"This is something that no liberal wants to deal with... Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.
"You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing.... Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."
... "You go out and talk to people, as I do, you go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation.... They all learned how to make money at a very early age... What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don't do it. Remember all that stuff about don't get a hamburger flipping job? The worst possible advice you could give to poor children. Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday. Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you are in a fight with your girlfriend. The whole process of making work worthwhile is central."
November 19, 2011
"You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly."
Said Newt Gingrich at Harvard's Kennedy School last night. Asked about income inequality, he said:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
205 comments:
1 – 200 of 205 Newer› Newest»He doesn't realize that his side won the battle over unions. Big time. Maybe he does, but it sure doesn't hurt to demagogue it some more.
Tea Party - we want to keep our shit.
OWS - we want your shit.
He's right, but...
Well, I don't see it changing.
I had a paying job when I was six. It was only a few hours here and there, but I had a little money of my own and the expectation that I should work was there. And, it was manual labor. By the time I was in high school, I had my own house painting biz, and I worked on the farms and in the factories.
As Mark Steyn writes about obsessively, the culture of infantilization and extended adolescece cripples people.
Yup, that's the Newt I couldn't vote for.
I can get all I want of this in the Doc's lounge at lunchtime. I don't need it in a POTUS.
Ironic. Newt is saying what Daniel Patrick Moynihan said back in the 70's.
Newt has always been full of extraordinary radical proposals.
That's the problem.
You never know what he might propose.
And it's just as likely to be some big gov't "engineering," as advocacy for small gov't.
He'd make a good professor somewhere. He's not the guy we need to fix our economy.
That guy is Ron Paul, but, of course, he marginalized every day.
Second best, probably Bachmann, also marginalized every day.
Nope, can't pay attention to the people who are talking seriously about what we need.
The only advantage to Newtie is that it might be fun to watch the debates with Zero. However, after either one of them won, well ...
DOOMED.
DEAD COUNTRY WALKING.
I should post under that name.
I think Newt is generally on target here--teaching kids about money, saving it, showing up on time for responsibilitis, and fulfilling them is a lesson that parents should teach their kids.
The "hamburger flipping" meme is just that. Flipping hamburgers requires people to show up on time, clean and properly dressed, and fullfilling their 8 hour shift.
Thats a a basic, but very important, job skill IMO.
Folks that denigrate "hamburger flipping" jobs are losers.
Contrast that with Pelosi:
"PELOSI: Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or, eh, a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance..."
Fundamental differences in how the world works.
Once again, I agree with Gingrich.
One of my most interesting jobs when I was a kid...
I was a trumpet player in the band... first chair, of course.
The various veteran's organizations hired me to play taps for funerals. I think the honorarium was 10 bucks, which was damned good money back in the 60s.
In the winters, the mouthpiece froze to my lips.
I don't know if Newt would make a good choice for the GOP presidential nominee. It's still too early in the campaigning.
I do know that Newt exhibits by far the highest intellect among all the GOP candidates. And he has the courage to take is ideas to places like Harvard where they will surely be challenged in the Q and A sessions.
I would eagerly watch debates between Gingrich and Obama.
I'd have to agree. What bothers me most about Romney is his attitude that he's going to tell China what to do about their currency and remind Iran that it forgot to grovel, not to mention running over Perry on humanitarian issues. I'm afraid it's the fat man with the sexual past.
Here Newt shows he really understands how people tick and that there is a lifecycle to one's life.
When one learns the right values at a young age, those values can help propel you through the ups and downs of life.
a psychiatrist who learned from veterans said...
I'm afraid it's the fat man with the sexual past.
Didn't hurt Bill Clinton.
WV: sealoons
My dad might have been reported to Child Protection Services if he were raising me today.
Dad had a paper route... a huge paper route. He met the train in Kankakee, and loaded huge bundles of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times onto a big truck, then he delivered the bundles to grocery stores and news stands through several counties. He started at about midnight and ran until dawn.
He started taking me with him when I was six. He thought this was good for me. He had me out there at 2 a.m. in the middle of midwestern blizzards, flinging around 40 pound bundles of newspapers.
He thought it was good for me, and I think he was right.
When I started, every once in a while the locomotive on the train was still a steam engine.
We listened the the Grand Ol' Opry on the radio. It was great.
Shouting, Your old man passed on his work ethic to you and I'm sure you did the same. My old man worked for Pratt&Whitney as a jet engine mechanic. In the 35 years he worked there he took off 2 days. It was when the Asian Flu hit in the 1950's. I saw him go to work sick, in pain, and never bitch. My 2 kids have those qualities and they are now rare, instead of mainstream. What we say to our kids means little. They watch closely what we do.
You know the country may be ready for somebody like Newt. On the Dem side, people went and voted for Hillary in big numbers but the media and the party establishment anointed the One anyway and look what has happened. And Romney has been very passive and if anything, the big complaint about Obama is that he does not fight for the people on the street and Romney does not look much better.
ndspinelli said...
Shouting, Your old man passed on his work ethic to you and I'm sure you did the same. My old man worked for Pratt&Whitney as a jet engine mechanic. In the 35 years he worked there he took off 2 days. It was when the Asian Flu hit in the 1950's. I saw him go to work sick, in pain, and never bitch. My 2 kids have those qualities and they are now rare, instead of mainstream. What we say to our kids means little. They watch closely what we do
So true. My folks talked like liberal/socialists, but lived like conservative libertarians.
Guess which way I turned out.
Of course Newt is right in general. I raked neighbors' leaves when I was ten, had a paper route when I was 12, worked in bowling alleys setting pins in Junior High, worked in the hospital kitchen washing pots and dishes in High School. Always had my own money, my own car...
It's all good.
What's that got do with being President? It's up to your parents to teach you this stuff.
Me: Dad, I want .....
Dad: Save up.
