Above: This guy used to be my congressman. And he was the only public official to call and express regrets when I got canned by the newspaper company I had worked for for 23 years. He's wrong on this issue. But he is representing his constituency.
- Spreading manure: Feds cave on child labor rules - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
President Obama’s Labor Department has capitulated to the right-wing manure spreader that was deliberately frightening the nation’s farm families about some new rules that were supposedly on course to destroy generations of agricultural heartland traditions.
This is not only an unfortunate example of election-year cowardice that also ensnared many other Democrats — including the normally level-headed Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. It quite literally threatens the lives of underage farm laborers all over the country. ...
... Despite the objections raised, the proposed rules would have done exactly nothing to stop children of any age from doing anything on a farm owned or operated, in whole or in part, by their own parents. The fact that that exemption was too narrow for some people, people who argued that farms owned by grandparents or uncles and aunts should have received the same consideration, might well have been grounds for some modification before the rules became official.
But, that would not have counted as a kill for the politicians and agribusiness activists who characterized the rules as a despotic imposition on family farm life, and on all the values of hard work and self-sufficiency taught there. ...
- Keep focus on child safety on farms - Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald Editorial
... the Labor Department in effect tried to make farm childhoods completely safe. That was an overreach, as the outcry proved; and the department smartly retreated.
But how about trying to make farm childhoods safer than they are today?
Not completely safe. Safer. ...
- Kids, farm rules still need work - Lafayette (Ind.) Journal and Courier Editorial
... Why the safety standards for hired hands on a farm should be fundamentally different than those for kids doing work in other, more city-related industries is something the Labor Department and the farming community still need to tackle.
- Lesson learned on scuttled farm rules - Glens Falls (N.Y.) Post-Star Editorial [Yes. There are farms in New York.]
... The proposals ... seemed to have been written by bureaucrats who didn’t know a tractor from a Cadillac, or a bull from a cow. ...
- Families working together make farms thrive - Powell (Wyo.) Tribune Editorial
- Make farms safer for child workers - Minneapolis Star-Tribune Editorial
- Farm folly - Columbus Dispatch Editorial
