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.
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy. But all of those horrible racist laws that these repugnant republicans are attempting to enact are, one by one, by judges or public opinion, beginning to backfire sewage in their faces. You can make fun of my rose colored glasses, but that progressive judge who won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race validates my optimism. Mark my words, our Gen Zers will not stand for this s***!!!
The party of death and their ordinary voters haven't got a clue except they get to keep the weapons of war and have fewer or virtually no restrictions for buying and keeping a gun.
I trust them just like I did the guy who tried to get me to buy shares in a cannabis farm on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Right next to the banana farm there.
Truly , we live in an Orwellian world where missiles became "peace givers", moved on to McCarthy and McConnell's party who claimed they represented "family values", proclaimed the were the one's in support of "law and order". It is Wm. Faulkner time all over again..."The past is not past...yada yada yada...we've become a cliche of a cliche of a cliche.
Hate to "like" these facts that so drastically need reporting.
And hate to hate even return-to-sender hellbeings. That would defile me. Hatred defiles both haters and their innocent victims, it spawns new generations of haters. And new victims.
Heartily detest the haters' vile thoughts, words and deeds and the endless chain reactions that they trigger.
Yes, the same crowd that espouses that everything they don't like should be up to the states and everything they want should be shoved down everyone's throat by the Federal government....
In Iowa,, the child labor law passed in the wee hours of the morning after a marathon session where GOP leadership quashed debate and questions from the Democrats. The law is from FGA and has been touted as the solution to the state's workforce shortage under the guise of securing parental rights. Children will be allowed to work in industries and under conditions that are dangerous. Children, especially poor or minority children, are being sacrificed by this dreadful law. How many is yet to be determined, but that some will be harmed seems all too likely. And now, it is also legal to have weapons in a locked car in school parking lots.
And dare we add the names Thomas, Alito, Eastman, Taylor Greene, Gaetz, McCarthy, Trump, Ghouliani, Flynn, Manafort, Barr, Huckabee...this sub-Homeric catalogue of mini-fascists goes on for pages and pages and pages, augmented by a pathetic menagerie of enablers...
It's unhealthy physically and mentally to reside in this Trumpian swamp of insincerity, greed, and corruption...
Both my dad & my father-in-law grew up near Throope, PA - they both briefly worked in the mines before they got away from there - my dad became a plumber & my father-in-law an electrician. But I'm sure there were an awful lot of young boys who couldnt leave.
what a WOW quote that is from Tale of Two Cities, just happen to be reading it for first time myself. You're right, Dems/willing Independents/ex-Republicans need to organize and crawl back political jurisdictions into "some kind of balance".
We sacrifice children to the Second Amendment. We might be dooming children to a life of suffering the effects of long Covid by our pathetic and politicized response to the pandemic, especially in schools. We won’t let trans minors have access to best medical practices. Our life expectancy falls short of our economic peers. We ban books in schools because any discussion of sexuality or race is mumble mumble pornography mumble mumble CRT mumble mumble whatever the scary word of the day is. Why not let them work? Especially the brown ones! We need workers, they need money because of our inadequate social safety net, it’s a win win!
It isn’t about parents’ rights. It isn’t about protecting children. It’s about money and keeping the base angry enough to keep voting in larger numbers than the rest of us. It’s frightening.
It’s terrifying , and I think very few Americans have even heard about what is happening. All of the facts you readers are adding to today’s letter should be shared on national media.
If it was about parent’s rights then why don’t they allow parents the right to plan their own families, instead forcing unwanted pregnancies on them. They spew lies, always have, and hope people are so used to being lied to that they no longer care.
"If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's [working with] kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child for is on the bottom [of the wage scale.]" p. 165-166
"I started to see how being big for your age was a trap. They send you to wherever they need a grown up body that can't fight back." p. 215
"Being grownup is so much safer than being a kid." p. 113
"Foster boys are 'product' (i.e. sold labor), "merchandise rotated between 50 customer accounts." p. 79
I'm 11. She's my legal guardian. And her idea of a perfect ward of the state is one that's AWOL. p. 171
Quotes from Barbara KIngsolver's book, Demon Copperhead, about the lives of rural children in an Appalacian county during the opioid epidemic. These quotes are taken from the story before the protagonist reached 14 years of age and after he had already been made to work crappy, unsafe jobs just to earn some food. It's rewrite of Dickens's David Copperfield.
Our country’s economy was built on the backs of the less fortunate from slavery to sweat shops paying by the ‘piece’ completed! The ugly truth about our foreign policy was that the under side had been enforced by the OSS/CIA whose bag of tricks included destabilizing unfriendly (to businesses rape of their natural resources) leaders of foreign countries!
I bought this recently and am sharing it (carefully)with my grandson. Nothing like poignant photography to remind us that America was not always “Great” and our future quality of life lies in a reverence for everything living and not materialistic ravaging.
It may have been legal before. Many teachers who were hunters here in Alaska would have their camping and hunting gear ready in cars......including guns.......so that when school was out on Friday nite they could set off right from work to hunting areas. Pretty sure it was happening in ND and SD and Iowa and probably Montana.
Gen Y and Gen Z will indeed be repelled by this and a list of abuses and offenses of the ruling GQP. Guns, gender persecution, book banning, science and medicine denial, election denial and the biggie: Climate Crisis ignored.
And so...we can complain. We can whine about the government takeover by fascists at every level - Federal right on down to school committees. Me too - angry as Hell.
What are we going to do about it?
Get that demographic to vote! Y and Z represent about 45% of the potential electorate.
It's their future and they will move us in the right direction, if.....
Thanks, Bill - I just sent your comment and the link to TurnUp to my 22 y.o. granddaughter and suggested she get on it and get everyone she knows to join her
Thanks, Bill. I've been meaning to check out Turn Up for weeks now and your link finally got me moving. I signed up for a recurring donation to honor the memory of my godson who died last week.
Salvaged is a much better word. It is more related to "Salvage Yard", where a bunch of broken, rusted parts are available for cheap. In many ways, "salvage yard" is a better description of what America is becoming.
Just drive across any state and look around? Run down trailer parks, trailer homes, mobile homes everywhere now.
One big salvage yard. USA.
Interestingly, all those poor white folks living in those falling down trailers? Vote Republican.
I see, Mike, I see. And I have seen far, far too much. In the United States, in Britain, elsewhere in our world. This isn't just a metaphor, it is our wretched reality.
My poor image was of the ship of State, already under jury rig... of the tugs rushing to take her in tow... and the Wreckers with their false lights, waiting to lure her onto the rocks.
Lazy, like too many of us Mike, not ALL of them bother to vote. BTW, manufactured homes are not necessarily a bad thing, especially when on a well maintained property. Assuming full inclusion on many things in life is less then a fully curious lens with which to see the world through.
Mike S.., those folks are content with those conditions.., it's all they've ever known..., and "talk radio" keeps them fired up. Tabloid none-sense 24/7. To them.., 'thems' the facts. Yup.
There has been an upsurge in the wheeled population in the last 20 or so years. Maybe since Reagan. First Glamping hit big. Then came the Donald, with its many horrific
This seems like a decent place for me to intrude with an observation that I’ve held to myself since I was politically sentient. And that is, that American states have far, far too much power individually, and that in the end they hold the key to doing permanent damage to the union.
In Canada we have a struggle between the provinces and the federal government that periodically gets testy. We have what was perceived at the time of its Constitutional inception (1982 when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law) what is called the “notwithstanding” clause. It is a sort of nuclear option for provinces, who can *temporarily* abrogate a particular clause in this Charter, if circumstances seem dire enough. It was barely ever used until recently (of course) when certain provinces peered southward, looking jealously at the enormous power individual states have to do mischief and decided to flex their own muscle by invoking “notwithstanding”. Such an action is rarely popular outside the acting province, and indeed often struggles to find majority adherence “at home”.
I understand the *how* of the states’ rights issues. But I deeply fear the consequences. In the past it seems to me that those were visited most direly upon people of color in states where racism is a major issue, if not *the* major issue.
But the ‘bug-i-ness’ of this particular feature of America has leap to the fore in the twenty-first century, especially in the last ten years. All states are some form of purple in their orientation. But the era of polarization has established in many people’s minds a state of cultish devotion to one party or the other, where before the majority didn’t care enough one way or another to vote with religious fervor on Election Days and to fight about politics the rest of the time.
With injudicious use of advanced technology, gerrymandering has become the ultimate weapon to divide the state in a manner which favors one party in the extreme. With gerrymandering, America seems to have entered the age where legislative super majorities have become as common as mosquitoes in spring. This certainly does not propel the wisest candidates into office. With legislative super majorities, states have entered into an arms’ race of stupid, bitterly partisan, socially explosive legislation. And of course the kicker is all the copycat legislation that issues forth from other states. What one doesn’t think of, another will.
So the bozos rule in many states, and America is resolutely marching back into the 1800s. More child labor - seriously???
The Federal government, with its constrained powers, can only play whack-a-mole with so much success in an attempt to counter this race to the bottom. The Courts are rarely much help.
The “union” is fast moving from being a high aspiration to an agent of its own destruction. It all leaves me less than optimistic. Idiocy and malevolence run rampant, competing with one another for pride of place.
If I read an Economist article about a current case in Texas correctly, that is already under way and the state's laws are so designed that gun-carrying rights and stand-your-ground rights cancel each other out and effectively guarantee the right of "whites" to kill persons of the wrong color when the latter are openly carrying arms, as they are entitled to...
That represents a painful truth, Ally. Both painful and dangerous for all concerned... especially for passing strangers who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Propaganda, television’s effect on culture (materialism), gerrymandering, lack of emphasis on civic responsibilities for multiple decades, etc.etc. I’m sure others can add to the list. But if we can identify the “why”, we are one step closer to finding solutions, am I right? Being here and talking about it, is a beginning (and I’m pretty sure is why Musk figured destroying Twitter was worth 44 BILLION $) 😳
Thanks Christy. When someone steps on our toes a person is driven to advise the stepper that it hurts. If we don't let the oppressor know the damage that is being done our toes will be crushed. In the political world we will surely be destroyed, oppressor included, if we fail to serve notice.
Manuel, agreed. However, one caveat to be aware of is that the bully stepping on one’s toes might be cunning enough to dress as your best friend, thereby eliciting you to express your displeasure falsely to your friend. This matters greatly when your voice is your vote!
This is the question that I ask every time the subject of "state's rights" or the Civil War comes up.
Here in the Pacific Northwest we historically had the State of Jefferson, but in more modern times Cascadia has been popular. While the State of Jefferson consisted of parts of Oregon and California that felt ignored by their state capitals, Cascadia, consisting of the entire west coast including BC, is a much more viable option.
I am sure that there are other regional entities that have discussed the possibility of abandoning the Union?
It certainly looks like the Confederacy is one of the least viable options. And one could argue that without a federal war machine California and Washington would be less prosperous.
Still, is a nation and large and diverse as The United States sustainable?
Excuse me... I am lost here and unable to find my way back to this conversation (in which I was apparently taking part) via "Return to thread"...
Is this an answer to the questions whether the Union can -- or should -- be saved?
Whatever the case, your last sentence brings to mind two things for me: Simon Bolivar's decision to divide into three the vast territory he had helped liberate from Spanish rule; and the fact that it can be so difficult to hold together even the smallest human groups... owing to factors like ill will, mistrust, misunderstanding and the blind, blundering will to power of people who don't know what they are doing...
Yeah, I can't find it either, but yes, my comment was in answer to your question of whether the Union can be saved.
I mentioned a couple of local PNW versions of what are probably hundreds of ideas that have been floated for building more logical versions of nations that might be broken off from the US Union.
The answer to whether the Union can or should be saved or salvaged is getting more complicated by the day.
Oh Sophia, this is also my take on what will happen in 2024...though the extreme gerrymandering worries me. I keep my rose colored glasses on but every so often they slip down my nose and I panic.
Oh Sophia - I fear our gen Zers. I have a couple. Per my observations, gen Zers in general are averse to politics, and get involved only if they feel they must. And importantly - if they feel their efforts have been snubbed or didn't work the first time, threaten to remove themselves from the process. This was illustrated to me in stark detail the other day when we were discussing Biden's announcement that he is running for a second term. They held their noses and voted Biden in 2020, hoping they made the right decision. And then came Willow. Most gen Zers see the Willow project decision as a deal breaker and they blame (rightly) the Biden administration for letting that climate busting project proceed. It is enough for many of them to just check out - to basically do a protest no-vote in 2024. This despite the otherwise good record Biden has on the climate. I believe this attitude will show up in other ways too as Republicans and the Mansions and Sinemas continue to work their obstruction tactics. What our gen Zers seem to fail to understand is that when they decide to protest by staying home, they play right into the hands of the enemy. If our young voters stay home in droves in 2024, we are going to get Trump (or worse) again. That I am pretty certain of. I just hope I am wrong about them staying home. I worry.
I disagree. For every politically disenfranchised young voter there are 10 who are revving up and mobilizing. They are not going to sit home and watch video games, not vote, and hand over the reins to their future to wacko right wingers. The two Justins embody the energy of this new I'm-not-taking-this-s*** landscape and spreading it around....
Of course, I hope you are right. However I don't see it in my neighborhood. I have three voting age offspring in their twenties all. Smart kids. And they have like-minded friends. Every one of them has an inadequate and/or inaccurate knowledge of what accomplishments have taken place during the current administration. And they have an inadequate/inaccurate knowledge of just how our inefficient and laborious government works, with its filibusters and greed and pork barrel bills and compromises and partisan standoffs. Their expectations are high (too high) and they feel that promises are being broken. Every one of them is quite angry that what they think is important to them has not been done (student loan forgiveness for example, or continued health care issues). They do not seem to get that the Democrats have but a slim majority (and now we lost that in the House) with problem children like Mansion an Sinema gumming up the process (typical response - "I don't care!!! He needs to do something!!!"). They continue to struggle in this economy like so many of them do. They see right wing victories all over the place where women's reproductive rights are challenged, LGBTQ+ rights challenged, continued abject racism, gerrymandered states winning in court. And most of all they are looking for quick and dramatic action on climate change, and in their eyes not seeing that either. I tell you - they are blaming Biden just as much if not more than blaming the Republicans (mistakenly so of course). These people wanted a Bernie, and have never forgotten that he didn't make it (of course Bernie could not have done better than Joe, but tell that to them). They are skeptical/suspicious about why he didn't get there. None of this class of voters is going to vote for the Republicans. They are the enemy after all. But a statistically significant portion will protest by not voting at all. They are too disgusted to go to the voting booth. UNLESS something changes. They must become more knowledgeable of what has been accomplished already, against stiff headwinds always. BTW Willow did much to do the opposite, despite the complicated nature of the decision. They must be reminded that they are the key to our elections, that the only way to obtain quicker and more effective solutions is to show up in droves and vote out the Republicans, strive for a supermajority. They must see progress (like that's going to happen with McCarthy at the wheel). I recall some what I was like when I was in my twenties. I can assure you, I knew only enough to be dangerous. I lacked experience. How can it be otherwise? I even voted for Reagan once - that is how stupid and naive I was.
This is where you come in Jay. Start by going down to their level and telling them that you understand them because you too were in there shoes...and then comes the "BUT,"
Staying home playing Play Station and not voting the democratic agenda is not an option. By not voting they are enabling reelections of the deplorables (that should scare the s*** out of them). It is your job to get them to change their perception to the one expressed by the two Justins....
Jay, because this is so important, I'm going to be blunt. You ARE wrong. Your worried feelings, and your personal observations with youth voters, are completely irrelevant here (as are anyone's). The current youth generation is significantly MORE involved in politics than than previously, not less, and we know this for a fact because there are these nifty things called voting records that you can look up to find out. An adverse generation doesn't show up in the numbers we just saw in a *midterm* (comare to 2014) if they are "adverse" and "threaten[ing] to remove themselves." Endless bevies of surveys just keep bearing this out too, over and over (check out the recently published Harvard Youth Survey - the gold standard).
Political participation is a matter of counting votes. The story is entirely one of numbers. Feelings and personal anecdotes lie. Numbers don't.
And, frankly, if you are looking to persuade some members of this cohort, based on your comment, it sounds like your heart is in the right place but you are going about it the polar opposite way that you need to. Most people that age (I should know, I'm barely out of it), are still in the thought mode of "f#ck you, I see through this system." How are you going to direct that energy? Expressing to them what you just did here sounds like you don't believe that they have it in them to make the right choice, and aren't mature enough to know how things *really* work, which is the biggest possible way to reaffirm the impulse to say "f#ck you" by sitting out. Instead, you need to clearly express just how much the opposition is counting on them to not be able to make the right choice, and express faith that they can indeed see through this charade. In other words, you gotta make the mature thing to do sound like the "f#ck you" option. And a great way to make that happen is to point out all the great things that the current administration HAS been doing towards the issues your kids prioritize. It's pretty hard to want to direct "f#ck you" energy toward someone who has done a hundred nice things for you, especially when the fascists are sitting right over there.
Regarding the Willow fiasco: respectfully, your use of "(rightly)" gives the game away; you are sharing and legitimizing your youths' disappointment on this rather than emphasizing the true balance of progress, or taking the opportunity to reaffirm your confidence that your kids are mature enough to realize that there are no deal-breakers when it comes to voting, only expressions of preference. It's not like giving a "like" to your favorite celebrity, it's like brushing your teeth: ya just do it.
"I fear for you not doing the right thing" is WAY less enticing than "I know I can trust you to not let me down." Way, way less enticing.
Again - I hope you are right. And I am a believer in facts and data. The young folks I know were a part of that data. But from my knothole, those same folks were out of their comfort zone getting that politically involved (as I would have been in my twenties), held their noses and got involved anyway. And what did they get for it? In their eyes, practically nothing. All they got was getting Trump outa there, only to watch the crazy just erupt as a result. They do not see (or do not care to see) just how difficult it is with a slim majority and some problem children (Mansion, Sinema) to move forward with a progressive agenda. They under-appreciate the victories attained in spite of the difficulties. Instead they see failures. And now they see McCarthy running the show in the House. And it's even worse. Now all Dems can do is play defense, in their eyes. Mark my words - many of these young folks are so disgusted that they are going to check out. We cannot afford another self-inflected wound like Willow.