I agree with Newt on this. My older brother and I both had little jobs to earn a very little bit of money before we were 10. First was collecting used newspapers from a large set of blocks around our Denver home, filling our garage with them, then having our dad drive us to some place that weighed them and paid us some pennies. Then babysitting. Then cleaning up around housing areas. Then buying our family's first power mower and getting multiple housing area residents to hire me to mow their yards, at age 14. Bagging groceries for tips only during college. Then grading first year calculus papers in college.
We ensured that our two kids had a similar pattern, starting with old fashioned paper routes, and they both are now productive members of society.
Rick: agree--my kids starting collecting aluminum cans and recylcing them for cash--I introduced them to dividend reinvesting in conservative companies--they continued to work and continued to do dividend reinvesting--they both went to college, one with a phd from notre dame, and one with a MA from U of WA, and neither on cost me a dime for tuition--they paid their own way.
Last night at the Oval Room shindig for super K-street consultants, a terrific blonde from WH did what Steve Martin did in Roxanne. She said: Here are 20 reasons why POTUS Obama will wipe the USA floor with any GOP candidate, whether it is Perry, Newt, Cain, Palin, or Romney? It was awesome. Afterwards, I went out with her. After the Nov. re-election, I can almost feel a corner office for myself. You know where.
America's Politico said...
I can almost feel a corner office for myself. You know where
WalMart?
When I was 8, I went door to door offering to sweep the neighbors' porches for a dime. Once I learned to sew, I made doll clothes and sold them door to door. Babysitting started at 11. First W2 job at 15 as a lifeguard, then a clerk at Woolco my senior year of high school. I had a college job before school even started - I wrote to the head of the athletic dept and asked for a lifeguarding job.
It wasn't until I got to college that I met kids who had never worked.
"Shouting Thomas said...
Dad had a paper route... He started taking me with him when I was six. He thought this was good for me. He had me out there at 2 a.m. in the middle of midwestern blizzards, flinging around 40 pound bundles of newspapers."
OMG! I hope he gave you regularly scheduled lunch and breaks. Because that could be fatal to you. And you can't recall Dad and get a new Dad!
@AP: Curled up in the fetal position after Obama is crushed?
OMG! I hope he gave you regularly scheduled lunch and breaks. Because that could be fatal to you. And you can't recall Dad and get a new Dad!
Best part of the job was pulling into the truck stop in Gilman, Illinois at 8 a.m. for the big breakfast. Eggs, potatoes, bacon, toast, OJ and coffee.
I can remember how proud I felt when the waitress would ask:
"What'll you have young man?"
Shouting Thomas--had that been in the south she would have asked you want do you want, honey.
Tank, That's interesting about your folks. All the Spinelli kids worked in the family restaurant. But, I also started caddying when I was 12. I learned a lot about adults out on the links.
AllenS said...
America's Politico said...
I can almost feel a corner office for myself. You know where
WalMart?
Nah ... more like Zuccotti Park
Newt is being Newt with this speech that has good ideas within it.
But his message actually says we should rely on Newt's ideas and await a brave new world where Professor Gingrich magically replaces the wrong ideas.
That is not leadership...that is lectureship. It does not create followers, it affirms our self righteousness.
I had a paper route in suburban White Bear Lake, MN. Big route. Large lots. Lots of walking. I delivered the St. Paul Pioneer Press (morning paper) and the St. Paul Dispatch (evening paper). Same newspaper, but different names for morning and evening papers. 228 Sunday papers, which were very big and heavy.
In the summertime delivering the Sunday paper, I had a bicycle with a wire basket over the front wheel, and two saddle bag type of wire baskets on either side of the rear wheel. I would drop off the bundles at places on the route, then ride back and start delivering. Wintertime I used a sled.
The worse experience that I had was when people would delay paying me, and then they would move. Maybe they thought that the newspaper would get beaten out of their money, but the money had to come out of my pocket. If I had to do it all over again, I would have wrote their names down, and... well, you can just about imagine.
I made about $80 a month, which was good money in the early 60's.
Now that I've thought about it, Wednesday's evening paper was quite big also. Saturday evening's paper was thin, and I could roll those up tight and toss them like lethal missiles.
First job I had, I was topping turnips for 5 cents a bushel with two old black men. My grandfather got me that job and I learned a helluva lot. Not only that I didn't want to top turnips for a living, but about life as I talked with those men.
I still remember that blazing summer with fondness.
Michael Haz - "I do know that Newt exhibits by far the highest intellect among all the GOP candidates."
Newt is playing the same game as Adlai Stevenson, Noble Algore, Kerry, and Obama - a set of behaviors intended to showcase their "genius" and "being the smartest man in the room". Throw out an idea a minute, but have no tempermental inclination to bring much, if any of their "great ideas" to life through display of the needed administrative, leadership, and executive skills...mainly because making an idea actually work is a huge time effort and distraction from putting out other great ideas that prove you are the smartest person in the room.
Adlai Stevenson - We have history that after his death, eager Dems flocked to learn what was in the vast library of "America's smartest Democrat". They found he had two books - a bible and a 1954 copy of the Illinois Social Register.
John Kerry and Noble Algore - were found to have been worst students than Dubya.
Obama - The grades and test scores of Black Messiah are a state secret.
Gingrich - Deposed after 4 years by fellow Republicans as Speaker for failing to advance "great ideas", and for losing interest in and sabotaging his own Contract With America as soon as he was elected Speaker. And for being a poor day-to-day Speaker - with poor leadership and executive skills. (One Reaganite still around and in charge of key Committees said - "We thought Gingrich was interested in change and reversing the LBJ welfare state..we soon found out Newt was more interested in hearing himself talk than anything else. Bill Clinton thought circles areound Newt. He was a disaster as Speaker.")
This is great. The question is, can Newt stop at getting rid of the problems without imposing his own solutions on every locality? He has one excellent solution, and there are probably many, many others. But if he can't be hands-off enough to let those other solutions emerge then we are still stuck.
