This week, as everyone should have expected from the start, the Congressional “Super Legion”… uh, “Injustice League”… er… “Committee“(??), came to zero agreement.

Click on any of the pictures above and below, to view enlarged versions.

Above, The End of a Bad Show, depicting the workings of the “Grand National Congressional Theatre”. Puck magazine’s mascot can be seen making his exit, bottom right. The above cartoon by Puck magazine’s founder, Joseph Keppler, Sr., appeared as the centerspread in the February 28th, 1883 issue of Puck.

Starting with Ronald Reagan, Republicans have followed a strategy of lowering taxes for the wealthy, spending wrecklessly and irresponsibly when they hold the Presidency, and borrowing heavily to make up the difference. Then, when Democrats take over the Presidency, they have to spend their time cleaning up the messes created by Republicans, who renounce their profligate spending (until, that is, the next time they regain power), and place blame for what they created, on whatever Democrat is now in charge.

Having destroyed our economy, and given us a Second Great Depression (just as they gave us the First Great Depression), Republicans, controlled by Tea Party (the Libertarian Party under a new name) extremists, insist that the past three decades of tax breaks for the rich, be paid for by taking away safety net programs for everyone else, now, when they are most needed.

Above, the title page headpiece art from the February 1894 issue of Judge’s Library, whose theme that issue was The Almighty Dollar.

The Tea Party’s refrain is that government doesn’t work. And they’ve proven this, by being the ones who stop it from working. It was the Republicans/Tea Party, who turned the deficit (they created) into a “crisis”, by holding the country hostage to their demands — threatening that unless they got their way, they would force the U.S. into default on its loans (which they took out). The U.S. dropped in credit rating, and our interest rate climbed, as a direct result of the obstinance of the Tea Party.

Above, left, the Bank of England climbing higher up a ladder representing the interest rate at which they lent money to America. She is climbing higher, due to financial troubles in the U.S. From the November 7th, 1857 issue of Picayune, a New York City comic weekly.

Above right, Opened with Prayer, depicting Congress in action just prior to the Civil War. From the December 31st, 1859 debut issue of Vanity Fair. Click on that picture not only to enlarge it, but to also read the satirical prose piece that accompanied it. Illustration by Vanity Fair‘s founder/editor, Henry Louis Stephens.

The Tea Party/Republicans are demanding a (further) transfer of wealth from the middle class and poor, to the most wealthy, claiming that the wealthy are the “job creators”. Look around. What jobs have they created lately? They have been creating jobs, just not in the U.S. Tax breaks given to the richest 1%, do not result in jobs in the U.S. — as the wealthy instead use the money from their tax breaks to invest overseas, including helping to pay the expenses of transferring still more factories & jobs to Asia and South/Central America.

The true job creators are the middle class and poor, whose spending here, in the U.S., is what drives job creation. By acting as Reverse-Robin Hoods, taking money out of the pockets of those whose spending is what truly creates jobs, Republican Party policies increase unemployment.

Above, by cartoonist Nelson Harding, from the 1912-published booklet The Political Campaign of 1912 in Cartoons by Nelson Harding (Eagle Library No. 170), is Standing Pat. Apparently, one hundred years ago, just as today, Republicans were seen as behaving like extortionists. This cartoon originally appeared in the newspaper The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, during the 1912 Presidential Election.

Below, monopolists Andrew Carnegie, J.D. Rockefeller, and Henry Osborne Havemeyer (a leading Sugar Trust robber baron), point at a poor working farmer and his son, in answer to “Who Should — Who Does — Pay the Taxes?”, plate 45 from the collection of Homer Davenport cartoons, The Dollar or the Man?, published in 1900.

We’ll be seeing much more from both The Dollar or the Man?, and, The Political Campaign of 1912 in Cartoons, as well as extracts from numerous other political booklets and pamphlets (from both side), throughout the 2012 Election year.

To find prior episodes of this series,click on Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons. And, to find earlier posts concerning financial reforms in general, click here.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform NYPuck NYPicayune JudgeMag KepplerSR HLStephens CongressCartoons