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.

A Brief History of Wisconsin Recall Elections

Now that the 2011-2012 spitstorm of Wisconsin recall elections is over, our elected representatives in Madison (the Republican ones, anyway) have promised to rewrite the state Constitution to make recalls more difficult -- requiring a charge of official malfeasance. They will probably move pretty quickly on that idea, too, while resentment of the recall process remains high.

But before that happens, let's take a quick look at previous recall elections in Wisconsin.

I'm going to stick with the recalls in my lifetime -- the ones I've drawn cartoons about -- starting with the recall of George Petak in 1996. Republican Petak represented Racine County in the State Senate.Republican  Tommy Thompson was Governor, and Republicans held a one-vote margin in the Senate. The Milwaukee Brewers wanted to replace County Stadium, and wanted Wisconsin taxpayers to chip in big time for the proposed Miller Park Stadium.

Instead of hiking taxes on the entire state, Thompson and the Republicans came up with the idea of imposing a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the four counties which border it. Opposition to the tax in Racine County on Milwaukee's southern border was strong (not helped by Thompson's telling the rest of the state to "stick it to 'em"). Petak opposed the tax plan as well, but Senate leaders kept bringing their plan up for votes again and again, late into the night. Finally, at 4:00 in the morning, Petak changed his vote, and the tax plan passed.

Racine citizens started the recall process almost immediately. The Wisconsin Democratic Party claimed at first to have no part in the "No More Petax" drive, although that charade lasted about as long as the pretense that Petak and the Republicans had no connection to "push poll" telephone calls attacking the Democratic candidate, Kim Plache.

Plache, however, won the election, and Democrats gained the majority in the State Senate. Twelve years later, that .1% sales tax is still in place, and the recall is still a sore point with Wisconsin Republicans. It's also not a good idea for Racine residents to identify themselves as such at Brewer home games or Milwaukee sports bars.

The next year, right-wing religious groups, led by Family Research Council chair Gary Bauer and "Virginia Citizens for Reform" (and supported by presidential candidate Steve Forbes) launched a recall effort against Wisconsin's two Democratic U.S. Senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, based on their support of women's right to choose. The drive was unsuccessful, and was ultimately ... aborted.

Which brings us to the recall of Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament in 2002. Ament was a reasonably popular County Executive -- at least, the Milwaukee Business Journal, for whom I was drawing at the time, and the Journal Sentinel liked him. Then the lucrative pension system for Milwaukee County employees and its capacity for bankrupting the county came to light and all hell broke loose. A group calling itself Citizens for Responsible Government mounted a recall drive against Ament. And they would have succeeded, too, if Ament had not resigned from office (thus saving his own $87,000 pension). Seven county supervisors lost recall races over the scandal.


An election to elect a new County Executive was held that summer, and the victor was none other than one Scott Kevin Walker.

Update: And if you perceived a link between the Milwaukee County pension scandal and the Republicans' 2012 attack on unions, give yourself a hand. Bruce Murphy has the best post mortem I've read yet on the bipartisan creation of the scandal and how unions are now paying the price for it.


There has also been a recall of the mayor of Sheboygan earlier this year -- a sordid affair involving public drunkenness and sexual assault. I haven't drawn any cartoons about it, but I bring it up because it is the only one of these recalls that involved "official malfeasance."

Southeast Wisconsin Redistricting, part II

In discussing the Republicans plan to join the City of Racine and the City of Kenosha into one state senate district, I described Kenosha as a solid union town. I neglected to contrast it with Racine except to say that the 21st Senate District has swung between Republicans and Democrats.

At the risk of sounding like I think Racine is a lousy place to live, and admitting up front that I'm going to be talking in stereotypes and broad generalizations, here is how I see Racine as being quite different from Kenosha.

Where Kenosha is Union Strong, Racine has developed a significant aversion to unions, and progressivism generally. It was not always thus: during the Great Depression, Racine got the nickname of Little Moscow due to its labor unrest. It even elected a Socialist Mayor in 1934, William Swoboda.

But not all major workplaces in Racine were union shops. S.C. Johnson & Son. Johnson Wax held off unionization by being one of the most progressive employers in the nation (recognizing same-sex domestic partner benefits in the 1990's when politicians were still afraid to stand up for LGBT citizens in any way.)

