;)
February 27, 2023
Afternoon/Evening Update:
** Hannah Dreier of the New York Times: "Migrant children ... are part of a new economy of exploitation: ... children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.... The federal government knows they are in the United States, and the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for ensuring sponsors will support them and protect them from trafficking or exploitation.... While H.H.S. checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors, data obtained by The Times showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.
"'It's getting to be a business for some of these sponsors,' said Annette Passalacqua, who left her job as a caseworker in Central Florida last year. Ms. Passalacqua said she saw so many children put to work, and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these cases, that she largely stopped reporting them. Instead, she settled for explaining to the children that they were entitled to lunch breaks and overtime.... Caseworkers at [child welfare] agencies said that H.H.S. regularly ignored obvious signs of labor exploitation, a characterization the agency disputed.... [Under the leadership of Secretary Xavier Becerra, H.H.S.] began paring back protections that had been in place for years, including some background checks and reviews of children's files, according to memos reviewed by The Times and interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees." ~~~
~~~ Marie: If Jungle Gym Jordan is looking for something to investigate, this should be it. A featured company in this story is called Hearthside, which makes products like Cheerios, Lucky Charms & Nature Valley granola bars for General Mills. Such warm & fuzzy happy names: "I'm going to sit hearthside here in the verdant Nature Valley & munch on a bowl of Cheerios." Never mind that those Cheerios were packaged by children working on assembly lines in the middle of the night. ~~~
~~~ Update. Hannah Dreier of the New York Times: "The Biden administration on Monday announced a wide crackdown on the labor exploitation of migrant children around the United States, including more aggressive investigations of companies benefiting from their work. The development came days after The New York Times published [the results, linked above, of] an investigation into the explosive growth of migrant child labor throughout the United States.... The White House laid out a host of new initiatives to investigate child labor violations among employers and improve the basic support that migrant children receive when they are released to sponsors.... Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, called the revelations in The Times 'heartbreaking' and 'completely unacceptable.' As part of the new effort, the Department of Labor, which enforces these laws, said it would target not just the factories and suppliers that illegally employ children, but also the larger companies that have child labor in their supply chains.... The Department of Labor has begun an investigation into Hearthside, administration officials said....
"[MB: And guess what?] Both the House Judiciary and Oversight committees pledged investigations, and Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the Judiciary chairman, demanded in a letter sent Monday that Robin Dunn Marcos, the director of the division of H.H.S. in charge of child migrants, submit to a transcribed interview.... A spokesman for Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, 'cut corners on vetting procedures to prioritize the expedited release of minors, and as a result more migrant children are being handed off to traffickers and exploited.'" MB: It's damned sad when Kevin McCarthy's criticism of Democrats is wholly justified.
Ian Duncan of the Washington Post: "An internal Transportation Department watchdog said Monday that it will audit Secretary Pete Buttigieg's use of Federal Aviation Administration jets for official trips, as well as travel by his predecessor, Elaine Chao. The Transportation Department said Buttigieg made 18 flights on FAA planes over seven trips. In all but one trip, it was less expensive to use FAA aircraft than to fly commercially, Buttigieg's office said. The cost of the flights for Buttigieg and accompanying staff members was $41,905.20, according to the department.... The audit will come at a time when Republicans have been ratcheting up pressure on Buttigieg over the derailment of a freight train in Ohio and disruptions to air travel. The audit of Buttigieg's travel was requested by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who cited a report by Fox News. Kerry Arndt, a spokeswoman for Buttigieg, said in an emailed statement that his team welcomed the review, which it said would be a chance to 'put some of the false, outlandish, and cynical claims about the Secretary's mode of travel to rest.'" MB: Huh. Maybe Marco should not be relying on the veracity of Fox "News" reports. We could ask Rupert about that.
