So goes the Farm..
WaveCameCrashin
Posts: 2,929
And yet another example.. How the statist are hell bent on destroying farming and families.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural ... z1t3St7kCn
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 be finalized 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.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural ... z1t3St7kCn
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 be finalized 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.
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Comments
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
I can't wait till this gumba gets run out of office.
Godfather.
Having to sit next to the farmer kids in high school and smell the horse stalls was... Ugh.
That said... You think it's a good idea to let young kids work with heavy machinery, grain elevators, automatic hay bailers?
Look at those extremely dangerous bulls they torment and ride in rodeos.... You want a 14 year-old girl in charge of that?
Yes... Working a family farm in as American tradition like it is in the rest of the world and blah blah blah.
Kinda lame that the government has to step in and save you from your own stupidity.
really you believe that ?..Kinda lame that the government has to step in and save you from your own stupidity.[/quote]
where will it end with the government saving people from their own stupidity ? you your self claim to be a victim of the government saving people from them selfs don't you ?
Godfather.
The government doesn't have to do that though...they choose to...
But ultimately to the part in bold, it isn't what I think that should matter to someone else. And Farm work is no different than anything else...parents USUALLY give kids what they can handle. If a kid can handle a combine why shouldn't they be able to? I bailed hay, and picked rock for long hours growing up...still have both my arms...The government should not be this involved. Plain and simple...what's next?...telling me when my kid is old enough to use a riding mower in my yard? making sure they pay taxes on the $10 they just earned from mowing the neighbor's yard...which they probably cannot do with even a self-propelled push now until they were 16 technically...
seriously...this is ridiculous
oh and welcome back, I haven't seen you on here in a while.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Yeah I'd rather my kid engage in or produce gay porn :roll: And furthermore I thought you guys liked farm animals or is it rodents like gerbils? :?
(and which option is more hazardous to our children's health :geek: )
Thank God I grew up before the were laws that turned us into wussies.
Wow, gay bashing alive and well
As well it should be. This administration has taken more liberty away from people than probably any other.
You call that gay bashing? Pftttttttt yeah ok dude.. Notice how it's ok for pod to attack families and kids that work on farms but as soon as I point out his lifestyle and yes they do put mice and gerbils in their body cavities.. I get accused of bashing :roll:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/is-the ... o-its-not/
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder ... -she-right
This is a quote from the Christian Science Monitor article:
However, “the proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents”, says the Labor Department press release from last August announcing publication of the proposed law revisions in the Federal Register.
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20111250.htm
From the press release: "The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents." AND in another section of the press release "The FLSA also provides a complete exemption for youths employed on farms owned by their parents."
I'm not disagreeing with you, although I do believe this is a false statement, but can you please start another thread on this topic. I would like to see the research done, and I would like an extended discussion on this topic by members of the Forum.
they did talk about the exemption in the daily caller piece as well. They claim the family farm exemption, but not all kids who work on family farms are children of the owners. I wasn't. I know a lot of kids who drove combine because a neighbor needed them to...this isn't just about kids and parents...it is about children who choose to work on farms not being allowed to do jobs they have been doing for decades. I imagine we will not find too many fines with this in the end...but the vagueness and the effort in general to do this is what bothers me more...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
It hinted at that--barely. The mention of it was minimal and vague, and that is the problem with mainstream media. Most people that read this article on the DC will immediately interpret it as an attack on their family business and on their rights as parents.
But, the update/extension of existing law falls under Child Labor Laws, and not on any type of infringement of individual rights. I just wanted to preemptively thwart any attempts to say this is government intruding into the homes of Americans, or any similar critique. This is simply an extension and update of a decades old law.
Also, as Jason P stated, the law will be ignored anyway.
This is what the article said:
"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."
And
"“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."
couldn't agree more about the media, doesn't even need to be mainstream.
and it is important to gather multiple sources. But from my reading, that I wouldn't be able to hire my neighbors 14 year old who has been doing jobs on his family farm to do so on mine even though he wants to... That seems strange to me.
but it will go ignored...and the dept of labor gets to say they did something even though I doubt they ever enforce these rules until an accident happens
But then again, I think there are child labor laws, while well meaning, that aren't completely necessary...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Good point about the media. "Alternative" news sources can be more harmful as they are not filtered in the way that some mainstream media outlets are. Any idiot with a bias or an agenda can start an online "news" website or a blog. it's up to the people to be able to sift through the b.s......but, they can't, unfortunately. Why not?
I agree with your sentiment on child labor laws. Many of them are arcane and harken back to a time with no regulation, thus the need for regulation. I hope I am clear with that statement.
And yes, the inability to hire your neighbor to do work on your farm is b.s., but I look at it as a casualty of broader laws meant to help those who do not know and/or trust their employers.
definitely a fine line to walk that is for sure.
but to me this just seems like doing something for the sake of doing something. I hate that.
I know the laws mean well, I would just rather allow those that do things responsibly to be able to do them even though some can't...but I feel that way about most things...
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Your point in bold highlights an unfortunate reality: laws are made (and passed) to ensure that those who are irresponsible--the minority of the public--do not harm or hinder the progress of those that are responsible.
See: anti-texting and driving laws; marijuana laws; drunk driving laws, etc, etc, etc.
As my friend once said: "the cattle need an electric fence."
The age of about 16, I think. We make parents protect their kids. We make them use child seats in cars, we make them ensure their children are fed and housed and protected and educated. The government keeps them from using things like cars until they're of a age we feel it's safe for them and the people around them. We don't let them drink until they're 21. How is it we think it's OK to prohibit children from drinking or smoking or driving but OK to allow them to use and operate machinery that could kill, maim them or someone else?
Um.. no. I don't think I've ever said anything even remotely approaching that. I have no idea what you mean at all.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at with the first part. I don't allow kids anywhere near the set, I'm active with the ASACP (that's an anti-child porn group) and my home office is in a building separate from my house and no one other than me has the key. The kids are not allowed anywhere near it.
As far as the second part goes, while I'm sure you think you're clever for suggesting that gay men are into beastiality, that says a lot more about you than anything else.
If my saying we should protect children from being expected to do dangerous jobs is "attacking" a farmer family, I'd hate to see your version of supporting them.
However...
1) being gay is not a "life style"
2) what the fuck are you talking about? nobody puts mice or gerbils into their body cavities. That came from a gay porn comedy magazine from the 80s.
Why... are you reading gay porn magazines from the 80s?
you know you can get that on the internet now, right?
I totally agree. And HTF did we get from farms to gay bashing anyway?
As far as farms go, I think they're like any place- some are educating and nurturing, some are destructive and harmful. But wild lands- even the most inhospitable have something good to offer.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Meh. It's probably my fault. I do tend to rile them up sometimes.
anyway... you're right that some farms are great and some are no place for kids.
While I'm sure that there are plenty of farms that are totally safe for kids to work, I'm thinking that the people making a big stink about this are kinda exaggerating the whole thing. Much like the "Obama supports the terrorists" because he opposed off-shore drilling.
Absolutely! So much gets exaggerated these days. Keeps the train busy, I guess.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
the age of 16 ? oki doki.
and the second part I was refering to governmental laws and restrictions concerning gay rights you usally bring up.
Godfather.
I knew what you were talking about, professor Hawking, but I don't think I've ever said that prop8 was about protecting me from myself.