Cartoons: Paycheck fairness

On April 9th, the Huffington Post ran this article:  Senate Republicans Block Paycheck Fairness Act For Third Time. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (Wikipedia version) was the first effort to make pay levels more fair.  So what's taking so long?

Cartoons seem almost inappropriate here, but sometimes humor helps us see more clearly.

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Pat Bagley, Cagle

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Bill Day, Cagle

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Rick McKee, Cagle

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Dave Granlund, Cagle

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Bill Day, Cagle

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-- Marge

Cartoons: Extreme weather and El Niño

Believe it or not November 2013 was the warmest year on record globally, according to a TIME magazine article (subscription needed to read the full item), "El Niño Is On Its Way:"

For many Americans, 2013 ended with an unusually bitter cold snap. Late November and December saw early snow and bone-chilling temperatures in much of the country, part of a year when--for the first time in two decades--record-cold days will likely turn out to have outnumbered record-warm ones. But the U.S. was the exception: November was the warmest ever globally, and the provisional data indicates that 2013 is likely to have been the fourth-hottest year on record.

Enjoy the snow now, because chances are good that 2014 will be even hotter--perhaps the hottest year since records have been kept. That's because, scientists are predicting, 2014 will be an El Niño year.

With the coming heat in mind, here are a few cartoon celebrating (sort of) cold and snow.

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Dave Granlund, Cagle

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Jimmy Margulies, Cagle

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Randy Bish, Cagle

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Had enough?

-- Marge

Citizens United is not the same as citizens united

In my email this morning there was a call to action from Change.org to sign the following petition to the US Supreme Court and Federal Elections Commission:

Disqualify Mitt Romney from running for President and file felony charges.

Research shows that it's a super PAC that's funneling the money to Romney's campaign.  In fact, super PACs came into being following the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission which

held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

However, Romney's campaign may have overstepped the line when accepting a donation from a foreign-owned corporation as reported in the article by Michael Beckel at the Center for Public Integrity, "Huge Donation To Romney SuperPAC From Foreign Firm Raises 'Red Flags'."  For more on super PACs and their effects, take a look at this article by Mike Lux of Democracy Partners, "The Hidden Effects of Citizens United and Super PACs." (Note that Mike is CEO of "Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a political consulting firm founded in 1999, focused on strategic political consulting for non-profits, labor unions, PACs and progressive donors.")

This is what PACs and superPACs mean to most of us (from Dave Granlund):

At the Center for Public Integrity site, you can check the sources of funding to super PACs. At OpenSecrets is a list of super PACs, both conservative and liberal, and data on recipients, donors, expenditures, and more.

More sunshine is always good.

-- Marge