** Rupert Disses the Help. Jeremy Peters & Katie Robertson of the New York Times: "Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the election in 2020 was stolen from ... Donald J. Trump, court documents released on Monday showed. 'They endorsed,' Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems said. 'I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight.' Mr. Murdoch s remarks, which he made last month as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion, added to the evidence that ... the people running the country's most popular news network knew Mr. Trump's claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway.... Dominion's latest filing also described how Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had told Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Murdoch's son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, 'Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.'... In [a] deposition, [Fox's chief legal officier Viet] Dinh, when asked if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, said: 'Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.'" Read on. MB: So surprising that Paul Ryan casts himself as the hero in a white hat.
Lisa Rein & Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "... a newly empowered GOP House majority [is] eager to ramp up scrutiny of the army of civil servants who run the government's day-to-day operations. The effort includes seeking testimony from middle- and lower-level workers who are part of what Republicans have long derided as the 'deep state,' while some lawmakers are drafting bills that have little chance of passing the Democrat-led Senate but give Republicans a chance to argue for reining in the federal bureaucracy of 2.1 million employees."
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.), who is facing allegations of embellishing his résumé, acknowledged Monday that he misstated the degree he received from Middle Tennessee State University, claiming he learned of the discrepancy only last week after requesting an official copy of his transcript. Ogles said he mistakenly stated that he received a degree in international relations. In a statement Monday, he said his degree was for liberal studies. That is a general education degree typically for those who cannot settle on a major. Nashville television station WTVF has reported on a wider range of misrepresentations by Ogles about his background, including calling himself an 'economist' when, in fact, he took only one community college economics course that he barely passed. The station has also raised questions about Ogles's representations of having law enforcement experience, including a claim that he handled 'international sex crimes.'"
A Fallacy of the Right-wing Echo Chamber. Philip Bump of the Washington Post: Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip "Dilbert," "enjoys presenting himself as smarter and more clever than everyone else, leading him to couch controversial statements with belated winks in the manner of Twitter owner Elon Musk (who rushed to support Adams in the wake of the new controversy).... He (like [Donald] Trump and Musk) has been able to tread further into controversy thanks to celebrity and power." Bump goes on to dismantle the Rasmussen Report question upon which Adams based his racist conclusions. Then he demonstrates that Adams was already a racist before the rant: "You don't simply jump from one poll about the views of Black Americans to a position of 'I endorse avoiding Black people at all cost.'"
Michigan Senate Race. Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat and former C.I.A. analyst who has notched several high-profile victories in a challenging district, said Monday that she would run for the Senate seat being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat. Ms. Slotkin is the first Democrat running in what could be a hotly contested primary followed by a marquee fight in the general election, held during a presidential year in a major battleground state." A CBS News story is here.
U.K., etc. Lisa O'Carroll & Jessica Elgot of the Guardian: UK Prime Minister "Rishi Sunak hailed a 'new chapter' in the UK's relationship with the EU as he agreed a deal to end the dispute over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol. The prime minister said he had secured a significant change to the original text of the protocol. Now termed the Windsor framework, it will create a new green lane for traders, scrapping all trade restrictions between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and new freedoms for medicines, chilled meats and pets to move over the Irish Sea. A new 'Stormont brake', a surprise measure in Monday's package, means the Northern Ireland assembly can oppose new EU goods rules that would have significant and lasting effects on everyday lives in Northern Ireland."
~~~~~~~~~~
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "During ... Donald Trump's time in office, White House reporters asked about a train derailment on one occasion according to a review of transcripts.... On December 18, 2017, an Amtrak passenger train derailed near DuPont, Washington State, killing three people and injuring 65 others.... Trump spoke about the fatal crash once, for a total of 23 seconds, and did not visit the site or send his transportation secretary: 'Let me begin by expressing our deepest sympathies and most heartfelt prayers for the victims of the train derailment in Washington State. We are closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with local authorities. It is all the more reason why we must start immediately fixing the infrastructure of the United States.'... Trump never did get his infrastructure plan going, and in 2019 killed a raft of train safety regulations...."
digby publishes a big chunk of a Rolling Stone story: "... according to two former Trump administration officials, [in early 2018 Donald Trump] was so upset by [Jimmy] Kimmel's comedic jabs that he directed his White House staff to call up one of Disney's top executives in Washington, D.C., to complain and demand action. (ABC, on which Jimmy Kimmel Live! has long aired, is owned by Disney.) In at least two separate phone calls that occurred around the time Trump was finishing his first year in office, the White House conveyed the severity of his fury with Kimmel to Disney, the ex-officials tell Rolling Stone. Trump's staff mentioned that the leader of the free world wanted the billion-dollar company to rein in the Trump-trashing ABC host, and that Trump felt that Kimmel had, in the characterization of one former senior administration official, been 'very dishonest and doing things that [Trump] would have once sued over.'...
