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The Defense Rests

Chauvin’s lawyer Eric Nelson argued that the cop who pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes behaved as “any reasonable police officer” would. Nelson’s strategy was to sow doubt and spin alternative narratives, blaming Floyd’s demise on his drug use despite overwhelming evidence he was choked to death. This article enumerates the diversionary techniques that were employed to make jurors question what they could see plainly with their own eyes. 

Change is Afoot

I want to let regular readers know that there will be some changes around here,  concerning both my website and my real life (I’m moving again). This means I’ll probably post extra-minimally on the blog for a while. So gird your loins, or do whatever it is you need to do to Be Prepared.*

*Actually, there is nothing you need to do.

Iraq: Now and Zen

Ugh, doing cartoons about Bush administration neocons and Iraq is giving me terrible flashbacks of the early oughts. I never thought I’d spend time thinking about the ill-groomed John Bolton again, but there he was on Fox News, saying that past decisions are “irrelevant to the circumstances we face now” and that he’s “happy to discuss the past 10 years and we can start 10 years before that if you want,” but that it’s “not the question that America faces today.” I also happen to be reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, which contains reflections on Buddhism. The hotheaded Bolton is probably the farthest a person can get from a Buddhist monk, and yet he shares a Zen master’s single-minded — some might say insistent — focus on the now.

Postal Service of the Future

Conventional wisdom seems to be that the financial difficulties of the Post Office are due to the rise of email. The Postmaster General noted this himself as he announced the end of Saturday delivery. But to only look at competition from email is to miss the larger ideological picture — namely, that privatizing USPS has been a goal of market absolutists for decades. The real “crisis” faced by the PO is the absurd requirement, set by Republicans in Congress, that the agency fund retiree benefits for the next 75 years — paying for future employees who haven’t even been born yet! This article on Alternet provides an overview of how the service is under attack. Never mind that the Postal Service isn’t taxpayer-funded; privatizing it is still part of the Cato Institute’s agenda. It seems obvious to me that replacing USPS with a patchwork of private mail delivery companies would be an unmitigated clusterf#ck. Believe it or not, the private sector is not always the most efficient (see: health insurance).

This Week’s Cartoon: “Consumer Nudism”

I decided to take a week off from the Republican primaries and other assorted nonsense in order to address the pressing matter of “five-fingered” footwear. The other naked-themed items leapt out at me around the same time. I don’t have a problem with minimalist shoes or other back-to-basics products, but I do find them curious cultural artifacts. Simplicity has major authenticity in this cluttered world. (Somewhat-related strip here.)

While researching this strip, I learned that Naked juices are owned by PepsiCo and Odwalla by Coca-Cola. It’s like a high-end fruit drink proxy war!

I Get Hatemail

I’ve noticed an uptick in angry email lately, ranging from the mildly disgruntled to the downright ugly. To wit, this gentleman’s missive:

How exactly was the “shutdown” an “actual economic disaster” you dumb c*nt?

oh, never mind.

–corey

(Asterisk added by me.) OK, here’s your answer:

“The bottom line is the government shutdown has hurt the U.S. economy,” S&P said in a statement. “In September, we expected 3 percent annualized growth in the fourth quarter because we thought politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default. Since our forecast didn’t hold, we now have to lower our fourth-quarter growth estimate to closer to 2 percent.”

More on how the government shutdown hurt the economy here.

An Ugly Decision

The Trayvon Martin decision was announced just a bit too late for my deadline this week. As it turned out, I was already working on a cartoon about a different court case — less tragic, but similarly mind-boggling in its outcome. The Iowa Supreme Court, which you can see in all its demographically-limited glory here, actually ruled for the second time that a male dentist could legally file his female assistant because he found her too attractive. Via TPM:

“Coming to the same conclusion as it did in December, the all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated by feelings, not gender.”

Maybe in the past attractive people have had advantages in the workplace, but no longer in Iowa!

