Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
A lot of interesting news stories have broken since I last posted at the Turley Blawg nearly a month ago. I’ve kept a running list of them. The story I decided to post about today is one that I placed under the heading “Asinine and Inane Ideas of the 2012 Presidential Candidates.” Now, truth be told, I had a plethora of stories from which to choose…so it wasn’t
easy. I finally selected one about the new Republican frontrunner, a man who has worn many hats—former professor, author, ethically challenged Speaker of the House, serial adulterer, historian, covert lobbyist, king of bling—the one and only Newt Gingrich!
I have often heard talking heads on television refer to Newt Gingrich as the “Ideas Man” and the “intellectual” of the Republican Party. It may be true that Newt has a lot of ideas—but I have to question whether the talking heads consider all of his ideas to be good ideas. I admit that even I was surprised when I heard Newt’s recent pronouncement that child labor laws are stupid when he spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. I was truly taken aback when he suggested that school janitors should be fired and that poor kids should clean the schools that they attended.
Newt’s Poor Kids Can Clean Concept
Newt Gingrich:
“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
“You’re going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America.”
That’s one radical proposal for sure. And one for which the “Ideas Man” received quite a bit of criticism. Newt bowed “to concerns that janitorial work is dangerous.” He then decided he needed to clarify his proposal and provided more specifics. He said poor kids could mop floors and clean bathrooms after school. He also suggested that they could sit in a clerical office greeting people.
I’m not sure where Newt thinks school systems will find money in their strained budgets to pay pupils to work after school hours. Has he thought about the valuable time school janitors and secretaries would have to spend training the children? And wouldn’t adults at the schools have to supervise the child workers?
I wonder what the little clerical school greeters might say to visitors. “Hi, my name’s Tommy. I’m poor and I got this job because I want to earn honest money and develop good work habits. I don’t want to grow up to be a lazy lump like my parents. Who are you?”
Do you think parents would be happy to learn that the bathrooms at the schools their children attend were being cleaned and disinfected by some of their fellow classmates?
Is this the kind of radical proposal that could actually change the face of poverty in America? Does putting poor children to work cleaning bathrooms and greeting visitors at their schools sound like a good idea to you? Is Newt Gingrich really an “original or rigorous thinker?” David Boaz of the Cato Institute doesn’t think Newt merits that description “because he doesn’t drill down on ideas, integrate them into a larger philosophy or bat them around with peers.” Boaz said: “He strikes me as a guy who thinks of lots of ideas and never runs them through a sanity test before spilling them on a stage. I think he has had a tendency to just have idle thoughts occur to him as he’s reading the newspaper and then announce them without even running it by a colleague.”
According to an article in Politico, a number of conservatives think that Gingrich “is more idea impresario than idea generator, a bright and savvy politician who uses a facade of deep intellectualism effectively — but not authentically.”
Roderick Hills Jr., a constitutional law professor at New York University who’s active in the Federalist Society, said of Newt: “Nobody thinks of Gingrich as a wonky type. Nobody thinks of him as someone who has serious positions, white papers, policies on a wide array of issues coming from deep knowledge and experience. I don’t think of him that way, and I don’t know of any professor who thinks of him that way.”
The Republicans have been claiming that the Democrats are guilty of class warfare when they propose that people who earn $1 million dollars or more a year can afford to pay higher taxes. Do they think Newt is guilty of class warfare when he proposes that poor kids should mop floors and clean school bathrooms?
Newt’s Poem to Poor Kids
Go fetch a bucket
And grab a mop.
Now get to work.
Clean up that slop.
Scrub the bathrooms
From stem to stern.
Don’t be a slug.
It’s time to earn
Your living, kid.
You’re poor. Boohoo!
I have no pity
For kids like you.
