First they came for the farm kids
The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.
Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”
“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”
The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course. […]
John Weber, 19, understands this. The Minneapolis native grew up in suburbia and learned the livestock business working summers on his relatives’ farm.
He’s now a college Agriculture major.
“I started working on my grandparent’s and uncle’s farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12,” Weber told TheDC. “I started spending full summers there when I was 13.”
“The work ethic is a huge part of it. It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life. If they do this it will prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16 year-old interested in farming than a 12 year old.”
Weber is also a small businessman. In high school, he said, he took out a loan and bought a few steers to raise for income. “Under these regulations,” he explained, “I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.” […]
[Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation] told TheDC that the new farming regulations could go into effect as early as August. She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations.
“In the last three years that division has grown 30 to 40 percent,” Boswell said. Some Farm Bureau members, she added, have had inspectors on their land checking on conditions for migrant workers, only to be cited for allowing their own children to perform chores that the Labor Department didn’t think were age-appropriate.
The government wants to clamp down on the “unfair advantage” rural kids have by learning to work hard on farms.
They should have to go and try to get jobs at McDonalds like everyone else.
NO UNFAIR ADVANTAGES. Unless you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth like Obama’s daughters.
Private school to IVY League. Those are the only types of advantages that are ok.
I’m just wondering how long it will take before the farmers realize that having several hundred acres and a backhoe can address oodles of problems.
Sounds like a plan to me, SDN.
I guess coming soon they will have to move from the fields and stock yards into the kitchens of the farmer’s homes, to make sure the little tykes meals are done up to code. Onto farmer John’s bedroom to make sure nothing unwholesome is going on there that could emotionally scar the little future farmers. And on, and on.
FOR THE CHILDREN!!!
When is enough going to be enough?
Its the amnesty full employment program… “No, your kids cannot work, but how about this newly pardoned, undocumented (we’ll get right on that – first document, a nice voter registration card! Oh, and a Democratic party palm card to guide him) worker?”
Also, bonus destruction of teaching any kind of work ethic!
Yeah, but there is an exemption for children of the farm owners.
I do question who owns Mrs. Obama’s garden and whether or not her kids are doing farm chores.
Its the amnesty full employment program…
…doing the jobs Americans are prohibited from doing.
All small farming and ranching operations are normally registered as sole proprietors or LLC’s due to insurance, regulations, tax and inheritance issues. Even “hobby” farms are registered. You can’t not be.
This is not a single attack by the administration, but a series of initiatives including proposals by the DoT to require farmers to be licensed and regulated like truck drivers in order to haul trailers, EPA dust regulations (and don’t forget 2008’s cow flatulence regulations), the USDA blocking off much of the Western United States lands for grazing and agriculture use, raids on Amish farmers producing raw milk and on and on. For a really scary picture – look into the story of the USDA’s prosecution of the Dollarhite family and many other rabbit breeders. Lives and reputations of many very good people have been destroyed.
As for the War on 4-H and FFA, this one is personal. We’re a 4-H family. It was the single best thing we did for our kids and our family. I could write for hours about the value of the 4-H. My children have served as club, county, district and state officers. Their projects are too numerous to list, but were influential in their eventual choices of colleges and careers. All of them will tell you, the skills they learned in 4-H were the single largest factor for their success in college. They knew how to plan, organize, evaluate, research solutions, manage their time, work with adults, lead their peers, give a presentation, and defend their positions.
For the record – National 4-H has been educating millions of youth since 1902. In Texas, we’ve been at it since 1908. 4-H isn’t just a program for rural youth. We have clubs and programs in every county in the United States and a number of foreign countries teaching leadership, citizenship and life skills to the next generation. While we are guided by dedicated County Extension Agents, 4-H thrives on the dedication of thousands of volunteers who give their time and energies to guiding and mentoring youth at the local level.
4-H goes far beyond livestock. Our youth are involved in projects such as Nutritional Science, Rocketry, Robotics, Textiles, Communications, Legislative Education, Consumer Education, and so much more. Our Shooting Sports members nationwide have a significant representation in the US Olympic Development programs. Everyone is welcome in 4-H. Youth involved in 4-H are significantly more likely to attend college and earn advance degrees.