Surveillance Bait

I find the NSA Prism program — what I know about it, anyway — to be problematic. But it does seem there’s a disconnect between public reaction to this particular scandal and our tolerance for the selling of highly-personalized data by tech companies in the private sector. I’ve read over the years about evolving technologies to offer individuals different prices and interest rates based on data collected through the internet; I have no idea how much this is actually happening, but the potential for abuse seems vast.

I’m not trying to suggest an either/or situation here in which government spying is OK and private sector data mining is not. The potential for abuse by the state is enormous and well-precedented.  But  Silicon Valley is no saint here; many tech libertarians seem to overlook this. Private data could be used to deny people health insurance and harm their credit — it goes beyond mere advertising. The arrangement with the Prism program just seems to me like foxes working with foxes guarding the henhouse.

Somewhat amusingly, while I was working on this very cartoon, I watched a music video on YouTube — The New Pornographers’ “Slow Descent into Alcoholism” — and immediately afterward was served Google ads for various detox programs. So there’s one particular data point on my record that might not be so accurate. At least, not currently.

Chain of Fools

The Obama administration’s plan to cut Social Security benefits boggles the mind. In addition to being unnecessary and cruel, it’s politically disastrous.

Oh, but I’ve heard some downplay the political concerns. “It’s not like people going to vote for the Republicans, who’ve been trying to gut Social Security for decades!” they say. To which I respond: Do not underestimate the cluelessness of low-information voters. Remember in 2010 when the R’s convinced so many people that they were the great defenders of Medicare? They’re going to have a field day with this. (I don’t mean to imply that seniors are low-information voters any more than anybody else; I merely think many American voters tend to have short political memory, and are easily misled.)

High Fructose Corn Syrup Times

This cartoon has generated predictable comments about being about a “silly” subject. I get it; a lot of people, including many progressives, are opposed to NYC’s proposed measures to cap soda sizes at 16 oz. Never mind that the chief scientist for the American Diabetes Association predicts that up to one in three American adults will have diabetes by the year 2050. And silly me, paying attention to conclusive studies proving that excessive sugar (with sodas being the primary culprit) is killing people.

“Educate consumers, don’t engage in Prohibition!” some readers have commented. Well, education efforts in situations like this don’t work, especially when competing with billions of dollars in marketing from multinationals. Also, the sugary drink restrictions aren’t prohibition — they’re regulation. You’re still free to swig as many 16-oz. Cokes as you like.

This isn’t about “controlling” or “feeling superior to” other people. This is about challenging shifting cultural norms that are being driven by super-sized industry profits. But hey, keep drinking that corporate Kool-Aid! No one’s stopping you.

Idle Threat

The Environmental Defense Fund website has some myth-busting facts about idling. Did you know idling for ten seconds burns more gas than restarting your car? Or that diesel engines produce more than 40 hazardous air pollutants? And that sitting in a cloud of your own exhaust with the heater on is really lousy for your health?

I’ve noticed a string of egregious idlers lately. The first was a young woman tapping away at her iPhone in a posh SUV in a shopping center parking lot. Temperatures were mild, so it’s not like she was braving the elements or anything; it was just internal combustion for internal combustion’s sake, I guess. The following day, I witnessed a pickup truck belching putrid exhaust for at least 20 minutes outside a convenience store. In this case, it was cold out, and a woman was waiting in the truck for her companion in the store, but seriously. Go inside and warm yourself by the spinning hot dogs or something! Then, while staying at a motel out of town, I observed a tractor trailer idling in an empty lot from dusk until the next morning. It was cold and snowy, and my guess was that the truck driver opted to sleep in the truck with the heat on — spent fuel be damned! — instead of paying for a motel room. Which is frankly pretty sad, but also alarming if you’re not a fan of global warming or particulate matter in the air you breathe.

After this cartoon was published, someone involved in the production of a documentary about idling in NYC contacted me — it turns out “Idle Threat” is the name of their film. You can watch the trailer here.

Licensed to Share

Related article here. I use both Facebook and Instagram with the awareness that my data is being mined in probably unimaginable ways, but asking for driver’s licenses (or birth certificates!) is a bridge too far. Especially for people who use a pen name or stage name for professional reasons, or reasons of personal security.