My editor at CalWatchdog, Steven Greenhut, like many journalists in many states now, is really interested in pension reform, and what pensions are doing to the rest of the state as they grow more humongous. I haven’t read his new book yet, Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation (I prefer serial killer novels for the summer), but he’s been on the radio and tv talking about it, so it must be great!

are police pensions so high they make you scream?

Yeah, I had to read up about it to understand the nuances. Or to understand anything, really.  It’s actually very simple: unions (mostly) arranged for moderate to low wages in certain industries, by including benefits on the back end, like retirement pensions, that laborers could feel reassured with.

This makes sense. Until you think about pyramid schemes. I’ve known for a while that the police can retire super young, like 40, and still get a livable pension, while even starting a different career. Since they work so hard, in dangerous situations, it seems fair. But somehow the pensions start to multiply, and with interest rates less than 1%, where will all this new money come from? The city, county and state. Oh.

It becomes more annoying when it’s state workers, who live in cubicles or offices and aren’t in danger at all, unless they jump out a window. I went to a seminar just a couple years ago at the LA Press Club when a smart entrepreneur said that all of us laid off journalists should go get state jobs, with little experience, with wonderful benefits, which you got no matter your age when you started. He teaches courses in Sacramento and other cities, and has a book out on this, too. He made it seem very enticing!

I’m into unions, really – have been in a real Hollywood one, and the NWU, which is sort of a quasi-union. And people should have a comfortable retirement. But I have no idea how to solve this problem, except have people in charge who are economists and realists.

This article by Steve on police and crime isn’t exactly about pensions, but gave me a beginning idea for the cartoon. But the ice screams truck was all mine.

Caption: Policeman: Yes, little girl, I promise to keep you safe. And my hefty pension, too! Ice screams truck for flavor.

More cartoons:

1. Political cartoons for teh LA Times for February 2011.
2. Yahoo! News Editorial Cartoon on food stamps.

baker's dozen (12) cupcakes cartoon

Oooh, one of my favorite Slate cartoons ever! Who doesn’t like a cupcake cartoon, huh?

A baker’s dozen, for you know-nothings, means 13 cupcakes or cookies or doughnuts or whatever. Bakeries used to be generous, and also smelled even better, and used real butter, and made everything themselves. I mean, really what does dough cost, a few pennies? So what is one more cookie or cupcake, or chocolate croissant, or…okay,  chocolate cheesecake? And they were so happy to have regular customers that they often gave the customer 13 items instead of 12!

However, this is a recession. (Well, not now – but back in September when this cartoon was published, things were looking pretty iffy. Now everyone is still unemployed, but they don’t sound quite as depressed.)  But Wall Street and advisers are careful not to use recession or depression, or Bad Words like that. In any case, bakeries and doughnut shops still stick to a hard 12.

I hope I explained that one into the ground.

This is an excellent example of why we need more women cartoonists. Good food, and I love how melty and feminine and delicate the tinted colors came out.

Cartoon caption for Google: There are 12 cupcakes in Baker’s Dozen (in a “possible” recession.)

More cartoons:

1. In which I get syndicated.
2. Going as Octomom for Halloween?

I’m about to find out. I’ve lived here over 15 years, so I have some answers, but what about the heart of it, where all the decisions are made? This month I started my cartoon for a new journalism group that’s covering the state of California, named appropriately enough, CalWatchdog. (Still waiting for a dog in the logo.) It’s connected with – get this – a think tank, called Pacific Research Institute!

I’ve done cartoons in all kinds of venues, but I have to admit, never a think tank. I’m so excited to be a part of it, and especially to have my name associated with something that sounds so…smart. This is Arnold’s last year, so I’m prepared to have as much fun as you can have with a German, and to explore issues all over California. (JUST KIDDING, German-ophiles!) So keep an eye on it, as I’ll be uploading cartoons about California there before they go on Slate or appear anywhere else.

Cartoon caption: You get three wishes, but balancing the State budget is out of my league.

I was originally going to do this idea for the bank bailouts, saying she doesn’t believe in them, but don’t tell my editor at CalWatchdog this! In fact…why not do another fairy tale for Slate!? Certainly that fairy gibberish by that cartoonist on Gocomics  – Pibgorn which I just had to look up – is super popular, and Gocomics is constantly pimping it.