James, Thanks for pointing that out; it’s a real concern. I’ve run into older adults too, who are single-issue focused Democrats. We need to spend more time talking to people (in a civil manner) and listening. It gave me some hope reading The Persuaders by Anand Giriharadaras -- especially the part about “deep canvassing.”
IMHO, Biden’s political expertise is the equivalent of a master chess player. It’s going to be awhile before they can start the drilling. Biden is working his ass off to give us a Blue Tsunami in 2024. It’s up to us voters to give him the majority he needs to stop the drilling. If we want to live in a democracy, it’s up to we the people to show up.
Yup. The new projects will likely never see the light of day, or be rendered irrelevant and unprofitable the moment it actually comes online. And it takes away the "Biden's a green new deal radical who hates oil and wants to take your car!" line of attack, which is more potent than people realize.
This reminds me of 2020, when a lot of folks seethed when he made big pronouncements supporting the continuation of fracking. Do we *like* fracking? Hell naw. Did we like those final vote totals in the Great Lakes states? Hell yeah (and thank gosh).
Well - tell that to a twenties age voter who is afraid the second half of his/her life will be spent in a climate ravaged dystopia. He/she is too impatient to sweat the details. Too distracted with life. I was too back then. You have to admit the optics were just awful. I agree the Biden administration has tons of political savvy - but they can and have made mistakes. And the fight is just too close to make mistakes. Something needs to be done to heal this Willow wound - something that will restore whatever confidence the young voter block had in their 2020 and 2022 choices.
Christy bring up some salient points in her responses.
But mostly I feel the need to state that, while I share the disgusted sentiment surrounding this project, there really was no decision to be made regarding the drilling. The oil company (which, of course, is evil), followed the permitting process as written. Approval is a formality, and pretty much any court would have agreed. The President cannot just play fast and loose with the laws his supporters don't like, and I'm astonished progressives are failing to see this, after the last half-decade of seeing such impunity in action. The culprit here is laws that allow further drilling to take place at all in the year 2023, and that is what needs to change. It certainly won't change by casting blame toward those we need to maintain their positions in order to have that power in place.
Willow is also complicated by the fact that Alaska is a huge state and most of the rural areas (inhabited by primarily indigenous Alaskans) are only accessible by air, thereby making the transportation of normal everyday goods extremely expensive. This of course makes the basics of food, housing, education, and healthcare very expensive in those rural areas. Oil royalties dumped huge amounts of cash very suddenly on these subsistence economies in the 70’s, with some pretty traumatic consequences. Maybe those same folks shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of a drastic withdrawal from oil revenue? Maybe the youngest generation would be more willing to demand more of gluttonous corporations and less of indigenous peoples in rural Alaska if they understood the complexity of it all?
These seem to target unaccompanied immigrant children in several states arguing that it helps them become independent and they really need the money and there are these jobs no White adult will take. Next, should we expect that families with able bodied children should be expected to be enrolled in job search or employment before they can qualify for food and economic assistance? How likely is it that the 14th Amendment will become the next target of the states with Red majorities?
I agree, Sophia, but only if they are aware of the trainwreck coming. So many people, young and old alike, miss the true meaning of the legislation being passed, because of the arcane language used in these bills, complicated by the "family values" espoused by right-wing "Christian" sponsors of them. I'm willing to bet that the majority of Georgia voters have no idea that there is a law in Georgia that allows the county election boards to be disassembled for virtually no reason, then replaced by partisan legislators, and election results can be overturned and replaced by these legislators' preferred candidates - vote nullification, all in the name of securing elections. The virtuous Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State, was a willing participant with our "anti-Trump" governor and his cohorts in crafting this abomination.
The republicans thought they were going to sweepingly bulldoze down the democrats in 2020 and reign supreme in all branches of the government, but...surprise! Young people and people of color had already begun to get woke and determined. But even with a slim majority the GOP was left dazed. Yet, they insist on not learning their lessons and are doubling down on their blatantly immoral activities, inevitably bringing about their political suicide. Would you consider that by that point the laws in Georgia will have changed? Just watch!
Sophia, like you, I'm praying that the Democrats - especially the young voters, are as enraged as we are about the mere possibility that Trump will prevail, and feel fairly confident that Biden will win handily. However, I never expected the buffoon to win in '16, so I hope my forecasting is better this time around. As far as the Georgia voter suppression/vote nullification laws are concerned, they were enacted just last year, AFTER TFG's infamous "all I'm asking is that you find 11,780 votes" call to Brad Rafensperger. That was Gov. Kemp, Rafensperger, and the right-wing's solution to outrage from every one of us who isn't a crazy Republican over the criminality displayed. They're not Trumpers, but neither is the Republican legislature pro-democracy. BTW, the new Lt. Governor and many others still pulling the strings were "alternate" electors. It will be difficult to upset that applecart. I know that the '22 election was a huge win for our side, but we still have a fight on our hands. Just look at the current House in DC. They're crazy, but they're in control, even by the slimmest of majorities (including Glamor Girl Empty Greene). Pray for Fani Willis, Jack Smith, et. al, since we know the kind of support we'll get from criminal, emboldened SCOTUS.
Nancy, here's what I understand and what I don't understand: I understand why republicans appear to have emerged as haters of a menu of a variety of groups not like them. The truth is that they were haters all along, but before trump they were forced to stymie their hate because of political correctness. trump's emergence gave permission to seemingly "upstanding" Christian family men who secretly ideated forcing themselves on women or despised ethnic groups, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community (basically people who live in fear and feel powerless), to openly express their suppressed emotions. What I don't understand, like you, how "sane" republicans' actions are anti-democratic. I also don't understand how people even entertain the idea that trump can possibly be elected president again when he is for certain going to prison....
Sophia, logic doesn't apply here. There's no question that TFG gave them permission to display their toxic side, but as you said, it was there all along. The non-crazies still believe that the economy and society do better under low taxes for the wealthy, Reagan's "trickle down" economic policies, and all of the other drivel that has been disproved repeatedly, but they ignore the facts - perhaps legacy Republicans who are still hoping to please Dad (who's long dead). Many people have an underlying urge to feel superior to others and keep their heel on those they consider to be inferior. Long-held religious beliefs also play into it, and they believe that gives them cover for their misogyny and other prejudices. I'd like to see their reaction if they're successful in destroying democracy and end up under the thumb of someone like Putin. If it weren't for 2016, I'd be certain that they can't win, but we've all seen that anything is possible.
I would not be so sure. In NH, despite all votes being split around 50% between Dem and Rep, only 1 out of the 5 members "elected" for the Executive Council was a Democrat. Gerrymandering.
I truly hope you are right! I hope the backlash to this horrible push toward racism and stripping away of rights from minorites and women by Republicans is swift and strong and more difficult to undermine in the future.
I agree that lax labor laws harm children of color the most, it does also hurt white kids. My 16 year old grandson works in a Sub Shop and is consistently scheduled to closing which with cleanup means that he doesn’t get home until almost 11pm on school nights. When he complains, his hours are nonexistent the next week.
That's the American way - punish a young worker who wants to earn an honest days wages doing jobs that no one else would consider doing by paying them PEANUTS & working them even harder.
And compromising their ability to excel in school, limiting their potential of pursuing higher education (if that is what they wanted) and enslaving them to this type of menial, low-paying jobs that only ensure a future of poverty that opens the door to crime as the only way out. It’s such a depressing, vicious cycle! And we are purported to be the wealthiest nation in the world! Shameful, indeed!
I wish that we could tax the rich & by God make it stick ! From slumlords to televangelists to billionaires to people that have been in the WH ( DJT ). They either pony up or do serious time in someplace not as nice & COUNTRY - CLUB COZY as a Club Fed.
I started reading today’s letter and almost put it down. It is so disgusting to see what Republicans are doing. We used to base hope on the democratic option of voting them out, but they’ve now eliminated that right, too.
I worked for a Day's Inn reservation center where the rallying slogan was " something, something Bottom line = $ sign ". " Greed is good ". The Church of the Almighty Greenback.
If life were easy.., people would just get fat. Ooooops, ex-q's me! We don't have an obesity problem..., OR do we? And, don't jump on me about poor white kids and their poor "big gulp" diet. Talk to their "big gulp" moms hauling them about in the 6 passenger van. Do those brats ever bend over to pick up a candy wrapper? Are you kidding.., their mom/dad wouldn't notice...their big gut is in the way. When you work yer arse off for something, you tend to appreciate it. I'm not opposed to "child labor laws"..(try writing them!).. BUT, I'm distressed by lazy-azz tabloid-mentality parents and their influencer-enabled offspring.
There is a young boy, not even in high school yet, in my small town who put up a flyer saying he is available for yard work for $10 hr. I copied his contact info, but has been too wet here for much yard work yet. If I do end up hiring him for some chores & he does well, I’d be bumping up his hourly wage for sure. I would sometimes hire students from the local Univ & have on hand all needed tools, a selection of different types of gloves & sizes. Would cover a 1/2 hr lunch break and provide the fixin’s for sandwiches & have beverages. Of course I worked along side them too & would teach about weed identification, plants, garden lore, etc. Covid put a stop to that, but since it’s simmered down a bit, need to step up the yard chore hiring!
That situation has gone on in our area for the last 25 years. Our children always took on jobs in neighborhood until they were old enough for work permits. They also did what was needed at home, inside and out. Since then we have not been able to hire a single teenager to assist with yard work. We for a while were able to hire my current and former students from 30 miles away, paying for their gas. Now they’re all grown and gone too. Not a single teen in our own and other neighborhoods around is even remotely interested in doing anything approaching work. They don’t even take their own trash cans in or do any chores at home. It truly is appalling.
For authoritarians, cruel dominance and servile obedience is first and foremost. I have seen that in business on numerous occasions. I have also seen managers whose style is win-win. Yet we never seem to be able to clear out the former; at least not for long.
You sound surprised. Having worked in minimum wage jobs for many years I can assure you that a reduction in hours is one of the usual punishments for speaking up.
Too bad these employers don't see the benefits of paying higher wages. When I ran my successful dress designing business many years ago, I had two excellent assistants. I paid them $11/hr, unheard of at the time for the job) and provided lunch. I can't describe to you the hard work and loyalty I got back....
Alice, your grandson is a very hardworking person. I understand that all of this is unfair and hard. But I think he can do a lot in the future because he was able to understand so early on how hard life is.
Exactly. I grew up in South Dakota. Forty-five years ago, at 14, I was working on a potato harvester, separating potatoes from dirt clods on a moving conveyer belt. The harvester moved across the potato field digging the potatoes and moving them onto conveyer belts. One conveyer belt would move the potatoes into a truck that was driving along side the harvester. The other conveyer belt would move the dirt clods back on to the field. The workers would stand in front of the conveyer belts and either pick up dirt clods and throw them onto the dirt clod belt, or pick up potatoes and put them on the potato belt. Where were my parents? They were working right along side of me - because we needed the money!
They did. There are aspects of farming and the farm I grew up on that I really and truly miss. But being poor and working on potato harvesters and some other hateful jobs I did, are not among them!😀
Hi, everyone who responded. I was hoping the poster would tell us the actual story, rather than people jumping to conclusions and posting opinions and speculation. My first job was collecting eggs from the hundred chickens my mom kept for pin money. Those old hens had my number and I had to carry a stick to spook the mean ones off their nests so they wouldn’t draw blood pecking me. I was four. My second job was steering the truck full of silage around the bed ground every morning at 4:30 all winter while my mom and dad shoveled silage to the sheep. I was 7. Then I got dressed while Mom cooked breakfast and I got on the school bus at 6:30 to ride to the little rural school I attended. Blah blah college, advanced degrees professional jobs comfortably retired now. Everyone’s story is different. I am interested in the poster’s grandson’s story. Closing fast food places is not conducive to being bright and perky at school the next morning, as opposed to the stories my other farmer and rancher kids schoolmates told each other because we all did chores before school.
At 16, it seems like an opportunity for parents to help him learn to advocate for himself and others, rather than stepping in and taking over. Negative experiences can provide opportunities
C'mon Meredith, you're joking right?... it's part of learning what the heck "Life" is about. Maybe he/she/they etc would be better suited to work for a trash-hauler emptying peoples dumpsters? Or, down in the alleys of NYC, swinging fully-loaded garbage-cans into the bac end of trash compactor truck? Working hard in a SubWay Shop.... give me a break!
Child labor is a trap. Especially if you are big for your age. They send you to wherever they need a grown-up body that can't fight back. ...Quoted from Barbara Kingsolver's book Demon Copperfield, a rewrite and updating of Charles Dickens's "David Copperfield'
Tell that boy he is better than that. He mustn’t succumb to giving his valuable time to a boss who doesn’t respect his employees. There must be better conditions in the area. If he looks, he can find a better place where he is valued and treated fairly.
I think there may be poor white kids in these jobs, too. This is as much an attack on lower socioeconomic classes as race. I GUARANTEE none of the legislator’s children will be working those jobs!
It also fits with dismantling education. A 15 year old working in a meat packing plant from 3-9 pm is NOT going to study, nor do well in school.
'Around a quarter of U.S. domestic produce is picked by an army of child workers who numbered an estimated 500,000 in 2021. As young Morris Spector said in 1925, “the blood and bones of little children” are still coined into profit as modern agribusiness exploits a 1938 compromise rooted in the regional and racial inequalities of New Deal reforms. Child labor remains intrinsic to the U.S. economy and officials engage in hypocrisy when they condemn it abroad.' (WAPO, November 1, 2022) Sorry that gifted link is not available.
Kevin, I do not know the number of poor white children who may be part of our labor force. It doesn't make sense, in my opinion, to rule out the exploitation and harm being done to white as well as to migrant children and America's children who are members of minority groups.
Morning, Fern! I keep thinking that these child labor laws are also being repealed to make up for the loss of immigrants due to stricter immigration laws. Your thoughts?
Morning Lynell! Child labor laws are being repealed because kids, immigrant or not, work cheap. They also tend not to know about such pesky things as OSHA restrictions. Really, there is no need to repeal such laws, because, almost everywhere, the enforcement apparatus (mostly state food and safety inspectors) is woefully underfunded and understaffed.
I think retirement age is being raised because the social security fund keeps getting raided (the government 'borrowing' from itself) to service our debt. That, and the average human life span is about 40% longer than it was in the mid 1930s, when the age of 65 was chosen. 90 years ago in NH (where I live now), men lived to an average age of 58 years, women 63. Now, despite a reduction due to COVID-19, it is 79 for men and 84 for women, necessitating a much longer pay out period. It is also why SSC payments are structured to encourage people to put off retirement until age 70.
“ Put simply, a big part of the American working population is earning less than the Social Security trustees (including me) anticipated decades ago — and therefore paying less in Social Security payroll tax.
Had the pay of American workers kept up with what had been the trend decades ago — and kept up with their own increasing productivity — their Social Security payroll tax payments would have been enough to keep the program flush.
At the same time, a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is going to the top than was expected decades ago.”
Thank you Kathy. I never made the connection between lower wages and the resulting lower payments into SSI. I’m going to listen to your Robert Reich link right away.
Lynell, businesses -- agriculture, garment, mining, and sports. among them, have been exploiting children workers as well as bypassing child labor laws without fail for ages. Given that and other factors, I do not know how pertinent your question is, but do know that the number of migrant children are surging and being exploited in factories and, perhaps, in other work environments in this country. I also think that the number of white children, so harmed, need to be counted and protected as well. See my comment about migrant children, which was a bit further down.
Fern, exploitation of migrant labor is alive and well in Chenango County, New York State. A week ago Wednesday I drove by a field that had a dozen immigrant workers planting by hand a couple of acres of land. These workers were both elders and children. 1 picnic table without cover and a single Port-a-potty were the accommodations I saw for these folks. My heart sank.
Literal slavery has fallen out of public favor; so how close can business come and get away with it? It doesn't have to be that way. Enter the "R" word; business r#%ulation.
Remember, too, that these "lower costs" are baked into consumer prices and corporate profit margins. This is true across all aspects of business sectors which depend on "lower wage and younger wage" resources. Hotels, cleaning, retail, McDonalds etc, you name it. The "living wage" concept is an utter contradiction in these areas. And yes, the irony of the GOP attack on immigration is indicated in the very lowest unemployment rates in US history. Most likely immigration policy has not if ever kept up with economic needs in the country. And of course, just what kind of remuneration do immigrants get?
If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's working with or for kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom of the wage and priority scale. In spite of all the "for the children" claims. (Paraphrased from Barbara Kingsolver, in her rewrite of David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead.)
Ding ding ding! Hit the nail on the head. Child labor laws ARE being repealed because of the loss of immigrant labor. And also because children can't fight back and don't vote.
The most vulnerable, children, the poor, the disabled, racial and other minorities, women, the under-educated, are all commonly exploited. Predators see the most vulnerable as targets. Our most irresponsible political choices tend to damage to lives of the most vulnerable disproportionately; even climate abuse.
JL Graham, this is the major point regarding the work force especially the very young and vulnerable but also regular working people of all ages, and all areas of employment.....conditions that are safe and decent and offer opportunities for growth (that DO NOT include abuse!) Work in general should provide opportunity. No one should have to work under conditions where they fear for their lives (or souls) everyday and yet go to work to face HELL due to the poverty of their family situation.
In the end work is a good thing but there must be rules and as a nation we need to provide not just money but education to help all citizens to have opportunity and support to become successful.
So one way or another, our economy has been and continues to be based on the exploitation of workers. Slavery was the underpinning of the US economy before it was the US, and still we tolerate exploitation of poor people and people of color so we can have lower prices on our food and other "stuff". The outcry that would ensue should all farm workers be paid decent wages and have good working conditions, because of what that would add to the cost of our broccoli.
