Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
July 7, 2013

So last month a Michigan House Representative, Lisa Lyons, made an unfortunate comment during a debate on school reform. I guess we should give her points for attempting to bring something new and witty to the standard politicking  but what came out was “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Yeah, that wasn’t good. Naturally, some people were offended and parsed the words to be offended as they could possibly be. Naturally, Lyons apologized by way of saying she was offended that people were offended and that, my friends, is what is really offensive. And so it spun. There was a “point/counterpoint” article in the MLive newspapers on this. It was really difficult to read with both sides going to great length about the finer points of pigs, hogs, and swine-related metaphors, and very little about the actual issue, which was… wait, what was the issue? Exactly. So instead of me weighing in on the school reform issue, I thought I’d sooth myself with the only positive I could take from it.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 30, 2013

I don’t typically do cartoons on the same subject two weeks in a row. But the Michigan Senate heading for vacation without choosing to vote on providing Medicaid to Michigan’s working poor seemed to have the right level of audacity. And I did take a different approach. Whereas last week’s cartoon has an academic and somewhat more traditional angle to demonstrate the consequences, this week’s is specific and realistic. More of a punch to the gut. I’m hoping some of our Michigan senators got to read it, and it made their vacations slightly less enjoyable.

Side note for myself: Next time I try to draw coffee pots, I should, I don’t know, maybe practice a little. Yeesh, the ones I drew are bad….

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 23, 2013

You can go here and here for the full backstory on this on, but the basics are that Republican leadership in the Michigan Senate refused to vote on legislation that would approve providing health insurance through Medicaid to about 300,000 now uninsured folks in Michigan. There were enough votes to pass it, but the leadership wanted a majority of the GOP senators to support it (because, you know, being strict constitutionalists, that’s how it works). Whatever the real reason (ideological purity, pettiness, fear, large collective stick in their bottoms about Obamacare), they decided to do nothing and go on their two month summer vacation. “We have to study it some more.” Uh-huh. And now, Michigan citizens who work and pay taxes but don’t have jobs that provide insurance and cannot afford to pay for their own, continue to exercise and hope it keeps them healthy.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 16, 2013

“Seconds tick like boulders whenever you don’t call”
from the song “Greener” by Tally Hall

I love that lyric. I’m not sure exactly what it means — I’m pretty sure it’s saying that life feels heavy and time passes impossibly slowly whenever the guy singing hasn’t talked with his significant other recently. Maybe. Mostly I don’t want or need to know. The more I try to break it down, the less it strikes me.

So, too, with this week’s cartoon, I’m not exactly sure the point I am trying to make. Having the guy deadpan, “Immigrants are gay?” seemed really funny to me. It has something to do with the stereotype of gays moving into and restoring urban areas. I just got done reading the book “Teardown” by Gordon Young about Flint, Michigan and the general theme of the challenges of urban renewal. (See the next blog post for more info on that.) And the has been quite a bit in the news lately about immigration reform and the benefits of immigrants moving into and bringing new life to urban areas. And I think there’s something in there about the similarities and contrasts of these two general groups. I tried like crazy for a couple of hours to rework the cartoon to make more of a direct point. But that only seemed to kill what I found appealing about it. So here it is. Hope it struck you.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 11, 2013

Last week gas prices in Michigan spiked to the second highest in the nation (after Hawaii, which is a bunch of islands with no pipelines). Why did this happen? Was it the changeover of formulas and additives for the summer driving season? Was it production issues at nearby refineries? Was it crude oil pricing instability brought on by some Iranian sneezing? Was it Big Oil squeezing out a bit more profit to demonstrate their authority over us? Was it Obamacare? Was it Obama not caring? Was it Obama colluding with Big Oil to sell Hawaii to the Iranians?

For the Michigan tourism industry, it doesn’t matter how it happened — the fact remains that there’s an obnoxious, smelly guy with an Ohio State-colored belly shirt and banana hammock floating in its pool….

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
June 2, 2013

Not much to add here, really. At the Mackinac Policy Conference last week, there was much talk about improvements to public education, including guest speakers Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee. It struck me — in ten years when the Democratic president proposes an overhaul to the public education system that includes vouchers and charter schools, it will be interesting to see how exactly Republicans turn on their ideas and decide it had always been lousy, stinkin’ socialism.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 26, 2013

This may appear only to be a swipe at Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette (and it is a swipe), but there’s more to it. Mr. Schuette’s reflexive partisan politics seems to me to be ill-suited for a position where he supposedly the legal representative for all Michiganders. So when he went wading into national politics on the recent IRS shenanigans, I felt the need to call shenanigans on him. Actually my first thought was to draw him smooching up to a giant poster in his office of former attorney general and eventual governor and national political pundit Jennifer Granholm (“Oh my darling! We know being attorney general is only a stepping stone to better things!), but it felt kinda creepy, and how many people even remember Jennifer Granholm at this point?

But frankly what I was doing with this weeks cartoon was poking fun at myself. I, too, long at times to sink my teeth into some juicy national topic like the IRS scandal or international topic like Benghazi. But, alas, I am paid to draw about Michigan, and tempting as it is to create some sort of tortured connection between the Arab/Israeli conflict and, say, our wet spring bringing a bumper crop of mosquitos this year (yeah, there is no connection), I should be satisfied with what I have to draw about. So thank you, Bill Schuette! Please keep doing stupid things in Michigan as long as you can until you graduate to a bigger stage!

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 19, 2013

Next week, my daughter Natalina will be graduating from Grandville High School with an excellent public education that has engaged her, challenged her, and prepared her for college and beyond. It has been an extraordinary return on value. The system has served her and her classmates well. A few weeks ago, the Buena Vista school district shut down and ended the school year early for some 400 students. The state and local school board dithered till last week and now have figured a stop-gap way to allow school to complete the year. The system has not served those students well.

Of course there are all whole host of social, political, and economic reasons for why all this is. Which is to say, there is no simple solution to “fixing” Michigan’s public education system. But maybe the first step is admitting that it is difficult and going from there.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 12, 2013

Here’s the backstory:

The Michigan Natural Resources Commission has approved a wolf hunting season this fall for parts of the Upper Peninsula.

The regulations approved Thursday establish a target of 43 wolves to be killed. Michigan has an estimated 658 wolves in the Upper Peninsula overall, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

The DNR recommended the limited hunt as part of a strategy aimed at cutting down on the number of wolves in parts of the U.P. where wolves have attacked livestock and pets. But allowing a hunt will upset a coalition that was formed with the intent of blocking a wolf hunt through a voter referendum. (Click here to read the full article.)

So while I believe all Michigan residents have a right to their opinion and I personally don’t know if a wolf hunt is the way to go, determining the best course of action shouldn’t come down to a popularity contest. Not when my greatest predator concern is for the moles that are making my lawn lumpy.

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
May 5, 2013

I didn’t want to do a cartoon about the bill in the Michigan legislature that proposes to reform Michigan’s automobile insurance laws. Even though it affects me and my family directly, I find it, well, boring. But I decided it was certainly relevant and I should do some research. As I was reading this article, my eyes glazed over when I read the quote from the insurance industry spokesperson. I woke up enough to realize, “This is exactly the problem. These guys depend on knocking me out with their insurance-speak so I don’t realize the money they’re taking out of my back pocket.” It’s kinda like free drinks in a casino. So I lifted the quote word-for-word and used it in Panels 2 and 3.

My new favorite defense for anything is “much of the information is available online.”