"In 2018, Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency would investigate a crass joke from Late Show host Stephen Colbert about Trump's cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin. Trump fumed at Colbert in an interview and called him a 'no-talent' who uses 'filthy' language.... The FCC ultimately declined to take action against the late night host. As the matter was being examined, the then-president took enough of an interest in it to repeatedly ask aides for updates on if the FCC had made a decision yet, a source with direct knowledge of the queries says."
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Joe DePaulo of Mediaite: "A Fox News host said the network is not allowing him to cover the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed against Fox News by Dominion voting systems. Speaking at the midway point of his weekly media roundup show MediaBuzz on Sunday, Howard Kurtz said that the company has forbidden him from covering the case. 'The company has decided that as part of the organization being sued, I can't talk about it or write about it, at least for now,' Kurtz said. [']I strongly disagree with that decision. But as an employee, I have to abide by it.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Real news media regularly cover newsworthy stories in which they are litigants. ~~~
~~~ David French of the New York Times: "Fox News became a juggernaut not simply by being 'Republican,' or 'conservative,' but by offering its audience something it craved even more deeply: representation. And journalism centered on representation ultimately isn't journalism at all.... As the Trump years wore on, the prime-time messaging became more blatant. Supporting Trump became a marker not just of patriotism, but also of courage.... So you can start to understand the shock when, on Election Day in 2020, Fox News accurately, if arguably prematurely, called Arizona for Joe Biden. It broke the social compact.... In the emails and texts highlighted in the Dominion filing, you see Fox News figures, including Sean Hannity and Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, referring to the need to 'respect' the audience. To be clear, by 'respect' they didn't mean 'tell the truth' -- an act of genuine respect. Instead they meant 'represent.'"
Get to Know a Billionaire. He Might Be a Cold-hearted, Racist Control Freak. ~~~
~~~ We White People Are So Lucky to Have Elon Defend Us. Will Oremus of the Washington Post: "Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk defended Scott Adams, the under-fire creator of 'Dilbert,' in a series of tweets Sunday, blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip after Adams said that White people should 'get the hell away from Black people.' Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is 'racist against whites & Asians.' He offered no criticism of Adams's comments, in which the cartoonist called Black people a 'hate group' and said, 'I don't want to have anything to do with them.' Musk previously tweeted, then later deleted, a reply to Adams's tweet about media outlets pulling his comic strip, in which Musk asked, 'What exactly are they complaining about?' The billionaire's comments continue a pattern of Musk expressing more concern about the 'free speech' of people who make racist or antisemitic comments than about the comments themselves." A Reuters story is here. ~~~
~~~ AND He's Giving Twitter Employees Their Freeeedom. Kate Conger, et al., of the New York Times: "Twitter laid off at least 200 of its employees on Saturday night, three people familiar with the matter said, or about 10 percent of the roughly 2,000 who were still working for the company. Elon Musk, who acquired the social media platform in October, has steadily pared back its work force from about 7,500 employees as he has sought to reduce costs. The layoffs came after a week when the company made it difficult for Twitter employees to communicate with each other. The company's internal messaging service, Slack, was taken offline, preventing employees from chatting with each other or looking up company data, five current and former employees told The New York Times."
