Stop working your kids to death! (Mena Forum)

The government doesn't like it. :smoke:
This would not have set well at all when I was growing up because ALL of my family worked constantly as soon as we were able to walk, practically. We worked in orchards, vineyards, hop fields etc. and if it wasn't for our contribution to the family we probably would have starved at times and we did not need government to tell us that we needed them.

QUOTE

Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores
By Patrick Richardson 1:31 AM 04/25/2012
ADVERTISEMENT

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

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.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.

“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.

“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field — literally on a tractor — when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis’s regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.

“What would be more of a blow,” he said, “is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.”

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average age of the American farmer is now over 50.

“Losing that work-ethic — it’s so hard to pick this up later in life,” Clark said. “There’s other ways to learn how to farm, but it’s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you’re 12, 13, 14 years old.”

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.”

In February the Labor Department seemingly backed away from what many had called an unrealistic reach into farmers’ families, reopening the public comment period on a section of the regulations designed to give parents an exemption for their own children.

But U.S. farmers’ largest trade group is unimpressed.

“American Farm Bureau does not view that as a victory,” said Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s a misconception that they have backed off on the parental exemption.”

Boswell chafed at the government’s rationale for bringing farms strictly into line with child-labor laws.

“They have said the number of injuries are higher for children than in non-ag industries,” she said. But everyone in agriculture, Boswell insisted, “makes sure youth work in tasks that are age-appropriate.”

The safety training requirements strike many in agriculture as particularly strange, given an injury rate among young people that is already falling rapidly.

According to a United States Department of Agriculture study, farm accidents among youth fell nearly 40 percent between 2001 and 2009, to 7.2 injuries per 1,000 farms.

Clark said the regulations are vague and meddlesome.

“It’s so far-reaching,” he exclaimed, “kids would be prohibited from working on anything ‘power take-off’ driven, and anything with a work-height over six feet — which would include the tractor I’m on now.”

The way the regulations are currently written, he added, would prohibit children under 16 from using battery powered screwdrivers, since their motors, like those of a tractor, are defined as “power take-off driven.”

And jobs that could “inflict pain on an animal” would also be off-limits for kids. But “inflicting pain,” Clark explained, is left undefined: If it included something like putting a halter on a steer, 4-H and FFA animal shows would be a thing of the past.

In a letter to The Department of Labor in December, Montana Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg complained that the animal provision would also mean young people couldn’t “see veterinary medicine in practice … including a veterinarian’s own children accompanying him or her to a farm or ranch.”

Boswell 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.

It’s something Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran believes simply shouldn’t happen.

During a March 14 hearing, Moran blasted Hilda Solis for getting between rural parents and their children.

“The consequences of the things that you put in your regulations lack common sense,” Moran said.

“And in my view, if the federal government can regulate the kind of relationship between parents and their children on their own family’s farm, there is almost nothing off-limits in which we see the federal government intruding in a way of life.”

The Department of Labor did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

here

The risk losing the "work ethic" is mentioned multiple times. Could be that's the whole point. In a nation full of people who've had all traces of any work ethic bred right out of them, who'd condemn a government intent on confiscating resources and doling them out as they see fit? :dunno:

:agree: I wonder at what point will the ball drop....eventually there will be those that stand up and say enough is enough.

QUOTE (TiskTisk @ Apr 25 2012, 01:43 PM)

:agree: I wonder at what point will the ball drop....eventually there will be those that stand up and say enough is enough.

Hopefully. :thumb:

QUOTE (jerrimccoy1 @ Apr 25 2012, 06:59 AM)

The risk losing the "work ethic" is mentioned multiple times. Could be that's the whole point. In a nation full of people who've had all traces of any work ethic bred right out of them, who'd condemn a government intent on confiscating resources and doling them out as they see fit? :dunno:

It's happened before Jeri.. I've been reading old newspaper articles where people were hoarding food during WW1 and WW2, when the governments of certain nations discovered it the hoarders' food was confiscated and doled out to everyone even though the hoarders had paid for their hoarded supplies themselves.

Thay went around right here in polk county killing peoples cows than burning them. Just to make people buy there food, :bullS:

I hadn't heard about that Skilsaw. Details, please. :scratch:

Yes, I would like details as well Skillsaw, please. As much as you are able to recollect. :thumb:

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 25 2012, 09:34 PM)

Thay went around right here in polk county killing peoples cows than burning them. Just to make people buy there food, :bullS:

I heard my mom and her dad talk about this. Grandpa had some cows and government men came and killed them. They weren't diseased. They just killed em.