Fern, this is a much more complicated issue regarding work....jobs for young people ....it involves the whole care of our younger citizens (or immigrants or the vulnerability of any worker).....let's include involvement in sports.....Once a young person is under the care of an ambitious coach......how many hours are they at the gym or on the field or court playing to win...yes for themselves and for their team but also to win for their coach. This also goes for band. Out of all the young people who commmit to this time of practice and performance ..... how many hours of study and classwork do they miss. How much family time do they miss? During long bus rides to games , how is time used....not often for study. Then how many actually use this time and training when they attend college, or after college....yes, some...a few work as professional athletes ....a few successful, but many live with head injuries, pain or may even become disabled.....a few make a lot more money advertising (good for them!!!)
If children do not have sports and need to work or would like to contribute to family income or save for further education....there are job opportunities that are safe and good and offer continued training and teach responsibility that they can carry with them into an their future. I had lots of friends who worked during High School driving school buses or working in grocery stores or in restaurants or within the fast food industry.....all good solid young adults with good families.
The new laws aren’t for those you relate to. Your experience points to “what was”. The new laws are targeting manufacturing/ factory work. Hardly something equitable to playing baseball or the tuba, or flipping burgers at 15+.
Of course white children are exploited too. I am willing to bet though that white children will serve in vanishingly small proportions compared to brown and black children in the worst jobs. The basic point i was trying to make is that the GOP voting in these laws know very well that it will be children of migrants risking life and limb for the most part. These laws are another facet of their racist agenda.
Migrant children have been so exploited for years as have American children. It is actually a very old story. Child labor laws have not been enforced. Of course, we must fight against these laws being enacted, but they won't make much difference if they are passed. The fight is to strengthen child labor laws; they need improvement and ENFORCEMENT.
Someone should be filming those children working in slaughterhouses. We know it is going on, but seeing is believing. The adults too, in those horrible settings, are also abused to work long hours for low pay and no health insurance or family leave. The repugnants must be stopped, in all places and nooks and crannies. Otherwise, we will continue this current rapid slide into hell.....thank god for you, Heather! Your hard work is educating thousands and maybe millions of people. Keep going!
Admittedly, one of the "kids" featured in their report was subsequently found to not be a minor (NBC retracted the report), the other facts in the reports remain.
'Life Expectancy in the U.S. Dropped for the Second Year in …'
'Life expectancy at birth in the United States declined nearly a year from 2020 to 2021, according to new provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That decline – 77.0 to 76.1 years – took U.S. life expectancy at birth to its lowest level since 1996. The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.'
'The data are featured in a new report, “Provisional Life Expectancy Estimates for 2021.” The report shows non-Hispanic American Indian-Alaskan Native people (AIAN) had the biggest drop in life expectancy in 2021 – 1.9 years. AIAN people had a life expectancy at birth of 65.2 years in 2021 – equal to the life expectancy of the total U.S. population in 1944. AIAN life expectancy has declined 6.6 years from 2019 to 2021.'
'Non-Hispanic white people in the United States had the second biggest decline in life expectancy in 2021 – one full year from 77.4 in 2020 to 76.4 in 2021. Non-Hispanic Black people had the third biggest decline, a 0.7 year drop from 71.5 years in 2020 to 70.8 in 2021. Life expectancy at birth in 2021 was the lowest for both groups since 1995. After a large (4.0 year) drop in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people in the U.S. had a slight decline in 2021 of 0.2 years to 77.6 years. Life expectancy for non-Hispanic Asian people also dropped slightly in 2021 – 0.1 years – to 83.5 years, the highest life expectancy of any race/ethnic group included in this analysis.'
Other findings documented in the report:
'Life expectancy at birth for women in the United States dropped 0.8 years from 79.9 years in 2020 to 79.1 in 2021, while life expectancy for men dropped one full year, from 74.2 years in 2020 to 73.2 in 2021. The report shows the disparity in life expectancy between men and women grew in 2021 from 5.7 years in 2020 to 5.9 years in 2021. From 2000 to 2010, this disparity had narrowed to 4.8 years, but gradually increased from 2010 to 2019 and is now the largest gap since 1996.' (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) See link below.
'Life expectancy for American Indian and Alaska Native populations fell more than other ethnic groups; at 65.2 years, the latest life expectancy estimates for these groups are similar to that of the US population in 1944.'
'Life expectancy for white Americans (76.4 years) is longer than that of Black Americans (70.8 years); until this most recent report, this gap had been narrowing.'
'For Asian Americans, life expectancy (83.5 years) remains the longest among ethnic groups for which data is collected. Hispanic Americans had the next longest life expectancy, at 77.7 years.'
'For women and men, life expectancy of 79.1 years and 73.2 years reflects a long-apparent, significant gap.' (Harvard University) See link below.
Excellent data Fern! Thank you for amassing it all. I find myself imagining Republicans touting these reductions in life expectancy as their solution to the climate change crisis by reducing the population burden on this part of the earth...
John, I wonder how many of those white men are 'men of despair'. How many are dying from alcohol, drugs, depression and anger... anti-government because they believe themselves to have been abandoned by government, perhaps, many of them were abandoned as they were overrun by the technology revolution with little government support? I cannot neglect mentioning racism, along with the belief that the Democratic Party favored Blacks over them. It was common perception, not only for racists. How many are MAGAs? How responsible is America for MAGA, which Trump knew how to name, use, organize and capitalize. Ah, MAGA, his malign genius for branding and herding human beings.
Fern, I have similar suspicions, however, I'd go one step further and speculate many, if not most, felt betrayed by their mothers. They just didn't get enough and hence all kinds of legislation to deny any power and control and punish all them women folk!
If we believe in " government of the people, by the people, for the people", then the people get to make the rules, no? For the conduct of commerce or whatever.
Look.., We've got the rules. Just look at the gyrations necessary to haul Dooshbag Trump into the Manhattan courtroom. Any other piece of s---T would have settled it out of court. Same for businesses that abuse workers.... they just settle it out of court.... and keep on keeping on. Don't hand me all this wining about child labor laws fer crissakes. Some freaking libtard dildo writes up a law which ends up so that a kid in a farm family can't even sweep out a horse stall. THIS is what makes a hit on 'talk radio'... THIS is what makes it so hard for a decent politician to get elected. Yes..!! Why? Cuz if he/she/they try to stand up, they get accused of supporting some dumb law which puts a farm, family father in jail for child abuse. Talk radio loves you guys. Big money supports the lawyers who defend 'the business'es that are dead-cold guilty. Trying to craft some "labor law" is an effort in futility. The simple answer is simple... NO out of court settlement - Jail time. How many of you have actually sat your butts down and wrote some rule/statute, whatever? Was it enforceable? Bigger yet, was it enforced? By the way, I didn't see any 'black chillins' in Hine's collection. Juss sayin.
As I have repeatedly said: all white people are racist in that we have no conception of what it's like to live in fear EVERY time we leave the house. The NRA's lobbyists and less restrictive gun laws are making fear a bigger issue. Perhaps it will make us understand our colored fellows better.
William, men cannot understand or comprehend the fear that women have of being raped by either stranger or intimate partner (the latter being far, far more common). Queer folk have the same fears.
Agree. Everything wrong in our country stems from racism. Slavery never ended, it just took on new forms - prisons, gerrymandering, voting suppression, buying the courts, and now child labor (who won’t be little white kids from the suburbs).
Authoritarianism spares no one in the end. Republicans know full well that ending public education will result in thousands of children dropping out of school. Some due to the burdens placed on already stressed out families with little to no resources to get their children to school miles away to their school of choice. There will be kids whose education comes to a screeching halt because their parents don't know any better or how to navigate these new demands. As if parenting wasn't already hard enough, imagine kids whose parents are absent, in jail, or on drugs and alcohol.
The GOP thinks it can replace migrant workers with children and people they've deemed deserving of such a fate. Poorly run privatized children's homes will supply the workers. Private prisons too.
It's really quite stunning how Republicans believe they can achieve a libertarian utopia and get the results they desire without bringing any harm to themselves as well. Never in history has authoritarianism ever worked out for anyone. Business leaders will eventually see the error of their ways and turn against their captors, but only after great harm to the country has been committed.
Agree. Everything wrong in our country stems from racism. Slavery never ended, it just continued into different forms: prisons, gerrymandering, voter suppression (in many forms), and now back to child labor which won’t affect the white suburban kids.
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.
Agree 1000%, Sabrina. And things like "Republicans Pass Default on America Act" or "MAGA Majority on Record: Yes to Extreme, Harmful Cuts Against Average Americans to Protect Billionaire Tax Breaks."
Here's my vote for a song: Sly and the Family Stone "I am Every Day People." The lyrics, to my mind, speak to where we are as a country in 2023. "Different strokes for different folks." "I am no better and neither are you." And it goes on...
Fortunately, governments are unable to control all students’ experiences. Yesterday I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The exuberant groups of middle and high school students became quiet as they entered the galleries. Many took pictures. As I left one especially moving gallery, the young girl in front of me looked at her friend (both White) and said, “You know they’re not allowed to teach any of this in school any more.” I would imagine that all those young people left the museum with new understandings.
I’d wish that you were being sarcastic because the philosophies tend to change more lives than the facts of specialized jobs. For example, I still know that 1453 was the fall of Constantinople and what good does that do? Read and discuss To Kill a Mocking Bird, Brave New world,
From 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas:
"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. "
I think that we make micro and macro decisions about veracity and value on an ongoing basis, so like having reliable, working instruments in the cockpit of an aircraft, we are wise to teach ourselves, each other, and posterity to approach the always incoming future with our best educated guesses (which is as good as it gets). Yes, we expect a well engineered bridge not to fall, but even formal science is ultimately about probability, not certainty. I prove to myself on an ongoing that I have a robust capacity for folly, but suspect that the beginning of wisdom is sensing the impact of subtle and numerous human and individual limitations. I think that keen awareness of our ginormous capacity to err is at the philosophical core of the scientific method, which works around those weaknesses somewhat.
I also think that while science can organize and illuminate questions of value, it cannot in and of itself decide them. What matters is what matters to us as sentient beings; although caring about something more than our own "punyverse" (as a friend calls it) is surely a sign of emotional maturity; a step away from the real universe's trend toward disorder and decay; the fragile yet adaptive eddies in the flow of entropy that we identify as life. I kinda think of wisdom as making better than random guesses about what's really real, and out of that, what matters most.
As I read the replies/ insightful comments (below) to JL’s post I wanted to write a reply to each but realized my reply to each would be the same.
The beliefs instilled by the entrenched repug parents that Leslie speaks of, the opposition to education that’s likely to be effective that John writes, and the idea that we “should actually teach our kids information!” Comment Ally wrote.
The beliefs entrenched in what? An education that’s likely to be effective, but effective toward what end? Teach our kids information, but what information?
My reply to each was a constant:
As long as the beliefs instilled, the information taught, the education is effectively limited toward imparting their “Christian” extremist view of the world upon their children then everything will be just fine.
———
LeslieN
“student’s fixed beliefs” like those instilled by their entrenched mindless repug parents.
John Bruner
in other word, they oppose education -- especially of it's likely to be effective.
Ally House (Oregon)
Oh, good grief! Gods forbid we should actually teach our kids information!
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.
Will, let's say you went into a house of prostitution for an evening. There, you would find prostitutes, all evening. Now, some might say they are "picking the wrong choice" or are "bad people". But, no, you are just in a house of prostitution, so, you find prostitutes.
Similarly with US State and Federal Legislatures. When you walk in to a legislature in America, you are, basically, walking into a House of Prostitution where the rich pay legislators to do their bidding.
So, IF you start out knowing that American Democracy, in the form of legislators, has basically become a collection of Houses of Prostitution, then?
Legislators are not really making the wrong choices. They are making the choices that their John's are telling them to make.
Mike S I think your analogy may be apt, however, I would extend it to suggest it could be contained within the notion that we have two basic principles competing, capitalism and socialism, both of which have value for our country as a whole. Milton Friedman may have simplified the view of Capitalists to the point of reductio ad absurdum to make it simpler for capitalists to enact their principles. It is more complex for the socialists among us who believe that an country owes its citizens protection from enemies without and within, including the enemies of poverty, hunger, illness, ignorance etc. In short the role of government is to place reasonable limits against the excesses of capitalism, a capitalism we must agree which has brought us innovation and growth but at too high a cost. Other developed countries have found tangibly more effective balances with happier populations as a result. We need SOME capitalistic drive but right now a whole lot more social responsibility.
Well, I respectfully disagree with this analogy on all levels, as I find it counterproductively reductive, as so much cynicism tends to be.
But, if I DO accept the accuracy of the analogy, you are asking me to accept that the people I am (myself reductively) referring to as bad people are merely a subset of a larger group that operates on a nihilistic program of spineless corruption.
So, Mike S, to follow your analogy, "Honestly" as you claim it to be; the United States House of Represtatives is a 'House of Prostitution'; that's is why Nancy Pelosi was called "Madame Speaker" ?
For Republicans, conscience has nothing to do with it. The aim is to expand the labor supply with workers who can be paid less and who are more easily exploited. It's all about making more money faster and funneling as much of it as possible upward -- in other words, it's the push of Capital to control and maximally exploit any and every resource, including Labor, without constraint, and capture every dollar save for those required to maintain an enormous military and build the infrastructure that Capital needs to bring in its raw materials, produce its goods, and move those goods to market. The infrastructure -- seaports, airports, electrical grids, etc. -- is to be funded with tax revenue extracted from the middle and lower classes, and the profits are to flow almost entirely to Capital, unburdened by any tax obligation. To Republicans, who are the mere proxies and puppets of the ultra-rich ruling class, there is no such thing as the social contract or social obligation. Every dollar the government spends on social services, the safety net, and so on, is a dollar that they think by rights should go to them.
If you scratch the surface of the FGA, you'll see that it is funded by the usual rogue's gallery of far-right billionaire oligarchs: Koch, Mercer, Scaife, et al. Are we surprised that FGA's self-declared objective is to "deconstruct larger government regulations"?
The ideal is the permanent reimposition of the oligarchic, white-supremacist economic and social structures of the antebellum South, transposed to today. It's easy to draw a straight line from John Calhoun in 1840 or so to today's far-right and the anti-democratic, authoritarian power plays and repressions that are happening more and more, as HCR points out in today's article. Nancy MacLean lays the story out plainly in __Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America__. Read it, if you haven't already.
The other aspect is that there is no longer a firm labor pool of newly admitted non-white workers to be had. I think this is how they are trying to deal with that without coming out and saying.
Their ideal society is the "Gilded Age", where little kids worked dangerous jobs (with no safely regulations) alongside of their parents and there were no restrictions on the robber-baron impulses of the oligarchy.
I don't see how we are going to get the best kind of people into our public offices as long as there is so much money to be made. Politics is EXACTLY the kind of thing that attracts people with sociopathic tendencies, as it has both power AND money.
Or praises the Jan 6th Insurrection under a Confederate flag (it's way too woke to condemn the "Lost Cause" these days). Or tries every trick in the book to bypass and undermine
"government of the people, by the people, for the people".
Oh NO...those precious darlings might begin to develop critical thinking skills and *gasp* start looking at their parents in a slightly different light! /s/
The Rs were shocked when they saw so many White people marching for Black Lives Matter. All of their actions now (banning books etc) are to stop/limit everyone’s awareness about what really prevents we the people from coming together and challenging them. Racism and sexism especially helps them to maintain control. Obama in the White House was also a wake-up call for them. They may not like the term “woke” but their cruelty is waking people up.
The strategy of divide and conquer (divide and rule) is ancient, along with obfuscatory theater and Orwellian big lies enforced with violence.
Rev. Martin Niemöller became "woke" after the Nazi's hauled him off to a concentration camp. After rescue by the Allies, he wrote "And Then They Came For Me".
"Why does it seem that the Republicans are, on almost all fronts, picking the wrong choice?"
James, let's say you went into a house of prostitution for an evening. There, you would find prostitutes, all evening. Now, some might say they are "picking the wrong choice". But, no, you are just in a house of prostitution.
Similarly with US State and Federal Legislatures. When you walk in to a legislature in America, you are, basically, walking into a House of Prostitution where the rich pay legislators to do their bidding.
So, IF you start out knowing that American Democracy in the form of legislators has basically become a collection of Houses of Prostitution, then?
Legislators are NOT making the wrong choices. They are making the choices that the John's are telling them to make.
They are making consistently bad/wrong choices because they have lost sight of the principles imbedded in the Declaration of Independence about freedom and equality when they set their sights on maximizing power simply for power's sake
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. '
Fern: this child labor exploitation is a growing trend which will double or triple if Rs win the Senate next year and retrain their house majority even if Joe wins! Dems face very bad odds in Senate races in MT, OH, WVA and possibly even in PA, NV and others. Folks, there is a rational answer to all these legislative threats: young women and young men 18 to 25! The party pays little or no Attention to specifically registering them and then encouraging them to vote on key issues such as abortion, gun violence, climate change, voting rights, college debt, child labor, federal minimum wage, etc but each of us reading this excellent column can really do something very meaningful: please support the most effective and innovative voter registration and turnout nonpartisan tax deductible organization www.turnup.us/ run by super Harvard students running voter registration drives in up to 2,700 high schools and colleges only and exclusively in competitive congressional districts!! Please check it out tonight and tomorrow-- young women and men will save our democracy next year but we have to get them registered and voting and these terrific Harvard students are going to get it done if we help them out! www.turnup.us/
Ira, two things: first, a simple thank you ten times over for expressing faith in the possibility of young voters, and providing such an excellent resource. I am I complete agreement this is where we should be focusing a big part of our energies for both short- and long-term political gain.
However, please stop spreading the idea that "Dems face very bad odds" in the given races you list. Not only is it unhelpful and discouraging, but in this case it is categorically, objectively untrue. I remind you that literally every single incumbent Senator won last year, and our more vulnerable incumbents in '24 have all outperformed the party by large margins many times over; they are very personally popular and any unbiased analyst would consider these races toss-up at worst. Ironically, if we had simply ignored the perception of "odds" and remained on offense until the end last year, rather than just hoping to shore up losses, we would have a filibuster-proof trifecta right now, and likely already passed voting rights last month. There is no way around that. There is danger in not believing our own strength.
