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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Feb '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Understood. But the federal government is so vast - quite a bit vaster than vast, in fact - that I have no confidence that this rule will be enforced randomly. At this point, our assumption should be that every federal rule or regulation will be enforced uniformly and with rigor.
Even Pharaoh of old was more restrained than our federal government: as brutish and tyrannical as he was, he relented for a time in the face of a catastrophe. Our regulators do not relent.
Feb '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This is such an essential point about regulation. Every GOP politician should make it a key part of every campaign.
May '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
How much more regulatory busybody-ism can a free people take before we start aggressively pushing back? Where is the tipping point?
Whatever happened to "Congress shall make no law"?
Nov '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
John Murdoch: That said....
Specifically, a lot of farm machinery depends upon what's called "power take-off" (PTO) hitch on the back of a tractor. That's a spinning shaft running from a point just below and behind the tractor driver's seat, back into/under the harvester/baler/spreader/backhoe or whatever other implement the driver is using. Those PTO hitches are dangerous--there have been lots of people injured, even killed, when pieces of clothing, scarves, coats, etc. get caught by the hitch.
Grew up on a farm and Dad was very insistent that we all knew to stay the heck away from the PTO. My husband also grew up on a farm and the neighbor kid had no arms - thanks to not heeding that advice. Everything on a farm is potentially very dangerous; hay lofts, grain augers, silos, animals, lagoons, and every piece of machinery. But I can't imagine a better upbringing. I wonder how many kids this kind of law actually affects. I know in my hometown lots of the work that was done by farm kids in the past is now done my immigrant labor.
Feb '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
In any case, the city and suburbs are far more dangerous for kids nowadays, between the STDs, drugs, intellectual superficiality, vicious pleasures, etc. Not that these things haven't infected the countryside, too, but they're less available - if for no other reason than the people are fewer and farther between.
Dec '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This is a fig leaf to Obama's campaign backers in Agri-Business.
By killing off a ready source of cheap labor with few attached compliance costs, they add one more (maybe the last) nail to lid of the Small Family Farm's coffin.
Big business loves these kinds of things because it makes their economy of scale that much more cost effective.
Do not for a moment think this was idiotic or accidental or whatever, this sort of thing is specifically targeted and very likely written by the people it's meant to benefit.
I'll give this to those folks that throw money at JugEars™, they sure do get good access and results for their money.
I can't believe that I'm saying this, but "Save Us Mittens, you're our only hope!"
Dec '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Taking this to its logical conclusion, we must also ban movies that feature children farming. We wouldn't our children to be exposed to such naked exploitation. We can start with "The Wizard of Oz".
Jul '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This is the Obamanation's best idea ever. Now that we can finally put aside the fantasy that school children have to rush home to do farm chores we can have school days that go to 5 p.m. ten or eleven months a year. The school teachers can do a real work year's work for a work year's pay and we will finally have the smartest, most studious, dedicated students in the world. An American high school diploma will really mean something again. The super educated youth will be ultra-productive and will earn huge gobs of money that we can then tax out of their hands and into my retirement lifestyle while paying off the national debt AND they will be so used to working hard all the time that they won't even notice this injustice enough to object to it.
Apr '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
This, to my mind, is the best news of the week, beating out even the Newt resignation. It's got to be worth a percent or so in each of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Iowa. The only upsetting thing about it is that we may shout too soon; we really want this put in place before the election, or at least being about to be put in place. It's a wonderful, wonderful, thing, and could very easily be a decisive issue; 1% in any of those 6 states could supply the winning electoral votes. Heck, 0.5% in Virginia or North Carolina, or 0.2% in Florida could be enough, too. Simply wonderful.
Apr '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I don't know whether you mean Constitutionally, in which case you should know that the Fair Labor Standards Act applies to farms already, and to farm child labor already, just with a limited carve out.
If you mean as a practical matter, you may not appreciate the size of the penalties. $10k fines for a first offense, with imprisonment as a consequence of a second offense, can make for a significant threat.
Apr '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I'm thinking it's a fig leaf to the trial lawyer/ human rights activist community. It's a pretty common topic on at international labor law conferences, as it's one of the areas where the US labor law is particularly free compared to some other countries (and it's always the countries with more restrictive/ "better" child labor restrictions that it's compared to). Since there's rarely much disagreement at these things (who's in favor of child labor?) I'm thinking it's possible that this is a Taranto effect thing; they were lured into a terrible decision by a false belief that everyone agreed with them.
Feb '12
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
James Of England
I don't know whether you mean Constitutionally, in which case you should know that the Fair Labor Standards Act applies to farms already, and to farm child labor already, just with a limited carve out.
If you mean as a practical matter, you may not appreciate the size of the penalties. $10k fines for a first offense, with imprisonment as a consequence of a second offense, can make for a significant threat. · 4 hours ago
He ain't lyin' (not that I ever doubted):
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs40.pdf
Read it and weep.
Aug '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Proof that children shouldn't be allowed to do farm labour! - Anonymous Democratic Party Bureaucrat
Aug '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
We can also abolish federal politicians' "break periods" which coincide with prime farming periods of the past, like seeding time and harvest time, because so many early politicians were also farmers.
Dec '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I would be in favor of greatly lengthening said "break periods", . . . hopefully until they intersect one another.
Then all we'd need to do is find a way to send the bureaucrats on sabbatical with the politicians, and we could finally get back to work.
Is it wrong to want to smother every bureaucrat I meet with a pillow made from shredded pages of the CFR?
Edited on April 26, 2012 at 11:48pmAug '10
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
Good point.
Maybe they could take up farming instead.
Jan '11
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
In case anyone is still checking this thread, am I a sucker or does this refutation of the "ban on farm chores and 4-H" story make sense? Brooks Bayne isn't exactly an Obama apologist. I emailed the author of the Daily Caller article for clarification but didn't hear back.
Re: Hey Farm Kid, Get Away From That Tractor!
I haven't read it but the proposed regulatory changes were pulled yesterday. Here's the Washington Post headline:
After farm groups complain, Obama administration drops plan to restrict child labor on farms