Hoosier Phobias

by on March 30, 2015
Posted In: 2015 political cartoons, cartoons, politics

hoosier-phobias

The same day that Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a state law allowing for the discrimination against LGBT workers and customers in the name of religion, he also lifted a ban on needle exchanges in response to a serious HIV epidemic. That is a good move, needle exchanges are among the most effective means of fighting HIV infections; unfortunately, the ban will return in 30 days.

As a child of the 1980s I immediately saw the connection between these two stories. Historically, HIV/AIDS and LGBT communities have been linked, as sexual minorities were among the first groups to suffer from the epidemic in the late 70s; consequently, homophobia — along with disdain for addicts and racism against Haitian immigrants, who were also targeted by the virus — delayed treatment and finding remedies or cures for strains of HIV and AIDS related diseases. Yet in America we have come so far in our understanding of the disease, in respecting the rights of its victims, in finding cures, and in recognizing the humanity and integrity of sexual minorities, that the confluence of these two events in Indiana — religiously motivated bigotry and short-sighted public health policy — took me by surprise.

It shouldn’t, of course. Ideologically driven public policies that defy science and basic respect for human rights are nothing new. Pence says he will restore the ban on needle exchange programs once those very programs resolve the HIV crisis. Why? He doesn’t think giving drug addicts free needles is effective anti-drug policy. So bound is he to a War On Drugs mentality that he is willing to risk public health and the lives of people addicted to drugs by dumping an health program that actually works, because it contradicts his reflexive biases about drugs and crime. I give him credit for lifting the ban, but he should recognize that effective public health policies should be retained. If he were truly serious about reducing the impact of drugs on his state, he would pursue treatment programs that get addicts off drugs and help them restart their lives.

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Hashtag Dissonance

by on March 22, 2015
Posted In: 2015 political cartoons, cartoons

genocide-together

Two hashtag campaigns launched last week on Twitter (where else?) addressing the topic of race. With #racetogether, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz thought it would be a neat idea to use coffee and his low wage workers to “start a conversation” that neither worker nor customer would ever want, regardless of their respective positions. As I write this I learn that Starbucks has abandoned the project, either recognizing it as a failure of good intentions or as a success in meme-driven marketing. “So long as they spell my name right” publicity, as it were.

The other campaign, #whitegenocide came about this weekend as almost a response to Starbucks invitation to converse about race — and thereby demonstrating exactly why no one wants to touch the subject in a commercial transaction. These trolls get enough attention on Twitter. And while I hate to give them anymore, as a source of friction in a cartoon, as a way to lampoon the kinds of absurd white victimization claims made by bigots afraid of any kind of inclusion of minorities — well, the meme was hard to resist.

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Cruz to Mars

by on March 16, 2015
Posted In: 2015 political cartoons, cartoons

cruz-to-mars

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (TX), who recently took over the chair of the Space, Science and Competitiveness subcommittee, opined to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden that NASA has become distracted from its “core mission” by studying climate change. Here is Cruz’s own press release on the subject, which includes the chart on increased spending for earth science that got the senator all bothered.

chart

Cruz charty chart

 

It’s a remarkably deceptive chart. The huge bar representing a 41% increase in funding for studying “earth science” (what a big tent that category is) stands in dramatic contrast to the 7.6% decrease in “exploration and space operations” — yet there is no indication of real dollars spent. Let’s look at NASA’s budget fact sheet and see what the numbers are.

Science – $5,289 million

  • $1,947 million for Earth Science including a plan to continue the 42-year Landsat record of global land-imaging measurements.
  • $1,361 million for Planetary Science including formulation of a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
  • $709 million for Astrophysics including the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).
  • $620 million to keep the James Webb Space Telescope on track for launch in 2018.
  • $651 million for Heliophysics including keeping Solar Probe Plus on track for launch in 2018.
  • Continues development of 35 missions toward launch and operation of 60 missions producing leading edge science.
  • Funds over 10,000 U.S. scientists in universities, industry, and government labs through over 3,000 openly competed research awards.

It should be evident that sciences directed toward exploration and understanding of the solar system and the universe get plenty of budgetary attention. Go read the rest and poke around NASA’s budgets and plans portal. As indicated above, Earth Science comprises roughly 37% of NASA’s scientific budget, reflecting one of the agency’s strategic goals to understand the effect of climate change on the earth, its inhabitants and to create technologies that help us cope with these changes, and “improve the quality of life on our home planet.”

Why Cruz objects to this, beyond his own convictions that climate change is bunk, seems to reflect his own myopic understanding of how the earth fits within the solar system or relates to space exploration. It’s like the false dichotomy between mind and body: much as Cartesians mistakenly assumed the mind is a separate entity housed within a clumsy vessel, the earth of Cruz looks outward into space, unaware that it is part of a complex solar, galactic and universal matrix of systems. Why bother with all this climatology stuff when there’s money to be made from sending people on one-way missions to Mars? So what if they die within 68 days? The point is to get there, plant our flag, and wave Uncle Sam’s dick in China’s face.

Note that my timeline for landing on Mars is 15 years later than the promises of the Mars One project, which confidently proposes to send four people to the red planet by 2023 — a mere 8 years from now! The magical thinking of the crowd-funded space projects of billionaires is a cartoon for another time.

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