According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, legislatures in at least ten states have set out to weaken federal child labor laws. In the first three months of 2023, legislators in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota introduced bills to weaken the regulations that protect children in the workplace, and in March, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law repealing restrictions for workers younger than 16.
What nobody wants to say about the GOP removal of child labor laws: it isn’t the white kids who will be working the overnight shifts cleaning slaughterhouse equipment with caustic chemicals, it will be brown and black kids. The same unstated reason is why the North Dakota state legislature could deny free school meals to kids, then turn around and vote themselves larger lunch stipends. The kids needing the free lunches are most likely going to be native American kids. Everything with the GOP stems from racism.
Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non? combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.
Why does it seem that the Republicans are, on almost all fronts, picking the wrong choice? This latest effort on child labor is sickening. They seem to have lost all concept of charity and fair play, to say nothing of conscience. That these efforts to remove safeguards against the exploitation of children will affect those of color more than whites is also obvious. How much more evil will the GOP inflict on the populace.
What of our souls? President Biden is not alone in fighting for the soul of America and the souls of all of us.
'Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.
Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.' (NYTimes)
Not exclusively migrant children, see all children that we in America so exploit and harm.
'There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. '
So now the Banana Republic of America? It surely sounds like it.
Yesterday evening here in Wiesbaden, I asked a young American attorney if she thinks she would return to the USA at any point. With firm conviction, she said, "Never. Why would I? Employee labor laws here make US labor laws a farce." That was only one reason for her not to return to the land of the free...if you're a white male, especially a white male with money.
The book banning. The relaxed child labor laws. The reversing of gun laws. The apparent stifling of our Military.
We are here folks. I would never have thought we would be standing in the midst of it all. We are living in a bipolar Nation where a President is fighting tooth and nail to give us the best possible life and the undertow is taking the fundamentals from us every single day.
The idea that the "parental choice" argument, eye-rollingly specious as it is, has gained traction among so many surprises me zero percent, rounding up. I'm gonna take the liberty of putting my snotty-young-punk-what-the-hell-does-he-know cap on yet again and make the incredibly non-controversial observation that most parents are incredibly terrible at being parents. They loudly proclaim how very much they love their kids, but they don't actually like their kids at all, they pretty much just want a mini-them to bolster their own sense of importance. Oh, I'm sure absolutely none of you lovely people fall into this description. But let's be real.
The library I worked at for several years was several blocks down the street from a middle school. At 3:30 each weekday the place would give up on decorum and become a barely-contained zoo for the next hour and a half. We always got complaints about how unlibrary-like we were, but my stance was always that we were a safe community space, and where these kids needed to go. Their parents clearly couldn't be bothered; best they be around books and friendly staff. The kids section itself was only mildly under control from the first moment of the morning, and we literally knew some of the "worst" little kids by name. I don't think a single staff member held the tykes in question any ill will. Their parents simply didn't want to parent. I cannot overstate how far some people will go to avoid spending any time with their kids, and how defensive they will get at the mildest mention of how much care and/or discipline they are willing to expend, which is zero. Yet how harried and belaguered they seem to be while doing so little, and doing it so poorly! HOW DARE YOU question their parenting, the wisdom that has been conferred upon them by the act of reproduction (such an original accomplishment, totally unprecedented!). They are the sole experts in all things related to their mini-them, and we had all better show the proper respect and deference to their handling of their mini-them, for without their mini-them, how WILL the human race go on, after all?
I don't know how anyone works as a teacher anymore. My Dad marvels that when he was in school, kids just knew not to mess with the teacher, because your parents would know by the end of the day, and fat chance they were taking your side. Now, any attempt to actually teach anything of substance, with any amount of creative engagement, in an environment anywhere conducive to reasonable order risks the wrath of at least a couple of the Owners of the Mini-Thems. Yes, yes, I know you got a degree in cognitive development, and are doing the actual work of raising 50 Little Jimmys most of every weekday for less pay than a waitress, but unless you happen to share Little Jimmy's DNA, how can you possibly pretend to know what he needs in his too-slow march to the rat race?
I digress. Anyway, combine this attitude with the average brainwashed American's slavish devotion to empty ideals of hard-workin' industriousness, and I am absolutely certain that a good portion of voters would fully agree they should be able to use their "parental choice" to take Little Jimmy out of that good-for-nothing WOKE! (tm) school of theirs and send them to the sweatshops instead, where they can learn some real traditional values, stay out of the way, and bring home a few extra dollars to make up for those taxes stole from them to pay for the good-for-nothing WOKE! (tm) school, which Little Jimmy is no longer attending.
