Pirates!

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Arrr!



Of course, you could make the same cartoon with just about any government budget!

Speaking of pirates, that image is hotlinked. :P

Comments

[coolstring.livejournal.com]

So, public schools and prisons should not be receiving money from the government?

[edgar-suit.livejournal.com]

"We say they're our heroes, but we pay them like chumps."

Teachers, Firefighters, Police Officers.

[coolstring.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this cartoon doesn't make sense unless it's out of a libertarian magazine or something.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Non sequitur.

[coolstring.livejournal.com]

...no, what I said was on topic, thanks. The pirate ships are "teacher's unions," who represent teachers, and "prison guards" which I can only assume is an attack on their union. Both of these jobs are funded by the government. And not enough, might I add. So, how exactly are they acting like pirates and attempting to steal from the government if they already get government money?

[coolstring.livejournal.com]

I know all of that. What I'm saying is that the cartoon is poorly conceived. If the artist wanted to make *that* point, perhaps showing a baby with a half-eaten popsicle in one hand, and a candybar wrapper on the ground, crying "MORE" would suffice. This cartoon suggests they shouldn't get anything to begin with, and thus are "stealing" from Sacramento. We're talking about government agencies and government workers, here.

[neonleonb.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think there is something to be said for the cartoon.

First, California spends huge heaps on prisons (reference) (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/MNG4KPUKV51.DTL), and it's way out of scale for other states. This is due, it has been claimed, to the influence of prison business lobbying and the prison guards' union. Is that true? Well, it's plausible, since it's otherwise incomprehensible why our prisons are so expensive.

Second, the teacher's union makes it very hard to reward good teachers and fire bad ones; instead, seniority is what counts. I mean, it's good that teachers work together to gain some power against the government, which will otherwise treat teachers rather poorly, but when the teachers themselves complain about the union (and I know some who do), then it sounds like the balance has shifted too far the other way.

In general, I'm pro-union, and indeed I'm the member of a union. That's because employers usually have all the power, meaning that employees are treated badly--no insurance, low wages, etc. But if unions get too much power, that can hurt their employers seriously (e.g. the auto workers' problems), and when their employer is the government I pay for, then I take an interest.

IT"S THE LAWS, STUPID

[jafesq.livejournal.com]

The main reason that the state of California spends so much on prisons is because of the harsh laws requiring incarceration. There are so many mandatory minimum sentences that the prisons are overflowing. Yet, crime continues. The theory that if we lock them all up we will be safer has been completely disproved by experience.

Re: IT'S THE LAWS, STUPID

[neonleonb.livejournal.com]

Yes, and some people claim that the prison industry, including the prison guards' union, promotes such laws and blocks any proposals that would reverse this trend.

Re: IT'S THE LAWS, STUPID

[jafesq.livejournal.com]

No doubt! And they are aided and abetted by lawmakers who believe (perhaps accurately) that they can get reelected by being "tougher on crime" than others.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

you know what the definition of insanity is, right?

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

You keep posting the same lame bullshit over and over again, and you seem to think that we're going to say "Ah! Not only is that actually funny, he's actually right!"

Here's a hint -- the unions are NOT pirates. They're not even close to being pirates. Teachers, for example, often spend their own money for supplies that aren't provided by the state. They often work 60 hours a week or more. My dad's been a teacher for 40 years. My sister and her husband are teachers. My grandmother was a teacher. My wife used to be a teacher.

You're full of shit. And your cartoons keep not being funny. Just like Dennis Miller.

[zombiesmustdie.livejournal.com]

Damn, who left all this troll food out?

[pragmatic-chimp.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[vivianc1968.livejournal.com]

I like them. Maybe you need to start a group for only liberal cartoons.

[navygrlf14.livejournal.com]

Isn't this called political cartoons, not leftist cartoons?

If you don't like them, you don't have to read them.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

Or, I can exercise my free speech rights by telling him what I think. His right to post idiotic cartoons doesn't pre-empt my right to tell him so.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The Constitution guarantees that he never has to listen to an opposing point of view, no matter what he says or how he chooses to say it. Disagreement with his point of view is oppression!

[fleaplus.livejournal.com]

Here's a hint -- the unions are NOT pirates. They're not even close to being pirates. Teachers, for example, often spend their own money for supplies that aren't provided by the state. They often work 60 hours a week or more. My dad's been a teacher for 40 years. My sister and her husband are teachers. My grandmother was a teacher. My wife used to be a teacher.

Those are individual teachers you're referring to, not the unions.

To be honest, I don't know what the specific problems are with the California Teacher's Union, but there certainly seems to be some issues with the NEA independent of the individual teachers and their salaries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association#Criticism

[real-live-troll.livejournal.com]

those crazy teachers

[desidono.livejournal.com]

This seems plausible to me, but I'm generally anti-union as they seem more about preserving the union power structure than being for their members as well as slow to change in a fast moving world.

I'm not saying all unions are bad mind you, just that some of them seem to be doing shady things. I dunno about hijacking the Sacramento government though and with how happy California is about filing initiatives for everything, you would think that if the unions were a problem somebody would've filed an initiative over it checking their power.