And most important – 4-H is a family oriented organization. Our families work together to educate and support each others children. We travel to events together, our kids grow up together and everyone is involved. Our kids learn the value of offering their hand to their neighbor, not because it’s required of them, but because it’s someone who is important in their life and they care about them.
She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations. “In the last three years that division has grown 30 to 40 percent,” Boswell said.
With a bit of luck, we’ll have 100 new Congresscritters to take care of that little management decision. I’m thinking the Labor Department should have enough money and staff to run checks on the household staffs of Congress and the Executive, and not one dime more.
I mean — is anybody really going to miss those lame posters in the break room?
This is insane rule making. I thought they had backed down, but apparently they want to double down on stupid in an election year. Okay.
As for the War on 4-H and FFA, this one is personal.
You bet your ass it’s personal! Do you know how hard it is to put together a nationwide army of Obama Youth, when there are alternative programs already in place? I mean, what chance would Obama’s Occupiers have against the FFA, 4-H, and the Scouts?
Now, why don’t you be good, sensible little citizens and let USDA take over your programs, so that they can make sure your children are no longer infected with these nasty habits of self-reliance, independence, hard work, and responsibility? That’s a good little citizen!
I guess I should not be surprised by the Department of Labor, given the stated philosophy of the EPA…
I think the key element they wanted here is the replacement of the independent training training programs with the federal program. Basically another attack on an outside center of authority. Build some more empire in staffing the training, get the names of the kids, find out their loyalties, massage their beliefs as much as possible and leach another piece of independence out of the citizenry.
The Daily Caller just doesn’t have a lot of credibility in these matters I don’t think. I wonder what the actual for real regulations are going to do.
here is a rebuttal from dirty socialist Labor cooze Hilda Solis
so the truth is probably in between somewheres – looks like the Labor cooze doesn’t seem to deny that the failshit government is going to take over the 4H/FFA “safety training and certification” programs, so that’s probably in the cards for sure
what’s so effing dangerous about a livestock auction?
Oh the farmer and the cowhand should be friends
One man likes to push a plough
the other likes to chase a cow
But that’s no reason why they caint be friends
sing it again and I’ll do the hand motions!
[…] (Via Darleen) […]
I do question who owns Mrs. Obama’s garden and whether or not her kids are doing farm chores.
The Potemkin Garden, Joan? The
slaveser, staff, tend to the “garden” which must be like Jacks’ magic beans since they were already harvesting produce from it for a phot op a few weeks ago. I’m in a considerably warmer zone than DC, and I just planted my garden last week.Further photo documentation from years past, show that garden is amazingly prolific, as well. It is passing small and produces severl metric tons of produce of fantastic variety. All grown in toxic soil!
What a crock.
Algae!
so the truth is probably in between somewheres
Can I just tell you how adorable it is that you’ve taken it upon yourself to act as an arbiter of truth? ‘Cuz it’s really fucking adorable.
The truth is that for as much as USDA and Labor would like to pretend that this is No Big Deal, it’s still a big power grab that is going to disrupt centuries of tradition in agriculture. Exemptions offered to kids working on their parents’ farms are not going to be extended to include nephews or grandkids. Definitions of “dangerous” and “non-dangerous” are arbitrary and subject to change at Hilda’s whim, as are definitions of “employer/employee relationship.” It’s pretty damn foreseeable that Hilda’s Army will decide that kids who sell the livestock they’ve raised for 4-H are engaged in “business activities,” which will have to be regulated out of existence FOR THE CHILDREN!
Plus, it’s just stupid and insulting that a bunch of unaccountable pencil-pushers in Washington think they need to screw with the lives of rural teens who are probably more responsible and capable than the bureaucrats who would be their overlords.
2nd amendment mother; great post on 4-H and FFA.
These are great programs. A slice of Americana and long time bastions of Americanism.
Which is why they must be destroyed.