Hmm, just noticed that it isn’t a cartoon, it’s a graphic novel, with some story and a photoshopped illustration for each day. It gets several hundred comments. By Brooke McEldowney,  (a Man)  who also does a normal comic strip   – forget the name now, as I don’t read it.

Even with all those comments and hits, it’s still not one of the top 10 comics on Gocomics, however…Well, who can figure out cartoon lovers, eh?

The cartoon above is also on the front page of Slate today, and more comments about it might be found here. (Sorry, no links now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.)

Check in tomorrow for some cartoons I liked, and some I didn’t like, about Haiti.

More cartoons:

1. California Elections are coming, California elections are coming, etc
2. Earthquake 7.2 in Mexicali today.

Then I read this. According to Yahoo News:

Some 14,700 rich Americans, worried about a stepped-up U.S. crackdown on offshore tax cheats, have turned themselves in under the government’s amnesty program.

The Swiss Justice Department said it would hand over the names of wealthy American clients of UBS with accounts holding more than 1 million Swiss francs ($986,200) where there is a reasonable suspicion of tax fraud.

Accounts of a lesser size, as low as 100,000 Swiss francs, could be included in certain circumstances when there is a “scheme of lies” identified, according to the document.

“The threshold for disclosing accounts, in my opinion, is low,” said Kevin Thorn, a Washington-based tax lawyer. “Most believed the threshold would have been $1 million-plus but it appears the government is holding to its word and looking at conduct more than amounts and is going after taxpayers across the board.”

Senator Carl Levin, whose congressional panel has investigated tax evasion for several years, said the language leaves too many loopholes for the Swiss.

Is anyone surprised he’s a Democrat?

I truly believe everyone should pay taxes, and only bad people don’t. But enough is enough. I also believe people have a right to decide for themselves where to put their hard-earned money! Aren’t some people good taxpayers and yet also wise and thrifty investors? Are all off-shore accounts – they mentioned Hong Kong as another secret place- bad?

I think financial cartoons are a challenge – and yet they turn me on! It’s hard to include all the facts, the nuances, and also keep it simple enough for a drawing…

Here’s one I did a few months ago, when the IRS first cracked down on the Swiss banks:

Okay, this cartoon is a little confusing. I KNOW THAT! I did my best. Will explain more later today.

——————————

Interpretation of both: All the people who had to turn themselves in to the IRS amnesty in October were scared sh!tless by the IRS that they would end up paying all their money, plus fines. I can’t believe that all these people are in the Mafia, so they must be people who either don’t support our government or have already paid too much taxes. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think people should be able to deposit big chunks of money elsewhere. Why should our incompetent gov’t – and I think everyone would agree, it’s extremely fiscally foolish – get it all?

At the same time, earlier this year the IRS filed a lawsuit against the biggest Swiss bank, UBS AG (oops, just noticed I drew ABS UG in the cartoon, which, actually, is a clothes designer I like!!) to FORCE them to hand over almost 5000 names of Americans who had deposited money with them.

THE IRS IS FORCING UBS AG  BANK TO BE A TURNCOAT AND TRAITOR TO ITS LOYAL CLIENTS!!! So Swiss banks – or at least this one -have lost their cachet! They’re no longer safe, or secret, or savvy. Hate the IRS and how it seems to control more than any other department in the government.

Thus, in the first cartoon, I had IRS dress like a pirate and shoot at UBS, turning it into Swiss cheese.

And in the earlier cartoon below it, I was trying to draw The Blob, from old movies, with dollar bills floating in it, but I’m very poor in Photoshop. :( So it doesn’t look much like a blob! I also added in the storm of bailouts, which is what the IRS should really investigate, to be fair to this country, but instead it surrounds Switzerland, threatening that it will eat it.

There may be additional comments here. CNN has more here.

Cartoon caption: America’s Pirate Problem: the IRS. Nearly 15,000 Americans confess to “saving” money overseas. And then the IRS steals their gold. ABS Bank, Switzerland.

Cartoon Caption of green blob cartoon: IRS, biggest bully in the playground. IGNORES suspicious bailouts. EATS Switzerland, a kind, neutral country.

More cartoons:

1. Japanese Stock Exchange teeters after the earthquake, too.
2. Banks timed failures to hide behind the election. Right?