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 25 2012, 09:34 PM)

Thay went around right here in polk county killing peoples cows than burning them. Just to make people buy there food, :bullS:

My Grandfather told Me that this took place all over Tx. also.He said the reason they gave was because the owners could not afford to feed the livestock.He & many more farmers that had mule teams were paid by the Govt. to dig long deep ditches to bury all the cattle & hogs in so the people could not eat them.The Govt. had armed gaurds watching to make sure the people didn't "steal" any meat to feed there hungry families.There was nothing wrong with these animals not sick in any way ..The Govt. did it for control reasons IMHO & my Grandfathers ,just so much Govt. :bullS: even back then in the depression era. :rant:

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farmingin...s/crops_17.html

During the early years of the Depression, livestock prices dropped disastrously. Officials with the New Deal believed prices were down because farmers were still producing too many commodities like hogs and cotton. The solution proposed in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was to reduce the supply.

So, in the late spring of 1933, the federal government carried out "emergency livestock reductions." In Nebraska, the government bought about 470,000 cattle and 438,000 pigs. Nationwide, six million hogs were purchased from desperate farmers. In the South, one million farmers were paid to plow under 10.4 million acres of cotton.

The hogs and cattle were simply killed. In Nebraska, thousands were shot and buried in deep pits. Farmers hated to sell their herds, but they had no choice. The federal buy-out saved many farmers from bankruptcy, and AAA payments became the chief source of income for many that year.

It was a bitter pill for farmers to swallow. They had worked hard to raise those crops and livestock, and they absolutely hated to see them killed and the meat go to waste. Critics charged that the AAA was pushing a "policy of scarcity," killing little pigs simply to increase prices when many people were going hungry.

Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace said that since there was too little demand for pork products, farmers couldn't run an "old folks home for hogs and keep them around indefinitely as pets." But even Wallace relented, recognizing the desperate need in the country. He pledged that the government would purchase agricultural products "from those who have too much in order to give to those who have too little." The AAA was amended to set up the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC), which distributed agricultural products such as canned beef, apples, beans and pork products to relief organizations.

Yet the basic governmental approach of supporting farm prices by reducing supplies continues to this day.

Written by Claudia Reinhardt and Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. First written and published in 2003.

QUOTE (slingshot @ Apr 26 2012, 09:37 AM)

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farmingin...s/crops_17.html

During the early years of the Depression, livestock prices dropped disastrously. Officials with the New Deal believed prices were down because farmers were still producing too many commodities like hogs and cotton. The solution proposed in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was to reduce the supply.

So, in the late spring of 1933, the federal government carried out "emergency livestock reductions." In Nebraska, the government bought about 470,000 cattle and 438,000 pigs. Nationwide, six million hogs were purchased from desperate farmers. In the South, one million farmers were paid to plow under 10.4 million acres of cotton.

The hogs and cattle were simply killed. In Nebraska, thousands were shot and buried in deep pits. Farmers hated to sell their herds, but they had no choice. The federal buy-out saved many farmers from bankruptcy, and AAA payments became the chief source of income for many that year.

It was a bitter pill for farmers to swallow. They had worked hard to raise those crops and livestock, and they absolutely hated to see them killed and the meat go to waste. Critics charged that the AAA was pushing a "policy of scarcity," killing little pigs simply to increase prices when many people were going hungry.

Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace said that since there was too little demand for pork products, farmers couldn't run an "old folks home for hogs and keep them around indefinitely as pets." But even Wallace relented, recognizing the desperate need in the country. He pledged that the government would purchase agricultural products "from those who have too much in order to give to those who have too little." The AAA was amended to set up the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC), which distributed agricultural products such as canned beef, apples, beans and pork products to relief organizations.

Yet the basic governmental approach of supporting farm prices by reducing supplies continues to this day.

Written by Claudia Reinhardt and Bill Ganzel, the Ganzel Group. First written and published in 2003.

I knew about this Sling..I wanted to hear personal experiences though. :thumb:

These people were not farmers, My grandpa had 2 cows, thay killed one and burnt it, thay did this to everybody, Thay did not buy them; you were only to own one cow, if you were not a farmer, Shoot i never thought of it, bet thay do cars the same way. to save oil.

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 26 2012, 07:17 PM)

These people were not farmers, My grandpa had 2 cows, thay killed one and burnt it, thay did this to everybody, Thay did not buy them; you were only to own one cow, if you were not a farmer, Shoot i never thought of it, bet thay do cars the same way. to save oil.

What year was this Skillsaw, was this during the FDR admin?