The last line of the post is the money quote and the great idea, but, when he says, "You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly.", I remember Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm, saying the same thing and I'm a little wary.
There's also the problem of how easily his idea could be abused.
Think Penn State.
Shouting Thomas said...
As Mark Steyn writes about obsessively, the culture of infantilization and extended adolescece cripples people.
People have been writing about this since the 50s. It's just gotten to the point where now the government and the Demos are trying to cater to people still living with their parents in their middle 20s.
I can remember how proud I felt when the waitress would ask:
"What'll you have young man?"
You told her and then she asked what you wanted off the menu.
I also delivered newspapers. The worst were the Christmas Specials right after Thanksgiving. Easily 10x the weight of the normal stack of papers.
At the article site, the comments are running a "Newt wants to repeal child labor laws and force kids into sweatshops" line.
And since everyone else is relating their early work experiences, it was babysitting for me until 15, when I started working in a deli. A stint for an accountant and as a typesetter (skilled labor at $10/hour 25 years ago--great money), and then retail throughout college.
Being a stay-at-home mom is so hard for me, because I had always worked until baby #3.
Lotta newspaper boys (girls?) here. A combo fun/hard situation was snow - pulling a sled a couple of miles on Sunday morning with big heavy papers.
By far the worst - rain. We didn't have the plastic bag covers in those days. A disaster.
And it was always uphill, with the wind in your face - in all directions. Just sayin.
I had a paper route in suburban White Bear Lake, MN.
I grew up there. Like the hooker said in the movie Fargo, "Go Bears."
Sorun, Normandy Park for me. Know where that's at?
I picked my papers up at County Road F and McKnight Road.
I had the paper route for the projects. The up side was that the route was very compact. The down side was that you got mugged and beat up occasionally.....As a source of satisfaction and fulfillment, the work ethic is highly over-rated. I started work very young and did not finish until my late fifties. If I had it do over again, I would become a dilletante art collector or, maybe, an activist for social justice. Those kids at OWS have a nice gig. I'd like to spend my leisure time by protesting my leisure time. A fine way to meet interesting people and add significance to an otherwise random existence.
I picked my papers up at County Road F and McKnight Road.
I know where that is. I grew up on Otter Lake Road up towards Bald Eagle Lake. Other side of town.
I get the feeling truly radical good ideas tend to go out the window when anyone takes the reins of power.
Which, coupled with his baggage, may be a good reason to think Newt would do his best work outside of a Republican presidency.
I don't question his conservative bona fides too much, but the fact is Newt is a man of letters and words, not a man of action. He made his bones as a back-bencher in the House in the 80s, when he became the bomb-throwing Republican foil, going up against Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright, and Tom Foley. That led him to the Speakership following the 1994 elections, but he was in most ways ill-suited for the position, and other than welfare reform, his term as speaker was nondescript when it wasn't contentious. I just haven't seen many leadership qualities in him, other than possibly the Contract With America in the runup to the 1994 elections. But that was just words and letters too, and it worked more as a political strategy than anything else.
The rise of Newt is helpful in one way. It helps further discredit the faction within the "movement" conservatives and Tea Party that glorifies ignorance and low educational attainment as "authenticity" and "non-Elitism".
I know where Otter Lake Road is. West of uptown.
@Cedarford:Throw out an idea a minute, but have no tempermental inclination to bring much, if any of their "great ideas" to life through display of the needed administrative, leadership, and executive skills...mainly because making an idea actually work is a huge time effort and distraction from putting out other great ideas that prove you are the smartest person in the room.
----------
You're absolutely right. Bill Clinton in a speech put this very well -- this was when Obama was all about vision, hope, and change. BC's statement was it is one thing to think up visionary ideas but entirely another to implement them. Implementation is where most people fail because they don't have experience, leadership skills, inspiring others to do their part, and just plain conviction, determination, and ethics. Implementation is hard work.
Ironic. Newt is saying what Daniel Patrick Moynihan said back in the 70's.
@ndspinelli, 40 years later maybe we're finally ready for them?
Janitor jobs for the peoples, y'all. Guv. Newt putting his shoulder to the wheel.
The economy fell apart because of the de-reg policies of Gingrich and Gramm (with help from Billy Bob Clinton)
@AllenS
'Ooh! That's {put in offense here} yucky' on the part of the left is going to be, yes, yucky. Maybe Gingrich could promise to appoint Clinton to something, but the subtlety might be lost on the left and might enrage the right.
Gingrich shouldn't be running for PotUS. He should be on trial (google "destroying the New Deal" for starters).
Spam away, byro-sockpup, Sac stoner trash. We need a bit more evidence.
When I was ten I did yard work for two ladies in a neighboring retirement community for 50 cents an hour. Mrs. Berry was sweet and grandmotherly, and gave me milk and cookies when I was done pulling her weeds. Mrs. Grogan was a hideous old dragon who stood behind me and criticized everything I did as I cleaned her stinking fish pond. Her house was as clean and orderly as a museum, and as untouchable. An oil portrait of her husband, an imposing man in a naval captain's uniform, hung on the wall. I think he died to get away from her.
Gingrich speaks in hard clear sentences. Romney is vague. Cain was very funny and upfront and aggressive, but apparently also had problems with women. Gingrich posts lots of reviews of books at Amazon.com and they're about the best reviews I've ever seen there. He has a strong clear intellect. I love his proposal here. Make the kids stakeholders in their own schools. Get them to clean up, and pay them. I had a paper route from age 7, and loved to collect the money. It meant comic books and baseball cards and 78 records, and other items. I enjoyed this, even if the dime had Roosevelt's picture on it, and that was my standard tip (ca. 1965). The shopkeepers accepted it, which was great.
Cedarford said...
