So we should put poor children to work as janitors. What a crying shame that Jonathan Swift managed to beat Newt to the punch by several centuries with his even more ambitious notion about what to do with poor children.
Personally, I think Swift got it backwards. If anyone is going to be eaten in order to solve hunger, it should be the wealthy. Why? Because everyone knows that 1% is more slimming.
PAD
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Not quite. Newt’s actual proposal was to set up a “work-study” sort of program in poorer school districts, where poor students could work at the school while taking classes, earning some money and building up a work record and learning basic job skills (like showing up and doing the job). The districts would save a little money, as they’d be paid less, the kids would get some income, and get a jump on their classmates for work experience.
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Others cite in Japan how school kids help take care of their schools, too.
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At no point did he suggest it be mandatory, or pay sweatshop wages, or anything else hideous. And growing up in rural New Hampshire, I knew a couple of kids who could have really used it. And in less rural areas, it could give the kids something productive to do outside school hours — getting them away from drugs, gangs, crime, and whatnot.
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There’s pride to be found in most any honest work. I see nothing wrong with giving kids who already have several strikes against them a chance to learn that early. We have way, way too many people in this country who never learned it.
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J.
From his proposal:
“I tried for years to have a very simple model. These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work; they’d have cash; they’d have pride in the schools. They’d begin the process of rising.”
I repeat: “These schools should get rid of unionized janitors”. That’s the kind of proposal that only a Ferengi could think of.
You know, way back, there was an issue of Dr. Fate in which Inza Nelson changed the member of congress into newts. In Gynrich’s case, there wouldn’t be much effort involved.
HEY!! Why you have to slur Ferengi by calling them Republicans?
Cutting into public sector unions? Nice little side benefit.
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Still trying to see the downside of the proposal, Gerard. And note that it’s all optional — school districts can choose to try it, students and their families can choose to apply for it.
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If it doesn’t work, they can scrap it. If it does, then others might choose to try it.
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I’m pro-choice here. Why aren’t others?
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J.
And janitors can choose to… oh wait.
“These schools”
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By which he means poor schools, poor students. He isn’t saying or suggesting that more affluent students need to develop a work ethic and get experience.
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Why not?
The value of having a job does seem lost on much of the younger generations. Labor laws when it comes to children do need to be taken back a step or two, in my view.
Darin, before making such an inane comment, perhaps you need to go back and see what prompted the very idea of “child labor laws.” I’ll also note that child labor laws do NOT apply to individual families (meaning parents can still make their kids wash dishes, mow lawns, take out the trash, install a new toilet and build an outdoor deck or patio) and the laws actually don’t apply to kids on farms.
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But, given the fact that this country generally seems to have the idea that school kids actually go to school and graduate, most of the labor laws are designed to ensure that kids actually have that opportunity. (I also find it a bit amusing that the people who are the most vocal about “letting kids be kids” when it comes to sexuality seem to be the most supportive of putting kids to work–at tough jobs, not just household chores–as young as possible.)
So what part of what I said did you find “inane?”
Clarify, Darin. Elaborate. So people don’t conclude you’re in favor of working six year olds 15 hours a day in meat packing plants.
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WHAT labor laws would you roll back?
WHAT jobs are kids not currently allowed to have that you want them working at?
Off the top of my head: I think it’s ridiculous, for example, that we now issue infants in the delivery room a SSN instead of waiting until they are of age to work. I’d like to see that changed. (I’m old enough to remember what the SS card/number is supposed to be for, see.) I also think kids should be allowed to have a menial, entry level job earlier… like at age 12 or 13. That way, they can have the option and those who choose to get a job at the local grocery store cleaning up in the aisles can demonstrate to the kids who don’t have jobs the benefits of having one. That kind of thing can be contagious in a good way.
“The value of having a job does seem lost on much of the younger generations.”
Traditionally known as BEIGN A FREAKIN KID!
Spoken by some one who knows nothing about the duties of school janitors or the life of poor children.
This passes as intellectual in GOP circles.
Not to mention as a good idea to the GOP ditto heads on this board. There’s been any number of occasions where I or other liberals on this board have been critical of the left, but for the right wing, there’s never been a right wing idea or talking point that they couldn’t support. You have to admire that dedication, in the same way that you would admire the energy of a toddler running in a circle for half an hour straight.
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PAD
Speaking of loony ideas on the left, how about Obama and Pelosi saying extending a payroll tax cut (that comes right out of Social Security) and extending unemployment will create more jobs than allowing the Canadian oil pipeline to be built. Good lord, what the hëll are they smoking?
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J.
Hi PAD,
Ok, as a right wing ditto head, I can see all sorts of problems with this proposal.
First, as a practical point, it would be very difficult to get kids to really DO the job of a modern janitor. It is hard work, yet it does require a certain amount of skill and understanding. And yes, I HAVE worked as a janitor when I was a student (college) and needed the money.
Second, it would probably COST money instead of save. Why? Because the way they do things now, they would REPLACE the janitors with students, they would ADD the students to work with the existing janitor corp. Then, they would have to have administrators that would oversee the program in each school, say one administrator for each three students working. Then, they would need a head administrator at each schools, with a secretary. And then they would need district supervisors and administrators to oversee the program to make sure that there were no ‘abuses’ of the program. et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
Whatever it may be, it isn’t nearly as strong as the stuff that the Keystone XL boosters are huffing. The claims of tens of thousands of jobs is, appropriately, a pipe dream whose reality not supported by the facts or the pipeline owners themselves.
I grew up in rural New Hampshire, ed. I wasn’t poor, but I knew kids who were. Very few of my classmates went to college.
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How about this: you’re trying to fill a job. You have two applicants, both fresh high school graduates. One of ’em spent two years working part-time doing janitorial work at the school, the other is looking for his first job. Which one would you prefer to hire?
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I’d hire the kid who knew what a job meant.
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J.
I’d hire the kid who was actually qualified and who came off best in the interview. Sure having a previous job is a plus but if you do badly on the interview, seem to have a negative attitude and show up wearing a t-shirt while the other guy took the time to put on a jacket and tie, guess what, that job experience means nothing.
It also depends on the job, if I’m hiring for a cashier I might want to hire the kid who got straight A’s in Math and has a recommendation from a math teacher over the kid who got C’s and worked as a janitor.
If it’s a job in customer service I might hire the kid who seems like more of a people person, (something that will only come out in an interview).
There are lots of things to take into account when hiring, not just “had a previous job”.
Mr. Hudak, I’m guessing you aren’t related to the Hudak who ran (and fortunately lost) for Premier of this province (Ontario). I say this because, unlike him, you make sense.
We’ve got a part time cashier next door, a university student days and when asked to make change on $22 from a $10.56 purchase he looked suitably embarrassed and admitted he couldn’t work it out in his head. He needed to reach for a calculator. Sad, or what?
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“How about this: you’re trying to fill a job. You have two applicants, both fresh high school graduates. One of ‘em spent two years working part-time doing janitorial work at the school, the other is looking for his first job. Which one would you prefer to hire?
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I’d hire the kid who knew what a job meant.”
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Right… Because in the real world, the world where employers look for things like grades, qualifications, experience in the field they’re hiring for, personal and professional character references and, depending on the job, criminal backgrounds, you always have employers pass on the prospective employees who are most qualified and leap at the chance to hire the one who worked as a part time assistant to a Master Janitor for a year back in school.
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Yeah… but, of course, that’s one of the talking points being pushed by Newt backers elsewhere and you can always count on Jay for talking point regurgitation rather than actual thought. And, yeah, you didn’t think much about that before typing, Jay. Why is it obvious (besides the fact that you’re Jay) that you didn’t?
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Even without Newt’s amazing, revolutionary plan to help kids learn that there’s real pride in honest work, most people already know that. Part of the reason that they already know that is that most kids out there have worked a part time job or two by the time they’ve gotten out of high school and certainly have a work history by the time they’ve gotten out of college.
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But you keep on living in that imaginary land of conservative bloggers where only Newt’s amazing genius can help us find a way to give kids job experience in a world that just won’t let them have it without his masterful plans and child labor law rollbacks.
I won’t deny I’m fairly conservative on many issues, (I’m the VP of the Federalist club at my law school) but I think this idea is terrible in a way no one has mentioned. Bullying.
I was never financially in that position, but I know what its like to be from “a bad family” and to have people judge me. I can’t imagine the shame associated with literally having to clean up for my fellow classmates because of poverty. It’s a target on someone’s back, someone who is already suffering due to want.
As a conservative, I want people to have free agency to contract. Poor children do not have free agency to contract, they are desperate. Yes, I’m glad they’d be working in a safe environment and its possible they might learn life skills. But it’s still creating two classes of students and making sure one is a subservient class.
Now, if it was a community garden to work in, or they reached out to local businesses to apprentice, or even had all students chip in (and yes, I’m all for every single student chipping in some time to keep the school clean, the janitor isn’t their maid) I’d be all for it but this plan has emotional abuse written all over it.
Giving students jobs is great, but not at the expense of their mental well being.
At this point, I’m wondering if Newt has ever worked a real job in his life. Has he ever worked as a janitor?
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But then, that’s not even the problem here. It’s the fact that he assumes that poor = lazy. And that kids born of poorer families will automatically be lazy.
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But then, that’s all I’ve been hearing from the right in the last couple of years, that *anybody* who’s lost their job must be lazy.
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So, while the lack of jobs in this country is certainly a problem, the best Newt can come up with is, more or less, a return to child labor?
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Oh, but of course it’ll be menial labor. Never anything cushy, like, say, working as a bank executive. Or better yet: let’s put some kids in Congress. They certainly couldn’t do any worse than some of the dûmbáššëš that are sitting there now.
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Although, I’m a bit surprised you went for this one, PAD. After all, while Newt wants child labor, Perry has declared war on Obama to save religion, Bachmann is still Bachmann, Santorum wants science out of politics (but religion is a-O-effing-K, apparently), and Romney is throwing around $10k bets when so many people are poor and/or out of work. This group sure is great for the future of America.
At this point, I’m wondering if Newt has ever worked a real job in his life. Has he ever worked as a janitor?
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I don’t know if he’s ever worked a real job in his life, but his “think tank” has, on two different occasions, tried to solicit money from a local business.
