It was my first intention to cheerfully ignore the quote-unquote ‘No Labels’ movement, given that it is yet another iteration of what is a peculiarly American phenomenon.  You see, you get these rich liberals who decide that since the political system is clearly controlled by a shadowy cabal of elites, surely they’d be candidates for membership as the Secret Masters of the Democratic party; then, when they discover that their role is actually to be sheep to be shorn for the benefit of public sector union bosses and government apparatchiks – and that the Republican party insists that their elites actually like America – they get quite huffy and start their own ‘nonpartisan’ little clique.  And so we see here with ‘No labels:’ you can tell that it’s ‘nonpartisan’ because they’ve got Republicans in it, too!  Well, except for that pesky little detail that their ‘Republicans’ can’t win elections as Republicans.  Which just makes them better Republicans, no doubt.  Pure.  Ethereal.  Safe.

But now it turns out that there’s actually a real reason to mention “No Labels:” Ben Smith reports that they stole their design from a graphic artist named Thomas Porostocky.  A very unhappy graphic artist – and for good reason: Mayor Bloomberg has more money than Croesus, which means that he could have easily just paid for the designs that his group stole.  But it apparently didn’t even occur to No Labels to recompense artists for their work; which makes sense, as it’s clearly not as important as electing Democrats by splitting the independent vote away from the Republicans.

Think that I’m exaggerating?  Check out this and this;

…the design was blatantly ripped off.  Contra the ad flack making the clip art excuse in Ben Smith’s update, the image on the right (from a T-shirt being offered for sale on the No Labels site) is precisely identical in shape and layout to the image on the left.  A slightly lighter blue is not change enough.

Moe Lane (crosspost)