Things don't always turn out the way we plan. For example, when we began putting together Friday's 'Daily Felltoon', some of our normally reliable online tools weren't quite their usual, fully-functioning selves (If you missed Friday's cartoon Click Here, or Friday's commentary Click Here).
When it comes to the jobs numbers and the economic situation in the United States, the Obama administration is learning a hard lesson about those plans right now.
The lesson isn't what some currently are saying - that America just can't pull itself up by its bootstraps right now. As we pointed out last Thursday, the problem isn't that Americans aren't willing to do the hard work to pull our economy back from the brink.
Our political leaders, however, are a different story.
From the left, the excuse that's heard most often is one that resounds with a story of fatalism - a story we're frankly tired of hearing. As Paul Krugman pointed out over the weekend, we know exactly what the problems are, and we know how to solve them. It is true that we don't have access to some tools to help pump up demand - for example, we can't cut short-term interest rates because they're basically zero. So that tool for driving demand isn't available. But that's NOT the only tool in our toolbox.
As Krugman also states, "We should be using fiscal stimulus; we should be using unconventional monetary policy, including raising the inflation target; we should be pursuing aggressive measures to reduce mortgage debt. Not doing these things means accepting huge waste" - waste, something modern conservatives claim to hate almost as much as taxes.
No, the problem on the left simply lies in not having the political will to do what's needed. Yes, House Democrats are claiming they'll push for more infrastructure spending and other stimulus measures in the face of Friday's jobs report. Sadly, their claims are reminiscent of those many on the Left made during the poorly-handled health care reform debate - too little, too late.
On the right, the sad fact is that they simply don't care. The compassion-free attitude of modern so-called conservatives, as Charles Blow noted over the weekend, is the real problem. The richest of the rich have been able to con many poor into thinking that someday, they'll be rich too - so the rich should never have to pay any more taxes, if we're going to repair our economic standing.
As Mr. Blow also noted, that's a false choice. We've said it repeatedly, as has anyone else who understands the economic problems America faces: BOTH sensible tax increases - especially on those who can most afford it - as well as sensible spending cuts are THE ONLY way to get our economic house in order. BOTH - not either/or.
Yet those on the right - even when they grudgingly admit corporations are swimming in cash and don't need big tax breaks, as Bill Kristol pointed out over the weekend - still insist that tax cuts WITHOUT additional sources of revenue are the only way forward. As Nicholas Kristof pointedly noted, if Republicans and conservatives are so set on finding a country that meets their current ideology of how things should be, they should move to Pakistan.
Unfortunately, this lack of courage on the left and lack of concern for others (and acceptance of reality) on the right are putting most Americans in the position of ants at a picnic, scrambling for scraps, while our so called leaders still feast, seemingly without care.
It's highly recommended that both sides change their tune, and stop focusing on their own pieces of cake before the 2012 elections - or they could find themselves politically headless come November 2012.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Friday Funday: All About The Cartoons
While there are other topics we could talk about today - like the 2012 GOP candidates stepping all over each other, and themselves, in New Hampshire, we think the most valuable subject we could talk about today is one of our favorites: cartoons.
This weekend, there will be three different events for you, our readers, to get out and see in different places around the country - and all of them are related to cartoons and cartooning.
If you're in the Midwest, near Lincoln, we invite you to stop by this evening (Friday) at the Haydon Gallery in the Haymarket, to meet Paul face-to-face - along with four other troublemakers cartoonist friends of ours. The event is a fund-raiser called "A Toon For Meadowlark," to help raise funds for the Meadowlark Music Festival.
The cartoonists are legends, and include our own Paul Fell; Mike Edholm, our current President of the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society; John Hambrock, of The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee; Milt Prigee, whose work has been seen in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, and Washington Post; and Tom Richmond of Mad Magazine.
You'll be able to meet the cartoonists, buy some of their works, and talk with them beginning at 5:30 tonight.