** The Pandemic, Ctd. A Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory May Be True. Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "New intelligence has prompted the Energy Department to conclude that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the coronavirus pandemic, though U.S. spy agencies remain divided over the origins of the virus, American officials said on Sunday. The conclusion was a change from the department's earlier position that it was undecided on how the virus emerged. Some officials briefed on the intelligence said that it was relatively weak and that the Energy Department's conclusion was made with 'low confidence,' suggesting its level of certainty was not high. While the department shared the information with other agencies, none of them changed their conclusions, officials said. Officials would not disclose what the intelligence was. But many of the Energy Department's insights come from the network of national laboratories it oversees, rather than more traditional forms of intelligence like spy networks or communications intercepts....
"In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses.... Early in the Biden administration, the president ordered the intelligence agencies to investigate the pandemic's origins, after criticism of a W.H.O. report on the matter." The Guardian's report is here. ~~~
Lauren Sforza of the Hill: "The lack of confidence or details on the assessment didn't stop Republicans from claiming validation and calling for urgent action against China."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Israel/Palestine. Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "Hours after a Palestinian gunman fatally shot two Israeli brothers as they drove through a town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, Jewish settlers went on a rampage in the area to avenge the killings, stoning and burning dozens of Palestinian homes, stores and cars. The shooting occurred early Sunday afternoon on a road south of the city of Nablus even as Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab officials were participating in a summit in Jordan, along with senior U.S. representatives, to discuss ways to de-escalate rising tensions. After nightfall, with the summit concluded, settlers held marches in the same area as the shooting and began attacking Palestinians and their property. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that one man, Sameh Aqtash, 37, had been killed by live fire as a result of Israeli 'aggression.'"
Mexico. Natalie Kitroeff of the New York Times: "More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Mexico on Sunday to protest new laws hobbling the nation's election agency, in what demonstrators said was a repudiation of the president's efforts to weaken a pillar of democracy. Wearing shades of pink, the official color of the electoral watchdog that helped end one-party rule two decades ago, protesters filled the central square of the capital, Mexico City, and chanted, 'Don't touch my vote.' The protesters said they were trying to send a message to the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who backed the measures and lives in the national palace on the square's edge. They were also speaking directly to the nation's Supreme Court, which is expected to hear a challenge to the overhaul in the coming months. Many see the moment as a critical test for the court, which has been a target of criticism by the president." An AP story is here.
Ukraine, et al. The Guardian's live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
News Lede
New York Times: "A 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey on Monday, killing at least one person and trapping others in collapsed buildings three weeks after a devastating quake struck the same region, leaving more than 50,000 people dead in the country and in neighboring Syria. The latest quake struck just after noon on Monday, south of the city of Malatya, according to the United States Geological Survey. Malatya is the capital of the province of the same name, one of 11 Turkish regions affected by the Feb. 6 tremor."
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Thinking of the old George Reeves' Superman this morning and how successfully his pursuit of "Truth, Justice and the American Way" has been turned upside down by Republicans since the swelling music and the waving American flag of that afternoon TV show set the moral standards of my youth.
For them, truth is now a lie.
Justice is now injustice.
And the American Way is now My Way.
In sum: My truth, my justice and my America.
Now an entire party of Lex Luthors occupies the House. Their hero, Putin, even looks a bit like him.
@Ken Winkes: I saw the "Superman" episodes more or less when they first aired. Even though I was very young, I seem to recall that I was unsure what "the American Way" was. I think what may have confused me was that the show aired when the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy were doing business, and my parents would have discussed those with each other in my presence, and they would have spoken negativebly about either.
So understanding double negatives as I did (surely a precocious child!), I probably thought that since my parents were against HUAC, maybe my family was "un-American."
Ironically, I suppose, the fact that George Reeves was probably gay came out later, a fact that would have caused those yahoos on the committee to think he did not represent "the American Way." Of course, I didn't understand that at the time. Rather, I seem to recall I thought Superman was a bit dodgy, inasmuch as he was fighting for an "American Way" of which I might not have been a part. Kids think the darnedest things.
Here's a headline from today's online NYT:
"Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says"
The third para of the article says:
"... the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with “low confidence,” suggesting its level of certainty was not high."
So the bold type says "most likely", the text says "maybe".
Guess which thought enters the social media stream?
