Gas prices remain headline news - which means this cartoonist has to keep thinking of original ideas to illustrate the story. This idea started with the snake's forked tongue - but I think the hose coils are what make the visual.
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
This story didn't have the legs it deserved. A newspaper in DC ran a picture of OUR mayor in a dress as a teen. Seemed it was a part he had in a school play called "Little Annie" - but the mayor denied that the photo was of him, creating a "Dressgate" scandal out of nothing. The "coverup" was quickly exposed by numerous childhood friends, Kwame admitted his error, and we all had a good laugh. Needless, to say, this one was a hanging curve for a cartoonist. . . .
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
Al Gore is profiteering from the very regulations he has advocated to increase the use of alternative fuels.
At the TED Conference in Monterey this spring, Gore admitted that he is vested in numerous alternative fuel companies - most prominently biofuel firms like Amyris and AltraBiofuels. For years, Gore has advocated government subsidies and market guarantees for biofuels. In 1994, for example, Gore was the Senate's tiebreaking vote to mandate ethanol as a fuel additive (a mandate that, ironically, creates more greenhouse emissions than it saves).
And while he was advocating those polices, he was personally investing in the very firms that would profit from them.
Gore is a partner in Kleiner Perkins, a California investment house that specializes in alternative technologies and that is also heavily invested in ethanol companies. One of Gore's partners, John Doerr, is presently advocating legislation that would expand biofuel usage even as major questions are being raised about ethanol's contribution to world food shortages.
"Add it up," reports Noel Sheppard of the Media Research Center, "and you've got an astounding number of dollars invested in agritechnology companies by Gore and folks connected to him, who together possess extraordinary clout and access to Congress."
But while Gore's policies are making him rich, they are making the world poorer, as the transfer of land from food to fuel has contributed to a global food crisis, causing shortages and galloping food inflation across the Third World. Just this year, the price of corn has tripled while wheat prices has soared 120 percent.
Yet, despite this naked profiteering, the mainstream media has been silent - covering up Gore's financial self-interest in advocating alternative fuels.
In his April 27 Earth Day column, Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom explained why we should trust the green lobby in the climate debate.
"I look at who has a dog in the hunt," wrote the liberal columnist. "On the one hand, you have environmentalists. There's not much money in it. On the other hand, there are oil companies. Car companies. There's a lot of money in that. It is well worth it to these concerns to pay lawyers and lobbyists huge sums to insure that nothing stands in their way of a profit. So you tell me: Who is more inclined to exaggerate for their cause? To spin the story?"
The answer isn't as simple as Mr. Albom supposed.
For more Payne, go to his web page.
The Shrek flap in city council was a natural to lead off this column on the state's film-recruitment efforts. But I was surprised at how easily the rest of the panels came. I would love to do a whole column on city council as Shrek characters, but I have learned never to mix race and animals - and Shrek is full of animals.
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
Back to one of my favorite auto industry metaphors, NASCAR, to illustrate the week's big news: That GM has offered to intervene with money to settle American Axle's UAW strike. Car nuts will note that my race cars are now of the "Car of Tomorrow" winged design since NASCAR - as of this year - is using that vehicle in ALL of its races.
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
Washington's draconian CAFE mandates to fight global "warming" are being felt in perverse ways. Making the rounds before the Detroit media last week, Chrysler executives rallied around higher gas prices -- criticizing the Clinton/McCain tax-holiday plan and applauding the trend toward $4 a gallon gas.
"While (CEO Bob Nardelli) empathized with the pain higher gas prices causes for consumers," reported the Detroit Free Press, "he said the nation must have an energy policy that is aligned with the country's larger goals."
Huh?
Why is the head of a company that is hemorrhaging profit -- because higher gas prices are driving consumers from high-profit SUVs into lower-profit sedans -- stumping for high gas prices?
Because the federal government has mandated an "energy policy" that, by 2020, tells automakers they have to sell. . . .
Read the full article here.
"Iron Man" is worth its press clippings - a superb May blockbuster. And an obvious cartoon metaphor as a result. This is my first take - though I'm sure I will find the analogy useful with other news stories. Maybe Dubya starring as "Rust Man"? . . . .
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
Barack Obama continued his Bash Detroit tour this week, telling an Indianapolis radio station that his first car, a 1970s-era Ford Granada, "may be the worst car that Detroit ever built."
As ever, Obama's car comments are more revealing about him than the industry about which he pretends to be an expert:
"This thing was a tin can. It was during the '70s when oil had just gone up, so they were trying to compete with the Japanese," Obama continued. "They wanted to keep the cars big, so they made them out of tin foil. It would rattle and shake. You basically couldn't go over 80 (mph) without the thing getting out of control."
Remember, this was the age of the federal 55-mph speed limit mandate, that era's moral equivalent of today's twisty light bulb edicts. So what was a good lib like Obama doing driving an immoral 80 miles-per-hour? Wasn't that fuelish? Against the law?
As for the car itself, the Granada was one of Ford's best-selling cars (over 300,000 units sold in 1975) -- a popular design positioned to compete, not against the Japanese, but against Mercedes. At least Obama gets the "tin can" quality right: the Granada was a mid-size car built to save money on a compact car chassis -- but aren't tinny compact cars exactly what green Obama wants to mandate for everyone?
Read the full article here.
I had fun with this one - coming on top of the news that Chrysler is pedaling cars by promising $3 gas for 3 years! This is the first time I've drawn Nardelli, Chrysler's new, ex-Home Depot CEO. He'd be fun to caricature more often - his mug rather reminds me of Peter Boyle playing Frankenstein in Mel Brooks' classic "Young Frankenstein."
Cartoon follows. (which also appears here in the Editorials section)
Where would globe-trotting pundit Thomas Friedman be without jet fuel?
Once a sensible voice of free markets and their resulting "flat world," the New York Times columnist has since swallowed the green Kool-Aid in one gulp and become a pulpit-pounding member of the Gore cult. After a five-month sabbatical to add one more tome to the never-ending library of climate-scare literature (his is called "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America"), Freidman has returned to his column to pick up right where he left off: lecturing President Bush for the umpteenth time for "not buckling down to break our oil addiction."
But oil is an economic necessity, not an addiction, as Friedman himself inadvertently reveals three graphs later when he tells how he and his wife "flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore" -- on a jet plane gulping 3,000 gallons of fuel an hour.
Global commerce -- the flat world -- runs on carbon jet fuel. . . .
Read the full article here.
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