So okay, I had planned to introduce this set of cartoons this month anyway, but Mitt Romney just two days ago made all my intros for the next month-and-a-half, a whole lot easier, by calling nearly half of all Americans lazy & worthless bums, soaking the government. Including retirees who earned their Social Security. And low wage workers who do pay taxes on their wages, but don’t earn enough to pay at higher rates. Students for making use of student loans. Large families where one person earns an average wage. Veterans, for getting veteran benefits. Current, active combat troops in war zones. And them lazy laid off workers, for daring to collect on the unemployment insurance (which they get only in relation to what they paid in unemployment taxes when they were working, and for how long). Many of these people, are registered Republicans.

Yes, the elderly, poor, and middle class, are worthlessly not paying enough in taxes — they need to pay more, to help pay the suffering richest 1%, grab an even greater share for themselves. (And, P.S., aren’t the Republicans the ones who say they won’t raise taxes on anyone? Well, I guess they only regard the rich (and corporations) as real people — and the rest of us as beneath human — since Romney now is saying that the poorer half of all Americans need to pay more taxes.

This, coming from a millionaire, who stuffs his money in Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts in order to avoid paying his share. Who himself pays near zero income tax, because he’s living off interest and dividends, and thus paying a smaller percentage on his income, than the average American worker. Who wants to eliminate completely taxes on interest, so that he, personally, will not have to pay one cent. Who has now been filmed, openly talking with his wealthy donors, making it crystal clear to anyone still not burying their heads like ostriches so they don’t hear his words, that his plan is to pay for his (further) wealth transfer to the rich, by taking that money from everyone else.

I am livid with his insulting comments. How DARE tax-evader Mitt Romney call 47% of Americans, lazy moochers. Shame!

That’s it. Rant’s done. If anyone’s still there (or perhaps, has simply learned to ignore my words, and look instead at the pretty pictures), let’s get to it…

Above, from the October 15th, 1884 issue of Puck magazine, by artist Frederick Graetz, we have Promise and Performance, depicting how 1884 G.O.P. Presidential-nominee James G. Blaine & his V.P. candidate, was promising to treat workers before the election, and how they would treat them after.

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

Below, James Blaine again, in The False Friend of the Workingman, by artist Joseph Keppler, Sr., depicting Blaine seeking the vote of mine workers, after betraying a promise he had made to them earlier. From the centerspread of the October 15th, 1884 Puck.

Finally, a Frederick Burr Opper cartoon we’ve shown before — The Bogus Workingman and His Lonesome Boom — showing politician James Butler, attempting to pass himself off as a common workman, by changing his clothes (his fancier duds are hanging on a peg in the background), and making use of his box of “tools for exhibition purposes”. From the front cover of the September 10th, 1884 issue of Puck.

Doug Wheeler

NYPuck