Media, Politics, Uncategorized

The Republicans’ “Ideas Man” & The Junior Janitors of America

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)

97 thoughts on “The Republicans’ “Ideas Man” & The Junior Janitors of America”

  3. raff,

    That is the infrastructure they wish to build….come now…how can you have that without gifts and grafts….

    On the other side…..

    Have you noticed how much Newt looks like Mr. Potter in “It a Wonderful Life”…..as opposed to “Captain Courageous”….

  4. OS:

    “I want to know why we are spending billions to build roads in Afghanistan when we have bridges here that fall into the Mississippi river.”

    Because Bush and Obama along with most members of congress are idiots.

  5. rafflaw:

    please, I am all ears. The economy, if it is getting better, which I doubt, is getting better because people have been doing without for almost 4 years and things are starting to wear out. And households have been paying down personal debt. Also business is making the people who are working to do more at the same or less pay.

    Stimulus = more productivity for less pay and fewer people employed. Wow and I thought you were a friend of labor?

    Now maybe you are right but the amount of money which has been pumped into the economy could lead to very high inflation if the economy heats up. Gold is up almost 3 times since 2006 when it was selling for around $600 it is now over $1,700 per oz. and that sirloin steak I used to pay $2.99 a pund for is now selling for between $5 and $6/pound.

  10. How about work that actually benefits kids and their families? Community gardens for a start. They would learn the importance of paying attention to what needed done, and reap the reward of fresh veggies. Maybe having their own ‘farmers market’ where they would get extra cash. I would like to see some of that cash go into the bank for the next year’s planting.

  12. Yikes, Newt Gingrich is truly horrible! It says a lot about the repugs when they point to this toad with pride as their “ideas man!”

    Back to the future indeed, 1994 Newt suggested: “As part of a proposal to overhaul welfare, Mr. Gingrich would allow states to end payments to unmarried women under 21, and has said states could use the money to run orphanages.”

    http://www.nytimes.com./1994/12/01/us/first-lady-assails-orphanage-plan.html

    “Here was Gingrich, who sees welfare as a problem, proposing as an alternative the very institution that inspired welfare’s creation.”

    The above quote was from Dale Keiger’s article “The Rise and Demise of the American Orphanage” published in the Johns Hopkins Magazine, April 1996 issue. It is a good read and still available on the intertubes but i am experiencing link failure.

  14. Excerpt from SwM’s link to the NYTimes article illustrates the point that many of these little ones are children of the working poor:

    “Furthermore, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty — defined here as a household with income less than 50 percent of the poverty level — a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas — those in which 30 percent or more of the population is poor — nearly a third live with at least one working parent.”

  15. When I first read this story last week I thought, this is something Elaine might choose to address.

    The point I found most telling in the whole ridiculous, “who can we abuse now for profit” Republican mind set was the fact that most of these poor kids are children of the working poor. Their parents work, they just don’t earn a livable wage …even with 2 jobs.

    Elaine … here’s a story you might have read … it is one I find very disturbing … http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/opinion/virtually-educated.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

  16. Scary video Mespo. These candidates just keep trying to out crazy each other and they keep pandering to the religious right.

  17. Good work, Elaine. Here’s a little glimpse into the mind of the Gang of Six on the issue of their longed for theocracy. Start about 38:00:

  18. raff, I agree about the stimulus. Bron is correct in that the TARP was a miserable idea. The money would have been far better spent if it had gone to the stimulus. From all I have read by people that know more about economics than I, the consensus is that the stimulus was too little and almost too late. It could have used the ill-spent TARP money.

    I want to know why we are spending billions to build roads in Afghanistan when we have bridges here that fall into the Mississippi river.

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