Sec Kerry: Creating more farms in Africa causes too much carbon so let's...

Stupidity must be a requisite in the Obama administration.  Leaders from other countries must be laughing at us.

Democrats Banish the American Work Ethic to the Reservation

A culture of dependency is the keystone of the Democratic Party. Obama’s shock troops are leading the assault on a good work ethic. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has outlawed an American tradition of kids working on farms. Many recognize the value of hard work, and are fretting what this means for future generations.

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field — literally on a tractor — when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis’s regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.

“What would be more of a blow,” he said, “is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.”

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average age of the American farmer is now over 50.

“Losing that work-ethic — it’s so hard to pick this up later in life,” Clark said. “There’s other ways to learn how to farm, but it’s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you’re 12, 13, 14 years old.”

And a good work ethic is the last thing a democratic politician wants your children to learn. We’ve entered a new era where food stamps and a government check are as laudable as having a job. Basically, the bureaucratic state needs to expand their tentacles. They want all of us on the reservation, in a state of dependency.

Look at the American Indian. The Department of the Interior purposefully torpedoed the success of these luckless tribes. The reason being, it would’ve been the death of a government agency. Forbes.com reported the following:

Any effort at land reform must go through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But the bureau, originally part of the War Department and one of the federal government’s oldest agencies, isn’t about to pave the way for its own demise by signing off on an effort to privatize reservation land. The bureau faced this situation before: Under the 1887 Dawes Act, land could be allotted to individual Indians, but by 1934 so much land had been privatized that Congress reversed course and communal tribal property was back in favor. “Allotment threatened the bureau so it had an incentive to end the process,” says Dominic Parker, an economics professor at Montana State University. In any event, tribal councils wouldn’t be keen to give up the patronage and power that controlling vast amounts of land gives them. And the $2.5 billion a year that Washington spends on programs for Native Americans is a powerful deterrent to change. “For the bureau and other narrow interests, staying with the convoluted system of land ownership is safer than improving property rights,” he says. The bureau declined to comment.

Once the work ethic is lost, it’s hard to get back. As one tribal member states:

“Privatizing land is fine but it falls far short of the answer,” says Yellowtail. “Our people don’t understand business. After 10 or 15 generations of not being involved in business, they’ve lost their feel for it. Capitalism is considered threatening to our identity, our traditions. Successful entrepreneurs are considered sell-outs, they’re ostracized. We have to promote the dignity of self-sufficiency among Indians. Instead we have a culture of malaise: ‘The tribe will take care of us.’ We accept the myth of communalism. And we don’t value education. We resist it.”


The United Nations Human Rights Council is scheduled to investigate the plight of the U.S. indigenous population. I wonder if they’ll question the role of the Interior Department. In another 50 years, this same agency will probably investigate the plight of the American farmer.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2011/12/13/why-are-indian-reservations-so-poor-a-look-at-the-bottom-1/2/

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/house-dem-unemployed-will-vote-obama-welfare/501721

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t6rYJsqb

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/un-investigate-us-native-americans

Department of Labor Outlaws American Kids from Working on Farms

I remember working on farms in our local community, when I was a kid. My friends and I baled hay, worked the fields, shoveled shit, fed the animals, and milked cows; some drove combines during the harvest, along with trucks filled with grain to the elevator. It was hard work, but it instilled pride and appreciation for a dollar earned. This great American tradition is about to come to an end.

Obama’s Department of Labor has made it illegal via fiat, for kids to work on farms not owned by their parents.

Wage and Hour Division (WHD)

Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Amend the Child Labor in Agriculture Regulations

Welcome to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) Website on the proposed changes to the child labor in agriculture regulations.

On September 2, 2011, the Department published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise the child labor regulations to strengthen the safety requirements for young workers employed in agriculture. The current child labor agricultural hazardous occupations orders have not been updated since they were promulgated in 1970. The department is proposing a dramatic updating of these regulations based on the enforcement experience of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD), recommendations made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and a commitment to bring parity between the rules for agricultural employment and the more stringent rules that apply to the employment of children in nonagricultural workplaces. The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents.

The proposed updates include:

Strengthening current child labor prohibitions regarding agricultural work with animals in timber operations, manure pits, storage bins and pesticide handling.

Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from employment in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco.

Prohibiting youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic devices, including communication devices, while operating power-driven equipment.

Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from operating almost all power-driven equipment. A similar prohibition has existed as part of the nonagricultural child labor provisions for more than 50 years. A limited exemption would permit some student-learners to operate certain farm implements and tractors (when equipped with proper rollover protection structures and seat belts) under specified conditions.

Preventing children under 18 years of age from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm-product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

Not only is this new regulation a direct attack on the establishment of a decent work ethic; it also enables the illegal alien lobby by prohibiting a viable workforce from participation. The next time I hear an editor from a liberal rag bemoan a farmer’s dilemma of rotting crops in the fields, because of stringent immigration laws, I’ll be sure to point out this asinine act by the Obama administration.

Source: http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/AG_NPRM.htm