My generation -- the baby boomers -- grew up during a period when the public schools were repeatedly closed by public employee union strikes. The school janitors went on strike in 1970, and the teachers struck in 1972, 1974, and 1977. That last strike lasted 50 days -- from January until March -- and required Racine Unified School District to make up days by extending school through June 30, including six Saturdays (the maximum number of Saturdays allowed by law). Union president Jim Ennis proclaimed that he represented his union's interests, not the public interest, and people remember that. This winter, during the furore over Scott Walker's union-busting "budget repair" bill, I overheard a woman my age in a restaurant telling her fellow diners that the 1977 strike was the major reason she is against unions.


Augmenting Racine's skeptical view of unions is the longstanding attitude among many of its citizens that if something doesn't directly benefit me, I'm against it. If my children have grown up and moved away, I don't see why my taxes should pay for schools. If I don't exercise, I don't see why my taxes should pay for bike trails. If I'm scared to go downtown because of all the dark-skinned people who live there, I don't see why my taxes should pay for making downtown attractive.

In addition to school strikes, my generation was beset with Racine's reluctance to deal with school overcrowding. Year after year, voters rejected referenda to build a new junior high school, so my class and the one before it went through three years of "split shifts": seventh graders went to school from noon to 5:00 p.m., and eighth and ninth graders went to school from 7:00 a.m. to noon. (This coincided with a year of year-round daylight savings time, so everyone got a taste of walking to or from school in the dark.) Classes were only 35 minutes long, which is a pretty short time in which to teach geometry, to accomplish anything in shop, or to practice band. It's even less time to get anything done in gym class, factoring in changing into gym clothes, showering, drying off, and getting dressed for the next class. Finally, Gilmore Junior High (now Middle School) was built; but now, Racine's voters keep rejecting referenda to repair or replace the century-old elementary schools that are crumbling around today's students.

Here's another example of Racine's If It Doesn't Benefit Me, I'm Against It attitude. Saturday, I mentioned the recall of Republican State Senator George Petak. In 1996, the Milwaukee Brewers wanted to replace County Stadium. Since he couldn't sell the idea of a state tax to pay for a new stadium, Governor Tommy Thompson had the bright idea of a .1% sales tax limited to Milwaukee County and the five counties that border it: Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha, Walworth, and Racine. Petak supported the new stadium, but knew how unpopular the tax was in Racine and promised to vote against it. As legislators wrangled over the bill into the wee hours of the morning, it was clear that the stadium bill would fail unless Petak voted for it.


He changed his vote to Yea, and Democrats rode the wave of popular outrage to take over the 21st District Senate seat. Unlike this summer's recalls, the outrage was bipartisan: Petak had to win a primary against a Republican challenger before falling to Democrat Kim Plache (which also resulted in Democrats seizing a senate majority). It was a mean campaign, however, and the venomous atmosphere was long-lasting. It's still not a good idea when at a Brewers game to let other fans know you're from Racine.

Given their similar size and geographic location, what makes Racine and Kenosha so different? Is it that Kenosha has two colleges and Racine has none?

By and large, Kenosha was settled by Italian immigrants, and Racine was settled by Scandinavians (primarily Danes). Italians have a reputation for adhering less to the state than to more immediate sources of authority: family and clan on the one hand, and the Catholic Church on the other. Scandinavians came here with a greater respect for the institutions of the state, but as Protestants (Lutherans), expecting more control over their religious institutions.

I work at a Lutheran church in Racine which claims the title of the oldest Danish congregation in the United States. I've thorougly researched the history of this congregation, which is marked by decades of squabbling over doctrinal matters and the personal conduct of its pastors. In one episode, the congregation voted whether to denounce their pastor, a Dane living only temporarily in the U.S., for attending a dance held to honor visiting Danish dignitaries. Congregational action of that sort would be unthinkable in a Catholic congregation.

My point here is that Kenoshans have a greater willingness to pull together as a community and Racinians display a greater demand for personal autonomy. When Sarah Palin castigates Barack Obama for having been a "community organizer," Racinians laugh with Palin; Kenoshans laugh at her. Kenoshans also seem more likely to carry through with a majority decision once it has been decided; Racinians are more likely to continue attacking the leader associated with whatever majority decision doesn't go their way.

