[stevewig]

GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich told a crowd at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that child labor laws are “tragic” and “stupid” and have “done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy.” In a proposal that he freely admitted was “extraordinarily radical,” he called for the firing of school janitors, replacing them with poor students. Politico reports:

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.” [...]

“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Gingrich Would Abolish Child Labor Laws | The Truth Pursuit


In the case where the child's father was the janitor he could do his dad's job?

[Wheatfield]

Smart Newt. With unemployment at record high levels, you are going to both increase those levels and, for an added bonus, do your best to ensure you have an uneducated labor force going forwards.
Wait 20 years and see how competitive the USA is. The right will probably blame the now uneducated adults for not staying in school when they were kids.

[stevewig]

Smart Newt. With unemployment at record high levels, you are going to both increase those levels and, for an added bonus, do your best to ensure you have an uneducated labor force going forwards.
Wait 20 years and see how competitive the USA is. The right will probably blame the now uneducated adults for not staying in school when they were kids.

Very true!

Plus he apparently forgets why Child Labor Laws were found to be necessary and what used to happen before they were mandated.
(Refusal to learn from history that one characteristic never changes - human nature (greed and cruelty).

[shooz]

They'll say that they "chose" poverty.

It's the libertarian way.

[riff]

In a proposal that he freely admitted was “extraordinarily radical,” he called for the firing of school janitors, replacing them with poor students

Silly me,.I thought the US was in deep trouble.
This week I've had three proposals from the conservative brain trust on how to fix EVERYTHING.
1) Shoot all the 20 year olds who look like they've never had a job. Apparently because "they set up tents in our park".
2) It's ALL Obama's fault.
and now this “extraordinarily radical" plan. It's the final piece of THE SOLUTION.

I will sleep soundly tonight.

[jeffkrol]

nice summation...........

Over the last couple of months the full extent of the intellectual degradation of the Republican party has been laid bare. Before Rick Perry forgot his own talking points he insisted the American Revolution was fought in the 16th century (200 years too early); Michele Bachmann claimed the vaccine against human papilloma virus can cause "mental retardation" (it can't), and that John Quincy Adams was a founding father (he wasn't). Individually these could be lapses of memory, slips of the tongue. But together they are emblematic of a brazen philistinism and reckless defamation that has dominated the American right in recent times. What we've witnessed in these debates are not gaffes, but the inevitable result of a descent into rhetorical hyperventilation. For the past three years making bizarre, false, inflammatory statements was not regarded as an obstacle to being taken seriously within the party but a prerequisite for it.

In Cain and Perry's gaffes, the Republicans' degradation is laid bare | Gary Younge | Comment is free | The Guardian

None of this means Republicans cannot win. Incompetence, ignorance and disingenuity are no barriers to elected office. In the only televised debate for the 2010 gubernatorial elections in Arizona, a swing state, the Republican incumbent, Jan Brewer, stopped halfway through her opening statement, stared blankly into the camera, and started giggling. She won by 12 clear points and enjoyed a 19% increase in her vote.

Obama sold the nation on hope and has presided over despair. It's because the Republicans have been so dysfunctional that he still has a shot. It's because he has delivered so little that their dysfunctionality may not matter. The stakes are high, the standards are low, and the choice is paltry.

[séamuis]

The stakes are high, the standards are low, and the choice is paltry.

this may be the single best description of our entire nation right now. quite depressing really.

[boriscleto]

[reeftool]

God forbid that kids should work. It would deprive MTV and their peers of billions of viewers and the video game industry would collapse. Kids might also learn the value of a dollar and spend their money wisely. It would destroy the American way of life.

[grhazelton]

Don't forget that Newt's PhD dissertation dealt with the Belgian Congo's education system. Dr Newt noted approvingly that the system, engineered by perhaps the most brutal colonial regieme, stressed "vocational" education for the Africans, to better fit them as hewers of wood and bearers of water. Dr Newt is of the school which urges floating radical, absurd ideas which, if they don't appeal to more than a tiny fringe, can always be disavowed.

His "scholarship" is suspect. I recall in one of his books the assertion that the U S Congress, out of pure altruism, enacted Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms. Now, Newt and are are the same age; we were both adults during that tempestuous time. As I recall the Congress had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing. I don't know what alternate reality Dr Newt lives in, but it isn't the one the rest of us inhabit.