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The first time, the owner was offered an award for being a successful female business owner and creating jobs for women, to be presented at a banquet in her honor, plus a one-on-one dinner with Gingrich for a donation of $5000. She accepted. Then, the “think tank” read one line further in the business information, and learned that her business was *gasp* a gentlemen’s club. The offer was rescinded, and her donation refunded, and, in turn, she retasked it to create an animal rescue charity called “Newt’s Nook.”
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Then, a year later, they offered to “renew” her membership in the organization (a membership that didn’t exist) for a donation of $1000-$2000. She replied that she’d be glad to…if she could have a sit-down with Gingrich to discuss what had happened the year before. To the best of my knowledge, they never heard back from his organization.
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–Daryl
Can I put something out there and say from the start that I don’t mean to suggest that whether a kid is from a rich, middle class, or poor family has any relationship with the following?
Kids already have the chance to learn a work ethic in school. Doing your assignments is honest work, paid for in grades that will help you get into college/get a job when you’re the age at which you are allowed to get one. (Here it’s 16 with parental permission; not sure if that’s state or federal, so I’ll leave it vague.) Work really hard and you’ll get closer to literally being paid for it, in the form of scholarships. And if you don’t show up when you are supposed to show up, then you have to either work twice as hard later to make up what you missed or your grades suffer.
Does that mean that everybody learns that lesson from school? No. But I’ve seen some high school students working real jobs who don’t seem to be learning it from them, either. Any kid who would develop a work ethic through work-work can also develop it through school work.
A few years ago there was a controversy when some school systems started paying kids for good grades. GPA’s went up dramatically but lots of folks were appalled that kids weren’t learning the notion of good work being its own reward and that kids needed to be bribed to get good grades, (like parents and teachers never did that before). I thought that was silly. Once you get out of school everything you do in life pretty much involves payment. Most of us would not go to work if we weren’t getting a paycheck. The problem with grades being the reward is kids don’t see it as enough. Sure if you get good grades you might get a scholarship or a great job several years down the line, but to the average teen several years is just something they can’t relate to in concrete terms. Getting paid now OTOH show the immediate benefits of their hard work.
Hey Peter are you killing off X-factor to keep your bloodthirst in check?
I mean eating people even if they are wealthy seems quite extreme, the fat content alone would clog each artery you have.
Maybe you should watch more walking dead.
I always knew the GOP wanted to turn the clock back on culture, sexuality, and morality to the 1800s.
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But now they want a return to Victorian Age economics too? Child labor, really?
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What will they come up with next? Forbid women to vote? Put orphan kids to work on coal mines? A pity Charles Dickens isn’t around to denounce them.
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I do tend to occasionally wonder just what it is about Newt and kids. This isn’t his first dance with making dumb statements about how kids should be dealt with by government institutions. Back in the early 90s, Newt put forward the idea taking the children of mothers on welfare away from them and putting them in orphanages.
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If that wasn’t bad enough, he doubled down on the stupid by showing that he only had a fragile grasp on reality. He suggested that he critics should just go rent out a copy of the movie “Boys Town” and then they would understand what a swell idea it was. This kinda ignored the facts that (1) he was telling everyone to look at an idealized Hollywood version of a story to see how things would work in reality, (2) the idealized Hollywood version of reality was almost 60 years old at that time, (3) the story was almost 20 years old when the film was made and (4) even the real Boys Town organization had changed substantially from what was shown in the film, let alone the rest of the world.
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George Will: “Mr. Gingrich said it’s not enough that he is the smartest guy in the room, he also has to be wise. Now you can associate many things with Mr. Gingrich, but wisdom isn’t one of them. Surely the Republican nominating electorate should understand the fact that people have patterns. Don’t expect the patterns to go away. Expect the patterns to manifest themselves again. If Newt Gingrich has any pattern at all — and he does — it is a pattern of getting himself into trouble because he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room.”
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That bit about Newt and wisdom up there? You can say that again, George. The Newt backers should probably pay attention to the rest of that as well.
Back in the early 90s, Newt put forward the idea taking the children of mothers on welfare away from them and putting them in orphanages.
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As I’ve said before, they only care about these kids until they are born. After that, said kids should apparently be shunned from all of society, treated as if they don’t exist.
Actually Craig, I always thought Carlin said it best, that they don’t care from the time your born until you’re old enough to serve in the military: “Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”
Well, Carlin was a far wiser man than I. 🙂
When did Mike Carlin say that?
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PAD
George Carlin said “Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”
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hitmanjr, he’s joking.
Yeah, I really was joking.
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PAD
I think many Republicans are coming around to Mr. Will’s line of thinking, which is why I feel it is horribly premature to count a conservative like Perry out.
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And really, Craig? Yet another BÙLLSHÍT statement about how the GOP only cares about children in the womb.
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There are plenty of examples of conservatives and/or Christians helping children in need…but you stick to spouting cliched claptrap you never have to back up. It’s all you apparently know how to do.
Yeah, really, because it isn’t bûllšhìŧ, as Newt was so kind to remind us.
“These schools should get rid of unionized janitors”
That is a good start. Schools should be able to pay a fair wage (for the real value of the work), be able to fire incompetant workers, and have qualified people make basic management decisions.
When there are unions present, none of this happens.
Receiving overinflated pay that is not representative of real value of work performed, incompetent workers retained, unqualified people in management positions as demonstrated by disastrously poor decisions …
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I had no idea that Wall Street was so thoroughly unionized.
“When there are unions present, none of this happens.”
This is such crap that conservatives like to belch out as if they have turrets. Why don’t we talk about all of those incompetents in the white collar areas, like boards of directors, CEOs, presidents, middle management and office workers that are way over paid, and keep their jobs because who they are sleeping with, kissing the rears of, who they know… There are as many if not more incompetents in non union jobs who are overpaid, never terminated, don’t put in a day’s work and make continuously bad decisions as there are in the union levels. In fact they are more destructive than any union worker has ever been because the white collar fleas at the upper levels destroy jobs and collapse businesses… Oh and in turn get massive bailouts from the conservative run FED.
We don’t have janitor’s unions in our public schools. Do we have fair wages, competent workers, and good management? No, we have minimum wages, corruption, cronyism, mismanagement, and no effective mechanism to report egregious behavior on the part of the janitors’ bosses, which only encourages egregious behavior.
“I always knew the GOP wanted to turn the clock back on culture, sexuality, and morality to the 1800s.”
Only according to false claims by the Dems. But not in reality.
Depends on whose reality. In general Conservatives would love to overturn abortion laws, sex ed in School, welfare, social security and other social safety nets. They think unions are bad and labor shouldn’t be allowed to organize. Many of them would love to see religion (their religion not anyone else’s) take a more active part in public discourse. Despite the outcome of the civil war they think state rights should trump federal laws unless it’s a law they happen to agree with (like keeping Pot illegal) in which case the fed rule supreme. People like Ron Paul think that Civil rights laws should be overturned and are unconstitutional. And now we have a conservative think Child Labor laws should changed. This may not be going back to the 1800’s but it is going backwards.
Xeviar, you guys seem to want unrestricted capitalism plus religion calling the shots in how we educate our young with that evil evolution stuff brushed aside as just a theory…
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But let’s be fair to the Victorians. At least THEY came around to accept Charles Darwin. Isn’t that scary? There are Evangelical sects in the US that are more backward than the Church of England was by the 1870s.
When I was a kid back in the 1960s, there were only a few ways for someone in high school or junior high to earn money. Unfortunately, one of the most widespread opportunities no longer exists: The job of paperboy. I funded my comic book collecting for several years delivering papers for the afternoon daily, “Chicago American” (later dubbed “The Chicago Today”). But with huge drops in circulations and the disappearance of many daily newspapers, tens of thousands of those jobs nationwide have vanished, and those that remain are usually filled by adults with cars because the routes are now so large and dispersed there’s no way a kid on foot or on a bicycle can do it. Being a paperboy — especially one who had to collect money from customers each week — was a tremendous lesson in life. I had to learn how to deal with customers (including deadbeats, whose non-payment took money out of MY pocket), learn how to be organized, learn discipline, and learn how to deal with adversity (bad weather, mean dogs, bullies, etc.). So if the terms are fair for a proposal like Newt’s, what’s so bad about allowing poor kids like I was to work and learn early on how to be constructive, responsible members of society? You’re coming across an elitist, PAD.
The job of the paperboy was killed even before the internet killed Newspapers. Apparently there was a lawsuit regarding a kid who was hit by a car on the job. The newspaper maintained that paperboys were independent contractors and therefor were not responsible for on the job injuries etc. The court disagreed and also found that they were in violation of state and feral labor laws. Almost overnight the idea of a teenage newspaper boy (or girl) disappeared replaced by the adult looking for some extra cash.
Strange thing I observed, after under age newspaper deliveries went the way of the dodo people got less demanding on where and how their paper was delivered. I never had a paper route but my older siblings did and I filled in for them once or twice. Different people had different rules on where they wanted the paper left. Some on the doorstep, some on the mailbox, yada yada, and they would get quite irate if you didn’t leave it exactly where they wanted. Even my parents would only tip if the paper was left right at the door, (so they didn’t have to walk outside to get it). After adults started delivering the paper it seems that people just accepted that the paper would be thrown from a car on the walkway and that was that. Adults simply could not be pushed around the way young kids once were and other adults accepted that. (My dad who used to complain if the paper was not left on the front door now walked to the bottom of the walkway for his paper and didn’t seem to have a problem with it).
Another good reason for child labor laws, kids are way easier to push around then adults.
I think you miss the point about those customer “demands.” People wanted their papers in certain placed so they wouldn’t get stolen, ruined by the weather in an era before the (wasteful) use of plastic bags, were too infirm to walk down the stairs or to the end of the walk, etc. When I had my two routes, I probably had at least a dozen customers who were retired and could not get around easily. One of the reasons I cancelled my subscription not too long ago was because, regardless of how many times I asked, they always threw the paper at the end of the driveway almost at the street. If I have to walk that far (especially in snow or driving rain), I may as well hop in the car and buy it where I buy my coffee. Giving a customer what they want is simple customer service, not “pushing” the carrier around.