In my state the youth, especially those educated in our fine regents universities, flee as soon as the graduate. We are an increasingly geriatric stare with a significant brain drain problem.
How ironic the right wing has no soul or conscience in abusing children, women, people of color, but focus on how they can be in power with their wealth by cheating our citizens the right to vote. God forbid we find the IRS because they might have to pay income tax. This state of affairs makes me weep for my grandchildren and our country. If this evil continues we will lose our soul. How do we sleep at night when we know we are on a precipice? Why have the next generation not become more active and work towards Justice? Maybe because they are overwhelmed with survival. I am at a loss now of how to intervene. I read this letter and am thankful for Heather highlighting the truth. I can not stand to think this is what our country is doing to our citizens who are vulnerable.
As long as we keep it in our heads and think about how to solve the problem, we always have a chance to change things. I really want my child and my grandchildren to live as well as we did, or even better!
What are the mechanisms to use the 14th Amendment to reverse the damage these "confederate" states have done and are doing? Is anyone in the Biden white house working on this?
Until the House is majority Democratic and the Senate filibuster-proof, there will be no new legislation that addresses the issues for which the 14th amendment was added to the constitution.
Ira, you are the lawyer and I am not, so I defer to your knowledge, but I wrote my comment as a reflection on the final 2 paragraphs in HCR's letter this evening. What she has implied (and I agree) is that in our supposed balance between states' rights and the federal-national rights of citizenship, gerrymandering and other means of denying one person, one vote have effectively rolled back national rights of citizenship, or at least chipped away at them significantly. Ultimately, if the "game" is rigged sufficiently (as it is in some states) the will of the voters is not reflected in the legislative bodies representing them.
Ira -- Although not the subject of tonight's letter, what about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (Disqualification from Holding Office)? Not blaming the Legislative Branch for this one, but why are the co-conspirators from Jan 6th NOT being barred from holding office?? (starting with Trump himself) The "... have engaged in insurrection or rebellion..." and ought not be allowed to hold public office.
I think you meant to say "why are the co-conspirators NOT beng barred from holding office". There are over a hundred congresspeople who, by my lights, should be facing a charge of treason for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. None of them have faced any repercussions as far as I know. I think the proper action is to remove them from elected office and bar them from any position for life. Traitors all.
Seems to me that their is strong case against them, but how many office holders have been convicted, or even charged with insurrection or rebellion? They should be.
I believe that there was (recently) one politician from a Southwestern state who was not permitted to run for office. I couldn't find the details with a quick Google search. Sorry.
It seems to me that the Constitution is being torn into meaningless fragments with the rapidly increasing devolution of power to the States. (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, of all people, signing ANYTHING into law!!!!!) Losing the majority in the House by relatively little has done nothing to check the appalling speed with which the Union is disintegrating. Who is basically pulling out the plug? the biased SCOTUS?
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.
Rosalind, I’ve settled in India. I married an Indian man in 1994 and when we parted in 2016 I decided to stay in India, where we had shifted for our retirement years. I miss the US and especially New York, where I am from. But I know I will have a much higher quality of life here than in my own country. I never imagined my life would unfold this way, but here it is. I am 73.
Rosalind, I grew up on 103rd Street and West End Ave! Please get well fast. Stay where you are happy and secure. Thank you for writing. We are all in this together, as our wonderful Joyce Vance says at the end of her newsletters....
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.
Ah yes, Linda: Martin Niemöller spent his first night out of a Nazi prison at the Bergkirche, where I am a pastor here in Wiesbaden. The Bergkirche was the only non-"National (read Hitler loyal) church in this entire area. This so-called poem was rather Niemöller's confession that he did not act quickly enough to be a part of the resistance. There were others: Hans Buttersack, an attorney who struggled to save the lives of the Jewish neighbors in the area. A gentle man, he left 6 children behind when he died in Dachau.
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?
Will, I don't agree with all your points, but do agree with some. Just an observation though about the library: I'm betting that a lot of those kids that showed up at 3:30? Parents were working and their was either no childcare or no available child care. Sometimes as a parent, you're truly stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Well, obviously for all too many folks that is true, which is why I always stuck up for the idea that the kids *should* run the place from 4-5. That is the best way we could be of service! That said... this was in an affluent area. I have real doubt many of the folks picking up thir kids in their new SUVs were working a second job later that night to pay for new shoes at Christmas. The folks who let their kids run amok while they were on the phone, then got offended if you tactfully reminded them where they were, were almost definitely were not doing so.
Either way, my point is thus: if having a school and a safe after-school place are the tiny bits of the social net that keep you afloat as you make ends meet... then show some damn appreciation. The teachers/librarians/coaches/etc. are keeping you afloat, are the ones actually taking care of your kids all day, and possess valuable skills. They aren't glorified babysitters. Say thanks, and get the heck out of the way while they do their jobs of raising your kids for you. None of this "parental choice" silliness. If you need everything surrounding your child to be to your specifications, if you really think you know better, well, there's always homeschooling. Put up or shut up. My Mom gave up a PhD, and my Dad gave up retiring until 75, to do just that. As an adult, I can't say I personally feel all the homeschooling families I knew did it for the right reasons, but you know what? At least it took commitment!
Most parents have no qualification or aptitude for being in charge of another vulnerable human being other than deciding they wanted one, and the more "choice" you give them as to what to do with those teensy people... yikes.
Will - As to your final paragraph, I agree that most (many?) folks have very little training in how to raise a knowledgeable and well-adjusted human being from cradle to semi-maturity. Basically, most of us just 'wing it.' The schools rarely teach life skills like cooking, car repair, mending garments, budgeting, how to access community services or to file a tax return (etc. etc.). Parenting is more complicated than any of these, is more labor-intensive, and always involves feedback from the "little-thems." No wonder there are so few who can pass the parenting test. (Just my thoughts ...)
From my limited contact with the local school system, it appears I don't live in a dystopian area where parents aren't involved in their children's education. I haven't heard the word 'woke' used in reference to much of anything here, let alone schools, except when we make jokes about local Republicans and their silliness. But that's Massachusetts for you.
James, I'm not wary about parents NOT being involved in their children's education, I'm concerned about most of those who *are* making the attempt! The vast majority of folks have no idea what is best for childhood development/education, and it really is best left up to the experts, instead of people getting all nosy every two seconds while also denying the school and teachers fair pay, because heaven forbid those property taxes go up one more cent. Simply put, the anti-intellectualism in this country is so ingrained at this point, people hold education as a profession in such low regard that they really think they can know better. At least when it comes to THEIR kids, who *obviously* are important enough to merit adjusting the whole curriculum around.
Just saying, call me quirky, but I betcha given the option that a whole lot of average Americans would prefer to send their kids off to the factory than to the school where they are exposed to those dangerous books and the suspicious people attempting to make them think. Are you going to tell them they are wrong to do so? It is, after all, their "choice" for their kids, amirite?
lol I “librarianed” in a poor town. We built the kids their own space. If they acted up I made them run laps around the building. After a bit the raised eyebrow did the job. Can’t imagine how that would be viewed post normalcy.
I just do NOT understand how these people are so intimidated by the idea of their children gaining critical thinking skills!! It's absolutely "Dark Ages". I am SO very glad that I live in Washington state!!!
"Kids knew not to mess with the teachers" — Yup. When I was in elementary school eons ago it was called double jeopardy: Get in trouble at school and you sure as hell got in trouble at home.
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.
They lost all sense of proportion once they started ripping babies out of their mothers arms (and as I understand it, some have still not been returned to this day).
Ripping children from mothers’ arms is not new. It was a regular practice for enslaved African Americans and Native Americans.
The foster care system is also a culprit. Some children end up in the system for questionable reasons. Too many of these children face abuse too.
Whitney Houston sang about “believing the children are our future-treat them well and let them lead the way..show them the beauty they possess inside”..
I think the children are our hope (although it is discouraging when young people are leaking national security info and initiating mass shootings). Let’s keep hope alive though!
No; we sill still have a Supremacy Clause, but, Yes malevolent state actors can create havoc with People's lives in many states. Michigan has turned the tide.& is no longer a "contested" state. HCR's LFAA highlighting the Biden course as spoken by Sullivan outlines a governmental strategy both nationally & internationally designed to handle the severe turbulence. It may be up to the 18 to 30 year olds to save our Country. Very difficult decisions ahead.
It's what happens when malignantly warped ego convinces one that their cohort are the only people that matter; the Master Race, the only patriots, the exclusive "righteous" in the eyes of God. The thinking to motivated 9/11 or Jan 6th. A step beyond that is the solipsistic assumption that only one's self alone really matters; like Trump.
Yes, his actions at the diner in New Hampshire were quite telling: he has certainly annointed them as his chosen people. Your choice of name is spot on.
Completely tragic, Elisabeth. When I hear of "master race", what comes to mind is Hitler. It's chilling. That is where the MAGA crowd is going. The GOP will cheat every which way they can in order to win. That was stated just yesterday by what's his name. What is frightening to me is that there are so many people who don't know how to think for themselves. That Trump is the idol of white Christians is beyond my comprehension.
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.
Interesting observation Joseph. I also am remembering an interview with Ann Coulter who explained her (&by extension right-wing) view of prohibiting immigration: it took jobs away from Americans. Okay. I see the kernel of logic in that. Yet, the great reveal with these new dismantled child-labor laws is that it’s not so much about “keeping jobs for Americans” as it is keeping jobs at slave wages and conditions. True “market capitalism” would say that the jobs in slaughterhouses would be filled when the wages rise to the level to attract workers. They won’t raise wages. They won’t allow immigration. So now they are suffering “labor shortages”. If you cannot exploit immigrants, who is next most exploitable? Children. Especially children from poor families. They couch it in terms of “Parental Rights” which is a shape-shifting argument to mask the exploiting aspect of it.
This is disgusting. We just remembered the Triangle Shirt Factory horror in what is now Greenwich Village, where poor women, working for next-to-nothing, died when the exits from the building were locked, so said the owners, who didn't want the workers to "leave early."
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.
As a former North Carolinean, I am so disappointed in this turn of events, but not surprised. Yes, higher jurisdictions need to take up the legitimacy of this legislation.
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.
The Dems did fight and almost got a voting rights act passed. But no thanks to Dem Joe Manchin and Dem (at the time…now a so-called independent, really a GOP-wolf in sheep’s clothing) Kyrsten Sinema, the bill failed to pass. Biden worked very hard to show Americans why it was so important to pass it. But too many are not paying attention!
Yeah, literally 270/272 Democrats in Congress voted for the most transformative pro-democracy bill in half a century and spent a full year pushing for its passage. What were those 270 people supposed to do at that point about the other 2? Use voodoo mind control or something?
Moral of the story: you didn't have enough people to make something happen; double down and get a few more people to make it happen. Blaming the folks who DID do the right thing for your justified disappointment is less cutting off your nose to spite your face and more decapitating yourself to spite your nosehairs. Ridiculously counterproductive in the most obvious way.
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.
Thank you for highlighting the hypocrisy. But all of those horrible racist laws that these repugnant republicans are attempting to enact are, one by one, by judges or public opinion, beginning to backfire sewage in their faces. You can make fun of my rose colored glasses, but that progressive judge who won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race validates my optimism. Mark my words, our Gen Zers will not stand for this s***!!!
The " Party of Family Values ". Whose ? Satan's ?
"Party of Family Values", "Party of Law and Order", etc, etc. Republican labeling is a product of the Ministry of Truth.
The Party of Rape, Racism and Russia.
Ya.. the 'R'se-hole of our Nation.
Clever word’smithing’!
Well done turn of phrase!!
The body part to which you refer is good and necessary, and it also is an erogenous zone for many. Do not dis the derriere.
The party of death and their ordinary voters haven't got a clue except they get to keep the weapons of war and have fewer or virtually no restrictions for buying and keeping a gun.
I trust them just like I did the guy who tried to get me to buy shares in a cannabis farm on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Right next to the banana farm there.
Truly , we live in an Orwellian world where missiles became "peace givers", moved on to McCarthy and McConnell's party who claimed they represented "family values", proclaimed the were the one's in support of "law and order". It is Wm. Faulkner time all over again..."The past is not past...yada yada yada...we've become a cliche of a cliche of a cliche.
Hate to "like" these facts that so drastically need reporting.
And hate to hate even return-to-sender hellbeings. That would defile me. Hatred defiles both haters and their innocent victims, it spawns new generations of haters. And new victims.
Heartily detest the haters' vile thoughts, words and deeds and the endless chain reactions that they trigger.
Yes, the same crowd that espouses that everything they don't like should be up to the states and everything they want should be shoved down everyone's throat by the Federal government....
Thanks. Now I feel JUSTIFIED in having 2, maybe 3 drinks between 7 - 7:30 a.m. in the morning.
I'M COMPLETELY STONE - COLD SERIOUS AS A FREAKING HEART ATTACK.
Should I have beer, tequila, or grain alcohol ?
hahaha I laughed out loud...
"Ministry of Truth" in quotation marks.
Pravda, always pravda.
I might add in addition to Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Jim Jones??? The party of Fascism?
You malign Fascists and Stalinists...
'R'se-holes! ....PHewwww..{{.. what a smell.
These people who need to own all the power are “perverts” and they try to hide that fact by throwing attention on innocent humans.
They are and will be despicable always as they hate themselves.
We can pretend there is a “Satan”, but in fact this is 100% human!
Church Lady
" Well, inat speshul ? ". 😇👼🙏
🤣
Their own families. Other people’s families are fair game.
In Iowa,, the child labor law passed in the wee hours of the morning after a marathon session where GOP leadership quashed debate and questions from the Democrats. The law is from FGA and has been touted as the solution to the state's workforce shortage under the guise of securing parental rights. Children will be allowed to work in industries and under conditions that are dangerous. Children, especially poor or minority children, are being sacrificed by this dreadful law. How many is yet to be determined, but that some will be harmed seems all too likely. And now, it is also legal to have weapons in a locked car in school parking lots.
Charles Dickens, time for a resurrection…
And dare we add the names Thomas, Alito, Eastman, Taylor Greene, Gaetz, McCarthy, Trump, Ghouliani, Flynn, Manafort, Barr, Huckabee...this sub-Homeric catalogue of mini-fascists goes on for pages and pages and pages, augmented by a pathetic menagerie of enablers...
It's unhealthy physically and mentally to reside in this Trumpian swamp of insincerity, greed, and corruption...
Cruz, Boebert....such a long list
Please check out Lewis Hines' child labor photos from the late 19th and early 20th century...
https://www.boredpanda.com/child-labor-usa-lewis-hine/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Both my dad & my father-in-law grew up near Throope, PA - they both briefly worked in the mines before they got away from there - my dad became a plumber & my father-in-law an electrician. But I'm sure there were an awful lot of young boys who couldnt leave.
Thanks! So horrific! To imagine my grandchildren in such dangerous conditions gives me nightmares!
Methinks this painting in the Scott Gallery at the Huntington is retaking its contemporary meaning https://emuseum.huntington.org/objects/53131/the-breaker-boys
Every photo is absolutely worth a thousand words.
Thanks for the link.
Oops. I saw this after posting a link to one of his books!! 😁😁 you’re 5 hours ahead of me! 🙌
what a WOW quote that is from Tale of Two Cities, just happen to be reading it for first time myself. You're right, Dems/willing Independents/ex-Republicans need to organize and crawl back political jurisdictions into "some kind of balance".
You got that right, Jeri. Let's roll back the laws to the 19th century, when life was grand <sarcasm>. These actions should be front page news.
"Family values" is just a load of Republican BS. Anyone who thinks otherwise has their head in the sand.
According to MTG family values only extends to biological parents not those pesky adopted "parents " . They aren't real parents !!
We sacrifice children to the Second Amendment. We might be dooming children to a life of suffering the effects of long Covid by our pathetic and politicized response to the pandemic, especially in schools. We won’t let trans minors have access to best medical practices. Our life expectancy falls short of our economic peers. We ban books in schools because any discussion of sexuality or race is mumble mumble pornography mumble mumble CRT mumble mumble whatever the scary word of the day is. Why not let them work? Especially the brown ones! We need workers, they need money because of our inadequate social safety net, it’s a win win!
It isn’t about parents’ rights. It isn’t about protecting children. It’s about money and keeping the base angry enough to keep voting in larger numbers than the rest of us. It’s frightening.
It’s terrifying , and I think very few Americans have even heard about what is happening. All of the facts you readers are adding to today’s letter should be shared on national media.
YES.
If it was about parent’s rights then why don’t they allow parents the right to plan their own families, instead forcing unwanted pregnancies on them. They spew lies, always have, and hope people are so used to being lied to that they no longer care.
"If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's [working with] kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child for is on the bottom [of the wage scale.]" p. 165-166
"I started to see how being big for your age was a trap. They send you to wherever they need a grown up body that can't fight back." p. 215
"Being grownup is so much safer than being a kid." p. 113
"Foster boys are 'product' (i.e. sold labor), "merchandise rotated between 50 customer accounts." p. 79
I'm 11. She's my legal guardian. And her idea of a perfect ward of the state is one that's AWOL. p. 171
Quotes from Barbara KIngsolver's book, Demon Copperhead, about the lives of rural children in an Appalacian county during the opioid epidemic. These quotes are taken from the story before the protagonist reached 14 years of age and after he had already been made to work crappy, unsafe jobs just to earn some food. It's rewrite of Dickens's David Copperfield.
Our country’s economy was built on the backs of the less fortunate from slavery to sweat shops paying by the ‘piece’ completed! The ugly truth about our foreign policy was that the under side had been enforced by the OSS/CIA whose bag of tricks included destabilizing unfriendly (to businesses rape of their natural resources) leaders of foreign countries!