Gotta keep birthin' em, so you can keep workin' em! Why wait to get the process started?
This is a war on common sense. Let's go back to the 1890-1920s era when children died and were maimed in factories. It's a major step back to the dark ages! It won't be the children of the rich who suffer. It will be the poor who, like in the "good old days," have to send the kids out to work for low wages, contributing to the perpetuation of our barriers to upward mobility.
Seriously, weaken child labor laws? I want to say I'm baffled (as well as appalled), but I think I see the twisted logic in this.
First, they're decades (maybe a half-century) behind on how "education" actually works. The idea is that it gives kids -- family -- a way out of working FOR the family, and maybe get off the farm, or out of the ghetto, or out of the drug-running, or whatever. That's a privilege allotted only to young WHITE people. Others should learn a trade from their father and be working in the shop, in the mine, in the field, with his family as soon as they can hold a shovel or a slop bucket. And they should propagate that to their own children.
Right now, mandatory universal education takes those kids OUT of the mines, etc., starting at age five and up to age thirteen or so. It fills their heads with ideas they could live better than their father did, and that makes the "uppity" and "rebellious" and "unmanageable." So they want to break the schools, and put the young kids on the production line.
Today is a sad day in NC for the ruling yesterday overturned democracy. The legislature is now free to overturn the vote of the people. Whoever the Republican candidate is in 2024 they can assume NC is theirs no matter who we the people vote for. The only good that can come of this is the Supreme Court throwing out the Moore case without making what just happened in NC nationwide.
Why didn’t the democrats fight to protect voter rights when they had the majority in both houses? With republicans putting gerrymandering on steroids and reaching supermajorities, and now even passing laws intended to nullify the votes of citizens in their own blue cities, we are likely never going to recover. The decision to let voter rights protection slide will haunt us forever. Even now only a few democratic senators seem aware of the danger their turpitude has left us in.
Our inability to punish the confederates after the Civil War has come back to haunt this country as though they had won. They are reasserting their social structure (rich white male supremacy) and the behavior of the Reconstruction South and the Ku Klux Klan. This includes putting children to work early in life and keeping their education to a minimum. This includes keeping anyone not white from voting and tightly controlling white minds.
What nobody wants to say about the GOP removal of child labor laws: it isn’t the white kids who will be working the overnight shifts cleaning slaughterhouse equipment with caustic chemicals, it will be brown and black kids. The same unstated reason is why the North Dakota state legislature could deny free school meals to kids, then turn around and vote themselves larger lunch stipends. The kids needing the free lunches are most likely going to be native American kids. Everything with the GOP stems from racism.
Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non? combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.
Why does it seem that the Republicans are, on almost all fronts, picking the wrong choice? This latest effort on child labor is sickening. They seem to have lost all concept of charity and fair play, to say nothing of conscience. That these efforts to remove safeguards against the exploitation of children will affect those of color more than whites is also obvious. How much more evil will the GOP inflict on the populace.
What of our souls? President Biden is not alone in fighting for the soul of America and the souls of all of us.
'Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.
Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.' (NYTimes)
Not exclusively migrant children, see all children that we in America so exploit and harm.
'There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. '
___Nelson Mandela
Why has the 14th Amendment become so relatively invisible? Shame on our judicial system in particular.
So now the Banana Republic of America? It surely sounds like it.
Yesterday evening here in Wiesbaden, I asked a young American attorney if she thinks she would return to the USA at any point. With firm conviction, she said, "Never. Why would I? Employee labor laws here make US labor laws a farce." That was only one reason for her not to return to the land of the free...if you're a white male, especially a white male with money.
Thank you Heather.
First they came for the Socialists.....
The book banning. The relaxed child labor laws. The reversing of gun laws. The apparent stifling of our Military.
We are here folks. I would never have thought we would be standing in the midst of it all. We are living in a bipolar Nation where a President is fighting tooth and nail to give us the best possible life and the undertow is taking the fundamentals from us every single day.
Be safe. Be well.
The idea that the "parental choice" argument, eye-rollingly specious as it is, has gained traction among so many surprises me zero percent, rounding up. I'm gonna take the liberty of putting my snotty-young-punk-what-the-hell-does-he-know cap on yet again and make the incredibly non-controversial observation that most parents are incredibly terrible at being parents. They loudly proclaim how very much they love their kids, but they don't actually like their kids at all, they pretty much just want a mini-them to bolster their own sense of importance. Oh, I'm sure absolutely none of you lovely people fall into this description. But let's be real.