The effect has been that when Kenosha faced the disaster of the closing of the Chrysler plant and all the companies that supplied it with material, Kenosha pulled together to determine its post-industrial future. Racine spent the age of industrial decline unable to agree what the future should look like and unwilling to spend a penny on anyone else's vision for it. Kenosha facilitated growth by forging agreements with its neighboring townships; Racine and its neighboring townships erected virtual Berlin Walls. Kenosha strengthened its ties to Chicago by becoming the northernmost stop on the Metra line; Racine is dead set against any form of interurban mass transportation.

It will be interesting to see how the difference in style plays out in elections for the 21st Senate District. And -- fair warning, Senator Wangaard -- the 22nd as well.

Condoms, Abortion and Total Recall

(Cartoonist's note: In 1992, I drew the cartoon at left as the Racine branch of the American Family Association was pressuring the local health department to stop distributing free condoms to patients coming in for AIDS and STD testing. The R-AFA argued that condoms are not 100% effective in preventing STDs, only abstinence is -- as if good intentions are stronger than latex.)

To the editor:

The destructive political cartoon in Wednesday's paper was a disgrace. Not only did it promote condoms and scoff at sexual abstinence, but it ridiculed a good and moral man and, by implication, a large segment of our community.

We don't even know John Kalashian, but we take grave exception to his being the target of some young, self-indulgent cartoonist whose hedonistic outlook allows no room for morals.

The thoughtless, juvenile cartoon is an effort to corrupt the morals of the community, and it tries to belittle anyone promoting morals and self-control, like Mr. Kalashian.

The Journal Times did not cover itself in glory by publishing such a cheap shot.

Glenn and Suzanne Pfeiffer

(Me again: Do you see Mr. Kalashian's name anywhere in the cartoon? More on the Pfeiffers later.)


To the editor:


The Journal Times cartoon in the Wednesday, April 8, edition was really a cheap shot at John Kalashian, absolutely hitting below the belt. The smart aleck who drew it, needless to say, doesn't rate very high in my opinion.

I'm stupefied that the Journal Times would print such unfair ridicule of one of Racine's stalwart citizens. John Kalashian is a man the young people of Racine can look up to, and I hope the citizens of Racine don't live to rue the day they failed to back John in giving young Racinians the leadership they so badly need.

The Journal Times owes John Kalashian an apology.

Roman Brook


(Cartoonist's note: In 1997, the American Family Association and allies launched a petition drive to recall Wisconsin's two Democratic senators for having voted against a Republican bill to outlaw all so-called "partial birth abortions." Locally, their petition drive was hurt by following so closely on the heels of a bitter recall election against Republican State Senator George Petak... and by the fact that Senator Feingold's seat was up for election the next year anyway.
(George Petak had broken a promise to vote against a .1% sales tax on Milwaukee County and the five counties bordering it, intended to pay for a new baseball stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers. He favored building the stadium, but the tax was very unpopular in his district. Governor Thompson had not helped popularize the tax among its victims by urging outstate voters to support the plan and "Stick it to 'em!"
(Angry Racinians successfully threw Petak out of office, eagerly helped by a state Democratic party which had been one vote shy of a majority in the state senate. Four years later, it's still a sore point on both sides of the issue.)


To the editor:

In regard to the amateurish political cartoon in your May 15 paper, drawn by a local liberal wannabe cartoonist, it's either a case of convenient amnesia or blatant hypocrisy. He tries to ridicule the hard-working (local) petitioners who are trying to recall Sens. Kohl and Feingold because they support partial-birth abortion. He says they "enjoy divisive recall elections."

He has a mighty short memory. It was the liberals who brought in and paid outsiders to force a divisive recall election to oust George Petak.

Suzanne Dechant Pfeiffer

(Actually, I had drawn cartoons critical of the Recall Petak campaign for claiming that there was no outside help in their campaign.
(Perhaps it's my short memory, but I'm not sure why Suzanne Pfeiffer has such a bug up her butt about me. As a kid, I used to substitute on her son's paper route from time to time. He had better not be expecting any more favors from me, I can tell you that.
(Or maybe she's still holding a grudge from the time I came selling magazine subscriptions as a school band fund-raiser on the first day of spring break one year. Unfortunately, it happened to be Good Friday, and she reacted as if I'd intruded on a family funeral, drunk and in a clown outfit.)