😡🤬😡🤬
I bought this recently and am sharing it (carefully)with my grandson. Nothing like poignant photography to remind us that America was not always “Great” and our future quality of life lies in a reverence for everything living and not materialistic ravaging.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/kids-at-work-lewis-hine
It may have been legal before. Many teachers who were hunters here in Alaska would have their camping and hunting gear ready in cars......including guns.......so that when school was out on Friday nite they could set off right from work to hunting areas. Pretty sure it was happening in ND and SD and Iowa and probably Montana.
This is a new measure from the current Iowa legislature here. And, sure, hunting weapons make sense. That's not what was being addressed now.
Gen Y and Gen Z will indeed be repelled by this and a list of abuses and offenses of the ruling GQP. Guns, gender persecution, book banning, science and medicine denial, election denial and the biggie: Climate Crisis ignored.
And so...we can complain. We can whine about the government takeover by fascists at every level - Federal right on down to school committees. Me too - angry as Hell.
What are we going to do about it?
Get that demographic to vote! Y and Z represent about 45% of the potential electorate.
It's their future and they will move us in the right direction, if.....
Go here: turnup.us
Read this:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/midterm-exit-polls-show-that-young-voters-drove-democratic-resistance-to-the-red-wave/
Thanks, Bill - I just sent your comment and the link to TurnUp to my 22 y.o. granddaughter and suggested she get on it and get everyone she knows to join her
But are Gen X and Gen Y aware of actions like rolling back child labor laws?? That's the kicker.
If they use the internet for news, it's hard to miss that story. Like any other group, some will be enraged. Others will go back to their video games.
On the subject of reproductive rights, I think most are motivated now. I hope.
Thanks, Bill. I've been meaning to check out Turn Up for weeks now and your link finally got me moving. I signed up for a recurring donation to honor the memory of my godson who died last week.
Thanks for following up on this. And so sorry for your loss. They aren't supposed to go before us...
But...
Can the Union still be saved?
Was it ever "saved"?
Maybe we should ask a black grandmother in South Carolina?
Sorry, I should have written "salvaged".
That... is the right verb for what's needed today.
But the Wreckers are strong. And armed to the teeth.
Salvaged is a much better word. It is more related to "Salvage Yard", where a bunch of broken, rusted parts are available for cheap. In many ways, "salvage yard" is a better description of what America is becoming.
Just drive across any state and look around? Run down trailer parks, trailer homes, mobile homes everywhere now.
One big salvage yard. USA.
Interestingly, all those poor white folks living in those falling down trailers? Vote Republican.
Like an autocatalytic reaction it is.
I see, Mike, I see. And I have seen far, far too much. In the United States, in Britain, elsewhere in our world. This isn't just a metaphor, it is our wretched reality.
My poor image was of the ship of State, already under jury rig... of the tugs rushing to take her in tow... and the Wreckers with their false lights, waiting to lure her onto the rocks.
Lazy, like too many of us Mike, not ALL of them bother to vote. BTW, manufactured homes are not necessarily a bad thing, especially when on a well maintained property. Assuming full inclusion on many things in life is less then a fully curious lens with which to see the world through.
Mike S.., those folks are content with those conditions.., it's all they've ever known..., and "talk radio" keeps them fired up. Tabloid none-sense 24/7. To them.., 'thems' the facts. Yup.
There has been an upsurge in the wheeled population in the last 20 or so years. Maybe since Reagan. First Glamping hit big. Then came the Donald, with its many horrific
Let’s just make sure that their generals and leaders are voted out so they can’t give them marching orders.
This seems like a decent place for me to intrude with an observation that I’ve held to myself since I was politically sentient. And that is, that American states have far, far too much power individually, and that in the end they hold the key to doing permanent damage to the union.
In Canada we have a struggle between the provinces and the federal government that periodically gets testy. We have what was perceived at the time of its Constitutional inception (1982 when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law) what is called the “notwithstanding” clause. It is a sort of nuclear option for provinces, who can *temporarily* abrogate a particular clause in this Charter, if circumstances seem dire enough. It was barely ever used until recently (of course) when certain provinces peered southward, looking jealously at the enormous power individual states have to do mischief and decided to flex their own muscle by invoking “notwithstanding”. Such an action is rarely popular outside the acting province, and indeed often struggles to find majority adherence “at home”.
I understand the *how* of the states’ rights issues. But I deeply fear the consequences. In the past it seems to me that those were visited most direly upon people of color in states where racism is a major issue, if not *the* major issue.
But the ‘bug-i-ness’ of this particular feature of America has leap to the fore in the twenty-first century, especially in the last ten years. All states are some form of purple in their orientation. But the era of polarization has established in many people’s minds a state of cultish devotion to one party or the other, where before the majority didn’t care enough one way or another to vote with religious fervor on Election Days and to fight about politics the rest of the time.
With injudicious use of advanced technology, gerrymandering has become the ultimate weapon to divide the state in a manner which favors one party in the extreme. With gerrymandering, America seems to have entered the age where legislative super majorities have become as common as mosquitoes in spring. This certainly does not propel the wisest candidates into office. With legislative super majorities, states have entered into an arms’ race of stupid, bitterly partisan, socially explosive legislation. And of course the kicker is all the copycat legislation that issues forth from other states. What one doesn’t think of, another will.
So the bozos rule in many states, and America is resolutely marching back into the 1800s. More child labor - seriously???
The Federal government, with its constrained powers, can only play whack-a-mole with so much success in an attempt to counter this race to the bottom. The Courts are rarely much help.
The “union” is fast moving from being a high aspiration to an agent of its own destruction. It all leaves me less than optimistic. Idiocy and malevolence run rampant, competing with one another for pride of place.
This is the kind of comment on the state of the union that should be spread everywhere.
Far more to the point than categorical statements that some unspeakable candidate "will" be President.
A pity there are so few readers here, but share and spread.
I chose to bump in on your comment because I have such a high regard for your breadth of thought.
You are kind... but what is happening is so overwhelmingly sad. So mean, so vile, so meaningless.
To have been born into the worst of all wars and live to see the victors reduced to this. It is unspeakable.
Please check out Lewis Hines' child labor photos from the late 19th and early 20th century...
These unspeakables will soon bring back lynching.
If I read an Economist article about a current case in Texas correctly, that is already under way and the state's laws are so designed that gun-carrying rights and stand-your-ground rights cancel each other out and effectively guarantee the right of "whites" to kill persons of the wrong color when the latter are openly carrying arms, as they are entitled to...
Or turn around in their driveway, or knock on their door.
I'm reminded of a take-off on the Gadsden flag I saw; rather than "Don't Tread on Me" it reads "I'm White and Scared of Everything".
That represents a painful truth, Ally. Both painful and dangerous for all concerned... especially for passing strangers who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Why is the "supermajority" of citizens that oppose the loss of rights listed by Heather failing to mobilize?
Propaganda, television’s effect on culture (materialism), gerrymandering, lack of emphasis on civic responsibilities for multiple decades, etc.etc. I’m sure others can add to the list. But if we can identify the “why”, we are one step closer to finding solutions, am I right? Being here and talking about it, is a beginning (and I’m pretty sure is why Musk figured destroying Twitter was worth 44 BILLION $) 😳
Thanks Christy. When someone steps on our toes a person is driven to advise the stepper that it hurts. If we don't let the oppressor know the damage that is being done our toes will be crushed. In the political world we will surely be destroyed, oppressor included, if we fail to serve notice.
Manuel, agreed. However, one caveat to be aware of is that the bully stepping on one’s toes might be cunning enough to dress as your best friend, thereby eliciting you to express your displeasure falsely to your friend. This matters greatly when your voice is your vote!
Should it?
Great question, Michael. See my reply to Christy above.
This is the question that I ask every time the subject of "state's rights" or the Civil War comes up.
Here in the Pacific Northwest we historically had the State of Jefferson, but in more modern times Cascadia has been popular. While the State of Jefferson consisted of parts of Oregon and California that felt ignored by their state capitals, Cascadia, consisting of the entire west coast including BC, is a much more viable option.
I am sure that there are other regional entities that have discussed the possibility of abandoning the Union?
It certainly looks like the Confederacy is one of the least viable options. And one could argue that without a federal war machine California and Washington would be less prosperous.
Still, is a nation and large and diverse as The United States sustainable?
Excuse me... I am lost here and unable to find my way back to this conversation (in which I was apparently taking part) via "Return to thread"...
Is this an answer to the questions whether the Union can -- or should -- be saved?
Whatever the case, your last sentence brings to mind two things for me: Simon Bolivar's decision to divide into three the vast territory he had helped liberate from Spanish rule; and the fact that it can be so difficult to hold together even the smallest human groups... owing to factors like ill will, mistrust, misunderstanding and the blind, blundering will to power of people who don't know what they are doing...
Yeah, I can't find it either, but yes, my comment was in answer to your question of whether the Union can be saved.
I mentioned a couple of local PNW versions of what are probably hundreds of ideas that have been floated for building more logical versions of nations that might be broken off from the US Union.
The answer to whether the Union can or should be saved or salvaged is getting more complicated by the day.
Oh Sophia, this is also my take on what will happen in 2024...though the extreme gerrymandering worries me. I keep my rose colored glasses on but every so often they slip down my nose and I panic.
Oh Sophia - I fear our gen Zers. I have a couple. Per my observations, gen Zers in general are averse to politics, and get involved only if they feel they must. And importantly - if they feel their efforts have been snubbed or didn't work the first time, threaten to remove themselves from the process. This was illustrated to me in stark detail the other day when we were discussing Biden's announcement that he is running for a second term. They held their noses and voted Biden in 2020, hoping they made the right decision. And then came Willow. Most gen Zers see the Willow project decision as a deal breaker and they blame (rightly) the Biden administration for letting that climate busting project proceed. It is enough for many of them to just check out - to basically do a protest no-vote in 2024. This despite the otherwise good record Biden has on the climate. I believe this attitude will show up in other ways too as Republicans and the Mansions and Sinemas continue to work their obstruction tactics. What our gen Zers seem to fail to understand is that when they decide to protest by staying home, they play right into the hands of the enemy. If our young voters stay home in droves in 2024, we are going to get Trump (or worse) again. That I am pretty certain of. I just hope I am wrong about them staying home. I worry.
I disagree. For every politically disenfranchised young voter there are 10 who are revving up and mobilizing. They are not going to sit home and watch video games, not vote, and hand over the reins to their future to wacko right wingers. The two Justins embody the energy of this new I'm-not-taking-this-s*** landscape and spreading it around....
Of course, I hope you are right. However I don't see it in my neighborhood. I have three voting age offspring in their twenties all. Smart kids. And they have like-minded friends. Every one of them has an inadequate and/or inaccurate knowledge of what accomplishments have taken place during the current administration. And they have an inadequate/inaccurate knowledge of just how our inefficient and laborious government works, with its filibusters and greed and pork barrel bills and compromises and partisan standoffs. Their expectations are high (too high) and they feel that promises are being broken. Every one of them is quite angry that what they think is important to them has not been done (student loan forgiveness for example, or continued health care issues). They do not seem to get that the Democrats have but a slim majority (and now we lost that in the House) with problem children like Mansion an Sinema gumming up the process (typical response - "I don't care!!! He needs to do something!!!"). They continue to struggle in this economy like so many of them do. They see right wing victories all over the place where women's reproductive rights are challenged, LGBTQ+ rights challenged, continued abject racism, gerrymandered states winning in court. And most of all they are looking for quick and dramatic action on climate change, and in their eyes not seeing that either. I tell you - they are blaming Biden just as much if not more than blaming the Republicans (mistakenly so of course). These people wanted a Bernie, and have never forgotten that he didn't make it (of course Bernie could not have done better than Joe, but tell that to them). They are skeptical/suspicious about why he didn't get there. None of this class of voters is going to vote for the Republicans. They are the enemy after all. But a statistically significant portion will protest by not voting at all. They are too disgusted to go to the voting booth. UNLESS something changes. They must become more knowledgeable of what has been accomplished already, against stiff headwinds always. BTW Willow did much to do the opposite, despite the complicated nature of the decision. They must be reminded that they are the key to our elections, that the only way to obtain quicker and more effective solutions is to show up in droves and vote out the Republicans, strive for a supermajority. They must see progress (like that's going to happen with McCarthy at the wheel). I recall some what I was like when I was in my twenties. I can assure you, I knew only enough to be dangerous. I lacked experience. How can it be otherwise? I even voted for Reagan once - that is how stupid and naive I was.
"They must see progress..."
This is where you come in Jay. Start by going down to their level and telling them that you understand them because you too were in there shoes...and then comes the "BUT,"
Staying home playing Play Station and not voting the democratic agenda is not an option. By not voting they are enabling reelections of the deplorables (that should scare the s*** out of them). It is your job to get them to change their perception to the one expressed by the two Justins....
"I just hope I am wrong... I worry"
Jay, because this is so important, I'm going to be blunt. You ARE wrong. Your worried feelings, and your personal observations with youth voters, are completely irrelevant here (as are anyone's). The current youth generation is significantly MORE involved in politics than than previously, not less, and we know this for a fact because there are these nifty things called voting records that you can look up to find out. An adverse generation doesn't show up in the numbers we just saw in a *midterm* (comare to 2014) if they are "adverse" and "threaten[ing] to remove themselves." Endless bevies of surveys just keep bearing this out too, over and over (check out the recently published Harvard Youth Survey - the gold standard).
Political participation is a matter of counting votes. The story is entirely one of numbers. Feelings and personal anecdotes lie. Numbers don't.
And, frankly, if you are looking to persuade some members of this cohort, based on your comment, it sounds like your heart is in the right place but you are going about it the polar opposite way that you need to. Most people that age (I should know, I'm barely out of it), are still in the thought mode of "f#ck you, I see through this system." How are you going to direct that energy? Expressing to them what you just did here sounds like you don't believe that they have it in them to make the right choice, and aren't mature enough to know how things *really* work, which is the biggest possible way to reaffirm the impulse to say "f#ck you" by sitting out. Instead, you need to clearly express just how much the opposition is counting on them to not be able to make the right choice, and express faith that they can indeed see through this charade. In other words, you gotta make the mature thing to do sound like the "f#ck you" option. And a great way to make that happen is to point out all the great things that the current administration HAS been doing towards the issues your kids prioritize. It's pretty hard to want to direct "f#ck you" energy toward someone who has done a hundred nice things for you, especially when the fascists are sitting right over there.
Regarding the Willow fiasco: respectfully, your use of "(rightly)" gives the game away; you are sharing and legitimizing your youths' disappointment on this rather than emphasizing the true balance of progress, or taking the opportunity to reaffirm your confidence that your kids are mature enough to realize that there are no deal-breakers when it comes to voting, only expressions of preference. It's not like giving a "like" to your favorite celebrity, it's like brushing your teeth: ya just do it.
"I fear for you not doing the right thing" is WAY less enticing than "I know I can trust you to not let me down." Way, way less enticing.
Again - I hope you are right. And I am a believer in facts and data. The young folks I know were a part of that data. But from my knothole, those same folks were out of their comfort zone getting that politically involved (as I would have been in my twenties), held their noses and got involved anyway. And what did they get for it? In their eyes, practically nothing. All they got was getting Trump outa there, only to watch the crazy just erupt as a result. They do not see (or do not care to see) just how difficult it is with a slim majority and some problem children (Mansion, Sinema) to move forward with a progressive agenda. They under-appreciate the victories attained in spite of the difficulties. Instead they see failures. And now they see McCarthy running the show in the House. And it's even worse. Now all Dems can do is play defense, in their eyes. Mark my words - many of these young folks are so disgusted that they are going to check out. We cannot afford another self-inflected wound like Willow.
James, Thanks for pointing that out; it’s a real concern. I’ve run into older adults too, who are single-issue focused Democrats. We need to spend more time talking to people (in a civil manner) and listening. It gave me some hope reading The Persuaders by Anand Giriharadaras -- especially the part about “deep canvassing.”
One thing I do know is that they are not all alike!
https://twitter.com/bidenswins?lang=en#
https://twitter.com/Victorshi2020?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Good!! Now, I think Biden has to atone for the Willows thing, somehow. We cannot afford to disappoint our young voters.
IMHO, Biden’s political expertise is the equivalent of a master chess player. It’s going to be awhile before they can start the drilling. Biden is working his ass off to give us a Blue Tsunami in 2024. It’s up to us voters to give him the majority he needs to stop the drilling. If we want to live in a democracy, it’s up to we the people to show up.
Yup. The new projects will likely never see the light of day, or be rendered irrelevant and unprofitable the moment it actually comes online. And it takes away the "Biden's a green new deal radical who hates oil and wants to take your car!" line of attack, which is more potent than people realize.
This reminds me of 2020, when a lot of folks seethed when he made big pronouncements supporting the continuation of fracking. Do we *like* fracking? Hell naw. Did we like those final vote totals in the Great Lakes states? Hell yeah (and thank gosh).
Well - tell that to a twenties age voter who is afraid the second half of his/her life will be spent in a climate ravaged dystopia. He/she is too impatient to sweat the details. Too distracted with life. I was too back then. You have to admit the optics were just awful. I agree the Biden administration has tons of political savvy - but they can and have made mistakes. And the fight is just too close to make mistakes. Something needs to be done to heal this Willow wound - something that will restore whatever confidence the young voter block had in their 2020 and 2022 choices.
Christy bring up some salient points in her responses.
But mostly I feel the need to state that, while I share the disgusted sentiment surrounding this project, there really was no decision to be made regarding the drilling. The oil company (which, of course, is evil), followed the permitting process as written. Approval is a formality, and pretty much any court would have agreed. The President cannot just play fast and loose with the laws his supporters don't like, and I'm astonished progressives are failing to see this, after the last half-decade of seeing such impunity in action. The culprit here is laws that allow further drilling to take place at all in the year 2023, and that is what needs to change. It certainly won't change by casting blame toward those we need to maintain their positions in order to have that power in place.
