times: "The campaign’s polling on Mr. McCain's potential running mates was inconclusive on the selection of Ms. Palin--virtually no one had heard of her."
Welcome to the year of the nobody, when people you've never heard of can blog or reality-show or, in the case of the political class, schmooze their way to fame and fortune. My favorite nobody of 2008 was a kid named Efraim Diveroli, the fast-talking 22-year-old president of a two-man arms trading outfit by the name of AEY, Inc. (Speaking of thin resumes, his business partner was a masseur by trade.)
On the strength of a charming smile and the lowest bid, the Pentagon awarded this joker a $300 million federal contract to supply munitions to the U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan. Three hundred million dollars!
"By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY's president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment--weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines--for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere," reported The Times. Alas, all good things end. Diveroli's firm sluffed off a bunch of repackaged, outdated and substandard Chinese-made shells from Albania to the Afghans, who knew enough about war materiel to complain to their American masters.
Lest I make myself misunderstood, I'm not claiming that experience is a reliable indicator of performance. The members of George W. Bush's cabinet had collectively spent more than a century of their lives serving in federal government. That didn't prevent them from bankrupting the treasury or standing by passively as a hurricane destroyed New Orleans. Nor am I impressed by fancy credentials. As many financial services workers can attest, few employees are more poorly prepared for real-world economics than those with MBAs. Journalism schools produce stenographers, not journalists.
Resume entries aside, history shows that certain personality traits--especially intelligence and open-mindedness--make for better presidents. Also helpful are a variety of life experiences, such as familiarity with other countries and cultures and overcoming tough times.
By most measures, Palin is a weird choice. Like Geena Davis in the 2005 TV series "Commander in Chief," she could wake up one morning to find that McCain has shuffled off to the great POW camp in the sky. We would probably be in trouble.
As far as we know, Sarah Palin faced her biggest personal challenge a year ago. According to official accounts, she learned that she was pregnant with a child with Down Syndrome. She decided to keep him. It has to be heart-breaking. Still, as a right-wing opponent of abortion rights, however, the decision not to abort had to have been simple to make. Also on the knocked-up front, she and McCain actively attempted to cover up the fact that her 17-year-old daughter has a bun in the oven. Icky, icky. Zero integrity points for sucking up to the Christianist Right.
Palin's teen daughter intends to carry the child to term--a decision one hopes she was able to make free of pressure from her ambitious mother.
More worrisome is an incurious intellect that dovetails regrettably with Palin's past as a beauty queen. "Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States," reported The Times. "In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait." Yet Anchorage is a major hub for flights to Japan, Korea and China. She never felt like checking out Canada?
Asked about rumors the Alaska governor was being considered as McCain's running mate, she told CNBC: "As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I'm used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we're trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question."
"Working real hard"? Doesn't the University of Idaho require its graduates to learn English? Does she know that she isn't running for VP of Alaska? Or that the VP presides over the Senate? With the nation facing enormous economic, political and military challenges, do we need another numbnut in the White House?
At least Palin knows something many other Republicans don't. "We are a nation at war," she told Business Week, "and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources." Palin has grammar trouble. But she knows why we're in Iraq.
Two of Palin's opponents in the 2006 Alaska governor's race were baffled at Palin's lack of substance. "She wouldn't have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her," Republican-Independent Andrew Halcro told The Times. "[Democratic candidate Tony Knowles] and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn't about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people's most basic instincts: 'I like you, and you make me feel good.'"
God bless America. We're going to need all the help we can get.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
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