Depends on how many people were looking. I’ve seen Mississippi public schools where the individual children’s recorded IQ fell the longer they were enrolled.
What is happening in the Chicago Public School System, as in the Mississippi Public School System, is a disgrace. It is racism. It is classism. It is a betrayal of the public trust. It is a betrayal of the fundamental principal that a democracy rests on the backs of an informed electorate. Worst of all, it is a betrayal of the children. Something must be done. Something should have been done years ago. If the Chicago Public School System had a lick of sense, an ounce of honor and a quarter-inch of spine they’d have turned the whole thing over to Marva Collins four decades ago. Yes to all that.
But the people who say, “It could be worse” ain’t just blowing hot air. One of Newt Gingrich’s earlier proposals to do about the public school system was to end subsidized lunches. I don’t know about Chicago, but in Mississippi we had public officials talking the other day about how the majority of poor children in our state eat two meals a day, breakfast at school and lunch at school. Newt Gingrich would take that away from them. Yes, absolutely, something needs to be done. But can you honestly tell me that Newt Gingrich is the best person to come up with “something” that will actually help?
I don’t think that it’s elitist, and I think you’re reacting strongly without even considering that there’s a world of difference between a paperboy and being a school janitor.
As has already been pointed out, Newt’s idea seems to involve firing ADULTS (because they have a union) and then giving those jobs to children. It’s already been pointed out that a modern janitor does many things that would legally be too dangerous for a child. They handle chemicals, deal with maintenance which might include electricity, and are exposed to bio-hazardous materials during a normal day. It is also, naturally, a minefield of potential ugliness in terms of how their peers will deal with it. Being the CHILD of a janitor is potentially bad enough.
So why does it have to be JANITOR duty? That alone shows a disdain for poor children, when a better choice would be working in the office or as a teacher’s aide to younger students. I had the opportunity to be a teacher’s aide in 8th grade, and it was a good experience for me.
Janitor duty is not that bad. I spent my freshman and sophomore years on the janitorial staff of my high school. Sure, it’s not the most glamorous of jobs, but it kept me in video games. After two years of it, I realized that I didn’t want to be a janitor for the rest of my life, so I changed my underachieving ways, and worked harder at school.
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I honestly don’t see how this is much different than the many community service initiatives kids are forced to take part of nowadays. Wait, the kids would actually get paid for the work. Democrats wouldn’t like kids to get used to actually doing something for money. 😉
Exactly. I just don’t see it being a bad thing.
Harostar wrote “That alone shows a disdain for poor children…”
That’s my problem with the progressive mentality: It takes away opportunities for people, all in a misguided effort to “protect” them. Do you have any idea what the unemployment rate is for black teenagers in Chicago? It is 89 percent (no, I didn’t forget to add a decimal point between the eight and the nine). Eighty-nine percent citywide for black teens — NOT just in the inner city. This is the president’s home town, for pete’s sake, and it’s a town that has been a stronghold for Democrats for more than 75 years!!! You call that help??? I sure as hëll don’t.
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R. Maheras,
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“It takes away opportunities for people, all in a misguided effort to “protect” them. Do you have any idea what the unemployment rate is for black teenagers in Chicago? It is 89 percent (no, I didn’t forget to add a decimal point between the eight and the nine). Eighty-nine percent citywide for black teens — NOT just in the inner city.”
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Bravo. You found figures to argue your point with. What you did not do however was think before you posted. Let’s take that 89% and look at it for a minute.
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The fact that you can site that number means that those unemployed teenagers are teenagers who are of legal age to be counted as members of the workforce already. They can go and get a part time job around their school hours now whether or not Newt gets his way or not.
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And, if we did what you and Newt wanted us to do, the proposed solution would increase that number both as a percentage and as real numbers. If we rolled back the child labor laws that Newt wants rolled back, then we would have younger children officially eligible to work and be counted as unemployment statistics. What you would not have is any real increase in the available jobs in the area.
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You would be multiple class years of children to the available, legal workforce and creating maybe six to ten jobs. Bravo! You’ve fired the evil, nasty, mean union janitor (who might actually be the parent of one of the kids going to school and thus made that kid’s family even more poor and unable to handle school and food costs in the process) and replaced him with one or two adult “Master Janitors” and created a few low wage positions for a small handful of kids in the school.
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And how does this really save the school any significant money if I may ask? You’re going to fire the evil, nasty, mean union janitor and stop paying him, but you’re then going to replace him with one or two “Master Janitors” and a handful of part time minimum wage earners. The upfront costs look to me the same if not more depending on the amount of work that needs to be done around the school.
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Oh, and just when are these kids not janitors? That’s a rather important question. See, when you have kids acting as non-paid teachers’ aides, they help out before or after class work is done, on free periods and sometimes before or after school. Janitors have to work when the problem comes up. So when are they officially off duty?
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When little Suzy vomits in the gym and the Master Janitor is dealing with something else, do we pull little Johnny out of class (and maybe away from a test) and hand him a mop and bucket? When that sink pipe breaks in the bathroom and starts flooding the bathroom and the water starts going out into the hallway, do we pull little Brad out of class and away from learning to help mop the mess up? Will you keep them late into the evening and long after the buses have run so that they have to have work and alternate travel time impact their study time? Now, you really only have two answer for that. You either say that you will and thus show how stupid the supporters of this are or you say no and show how really pointless this is.
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See, if you say that you would roll back the child labor laws that were put in place in part to ensure that children were not being worked through school hours or to in part insure that work was not interfering with young children’s education so that you can pull them out of classes and/or tests to do this… Well… Welcome to Jonathan Swift’s world.
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If you won’t pull them out of classes or keep them late after school, if you won’t actually use them when they’re actually needed, then what’s the point of all of this other than to take a shot at unions and show how stupid a major Presidential GOP front runner can be and still be popular with his base?
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You would be adding multiple class years of children to the available…
Jerry, from a political standpoint, I don’t care whose idea this was, so all the hair-splitting about unions and the Newt’s supposed ulterior motives and child labor laws, etc. are, in my opinion, a waste of time. All I know is that every year in Chicago, the employment issue for minorities — roughly 59 percent of the Chicago population — seems to get worse. It’s a frickin’ disgrace! When is enough enough? When will the problem be addressed? Where is the plan? Why does it seem like nothing substantial is being done by by a city that has been totally controlled by one political party since Al Capone was in his heyday? Those stats I provided about unemployment were not Republican or conservative stats — they come from the minority organizations in Chicago who are frustrated and grappling with a long-term problem that no one in leadership seems to be dealing with. So Gingrich makes an offhand suggestion, and what immediately happens? The progressives who should be championing such things themselves start sniping. If I sound ticked off, it’s because I am. Chicago’s my home town, and dammit, I’m ashamed.
Maheras, I agree that the unemployment rate for minorities is disgraceful. But take a look around. Nobody is hiding jobs from minorities, EVERYBODY is out of work. And why is everybody out of work? Because Wall Street shipped our jobs to China.
I’ve lived most of my life in communities that were 40% – 80% African American. Yes African Americans are the last hired and the first fired, and that stinks. But nobody else is being hired either. Yes African Americans are the canaries in the coal mine, but in this case the mine has completely filled with gas and nobody is getting out alive.
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“So Gingrich makes an offhand suggestion, and what immediately happens? The progressives who should be championing such things themselves start sniping.”
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First, Newt did not make an “offhand suggestion” here. What he did was, yet again, propose the rollback of child labor laws and take a swipe at unions. The first bit is just his decades long obsession with attacking children in some way, shape or form.
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Hey, remember when he attacked public high school education as just being subsidized dating for the kids? Projecting his bad habits on others since the former Jackie Gingrich, Newt’s first wife, was his high school geometry teacher, and Gingrich started dating her at 16. But, hey, everybody must be as bad as him, right?
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“The progressives who should be championing such things themselves start sniping.”
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Progressives should be championing rolling back child labor laws? Progressives should be championing putting adults who have families to take care of out of work so that Newt can have his child labor force? What’s your next trick, claiming that Progressives should be championing putting 8 year olds back into the mines of West Virginia and stripping out safety regulations while they’re at it?
Jerry — You just don’t get it. Your paternalistic way limits opportunities for poor people to work and improve their lives. It doesn’t help… it actually makes things worse. With more than 75 years of Democratic and progressive leadership, if your way worked, Chicago should be a progressive paradise by now. It’s not, despite all of the promises, posturing and money spent by progressives over the years. In some areas, it’s worse than it’s ever been. My old neighborhood on Chicago’s west side, Austin, has been locked in poverty and crime since the early 1970s — so much so that even during the boom periods, it remained an economic desert. In such high-crime areas there are very few jobs because there are very few businesses. And there are very few businesses because they are high risk areas where no one wants to invest — even progressives. Instead, people are paid to stay poor and live without hope. If that’s the Democratic solution, you can have it. Personally, I think it’s stupid to ignore stuff that obviously isn’t working — regardless of which party is blind to the obvious.
Maheras, you are correct in that the problem is too many people and too few jobs. The question Jerry is asking — and it’s a good one — is how is raising the number of young people who are qualified to work going to combat the lack of jobs?
Another good question is how is taking some of the few jobs available, the janitors’ jobs, and increasing adult unemployment going to help?
Shaving a pie into smaller pieces never made a bigger pie.
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Okay, and I I know I’m asking a lot of you here, but actually think beyond the political talking points for long enough to type and explain to everyone here exactly how rolling back child labor laws is going to fix any of that.
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Please, do tell us exactly how the unemployment figures you cite above will be improved in that area by adding hundreds of new “workers” into the local work pool by lower the legal age of employment while adding a grand total of five or six jobs per school.
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Please, educate us all on the wonders that will come from pulling a poor kid out of a class and telling him he needs to get a plunger and a mop and go clean up the clogged toilet and the mess some other kids made in the bathroom down the hall.
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And, please, put more thought into the responses insofar as how Newt’s masterful strategy for dealing with this will solve things than you have above because, quite frankly, you’re not doing so well with your argument.
Did I say Gingrich’s proposal was some kind of magic bullet that would wipe away poverty in depressed areas? No. But it’s SOMETHING. My old neighborhood was, in essence, left to rot by Democrats. Over four decades there was no investment, no ideas, and no sense of urgency at all by city leadership. Austin and other areas of Chicago were treated like toxic dumps: They sealed off and contained, and then forgotten. Newt’s idea may be a paltry band-aid, but it’s a helluva lot better than nothing.