Honestly, this seems like a cartoon a liberal would have done. Woe is me, we’re bad people, let’s forget to be happy when we can mope.

Or maybe they’re proactive capitalists, and they know the way to help the economy is to spend money, even if it’s for a Halloween par-tay. Or network at a party, that really does help. I started guest blogging last week for the LA Weekly, because I know Jill Stewart through the late great Cathy Seipp, and also from the LA Press Club. Hella lot of work to write newsy blogs, but fun!

Back in March, CNN said 4 states had already hit 10% unemployment, including California. Bloomberg says Obama predicted it back in June. However, today Bloomberg says as of September it’s 9.8%, so maybe these numbers are a little suspect, or according to who’s reporting.

Cartoon caption: “Maybe we should consider having a 10% Unemployment Party, rather than a Halloween party…”

Anyway, I finally figured out how to use that shadey stuff, fade from one color to another,  in Photoshop, always forget what it’s called. Too much of it in illustrations- and there’s too much of it around – is just so fake & plastic-like, but a little certainly does help legibility and atmosphere and backgrounds. I used it in 2 places in this cartoon! Watch me start to overdo it! I was inspired by a Halloween cartoon from Daryl Cagle’s Syndicate, by , which uses a very limited palette – I’ll try to get it for you. A limited palette can even have just one color (plus black and white, which aren’t colors), but with even just 2 or 3 colors it’s bold, and even shocking! With this cartoon, I limited it to grey-greens and oranges. I really like the way it came out. YMMV.

I’ve seen some strange signs the homeless make – some touching, some just, well, strange – but I wrote that he needed help with his self-esteem because it’s LA here. And funny.

More cartoons:

1. Great Halloween cartoon of haunted house!
2. The vampire and Sarah Palin.

"When the deadline passed, and California couldn't make its budget, it began to eat its own young..."©D.Barstow 2009

Sometimes ideas come to me out of nowhere! In this case, I think I began with the sentence up to budget…and then just tried out some endings. I also don’t know why I thought of Mickey Mouse! It’s not like I like the character, or like Disney in any way. But it was a symbol that one could hurt…

I only do cartoons about California now and then, as it’s obviously not national, but an LA Times article said recently, the State Treasurer claims it’s “too big to fail.”  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said they’d have to make education cuts – which I say, hallelujah – we have a terrible record of even teaching kids to read and write, with the most corrupt school system, at least in SoCal.  He also talked about selling landmarks like San Quentin! and the LA Coliseum.  The WSJ reported:

Other properties on the governor’s list include a landmark concert hall called the Cow Palace in Daly City, Calif., and fairgrounds in Sacramento and near San Diego. It’s unclear how much the proposal could actually raise.

Disneyland was never mentioned, of course, but everyone associated it with California. I couldn’t remember what Mickey looked like, so I had to Google him. There are some artists – maybe a lot, I don’t know- who seem to have a photographic memory, and just know how something should look. That’s never been me. I’m almost the opposite. I find it very hard to remember faces or clothes. For me, it’s words and ideas first. So I think I did a pretty good job with him, but wondered if cutting off the fingers was too much. At least I didn’t add any blood. (full disclosure: when I was drawing him, and I cut off his fingers and his ear, and he was crying, I got tears in my eyes. See, I’m not the tough oped cartoonist you thought I was.)

And I like the caption, drawn as a storybook page that ends quite tragically.

More cartoons:

1. If California was as cool as Glee.
2. Sometimes it sucks to be gay.

"I think we timed it just right. Election fever overshadows bank failures."

If you are expecting analysis of the bailout package(s) and bill, explanations of why these banks failed, why the markets have plunged to unimaginable depths, and where you should invest any money  you have left now…well, you’ve come to the wrong blog.

I’m just a cartoonist.

However, I think I caught the presidential race fever! Even though WAMU is was my bank!

The Drawing
I love solid blacks and white! I’m a little concerned the VP’s dress may be too loud for the banking dress code, but this IS Casual Friday. I have a crush on the man at the bottom.

Do you think I should have shortened the caption just a smidge? I was trying to think of a word other than overshadows, but…couldn’t.

TIME, this one’s for you.

More cartoons:

1. Japanese Stock Exchange teeters after the earthquake, too.
2. Bill Clinton and the blue dress.