Mr. Squid you can greedily slup up everything the Daily Caller ejaculates if you want me I think they’re outrage-du-jour traffic whores what you have to parse carefully
That last paragraph, Squid. What do pencil pushers in D.C. know about farming, and how can they presume to know what’s best in the matter compared to people who’s families have been farming for hundreds of years?
At least, in a sane world.
I’m not saying I believe everything the Daily Caller writes, happyfeet. I’m saying that I find them more trustworthy than I find you.
Reflect on that for a while, why don’t you?
I have to go to work but I can think about it in the car
I’m not promising any epiphanies but you never know
Where I grew up you often got dragooned into working if you were just a friend over visiting. If work needed doing, you pitched in, you got fed and you were secretly jazzed that they thought you were useful. Like men are.
Why am I seeing a picture in my head of thousands of farm kids on tractors on Pennsylvania Ave?
Because the alternative is thousands of federal inspectors in black SUVs in farm driveways?
With a bit of luck, we’ll have 100 new Congresscritters to take care of that little management decision.
Don’t hold your breath. This is again the gallop of my hobbyhorse, bureaucracy. You can’t vote Hilda Solis out of office, only her boss. But worse, you’ll never get a crowbar to dislodge the thousands of bureaucrats beneath her. Even if you get “our team” in Congress you get spittle in return. Case in point: Fred Upton. The Rethuglican who years ago under Bush gave us the “energy regulations” that in effect ban all sorts of lightbulbs has been rewarded with a chairmanship on Energy, even during the terrorist Visigoth reign of the awful, extremist Tea Party Congress of 2010. Those regulations are still in place, and a measure in 2011 that would have repealed some of it failed:
In 2011, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and 14 other Republicans joined to introduce the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act or BULB Act (H.R. 91), which would have repealed Subtitle B of Title III of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Barton was opposed to regulation, while Rep. Michael Burgess pointed to jobs purportedly lost to China and voiced a fear of mercury problems resulting from CFL use.[44] On July 12, 2011, H.R. 2417 failed to pass by the required two-thirds[clarification needed] majority in the U.S. House.[45]
Nota bene, the proud Republican House full of committed fresh conservatives and led by tough-guy John Boehner failed to pass this bill. We will never see a two-thirds majority to do even the simplest of things like this.
Meanwhile, Fred Upton enjoys being:
Chairman, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Ex Officio, Subcommittee on Health
Wasn’t bureaucracy [CRACY!] a French invention? Yeah, thought so.
The French are outstanding at the art of turning spoilage into an art. This bears mixed results.
Spoiled grapes become wine. Spoiled milk becomes cheese. Spoiled politics become cancerous state bureaucracy.
I am half French. My German half laughs at me and treats me like a handmaiden.
The Frogs may have made some improvements on such as wine and cheese, though these are nearly invariably due to accidental ecological circumstances (soil, bacterial occurrence, native yeasts, etc.) outside their agency, with an additional modicum of sensible husbandry, but they’re hardly to be credited with the invention of these two great gustatory boons to humankind, both having arisen deep back in the shrouded time before writing itself had been invented.
Enthusiasts such as Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte and their brethren, on the other hand, I believe, should have to eat responsibility for progressive “scientific” or sociological political management in the altogether.
Come now, sdferr. You know you’d eat dinner with Votaire or Descartes if they invited you. C’est ca?
Voltaire, probably (but he was hardly in camp with these morons). Descartes, probably not, for a couple of reasons. First, I resent that he set Western philosophy off on an unnecessary three to four hundred year wild-snipe chase. Second, he was too good with the rapier and too apt and willing to use it.
I love Voltaire. What a sarcastic bastard and a gossip who knew everyone and threw fabulous parties. His letters are hoot.
I figured Descartes would be great to talk to about mathematics. Other than that, he was a sulky killjoy.
I don’t know why…you know they got chores to do!
We will never see a two-thirds majority to do even the simplest of things like this.
Well, shit. That’s four years of my life, wasted. Stupid of me to even try to rescue my descendents’ fate.
