Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 21, 2011

Aaaa-HAH. I beat you to the post this time, Vista Bill!

Exactly what country is that caller in? Sounds like the USA to me.

Central Minnesota would be my guess …

I’m disappointed. Not because I don’t agree with the posts so far. I do. I just wanted another good rattling adventure yarn in some imaginary dictatorship overseas.

The Governor of Wisconsin needs help!

And suddenly, the right-wingers who usually come to insult Trudeau go silent…

Maybe Red Rascal can sabotage the recall elections in Wisconsin! He screws up, of course. And all the reich-wing legislators are recalled. But maybe that’s not realistic.

Jeff’s summer daydream is overlapping with Scott Walker’s.

I don’t want teachers paid like bankers and stockbrokers. If they were, the profession would attract too many greedy, unscrupulous, self-serving, egoistic people. They should be paid enough to attract hard-working and talented young people into the profession and keep them there. As it is, they are often paid just enough to attract an adequate supply of warm bodies to occupy desks. Fortunately, in spite of that, there are many, many fine teachers. But there are those who think it unjust that they should be taxed to pay for their neighbor’s kids’ educations. In the every-man-for-himself world, people have no responsibility toward anyone in the next generation, but their own kids … and then ONLY if their own kids DESERVE it.

By all means. Federal income tax must be repealed. Except for the poor who aren’t paying their fair share. And minimum wage is unconstitutional. America’s rich aren’t nearly rich enough. America’s poor aren’t nearly poor enough. Only 25% of America’s children live in poverty? Let’s go for 50%! Just don’t touch the bank accounts of the billionaires! That’s enough ranting for one morning.

Amid all of this,,,happy birthday, Mr. Trudeau. Keep up the good work, entertaining us while forcing us to think.

Okay, Comrades, it’s time to stop all this shilly-shallying. Hunt down anyone who has more money than you do and shoot, skin, and eat them.

Does anyone realize what raising taxes by 1-2% and cutting spending by the same might do? And don’t tell me that the middle/poor class will suffer. At less than 100k per year, the percantage is 1000-2000$ max, divided by 24 paychecks= $41.66 to $83.33. Average Joe will not miss that at all.

during the last prez election I was surprised to learn that Hilary defined the middle class at making $200,000/year!!! Teachers are not middle class???

Why is it always either, or. Either capitalism or communism. Granted that communism didn’t do well in the 50s, but post-modern capitalism has turned into a kind of corporate fascism. What’s wrong with libertarian socialism? I’m an anarcho-syndicalist myself.

The party is Wisconsin is only beginning, as the Fuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan Wisconsin found out earlier this week. Good times!The movie is at the bottom of the essay!http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/19/996090/-Hoppers-WhopperWalker-Shamed-Again#comments

If the right-wing had its way every “free”-way would be a toll road, every bridge would have its “troll”-booth, every school would be a charter school, the army would be owned and operated by Blackwater, and there would be no taxes at all for anybody.

Education for everybody, free road travel, free bridge-passage, and an army that protects everybody — not just those who pay fee-for-service to Blackwater — are socialist policies. It’s socialism that has given us these things.

At its extreme, under the most conservative libertarianism, parents could sell their children to be slaves for one heck of a lot of money. This is already being done in some countries, though it is illegal. Sex-slavery, I believe, is the most common form.

¶ Under the most extreme form of conservative libertarianism, some people (lets call them kings and lords) could actually own other people — as in Biblical times.¶ And in the ultra-extreme it is theoretically possible for one huge globe-spanning corporation to own-and-employ every person on the planet except for the owners of the corporation itself.

happy birthday, mr. trudeau

Kids are kids. Doesn’t matter if they are liberal or conservative in terms of whether they are well behaved or not.

We will never have to worry about overpaying a teacher. Teachers don’t have near the amount of leisure time that some seem to think they have. Teachers have workshops to attend and they have to take a lot of their work home with them. They also often have to work at other jobs just to pay their bills.

Thanks for the stimulating cartoons & happy birthday Mr. Trudeau.

Sadly, I think the majority of Americans hold these sentiments, rich or not. Pity.

SEIU = Service Employees International Union. Okay, I admit, I had to look it up too. Mr. Jack seems to think they’re thugs who beat up people like Red Rascal. (BTW,doesn’t the “red” in Red Rascal mean he’s commie? Or does it mean he’s “red state” Teapublicanoid?)

@Pi

Extreme (or “conservative”) libertarianism sounds just like unfettered (unregulated) capitalism, Pi.

At the heart of this capitalistic libertarianism lies the principle of possessive individualism: the notion that your wealth is your true identity.

Sorkh Razil was given that name by Afghans who were struck by Jeff’s red hair.