The library I worked at for several years was several blocks down the street from a middle school. At 3:30 each weekday the place would give up on decorum and become a barely-contained zoo for the next hour and a half. We always got complaints about how unlibrary-like we were, but my stance was always that we were a safe community space, and where these kids needed to go. Their parents clearly couldn't be bothered; best they be around books and friendly staff. The kids section itself was only mildly under control from the first moment of the morning, and we literally knew some of the "worst" little kids by name. I don't think a single staff member held the tykes in question any ill will. Their parents simply didn't want to parent. I cannot overstate how far some people will go to avoid spending any time with their kids, and how defensive they will get at the mildest mention of how much care and/or discipline they are willing to expend, which is zero. Yet how harried and belaguered they seem to be while doing so little, and doing it so poorly! HOW DARE YOU question their parenting, the wisdom that has been conferred upon them by the act of reproduction (such an original accomplishment, totally unprecedented!). They are the sole experts in all things related to their mini-them, and we had all better show the proper respect and deference to their handling of their mini-them, for without their mini-them, how WILL the human race go on, after all?
I don't know how anyone works as a teacher anymore. My Dad marvels that when he was in school, kids just knew not to mess with the teacher, because your parents would know by the end of the day, and fat chance they were taking your side. Now, any attempt to actually teach anything of substance, with any amount of creative engagement, in an environment anywhere conducive to reasonable order risks the wrath of at least a couple of the Owners of the Mini-Thems. Yes, yes, I know you got a degree in cognitive development, and are doing the actual work of raising 50 Little Jimmys most of every weekday for less pay than a waitress, but unless you happen to share Little Jimmy's DNA, how can you possibly pretend to know what he needs in his too-slow march to the rat race?
I digress. Anyway, combine this attitude with the average brainwashed American's slavish devotion to empty ideals of hard-workin' industriousness, and I am absolutely certain that a good portion of voters would fully agree they should be able to use their "parental choice" to take Little Jimmy out of that good-for-nothing WOKE! (tm) school of theirs and send them to the sweatshops instead, where they can learn some real traditional values, stay out of the way, and bring home a few extra dollars to make up for those taxes stole from them to pay for the good-for-nothing WOKE! (tm) school, which Little Jimmy is no longer attending.
Gotta keep birthin' em, so you can keep workin' em! Why wait to get the process started?
This is a war on common sense. Let's go back to the 1890-1920s era when children died and were maimed in factories. It's a major step back to the dark ages! It won't be the children of the rich who suffer. It will be the poor who, like in the "good old days," have to send the kids out to work for low wages, contributing to the perpetuation of our barriers to upward mobility.
Seriously, weaken child labor laws? I want to say I'm baffled (as well as appalled), but I think I see the twisted logic in this.
First, they're decades (maybe a half-century) behind on how "education" actually works. The idea is that it gives kids -- family -- a way out of working FOR the family, and maybe get off the farm, or out of the ghetto, or out of the drug-running, or whatever. That's a privilege allotted only to young WHITE people. Others should learn a trade from their father and be working in the shop, in the mine, in the field, with his family as soon as they can hold a shovel or a slop bucket. And they should propagate that to their own children.
Right now, mandatory universal education takes those kids OUT of the mines, etc., starting at age five and up to age thirteen or so. It fills their heads with ideas they could live better than their father did, and that makes the "uppity" and "rebellious" and "unmanageable." So they want to break the schools, and put the young kids on the production line.
My. God.
The Rethuglicans and the SCOTUS they stacked and packed will do everything possible to nullify our rights even to vote if they can. It's sickening.
From a meme on FB: "Those who want you to work until you are 70, and those who won't hire you after 50, are the exact same people! "
Today is a sad day in NC for the ruling yesterday overturned democracy. The legislature is now free to overturn the vote of the people. Whoever the Republican candidate is in 2024 they can assume NC is theirs no matter who we the people vote for. The only good that can come of this is the Supreme Court throwing out the Moore case without making what just happened in NC nationwide.
Republicans in power desperately want cheap labor for hard-to-fill jobs. Their solution? Children. You know, the ones they keep claiming to protect.
Why didn’t the democrats fight to protect voter rights when they had the majority in both houses? With republicans putting gerrymandering on steroids and reaching supermajorities, and now even passing laws intended to nullify the votes of citizens in their own blue cities, we are likely never going to recover. The decision to let voter rights protection slide will haunt us forever. Even now only a few democratic senators seem aware of the danger their turpitude has left us in.
Our inability to punish the confederates after the Civil War has come back to haunt this country as though they had won. They are reasserting their social structure (rich white male supremacy) and the behavior of the Reconstruction South and the Ku Klux Klan. This includes putting children to work early in life and keeping their education to a minimum. This includes keeping anyone not white from voting and tightly controlling white minds.