Lioness — If I were running such a program, I’d make the jobs supplemental positions, meaning no adults would lose their jobs. When I was in eighth grade at the John Hay Upper Grade Center (an early form of junior high in Chicago), I worked in the cafeteria bussing tables and doing clean-up for an hour or so every day. For that, I received free meals — which was a big deal at the time.
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“Did I say Gingrich’s proposal was some kind of magic bullet that would wipe away poverty in depressed areas? No. But it’s SOMETHING.”
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No, it’s nothing. It’s absolutely and positively nothing.
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It creates no real jobs in the community. It makes one person who needs the job (and who may be the only bread winner for a family in a depressed area) unemployed in order to hire someone else for less pay. Net jobs gain there? Zero.
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You then maybe add a handful of part time, minimum wage jobs in the area for each school, but you’re not really adding any jobs into the area because you’re restricting who can work the jobs. So some kids make a few bucks a week, you’ve fired someone in the area who was making a living wage and replaced him with someone who is making just enough to barely get by. Oh, and you’ve artificially inflated the unemployment statistics in depressed areas by adding to the legally available workforce while actually providing no new jobs.
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Good job! You’ve done “something” and it was stupid six ways from Sunday. Feel free to pat yourself on the back now.
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“Newt’s idea may be a paltry band-aid, but it’s a helluva lot better than nothing.”
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No, it’s not. It’s really, really not. But you’re running on partisan talking points and an inability to actually look at what Newt’s offering without partisan colored glasses, so you’ll keep saying that well beyond the point where it’s worth continuing the discussion.
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Of course, it does do one thing that is the most important thing to many of the Newt backers and conservatives across the land. You get to say you stuck it to those mean, evil, nasty unions.
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I guess that counts for some as being better than nothing.
Actually, when you think about it, it’s brilliant. Child is poor. Works as janitor. Injures himself. Parents sue the school. Parents win. Kid is set for life. End of poverty. I mean, yeah, the school will be in trouble, but I’m sure Newt has a solution for that, too…like getting rid of teachers and just having the poor kids teach.
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PAD
Maheras, that’s a good idea. A supplemental program of the type you’re talking about and that you participated in would actually help. It would increase jobs, get needed work done, and provide kids with work experience. But what you want is not what Newt wants, and that is a key thing to remember. The kind of supplemental non-replacement programs that you’re talking about actually were a key part of the Democrat’s original War on Poverty that the Republicans dismissed as “unnecessary” and got rid of through budget cuts. I think you will agree that these programs were actually very necessary.
None of us have ever seen what the War on Poverty could have accomplished if it had been properly funded and given a chance, but it sounds like your experience is a shining example of what the original properly-funded program set out to do.
Mr. David, that’s a lovely idea in theory. The problem is that poor people almost never sue. I’ve seen far worse offenses involving crippling injuries (and one gang rape) happen to poor children in the school system, and the parents don’t think it’s their place to speak up.
While I was reared in the middle class, my parents had been “Poor White Trash” and still carried that mentality in their heads. Whenever I got in trouble with the school system because of a conflict between what was actually written in the rules and the implicit rulebook I would beg my parents to stand up for me only to be told it wasn’t our place to make trouble. Even in middle age I’m still working to get all of that out of my head, and it’s much stronger in families that are still caught in poverty.
Jerry wrote about the part-time job proposal for teens, “No, it’s nothing. It’s absolutely and positively nothing.” — That’s the prevailing attitude of the entrenched Democrats in Chicago, and is one of the reasons nothing’s changed in my old neighborhood in 40 years. All those folks get are empty promises. Talk about getting taken for granted. It’s why I wish there were three or four viable policical parties, rather than two.
PAD — Don’t EVEN get me started on the slide of public education in Chicago — especially for the poor…
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“Actually, when you think about it, it’s brilliant. Child is poor. Works as janitor. Injures himself. Parents sue the school. Parents win. Kid is set for life. End of poverty.”
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Nope. That’s a no go.
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With Newt and the current crop of Republican elected officials, you have a team who want to roll back most safety and workplace regulations. This will pretty much make sure that the kid’s employer of choice (school or elsewhere) isn’t in violation of any laws or standards no matter how negligent they were about workplace safety.
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Then, double trouble, they like to push for legislation that restricts when and where you can sue and how much you can win (deserved settlement or not.) So now the kid who has been hurt by the poor working conditions in the dangerous work environment either can’t sue or at best gets gets a few hundred bucks.
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And then, of course, The Republicans will watch and smile as their voices in conservative talk radio, conservative blogs and Fox News attack the boy as being a unpatriotic, greedy, lazy, something for nothing, mind numbed Democratic operative trying to attack and destroy the great, patriotic American job creators.
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So still in poverty and now injured and unable to work to boot.
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*yawn*
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R. Maheras responds once again in mindless partisan talking points rather than thought or substance.
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Yeah, done with you for now.
Maheras, take a look sometime at the actual history of the actual programs for the poor. Republicans have been slashing money from anti-poverty programs the Democrats created since the 1960s. Quite often the original promises were made in good faith, then the Republicans forced through budget cuts to eliminate “frivolous programs”. It stinks to high heaven, but it’s not entirely the Democrats’ fault.
By the way, as a kindergarten-through-high-school product of the Chicago Public Schools system, I think I’ve earned the right to hammer Democrats for their mismanagement of it — especially during the past 40 years. In 1987, at a time when Democrats had been running the city for more than 50 years, Chicago public schools were called “the worst in the nation” by then U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett. Could the Republicans have done any worse than that? Could ANYONE — even a group of random people off of the street — have done worse than that?
Keep yawning, Jerry. But the fact is, I’ve never been a Republican, so your typical defensive “Republican talking points” rebuttal holds no water. I’m an independent who is just telling it like it is. I’m actually a fallen Democrat — for the simple reason that, in Chicago, I’ve seen over and over again what happens when voters rubber stamp one party for generations: politicians take their constituents for granted and thus lose all sense of accountability. And if you think I’m kidding about being an independent, how many partisan people do you think would have, in 2004, voted for both George W. Bush AND Barack Obama? I did. Bush for president and Obama for U.S. Senate.
Sorry, put this in the wrong place.
Maheras, that epends on how many people were looking. I’ve seen Mississippi public schools where the individual children’s recorded IQ fell the longer they were enrolled.
What is happening in the Chicago Public School System, as in the Mississippi Public School System, is a disgrace. It is racism. It is classism. It is a betrayal of the public trust. It is a betrayal of the fundamental principal that a democracy rests on the backs of an informed electorate. Worst of all, it is a betrayal of the children. Something must be done. Something should have been done years ago. If the Chicago Public School System had a lick of sense, an ounce of honor and a quarter-inch of spine they’d have turned the whole thing over to Marva Collins four decades ago. Yes to all that.
But the people who say, “It could be worse” ain’t just blowing hot air. One of Newt Gingrich’s earlier proposals to do about the public school system was to end subsidized lunches. I don’t know about Chicago, but in Mississippi we had public officials talking the other day about how the majority of poor children in our state eat two meals a day, breakfast at school and lunch at school. Newt Gingrich would take that away from them. Yes, absolutely, something needs to be done. But can you honestly tell me that Newt Gingrich is the best person to come up with “something” that will actually help?
Considering that the choice was between Barack Obama and Alan Keyes, your 2004 vote for Obama isn’t a sign that you’re a political independent and nonpartisan, its a sign that you’re not obviously brain damaged.
Could ANYONE — even a group of random people off of the street — have done worse than that?
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See: some of the long-run Republican states in the South and how well they’re doing.
Sasha — You miss the point. Partisans NEVER vote for the other party — even when their candidate is a total doofus. This is particularly evident in Chicago (and to a lesser degree, Illinois) politics, where, if you are “in” with your party, and you continue to “play ball,” you are in office for life. Unless, of course, you are crooked, are caught, and the feds arrest, try and convict you — which happens quite office in my neck of the woods.
Craig, Maheras is right about one thing. The Democrats have dropped the ball on their promises to help poor people, in Chicago and in the South. The fact that all the Republican proposals so far have been far worse does not negate the Democrat’s failure.
Partisans NEVER vote for the other party — even when their candidate is a total doofus.
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Actually, I was seriously considering voting for McCain in 2000 since I wasn’t that wild about Gore. I liked McCain back then; his policies were more moderate, he was a war hero. But then the GOP shoved Bush to the forefront and it was a no-brainer…in every sense of the word. And since then, McCain has ruthlessly divested himself of every aspect of his personality and beliefs that made him of interest to me. What does that say about him…and about the party that compelled him to do so?
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PAD
Lioness — A few months ago, I opined on a different Web site that I thought Gingrich was unelectable. I said while he’s a smart and experienced guy, he carries more baggage than a Third World bus. Well, things have obviously changed, and I’ve had to reassess him as a viable candidate. Nothing more; nothing less. Yes, many of his cons are problematic, but in that regards, he’s no different than Obama or many other candidates.
PAD — You’re not the only one who wondered, “What the hëll happened to McCain?”
The fact that all the Republican proposals so far have been far worse does not negate the Democrat’s failure.
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I’m not saying it does. The fact is that education in this country is on a downward spiral, regardless of who’s in control.
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Not to mention, when R. Maheras defends Newt’s proposal as something being better than nothing, couldn’t we also point to Chicago for the same fault in logic?
Maheras, I agree with your initial assessment of Gingrich (I keep wanting to type “the Grinch” instead of his last name.) We can reassess him until the cows come home and it’ll still be, as that distasteful woman put it, “like putting lipstick on a pig”. Gingrich may look go (in this case that means “not Romney”) to the hardcore Republican base, but I can’t see anyone else voting for him.
I wouldn’t agree that partisans never vote against their party, and Keyes was a particularly special case. Besides that fact that he wasn’t a total doofus but, rather, a complete whack-job, he was also someone who never lived in Illinois and had no established political base. Like I said, you merely established you weren’t part of the Crazification Factor.
