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This hauntingly powerful image of a toxic water slide is by Nick Anderson of The Houston Chronicle.
For a second straight week, the tainted water travesty flows from Flint taps onto editorial pages nationwide.
Six earlier opinion cartoons are in our first roundup last Wednesday. These eight new ones appeared in recent days as the lead poisoning crisis in Michigan's seventh-largest city (99,763 people in 2013) remains on front pages, magazine covers and network newscasts.
Some artists poke the governor, some focus on what's seen as economic injustice and some deliver graphic symbols needing no text.
This editorial pager cartoon by Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is published today (Jan. 25).
Also new is an animated video by Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Fiore of San Francscio. His minute-and-a-half "Austerity Man" commentary is accompanied by this blog post at Fiore's website:
Now that Michigan governor, Rick Snyder, is getting credit for saying he’s really super-dooper sorry about poisoning thousands of children in Flint with lead, let’s not forget how he did it. In his zeal to be a fiscally conservative budget turnaround artist, Snyder and his crew played fast and loose with science, safety and even democracy.
Step one to making those painful budget cuts was eliminating any accountability to the voters. If the person enacting austerity budgets could be punished at the ballot box, most likely he or she wouldn’t have made the Wise and Necessary Cuts. Enter Rick Snyder’s “emergency managers,” who took over control from people like, um, mayors and city councils.
Step two is to cut budgets, everywhere and in every way possible. If money is spent on, say, additives in the water that will prevent pipes from corroding and releasing lead into the city’s water supply thereby putting thousands of children at risk of brain damage, so be it, we must save $100 a day. (Yes, for a mere $100 a day, Flint could have very well avoided poisoning an entire populace with toxics.) But spending money is bad, right?
Death flows from Flint taps, as symbolized by the Grim Reaper in this Investor's Business Daily image by Michael Ramirez.
This perspective on economic disparity is by Jack Ohman of Tribune Content Agency.
Steve Sack imagines the governor's calculations in this Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial page commentary.
The New York Times published this creation by Brooklyn designers Seth Labenz and Roy Rub, who own Topos Graphics studio.
By Drew Sheneman of Tribune Content Agency.
Gov. Rick Snyder is repicted as "Austerity Man" in a 92-second animated video by Pulitzer winner Mark Fiore of San Francisco. A link is in the article text above.