Right. Lab leak, most likely. Stripped of the "maybe."
Maybe when the machines take over they'll do a better job of headline writing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html
I'm bringing this back from 2015. Ken and Marie's discussion about Superman made me think of this exchange and because it's Monday and we need a few laughs to get us through the rest of the week:
THE SUPREME BEING
In 2006 Janet Malcolm wrote a very funny, clever article in the New Yorker about the confirmation of John Roberts. During the hearings old black and white movies came to her mind unbidden. Watching Roberts on television, she said, was like watching one of "the radiantly wholesome heroes that JimmyStewart, Joel McCrea, and Henry Fonda rendered so incisively in the films of Capra, Lubitsch, and Sturges. They don't make men like that anymore. But Roberts had all their anachronistic attributes: the grace, charm, and humor of a special American sort in which decency and kindness are heavily
implicated, and from which sexuality is entirely absent. It was out of the question that such a man be denied a place on the Supreme Court." When I, myself, listened and watched this hearing I was taken with how this man so prettily maneuvered his way into the hearts of even the eight democrats on the committee. My favorite of the Q and A's was this:
Schumer: You agree we should be finding out your philosophy and method of legal reasoning, modesty, stability, but when we try and find out what modesty and stability means, we don't get answers. It's as if I asked you:what kind of movies do you like? Tell me two or three good movies. and you say, "I like movies with good acting. I like movies with good directing. I like movies with good cinematography." and I ask you, "No, give me an example of a good movie." You don't name one. I say, "Give me an example of a bad movie." You won't name one. then I ask if you like Casablanca and you respond by saying, "Lots of people like Casablanca." You tell me it's widely settled that Casablanca is one of the great movies.
By this time Schumer's time was up and there was to be a fifteen minute break, Roberts asked if he could respond to Schumer; reply granted, he said:
"First, Dr. Zhivago and North by Northwest." This brought down the house and as Malcolm says, "Roberts went on to give an unconvincing defense of his evasiveness, but it was too late, there was too much good feeling through the room like lavender air freshener for the weakness of his argument to matter."
So the skillful seduction worked. It's right out of central casting where
the handsome, wholesome fella becomes the hero of the day. Then the curtain falls, the lights come on and we all go home to the real world.
Ken,
A party of Lex Luthors? Au contraire, mon frere. Luthor was smart. An actual genius as opposed to the imbecile Trump’s self characterization of “stable genius”. Luthor was anything but stable. In fact, most real geniuses are not exactly stable either. Their abilities tend to put them outside the box of most people who live much more stable and predictable lives. Yet another botched bit of language by the fat fascist. Also, although he was evil, Luthor was not a petty little weasel, which many MAGA morons are.
But thinking of the American Way, we can go back even further into the past, to our founding document, which strives to lay out the existential elements of the United States of America:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It is a sad commentary on this country that after almost more than two and a half centuries, the essential qualities upon which we base our nationhood, are still largely aspirational. Still, they are, according to Jefferson, and the signatories to the Declaration of Independence, the sainted Founders, the ideals to which we aspire.
The problem for the MAGAs and the white supremacists, the religious fanatics, and the vast number of garden variety R’s, is that they viscerally despise the idea of all humans being created equal. Ron DeSantis proves this with every breath.
As for life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, those are only for the right.
If you live to make the world a better place, and that means pointing out the flaws in late stage capitalism, you’re a dirty commie.
Liberty to control your own destiny doesn’t apply if you’re a pregnant woman. You must abide by the decisions of the Savonarolas.
And if what makes you happy is dressing like a member of the opposite sex and reading stories to kids, you’re a pervert and they’re going to have you arrested. And oh yeah, if you’re gay, you can still walk around without being arrested (for now), but you’re still going to hell.
So much for the actual American Way as described by the Founders. As existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir would say, once a thing is stripped of its essential qualities, it is no longer that thing. It is now something different. So those who slavishly follow the MAGA path to fascism and totalitarianism are not Americans, they’re something else.
Another reason these assholes are all proud members of Party of Traitors.