I don’t suppose any of you fellas know where I can go to get fitted for my shackles? I’d prefer to get them fitted now, before the big rush. I’d hate to settle for the one-size-fits-none model.
Squid, I see a niche market: Squid Brand™ Lock picks and bolt cutters.
That would mean fighting back, leigh, which is futile. I think I’ll go with SquidCo(R) lotions and balms, instead. Because Slavery Shouldn’t Chafe!(tm)
You aren’t Spartacus, eh?
If things keep going the way they are, I’m not going to be dying in bed in my old age.
My plan is still to die at the age of 137, shot by a jealous husband.
“What’re y’all doin’ on my land?”
“Hello, sir. We’re from the Department of Labor…”
“Ain’t got ho hired hands. Git.”
“It’s actually about your children, sir…”
“Did y’all happen to see the ‘no trespassing’ signs back there at the gate?”
“…What? Oh, um, well, yes we did…”
“Good.” (Cracks open shotgun, loads shells)
“Um, what are you…”
“I said GIT!!”
Paul Ryan’s address on the Budget at Georgetown U. today (video). Sorry, but I haven’t been able to lay my hands on the written speech, though some of the highlights are hit in his article published yesterday in The Catholic Register.
So now learning work ethic is illegal.
“Mark Steyn to the white courtesy phone, please.”
Who knew we’d live to see the return of Revenuers?
Obama’s Brain Trust: Hey!…I have an idea. Let’s criminalize all the families that teach pride in hard work, responsibility & strive to keep up the whole World’s bread basket.
Ya know, For The Children™
Psssst…I bet we can steal their mineral rights too.
Better idea: we ring the Beltway with “No Trespassing” signs (facing inward). Then when any of them approach, we rack the shotguns. I’ll take first watch.
RI Red,
Ted Nugent is on line 2. He says it’s urgent.
The name? I don’t know. The thing itself goes back to when and probably mutually responsible for the invention of writing. Can’t have one without the other.
Personally I blame Hammurabi’s secretary, Himuralibima.
Labor Department Backtracks on Proposed Regulations for Kids on Farms
Lamont, I’m awaiting my Secret Service interview. Need to get some tips on foreign hookers. Funny how spellcheck turned that into “hooters”. Ok, whatever.
Well yeah, but there might be some excitement between now and then.
what’s so effing dangerous about a livestock auction?
by happyfeet on Apr 26, 2012 at 8:32 am
I grew up cattle ranching ( purebred stock), I didn’t work any auctions but I did work and exhibit at cattle shows. By 17 I hat broken every rib, some twice, cracked my sternum from top to bottom and broke a collarbone. Auctions are probably a little more dangerous than purebred shows, but when you’re dealing with animals that weigh over half a ton you can get hurt.
Is this going to put an end to kids’ barrel racing? I know some moms who are going to rain down the wrath of Mom on the O Administration.
Damn ccs, you sound cattle clumsy! I know bull riders what ain’t broke that many bones.
Oh, so that’s what that was when the Obama Administration jammed ObamaCare down the throat of the majority protest against the bill! Listening! And responding! Who knew?
i got charged by a cow once it taught me Respect
Well yeah, but there might be some excitement between now and then.
I’m counting on the ladies finding my battle scars tres sesky.
Well 18 at one time was when a cow calved at a show, with registered animals you tattoo the ears to make it permanently identifiable. The calf let out a ‘scream’ when the needles hit. I was holding the cows lead, she caught me under the ass and bounced me off the top of a fence rail. Most of them were just wrong place wrong time. Sometimes you just have to put yourself in dangerous places.
It was only 3 seperate incidents to do all that damage.
Heh, ccs; like you said, when dealing with animals that weigh over half a ton….
Those who doubt it, I refer to any and all tape of the late, great “Bodacious”.
I’ts funny – Obama was the poster child for the new America, cleaned up, no longer treading the dangerous line towards fascism, and 4 years later all we see is unlawful detention, soldiers still all over the world, war after war, and now an increased infringement on our liberties. And given all this hoopla, all these crimes, does anyone vote Ron Paul? No…