Willow is also complicated by the fact that Alaska is a huge state and most of the rural areas (inhabited by primarily indigenous Alaskans) are only accessible by air, thereby making the transportation of normal everyday goods extremely expensive. This of course makes the basics of food, housing, education, and healthcare very expensive in those rural areas. Oil royalties dumped huge amounts of cash very suddenly on these subsistence economies in the 70’s, with some pretty traumatic consequences. Maybe those same folks shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of a drastic withdrawal from oil revenue? Maybe the youngest generation would be more willing to demand more of gluttonous corporations and less of indigenous peoples in rural Alaska if they understood the complexity of it all?
Go Gen-Z! Undo these many wrongs!
These seem to target unaccompanied immigrant children in several states arguing that it helps them become independent and they really need the money and there are these jobs no White adult will take. Next, should we expect that families with able bodied children should be expected to be enrolled in job search or employment before they can qualify for food and economic assistance? How likely is it that the 14th Amendment will become the next target of the states with Red majorities?
I agree, Sophia, but only if they are aware of the trainwreck coming. So many people, young and old alike, miss the true meaning of the legislation being passed, because of the arcane language used in these bills, complicated by the "family values" espoused by right-wing "Christian" sponsors of them. I'm willing to bet that the majority of Georgia voters have no idea that there is a law in Georgia that allows the county election boards to be disassembled for virtually no reason, then replaced by partisan legislators, and election results can be overturned and replaced by these legislators' preferred candidates - vote nullification, all in the name of securing elections. The virtuous Brad Raffensperger, Secretary of State, was a willing participant with our "anti-Trump" governor and his cohorts in crafting this abomination.
The republicans thought they were going to sweepingly bulldoze down the democrats in 2020 and reign supreme in all branches of the government, but...surprise! Young people and people of color had already begun to get woke and determined. But even with a slim majority the GOP was left dazed. Yet, they insist on not learning their lessons and are doubling down on their blatantly immoral activities, inevitably bringing about their political suicide. Would you consider that by that point the laws in Georgia will have changed? Just watch!
Sophia, like you, I'm praying that the Democrats - especially the young voters, are as enraged as we are about the mere possibility that Trump will prevail, and feel fairly confident that Biden will win handily. However, I never expected the buffoon to win in '16, so I hope my forecasting is better this time around. As far as the Georgia voter suppression/vote nullification laws are concerned, they were enacted just last year, AFTER TFG's infamous "all I'm asking is that you find 11,780 votes" call to Brad Rafensperger. That was Gov. Kemp, Rafensperger, and the right-wing's solution to outrage from every one of us who isn't a crazy Republican over the criminality displayed. They're not Trumpers, but neither is the Republican legislature pro-democracy. BTW, the new Lt. Governor and many others still pulling the strings were "alternate" electors. It will be difficult to upset that applecart. I know that the '22 election was a huge win for our side, but we still have a fight on our hands. Just look at the current House in DC. They're crazy, but they're in control, even by the slimmest of majorities (including Glamor Girl Empty Greene). Pray for Fani Willis, Jack Smith, et. al, since we know the kind of support we'll get from criminal, emboldened SCOTUS.
Nancy, here's what I understand and what I don't understand: I understand why republicans appear to have emerged as haters of a menu of a variety of groups not like them. The truth is that they were haters all along, but before trump they were forced to stymie their hate because of political correctness. trump's emergence gave permission to seemingly "upstanding" Christian family men who secretly ideated forcing themselves on women or despised ethnic groups, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community (basically people who live in fear and feel powerless), to openly express their suppressed emotions. What I don't understand, like you, how "sane" republicans' actions are anti-democratic. I also don't understand how people even entertain the idea that trump can possibly be elected president again when he is for certain going to prison....
Sophia, logic doesn't apply here. There's no question that TFG gave them permission to display their toxic side, but as you said, it was there all along. The non-crazies still believe that the economy and society do better under low taxes for the wealthy, Reagan's "trickle down" economic policies, and all of the other drivel that has been disproved repeatedly, but they ignore the facts - perhaps legacy Republicans who are still hoping to please Dad (who's long dead). Many people have an underlying urge to feel superior to others and keep their heel on those they consider to be inferior. Long-held religious beliefs also play into it, and they believe that gives them cover for their misogyny and other prejudices. I'd like to see their reaction if they're successful in destroying democracy and end up under the thumb of someone like Putin. If it weren't for 2016, I'd be certain that they can't win, but we've all seen that anything is possible.
It is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the Amurican voters.
I would not be so sure. In NH, despite all votes being split around 50% between Dem and Rep, only 1 out of the 5 members "elected" for the Executive Council was a Democrat. Gerrymandering.
But after the Gen Zers revolt under the leadership of the two Justins etal, gerrymandering will be upturned....
I want to believe you are right!
I truly hope you are right! I hope the backlash to this horrible push toward racism and stripping away of rights from minorites and women by Republicans is swift and strong and more difficult to undermine in the future.
Sophia, I hope you’re right.
Oh I hope so! Are there enough of them? I won't be here to know but I worry about my children and grandchildren!
I agree that lax labor laws harm children of color the most, it does also hurt white kids. My 16 year old grandson works in a Sub Shop and is consistently scheduled to closing which with cleanup means that he doesn’t get home until almost 11pm on school nights. When he complains, his hours are nonexistent the next week.
What? He is punished when he should be rewarded for his diligence??
That's the American way - punish a young worker who wants to earn an honest days wages doing jobs that no one else would consider doing by paying them PEANUTS & working them even harder.
And compromising their ability to excel in school, limiting their potential of pursuing higher education (if that is what they wanted) and enslaving them to this type of menial, low-paying jobs that only ensure a future of poverty that opens the door to crime as the only way out. It’s such a depressing, vicious cycle! And we are purported to be the wealthiest nation in the world! Shameful, indeed!
I wish that we could tax the rich & by God make it stick ! From slumlords to televangelists to billionaires to people that have been in the WH ( DJT ). They either pony up or do serious time in someplace not as nice & COUNTRY - CLUB COZY as a Club Fed.
I started reading today’s letter and almost put it down. It is so disgusting to see what Republicans are doing. We used to base hope on the democratic option of voting them out, but they’ve now eliminated that right, too.
"The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits." - Milton Friedman
And Miltie should rot in hell for the next couple of eternities for that belief alone.
I worked for a Day's Inn reservation center where the rallying slogan was " something, something Bottom line = $ sign ". " Greed is good ". The Church of the Almighty Greenback.
Sick joke - the GOP elephant paying young workers PEANUTS...Whoa...
Please check out Lewis Hines' child labor photos from the late 19th and early 20th century...What's old is forever new...
If life were easy.., people would just get fat. Ooooops, ex-q's me! We don't have an obesity problem..., OR do we? And, don't jump on me about poor white kids and their poor "big gulp" diet. Talk to their "big gulp" moms hauling them about in the 6 passenger van. Do those brats ever bend over to pick up a candy wrapper? Are you kidding.., their mom/dad wouldn't notice...their big gut is in the way. When you work yer arse off for something, you tend to appreciate it. I'm not opposed to "child labor laws"..(try writing them!).. BUT, I'm distressed by lazy-azz tabloid-mentality parents and their influencer-enabled offspring.
Apples and oranges. The kids you describe won't work. I can't find kids in my neighborhood to do chores for 25$ cash an hour!
There is a young boy, not even in high school yet, in my small town who put up a flyer saying he is available for yard work for $10 hr. I copied his contact info, but has been too wet here for much yard work yet. If I do end up hiring him for some chores & he does well, I’d be bumping up his hourly wage for sure. I would sometimes hire students from the local Univ & have on hand all needed tools, a selection of different types of gloves & sizes. Would cover a 1/2 hr lunch break and provide the fixin’s for sandwiches & have beverages. Of course I worked along side them too & would teach about weed identification, plants, garden lore, etc. Covid put a stop to that, but since it’s simmered down a bit, need to step up the yard chore hiring!
That situation has gone on in our area for the last 25 years. Our children always took on jobs in neighborhood until they were old enough for work permits. They also did what was needed at home, inside and out. Since then we have not been able to hire a single teenager to assist with yard work. We for a while were able to hire my current and former students from 30 miles away, paying for their gas. Now they’re all grown and gone too. Not a single teen in our own and other neighborhoods around is even remotely interested in doing anything approaching work. They don’t even take their own trash cans in or do any chores at home. It truly is appalling.
For authoritarians, cruel dominance and servile obedience is first and foremost. I have seen that in business on numerous occasions. I have also seen managers whose style is win-win. Yet we never seem to be able to clear out the former; at least not for long.
You sound surprised. Having worked in minimum wage jobs for many years I can assure you that a reduction in hours is one of the usual punishments for speaking up.
Too bad these employers don't see the benefits of paying higher wages. When I ran my successful dress designing business many years ago, I had two excellent assistants. I paid them $11/hr, unheard of at the time for the job) and provided lunch. I can't describe to you the hard work and loyalty I got back....
This is so sad and injust.
Alice, your grandson is a very hardworking person. I understand that all of this is unfair and hard. But I think he can do a lot in the future because he was able to understand so early on how hard life is.
Please check out Lewis Hines' child labor photos from the late 19th and early 20th century...
https://www.boredpanda.com/child-labor-usa-lewis-hine/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Thank you, Marj, for posting the link!
Why are his parents letting him work there?
Why? Probably because they also have low-paying jobs and desperately need the money!
Exactly. I grew up in South Dakota. Forty-five years ago, at 14, I was working on a potato harvester, separating potatoes from dirt clods on a moving conveyer belt. The harvester moved across the potato field digging the potatoes and moving them onto conveyer belts. One conveyer belt would move the potatoes into a truck that was driving along side the harvester. The other conveyer belt would move the dirt clods back on to the field. The workers would stand in front of the conveyer belts and either pick up dirt clods and throw them onto the dirt clod belt, or pick up potatoes and put them on the potato belt. Where were my parents? They were working right along side of me - because we needed the money!
Carey, I truly hope things have greatly improved for you 🙏
They did. There are aspects of farming and the farm I grew up on that I really and truly miss. But being poor and working on potato harvesters and some other hateful jobs I did, are not among them!😀
Hi, everyone who responded. I was hoping the poster would tell us the actual story, rather than people jumping to conclusions and posting opinions and speculation. My first job was collecting eggs from the hundred chickens my mom kept for pin money. Those old hens had my number and I had to carry a stick to spook the mean ones off their nests so they wouldn’t draw blood pecking me. I was four. My second job was steering the truck full of silage around the bed ground every morning at 4:30 all winter while my mom and dad shoveled silage to the sheep. I was 7. Then I got dressed while Mom cooked breakfast and I got on the school bus at 6:30 to ride to the little rural school I attended. Blah blah college, advanced degrees professional jobs comfortably retired now. Everyone’s story is different. I am interested in the poster’s grandson’s story. Closing fast food places is not conducive to being bright and perky at school the next morning, as opposed to the stories my other farmer and rancher kids schoolmates told each other because we all did chores before school.
At 16, it seems like an opportunity for parents to help him learn to advocate for himself and others, rather than stepping in and taking over. Negative experiences can provide opportunities
They need the money
Um...bc they need the money?
C'mon Meredith, you're joking right?... it's part of learning what the heck "Life" is about. Maybe he/she/they etc would be better suited to work for a trash-hauler emptying peoples dumpsters? Or, down in the alleys of NYC, swinging fully-loaded garbage-cans into the bac end of trash compactor truck? Working hard in a SubWay Shop.... give me a break!
Why dont his parents step in ?
Child labor is a trap. Especially if you are big for your age. They send you to wherever they need a grown-up body that can't fight back. ...Quoted from Barbara Kingsolver's book Demon Copperfield, a rewrite and updating of Charles Dickens's "David Copperfield'
Tell that boy he is better than that. He mustn’t succumb to giving his valuable time to a boss who doesn’t respect his employees. There must be better conditions in the area. If he looks, he can find a better place where he is valued and treated fairly.
I think there may be poor white kids in these jobs, too. This is as much an attack on lower socioeconomic classes as race. I GUARANTEE none of the legislator’s children will be working those jobs!
It also fits with dismantling education. A 15 year old working in a meat packing plant from 3-9 pm is NOT going to study, nor do well in school.
'Around a quarter of U.S. domestic produce is picked by an army of child workers who numbered an estimated 500,000 in 2021. As young Morris Spector said in 1925, “the blood and bones of little children” are still coined into profit as modern agribusiness exploits a 1938 compromise rooted in the regional and racial inequalities of New Deal reforms. Child labor remains intrinsic to the U.S. economy and officials engage in hypocrisy when they condemn it abroad.' (WAPO, November 1, 2022) Sorry that gifted link is not available.
Kevin, I do not know the number of poor white children who may be part of our labor force. It doesn't make sense, in my opinion, to rule out the exploitation and harm being done to white as well as to migrant children and America's children who are members of minority groups.
Morning, Fern! I keep thinking that these child labor laws are also being repealed to make up for the loss of immigrants due to stricter immigration laws. Your thoughts?
Morning Lynell! Child labor laws are being repealed because kids, immigrant or not, work cheap. They also tend not to know about such pesky things as OSHA restrictions. Really, there is no need to repeal such laws, because, almost everywhere, the enforcement apparatus (mostly state food and safety inspectors) is woefully underfunded and understaffed.
Morning, Steve! I keep forgetting...enforcement is everything. So inadequate funding means inadequate staff means inadequate enforcement.
Not to mention when the media decides to make it (child labor) news, we tend to think it's a new thing we must react to when in truth it's not new.
I am not Feen, but I think you are correct. Raising retirement age is partly for the same reason.
I think retirement age is being raised because the social security fund keeps getting raided (the government 'borrowing' from itself) to service our debt. That, and the average human life span is about 40% longer than it was in the mid 1930s, when the age of 65 was chosen. 90 years ago in NH (where I live now), men lived to an average age of 58 years, women 63. Now, despite a reduction due to COVID-19, it is 79 for men and 84 for women, necessitating a much longer pay out period. It is also why SSC payments are structured to encourage people to put off retirement until age 70.
“ Put simply, a big part of the American working population is earning less than the Social Security trustees (including me) anticipated decades ago — and therefore paying less in Social Security payroll tax.
Had the pay of American workers kept up with what had been the trend decades ago — and kept up with their own increasing productivity — their Social Security payroll tax payments would have been enough to keep the program flush.
At the same time, a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is going to the top than was expected decades ago.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/an-easy-way-to-save-social-security?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Very helpful, Kathy. Thank you!
Great article. Thanks for posting. I'm hoping HRC will also highlight it so it gets more attention.
Yes, he did an excellent job explaining this issue and has suggestions to remedy the problems.
Thank you Kathy. I never made the connection between lower wages and the resulting lower payments into SSI. I’m going to listen to your Robert Reich link right away.
Thanks, Penny.
Lynell, businesses -- agriculture, garment, mining, and sports. among them, have been exploiting children workers as well as bypassing child labor laws without fail for ages. Given that and other factors, I do not know how pertinent your question is, but do know that the number of migrant children are surging and being exploited in factories and, perhaps, in other work environments in this country. I also think that the number of white children, so harmed, need to be counted and protected as well. See my comment about migrant children, which was a bit further down.
Fern, exploitation of migrant labor is alive and well in Chenango County, New York State. A week ago Wednesday I drove by a field that had a dozen immigrant workers planting by hand a couple of acres of land. These workers were both elders and children. 1 picnic table without cover and a single Port-a-potty were the accommodations I saw for these folks. My heart sank.
Wondering what ever happened to the immigrants Florida and Texas bused out of state.
Literal slavery has fallen out of public favor; so how close can business come and get away with it? It doesn't have to be that way. Enter the "R" word; business r#%ulation.
Remember, too, that these "lower costs" are baked into consumer prices and corporate profit margins. This is true across all aspects of business sectors which depend on "lower wage and younger wage" resources. Hotels, cleaning, retail, McDonalds etc, you name it. The "living wage" concept is an utter contradiction in these areas. And yes, the irony of the GOP attack on immigration is indicated in the very lowest unemployment rates in US history. Most likely immigration policy has not if ever kept up with economic needs in the country. And of course, just what kind of remuneration do immigrants get?
If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's working with or for kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom of the wage and priority scale. In spite of all the "for the children" claims. (Paraphrased from Barbara Kingsolver, in her rewrite of David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead.)
Ding ding ding! Hit the nail on the head. Child labor laws ARE being repealed because of the loss of immigrant labor. And also because children can't fight back and don't vote.
Exactly what I was trying to say, Barbara!
The most vulnerable, children, the poor, the disabled, racial and other minorities, women, the under-educated, are all commonly exploited. Predators see the most vulnerable as targets. Our most irresponsible political choices tend to damage to lives of the most vulnerable disproportionately; even climate abuse.
JL Graham, this is the major point regarding the work force especially the very young and vulnerable but also regular working people of all ages, and all areas of employment.....conditions that are safe and decent and offer opportunities for growth (that DO NOT include abuse!) Work in general should provide opportunity. No one should have to work under conditions where they fear for their lives (or souls) everyday and yet go to work to face HELL due to the poverty of their family situation.
In the end work is a good thing but there must be rules and as a nation we need to provide not just money but education to help all citizens to have opportunity and support to become successful.
So one way or another, our economy has been and continues to be based on the exploitation of workers. Slavery was the underpinning of the US economy before it was the US, and still we tolerate exploitation of poor people and people of color so we can have lower prices on our food and other "stuff". The outcry that would ensue should all farm workers be paid decent wages and have good working conditions, because of what that would add to the cost of our broccoli.
Fern, this is a much more complicated issue regarding work....jobs for young people ....it involves the whole care of our younger citizens (or immigrants or the vulnerability of any worker).....let's include involvement in sports.....Once a young person is under the care of an ambitious coach......how many hours are they at the gym or on the field or court playing to win...yes for themselves and for their team but also to win for their coach. This also goes for band. Out of all the young people who commmit to this time of practice and performance ..... how many hours of study and classwork do they miss. How much family time do they miss? During long bus rides to games , how is time used....not often for study. Then how many actually use this time and training when they attend college, or after college....yes, some...a few work as professional athletes ....a few successful, but many live with head injuries, pain or may even become disabled.....a few make a lot more money advertising (good for them!!!)