Gingrich - Deposed after 4 years by fellow Republicans as Speaker for failing to advance "great ideas", and for losing interest in and sabotaging his own Contract With America as soon as he was elected Speaker.
No, he was smeared on a phony charge by David Obey. That's what cost him the Speakership.
Eventually cleared by the IRS.
@ Kirby Olsen
Link us to a book with a Gingrich review if you would be so kind.
Of course the one thing none of these jokers will talk about is that pesky little Bell Curve.
"You're going to see from me extraordinary radical proposals"
Smells like hope and change.
"Gingrich has a strong clear intellect", says Kirby the ex-beatnik.
No. He sounds about like a Atlanta jr. college teacher, quoting Bruce Catton (and at times appears to be ..approving of the Confederacy) but that's enough to impress most GOP yokels, at least in the dirty south
(keep mumbling byro-sockpup, with 50 names)
"You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly."
I think Newt is calling his "get a job" plan a radical solution so those Ivy League dweebs will get excited about it. Radical is a compliment to them. Radical excites them, makes them feel special. "I have a radical plan!"
People of ordinary intelligence already know they need to get a job if they want to get out of poverty. He's pitching it as "radical," but this is Republican Economics 101. Create an environment where jobs flourish.
Almost every liberal policy or rule is designed to avoid work. The whole point of the union is to avoid work. You're working us too hard. There's too much work. I don't want to do this work.
The entire Obama administration is an attack on actual labor (i.e. work). He attacks industry after industry. He attacks insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, banks. I don't believe there's a job he likes.
I guess he likes plaintiff's attorneys. The whole point of that profession is "free stuff!"
No, if you want a real radical solution to poverty, look to Harry Blackmun. He wanted the state to provide free abortions to the people. That's a socialist twofer. It's the happy socialist paradise of free stuff provided by the state, mixed in with the ugly socialist nightmare of making unwanted people disappear.
Remember all that stuff about don't get a hamburger flipping job? The worst possible advice you could give to poor children.
In other words, be a good house n*g**r, says Guv'nor Newt. He should just stick to Picketts' Charge for Dummies.
Allens:
I did the Evening & Sunday bulletin. When the delivery truck pulled up, with the bundles of newspapers, all of us paperboys had only one question for him "how many papers in a bundle?". Back then the year-round average was 30-50 but as we hit Thanskgiving, the ads grew and the paper bundles could be as low as 20 or even 10 on a Sunday. The Saturday paper was mercifully thin at 100 in a bundle.
A few years later in college, I got a job driving the truck and when the paper boys asked me how many papers were in a bundle I always exagerrated the size of the paper to hear them bitch and whine.
Heh I am still a prick.
edutcher - No, if you look at the reasons Gingrich was deposed by Republicans, it boils down to them feeling he was a lousy leader.
If you then look at why, what were the contributing factors, you do see "his ethics woes" on that list of factors, but that was not the sole or even a major factor:
1. His inability to lead or administer from the Speakers office in an effective manner.
2. Major losses for House Republicans in 1998.
3. His sabotage of his own "Contract With America" when ol' Newt found money, K Street, and being a fellow lifetime politician was very good for Newt.
4. The ethics charges.
5. Engaging Bill Clinton in a battle of wits and losing, in large part because the most pleasurable thing to Newt was the attention of others and hearing himself pontificate.
Newt is no longer a factor, given the million's he has stolen from the taxpayer providing "guidance" to federal institutions.
He's corrupt.
And America cannot have another corrupt president.
While Newt would be a disaster as President and an easy mark for Obama - credit him with at least helping the "Base" get over their love affair with "heart" over brains, and ignorance as a sign of authenticity of character and the notion we need a Palin or a plumbers apprentice who "is just like us" in the White House.
It takes courage to swim against the tide of know-nothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual Republican base.
The Jesse Jacksonification of the Reps, in which the least informed throwing out the most strident red meat to the Fundies and frindemost "angries" of the Tea Party faction (the new Birchers) -earns the loudest applause. After Palin, McCain, Joe the Plumber, Bachmann...the latest to get "the Love" is Herman Cain, who revels in his ignorance of so many things, just as his supporters do.
At least a movement towards Newt is a sign that conservatives are moving past the glorification of stupidity fringe within their ranks - and actually do want someone smart enough to understand a scientific argument and locate Russia map - because our problems are complex and are past someone with a good heart and a half-empty head and no way to get things done being put in charge.
I'm an Air Force brat, and my parents loved living in England, so my Dad was stationed there often. I graduated high school there, and I also lived there for a while in Elementary and Middle school. It was practically impossible for American kids to work in England, especially if you lived off base. One of the few jobs I could get was seasonal field work, picking strawberries or potatoes from the local farms.
Flash forward thirty years, and I am teaching illegal immigrants and the children of illegal immigrants that have never worked a day in their lives, let alone as field workers.
The problem with Newt is, as mentioned, that he's unreliable as a conservative.
He and Romney are more alike than people realize. They both know full well what they have to advocate to win their target constituency.
The difference is that Mitt spent so much time trying to get elected in Massachusetts; Gingrich was in Georgia.
Consider this: Gingrich in 1964 was a Rockefeller delegate--from Georgia. When he first ran for Congress, he cultivated the support of the NEA teachers union and the environmentalists.
Didn't work (surprise!); so he tacked right.
But the old Newtie's still there.
This is the guy who took money from Fannie and Freddie to be a bridge from them to the GOP. And who advocated a health insurance mandate at one time. And who cut an ad on global warming with Nancy Pelosi. All within recent years, not in the 60s.
Right now his target constituency is conservative activists in the primaries. Which Newt will we have when it's the general election--or the Congress--or the various voices in the culture who are perceived as collectively reflecting "good opinion"--and it is only a rare political figure who doesn't crave winning that "good opinion."
As far as I'm concerned, Newt is just a more entertaining version of Romney.