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 26 2012, 04:04 PM)

[I knew about this Sling..I wanted to hear personal experiences though. :thumb:

I posted this to inform others, like me, that had never heard of this. :thumb:

I just read today that the feds are backing off of this bill but I do NOT trust them, they will rebrand/rename it and bring it back without the publicity and pass it..They just did this very thing with the internet regulation bill. SOPA sunk, they renamed it, brought it back and passed it just the other day. :rant:

It's both sides that are sinking us folks, they are both corrupt and bought and paid for, their job now is to sink the US as far as possible. In that they are not partisan at all, both sides are working against we the people.

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 27 2012, 08:52 AM)

.They just did this very thing with the internet regulation bill. SOPA sunk, they renamed it, brought it back and passed it just the other day. :rant:

The House just passed the CISPA bill yesterday, and it now goes to the Senate. Let's pray that the Senate won't pass it. :pray:

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 27 2012, 12:21 AM)

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 26 2012, 07:17 PM)

These people were not farmers, My grandpa had 2 cows, thay killed one and burnt it, thay did this to everybody, Thay did not buy them; you were only to own one cow, if you were not a farmer, Shoot i never thought of it, bet thay do cars the same way. to save oil.

What year was this Skillsaw, was this during the FDR admin?

Misskit i dont remember, it had to be after 1937, because that was when he moved to polk county. He was from Bugger hollow Ar. He was a bare nucks fighter, Grandmaw said people came from all over the country, here to rich mountain to fight him. He was a wooden shingle maker, shake shingles.

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 27 2012, 09:07 AM)

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 27 2012, 12:21 AM)

QUOTE (skillsaw @ Apr 26 2012, 07:17 PM)

These people were not farmers, My grandpa had 2 cows, thay killed one and burnt it, thay did this to everybody, Thay did not buy them; you were only to own one cow, if you were not a farmer, Shoot i never thought of it, bet thay do cars the same way. to save oil.

What year was this Skillsaw, was this during the FDR admin?

Misskit i dont remember, it had to be after 1937, because that was when he moved to polk county. He was from Bugger hollow Ar. He was a bare nucks fighter, Grandmaw said people came from all over the country, here to rich mountain to fight him. He was a wooden shingle maker, shake shingles.

OK, thanks for what you did remember Skill...I'm betting it was during FDR's administration than..He did this sort of thing, during the depression of all times..It has since been proven that FDR's "help" actually prolonged the great depression by about 5 years. He was a dictator wannabe who catered to Wall Street and the Elitist bankers, heck his entire family came from a LONG line of bankers so it's no wonder he was in bed with them, so to speak and it's no wonder that he did whatever the heck benefited them.

When you go back and read some of the crapola that FDR pulled it would blow your mind, kind of like obama now. :rant:

Was it FDR that promised "A Chicken in every Pot"? The time period of 1938 to 1942 is in the papers that my Grandfather wrote & left to his children-all 10 of them that lived to be grown. :)

QUOTE (Monocrat @ Apr 27 2012, 07:36 PM)

Was it FDR that promised "A Chicken in every Pot"? The time period of 1938 to 1942 is in the papers that my Grandfather wrote & left to his children-all 10 of them that lived to be grown. :)

Oooh you're so lucky to have some personal history from that era Monocrat. :thumb: My FIL thinks FDR was the greatest thing since sliced bread. :rolleyes: But that just goes to show how the media covered for him, just like they're doing now for obama, it's pretty sickening how the elitists are all complicit in cover ups when it's "their guy". I really do fear for this country and I'm truly saddened by the fact that we have been lied to for decades, things are not as I have always thought they were and although I have come to accept that fact it's made me VERY depressed, not to the point of doing something weird mind you but just really sad for our country and it's people.

I always had faith that our "leaders" would do the right thing eventually but how wrong I was, they are either in the pocket of someone or else they are afraid of someone or they are being controlled by someone, either way we the people are the losers in the end and although I hate to even say it out loud I'm afraid that even worse times are coming, obama MUST NOT win this election, if he does than we may as well kiss the US goodbye, I hate to say that about ANY president but he is EVIL and I have NEVER even THOUGHT that about any president no matter how much I disliked them..This man is so corrupt that it defies anything that I have ever read about any president who came before him.

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 28 2012, 01:49 AM)

QUOTE (Monocrat @ Apr 27 2012, 07:36 PM)

Was it FDR that promised "A Chicken in every Pot"? The time period of 1938 to 1942 is in the papers that my Grandfather wrote & left to his children-all 10 of them that lived to be grown. :)

Oooh you're so lucky to have some personal history from that era Monocrat. :thumb: My FIL thinks FDR was the greatest thing since sliced bread. :rolleyes: But that just goes to show how the media covered for him, just like they're doing now for obama, it's pretty sickening how the elitists are all complicit in cover ups when it's "their guy". I really do fear for this country and I'm truly saddened by the fact that we have been lied to for decades, things are not as I have always thought they were and although I have come to accept that fact it's made me VERY depressed, not to the point of doing something weird mind you but just really sad for our country and it's people.