PD,
Thanks for that reminder of the slipperiness of John Roberts. It’s that slithery, wishy-washiness of his that has caused him to lose complete control of the “Roberts” court to far-right zealots. He might have smirked in the coat room after that hearing, having successfully evaded any serious questions, but if he’s still smirking all these years later, it’s because he put one over on the American public and is in fact thrilled that his name will be forever attached to the most demagogic, arbitrary, precedent shattering court in American history.
It’s Little Johnny and the Evil Dwarfs.
Oh, and his movie choices? Quite revealing.
“Doctor Zhivago” is about the horrors of Leninist Russia. Something his pals in Congress still assign to Democrats who strive to rein in corporate excesses, or allow teachers to go about their work unmolested by untethered ideologues. “They’re SOSHULISTS!”
The bad guys in “North by Northwest” are effete (and gay) evildoers with connections to commie governments.
He would never have selected “High Noon”, a story of one man standing alone against the fury of the McCarthyites. Why, today’s McCarthyites love “his” court.
@PD Pepe: Thanks for reprising the exchange between Schumer & Roberts as well as Malcolm's spot-on commentary on Roberts. I don't think I ever heard it before (which is kind of surprising, because I used to read the New Yorker cover-to-cover back then).
@Akhilleus: Not my favorite movies, either. But then I have odd tastes in films.
"Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.
Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.
Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found.
In interviews with more than 60 caseworkers, most independently estimated that about two-thirds of all unaccompanied migrant children ended up working full time."
But don't worry too much about getting your cereal or underwear because the politicians have recognized the problem and are working to create solutions,
"In Iowa, Republican legislators introduced a bill in January to expand the types of work 14- and 15-year-olds would be permitted to do as part of approved training programs, extend allowable work hours, and exempt employers from liability if these young workers are sickened, injured or killed on the job.
In Ohio, legislators reintroduced a bipartisan bill this year to extend working hours for 14- and 15-year-olds with permission from a parent or legal guardian, and called on Congress to adopt the same rollbacks at the federal level.
Legislators in Minnesota introduced a bill in January 2023 to extend work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds.
Republicans in Wisconsin passed a bill that was vetoed by Governor Tony Evers in this month that would have expanded work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds. The New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, signed a similar law in 2022 that expanded work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds to work longer hours during summer months and on holidays and expanded allowable work hours for 16- and 17-year-olds."
RAS,
Back in the day, US capitalists attacked those who worked to enact child labor laws, screaming that these laws were government overreach against the absolute necessity of capitalism’s need for cheap labor, and were the captains of industry and manufacturing not allowed to work children to death, the country would collapse, all to satisfy weak sister liberals.
In places like mill towns, mill owners would hire entire families paying them as little as $2 a week. The idea was that if they paid the adults a living wage, they couldn’t get children to work, children whose small frames were useful for squeezing into hard to reach places to keep the machinery going, and if the odd child were killed now and then, keeping the factory machines churning out profits for the owners, wellll.. plenty more out there.
Things don’t change much, do they?
I'm of two or more minds about child labor, RAS. Pardon my dither.
Very familiar with child history here in the United States and England during the nineteenth century and before, and recent accounts reminded me of many Dickensian accounts of tots tunneling for coal in the dark tunnels of a much darker age.
Also remember picking strawberries in the local fields in my early teens (late 50's) and noticing that the migrant pickers brought their entire families to pick, many of the kids much younger than I, and often with babies sleeping wrapped in blankets between the rows. All this before state labor laws for ag workers tied minor labor to age and seasonal requirements.
And then there were those many kids who grew up on farms who knew how to drive long before the rest of us because they were driving farm equipment even before they entered teen-dom.
That said, had little trouble with the changes that protected children from exploitation, tho I began to wonder about the effect on development of those lost opportunities for learning how to work.
Partly due to the loss of family farms, partly to more regulation, and certainly due to diminished opportunity, it seems that in proportion far fewer minors gain work experience today than they did sixty years ago. My (now dated) experience in schools has me thinking that's not all good.