J's idiocy is exposed more and more, equating a paying job a child could to to chattel slavery. Typical leftwing pile of malarky.
I worked at my dads shop at age 10, spraying and hoeing weeds and cleaning the pipe yard of trash. Sweeping the shop and cleaning the toilet. Learning to account for my work time so I could be paid accurately.
J, the Moron, thinks that is slavery.
Keep posting, idiot. You amuse me.
He really is a visionary.
Ah Byro-sorepaw, AZ acidhead---you think the cops or psych. people are with ya? Wrong again Dyslexo-Ron, snitch grrl. Maybe we show them your threats against the Oakland police, and had some more time to your sentence. Keep mumbling AZ theatre trash (yo, Miss Foster)
Could you imagine Newt fucking?
Ooohhh.
That huge head going down on you, pussy juice on his lips.
What about his hardon? You know that thing is nasty but full of interesting ideas.
Kirby Olson said...
He [Gingrich] has a strong clear intellect.
Agreed. The problem is, should Newt actually be elected president he will almost certainly face a worsening depression. And there's no way to turn the oceanliner sized American economy around by being brilliant. Certain changes can be implemented that will let the business community know it is no longer under assault. Then the president must sit back and wait, stay the course and above all NOT FIDDLE while the economy ever so slowly revives. Newt won't be able to abstain from jiggering with this that and a thousand other things, especially as the entire socialist establishment screams that he's meaner than Scrooge, why he's a KILLER! So he won't stay the course and will, by his own doing weaken the very recovery he set in motion.
Ah your fraudulent veteran account, AND your titus queer account. Thatd be you Byro Buggali, AZ acid-theatre trash. Sgt. Titus!. Hah hah. Yr the one hanging with the Oakland anarchists, anyway--just lying as usual perp.
Buh bye, wicca queer1
By the way, someone mentioned that this sort of work ethic for kids is a Republican thing.
Really? It sure didn't used to be, and I don't think that's true even now.
There are a lot of folks who work hard, know they have to, know their kids have to, because that's reality. Maybe you think they should be Republicans (I don't think anyone should be, not this GOP), but they aren't.
There are, however, liberals and Democrats who live in fantasy land: like Nancy Pelosi (as mentioned), imagining a world where you're a happy bohemian and never worry about paying the bills. Or Occupiers who imagine all nuclear and carbon-based energy goes away, and magically new forms of energy appear that make everything keep working.
And, yes, people on the right can live in fantasy land too.
And Newt's dead on when he lambastes those who dismiss hamburger-flipping. Reminds me of those who think it's oh-so-terrible for kids to be "regimented" by rules, to wear uniforms to school that crushes their individuality.
We make our kids in our Catholic school wear uniforms. I'll say it openly, even to them: we have very good reasons for you wearing a uniform; and your not liking it is irrelevant. I don't care if you like, I don't even want you to like it. Having to do things that you don't like; and having things you don't like still be worthwhile, are also good lessons.
J returns from Zucotti Park
What about Newt's ass?
That thing is fucking huge.
Could you imagine him naked? Total nightmare.
You know his gut hangs over his hog and you can't see the cock when he is naked. That's just sad.
Why do William's nihilist posts make me happy?
Ah, the mystery deepens.
You're gonna be a fat fuck yourself, Titus.
Just you wait mwa ha ha ha ha.
Ah since you're into the religious angle--Gingrich is a satanist
like all states right morons, and all quasi-Torys, even ones who take Mass.
All ya need to know. .
When Calista is on her knees does she have to lift the huge gut in order to suck Newt off?
That would be a drag.
Well, Newt Gingrich is more famous than Morry Taylor. Morry Taylor in 1996 spent his own money. And, garnered 1% of the votes in the GOP primary.
Back then, Michael Lewis called the 9 contendahs THUMB WRESTLERS.
That's not Newt! He'd be a fucking fascist. But the good news? He doesn't have a chance! And, IF he got the nomination ... all you'd see are Clinton ads for Obama. It would work like laughing gas.
Back in the old South, they wouldn't let papists aka marians in the Klan, or ..klansmen in the RC. Newt must have paid some padres off. That smirking elf insults even the memory of.... PT Beauregard.
No. He sounds about like a Atlanta jr. college teacher, quoting Bruce Catton.
That is a name out of the past. I have 4 generations of ancestors buried maybe 100 feet from Catton in Benzonia, Michigan. His younger brother was my grandfather's best friend in HS, and both Bruce and my grandfather were inspired to their life's work by watching the GAR vets march there - Catton as a civil war historian and my grandfather as an army officer. A lot of this is in Catton's autobiographical "Waiting for the Morning Train".
I must say though that my mother's family going back with Catton's into the mid-1800s there in Michigan may be part of why I disliked history so much until maybe my late 40s or so. We had all his books, and trying to read them when in middle school, or even high school, was pure torture. The civil war was exciting, until I tried to read about it in one of his books.
@J: What is a Byro? I don't suppose you mean Bryonic. Many of your insults would be more effective if they were comprehensible....Why are we all sock puppets? Is the Mormo-Zionist conspiracy so widespread that, like the figures in the Matrix, we only imagine we have an independent existence?......I grew up poor and started work at an early age. If there was anything ennobling or character building about poverty, it escaped my attention. I'm pretty sure that growing up rich is the way to go. Still, I will say this in favor of poverty: When you grow up poor, you know that the purpose of life is to make a living. There's a kind of closed circuit to this reasoning, but even so it's a purpose. Look at the children of Cher and Warren Beatty. How much leisure and luxury must you have to entertain ideas that the path to fulfillment and happiness involves chopping your penis off. Only rich kids have the time and means to elaborate on their foolish thoughts.
This is simply not going to work. Black people will not be lectured to about work values from the white man. It's going to have to come from within. I mean heck, Bill Cosby tried with no avail.