I always had faith that our "leaders" would do the right thing eventually but how wrong I was, they are either in the pocket of someone or else they are afraid of someone or they are being controlled by someone, either way we the people are the losers in the end and although I hate to even say it out loud I'm afraid that even worse times are coming, obama MUST NOT win this election, if he does than we may as well kiss the US goodbye, I hate to say that about ANY president but he is EVIL and I have NEVER even THOUGHT that about any president no matter how much I disliked them..This man is so corrupt that it defies anything that I have ever read about any president who came before him.

This post describes exactly how I feel about Obama. I might add that when I see him on TV that I get sick to my stomach. <_<

QUOTE (slingshot @ Apr 28 2012, 01:20 AM)

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 28 2012, 01:49 AM)

QUOTE (Monocrat @ Apr 27 2012, 07:36 PM)

Was it FDR that promised "A Chicken in every Pot"?ï¿½ The time period of 1938 to 1942 is in the papers that my Grandfather wrote & left to his children-all 10 of them that lived to be grown. :)

Oooh you're so lucky to have some personal history from that era Monocrat. :thumb: My FIL thinks FDR was the greatest thing since sliced bread. :rolleyes: But that just goes to show how the media covered for him, just like they're doing now for obama, it's pretty sickening how the elitists are all complicit in cover ups when it's "their guy". I really do fear for this country and I'm truly saddened by the fact that we have been lied to for decades, things are not as I have always thought they were and although I have come to accept that fact it's made me VERY depressed, not to the point of doing something weird mind you but just really sad for our country and it's people.

I always had faith that our "leaders" would do the right thing eventually but how wrong I was, they are either in the pocket of someone or else they are afraid of someone or they are being controlled by someone, either way we the people are the losers in the end and although I hate to even say it out loud I'm afraid that even worse times are coming, obama MUST NOT win this election, if he does than we may as well kiss the US goodbye, I hate to say that about ANY president but he is EVIL and I have NEVER even THOUGHT that about any president no matter how much I disliked them..This man is so corrupt that it defies anything that I have ever read about any president who came before him.

This post describes exactly how I feel about Obama. I might add that when I see him on TV that I get sick to my stomach. <_<

Me too Sling, I can't even stand to hear him talk on the radio, I have to turn it off/down until he's done. I simply can not stand to hear him lie anymore.

Obama administration withdraws farm child labor proposal after wave of internet outrage

Saturday, April 28, 2012
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) A proposal by the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) that would have restricted children under the age of 16 from performing certain routine chores on family farms has been officially revoked. According to The Daily Caller, which originally broke the story, a groundswell of public outcry that occurred after the story went "viral" ultimately led to the decision, which was announced late Thursday evening.

Traditionally, children of farmers have always been involved with helping out around the farm, whether it is feeding the animals, cleaning up after them, or helping to grow and harvest crops. This is why it took the public by surprise to learn that DoL, under the direction of the Obama administration, had planned to outlaw children under the age of 16 from doing this type of work.

As we reported yesterday, the DoL rules would have exempted children working on their own family farms from the new requirements. However, the entire structure of how children learn about agriculture would have changed dramatically regardless of the exemption, as the federal government intended to seize control of agriculture education programs as well as restrict who could legally participate in them.

"The decision to withdraw this rule -- including provisions to define the 'parental exemption' -- was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms," says a DoL press release issued Thursday evening. "To be clear, this regulation will not be pursued for the duration of the Obama administration."

You can view the official DoL press release here:
http://www.dol.gov

The decision is great news for the thousands of young children who participate in programs like 4-H and FFA that provide agricultural education and immersion for the next generation of American farmers. DoL's proposals would have eliminated certification for 4-H and FFA, according to The Daily Caller, and replaced them with state-run agricultural education.

"I am pleased to hear the Obama administration is finally backing away from its absurd 85-page proposal to block youth from participating in family farm activities and ultimately undermine the very fabric of rural America," said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). "The Obama DoL's youth farm labor rule is a perfect example of what happens when government gets too big."

Sources for this article include:

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/035701_family_f...labor_laws.html

Gee wasn't that just so nice of the obama admin to leave well enough alone. :rolleyes:

QUOTE (MissKit @ Apr 29 2012, 11:39 PM)

Gee wasn't that just so nice of the obama admin to leave well enough alone. :rolleyes:

Maybe, but you can't say they didn't try.
And anyway, it's not just farm kids. This administration doesn't want anyone to work.
We're living in the Bizarro world of opposites.

View Full Version: Stop working your kids to death!