In 1953, when I was 14, I worked on a farm in Newville, PA for a full summer. I fed and milked cows; drove tractors and plowed fields (see: In Newville, PA); picked cherries and peaches; cleaned stables and chicken coops; stacked hay bales; killed chickens; scythed roadsides; helped build a silo; etc. I worked ten hours a day, six days a week ... and two hours on Sunday ... for ten weeks ... all for $100 in compensation. I think this works out to about 16 cents an hour ... yet it was one of my life's most meaningful and defining experiences.
Now our Federal government, in its nanny-state wisdom, is planning to stop farm children under the age of 18 from doing many agricultural chores (see: New Labor Dept. Proposals). We all know that our government has done a lot of stupid things, but this takes the ten-tiered wedding cake. Now a Washington bureaucrat, who probably can't tell a heifer from a Hubbard squash, wants to tell farmers how to run their businesses and their families. This smacks of how well a senior lecturer in law from Chicago has been able to manage a nearly $15 trillion economy.
Balderdash!! Please kind readers do your part this Fall to help repopulate our government with grown-ups.
George, I'm 100% with you on this one - and sending inner-city kids to spend a Summer on a farm would be better than 12 yrs of unionized teacher learning, regardless of how you turned out........
ReplyDeleteRick
Farm work sounds like child abuse to me. George paid it forward when he was Pledgemaster of his frat.
ReplyDeleteHe denies that it was hazing, but admits that some atrocities were necessary in the name of team building.
Nice parallel! Are you suggesting that Obama may be hazing the American people? Think about all the atrocities that he is inflicting upon us ... and the resulting loyalty that is being exhibited in return by the tyros among us. He is clearly our supreme leader and using cognative dissonance to maintain his mantle of authority.
ReplyDeleteNo, I am suggesting that anyone who made pledges walk a gauntlet whilst retaining a pickle in their anus, might have been subliminally passing on the abuse suffered as a young indentured servant on a farm. One can only hope the nanny-state will prevent another generation of post-farm-labor-traumatic-stressed youths from infesting polite society.
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