By the way, someone mentioned that this sort of work ethic for kids is a Republican thing.
Really? It sure didn't used to be, and I don't think that's true even now.
I think that the good father is correct here. But, the problem is that the leadership in the Democratic party has signed on to this for political reasons - the unions don't like low priced competition, and many of the 47% want their handouts. So, while it is something practiced by a lot of Democrats, it is rarely espoused by any of their national leaders.
I for one am really tired of the "hamburger flipping" implied insult.
When I was a student at UW-Madison in the early 70's, I was thrilled when I got a job at the Lake Street McDonald's. And even more thrilled when I made it up from 'the counter' to 'grill cook'.
Summers, I worked at an A&W in my home town.
And looking back, it would not have been at all bad to have stayed with McDonald's Corp. Could have a franchise or two by now.
Honestly, it was the threat of having to work a hamburger job that got my ass in line at college to get good grades. It was always that looming threat that hung over me. *shudders*
The Jesse Jacksonification of the Reps, in which the least informed throwing out the most strident red meat to the Fundies and frindemost "angries" of the Tea Party faction (the new Birchers) -earns the loudest applause.
The TP the new Birchers. Heh. I agree slightly. Better Newt (who has a few traces of a Reaganite moderate, or did) than the PC Michael Steele GOP. But about like saying...better Jodl than Zhukov. Doesn't mean much. Essentially Gingrich is a hustler and opportunist (aka, carpetbagger)
Unregulated child labor as the antidote to poverty and the key to entrepreneurship.
Your blessed Newton really hit quite the nugget with this one.
Sorepaw & Ted,
Extinction's effective only if everyone’s onboard.
@11:53. Yep. Visionary, indeed. Underage coal miners and chimney sweeps is really the way to bring prosperity to America. No one thunk that one up before. Thanks, Professor Newton!
I guess that, given their keen interest in nuclear power, right-wingers will propose using 4-year olds to dispose of radioactive waste. See? Progress!
Unregulated child labor as the antidote to poverty and the key to entrepreneurship.
I love how you so blithely dismiss peoples' life stories. Yeah working a paper route or assembling a computer at 13-15 is such horrible, evil work and should never be allowed by the watchful eye of big government.
FU Shitmo, you're a tyrant.
The left complains about income inequality because they want to chop the top down, not bring the bottom up.
his term as speaker was nondescript when it wasn't contentious.
Except it was the one time in the last 40 years when receipts approached expenditures. Not sure how much he had to do with it.
Honestly, it was the threat of having to work a hamburger job that got my ass in line at college to get good grades. It was always that looming threat that hung over me. *shudders*
It sure as hell wasn't intellectual curiosity or possession of a keen mind that incented you to getting your ass in the diploma mill!
Idiots like Alex help explain the crisis in American education.
Newton's half-right, as half-wits like him usually are. The manual and retail labor that pre-educated kids can compete with adults for is the answer, but not at that age. The idea is to bring back apprenticeships and benefits for occupations that even financially sound Germans realize never became obsolete. And if it comes at the expense of refusing to continue educating every idiot to the level of a bachelor's degree, then that's only as it should be.
The problem with Newt is, as mentioned, that he's unreliable as a conservative.
Compared to who, Romney? Huntsman? Cain?
Obviously Perry is a more reliable conservative than Newt. The basic fear with Perry is that he is a god-awful campaigner and debater and public speaker. His campaign has been scary bad.
Cain = toast
Perry = scary question mark
Romney = damn Massachusetts RINO
Newt = flee to safety
Perry is a scary question mark not on substance, but on his basic inability to run for office. Republicans are constantly called "dumb." I'm used to it. I'm bored by the charge. But Perry looks dumb so damn often, in so many ways, that I feel like it's almost affirmative action to vote for the guy.
Newt's an iconoclast, and very opinionated, and is liable to say something that will damage his campaign. We shall see.
But I also like that he has a lot of thoughts and opinions. As somebody mentioned earlier, Newt has put up a lot of book reviews on Amazon. I can't imagine most politicians doing that. Reagan? Thatcher? No.
I really like it. He's a professor and so he's more prone to ideas and ideology (which is dangerous), but just the fact that he throws up reviews on Amazon suggests to me that he is an independent thinker and a populist.
I read his reviews and I want to go out to my library and check out some of these books.
geez, Cedarford, didn't know your picture was in the dictionary under the heading: bigot.
Your concern trolling over the "anti-intellectualism" among conservatives is wearying; because your use of words like "stupidity" and "authenticity" reveal the usual Leftist contempt for the hoi polloi -- only a "professional class" of self-selected academics, the "intellectual class" is fit to be rulers.
It isn't "intellectual" or "intelligence" that non-Leftists reject, it is the arrogance, bigotry and sense of entitlement to rule others that set off the DANGER! STATIST! detectors.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. -- Thomas Sowell
I'm a tyrant? Lol. Newton's the one who says that working kids will save the economy.
No one cares about your economically unproductive paper route, aphid brain. Most of us had those. Obviously that's not protected by the sort of regulation that Perfesser Pinhead would like to repeal.
Your education is a testament to the appalling critical thinking and general knowledge standards of America's institutions of higher learning.
It isn't "intellectual" or "intelligence" that non-Leftists reject, it is the arrogance, bigotry and sense of entitlement to rule others that set off the DANGER! STATIST! detectors.
In right-wing fantasies, the stupid and lazy shall inherit the earth.
For Thomas Sowell to equate Scandinavia with the U.S.S.R. takes the sort of intellectual dishonesty or laziness that only a right-winger can see past.
DANGER! SMART (ARROGANT) PEOPLE IN THE VICINITY! Elitist! Elitist!
Nanoo nanoo.
Ritmo
The stupid and the lazy have already inherited the White House.
And your rewriting of Gingrich's comment to fit your religious beliefs is noted.