SOURCES
Newt Gingrich, Pseudo-Intellectual Free-Trade Kool-Aid Drinker (Huffington Post)
Newt Gingrich: Child Labor Laws Are ‘Stupid’ (Huffington Post)
Newt Gingrich is an Idea Man (Quality of Ideas Not Guaranteed) (Huffington Post)
Is Newt Gingrich as smart as he thinks? (Politico)
Gingrich Doubles Down On Child Labor: Poor Kids Should ‘Clean The Bathroom’ (ThinkProgress)
Newt Gingrich says poor kids have no work habits, suggest janitorial work (Global Post)
Newt Gingrich’s child labor plan cleans up (The Guardian)
OS:
I dont know about Newt but Bush and his step son Obama have already done that.
First TARP and then Stimulus and now the EU loan, it is not 1929 all over again, more like around 1933-34.
I hope you enjoy the fruits of centralized planning. The pickens on that tree are always slim and unsuitable for consumption.
OS,
Back to the Future.
Elaine, looks like ol’ Newt, Bron and other like minded folks are ready to charge headlong into 1929, ready or not.
Newt Gingrich and Child Labor
http://thenevadaview.com/2912/newt-gingrich-and-child-labor/
Excerpt:
Gingrich seeks to return us to the Victorian era which was notorious for employing young children in factories and mines and as chimney sweeps. I suppose it would teach kids how to work—schooling is cast to the back burner. It might even help Gingrich earn the “job creator” moniker.
Unionized janitors are just too expensive. Kids could be used to work at a far lesser hourly wage. Probably could hire 3-4 kids at the cost of a single unionized adult janitor. That would increase jobs wouldn’t it?
It would be a start. Since Gingrich specified these kids are entrapped in the “poorest neighborhoods,” he must be excluding the kids from working that live in privileged neighborhoods. Schools in privileged neighborhoods apparently don’t employ unionized janitors. No point in firing janitors that aren’t unionized nor worry about rich kids needing to learn how to work.
Just think, the Gingrich plan could re-institute a movement back to the days when kids worked in cotton-mills, coal mines, sweatshops or as domestic servants. It might even speed up the current trend of dividing the American population into two groups—those that have and those that don’t. I read in a local newspaper last week that Nye County’s population has 18.7% below the federal poverty level according to the 2010 Census. That must be welcome news to the Nye County School District—plenty of kids to choose from to replace their unionized janitors.
All one has to do is elect Newt Gingrich President of the United States and we’re on our way to toward erasing poverty—saved by our kids. Don’t laugh at that—Gingrich is leading the GOP’s Presidential candidates so he must have a lot of support in the Republican Party—anything to beat President Obama in 2012.
Since the military draft has been replaced with a volunteer system, those underprivileged kids can always opt to join up when their janitorial jobs peter out. The privileged class no longer has to worry that their kids will get drafted.
Think that the idea of using child labor is beyond achievement. Think again. In 1916, the National Child Labor Committee and the National Consumers League successfully pressured the US Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Act, the first federal child labor law. However, the US Supreme Court struck down the law two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), declaring that the law violated a child’s right to contract his or her own labor. In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law. This measure was blocked, and the bill was eventually dropped.
It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.
AY:
Mexico doesnt have real good economy, arent they more on the centralized control side of the line?
By the way, I dont have a disability pension. But how is that trust fund working for you?
rafflaw:
allowing a kid to work who wants is not the same as letting 10 year olds work on the factory floor.
Before I was 16 I had to have my mother sign a card saying I could work.
bobby:
you know how those evangelicals are.
The republican base has returned to the ultimate uncaring candidate but at least he debates well unlike Perry. The good news unless you are one of the posters that truly hates Obama is that he will probably lose. The bad news is that if Europe fails to resolve its crisis and a worldwide depression results we will all be stuck with him.
Good story, nice poem.. but I think you missed a golden opportunity..
Newt’s Poem for Rich Kids
You don’t have to work, you’re rich
the Parents of the poor kids
will clean the pi$$ stains
you leave upon the walls.
and pickup the trash
you drop along the halls.
Yea, it doesn’t rhyme.. & that’s why you shouldn’t leave this job to me!
>so the poor will not be prayed (sic) upon by unscrupulous business owners.
I loves Freudian slips.. ‘prayed’ upon, oh, those religious folks are _so_ nice.. vs ‘Preyed’ upon.. which is what they are _actually_ doing..
enjoy!