If children do not have sports and need to work or would like to contribute to family income or save for further education....there are job opportunities that are safe and good and offer continued training and teach responsibility that they can carry with them into an their future. I had lots of friends who worked during High School driving school buses or working in grocery stores or in restaurants or within the fast food industry.....all good solid young adults with good families.
The new laws aren’t for those you relate to. Your experience points to “what was”. The new laws are targeting manufacturing/ factory work. Hardly something equitable to playing baseball or the tuba, or flipping burgers at 15+.
Of course white children are exploited too. I am willing to bet though that white children will serve in vanishingly small proportions compared to brown and black children in the worst jobs. The basic point i was trying to make is that the GOP voting in these laws know very well that it will be children of migrants risking life and limb for the most part. These laws are another facet of their racist agenda.
Migrant children have been so exploited for years as have American children. It is actually a very old story. Child labor laws have not been enforced. Of course, we must fight against these laws being enacted, but they won't make much difference if they are passed. The fight is to strengthen child labor laws; they need improvement and ENFORCEMENT.
Woah 🤯 I did not know!
Someone should be filming those children working in slaughterhouses. We know it is going on, but seeing is believing. The adults too, in those horrible settings, are also abused to work long hours for low pay and no health insurance or family leave. The repugnants must be stopped, in all places and nooks and crannies. Otherwise, we will continue this current rapid slide into hell.....thank god for you, Heather! Your hard work is educating thousands and maybe millions of people. Keep going!
NBC has been on it:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-dhs-investigating-human-trafficking-children-slaughterhouses-rcna66081
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/biden-administration-crack-child-labor-rcna72512
Admittedly, one of the "kids" featured in their report was subsequently found to not be a minor (NBC retracted the report), the other facts in the reports remain.
"Free Lunch" to white men is the foundation of America!
A fundamental right!!
Now, free lunch to anyone else? Well, that is a waste of tax dollars.
Just ask any Republican in Congress on welfare from, say, a billionaire donor.
'Life Expectancy in the U.S. Dropped for the Second Year in …'
'Life expectancy at birth in the United States declined nearly a year from 2020 to 2021, according to new provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That decline – 77.0 to 76.1 years – took U.S. life expectancy at birth to its lowest level since 1996. The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923.'
'The data are featured in a new report, “Provisional Life Expectancy Estimates for 2021.” The report shows non-Hispanic American Indian-Alaskan Native people (AIAN) had the biggest drop in life expectancy in 2021 – 1.9 years. AIAN people had a life expectancy at birth of 65.2 years in 2021 – equal to the life expectancy of the total U.S. population in 1944. AIAN life expectancy has declined 6.6 years from 2019 to 2021.'
'Non-Hispanic white people in the United States had the second biggest decline in life expectancy in 2021 – one full year from 77.4 in 2020 to 76.4 in 2021. Non-Hispanic Black people had the third biggest decline, a 0.7 year drop from 71.5 years in 2020 to 70.8 in 2021. Life expectancy at birth in 2021 was the lowest for both groups since 1995. After a large (4.0 year) drop in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people in the U.S. had a slight decline in 2021 of 0.2 years to 77.6 years. Life expectancy for non-Hispanic Asian people also dropped slightly in 2021 – 0.1 years – to 83.5 years, the highest life expectancy of any race/ethnic group included in this analysis.'
Other findings documented in the report:
'Life expectancy at birth for women in the United States dropped 0.8 years from 79.9 years in 2020 to 79.1 in 2021, while life expectancy for men dropped one full year, from 74.2 years in 2020 to 73.2 in 2021. The report shows the disparity in life expectancy between men and women grew in 2021 from 5.7 years in 2020 to 5.9 years in 2021. From 2000 to 2010, this disparity had narrowed to 4.8 years, but gradually increased from 2010 to 2019 and is now the largest gap since 1996.' (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) See link below.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm
'Life expectancy for American Indian and Alaska Native populations fell more than other ethnic groups; at 65.2 years, the latest life expectancy estimates for these groups are similar to that of the US population in 1944.'
'Life expectancy for white Americans (76.4 years) is longer than that of Black Americans (70.8 years); until this most recent report, this gap had been narrowing.'
'For Asian Americans, life expectancy (83.5 years) remains the longest among ethnic groups for which data is collected. Hispanic Americans had the next longest life expectancy, at 77.7 years.'
'For women and men, life expectancy of 79.1 years and 73.2 years reflects a long-apparent, significant gap.' (Harvard University) See link below.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835#:~:text=Life%20expectancy%20for%20white%20Americans,for%20which%20data%20is%20collected.
Fern,
Excellent data. All I can say is "Exactly!".
Exactly, some folks can't resist taking up space, when they have nothing to offer.
Excellent data Fern! Thank you for amassing it all. I find myself imagining Republicans touting these reductions in life expectancy as their solution to the climate change crisis by reducing the population burden on this part of the earth...
John, I wonder how many of those white men are 'men of despair'. How many are dying from alcohol, drugs, depression and anger... anti-government because they believe themselves to have been abandoned by government, perhaps, many of them were abandoned as they were overrun by the technology revolution with little government support? I cannot neglect mentioning racism, along with the belief that the Democratic Party favored Blacks over them. It was common perception, not only for racists. How many are MAGAs? How responsible is America for MAGA, which Trump knew how to name, use, organize and capitalize. Ah, MAGA, his malign genius for branding and herding human beings.
Fern, I have similar suspicions, however, I'd go one step further and speculate many, if not most, felt betrayed by their mothers. They just didn't get enough and hence all kinds of legislation to deny any power and control and punish all them women folk!
I'm not going there, with one exception, in that you did have me envisioning 'mother's milk'. That's all you're getting from me, dear John. Cheers!
And uncontrolled capitalism...
If we believe in " government of the people, by the people, for the people", then the people get to make the rules, no? For the conduct of commerce or whatever.
Look.., We've got the rules. Just look at the gyrations necessary to haul Dooshbag Trump into the Manhattan courtroom. Any other piece of s---T would have settled it out of court. Same for businesses that abuse workers.... they just settle it out of court.... and keep on keeping on. Don't hand me all this wining about child labor laws fer crissakes. Some freaking libtard dildo writes up a law which ends up so that a kid in a farm family can't even sweep out a horse stall. THIS is what makes a hit on 'talk radio'... THIS is what makes it so hard for a decent politician to get elected. Yes..!! Why? Cuz if he/she/they try to stand up, they get accused of supporting some dumb law which puts a farm, family father in jail for child abuse. Talk radio loves you guys. Big money supports the lawyers who defend 'the business'es that are dead-cold guilty. Trying to craft some "labor law" is an effort in futility. The simple answer is simple... NO out of court settlement - Jail time. How many of you have actually sat your butts down and wrote some rule/statute, whatever? Was it enforceable? Bigger yet, was it enforced? By the way, I didn't see any 'black chillins' in Hine's collection. Juss sayin.
.....equals fascism.
As I have repeatedly said: all white people are racist in that we have no conception of what it's like to live in fear EVERY time we leave the house. The NRA's lobbyists and less restrictive gun laws are making fear a bigger issue. Perhaps it will make us understand our colored fellows better.
William, men cannot understand or comprehend the fear that women have of being raped by either stranger or intimate partner (the latter being far, far more common). Queer folk have the same fears.
Agree. Everything wrong in our country stems from racism. Slavery never ended, it just took on new forms - prisons, gerrymandering, voting suppression, buying the courts, and now child labor (who won’t be little white kids from the suburbs).
Don’t forget poor white kids who come from families who are often pawns in the divide & conquer strategy used by 21st century confederates.
Authoritarianism spares no one in the end. Republicans know full well that ending public education will result in thousands of children dropping out of school. Some due to the burdens placed on already stressed out families with little to no resources to get their children to school miles away to their school of choice. There will be kids whose education comes to a screeching halt because their parents don't know any better or how to navigate these new demands. As if parenting wasn't already hard enough, imagine kids whose parents are absent, in jail, or on drugs and alcohol.
The GOP thinks it can replace migrant workers with children and people they've deemed deserving of such a fate. Poorly run privatized children's homes will supply the workers. Private prisons too.
It's really quite stunning how Republicans believe they can achieve a libertarian utopia and get the results they desire without bringing any harm to themselves as well. Never in history has authoritarianism ever worked out for anyone. Business leaders will eventually see the error of their ways and turn against their captors, but only after great harm to the country has been committed.
GOP Gospel: Maximize Human Suffering. If God won't bring about the Apocalypse RIGHT NOW, when they want it, they'll do it themselves.
Everything, keep your foot on the necks of the “other.”
Sick joke - the GOP elephant paying young workers PEANUTS...Whoa...
Please check out Lewis Hines' child labor photos from the late 19th and early 20th century...What's old is forever new...
Agree. Everything wrong in our country stems from racism. Slavery never ended, it just continued into different forms: prisons, gerrymandering, voter suppression (in many forms), and now back to child labor which won’t affect the white suburban kids.
It's really quite awful. I hope that in the future we can change that!
Yes, it always goes back to the “R”(racism) card doesn’t it?We continue to move backwards unfortunately.Smh.
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.
Agree 1000%, Sabrina. And things like "Republicans Pass Default on America Act" or "MAGA Majority on Record: Yes to Extreme, Harmful Cuts Against Average Americans to Protect Billionaire Tax Breaks."
Here's my vote for a song: Sly and the Family Stone "I am Every Day People." The lyrics, to my mind, speak to where we are as a country in 2023. "Different strokes for different folks." "I am no better and neither are you." And it goes on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JvkaUvB-ec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nczKHDCyhNo
Fortunately, governments are unable to control all students’ experiences. Yesterday I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The exuberant groups of middle and high school students became quiet as they entered the galleries. Many took pictures. As I left one especially moving gallery, the young girl in front of me looked at her friend (both White) and said, “You know they’re not allowed to teach any of this in school any more.” I would imagine that all those young people left the museum with new understandings.
I hope they're going to the Holocaust Museum, too.
So glad you got to visit, and so glad to hear the student's words. That is a balm.
I’d wish that you were being sarcastic because the philosophies tend to change more lives than the facts of specialized jobs. For example, I still know that 1453 was the fall of Constantinople and what good does that do? Read and discuss To Kill a Mocking Bird, Brave New world,
The Old Man And the sea etc
I was assigned those three books, and others, when in 7th and 8th grade.
Same, Derek. Although it might have been 9th grade for TKaMB (although I had read it by then; one of my Mom's favorites.)
From 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas:
"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. "
“student’s fixed beliefs” like those instilled by their entrenched mindless repug parents.
in other word, they oppose education -- especially of it's likely to be effective.
Oh, that explains a lot... and all this time, I still had hope for my friends in Austin.
PUKE
Oh, good grief! Gods forbid we should actually teach our kids information!
I think that we make micro and macro decisions about veracity and value on an ongoing basis, so like having reliable, working instruments in the cockpit of an aircraft, we are wise to teach ourselves, each other, and posterity to approach the always incoming future with our best educated guesses (which is as good as it gets). Yes, we expect a well engineered bridge not to fall, but even formal science is ultimately about probability, not certainty. I prove to myself on an ongoing that I have a robust capacity for folly, but suspect that the beginning of wisdom is sensing the impact of subtle and numerous human and individual limitations. I think that keen awareness of our ginormous capacity to err is at the philosophical core of the scientific method, which works around those weaknesses somewhat.
I also think that while science can organize and illuminate questions of value, it cannot in and of itself decide them. What matters is what matters to us as sentient beings; although caring about something more than our own "punyverse" (as a friend calls it) is surely a sign of emotional maturity; a step away from the real universe's trend toward disorder and decay; the fragile yet adaptive eddies in the flow of entropy that we identify as life. I kinda think of wisdom as making better than random guesses about what's really real, and out of that, what matters most.
😬😭🤬
😡😡😡
As I read the replies/ insightful comments (below) to JL’s post I wanted to write a reply to each but realized my reply to each would be the same.
The beliefs instilled by the entrenched repug parents that Leslie speaks of, the opposition to education that’s likely to be effective that John writes, and the idea that we “should actually teach our kids information!” Comment Ally wrote.
The beliefs entrenched in what? An education that’s likely to be effective, but effective toward what end? Teach our kids information, but what information?
My reply to each was a constant:
As long as the beliefs instilled, the information taught, the education is effectively limited toward imparting their “Christian” extremist view of the world upon their children then everything will be just fine.
———
LeslieN
“student’s fixed beliefs” like those instilled by their entrenched mindless repug parents.
John Bruner
in other word, they oppose education -- especially of it's likely to be effective.
Ally House (Oregon)
Oh, good grief! Gods forbid we should actually teach our kids information!
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.
"Why does it seem that the Republicans are, on almost all fronts, picking the wrong choice?"
Because they are - by and large - bad people.
I usually use more words to make my point, but sometimes the simple smacks you on the face.
Will, "bad people"?
Will, let's say you went into a house of prostitution for an evening. There, you would find prostitutes, all evening. Now, some might say they are "picking the wrong choice" or are "bad people". But, no, you are just in a house of prostitution, so, you find prostitutes.
Similarly with US State and Federal Legislatures. When you walk in to a legislature in America, you are, basically, walking into a House of Prostitution where the rich pay legislators to do their bidding.
So, IF you start out knowing that American Democracy, in the form of legislators, has basically become a collection of Houses of Prostitution, then?
Legislators are not really making the wrong choices. They are making the choices that their John's are telling them to make.
Honestly, it really is that simple.
Mike S I think your analogy may be apt, however, I would extend it to suggest it could be contained within the notion that we have two basic principles competing, capitalism and socialism, both of which have value for our country as a whole. Milton Friedman may have simplified the view of Capitalists to the point of reductio ad absurdum to make it simpler for capitalists to enact their principles. It is more complex for the socialists among us who believe that an country owes its citizens protection from enemies without and within, including the enemies of poverty, hunger, illness, ignorance etc. In short the role of government is to place reasonable limits against the excesses of capitalism, a capitalism we must agree which has brought us innovation and growth but at too high a cost. Other developed countries have found tangibly more effective balances with happier populations as a result. We need SOME capitalistic drive but right now a whole lot more social responsibility.
Well, I respectfully disagree with this analogy on all levels, as I find it counterproductively reductive, as so much cynicism tends to be.
But, if I DO accept the accuracy of the analogy, you are asking me to accept that the people I am (myself reductively) referring to as bad people are merely a subset of a larger group that operates on a nihilistic program of spineless corruption.
In other words... bad people.
So, Mike S, to follow your analogy, "Honestly" as you claim it to be; the United States House of Represtatives is a 'House of Prostitution'; that's is why Nancy Pelosi was called "Madame Speaker" ?
Mike, you make a very interesting analogy with prostitutes. 🤣 🤣 🤣
Republicans are scum that only care about themselves.
For Republicans, conscience has nothing to do with it. The aim is to expand the labor supply with workers who can be paid less and who are more easily exploited. It's all about making more money faster and funneling as much of it as possible upward -- in other words, it's the push of Capital to control and maximally exploit any and every resource, including Labor, without constraint, and capture every dollar save for those required to maintain an enormous military and build the infrastructure that Capital needs to bring in its raw materials, produce its goods, and move those goods to market. The infrastructure -- seaports, airports, electrical grids, etc. -- is to be funded with tax revenue extracted from the middle and lower classes, and the profits are to flow almost entirely to Capital, unburdened by any tax obligation. To Republicans, who are the mere proxies and puppets of the ultra-rich ruling class, there is no such thing as the social contract or social obligation. Every dollar the government spends on social services, the safety net, and so on, is a dollar that they think by rights should go to them.
If you scratch the surface of the FGA, you'll see that it is funded by the usual rogue's gallery of far-right billionaire oligarchs: Koch, Mercer, Scaife, et al. Are we surprised that FGA's self-declared objective is to "deconstruct larger government regulations"?
The ideal is the permanent reimposition of the oligarchic, white-supremacist economic and social structures of the antebellum South, transposed to today. It's easy to draw a straight line from John Calhoun in 1840 or so to today's far-right and the anti-democratic, authoritarian power plays and repressions that are happening more and more, as HCR points out in today's article. Nancy MacLean lays the story out plainly in __Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America__. Read it, if you haven't already.
The other aspect is that there is no longer a firm labor pool of newly admitted non-white workers to be had. I think this is how they are trying to deal with that without coming out and saying.
Their ideal society is the "Gilded Age", where little kids worked dangerous jobs (with no safely regulations) alongside of their parents and there were no restrictions on the robber-baron impulses of the oligarchy.
I don't see how we are going to get the best kind of people into our public offices as long as there is so much money to be made. Politics is EXACTLY the kind of thing that attracts people with sociopathic tendencies, as it has both power AND money.
Follow the money.
The former "Party of Lincoln" sold out completely to sociopathic billionaires, and the "Devil" got their souls at a discount.
Republicans have souls ?????
Not lately. At least, not the ones who lie for a living.
& their EKGs look like they've been dead awhile & just too f--king stupid / stubborn to acknowledge the fact.
I don't know about EKG's, but a lie detector lie detector would melt if connected to any prominent Republican.
I can picture ole Abe rolling over in his grave when anyone gives credit for vile acts to "the party of Lincoln."
Or praises the Jan 6th Insurrection under a Confederate flag (it's way too woke to condemn the "Lost Cause" these days). Or tries every trick in the book to bypass and undermine
"government of the people, by the people, for the people".
James, if THEIR precious white, privileged children were ever forced to work in those conditions, they would be the first to shout!
What if THEIR children had to hear about unpleasant things, like slavery or racism?
Oh NO...those precious darlings might begin to develop critical thinking skills and *gasp* start looking at their parents in a slightly different light! /s/
The Rs were shocked when they saw so many White people marching for Black Lives Matter. All of their actions now (banning books etc) are to stop/limit everyone’s awareness about what really prevents we the people from coming together and challenging them. Racism and sexism especially helps them to maintain control. Obama in the White House was also a wake-up call for them. They may not like the term “woke” but their cruelty is waking people up.