It is not bigotry to call some of the fringe dwellers in the conservative right that see ignorance and anger as "authenticity and having a good conservative heart". I consider them a negative force in the Republican Party.
I also consider the ignorant angry leftists of the Democrats as a bad faction they have to put up with.
And calling anyone that disagrees with you a racist, bigot, homophobe or 'stinking' RINO is a hallmark of the lazy ignorant left or the lazy ignorant far right - Darleen.
geez, Cedarford, didn't know your picture was in the dictionary under the heading: bigot.
LOL. You didn't know that? You must be new here.
Yep. An accurate understanding of history is now a "religious belief". Good one, Darleen. Must be good for at least 10 commenting points on The Straight Talk Express.
But if that's the sort of propaganda that leads you to believe that the current administration is dumber than the one it succeeded and the slate of nominees that hope to succeed it, I'm not surprised.
How's presidential nominee Rick Perry's campaign going, BTW? Have they taught him any SAT words, yet?
"Of course Newt is right in general. I raked neighbors' leaves when I was ten, had a paper route when I was 12, worked in bowling alleys setting pins in Junior High, worked in the hospital kitchen washing pots and dishes in High School. Always had my own money, my own car...
It's all good.
What's that got do with being President? It's up to your parents to teach you this stuff."
What it's got to do with being President is that what you said is illegal.
Or if it isn't illegal, say at age 14 or 16-17, employers have to jump through extra hoops just for the privilege of employing someone who's never had a job before, and why should they?
It's kind of funny breaking down the pathetic slate of GOP candidates into their constituent components.
There's the proud idiot (who probably wishes he could forego "talking" and "debating" and replace those nasty obligations with "executin'"), there's the sexual harasser, there's the phony slick talker (the only one they see past and are yet, ironically stuck with), the wacky freedom fighter, the bible thumpers and a sane one that everyone overlooks.
This is a fun campaign season. If they had any humanity in them left about which to feel sorry in the first place, I'd actually feel sorry for the right wing.
And, oh yeah! The "Perfessor"
(A crucial addition to the party of the proudly ignorant in the information age).
C4 must have seen this speech.
What Newt says here is spot on.
I watched my parents work themselves from abject poverty into middle class where they were very comfortable and in want of nothing. Then I was forced by them to start over poor myself and work hard to return to middle class and eventually into the hated 1%. I met many others like this along the way.
I can testify that this is not some fantasy. My parents and I did this without college degrees, government subsides, or subsidized jobs. It required little more than a decent work ethic and a little financial discipline. It would surprise a lot of people how easy it is. That said, the path is not guaranteed, effort free, always fun and interesting or instantaneous. So it is of no interest to today, but unfortunately it is the only path that has ever worked and been sustainable...ever.
The free market is civilation's greatest discovery, because it rides on the waves of natural selection rather than swiming against them. It's a miracle system.
Does anyone else truly think that Newton's fear of unions taking over jobs "meant for children" makes any sense, when you really think about it?
Good grief. If this is the sort of cognitive dissonance that makes Newton's brainfarts dazzle and sparkle, then I'm not sure anyone can really help you.
Cedarford,
You didn't qualify any of your blanket assertions about people who find -- say, Gov. Palin -- worthy of support "anti-intellectual" because, in your estimation, she is a stupid, snowbilly.
Support someone consider "stupid" by the intellectual class makes oneself stupid.
Never, even question if the intellectual class has their own [statist] agenda.
The fight, per se, in the Republican party isn't between "moderates" and "fringe dwellers", it's between people who actually believe conservative principles of Constitutionally-limited government and those that just want to mouth those principles in order to get to DC and on the statist gravy train.
Democrats are not shy in their cause of creating a permanent dependency class ... Establishment Republicans just want their turn in the same driver's seat.
Does anyone else truly think that Newton's fear of unions taking over jobs "meant for children" makes any sense, when you really think about it?
Of course it would make no sense. But since he didn't say it, why ask?
[any more creative writing you want to advance, Ritmo?]
So, Bag - you seem to be saying that poverty is the greatest incentive to do well in life.
America's GDP must really stick in your craw, man. Something should really be done about that obscenely high number, lest we forget what it means to appreciate hard work.
Q. Of course it would make no sense. But since he didn't say it, why ask?
A. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school.
Newt now officially relies on people not reading what he says in all of one simple sentence of his in order to defend him.
The quote was not all that long, Darleen. Surely you didn't intentionally miss it within those overbearing 15 or so sentences of Newton's that Althouse cited?
Ritmo,
People don't need an incentive to succeed, they just need the freedom to. Freedom from chaos, and existential threats. That's where government comes in. When it tries to do more, it becomes part of the problem.
And the national GDP was never even known to me or my parents during our climb from poverty. It had nothing to do with it, In fact, I had some of my most successful years during recessions. This year has been my most successful ever by far.
Cederford,
How about telling us what does work, or who is a great choice for President. You spend a lot of time attacking everyone and everything out there. That's not real helpful or challenging is it? Stop coasting downhill and show us something.
It didn't take long for Ritmo to return to his usual insult trolling.
Time to scroll past again.
Are there any lefties with game? Where's the Democrat's Walter Russell Mead?
Ain't no debating with the left, I guess, jes' trash talk. Snore.
"Does anyone else truly think that Newton's fear of unions taking over jobs "meant for children" makes any sense, when you really think about it?"
Historically, unions existed to reserve jobs for white men. Unionization meant excluding blacks from employment. Certainly the AFL/CIO in their separate incarnations began with precisely that purpose. Excluding children and women from employment had the same purpose and child labor laws were passed more or less specifically to make it impossible for children to be hired and take jobs from adult (white) men.
No doubt there are dangerous occupations that children should not do. However, consider that the ONE occupation that even small children may be legally employed doing is also one of the most dangerous in the nation... farming. So the idea that the first purpose of child labor laws is safety has a strong counter. It may be a purpose, but the primary purpose is, actually and without any reasonable dispute, keeping children from doing the jobs that adult men might be hired to do, and doing those jobs more cheaply.
