Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 22, 2015

The ‘idea’ of budget cuts is nice… the reality of budget cuts, not so much.

If budget cuts are a good thing, why do we still have the same number of politicians?

Be careful what you ask for….Wait, I thought eliminating taxes would cause the bridges to be repaired….No? That’s not what the twits on Fox and Friends told me…..

This ‘toon is actually what does happen when local government budgets are cut back, as residents of Florida could testify during the so-called ’Great’ Recession. Lack of maintenance of sewer lines and water lines resulted in leaks; deferred maintenance of road surfaces resulted in accidents and damaged cars and so on.

But the government services-haters will insist that there is so much waste in any government budget and all that has to be done is cut back on that waste; that services can still continue. This argument is unlikely to ever be resolved…

Most people talk about budget cuts and ignore the elephant in the room – restructure the government to be more efficient.

Look at school administration to teacher ratio fifty years ago compared to today and you will see where the problem is..

Administration is top-heavy all through government.

“come hell or high water” is not a statement….it is an option

Finally, a crosswalk sign that accurately reflects what pedestrians do anyway.

The people making the cuts are usually the ones who intend to prove that any cuts are detrimental to the public, and carefully constructed to be so while extravagant waste continues unseen elsewhere. No that there have ever been any cuts, of course. The government constantly maintains an inflationary budget increase of at least ten percent, which is apparently just short of your own earnings increase in some perfected world. Any slowing down of the inflationary cycle led by government waste is called a Draconian Cut, as all the world is a stage and we are but groundlings, to be manipulated by the machinations of the author and his minions upon the stage.

Here in Texas, the almost new Governor, one Greg Abbot just signed a $300 million tax cut while increasing the budget for guards (I forgot what he calls them), on the Texas-Mexico border. I don’t even want to know whose taxes were cut. You know him, he’s the wing nut who stated in his campaign speeches that his administration wouldn’t be about guns and abortion. He’s already signed an “open carry” gun bill and an anti-abortion bill. I just noticed an article that many Planned Parenthood clinics were closing.Yeah, we need to have our trusty six-shooters with us all the time, you know, when the US of A gummint invades Texas. Due to efforts of Guv Abbot and Costello, the US of A backed off with the Jade Helm thing. I guess they got all their secret bases built in the closed Wal-Mart stores.

If there is so little or no waste in government budgets (which seems to be a popular concept among posters here) why will any person in a government job tell you that you never come in under budget in a year? They will tell you that if you don’t spend every last dime you won’t get as much money in next year’s budget. And then they tell you they worked incredibly hard to keep the proposed budget increase to only 7% (which will double the outlay in just 10 years).

Are you sure this isn’t by Dept of Mental Health?

And where do you propose to put them to work. I say make the Corporations stay in this country.

Reductio ad absurdum – where liberal cartoonists live. Conservative cartoonists also. Also politicians. And trolls.

Very crowded there.

HaHa, you don’t get it (or maybe you do). We’re not getting rid of all those military bases.

We cut admin staff with our Superintendent’s recommendation. During the difficulties of the depression, we wanted to protect class size and programs, so we cut administration. So much that a few years ago we were given an audit report that said that we didn’t have enough administration to support a good education system (we already knew that). The audit recommended hiring more admin and support staff. We have and it’s helped. Our school system’s results have jumped in several areas including test results.

why not have no budget? don’t pay police, fire, sanitation, and etc…

People never notice anything till it is gone. I don’t mind paying my way.

Right, libertarian/republican budget cuts. Giving them additional excuses not to pay their responsibility by reducing taxes and maximizing profits for themselves. Who do you think will complain about all the uncollected trash and cross walks unregulated? libertarian/republicans of course.

Freedom requires responsibility

Kansas?

A more immense deficit is GOOD for this country!

No, Michigan!

Budgets are for losers. They prevent us from doing what we want to do when we want to do it. I’d rather do what we’ve been doing and spend like there’s no tomorrow and let our stupid grandchldren pick up the tab. Isn’t that what we all want?

Study hard, kids…our debt will be waiting for you.

There are things we are prepared to pay anything for and things we are not prepared for at all. I’m constantly amazed at how often politicians -regardless of political stripe - get these backwards.To cut or not to cut is not the question but where to cut.

Ask the state of Kansas how this plan is working.

For the most part I agree (still don’t trust the Germans).

We did have the deficit down to zero, and were paying down the debt. Then W came along and told us we deserved to have that money back (or at least the 1% deserved our money back). Which is why it’s Obama’s fault. Although I do fault him for allowing the tax cuts to continue, for the most part. Although the Bush recession did make it difficult to return our taxes to an appropriate amount.

I live just outside the village limits. The village has a municipal trash contract where all households are billed $38 per month for trash pickup. Being outside the village my cost for trash pickup is $20 per month , so my cost through a commercial contract is $18 less than people who live in the village. Here’s the funny thing FOIL request revealed the village is paying the trash hauler $18 per household and then just tossing in a $20 overcharge to residents for the convenience of not having to pay the trash hauler directly.So yes there is a lot of excessive government waste that could be eliminated with purely commercial entities.

Brief anecdote: someone said “Bush was giving us money” in the first rebate. A con friend said, “He’s not sending us his money, he’s giving us our money back!”I wanted to tell him Bush was giving us our grandchildren’s money since we were already in deficit, but I knew he would never understand.

Typical liberal craptalk. Assumes that there is no waste whatsoever in government and that any budgetary diminution will result in termination of essential services.

If we pulled all of our troops out of Japan and Germany and other countries, it would crash their economies…They really depend upon those good old Yankee Dollars they throw around

The “walk, don’t walk, do whatever you want” isn’t really a matter of budget cuts so much as people deciding to take a risk (or not). The lack off water in the fire plug to fight fires with is more to the point, and “pick up your own trash” is, too. But the cartoon could have made its point better with a road so full of potholes that it scares off the sinkholes, and a “closed for lack of funds” sign on the police station down the block. Science fiction great Larry Niven wrote a story about libertarianism taken to extremes in “Cloak of Anarchy.” The “villain” decides at the end “I was wrong. Anarchy isn’t stable. It comes apart too easily.”

Richard S. Russell: The bases are to prevent the countries from becoming independent. There are so few because we can always invade the small ones like Grenada and by destroying their economy, force them into the drug trade to fund Iran-Contra (or some similar corruption)..Those who refuse to study history…

Um, Mr. Riley? Putting the 2 in as a superscript indicates that the oxygen atom is missing an awful lot of its mass and can’t possibly be considered an oxygen atom since it must have at least 8 protons. If it’s down to a nucleonic mass of 2, it’s either deuterium or some variant of helium that’s missing both its neutrons.The chemical symbol for water is H2O with the 2 as a subscript, not superscript.End pedantic rant.

Might work out, since we don’t let our kids walk anywhere unsupervised anymore.

It’s really Easy to figure out when you notice that the people screaming Loudest for Budget Cuts are the ones who Ran on the Platform that Government can Never Do Anything Right..They got Elected and proceeded to Keep that Promise.

Welcome to Libertopia, suckers!

To protect us from the Soviet Union, of course.

a straw man for simpletons. “less taxation and goverment does not equal no taxation or government.” do those who want more taxation want 100% taxation and 100% government control?

this cartoon gets drawn about once a week. i haven’t looked at the archives but i am guessing wiley does it more than once a year.