It's everything you've heard--and more. But like other folks, we have our issues. Feel free to log on and give me a piece of your mind (please read the "guidelines" page first.)
Do you have a statewide political, social or environmental issue that deserves a good editorial or cartoon? Just drop me line.
A couple of recent articles in the Juneau Empire and Bradner’s Economic Digest have pointed out that Alaskans may be losing cruise ship business as a result of a head tax instituted a couple of years ago. Of course, opinions differ, but we need to look at the qualifications and ability (or inability) of each side to use sound reasoning.
We wouldn’t want to go back to the “good old days,” but sometimes we need a reality check as many folks strive for “energy efficiency” in today’s world. Click on the image to see the comparison.
The Department of Justice team in the Ted Stevens prosecution has given justice a black eye. We hope Attorney General Eric Holder and Judge Emmet Sullivan have taken the first steps to keep our courts from regularly becoming a political tool during election campaigns.
When U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department of Justice would be requesting dismissal of charges against Senator Ted Stevens, many Alaskans felt two emotions. First, we were glad “Uncle Ted” was off the hook. Then we got mad, because he was the person we wanted in the Senate. We felt cheated by the other party’s dirty politics.
These where my thoughts when I drew the cartoon with donkey’s heads on the prosecutors; the result was some strong feedback on both sides — read the comments for more information.
This year’s Alaska Press Club awards included second place for cartoons from this website, which are also published weekly in the Ketchikan Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Weekly Standard (online) . Each cartoonist’s entry consisted of three cartoon samples from 2008. Here is an excerpt from the Alaska Press Club’s Awards Listing:
Category 23, Best Editorial Cartoon
First place:Peter Dunlap Shohl, “A Heartbeat Away,” “Mussed,” “Fast Forward,” Anchorage Daily News. Clear ideas, boldly presented in a unique, very loose, painterly art style. Wild, quirky caricatures. Effective use of color.
Second place:Roger L. Maynard, “Plumber,” “Hired Guns,” “Big Shoes,” Fiddlestix Graphics. Good local commentary, clearly presented in a conventional but effective style. Decent use of visual metaphors, with uncluttered layouts and nice rendering in grayscale. (Background notes explaining the context of the cartoons was most helpful to this out-of-state judge.)
Third place:Tony Newman “Toe,” “Juneau Avalanche,” “Get to Know Sarah Palin,” “Palin Returns,” Juneau Empire. Pointed commentary with a nice dose of humor. Straightforward, somewhat static layouts, a bit cluttered in places, are rendered in a simple line with effective use of solid blacks.
Judge:John Trever has been the editorial cartoonist at the Albuquerque Journal since 1976. Among his awards are honors by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Free Press Association and the Overseas Press Club.
It seems the Palin administration is reluctant to say any bad words about their Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA). To any observer, however, it is apparent that the Denali Pipeline folks are moving ahead at a much faster rate than the Canadian Company, TransCanada.
This spring the Denali group had over 80 people in Tok doing preliminary work in preparation for their open season. They’ve spent roughly 8 million dollars to date, compared to TransCanada’s 1 million or so. All of this without TransCanada’s AGIA-sponsored inducement of 500 million bucks from the State of Alaska.
The most surprising thing about Barack Obama’s proposal to make veterans submit medical bills for service-related injuries to their insurance companies, is that he normally does politics so well. Anyone should have seen that even mentioning such a proposal is political suicide–at least for most politicians.
Fortunately, some other politicians were able to turn him around before he did too much damage to either his own presidency or the morale of our armed forces.
By the time the cartoon was printed in the weekend paper, this was a non-issue, but the subject was so alarming it still warranted a comment.
For every timber sale in Alaska, there are five or six radical environmentalist groups ready to keep everything locked up. There is no moderation, no common sense in their approach. Any timber sale, no matter how small or benign, is cause for a major campaign — and it seems they’re ready to go on a moment’s notice.
Unlike other editorial forms, cartoons don’t lend themselves to lengthy detailed explanations. So for those readers who don’t understand why we oppose the economic policies of the current administration, here is a video from the Cato Institute that vividly illustrates some of the basics:
A couple of recent articles in the Juneau Empire and Bradner’s Economic Digest have pointed out that Alaskans may be losing cruise ship business as a result of a head tax instituted a couple of years ago. Of course, opinions differ, but we need to look at the qualifications and ability (or inability) of each side to use sound reasoning.
