The Toons of November Remembered

Rummaging through the archives in Bergetoons' state-of-the-art plastic bins, our Graphical History Tour guides have run across my cartoon about funding the federal government forty years ago this month.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Nov. 7, 1985

There's a lot of charcoal in this cartoon of Congress congratulating itself on agreeing on a deadline for resolving the federal deficit, which was almost $212 billion, 4.9% of Gross Domestic Product, in 1985. President Ronald Reagan had promised in 1980 to reduce the deficit, at which time those same figures were $74 billion and 2.6%.

Where are we now? That would be $1.8 trillion in the hole, representing 6.0% of GDP.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Nov. 21, 1995

2011 Redistricting in Wisconsin has secured a lopsided Republican advantage in the state legislature and our congressional delegation ever since; that was not the case in 1995. Republicans held a 17-to-16 majority in the State Senate that year.

The Milwaukee Brewers came to Madison asking for help funding the building of what is currently American Family Field. Governor Tommy Thompson was loath to raise taxes on the entire state, so he proposed instead imposing a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the four counties adjacent to it, including Racine County to its south. 

The idea was extremely unpopular in Racine, and wasn't helped by Thompson gleefully telling voters outside the five-county area to "stick it to 'em." State Senator George Petak, Republican from Racine, pledged to vote against the five-county tax, and did so on several procedural votes. The deal appeared destined to fail by one vote, but then, around 4:00 in the morning, Petak switched his vote to Aye.

A supposedly grass-roots group quickly gathered enough signatures for a recall election against Sen. Petak. The Wisconsin Democratic Party denied involvement in the "No More Petax" recall effort, and if you believed them, I've got a Bridge To Nowhere I'd like to have sold you.

In the end, the recall was successful, and Democrats were happy to take over control of the State Senate from 1996 to 1998.

not in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

In a multi-panel cartoon, one can often get away with not drawing any background, and merely drawing one or two characters standing and talking. In a single-panel cartoon, however, it's best to have the characters doing something somewhere (especially now that everything has to be in color).

So when the Business Journal editors told me that the week's editorial was going to chide corporate boards that professed not to be able to find qualified women to serve on them, I figured the characters in my cartoon had to be discussing the issue in some men-only space. They aren't as plentiful as they were, oh, half a century ago, so I drew these corporate guys schvitzing in a sauna.

My editor quickly got back to me that the sauna setting was unacceptable, as was the second product line of Amalgamated Mustache Wax & Urinal LLC.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Nov. 18, 2005

I whipped off this version with the Mustache Wax CEO talking by phone to some unseen person, and pasted in the dialogue from the earlier version, minus the "and urinal." (It being Milwaukee, I counted on readers recognizing the Rollie Fingers bobblehead on the corner of the man's desk.)

It was the third time that year that the Business Journal editors asked me to edit or redo a cartoon, which may have had something to do with them deciding at year's end to go forward with no editorial page cartoon at all.

Or maybe it was because I had been away on a planned vacation for the November 11 issue, and readers hadn't missed me.

Moving right along...

for Q Syndicate, Nov. 2015

It seems nearly inconceivable now, but a mere ten years ago, Donald Humbert Trumpbert was just one of a dozen Republican presidential candidates, each of them clawing and biting to stand out from the pack.

At a candidates' cattle call on CNBC in October, Ted Cruz figured that the way to stand out was to attack the debate moderators. He accused them of asking "frivolous" questions (he had been asked about his opposition to the recent budget agreement, but ran out of allotted time before getting around to answering it), and said future GOP debates should have only questions submitted by GOP voters.

And his ploy might have worked, too, except that Marco Rubio and Chris Christie quickly seconded Cruz's complaint; Trump also called the questions "nasty," and it should come as no surprise to you that he was answering a question from the one female moderator on the panel when he said that.

To be fair, the moderators' first question to the group was to identify their biggest weaknesses. It's the sort of question you might be asked in a job interview at a company whose biggest weakness is employee retention; it's not the sort of question its CEO, much less a president of the United States ever has to answer.

The unquestioned loser of that debate was CNBC itself, although they were stuck with the format of trying to get twelve candidates to do something other than regurgitate standard Republican talking points and their own campaign slogans.

As for those candidates, they had already gotten their wish. The next debate was hosted by Fox Noise.