Sasha — In the context of the time, the fact that Keyes was a carpetbagger was not a show-stopper for the Illinois Republican Party. After all, Hillary was also a carpetbagger, yet she had successfully been elected in New York just four years earlier. That said, I think most folks in Illinois thought the IRP had rocks in their heads when they drafted Keyes to run — even though everyone knew Keyes was a last-minute substitution who was enlisted when their preferred candidate, Jack Ryan, bowed out due to a sex scandal. No Republican in Illinois wanted to be the sacrificial lamb after that, so the IRP went out of state. To his credit, at least Keyes tried to take one for the RNC team, even though it was a foregone conclusion that, with Ryan gone, Obama was a shoo-in.
Sasha — One other thing, Keyes did manage to get 27 percent of the vote, which is well above the “crazification” baseline that I’d wager is at about the five-six percent level — you know, the level of people who think the world is flat, believe that trolls live under their stairs, etc. Getting 27 percent of the (mostly partisan) vote was a pretty good showing for a total outsider who’d been in the race for less than three months.
And the point of the Crazification Factor is that despite being drafted from out-of-state with less three months before the election (unlike Hillary who, though a carpetbagger, had set up residence in NY prepped her Senate run well in advance) and being a total and overt loon to boot, Alan Keyes still won 27% of the vote, despite any common sensical or rational reason to do so.
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A lot of really nutty things fall within the Crazification Factor’s margin of error.
“Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it.”
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I’d make some crack about even school janitors being able to detect the flaw in logic there, except my uncle’s a school janitor, so I know that they can actually be a pretty sharp lot, and are, if anything, underpaid for what they do.
It’s always amusing when someone takes an ideologically-based position, if refuted with actual facts, and then responds with “You don’t get it!”
The irony is almost overwhelming.
Of course that’s not not what happened. The conclusion that prompted that response was hyperbole about how Newt wants to fire all the union miners in West Virginia and replace them with 8-year-olds. Much more telling, is there was no solution for the problem that progressives have been fumbling around with in Chicago for more than 40 years. All there was was sniping at Newt. Frankly I don’t care who is elected in 2012. But I do care that Democrats have been worse than incompetent stewards of minority issues in Chicago, and they had better get their stuff together soon or the unthinkable may happen: Chicago may be ripe for a shift from Democratic to Independent, or worse (for the entrenched party folks), Republican.
Thanks for making my point.
You have no point. You’ve made no definitive statements yourself, and provided no facts — just a few suggestive quips.
Another problem I have with Newt’s proposal is the same I have with many Conservatives’ naive (or malicious) view of Capitalism. That people are poor because, somehow, they’re lazy, they lack the dedication, they’re too spoiled to take opportunities, they’ve been morally deformed by a Liberal mindset, they expect handouts, etc.
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If we just instill work ethics into the young kids, things will be dandy, the next generation will be more Randian, or something, America will be great, blah blah blah.
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Keep dreaming.
You are absolutely correct, Rene. Success in Capitalism is very much a combination of factors, many of which a person cannot control. This includes:
1. Hard Work
2. Good business sense
3. Knowing the right people
4. Strong, alpha-type personality
5. LUCK, and lots of it
6. Birth (into money, into a certain family, into a certain area)
There are more, but I think those are the primary ones. Just working hard won’t necessarily get you anywhere, as I know plenty of people that work hard but are still poor. Poverty, likewise, comes from many factors. The simple fact is that many of those that are poor work harder than those that are wealthy. I know people that work multiple jobs, but still can’t seem to get ahead in life. One huge reason for this is pure accident — it’s hard to afford an education when you have a huge medical bill, or a broken fridge, or a leaking roof, or any of a million other problems that can drop onto your head at any given moment.
Very few really do come from nothing and build themselves up to success as the cries of “HARD WORK” would have us believe. Most of those living the good life as doing so purely by the accident of their birth. They were born into a wealthy family, or were born with some natural perk that gave them the edge. The rest of us? We can work ourselves into an early grave, and still never accomplish anything.
Or that they’re born criminals. Courtesy of the GOP frontrunner:
“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
I don’t care how the schools do it, but I just want them to abandon telling these kids that if you get a degree you are just going to come in and walk into the corner office and just get to direct folks and not do anything menial.
I’ve been in the workforce 30+ years and even though I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree, and have a title ending in manager, I still have to my own filing and stuffing of envelopes etc.
When it has been suggested that I might want an intern to help me I say no, because everyone I have ever encountered comes in and wants to do my high level work when the part that take my time from those tasks are the daily grind items that I thought I would be able to move past as I progressed up the ladder. I did those tasks in my 20’s and I still do these in my 50’s. These kids of all income backgrounds need to realize that they will need to start at the bottom and work their way up, and hopefully will be able to have other folks work their way up behind them.
Right now, I don’t see that happening.
Kathy, I remember watching a movie about that same problem. It was made in the late 1940s. I suspect the problem of inexperienced youth has been around even longer than that.
If you let interns come in and tell you what work they’re going to do – you’re doing it way wrong.
R. Maheras,
What are the unemployment statistics for white teens Chicago? All teens?
And the response: Crickets chirping while R keeps repeating the same talking points.
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The unemployment rate for all teenagers in the entire state, defined in Illinois as those aged 16-19, is 27 percent.
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http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/06/17/more-than-1-in-4-teens-unemployed-in-illinois/
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The only sources I could find for Chicago doesn’t say what R said (without bothering to source it.) Everything I find says that the unemployment rate among white teens in Chicago is 24.7 percent and the unemployment rate for black teenagers is 47.7 percent.
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If that’s true, it’s not a Chicago thing. That’s pretty dámņëd close to the national statistics.
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http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm
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Wait… no… found a source when I figured out a few different search words.
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“And it’s critical. Contrast 89 percent unemployment for black Chicago teens with 72 percent for white teens.”
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http://www.wbez.org/story/venture-no-jobs-no-job-skills-lots-black-teens-88020#
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Wow… R is right. Chicago is just hurting minorities so much more than whites. You can clearly see that the white teenagers are just doing so much better than their black peers.
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[Sarcasm Mode Off]
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No wonder he didn’t source it.
The crickets are chirping because a new thread was started. And if either of you think the white unemployment rate for teenagers in Chicago is equivalent to the rate for black teenagers, it’s no wonder you apparently don’t think there’s a race problem there. And if you can cite those statistics and say, with a straight face, that the Democrats are doing a good job in Chicago (especially when it comes to improving the quality life for nearly 60 percent of the population there), then you are either being disingenous, are blindly partisan, or are a fool.
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R. Maheras: “The crickets are chirping because a new thread was started.”
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And their chirping is still a more substantial and logical argument than anything you’ve put forward.
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R. Maheras: “And if either of you think the white unemployment rate for teenagers in Chicago is equivalent to the rate for black teenagers, it’s no wonder you apparently don’t think there’s a race problem there.”
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Interestingly, no one here said that. You just did so that you could have a made up argument to respond to since you can’t respond to the real discussion with anything that rises above screaming about those gosh darned horrible Democrats, but no one else here said that.
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Of course there’s a discrepancy in the two figures and one showing that black teens get work in less numbers/percentages in Chicago that their white peers. However, as the sources I linked above show, that’s not a Chicago thing; or even an Illinois thing for that matter.
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The unemployment rates for black teens VS their white peers is roughly 48 percent VS 24 percent across the country. The percentage for unemployed back teens across the country, whether in Democrat strongholds or Republican strongholds, is roughly twice that of white teens. That’s true for the state of Illinois as well.
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We all pretty much knew that.
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What made you look stupid here and made your not sourcing you information or providing a link to any sources look like you deliberately trying to misrepresent things was how you presented the figures and how you still now desperately grasp at saving the idea behind the context of how you presented them.
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You threw out that 89 percent figure for Chicago and went on about the suffering minorities as if the system in Chicago was singling them out and hurting just them while everyone else was just sailing on by as per normal fro everywhere else. It was those dámņëd Democrats hurting minorities and making things harder for minorities (in Obama’s home town no less) by their actions!
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Except, for your point to actually have any meaning or weight in the context that you presented it in, the rate of white teen unemployment would have to be 24 to 25 percent. It’s not. The unemployment rate for white teens in Chicago is a whopping 72 percent.
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That’s not a minority thing there, that’s a problem facing everyone. Yes, the black teens have it worse off than the white teens, but no more so than anywhere else in the country since the unemployment rates are actually much higher for both groups in Chicago (and actually closer to being the same than in most places.) But, of course, the whole truth doesn’t quite let you shake your fist at the sky and claim the same righteous indignation that you were laughably trying to pull off in several of your posts.
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R. Maheras: “And if you can cite those statistics and say, with a straight face, that the Democrats are doing a good job in Chicago (especially when it comes to improving the quality life for nearly 60 percent of the population there), then you are either being disingenous, are blindly partisan, or are a fool.”
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And, again, you have to make šhìŧ up about what people said in order to have something you can argue against and not look foolish. What a shock. What a surprise.
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You’ve been trying to change the subject or at least shift it considerably since your first real post on the matter, all you’ve done when presented with facts or reasonable or logical points to discuss is shake your fist and scream the same blathering, irrelevant talking points over and over again and now you’ve hit that fun stage where you inform others of what you wish they had said and argue against that rather than discuss what was actually said by others.
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The fact that you have to go through all of that to make yourself think that you’re POV on the original topic is valid and even close to right should be a big clue to anyone with any self awareness at all that it’s neither.
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Oh, and the other thing with your attempts to twist and change the subject…
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This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Chicago. This isn’t about anything that Democrats have done. You may desperately want to make it about those things, but it’s not about any of them.
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This is about Newt and his proposal for the entire country and all the people in it. This is about Newt and his idea to roll back child labor laws in this country. This is about Newt and his taking a shot at unions to pander to the base and get potential votes.
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Not a dámņëd thing you’ve spewed since the discussion started really has anything to do with the topic at hand. Not your screaming about Democrats in Chicago or you sad, pathetic and feeble attempts to make this about race.
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If you’d like to actually join the discussion that the rest of us were trying to have, feel free. If all you want to do is continue to spout off more irrelevant talking points and change the subject while dodging any actual points put before you…
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Done with you now.