We see minors working at fast food outlets, of course, and as what used to be called bag boys-persons at grocery stores, and there is still some ag work available but my sense is that in addition to the many other changes that have removed minors from the labor market, minors hereabouts they have largely been replaced in the fields by migrant labor.
So teens have more time for their I-phones and video games, I guess.
Once again, there are many thread to follow here. The effect of minor labor on wages. If you can pay kids less, then capitalism will have you hire kids. If you're hiring kids on the sly to clean the saws in meat-packing plants at night, you are a criminal and should be treated as such. If the deep state cannot hire sufficient personnel to police the regulations, the regulations will be abused. If in the name of profit, you don't care who's exploited, especially if they have brown skin, you will soften or eliminate the regulations.
And there in the back of my mind is the whispered grumble: Where today can minors get the work experience I think their healthy development requires?
Judging from the number of lawn care vehicles I see on the road, they're not even mowing their own lawns.
RAS: When I first learned of this child labor business I was furious––-how could this be sanctioned in the U.S.? Evidently, according to your post, states have changed these laws. We are back in the fields of cotton picking when very small children joined their parents in this process or before child labor laws when young children would work in factories. Akhilleus spells out the history and then asks: "things don't change much, do they?" Well we DID change this with that child labor law that has now obviously been eradicated. Congress needs to take this on? What am I missing here?
Ken: Your point about kids involved in work on family farms or other venues rings true as a positive in their maturation and am glad you pointed that out; a very different kind of child labor.
@Ken Winkes asks, " Where today can minors get the work experience I think their healthy development requires?" There are numerous answers to your question, but the underlying/mitigating factor is that the work experience is supposed to be supervised by adults who are not part of the exploitative scums.
When I was a young child, I had to do certain household chores. So did my father before me. I don't know if my father got an allowance but I did -- a very small one. In junior high school, my friends and I started babysitting in the neighborhood. Our parents knew who we were working for. After my senior year, I worked in the summer for a lawyer who was a family friend. Nobody pretended I knew what the hell I was doing as a supposed "legal secretary." But in a few months, I learned a lot. Most of my friends had some kind of summer jobs. Not many worked afternoon jobs during the school year.
Kids in our school who were on the "trades track" -- i.e., not college track -- worked part of the day -- some days -- as interns in businesses like the ones they aspired to work in after they were graduated from high school. I think the kids got some crappy pay. There was an ag track, too. In every case, their work experience was supposed to be supervised by their teachers as well as by their bosses.
All of this is work experience, and generally, it's safe and enlightening. But as an article I linked some time in the last week or so revealed some meatpacking companies were employing kids who had to work at night cleaning equipment; IOW, neither safe nor educational. And you can imagine what kind of supervision these kids got.
What these state legislatures are doing, including Democratic New Jersey, is overworking kids who should be in the library -- even if their particular governor doesn't want them reading any books not written by Sir Walter Scott or Martha Mitchell.
Which is all to say that in the 1950s and '60s, young people who lived in the burbs did get work experience, and in a significant percentage of cases, it would have counted as useful work experience.
In the meantime, officials from Xavier Becerra to local police -- and of course the greedy corporations -- have abused these children. Will somebody do something? I doubt it.
@Marie
I had a similar experience--in terms of having assigned responsibilities.
That my father had a small hardware store afforded both of us many opportunities for teaching (he) and learning (I) that many did not have, even in those olden days.
Not all of it was eagerly anticipated by little Kenny. Still remember counting carriage and machine bolts (there were thousands) for the yearly inventory and still wonder if I had to be as meticulous as I was. Even wonder if my father was laughing a little off to the side.
Nonetheless, there were expectations to be met, something I mostly did because no alternative was offered or available, and I'm sure the meeting of expectations transferred over time to become a basic part of me.
There was also an occasional sense of self-reinforcing accomplishment that was more reward than the quarter or two I might have been given.
Its that element of growing up I sense that too many youngsters might be missing.
And, of course, there was no opportunity to strike it rich selling drugs.