If you're going to be in the Southeast or Mid-Atlantic regions this weekend, you may want to take a road trip to a comic art convention called HeroesCon, happening in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our friend Eric Menge (who also happens to be the husband of our editor, Amy) writes an online graphic novel called Snow by Night. He and his cartooist/artist Brittany will be there to promote their graphic novel, sell copies of Chapter 1, and meet with fans. If you go, they'll be at table SP-45. Stop by and say h, and check out Snow by Night in hard-copy form!
If you're near our West Palm Beach offices, we recommend stopping by the Norton Museum of Art, to check out the "Out of This World" exhibit beginning this Saturday. The exhibit will feature costumes, pictures, comic artwork, and related items from such entertainment and comics legends as Star Trek and Batman (and now we all know who Tom Richmond loaned his Batman costume to).
As most people know, we love comics and cartooning - so we're glad we get to share these opportunities to meet some of our favorite cartoonists this weekend. Remember - without cartoon art, you'd likely have to sit around and watch news clips and pictures of pretend Presidential candidates steal the media spotlight from actual announced candidates.
We shudder to think of what a horrible world that would be.
No matter where you go this weekend, we hope you enjoy some cartooning - even if it's just the characters on a cereal box.
This weekend, there will be three different events for you, our readers, to get out and see in different places around the country - and all of them are related to cartoons and cartooning.
If you're in the Midwest, near Lincoln, we invite you to stop by this evening (Friday) at the Haydon Gallery in the Haymarket, to meet Paul face-to-face - along with four other troublemakers cartoonist friends of ours. The event is a fund-raiser called "A Toon For Meadowlark," to help raise funds for the Meadowlark Music Festival.
The cartoonists are legends, and include our own Paul Fell; Mike Edholm, our current President of the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society; John Hambrock, of The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee; Milt Prigee, whose work has been seen in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, and Washington Post; and Tom Richmond of Mad Magazine.
You'll be able to meet the cartoonists, buy some of their works, and talk with them beginning at 5:30 tonight.
If you're going to be in the Southeast or Mid-Atlantic regions this weekend, you may want to take a road trip to a comic art convention called HeroesCon, happening in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our friend Eric Menge (who also happens to be the husband of our editor, Amy) writes an online graphic novel called Snow by Night. He and his cartooist/artist Brittany will be there to promote their graphic novel, sell copies of Chapter 1, and meet with fans. If you go, they'll be at table SP-45. Stop by and say h, and check out Snow by Night in hard-copy form!
If you're near our West Palm Beach offices, we recommend stopping by the Norton Museum of Art, to check out the "Out of This World" exhibit beginning this Saturday. The exhibit will feature costumes, pictures, comic artwork, and related items from such entertainment and comics legends as Star Trek and Batman (and now we all know who Tom Richmond loaned his Batman costume to).
As most people know, we love comics and cartooning - so we're glad we get to share these opportunities to meet some of our favorite cartoonists this weekend. Remember - without cartoon art, you'd likely have to sit around and watch news clips and pictures of pretend Presidential candidates steal the media spotlight from actual announced candidates.
We shudder to think of what a horrible world that would be.
No matter where you go this weekend, we hope you enjoy some cartooning - even if it's just the characters on a cereal box.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Time's Up
Since the Great Recession began in 2008 (under President Bush), we've been saying, ever more intensely, many of the same things the wisest minds in economics have been saying: that the U.S. government needs to do more, not less, to help the economy recover. That we should bring back a WPA-like program. That American corporations are NOT paying an effective tax rate that's too high; rather, they're paying an effective rate that's too low.
We have warned countless times that if the idiots in the great American masses didn't wise up and quit voting against their own best interests, America would hit another economic wall, sooner rather than later.
On Wednesday, we were sadly proven right once again.
As early jobs-related numbers rolled out on Wednesday and manufacturing orders and other economic data began rolling in, it was clear that the economic numbers were going to take another hit - and they did. Don't expect the news to get better the next few days, as the official numbers for job creation, unemployment, and other economic news are released.
While specific, accurate, long-term economic forecasting is FAR more complicated than most people on Earth can even imagine, the generalities of economics are not all that complicated. Yes, it IS about supply and demand, as many Americans often say. But the problem isn't the supply, or even the potential supply.
