Auchtoon!

So, there were two PFAS-related stories this past week in Michigan — one positive, one less than positive.

The first story:

The U.S. military has agreed to install groundwater treatment systems to stop the flow of PFAS contamination around the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Oscoda — a move hailed by politicians and local advocates.

The decision, first announced in Oscoda Wednesday, is seen as a first-in-the-nation step by the U.S. Defense Department to take quicker action to contain the compound from spreading, and follows years of criticism from local and state officials about the commitment and pace of military efforts to address the environmental harm.

Hey, you don’t hear this often, but, “Good on ya, Defense Department! We appreciate you stepping up to do the right thing.”

Naturally, as an editorial cartoonist, I decided to address the second story:

A new state appeals court ruling would kill Michigan’s restrictions on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) levels in drinking water, if left standing.

The 2-1 ruling stems from a 2021 lawsuit by Minneapolis-based chemical manufacturer 3M, which argued Michigan’s process to develop drinking water standards was “rushed and invalid.”

To which 3M stockholders not living in Michigan say, “Good on ya, 3M! We appreciate you stepping up to do the right thing.”

Full disclosure: I am not a Detroit Lions supporter. My team has always been the San Francisco 49ers. Or at least since I was 6 years old and I arbitrarily decided I liked their helmet the best on the side panel of my electric football game. (There is a deeper discussion here about the just how capricious tribalism can be, but that’s for another day).

However, if not all, most Michiganders are Lions fans, and there is definitely a positive vibe going on this year. Some of it is measurable — season tickets sold out this year for the first time in Ford Field history! But mostly what I’ve detected is an underlying current. It’s optimism, but an optimism that’s unique to Lions fans. Cautious optimism is much too mild. It’s more like hopefulness but without even a trace of positive expectations. (It comes from suffering a LOT of disappointment).

In any case, there are lots of terrible things going on in the world. There always are, of course. Still, the news of war, floods, fires, indictments, etc., seem to be hitting especially hard of late. You can’t blame Lions fans for allowing themselves to be hopeful about something.

It’s a natural impulse for individuals to band together to defend themselves from a common, more powerful foe. Actually, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a foe — just a group or a person (the Supreme Court says corporations are people) who will not otherwise keep the best interests of individuals in mind in their decisions.

It is this natural impulse that drives the creation of both labor unions and boycotts, both as means of negotiating with and defending against corporate decision-making. It’s curious to me that this is often where similarities end.

As the United Auto Workers begins contract negotiations with automakers, they are seeking a better deal, especially for workers manufacturing batteries for EVs. As groups of conservatives continue to prosecute their battles with so-called woke businesses, they are seeking …a reason to quit drinking crappy beer?

On one hand, we have Governor Gretchen Whitmer, state politicians of all stripes, business leaders, educators, and community activists all brooding over Michigan’s population stagnation and what can be done to keep our youth from moving out of state.

On the other hand, we have a state that more or less requires young people to own a reliable automobile to functionally live here and then burdens them with sky-high insurance rates.

Adding insult (and potential bankruptcy) to injury, those rates no longer provide protection to survivors of catastrophic crashes, although this week’s Michigan Supreme Court decision did at least protect those injured before the 2019 no-fault reform was put into effect. But that’s not gonna help young people just starting out in Michigan.

Perhaps it’s time for the one hand to figure out what the other hand is doing.

Best wishes to all for taking a summertime break from the algorithms!

I am super excited about the World Cup, and I’ll be cheering on the U.S. team no matter whatever odd Eastern Time Zone hour they will be playing. As four-time winners and defending champs, it’s easy to be a fan of the U.S. Women. But this year will be a significantly more difficult challenge. So many other countries have vastly improved their play. So I’m enthusiastic, but certainly not over-confident.

I hesitate to draw a parallel here, because bringing people up on felony charges should never be considered a sport. However, in both athletic competition and governance the goals are similar: to work within a system with rules that provide for a fair competition.

This week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced felony changes against 16 people who allegedly posed as electoral college members after the 2020 election. The charges are clearly targeted to actual evidence of breaking of election laws. Of course it’s political. (Everything is.) But that should never stop prosecution of broken laws. I’m looking forward to the healthy competition.

An incident at a recent Michigan Republican Party meeting in Claire featured a fight between two ardent party supporters in which one kicked the other in the groin. It was remarkable mostly in that it wasn’t so remarkable — it fully fit a pattern within the Michigan GOP of late.

Now history has clearly demonstrated that it’s better for everyone in general for a political party to have some level of dysfunction than to be a well-oiled machine. So I’m fine with dysfunction. Being preached to about family values and acting in decidedly un-family values ways… not so much.

By their very nature, editorial cartoons do not age well. They are almost always a snapshot of an exact time with a particular set of circumstances.

So it was certainly unusual when something I drew decades ago bubbled up in my head and made me think, “I would draw the same thing today.” In fact, I don’t think that has ever happened — until this week.

In 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Grutter v. Bollinger, a case involving student admissions in higher education and the legality of affirmative action. The court held that “a student admissions process that favors ‘underrepresented minority groups’ did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant.” So basically, race could be considered but specific racial quotas were unconstitutional.

As with the recent Supreme Court ruling, which went a step further in eliminating race as even a consideration, there was intense dissent about the ruling (and opinions about race in general). For example:

In her majority opinion, [Justice Sandra Day] O’Connor wrote that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” adding that the “Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer concurred in the judgment, but did not subscribe to the belief that the affirmative measures in question would be unnecessary in 25 years. In a dissent joined by three other justices, Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that the university’s admissions system was, in fact, a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system.

And so 20 years later, the question remains the same: Which comes first — racial equality or the end of racism?

This week I had to cancel an evening basketball game because of the unhealthy air conditions caused by the wildfires in Canada. It was the right thing to do, but still I was disappointed and a little bit angry. And if the recent pandemic had taught us nothing else, it’s that anger must always be directed toward something.

So naturally I blamed the Canadians. What is wrong with those idiots? Why can’t they control their damn wildfires? I’ve been inconvenienced, and I will need to speak with their manager!

But then I realized that we are coming up on Independence Day weekend where it is an American tradition to inconvenience each other ad nauseam with fireworks. I wonder if all that smoke and noise is ever annoying to our Canadian neighbors?

It probably is, and the whole wildfire situation is likely much more complex than I imagine, so I really shouldn’t act like I know more than I do (even if the pandemic also taught us that it’s perfectly fine to do that).

If I were Dan Gilbert and Rocket Mortgage, I’d be more than a little upset. Here they have invested a lot of time, money, and effort into being a good corporate citizen, particularly in Detroit. As the lead sponsor of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, an annual Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) tour event at the Detroit Golf Club, Rocket Mortgage has brought considerable esteem and economic benefit to an often maligned community. But it seems no good deed goes unpunished.

Because in a stunning move, the PGA — after furiously battling new rival LIV Golf and its Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund money fountain — suddenly and unilaterally declared a merger with its self same evil enemy. Didn’t ask its players, didn’t ask its sponsors. Just did it.

It’s clear that the Saudi government is using its enormous reserves of oil money to buy into a popular sport like golf in an effort to improve its public image, a practice known as “sportswashing.” It’s nothing new — buying the rights to host the Olympics and World Cups have been very popular among authoritarian regimes for years. It’s just a little unsettling to see how quickly (and with no regard for others) that the PGA caved.

Side note for those in my demographic (middle-aged guys): Yes, I know I missed a golden opportunity to make a Caddyshack reference: “Pick up that blood!” But as hard as it is to believe, not everybody has an encyclopedic knowledge of that movie. (So you’ll get nothing and like it!)