Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I grew up in rural California and Colorado. That meant that many of my friends grew up on farms, orchards and ranches. They all worked hard and they were all the better for it. So of course the Obama Administration is proposing to ban family farm life:
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.”
Given the demise of the family farm as it is, I'm not entirely sure how many people this would hurt. Still, what a horrible reminder of the government's size and scope. It's not getting better, it's getting much worse. The regulatory state threatens us all.
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May '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This might force the Pioneer Woman to drop her self-imposed ban on political commentary.
May '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I can't claim to be a farm kid, but I was born to one. At the very least, I am qualified to make the following comment about this DOL proposal: it's stupid on stilts. The idea that some frumpy, cubicle-bound bureaucract in DC could tell my grandfather in Missouri that his kids couldn't milk cows before and after school is laughable. I pity the poor DOL agent that ever has to enforce this idiocy.
Oct '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
---All together now---
HEY, STATISTS, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE
Mar '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I do believe that in between junkets to Las Vegas and creating bad videos documenting their complete lack of discernable talent, our bureaucrats sit around the office and try to come up with something even more stupid than their last outrage.
Jun '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Obama maybe thinks he's creating jobs for adults, but what he's really doing in creating more ex-farmers.
Jan '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This is one of the silliest things I've heard--and that's saying something. I didn't grow up on a farm, but I know a fair number of people who did. Telling families that their kids can't help with the farm chores would be like telling my parents that their kids can't help clean up after dinner, fold laundry, or help cut the grass. Wait, I better not give the Obama administration anymore ideas... Or maybe because those are things my stay-at-home mother did, they don't count as work, so we're safe.
Jan '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Why? So that farm work can only be done by union members?
Fine. I'll agree to it. On one condition. If every farm worker must belong to a union, then every union must be certified through eVerify not to employ or retain any "undocumented" worker.
If you want to push the rules to the limit on others, you must be prepared for the same in return.
Edited on April 25, 2012 at 3:35pmRe: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I can't wait for the Congressional hearings featuring farm kids schooling the regulators.
Aug '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Severely Ltd.: ---All together now---
HEY, STATISTS, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE · 37 minutes ago
And in the homes it was well-known when he got home at night his skinny troublemaking wife would "Let's Move!" him to within inches of his life...
Edited on April 25, 2012 at 3:57pmApr '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This is a tempest in a teapot. There's no way to enforce this rule. Farm kids are safe from the DOL.
Jun '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Ya think? To drive a taxi in New Mexico I have to pass a physical mandated by the Department of Transportation in Washington DC. Come to think of it, I haven't held a job in the last fifteen years that didn't require licensing of some sort. It's getting to the point where you can't paint a fence without government approval. That's literally the case in Santa Fe.
There's an obvious solution to this problem. Cheat! Socialism eventually criminalizes all human activity and makes lawbreakers of us all. The only rational solution is non-compliance. When governments criminalize commerce, capitalism always answers with a black market. Of course, when I explain to my lefty friends that capitalism can't be stopped because it's totally organic, natural, and spontaneous, I get blank stares.
If you'll excuse me, I have some serious cheating to do. See ya later.
Jun '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
If it's about creating more jobs for adults, as I suspect, I would have to say that all child artwork should be destroyed after a week, or ten days. Just long enough to show it to Grandma and Grandpa. Some child art is good enough to take jobs away from adult artists with unpaid student loans, and we certainly need to keep encouraging young men and women to go into great debt for degrees in the visual arts. No?
Edited on April 25, 2012 at 4:03pmMay '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Just another day in the fantasy land of ignorance and inconsistency. On one hand the lefties spend a great deal of time telling us that one of the biggest eeeeeeevils in the world is corporate agriculture and when they get into power they do everything to destroy what's left of the family farm.
"It's about time Washington started listening to rural America," Obama said. "You can't simply sit in Washington, talking to lobbyists. That's why the Washington insiders who matter to me live in Washington County, Iowa, not Washington, D.C. That's why as president, I'll be listening to the LRV (League of Rural Voters), not ADM." (November 10, 2007 Chicago Tribune)
Yeah, Right...
Jun '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Why aren't deer poachers, who operate in and around remote farmland, safe from law enforcement? Because the government offers rewards for tips that lead to poaching arrests. Why wouldn't the government do the same here?
May '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
The Obama crowd are the very definition of perverts: they hate that which is good, and love that which is bad.
(And yeah, I was a farm kid. My kids are suburbanites, but I would love for them to have a chance at having a summer job in agriculture. I'd consider their childhoods incomplete without it.)
Apr '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Is the fact that farm children aren't typically paid for the work enough of a loophole? Or does room/board count?
I'm sure their mindset is just to keep those slopeskulled rubes from exposing their children to the horrors of unpasteurized milk.
I'm surprised they haven't mandated all kitchens install triple-deadlocked doors so children can't get near a potentially hot stove. Or, better yet, ban all non-induction cooktops. I mean, we let our children near GAS and FIRE every day and no one is doing anything to prevent this tragedy-in-the-making!
Jan '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Farm parents also have a "talk" with their children.
Feb '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
What's so special about farms? Why should kids be allowed to mow the lawn, wash the car, iron a shirt or shovel snow?
Oct '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Until some farmer mows an anti-Obama slogan--or the like--in his field and suddenly attention is focused on Orval Jr. driving his daddy's truck to the farmer's market. Paranoid? Oh yeah. It's useful as a vigilance mechanism.
~Paules
Ya think? To drive a taxi in New Mexico I have to pass a physical mandated by the Department of Transportation in Washington DC.
There's an obvious solution to this problem. Cheat! Socialism eventually criminalizes all human activity and makes lawbreakers of us all. The only rational solution is non-compliance. When governments criminalize commerce, capitalism always answers with a black market.
If you'll excuse me, I have some serious cheating to do. See ya later.
Thank you.
Aug '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
These aren't the sort of laws that are put on the books with the expectation that they will be rigorously and uniformly enforced. They're put on the books so that officials will have legal cover when they need to harass specific individuals.