There are millions of Americans who would love to have a job - and even more who would love to have just one job. These are mostly educated, experienced, well-trained, skilled workers, who have been ignored and overlooked, as businesses and corporations of all sizes keep searching for something that doesn't exist - the perfect worker, who is willing and happy to become a slave.
We have far more supply than we can use in America right now - and not just of workers.
What we don't have right now is demand.
When millions of Americans are one illness, one car wreck or one natural disaster away from complete economic ruin, spending an extra ten or twenty dollars each month isn't even a possibility. That inability to spend drives demand down - which just reinforces the downward economic spiral.
The fact is, one percent of the world's households hold nearly forty percent of the world's wealth. Historically, that kind of imbalance only leads to one place - war, which tends to level the playing field in the short term, usually starting with the violent deaths of the wealthy and ending with the starvation deaths of the poor.
This shouldn't be news to you. We've told you this before.
In the face of this screaming economic siren, however, our politicians in Washington DC - from both parties - saw fit this week to waste more time, money, and energy holding a fake vote that could pull the final support out from under the entire world economic system.
Since they won't do anything - or even say what needs to be said - we will.
It is time to stop using false equivalences. It is time to stop finding excuses not to act. It is time to stop being afraid we might anger someone if we DO something to get ourselves out of this economic disaster. If corporations threaten to leave because we're going to make them pay a more fair effective tax rate? Let them follow through. If we need to raise taxes on the rich? Do it. Taxes were higher under Ronald Reagan than they are now, and America's upper class and corporations did just fine then.
It is time to do what needs to be done for our country and its people, to help them make progress on their lives, above all else.
If there is any one lesson from the piles of numbers coming out, that should be it.
Time's up. The time to debate is over. It's time to move on - and act. Now.
We have warned countless times that if the idiots in the great American masses didn't wise up and quit voting against their own best interests, America would hit another economic wall, sooner rather than later.
On Wednesday, we were sadly proven right once again.
As early jobs-related numbers rolled out on Wednesday and manufacturing orders and other economic data began rolling in, it was clear that the economic numbers were going to take another hit - and they did. Don't expect the news to get better the next few days, as the official numbers for job creation, unemployment, and other economic news are released.
While specific, accurate, long-term economic forecasting is FAR more complicated than most people on Earth can even imagine, the generalities of economics are not all that complicated. Yes, it IS about supply and demand, as many Americans often say. But the problem isn't the supply, or even the potential supply.
There are millions of Americans who would love to have a job - and even more who would love to have just one job. These are mostly educated, experienced, well-trained, skilled workers, who have been ignored and overlooked, as businesses and corporations of all sizes keep searching for something that doesn't exist - the perfect worker, who is willing and happy to become a slave.
We have far more supply than we can use in America right now - and not just of workers.
What we don't have right now is demand.
When millions of Americans are one illness, one car wreck or one natural disaster away from complete economic ruin, spending an extra ten or twenty dollars each month isn't even a possibility. That inability to spend drives demand down - which just reinforces the downward economic spiral.
The fact is, one percent of the world's households hold nearly forty percent of the world's wealth. Historically, that kind of imbalance only leads to one place - war, which tends to level the playing field in the short term, usually starting with the violent deaths of the wealthy and ending with the starvation deaths of the poor.
This shouldn't be news to you. We've told you this before.
In the face of this screaming economic siren, however, our politicians in Washington DC - from both parties - saw fit this week to waste more time, money, and energy holding a fake vote that could pull the final support out from under the entire world economic system.
Since they won't do anything - or even say what needs to be said - we will.
It is time to stop using false equivalences. It is time to stop finding excuses not to act. It is time to stop being afraid we might anger someone if we DO something to get ourselves out of this economic disaster. If corporations threaten to leave because we're going to make them pay a more fair effective tax rate? Let them follow through. If we need to raise taxes on the rich? Do it. Taxes were higher under Ronald Reagan than they are now, and America's upper class and corporations did just fine then.
It is time to do what needs to be done for our country and its people, to help them make progress on their lives, above all else.
If there is any one lesson from the piles of numbers coming out, that should be it.
Time's up. The time to debate is over. It's time to move on - and act. Now.
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