August Assembly Required

Back when I was drawing cartoons for University of Wisconsin student newspapers, there would be one cartoon I drew every August in order to make the deadline of the first edition of the new fall semester.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Sept. 5, 1985

As it happens, the UW-Parkside Ranger did publish Volume 14, Issue 1 on August 29, 1985; but this cartoon I drew that August only made it into Volume 14, Issue 2. I don't remember whether I hadn't known there would be an August 29 issue, or whether there wasn't space for this cartoon. It was probably the former, though.

Anyway, there was a white minority government ruling South Africa in those days. Apartheid meant a strict segregation of the races; native Blacks were kept subjugated in impoverished villages, forbidden the vote, and generally treated like trespassers in their own land. In response, corporations and universities were responding to demands to divest from South African companies.

Amid violent suppression of Black South African protests against a new constitution, President Ronald Reagan resisted congressional and citizen calls to impose sanctions on the South African government. Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, Congress would pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 over Reagan's veto, banning new U.S. investment in South Africa and sales to the country's police and military, while cutting off South African imports.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Sept. 5, 1995

The UWM Post published three issues during the summer semester in those days; I would contribute cartoons to the summer editions in 1996.

As for this cartoon, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) was a prominent fiscal conservative, and the lead namesake of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act on 1985. The bill promised to balance the federal budget by 1990 by mandating across-the-board cuts in government programs if Congress failed to pass budgets beneath a prescribed deficit level.

It didn't work. The federal deficit would be eliminated, temporarily, under President Bill Clinton, but thanks to tax increases that were anathema to Gramm and the rest of his party — which were reversed as soon as the supposed deficit hawks were back in total charge of things.

The line in the third panel of my cartoon is a direct quote of his rationale for simultaneously cutting benefits for the poor and taxes for the rich — still Republican dogma to this day. They got their way in spades with the Big Abomnibus Budget Bill of 2025, which proved that Republicans never really cared about running up the deficit in the first place — in case anybody thought that George W. Bush's deficits were a fluke.

Gramm was running for president in the summer of 1995, and made a good showing in an Iowa straw poll in August; but his campaign didn't make it past the Iowa caucuses in January. The one positive thing I can say about him is that he was a hoot to draw.

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I've got one other cartoon from August, 1995 that I'd like to include here, because it never got published. I'll leave it up to you to decide why that was.

It's about a local news item, and drawn for the Racine Journal Times. The Ku Klux Klan announced plans to hold a rally on August 19 in front of the courthouse in Elkhorn, population then around 5,000, in Walworth County. In response, the county's Republican and Democratic parties issued a joint statement denouncing the Klan while affirming their First Amendment right "to have and declare" their beliefs. 

"We do not support the belief that hatred solves problems," their joint letter read. "We believe hate crimes and hate group activities negatively affect everyone in the community."

When the Walworth County board took up a resolution in support of "peaceful counteractions against hate groups," someone objected to the term "hate groups." So the board amended the resolution so that it lent its support to "peaceful counteractions against unhappy groups."

Unpublished, August, 1995

Lake Geneva Supervisor Dan Janowak explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Meg Jones that he suggested the alternative phrasing because the KKK "is not a hate program. It's more or less people that are unhappy with what's going on and they don't necessarily hate."

Board Chairman Lawrence Scharine weaseled, "'Hate' or 'unhappy,' it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there."

"Lied" or "weaseled," it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there.

The Klan rally took place as planned, separated from counter-protesters by "a small army of police in riot gear." The Journal Times didn't offer an estimate of the number of Klansmen involved (and Imperial spokesWizard David Neumann wouldn't say how many members the local Klan had), but implied that they were outnumbered by the 400-500 counter-protesters and curious on-lookers. "Klansmen spoke against affirmative action and hiring quotas," the JT''s Joseph Scolaro reported. "They continually called protesters 'scum' and decried homosexuals and minorities."

The only arrests made at the rally were of two anti-Klan protesters from Milwaukee, released on signature bonds.

Speaking of affirmative action...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, August 5, 2005

As difficult as it may be to remember only twenty short years ago, a little corporate diversity was thought to be a good thing. I drew this cartoon to accompany a Business Journal editorial in favor of favoring "disadvantaged" businesses.

The idea was that businesses owned by racial minorities, women, and/or physically challenged persons should be given favorable consideration in bidding for government contracts; in practice, just having one or two such persons serving on the corporate board would qualify a company as labeled disadvantaged.

Under the present regime, of course, these companies would have to fire any racial minorities, women, and physically challenged persons on their corporate board just to have a glimmer of hope to compete with and out-bribe all-white, all-male, all-cis family and golfing partners of La Cosa di Trump.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2015

And finally today, marriage equality vs. religious liberty.