Jerry Chandler wrote: “The unemployment rates for black teens VS their white peers is roughly 48 percent VS 24 percent across the country.” The statistics you cite are the lowball numbers which do not match those cited by minority organizations in Chicago who are actually in the trenches fighting the problem — organizations whose numbers you so energetically ridiculed. But what you clearly don’t realize is that if those numbers you cited for Chicago minority teenagers are accurate, and things in Chicago are truly “no different” for minority teens than anywhere else, that actually supports my original contention that 75 years of Democratic rule in Chicago has done nothing to ease the situation of minorities there. And if the higher numbers cited by minority organizations in Chicago are correct, then the Democrats’ performance there on minority issues (and joblessness in general) are even more shameful. Regarding your charges about sourcing, they are simply ridiculous in this era of Google.
You rock, Jerry.
Guess those crickets were busy trying to find a source. Im sure they’ll get back with one, the Tuesday after never.
Jerry Chandler wrote: “This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Chicago. This isn’t about anything that Democrats have done.” It is most CERTAINLY about all of the above. As I mentioned, Chicago has been totally run by (mostly white) Democrats for for more than 75 years. In that time, not only has the Democratic Party failed to create a progressive utopia, in significant ways (job-wise and education-wise, for example), minorities are worse off now than they were 50 years ago. So partisan Democrats like you should be the LAST people criticizing suggestions attempting to improve the situation — even dumb suggestions.
And I’m sure you’ll now explain how Chicago’s fortunes can be turned around by following the example of the conservative utopia modeled in Alabama.
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Wow. I’m a partisan Democrat. Who knew? I guess I’d best stop having conversations with Bill Mulligans and others over on Facebook about how I’m pìššëd øff at that the Republicans because it seems that they want to give us the absolute worst candidate rather than a viable option to Obama and I guess I certainly better stop criticizing Obama here, on my blog, on Facebook and elsewhere.
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“Jerry Chandler wrote: “This isn’t about race. This isn’t about Chicago. This isn’t about anything that Democrats have done.” It is most CERTAINLY about all of the above. “
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No, you mental midget, this is about Newt, his idiotic ideas in general, his specific proposal here to roll back child labor laws and his little slap at unions. That’s what the thread was started to discuss. that’s what we’re all discussing. Look at the header of the thread. Newt, his proposal and the entire country. It’s really not our fault if you’re too mind numbingly-stupid to be able to comprehend what you are reading or what the words others type actually mean.
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“So partisan Democrats like you should be the LAST people criticizing suggestions attempting to improve the situation — even dumb suggestions.”
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Look, if you want to double down on your own stupidity, that’s fine. But, really, you want to prove definitively to everyone here that you’re IQ is just slightly less than that of one of my cats? But then, your deceleration that people shouldn’t criticize even dumb suggestions?
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Hey, maybe you love embracing dumb suggestions and singing their praises, most of us don’t. Does explain the content of of your posts though.
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look, the sane adults here were trying to discuss Newt and a proposal that will have an impact on every child in every state, white, black, red, yellow, green, pinky russet or some combination of the above, the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of it and Newt’s swipe at unions in it.
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You just want to stand on your street corner in a daze and scream inanities at the passers-by. You don’t want to have an actual conversation of any intelligence, you just want ignore actual points others put before you and continue to scream about the horrible Democrats and yell about how all of this is all just about race and Chicago.
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You are a prize winning idiot and on this matter I am well and truly done with you now.
Jerry — Instead of addressing in the sub-thread above my specific complaints about how badly the Democrats have botched things for minorities in Chicago — despite having TOTAL control of that city for more than 75 years — you ignored them and went down several diversionary ratholes, threw in some personal insults, and then ended it all by saying “I’m done here.” In actuality, the reason you’re “done here” is because you do not HAVE a valid argument refuting my charge that Democrats have no case when it comes to criticizing Gingrich about job creation for minorities. Because, despite your protestations, Chicago is the perfect political petri dish for demonstrating what happens to a minority community when Democrats have total control. From a scientific point of view, the sheer size of its representative sample, coupled with the enormous time span of the “experiment,” and even the most partisan of partisans should be able to see that for more than seven decades, the Democratic Party’s promises to its loyal minority constituents have been largely empty. I don’t know Republicans would do any better, but they certainly couldn’t have done much worse. Personally, I think the solution for minorities in Chicago is they should reject political allegiance of any type and throw their support behind whoever gets results. I think this will give them far more political leverage then they’ve enjoyed since Prohibition.
In my neck of the woods, teen unemployment is close to 100%. Ever since the factories closed, the adults have had to take all the low-wage entry-level jobs their teenager children used to work. The kids aren’t working behind the counter at Subway; their dads are working there.
Which is another problem with this crazy scheme. In Mississippi our completely non-unionized school system which just happens to rank at the bottom of the nation without any union around at all, this proposal would in effect fire the students’ mothers (who are the poor people working those jobs in the first place) and replace them with the poor students who would earn less money for their families. Net result: the poor students’ family income would go down, and they would have less ability to help the student be profitable as an adult.
Real bright thinking, y’all.
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“In Mississippi our completely non-unionized school system which just happens to rank at the bottom of the nation without any union around at all, this proposal would in effect fire the students’ mothers (who are the poor people working those jobs in the first place) and replace them with the poor students who would earn less money for their families. Net result: the poor students’ family income would go down, and they would have less ability to help the student be profitable as an adult.
Real bright thinking, y’all.”
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It’s Newt and the hardcore GOP base. No thinking required or expected.
Some more of Newt’s amazing genius that was overlooked until now:
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Gingrich would end Fed’s emphasis on jobs, focus only on inflation
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/gingrich-end-fed-focus-jobs-focus-only-inflation-141508938.html
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But then, let’s face it: this isn’t so much Newt’s plan as it is stuff copied & pasted from the GOP Playbook: shift more and more of the tax burden in this country from the rich to the poor and middle class. And who needs a job to pay those extra taxes, anyways?
Several things here:
1) Gingrich’s plan was to fire the union janitors — because it’s somehow the folks in unions who are overpaid — and replace them with child labor. I don’t see how that’s a positive, Dad loses his job with benefits but junior gets to do it for a fraction of the cost.
2) Gingrich claimed this would help poor kids learn the value of work, which is insulting because poor kids are the most likely to already know this, if you want to instill the value of a work ethic, have Hiltons and Kardashian kids sweeping floors — kids who are less likely to even do basic chores around the house.
3) A work ethic is also instilled — as well as self esteem — in drama clubs, newspaper, and other extracurricular activities. Poor kids often can’t afford either the dues if applicable or time (many already have after school jobs). If you want to give kids a chance at mobility, we should be focusing on educational programs.
4) The kid who mopped the floor will be at a disadvantage in college and for potential internships against the kid who wrote for the newspaper, That’s a fact. I have no problem with adopting a system where all kids do custodial work as part of school pride, but singling out poor kids is not a good idea.
I wonder what these GOP guys think the world would be like if unions were abolished or never existed. I strongly suspect that, instead of a dynamic economy of their dreams, we’d have 12-hour workdays with no vacation, slave wages, kids and old men working, and greater economic inequality than ever.
Rene, I suspect that is their dream, complete with a caste system that puts them on top.
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Sadly, the Conservative/Republican power brokers would likely love to see that come to pass. Even sadder, their most ardent supporters in the voter base seem to stupid to realize what supporting.
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… what they’re supporting.
See, just trying to comment on it is affecting you, Jerry. 😉
I have been saying exactly that for years, the base which is middle class for the conservatives are acting against their own best interests. A conservative I know just had to take a pay cut to keep his job and shortly after it came out the president of the company gave himself a nice million dollar bonus. He started ranting at me it was all the union’s fault that he had to take a pay cut. The irony… The company has NO union!
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Then I tried to get him to explain to me how it was all the unions’ fault in a non union shop and he starts telling me Rush said this, Newt said this and I just walked away shaking my head in disbelief. This is not a dumb person, in fact I know him well enough to say he is slightly above average in most things. But constant exposure to the utter stupidity and scapegoating that is the conservative discourse has him blaming non-existent people for the actions of his greedy bosses.
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How do you enlighten someone that wants to act against their own best interest and not think rationally!
Usually, wait until they hit rock bottom and have no one left to blame.
Lioness and Jerry – this reminds me of Romney’s charge that Obama was replacing our “merit-based” society with an “entitlement” society where the rewards are the same regardless on contribution. This is a horrible viewpoint, as it doesn’t state that your lifestyle will be worse just that others might be better who don’t work as hard.
If you read the DOI and the Constitution, the notion of the U.S. as an “entitlement” culture can be found there. I don’t see how self-professed Christians would want to enact a government of social Darwinism. Merit-based is octen code for the strong survive, Dinosaurs had that society. I”ll pass.
The key philosophical difference is that some believe that no one would do anything without fear (of financial catastrophe) or greed (desire to accumulate more and more). I don’t think that’s the case — at least not for everyone. A country with universal health care and living wages would not create a slacker culture. Right now, though, people work themselves into the ground because they fear the illness that will wipe them out or the lack of a dignified old age.
A country with universal health care and living wages would not create a slacker culture.
And hasn’t created slacker cultures in any number of foreign countries that have these things. Starting with Canada. I’ve never heard Canadians accused of being slackers.
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Well, the brain damaged voter block is now officially locked up…
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Actor Gary Busey Endorses Newt Gingrich: ‘I Know What He Stands For’
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http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/266361/20111213/actor-gary-busey-endorses-newt-gingrich-know.htm
Busey’s endorsement could be beneficial…for Ron Paul. Actually, how far off the reservation have the others strayed when what little of the debates I’ve seen makes Ron Paul look like the only sane one? Busey weighing in for McCain could finally be the thing that causes Paul’s numbers to spike.
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PAD
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“Busey weighing in for McCain could finally be the thing that causes Paul’s numbers to spike.”
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Yeah, I know the problem you’re having here. It’s honestly so Twilight Zone bizarre that Newt Gingrich is being considered the viable front runner (and by such a huge lead) for the GOP in 2012 that the mind can’t comprehend the stupidity of it. You want to type “Gingrich,” but the mind and body rebels against you and types something else entirely without you realizing it.