Medicare is out of control, I think, because people live poor lifestyles healthwise — harmful eating practices (e.g. too much satfat), obesity (leading to type II diabetes), lack of exercise, smoking, etc. cause people to enter extreme conditions of ill health in the latter decades of their lives. Hence, the costs of caring for them begin to overwhelm Medicare or any insurance system, public or private.

It boils down to greed. We live in a world controlled by corporations with insatiable greed, who have no interest in what our world will be like in the long term. Add the problem of overpopulation to the mix and I’m afraid that there ain’t no light at the end of the tunnel. I weep for our children.

What is the complexity of the ‘toon? He’s got the Koch brothers on the line.

Absolutely. Pointy-haired managers (from Dilbert) get in the hundreds of thousands (500,000-900,000). Board members get millions (1,000,000-9,999,999). CEOs are in the tens of millions (10,000,000-99,999,999).

Do I detect a hint of sexism in your comment. I’m a one of the teachers that Red Rascal managed to take out, and I’m a man.

I watched the movie “Company Man” the other night (Netflix) and it is a great depiction of what is happening in the US. Downsizing the employee base and top dogs getting rich and spending company money on themselves, and then selling their shares and retiring. Great movie, check it out.

Worse than that will be coming if the gang of 6 get they’re plan through! It lowers taxes by 6% (from 35% now to 29%) for individuals making over $380K to billions!!!! No wonder all of those legislators are smiling!

@jnik, The Governor of Wisconsin needs CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY help.

Today’s politicians live in a Truman Show world with cameras on them all the time and everything orchestrated around their popularity. Few remember what life is like outside the dome since their election, or realize how much it has changed, until the spotlights start falling on their heads.

first you throw some teabags into an estuary and claim to be a patriot. Then you blame every middle class person who has a job and a paid insurance plan for ruining everything. Especially if their jobs are protected so you can’t fire them for breathing the wrong way. You’ve already crashed the realty market and ruined the stock market for an independent investor to keep any real new rich from popping up. You crashed a lot of new money by making sure patents and copyrights are almost worthless, Yeah, you got the job mostly done. And idiots will show up and defend you and keep electing you until you don’t need them any more and safely illegally foreclose them out of their homes and jobs. Don’t worry though. You can always sell another big lie to them about being the victims of aliens you brought in to take their jobs or of the folks who are trying to save their system as you keep punching holes in the sinking ship. Like Murdoch is not a bad guy cause all the news media behave that way. Reminding me of one of my dad’s old sayings:" does it make it right for you to be wrong, too? two wrongs don’t make a right." Actually, they make a right winger who repeats them until they sound like the truth.

Now what was that about wanting me to help?

Where do you live Sandfan?

All right, all you Freemarketeers out there, listen up!Remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s song?You load sixteen tons, what do you getAnother day older and deeper in debtSaint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t goI owe my soul to the company store.This is the free market at work. It was once prevalent across rural areas in America. I know, because I lived on one, Madison “College” and “Hospital” [quote marks because it was neither a real college (not accredited) nor hospital (folk medicine practiced)] for a few weeks at extremely low rent, while I worked nearby in Nashville at a publishing house.Here’s the deal: Suppose you’re a married man with three kids. You desperately need a job. Company Store (CS) offers you a job working the land. You work from sun to sun for real honest-to-goodness wages. Bonus: Prices at CS — where you can buy everything from a plow to a toothbrush — are significantly and consistently lower than they are at the stores in town a few miles away.Aaaah! The good life, huh?Not so fast, Freemarketeer. The owner, a very rich man called Big Boss Man (BBM), has a small, fat accountant with green eye shades (SFAWGES) and a very sharp pencil. He has everything figured out to the proverbial gnat’s eyebrow:No matter how hard you work, how frugal you are, etc., you can NEVAH NO NEVEH get out of debt to the CS because SFAWGES’ ever-sharp pencil has calculated that your wages are and will always stay BELOW what you can ever save to get out of debt and out of there with your life and the lives of the shrinking bellies of your family.And don’t even think of sneaking away in the middle of the night in your battered Model T. For BBM has a little deal with the sheriff, who’ll track your backside down and send you back. For a fee, of course, of course, which BBM tacks onto your debt. And if you refuse to toil, your backside will land in jail and your wife and kids’ll starve.I kid you not! It’s the free market system at work.

Or, Jesus might well have put it, “Let the rich eat the rich!”

“I [Jesus] say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” —Matthew 19:24 KJV

Teachas got nuttin’ to fear, with the Rascal on their case.

Troll booth, heh,heh. I hate troll booths.

All the villains who have made America poor.