This is Historic Times » taxes

Mitt Robbery

deephurting — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:49:02 +0000

A report, released earlier this week, revealed that Mitt Romney (as well as the investment firm he ran, Bain Capital) keeps a portion of his vast personal fortune in offshore tax shelters on the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands are a bit of a pop-culture cliche when it comes to the subject of tax evasion–frequent viewers of the Simpsons, for example, may recall a humorous telephone conversation between the Springfield police and a man in the Caymans working on behalf of Krusty the Clown, who at one point said, “I’m afraid I can’t divulge any information about that customer’s secret, illegal account.”

It just goes to support my theory that, while modest wealth can perhaps be had and maintained honestly, no one ever got to the ultra-wealthy column and remained there without doing unethical things or outright breaking the law at some point. The above-noted article quotes a tax expert who estimates that havens in places like the Caymans cost the federal government $100 billion dollars annually, so you could say that at least part of Mr. Romney’s fortune is based on (indirectly) reaching into the pockets of every taxpayer in America and stealing their change. In fact, it’s worse than that–this kind of robbery also affects everyone in America too poor to pay taxes, since it deprives the government of money that could otherwise be put towards social services for the unemployed, as well as the elderly, the infirm, and the handicapped, not to mention funding for infrastructure, postal services, fire departments, police…

Anyway, I thought there might be something to the idea of Romney swiping tax dollars, so I sketched a couple of different approaches to the concept before hitting on the image of a getaway car in a bank robbery. I changed the car to a boat, so it’d more easily play into the idea of escaping to the Caymans, and modeled the boat in my final illustration on one belonging to notorious gangster Al Capone, whose own tax fraud ultimately led to his conviction and imprisonment.

Tax Cut & Paste

deephurting — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:00:27 +0000

I copied the basic idea and design for this cartoon from a different one I started earlier this year, or perhaps even late last year, but which I never finished. It works better in this case, because the earlier topic fell out of relevance relatively quickly, whereas this one should stay meaningful into the indefinite future.

Like this piece, this cartoon compares the “job creators” argument made by Conservative candidates and pundits to activities commonly associated with organized crime. Initially, I’d included a GOP symbol in the letterhead, but I realized it worked just as well without it, and that way could just as easily apply to the Democrats as well as the Republicans. Or to rich, corporate tools in general, really.

Rescue 9-9-9

deephurting — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 01:12:34 +0000

The title of this cartoon references Herman Cain’s rich-friendly tax “plan,” and Rescue 9-1-1, a popular reality show from the ’80s and ’90s which was about actual emergency response telephone calls, and was hosted by William Shatner.

I started developing a cartoon months ago which compared record corporate profits and windfalls for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else to the common cliche of a sinking ship. Even though the overall metaphor wasn’t especially original, it hinged on a gag which was pretty unique, but it didn’t quite seem to describe the present situation accurately, so I set it aside and finally drew this, instead.

Don’t Tread on Me

deephurting — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:00:28 +0000

I had the basic idea for this cartoon several months ago, when Republicans first ramped up using the term “class warfare” to describe the concept of ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s coincidental that the Israel-Palestine conflict happened to be in the news around the time I decided to finally draw it, though I finished this about a week later than I’d hoped, because I went on a short trip for my birthday last Friday.

As mentioned, the image of a stone-throwing child facing off against a heavily-armored tank is common to the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine, ironically recalling the story of David and Goliath. I feel it works as both a figurative and literal representation of the economic clash, because the state and corporate power structures used by the ultra-rich to suffocate the poorer classes are often the same ones supporting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. And what better symbol is there of the military-industrial complex than a tank? Except maybe for an aircraft carrier. Or the F-22 Raptor. Or a nuclear-armed ICBM…

Anyway, I was more concerned with pointing out the lopsidedness of the conflict than the hypocrisy of Republicans and the rich scolding the President for engaging in “class warfare.” It takes at least two for you to have a war, but all we’ve seen lately has been one side savagely flogging the other without much being done in the way of retaliation. If what Obama’s calling for is “class warfare,” then the status quo could be called a “class massacre.”

Gusher

deephurting — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:00:44 +0000

As promised last week, here is a cartoon on Congress’s recent decision not to eliminate enormous tax breaks for Big Oil. I finished it later than I wanted to, because I spent some time earlier in the week practicing some caricature that didn’t turn out.

The oil companies represented here are the so-called “Supermajors”: Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobile (with his back to the viewer), and Total, along with Chevron, Texaco, and Halliburton. Missing from the pack is Conoco-Phillips, because their main logo (much like Exxon’s) wouldn’t easily adapt to the above treatment, and I forgot 76 is one of their brands.

Originally, I was going to caricature the various heads of each company I included and then label their outfits with their corporate logos, but I thought that would make the logos too hard to identify at a small size, hence what I did here instead. In spite of the above-mentioned issues with Exxon and Conoco, as well as the fact that I hated trying to copy the BP logo by hand, I think it worked out pretty well–Chevron just looks so darn happy!

Since Congress and Obama chose to renew expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act on Thursday, I’m guessing my next cartoon will be on that. Hopefully I’ll finish it earlier in the week than I finished this one. In the meantime, here’s an old cartoon I did on the same subject in 2009.

Make the Pie Higher!

deephurting — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:54:20 +0000

I was delayed working on this to about a day later than I normally would have been because Thursday (September 23rd) was my birthday.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I won a Sigma Delta Chi award from The Society of Professional Journalists some months back. The national conference in Las Vegas is coming up in the first week of October, and I was invited to accept my award in person at the awards banquet on the 2nd–unfortunately, the organization neither covers costs for travel and accommodations, nor do they waive attendance fees for the rest of the conference for award winners.

I figure I should try to be there, because this might be the last good professional networking opportunity I’m going to get for some time, or ever. Fingers crossed–we’ll see if I can scrounge up enough money in the next week to make it!

Boundless Human Stupidity

deephurting — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:18:51 +0000

It’s not often that I do gags based off references this obscure, but it seemed appropriate, so I guess this is one of those times. If you don’t get it, see this.

I should follow with something a little more universal, on a different topic, in a day or so.