NBC World News was just predicting Ron Paul’s victory in Iowa…
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I’m sorry Pad, but if you watched Ron Paul long enough on the debates he came off as insane as all the rest. I’d put him just above Bachmann on the crazy scale. He says some things sensibly but on other subjects he’s is just insane.
He’s a kook, but I admire him for being an honest and earnest kook.
Mr. David, the sanest bit of news I saw last Sunday was this ad for Ron Paul. Coming from a man who wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act, that fact was pretty depressing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKfuS6gfxPY
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No. Not really sane at all.
Newt Gingrich is the GOP version of 90s nostalgia. I’d rather they listen to Nirvana or Soundgarden instead. Isn’t he the guy who wanted to impeach the only president in recent years to balance the budget, allegedly their fondest wish?
I just imagined Newt Gingrich in a brand new costume with piping all over.
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I’ll be scrubbing out my brain for the next forever or so.
“Newt Gingrich is the GOP version of 90s nostalgia. I’d rather they listen to Nirvana or Soundgarden instead. Isn’t he the guy who wanted to impeach the only president in recent years to balance the budget, allegedly their fondest wish?”
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Your statement would have the slightest relevance – and sense – if he was trying to impeach Clinton FOR balancing the budget. Otherwise, regardless of where you stand on the whole impeachment thing, it would be like blaming a prosecutor for prosecuting a child abuser even though he took said child to Disneyworld, his child’s fondest wish.
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One has/had nothing to do with the other.
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One could make the same case that Hillary and Bill are popular with those who yearn for the ’90s as well. In fact, to me that is yet another of Newt’s weaknesses. It would cause the Clintons to use everything at their disposal to campaign for Obama.
Wow, Jerome, bringing up child abuse, that’s low even for you.
And yet again Neil C. misses a point entirely.
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Neil, if that particular analogy gets you too hung up to answer him, try this one.
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He’s saying that you pointing out the one thing that has nothing to do with the other would be a bit like saying that we shouldn’t prosecute a man for drunk driving because he donates so much to his local church.
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I didn’t agree with the impeachment witch-hunt of the 90’s, and even I can get what he’s saying here.
I undestood. It was just a bad analogy.
And before someone jumps on spelling, I know it’s understood.
I just stumbled into this…
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http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h104-4170
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…and had to bring it up here. Not because I can’t believe anyone would propose a legislation like this (death penalty for anyone carrying 100 doses of a controlled substance across a border… and that includes pot) but because I am really interested in reading the oppinion of the local reactionaries about it.
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Eh… About as crazy as when Newt said we should put giant mirrors in space to light our streets and cities at night.
Hmm, I don’t remember that one, Jerry.
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It sounds like Newt isn’t doing so hot in Iowa right now. It won’t help that his brand-new political director there, who was hired only a week ago, has already had to resign for calling Mormonism a cult.
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But then, as the Yahoo! article about Newt’s Iowa numbers points out:
“Gingrich has a long record of making provocative statements that could alienate independent voters, such as when he recently referred to Palestinians as an “invented” people.”
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I would hope such statements would alienate ay intelligent voter, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Yup.
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It’s making the rounds again thanks to David Brooks.
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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/12/david-brooks/david-brooks-says-newt-gingrich-once-proposed-putt/
Where did he get that idea, a Star Wars novel?
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At a guess? Reading Alvin Toffler years ago while stoned out of his little Newt mind.
I do not like Newt sometimes. he is not reliably conservative and can come off as smug. I am still hoping Perry surges.
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But really, should it be so controversial that we suggest poor kids be given the opportunity to work to earn something of value? I worked through out high school and college. I was not wealthy and I knew it. I was determined to get out of my station in life and better myself. Work was a great teacher of what the real world was like and what one might do if you were willing to work.
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Work as a youth taught me many great lessons, not the least of which was if you want anything better than struggling you will have to work for it. Work was not a four letter word. It was a great teacher that lead to success.
If that was all he said, it wouldn’t have been. Newt said quite a bit more than that, however …
Jerry — Did you even read that aricle? If you did, then your quote above is a deliberate distortion. Gingrich did not make the proposal. It was made in 1979 by a NASA-sponsored panel of experts at a Woods-Hole “new concepts” brainstorming symposium. All Gingrich did was discuss a summary of that panel’s suggestions, and, as Politifact points out, to their knowledge he hasn’t raised the issue since he originally brought it up in 1984. There are plenty of things to criticize Gingrich about, but this simply isn’t one of them.
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He cited it and promoted it approvingly in his book.
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Someone else says that a great idea to deal with global warming would be to build a giant sun-glass lens and float it in orbit so that it would sit in between us and the sun at all times. I read it and then discuss it on my blog. I promote it in my writings as a good idea and discuss in all seriousness about how it might be a good thing to do. Under those conditions, you could absolutely say that I promoted the idea and said we should do it.
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Just as Newt did back then.
Where did he get that idea, a Star Wars novel?
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Wrong franchise. It was Gustav Graves from “Die Another Day.”
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PAD
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“But really, should it be so controversial that we suggest poor kids be given the opportunity to work to earn something of value? I worked through out high school and college. I was not wealthy and I knew it. I was determined to get out of my station in life and better myself. Work was a great teacher of what the real world was like and what one might do if you were willing to work.
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Work as a youth taught me many great lessons, not the least of which was if you want anything better than struggling you will have to work for it. Work was not a four letter word. It was a great teacher that lead to success.”
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Except, that’s not what he is really saying. Just saying that you should go out and find a job, do some honest work and learn the value of both hard work and a dollar is fine. Not Newt’s proposal and, last time I looked, not something that was being condemned by anyone here or elsewhere.
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Newt is advocating something entirely different. First, and likely his primary goal, he’s doing the standard Republican playbook thing of the moment and going after unions. The first bit in the plan is firing the union janitor after all.
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And a big part of that step is supposedly to lower the wages paid for the job. So, you fire someone making a living wage for their area and re-list the job at a less than living wage salary. Newt wants to remove a job that may be paying enough for someone to live off of from the poor areas that R. Maheras likes to use as examples above and replace it with the same job with a less than living wage. Bravo. One less job in the area that might keep someone out of poverty and off of food stamps and welfare assistance. Good plan, Newt!
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The next part of the plan is to roll back child labor laws that restrict when, where and how long a child can be worked by an employer and how old someone has to be to be employed. Sure, he’s wrapping it up in the school idea, but he’s not saying that it would be limited to only that one scenario.
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But just staying in the school setting… You then hire a few kids in the school to help the master janitor and to do small jobs when he’s not around or busy. Well, see, schools by nature are open during the hours that kids happen to be in school. And, being that janitors work during school hours and when accidents happen, when are you going to work the kids? Very often, during school hours. So, what, you pull the kids out of class and away from school work and studying to clean up mess that just got made in the cafeteria?
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Yeah, let’s pull the elementary school kids out of class, hand them a mop and a plunger and have them go clean up the vomit on the lunchroom floor or the backed up and overflowing toilet.
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But on top of that and directly to your point, there’s nothing (other than the lousy economy) stopping the kids who are now the age you and I were then from getting a part time job and earning some cash. You can now still get a job at the same legal work age that you and I started at. And, beyond that, you can still cut lawns and do work along those lines before you’re of legal age to be hired by a business to be an employee.
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Nothing at all wrong with suggesting that kids look to things like that for some honest money. Again, not what Newt’s proposing.
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“Work was not a four letter word.”
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Uhm… Well… Technically…
Jerry and PAD,
The latest is the Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows Dept. You know who agrees with you and others here about Newt and specifically his janitor proposal? Ann Coulter (who in another shock favors…Romney)
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“Fellow right-wingers: Is our objective to taunt Obama by accusing him of “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior,” of being “authentically dishonest” and a “wonderful con” — and then lose the election — or is it to defeat Obama, repeal ObamaCare, secure the borders, enforce e-verify, reform entitlement programs, reduce the size of government and save the country?”
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“If all you want is to lob rhetorical bombs at Obama and then lose, Newt Gingrich — like recent favorite Donald Trump — is your candidate. But if you want to save the country, Newt’s not your guy.”
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“Gingrich makes plenty of bombastic statements, but these never seem to translate into actual policy changes.”
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“After becoming the first Republican speaker of the House in nearly half a century, for example, Newt promptly proposed orphanages and janitorial jobs for children on welfare.”
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“It was true that welfare had destroyed generations of families shorn of the work ethic and led to soaring illegitimacy rates, child abuse and neglect. Maybe orphanages and child labor would have been better.”
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“But we didn’t get any orphanages. We didn’t get jobs for children in families where no one works.”
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“What we got was the cartoonish image of Republicans as hard-hearted brutes who hated poor kids.”
I like how she qualifies her statement by saying that she’s not necessarily against orphanages and child labor.
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Yeah, Ann, it’s Newt that gave Republicans the cartoonish image of hard-hearted brutes. Can’t be anyone else.
Because it’s so much more heartwarming to leave children in homes where they’re abused and/or neglected than an orphanage where they’ll be cared for.
How does “on welfare” equate to “abused and/or neglected”? And how is saying “The state can do a better job of raising poor children than their parents” in any way consistent with conservative or Republican principles?
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What’s interesting is the reasons behind the three (seemingly on the surface) same POVs on Newt.
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She wants someone who is likely as extreme Right as Newt, but more effective at turning rhetoric into legislation and less prone to wandering into Alvin Toffler Land.
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Peter likely wants just dislikes Newt in general here. He’ll correct me if I’m wrong I’m sure.
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I dislike Newt and some of the other alternatives that the Republicans have put up there this go-round because I would like a viable alternative to Obama and we just don’t have a strong third party here.
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And I’m not even sure we’re really bedfellows here. She just doesn’t want him running because she thinks he can’t win. She’d likely be thrilled if Newt ran and actually won. I wouldn’t be and, just a guess, neither would Peter.
Jerry,
Actually, Ann has been against Newt running for years now. She has, many times, called him the “Talker-In-Chief”. And further in the column we learn she is not against Newt because she feels he can’t win. Hëll, she was supporting Duncan Hunter at this time four years ago, for God’s sake – but for the following reasons:
1.) She feels he is a poor leader
2.) She feels he has had a lot of bad ideas
3.) She does not feel he is particularly conservative.
