Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 24, 2011

I have to compliment myself on this one. Not so much the cartoon (it’s okay — it was fun drawing Uncle Sam, but I never did get his hands right). No, it was the timing. I had to get this one done Wednesday morning before Christmas. At that point, the Senate’s two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment benefits was considered dead in the House. I gambled the deal would get done (including the nonsensical bit about fastracking an oil pipeline) by Saturday. Then, blamo!, Friday it went through. It was, well… for America it was yet another partisan politics debacle. But for me it was a Christmas Miracle!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 17, 2011

The backstory. I mean, honestly. Reminds me of back in 1998 when Vermont was trying to make Lake Champlain a “Great Lake.” That deserved a rude gesture, too.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 10,  2011

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, December 3,  2011

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, November 26,  2011

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, November 19,  2011

Lower taxes are nice. Lower taxes are helpful. But there’s more to building Michigan’s economy than lower taxes….

Attended opening night last night, and it was fantastic! (The Shrew and the Haberdasher in particular) Shows tonight and Saturday at 7:00PM. Click here for details: http://gpsblogs.org/ghstheater/

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, November 12,  2011

Basic summary: A Republican State Representative, Paul Scott of Grand Blanc, was successfully recalled from office this past election. The effort to recall him was largely funded by the Michigan Teachers Union (the MEA), which skews heavily toward the Democrats. Republican-leaning special interest groups have vowed revenge. For analogies, I flirted with Pandora’s Box and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots, but eventually settled on the hammer.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, November 5,  2011

Without fail, candidates like the one in the cartoon show up every election cycle. It’s important not to elect them. Just doing my part…

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, October 29,  2011

Our governor, Rick Snyder, comes from the business world, not politics. It’s probably his chief virtue as far as Michigan voters are concerned. But the reality is that it leaves him unprepared at times. In this instance, a proposed second bridge to Canada at Detroit and a few miles from the existing Ambassador Bridge got bogged down and shot down in the state legislature recently. Some Democrats suddenly got concerned about neighborhoods near the new bridge (not that there hadn’t been plenty of time to raise concerns earlier) and many Republicans are basically on the payroll of the owner of the Ambassador Bridge (who obviously is very much opposed to the competition). Meanwhile, Canada is a little dumbfounded because they had already agreed to foot the bill to build the bridge. Yeah, I don’t get it either….