The strategy of divide and conquer (divide and rule) is ancient, along with obfuscatory theater and Orwellian big lies enforced with violence.
Rev. Martin Niemöller became "woke" after the Nazi's hauled him off to a concentration camp. After rescue by the Allies, he wrote "And Then They Came For Me".
I agree with you Elizabeth
"Why does it seem that the Republicans are, on almost all fronts, picking the wrong choice?"
James, let's say you went into a house of prostitution for an evening. There, you would find prostitutes, all evening. Now, some might say they are "picking the wrong choice". But, no, you are just in a house of prostitution.
Similarly with US State and Federal Legislatures. When you walk in to a legislature in America, you are, basically, walking into a House of Prostitution where the rich pay legislators to do their bidding.
So, IF you start out knowing that American Democracy in the form of legislators has basically become a collection of Houses of Prostitution, then?
Legislators are NOT making the wrong choices. They are making the choices that the John's are telling them to make.
Honestly, it really is that simple.
Yes, I've always told my local legislators that we have the best government money can buy... they don't like to hear it, but it's the god's honest...
honest truth.
Yep.
Mike You have prompted me to send a case of Carly’s Horehound Candies to the Republican House members.
They are making consistently bad/wrong choices because they have lost sight of the principles imbedded in the Declaration of Independence about freedom and equality when they set their sights on maximizing power simply for power's sake
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
Fern: this child labor exploitation is a growing trend which will double or triple if Rs win the Senate next year and retrain their house majority even if Joe wins! Dems face very bad odds in Senate races in MT, OH, WVA and possibly even in PA, NV and others. Folks, there is a rational answer to all these legislative threats: young women and young men 18 to 25! The party pays little or no Attention to specifically registering them and then encouraging them to vote on key issues such as abortion, gun violence, climate change, voting rights, college debt, child labor, federal minimum wage, etc but each of us reading this excellent column can really do something very meaningful: please support the most effective and innovative voter registration and turnout nonpartisan tax deductible organization www.turnup.us/ run by super Harvard students running voter registration drives in up to 2,700 high schools and colleges only and exclusively in competitive congressional districts!! Please check it out tonight and tomorrow-- young women and men will save our democracy next year but we have to get them registered and voting and these terrific Harvard students are going to get it done if we help them out! www.turnup.us/
Ira, two things: first, a simple thank you ten times over for expressing faith in the possibility of young voters, and providing such an excellent resource. I am I complete agreement this is where we should be focusing a big part of our energies for both short- and long-term political gain.
However, please stop spreading the idea that "Dems face very bad odds" in the given races you list. Not only is it unhelpful and discouraging, but in this case it is categorically, objectively untrue. I remind you that literally every single incumbent Senator won last year, and our more vulnerable incumbents in '24 have all outperformed the party by large margins many times over; they are very personally popular and any unbiased analyst would consider these races toss-up at worst. Ironically, if we had simply ignored the perception of "odds" and remained on offense until the end last year, rather than just hoping to shore up losses, we would have a filibuster-proof trifecta right now, and likely already passed voting rights last month. There is no way around that. There is danger in not believing our own strength.
Well said, Will. We have to "play to win" not "play to not lose".
In my state the youth, especially those educated in our fine regents universities, flee as soon as the graduate. We are an increasingly geriatric stare with a significant brain drain problem.
This is incredibly bad. I am honestly shocked that this can happen in our country!
How ironic the right wing has no soul or conscience in abusing children, women, people of color, but focus on how they can be in power with their wealth by cheating our citizens the right to vote. God forbid we find the IRS because they might have to pay income tax. This state of affairs makes me weep for my grandchildren and our country. If this evil continues we will lose our soul. How do we sleep at night when we know we are on a precipice? Why have the next generation not become more active and work towards Justice? Maybe because they are overwhelmed with survival. I am at a loss now of how to intervene. I read this letter and am thankful for Heather highlighting the truth. I can not stand to think this is what our country is doing to our citizens who are vulnerable.
As long as we keep it in our heads and think about how to solve the problem, we always have a chance to change things. I really want my child and my grandchildren to live as well as we did, or even better!
They ARE. I’m seeing them all over the news. Do a Google search for Gen Z (or young adults) + voting.
Why has the 14th Amendment become so relatively invisible? Shame on our judicial system in particular.
What are the mechanisms to use the 14th Amendment to reverse the damage these "confederate" states have done and are doing? Is anyone in the Biden white house working on this?
Great question! Wish I knew the answer...
I hope some of the reporters ask about it.
We can ask about it ourselves. https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Until the House is majority Democratic and the Senate filibuster-proof, there will be no new legislation that addresses the issues for which the 14th amendment was added to the constitution.
Just think what 4 years of a Democratic supermajority and no filibuster could accomplish!
Professor, please expand on how the 14th has lost so much relevance in the federal judiciary? Thank you
Ira, you are the lawyer and I am not, so I defer to your knowledge, but I wrote my comment as a reflection on the final 2 paragraphs in HCR's letter this evening. What she has implied (and I agree) is that in our supposed balance between states' rights and the federal-national rights of citizenship, gerrymandering and other means of denying one person, one vote have effectively rolled back national rights of citizenship, or at least chipped away at them significantly. Ultimately, if the "game" is rigged sufficiently (as it is in some states) the will of the voters is not reflected in the legislative bodies representing them.
Ira -- Although not the subject of tonight's letter, what about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (Disqualification from Holding Office)? Not blaming the Legislative Branch for this one, but why are the co-conspirators from Jan 6th NOT being barred from holding office?? (starting with Trump himself) The "... have engaged in insurrection or rebellion..." and ought not be allowed to hold public office.
I think you meant to say "why are the co-conspirators NOT beng barred from holding office". There are over a hundred congresspeople who, by my lights, should be facing a charge of treason for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. None of them have faced any repercussions as far as I know. I think the proper action is to remove them from elected office and bar them from any position for life. Traitors all.
I recently heard, can’t remember where, the congress members are unlikely to be punished.
Why is there no "Dislike" emoticon?
Seems to me that their is strong case against them, but how many office holders have been convicted, or even charged with insurrection or rebellion? They should be.
I believe that there was (recently) one politician from a Southwestern state who was not permitted to run for office. I couldn't find the details with a quick Google search. Sorry.
It seems to me that the Constitution is being torn into meaningless fragments with the rapidly increasing devolution of power to the States. (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, of all people, signing ANYTHING into law!!!!!) Losing the majority in the House by relatively little has done nothing to check the appalling speed with which the Union is disintegrating. Who is basically pulling out the plug? the biased SCOTUS?
Yes, that she could be signing anything into law has to be one of the low points of our history.
She is the best example of the horror of the times…
I can't understand how it is possible that she can sign ALL laws?!
There is a higher authority, thank goodness! Have a look at Bryan Sean McKeown's post a little further up the thread.
I think, as was noted above, it helps to "follow the money".
No rich Democrats?
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.
Rosalind, I’ve settled in India. I married an Indian man in 1994 and when we parted in 2016 I decided to stay in India, where we had shifted for our retirement years. I miss the US and especially New York, where I am from. But I know I will have a much higher quality of life here than in my own country. I never imagined my life would unfold this way, but here it is. I am 73.
Elisabeth, I’m just a year behind you, and my home is the UWS Manhattan, which I love.
I had a fall last year that caused a frontal lobe bleed. I’m still doing occupational therapy following an emergency surgery.
If I had been in the USA my children would be paying for my treatment long after I will be gone.
I understand.
Rosalind, I grew up on 103rd Street and West End Ave! Please get well fast. Stay where you are happy and secure. Thank you for writing. We are all in this together, as our wonderful Joyce Vance says at the end of her newsletters....
I know every building along the way there! Some of my best friends still live there.
Simply awful.
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.
Ah yes, Linda: Martin Niemöller spent his first night out of a Nazi prison at the Bergkirche, where I am a pastor here in Wiesbaden. The Bergkirche was the only non-"National (read Hitler loyal) church in this entire area. This so-called poem was rather Niemöller's confession that he did not act quickly enough to be a part of the resistance. There were others: Hans Buttersack, an attorney who struggled to save the lives of the Jewish neighbors in the area. A gentle man, he left 6 children behind when he died in Dachau.
Rosalind, I will come visit you when I travel to Germany.
Well said and so sadly true
I'm very hurt for our prospects.
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?
Will, I don't agree with all your points, but do agree with some. Just an observation though about the library: I'm betting that a lot of those kids that showed up at 3:30? Parents were working and their was either no childcare or no available child care. Sometimes as a parent, you're truly stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Well, obviously for all too many folks that is true, which is why I always stuck up for the idea that the kids *should* run the place from 4-5. That is the best way we could be of service! That said... this was in an affluent area. I have real doubt many of the folks picking up thir kids in their new SUVs were working a second job later that night to pay for new shoes at Christmas. The folks who let their kids run amok while they were on the phone, then got offended if you tactfully reminded them where they were, were almost definitely were not doing so.
Either way, my point is thus: if having a school and a safe after-school place are the tiny bits of the social net that keep you afloat as you make ends meet... then show some damn appreciation. The teachers/librarians/coaches/etc. are keeping you afloat, are the ones actually taking care of your kids all day, and possess valuable skills. They aren't glorified babysitters. Say thanks, and get the heck out of the way while they do their jobs of raising your kids for you. None of this "parental choice" silliness. If you need everything surrounding your child to be to your specifications, if you really think you know better, well, there's always homeschooling. Put up or shut up. My Mom gave up a PhD, and my Dad gave up retiring until 75, to do just that. As an adult, I can't say I personally feel all the homeschooling families I knew did it for the right reasons, but you know what? At least it took commitment!
Most parents have no qualification or aptitude for being in charge of another vulnerable human being other than deciding they wanted one, and the more "choice" you give them as to what to do with those teensy people... yikes.
Will - As to your final paragraph, I agree that most (many?) folks have very little training in how to raise a knowledgeable and well-adjusted human being from cradle to semi-maturity. Basically, most of us just 'wing it.' The schools rarely teach life skills like cooking, car repair, mending garments, budgeting, how to access community services or to file a tax return (etc. etc.). Parenting is more complicated than any of these, is more labor-intensive, and always involves feedback from the "little-thems." No wonder there are so few who can pass the parenting test. (Just my thoughts ...)
Definitely a rock & hard place for some folks but, librarians have a capable skill set. Librarians were always my top selection from a jury pool.
From my limited contact with the local school system, it appears I don't live in a dystopian area where parents aren't involved in their children's education. I haven't heard the word 'woke' used in reference to much of anything here, let alone schools, except when we make jokes about local Republicans and their silliness. But that's Massachusetts for you.
James, I'm not wary about parents NOT being involved in their children's education, I'm concerned about most of those who *are* making the attempt! The vast majority of folks have no idea what is best for childhood development/education, and it really is best left up to the experts, instead of people getting all nosy every two seconds while also denying the school and teachers fair pay, because heaven forbid those property taxes go up one more cent. Simply put, the anti-intellectualism in this country is so ingrained at this point, people hold education as a profession in such low regard that they really think they can know better. At least when it comes to THEIR kids, who *obviously* are important enough to merit adjusting the whole curriculum around.
Just saying, call me quirky, but I betcha given the option that a whole lot of average Americans would prefer to send their kids off to the factory than to the school where they are exposed to those dangerous books and the suspicious people attempting to make them think. Are you going to tell them they are wrong to do so? It is, after all, their "choice" for their kids, amirite?
You are right, Will. On a lot of these fronts.
lol I “librarianed” in a poor town. We built the kids their own space. If they acted up I made them run laps around the building. After a bit the raised eyebrow did the job. Can’t imagine how that would be viewed post normalcy.
I just do NOT understand how these people are so intimidated by the idea of their children gaining critical thinking skills!! It's absolutely "Dark Ages". I am SO very glad that I live in Washington state!!!
"Kids knew not to mess with the teachers" — Yup. When I was in elementary school eons ago it was called double jeopardy: Get in trouble at school and you sure as hell got in trouble at home.
So, what's your address? We'll be visiting you... <grin>.
I am currently residing in a pineapple under the sea. Stop by anytime!
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.
They lost all sense of proportion once they started ripping babies out of their mothers arms (and as I understand it, some have still not been returned to this day).
I think they had already lost it, and that was one of the results, but yes, it is a yet unaddressed major crime against humanity, that has yet to be properly investigated, prosecuted and so far as possible, resolved. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/
Ripping children from mothers’ arms is not new. It was a regular practice for enslaved African Americans and Native Americans.
The foster care system is also a culprit. Some children end up in the system for questionable reasons. Too many of these children face abuse too.
Whitney Houston sang about “believing the children are our future-treat them well and let them lead the way..show them the beauty they possess inside”..
I think the children are our hope (although it is discouraging when young people are leaking national security info and initiating mass shootings). Let’s keep hope alive though!
We cannot go back, FDR 's Fair Labor Standards Act ( FLSA) 1938. JFK's Equal Pay Act 1963. Biden 2024.
And yet - wise and experienced little Governor Sanders née Huckabee can wipe all that out with a signature?
No; we sill still have a Supremacy Clause, but, Yes malevolent state actors can create havoc with People's lives in many states. Michigan has turned the tide.& is no longer a "contested" state. HCR's LFAA highlighting the Biden course as spoken by Sullivan outlines a governmental strategy both nationally & internationally designed to handle the severe turbulence. It may be up to the 18 to 30 year olds to save our Country. Very difficult decisions ahead.
I hope everything works out for the young ones!
Thanks. Deep breath, head up.
https://votersnotpoliticians.com/redistricting/
This is how we did it (I just signed the petition but a friend of mine researched and wrote it):
Thank you very much for the Link. Please post again and again when MI turn-around needs to retold.bsm
Thanks. Will Do!
The GOP doesn't care about children of color. If they get maimed or killed, the GOP has zero compassion.
It's what happens when malignantly warped ego convinces one that their cohort are the only people that matter; the Master Race, the only patriots, the exclusive "righteous" in the eyes of God. The thinking to motivated 9/11 or Jan 6th. A step beyond that is the solipsistic assumption that only one's self alone really matters; like Trump.
Got that right JL. The Seditionsts have now been annointed by tfg as the "6'ers", If that sticks, I will call them the "Seditionist Sixers".
Yes, his actions at the diner in New Hampshire were quite telling: he has certainly annointed them as his chosen people. Your choice of name is spot on.
Joanna, they don’t care about ANY children. How tragic is that?
Completely tragic, Elisabeth. When I hear of "master race", what comes to mind is Hitler. It's chilling. That is where the MAGA crowd is going. The GOP will cheat every which way they can in order to win. That was stated just yesterday by what's his name. What is frightening to me is that there are so many people who don't know how to think for themselves. That Trump is the idol of white Christians is beyond my comprehension.
Common sense ? What in hell is THAT ?
" Suffer the little children " -the GOP is taking that LITERALLY.
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.
Interesting observation Joseph. I also am remembering an interview with Ann Coulter who explained her (&by extension right-wing) view of prohibiting immigration: it took jobs away from Americans. Okay. I see the kernel of logic in that. Yet, the great reveal with these new dismantled child-labor laws is that it’s not so much about “keeping jobs for Americans” as it is keeping jobs at slave wages and conditions. True “market capitalism” would say that the jobs in slaughterhouses would be filled when the wages rise to the level to attract workers. They won’t raise wages. They won’t allow immigration. So now they are suffering “labor shortages”. If you cannot exploit immigrants, who is next most exploitable? Children. Especially children from poor families. They couch it in terms of “Parental Rights” which is a shape-shifting argument to mask the exploiting aspect of it.
This is disgusting. We just remembered the Triangle Shirt Factory horror in what is now Greenwich Village, where poor women, working for next-to-nothing, died when the exits from the building were locked, so said the owners, who didn't want the workers to "leave early."
You are spot on with this.
I tried to say that in response to someone earlier in the thread, but you said it much better than I!
Yes…this is an evil goal and they are doing it.
Well said Joseph.
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.
Worse than sickening. It's mortally threatening.
And morally intolerable.
😞
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.
As a former North Carolinean, I am so disappointed in this turn of events, but not surprised. Yes, higher jurisdictions need to take up the legitimacy of this legislation.
Republicans in power desperately want cheap labor for hard-to-fill jobs. Their solution? Children. You know, the ones they keep claiming to protect.
Yes, protect 'em before they're born. Then to hell with 'em.
Who needs Replicants ( Blade Runner reference ) when we have KIDS to do all the heavy lifting & dirty jobs ?
Then to the slaughterhouses with them.
They say one thing and do another - it's just awful!
Republicans don't care about anyone who isn't rich, white or at least has mostly European DNA.
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.
The Dems did fight and almost got a voting rights act passed. But no thanks to Dem Joe Manchin and Dem (at the time…now a so-called independent, really a GOP-wolf in sheep’s clothing) Kyrsten Sinema, the bill failed to pass. Biden worked very hard to show Americans why it was so important to pass it. But too many are not paying attention!
Yeah, literally 270/272 Democrats in Congress voted for the most transformative pro-democracy bill in half a century and spent a full year pushing for its passage. What were those 270 people supposed to do at that point about the other 2? Use voodoo mind control or something?
Moral of the story: you didn't have enough people to make something happen; double down and get a few more people to make it happen. Blaming the folks who DID do the right thing for your justified disappointment is less cutting off your nose to spite your face and more decapitating yourself to spite your nosehairs. Ridiculously counterproductive in the most obvious way.
Biden did not prioritize voter rights and did not fight for it.
I think we didn't have the imagination to believe the GOP would stoop this low.
I have known about Repub evil for decades, yet I am constantly shocked at the level of depravity. It’s the lead up to WW2
Indeed. You had a right to think that after all, you're all Americans. From sea to shining sea.
It's a bottomless pit or maybe a black hole.
Haven’t had a majority in both houses for 14 plus years
I don't understand why they need all this, don't they associate their future with our country?
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.
They murdered Lincoln to put Johnson in the White House. If only Lincoln had kept Hannibal Hamlin as his VP!
Indeed.
It's horrible, it's all unacceptable. We need to fight it as best we can.