It is said that, in Newt's office work room there are serried ranks of file cabinets, all labeled "Newt's Ideas." On the otherwise bare worktable in the center of the room is a lone manilla file folder marked "Newt's Good Ideas."

[magkelly]

I had a job helping with an adult's Sunday paper route at 12, a job at 14 cleaning an older lady's house for $10 an hour and I also sat kids younger than me by then. At 15 I was working retail 30 hours a week and going to high school. By the time I was 17 I was working f/t and going to school f/t. It didn't kill me, shrug. I don't want to see kids back in factories and mines, but a little scrubbing didn't hurt me one bit. At least at work I got decently paid for it which is more than I ever got doing the same thing at home.

My Mom was married once before my Dad. Her first husband was a nasty man but he was affluent and as a consequence she had a maid for a good number of years. As kid she cleaned a lot and her family was big so as an adult she tended to shy away from doing a lot housework. When I was a kid she and Dad were working f/t and they would hire a woman to clean a couple of times a week and I had a babysitter. As I got older though they ditched her and I pretty much got to be the maid. I got a $2, later $5 allowance but it in no way compensated for the amount of work I was asked to do at home. I put more cleaning hours in at home than I did on my real job and I didn't just get to quit because I was working and going to school f/t later. I got to clean the house completely one day a week all day until I left and I still had a sizable list of chores I was expected to do every day besides.

I didn't like it. I was often too tired and I got thoroughly sick of cleaning. Today I do what I have to do around here, but I'm not my folks with their white glove routine and if I don't feel up to it, it doesn't get done right then. I don't care. Back then I really didn't like my parents keeping me that busy but as an adult I get it now. I could have gotten into a lot more trouble as a teen than I ever did. I was too busy. Unlike most kids I was able to buy my own clothes and stuff and I was able to supplement my college scholarship for the first couple of years with what I'd earned. By the time I was 20 I had my first manager's job and I did well at it.

I don't think kids should be exempt from working. Kept from dangerous jobs, yes, kept out of school, no, but a p/t job can do a lot for a kid, and I don't think that keeping kids from earning until they're 16 is necessary. A lot of kids can work at something a lot earlier and many want to. There's nothing wrong with it IMHO so long as the kid isn't being exploited or overworked. I was overworked a bit, and I don't advise parents allowing that, but in the end I'm not sorry for the experience. It kept me out of trouble and allowed me to have things my folks couldn't afford to buy me, win win scenario...

Last thing I want to see is child labor laws completely revoked though. He's an idiot suggesting that. Kids working in dangerous jobs for 20 hours a day? That we don't need to see ever again. That was blatant abuse.

[riff]

Kids for Coal Mines... cheaper than daycare, cheaper than education, even cheaper than birds.

The US is some 70 trillion dollars in debt and this is what Newt is thinking about. Polite words fail me.

Don't hesitate, why wait, join I breed for the 1% today.

[redrockcoulee]

Kids can work here. In the past both my wife and I worked while in school and she worked on the farm since age 8 at least. She and her younger brothers put in a lot of hours on the farm as many farm kids do. My grand daughter has worked usually two jobs since junior high and is very involved in sports that involves travelling out of her small town. Child labout laws regulate how many hours they can work, hours they can and some types of jobs. Abolishing them will not teach them the value of a dollar as not every child who worked was a good manager or money nor became a good worker or manager of money as an adult. But it would allow for pre teens to work night shifts, twelve year olds to work full time and people not responible enough to decide for themselves if they want to smoke to work in situations where they would have to decide if it is safe.

But the biggest problem is that it is intended to replace decent paid positions with cheap labour and soon after schools have that and there are so many students compared to janitors other government jobs and then factories etc. How will adults compete with super cheap labour or is the goal to have adults too working at the same rates as they do in China?


Want children to learn the value of a dollar, give them allowances big enough to cover their expenses. I used to get the child allowance when I was a kid which was more money than most of my friends got however out of it came my clothes so until I got a paper route I collected bottles along the highway as soon as the snow melted. But I doubt that I would be better off if I cleaned school floors when I was in Grade 3.

[audiobomber]

He's trying to keep those sweat shop jobs in America instead of outsourcing to third world countries. Why employ someone else's peasants when you can have your own?

[JACOBY]

Tell Newt to come over my house.I Have something for him a slap upside his head. And I'm not even a violent person.