So, no, I don’t think she’d be doing backflips if Newt won.
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Any candidate that Ann Coulter feels comes off as too mean and “radiating more heat than light” just may have a problem in the general election.
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Here is the rest of her reasons why she feels Newt would be a terrible choice:
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“Ronald Reagan was also accused of waging a war on the poor. But that was on account of his implementing historic tax cuts that produced not only record revenues for the government, but decades of prosperity for the entire nation.”
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“With Newt, you get all the heat, blowback and acrimony, but you don’t get the policy changes.”
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“To the contrary, his pointless bloviating about orphanages and child janitors harmed the chances for welfare reform, despite the fact that the American people, the Republican Congress and the Democratic president (publicly, at least), supported it.”
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“Indeed, when it came time to make vital changes to welfare policy, such as work requirements and anti-illegitimacy provisions, Gingrich tried to scuttle them. He denounced such provisions — the very heart of welfare reform — as, yes, “social engineering of the right” (e.g., Republican Governors Conference, Williamsburg, Va., Nov. 22, 1994).”
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“The guy who wanted orphanages for children on welfare suddenly called work requirements for adults on welfare right-wing “social engineering.””
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“Gingrich went on to lose almost every negotiation with Bill Clinton — and that was with solid Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. His repeated capitulation to Clinton led former Vice President Dan Quayle to remark that the Republican “Contract With America” had become the “Contract With Clinton.” (Not to be confused with Newt’s book, “Contract With the Earth.”)”
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“Perfectly good policies are constantly being undermined by Newt’s crazy statements — such as his explanation that women couldn’t be in combat because they get infections, whereas men “are basically little piglets,” who are “biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.””
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“Hunt giraffes?”
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“With Gingrich we get the worse of all worlds. He talks abrasively — offending moderates and galvanizing liberals — but then carries a teeny, tiny stick.”
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“We want someone who will talk softly and unthreateningly while implementing vital policy changes. Even when Gingrich doesn’t completely back off conservative positions, his nutty rhetoric undermines the ability of Republicans to get anything done.”
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“By the time of the 1996 Republican National Convention, Gingrich was so widely reviled that the Democrats’ main campaign strategy against all Republican candidates for office was to link them with Gingrich.”
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“Gingrich was forced into a minor speaking role at the convention, which he used to promote … beach volleyball.”
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“That’s right, Republicans were trying to defeat Clinton and Newt was talking about beach volleyball, which is apparently the essence of freedom — as well as evidence of Newt’s cuddly side!”
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“(During the House ethics investigation of Gingrich, he produced notes in which he reminds himself to “allow expression of warm/smiling/softer side.”)”
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“After Gingrich had been speaker for a brief two years, the Republican House voted 395-28 to reprimand him and fine him $300,000 for ethics violations.”
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“(Sen. Bob Dole loaned Gingrich the money in what was called the first instance of an airbag being saved by a person.)”
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“It’s true that Newt has had some good ideas — but also boatloads of bad ones, such as his support for experimentation on human embryos, cap and trade, policies to combat imaginary man-made global warming, an individual health insurance mandate, Dede Scozzafava (Romney supported the tea party candidate), amnesty for illegal aliens, Al Gore’s bill to establish an “Office of Critical Trends Analysis” to prepare government reports on “alternative futures” (co-sponsored by Gingrich), and thinking he could get away with taking $1.6 million from Freddie Mac without anyone noticing.”
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“During the ethics investigation, the committee also found among Newt’s personal papers a sketch of himself as a stick figure at the center of the universe.”
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“On one page, Newt called himself: “definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who fan civilization, organizer of the pro-civilization activists, leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.””
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“This is not a small-government conservative talking. It is not a conservative at all.”
Coulter’s hardly alone. There are plenty of right wing talking heads (not to mention people who have worked with Newt) who are terrified that Newt will be the nominee. Of course, they’d have no one to blame but themselves: They’ve been stoking ultra right wing fervor for years and now that they’ve got the face of it in Gingrich, they’re going, “Wait a minute…” In Gingrich, they are reaping what they’ve sown.
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What I’m unclear on is which they find a more appalling notion: the concept that Gingrich is the nominee and therefore they can’t beat Obama…or that he’s the nominee and wins the presidency.
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PAD
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Many of the ones (at least that I know) in the voter base? They honestly think that he’s going to destroy Obama in the debates, leap past him in the polls and destroy him in the 2012 election in a fashion reminiscent of the 1984 election results. Then he’s going to fix the country and make America great again.
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Personally, I’d like to know what recreational drugs they’re on.
Let me get this straight. Ann Coulter dislikes Newt, but not because Newt is a heartless madman flirting with fascism. No, just because Newt is too honest about being a heartless fascist and too incompetent to actually implement his heartess fascism.
“Coulter’s hardly alone. There are plenty of right wing talking heads (not to mention people who have worked with Newt) who are terrified that Newt will be the nominee. Of course, they’d have no one to blame but themselves: They’ve been stoking ultra right wing fervor for years and now that they’ve got the face of it in Gingrich, they’re going, “Wait a minute…” In Gingrich, they are reaping what they’ve sown.”
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Well, one of the main things that bothers conservatives, especially Tea partiers and evangelicals, is that Newt is not nearly and “ultra right wing” as his reputation would have you believe.
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From abortion to so-called “climate change”, they feel he is as wishy-washy as Romney, if not moreso.
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And with support for experimentation on human embryos, cap and trade, policies to combat imaginary man-made global warming, an individual health insurance mandate, they feel he is ill-equipped to contrast and challenge Obama on these issues.
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With things like supporting the RINO Dede Scozzafava (Romney supported the tea party candidate), they feel he is part of the establishment they are rebelling against.
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With the $1.6 million from Freddie Mac they feel he is ill-equipped to rebut Obama when he talks about economic fairness or challenge him on how fannie and Freddie helped cause the mess we’re in.
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In short, the most passionate feel Obama will destroy the country if given four more years, but that Newt may well destroy the new conservative brand and turn people off with his rhetoric ifd he gets in. More than one have used the term “Nixonian” when describing him.
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Which is why so many are praying for Rick Perry to at least survive after Iowa, if not win it. He is the “consistent conservative”, is running a state and will not have people revisiting the fights of the ’90s.
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Jerome,
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You’re here saying that (and I agree to a large degree with some of it,) but others elsewhere are calling him the “serious” conservative in the race. While he plays the part of a conservative more often than not, the truth is he’s out there. Back when he was the new thing on the block and people were asking him to define himself to the nation, he stated in several interviews that if you wanted to see who Newt was, all you had to do was read the book The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.
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Have you ever read that thing? I have. I have four words for you – Ho Lee She Ate.
Jerry,
Exactly. Which is why conservatives from George Will to Ann Coulter are against him. They may agree with the some of the policies he may try to push, but he more often than not contaminates them with “out-there” ideas.
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To repeat one of Coulter’s examples:
“On one page, Newt called himself: “definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization, arouser of those who fan civilization, organizer of the pro-civilization activists, leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.””
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“This is not a small-government conservative talking. It is not a conservative at all.”
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The ironic thing is the one subject in which he so clearly undermines himself is that in which he may be accurately a described as a “bleeding heart” but comes off as “black-hearted”- poor children.
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he genuinely seems to care about improving their plight but then comes out with such bizarre initiatives – remember giving all of them a laptop? – he comes off giving the opposite impression that he intends.
You know, I truly wish Conservatives were as against social engineering and intervention into people’s lives as they claim to be. I am sorry, but Newt considering himself “definer of civilization” is totally consistent with being a Conservative.
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IMO, Conservatives have a sharp idea of what society should be like, and they fight for it with all the weapons at their disposal. I don’t agree with their ideal of civilization, but I respect the clarity of their vision and their dedication. What I do NOT respect is their attempt to say they’te not telling people what to do, they’re just for small government and nothing else, really, when they have very clear positions on every single aspect of modern life, and they fight for it with a dedication that Liberals many times lack.
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The simple truth is that all governments need to make rules to maintain an ordered society. The other simple truth is that almost all of those rules are by nature a form of social engineering. We just don’t call them that when it’s a rule that “our side” puts out and that we personally like. There’s actually a fairly livable balance for what we want to call freedom and the restrictions needed for everyone to have and enjoy that freedom out there somewhere, but we tend to pull away from that balance every time we get near it for any good amount of time.
Oh, and can someone please slap Sean Hannity silly for me? he was on the other night and was like a robot minus the entertainment value one of those would provide. he had a guest on – I believe it was Monica Crowley – and he kept making his “point” that “these are all flawed candidates” and “they’re all infinitely better than Obama”.
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he kept cutting off Crowley, who kept saying that a vigorous debate among the candidates was healthy. That it will sharpen their arguments for the fall, that it will prepare them to strengthen their weaknesses, that it will highlight their differences.
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He kept saying stuff like “I’m tired of hearing about Romney’s flip-flops and Newt’s ad with Pelosi” and basically said it was a two-man race (thereby dismissing the efforts of Perry, who is coming on strong; Paul, who could conceivably win Iowa; Bachmannn and Santorum, who have spent a ton of time in iowa and could still break through there and Huntsman, who has shown a pulse in New Hampshire.
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He did this for two other segments as well, basically saying, “Who cares what these guys (and gal) stand for, what their weaknesses are and what their differences are? Either way they have an R after their name and I’m voting for them no matter what over Obama so why confuse the issue?”
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How sad.
Mr. Maheras,
I can’t help but wonder, would you feel that someone was engaging you in intelligent discussion if you were criticising something Obama said or did and the other person continually ignored what you were talking about and simply repeatedly said that you were wrong because of something done somewhere by Republicans in power when the somewhere and something was unrelated to your criticisms of Obama?
Would you feel that they were being honest in a debate with you if they said that you were in no position to criticize Obama because Republicans had said or done worse and you may have supported those actions or words?
If you tired of speaking to this person because they would not address your criticisms other than to say you were wrong, say that you were wrong because of these unrelated matters and claim your criticisms were without merit because the other side once said or did worse, would you believe that they were correct in their declaration of victory in their debate with you becaue you walked away after they showed that they were incapable of intellectually honest debate?
You almost make me wish I was still a Poli Sci student in college. I could have written a most delicious paper on you.