Ok, David Boaz’s excerpted comments notwithstanding, the core issue here is one of choice. Both forcing children to work or prohibiting them from working when they want to, is bad.
If children, for the sake of argument 14 yo and up, WANT to greet people, or work as maintenance help, then why shouldn’t they be permitted?
I agree with Boaz, that Gingrich just throws these maverick ideas out there on stage, w/o having a good philosophical infrastructure to support them.
What he proposes is essentially a libertarian idea, but since he is not a libertarian, nor subscribes to any significant interdependent libertarian set of ideas, his proposal is most likely incomplete and by implication shocking to the conscience.
Where the hell are you going to get a grant to put kids to work? There isn’t enough money around for good ideas, yet alone this loser. It was said earlier that this is an attack on child labor laws, period!
Bron,
I think not in your lifetime….unless you are 18 or 19 now….but in all practicality….look at the Mexican Child Labor Laws…..Educate yourself…
Illegal child labor in Mexico puts food on tables of Americans
300,000 kids toil in fields illegally, U.N. says
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/05/09/20080509childlabor0509.html
Just don’t confuse yourself with the facts….It is what you consume….btw…if I recall….we do have something called NAFTA that is supposed to prohibit this type of activities…oh…well…a profit is to be made….even if on the backs of children…
Do you know in some Asian counties today…if a parent dies owing money…then the children can be forced to work and pay that money back…as you sit with your disability pension….think about that….
rafflaw:
“A private grant to put kids to work?! Really?”
what is wrong with that? That way you give the janitors a little help and dont put them out of a job plus the kids do something positive for the community and the evil old rich guy feels good about his wasted life chasing filthy lucre.
Win win all around.
Mike:
I dont think you are going to have children working in factories at 10,12,13,14,15,16 years of age.
If that is the impetus behind the law, then I would be against it. But I see nothing wrong with children working at 12 or 13 washing dishes or making pizzas or sweeping floors or scooping ice cream a few hours a day a couple of days a week. If they want to and if their parents let them.
Isnt that the bottom line? If they want to and if their parents let them?
What are you really worried about? There is still a social safety net so the poor will not be prayed upon by unscrupulous business owners.
The Nastiness of Newt
The Nation, 11/30/11
http://www.thenation.com/article/164888/nastiness-newt
Excerpt:
Even in a party where shamelessness is now considered a virtue, it’s unsettling that a man who collected $30,000 a month for an hour of counsel to Freddie Mac administrators would attack school janitors, who according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics earn a mean wage of $13.74 an hour, or $28,570 a year. In response to Gingrich, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said, “The people you want to fire and replace with kids? A lot of them are parents. That job puts a roof over kids’ heads, food on the table, and provides them with healthcare and the chance to get an education. That job is the only thing between a kid and poverty.” But Gingrich has never been bothered by the human costs of right-wing social experimentation. So why start, now that the Grand Old Party seems to be longing for a return to the Gilded Age? Gingrich is betting there’s no such thing as going too far to the right in this race. He may be right; just days after he championed child labor, he secured the endorsement of New Hampshire’s Union Leader, a rigid-right newspaper determined to stop Romney.
Elaine,
That “poem of Newt” is classic.
Ditto on that Mike….
I agree completely with Mike’s last comment. Well said, sir.
Mike,
This is the real class warfare.
Bron,
This isn’t about kids working in schools to cut down on janitorial costs, this is about repeal of child labor laws. This goes back to Dickensian London and ten year old chimney sweeps. This is China and all the 3rd World countries. Hire kids to work on assembly lines for 3 buck$ an hour, why pay an adult $10? Is this really the America you want? Also please don’t hand me bullshit about how good work is for kids. Both my daughters started working part-time jobs at 16, to earn extra money. My wife and I didn’t really encourage this and we gave them good allowances to boot. There is a big difference between wanting to work and being forced to as a support for your family. When you do it when you don’t have to if the boss mistreats you, there is the option to quit. Otherwise, especially if you are a child workplace abuse becomes the norm. Is this really the America you want?