Is it reasonable for Gingrich to fear the unions taking those jobs that ought to be children's jobs? No, it's not, because it's already been done. This is what happened, absolutely and without a doubt.
Returning to young people the sorts of labor appropriate for themselves at age 10, at 12, at 14 will likely enough impose on some union territory.
But the laws don't simply restrict schools from hiring young people to sweep hallways and clean dry erase boards. The laws restrict any employer from hiring any child or even teenager, from doing jobs they are well able to do.
There is no reason at all for any entry-level, associate, job at my employment not to be done by a 10 year old. A 10 year old could easily run the til and make change. A 10 year old can tidy and stock shelves and size clothing. A 10 year old can turn all the shoes toe-forward and if she can't reach the top shelves, well then neither can I.
Ooh! Ooh!
Let me do the lefty rejoinder:
Synova wants kids to be sweat shop slaves!
Thank you.
It didn't take long for Ritmo to return to his usual insult trolling.
Time to scroll past again.
Are there any lefties with game? Where's the Democrat's Walter Russell Mead?
Ain't no debating with the left, I guess, jes' trash talk. Snore.
Lol.
The game was "You lost, and then you felt insulted about coming up with such bad and easily trashed ideas."
The point of playing a game, Dear Lil' Pogo, is that when you lose the game you accept it. You don't try to deny the loss by decrying the awful blow to your ego that it represents.
But this is why the right will keep losing. An inability to understand that competition is to be balanced by cooperation and compassion is what prevents them from learning from their mistakes.
They want to say that they value humility, while always insisting that they're always right.
Since pointing out how illogical that is also goes over their head, you have to substitute that for a term that conservatives understand: Incoherent.
And the idea that high-minded debate (or even a decent idea) will come about with the appearance of someone as nasty as Professor Newton the Grinch? Laughable on its face.
This is the problem as well with the notion of "living wage."
Some jobs ought to be done by the groups of people who have no need to support a family with their employment.
This is also the problem with making it illegal to simply ask someone to do a few chores and then pay them for it. A homeowner generally can ask the neighbor kid to rake the lawn for a few bucks, but a business owner can't do the same with a broom.
People don't need an incentive to succeed, they just need the freedom to. Freedom from chaos, and existential threats. That's where government comes in. When it tries to do more, it becomes part of the problem.
This is funny. I'm supposed to accept that the poor in America are less free than the emerging capitalist class in China and the third world. Funny idea of freedom you have, Baggie.
And the national GDP was never even known to me or my parents during our climb from poverty. It had nothing to do with it, In fact, I had some of my most successful years during recessions. This year has been my most successful ever by far.
So, you ARE saying that national poverty per capita is a good thing for the wealthy and their quest to do even better than anyone else?
So noted, Baggie Man.
Go ahead, Ritmo, tell everyone what your first job was.
Ain't no debating with the left, I guess, jes' trash talk. Snore.
I'm sure a few minutes listening to your favorite, civil public debater, Rush Limbaugh, will jolt you back into consciousness.
I think it was cleaning up at a casino, Allen.
The comments at Politico are brilliant. Good to know, though, that our lefties aren't missing any of the important points.
Because pushing a broom and cleaning a chalk board is just *exactly* like sweat-shop labor in a third world country.
They don't have $120,000 a year union janitors and their laughable work rules in Japanese schools. The kids clean up, every single day.
Because pushing a broom and cleaning a chalk board is just *exactly* like sweat-shop labor in a third world country.
Well, when it comes to the kind of environmental deregulatin' that Perfesser Newton the Grinch is such a fan of, no matter how many thousands of additional visits to the E.R. for status asthmaticus our kids have to cope with, you never know.
Hell, why, even last month, Hoosier Daddy was trying to convince me that all the additional cardiac deaths per capita suffered by Indianans, is a crucial function of the freedom they value.
Interesting, in a quixotic way.
Ritmo - guess what? In Japan & South Korea school kids are expected to clean their classrooms and hallways. Somehow they don't seem traumatized by the whole affair. Why are American kids such delicate little flowers?
It would be better if Ritmo's avatar eye closed every other time he posted.
Then scrolling past his many posts would be more fun.
In other words, Ritmo, it's okay to make up shit.
Hold the barbarians at the gate, lest they weasel their way in and reintroduce infants as chimney sweeps.
I've got teenagers, so I've been quite aware of the results of child-labor laws and the impact on the kids. It's not good. But if hurting young people is worth holding that line against feeding babies to the jaws of industry, then I suppose that's what you've got to do.
Sorun, Normandy Park for me. Know where that's at?
Hey! I walk to Normandy Park with my kids. Small world.
I was a candy striper (my parents wanted us working, even if there was no paycheck yet) and a babysitter until I was old enough for a W2 job.
Then, when once I turned 16 and could attend "post secondary enrollment options" -- community college instead of 11th and 12th grade at the local high school, there I went. (Hey, first two years of tuition and books covered by my school district!). My folks knew the dean of students at the CC, but couldn't get him to sign off on me attending at 15. Heh. I had three jobs while at cc -- secretary, and some overnight stuff that I could get some Z's in and do homework unless there was an emergency situation. The usually wasn't -- a college student, paid 6.50 an hour to sleep! I thought I was in heaven.
And then 40 hrs a week at a bakery during my final years of college after I transferred out of community college. It wasn't until I got there that I discovered the concept of students not working. I was jealous at the time, but on the other hand, I left school with no loans. Lesson well-taken.
That's the kind of dishonest gentle evasion that's left Pogo wallowing in this blog's comments section long after feistier commenters were deleted and more intelligent commenters left.
Chip Ahoy might be able to help with the blinking eye thingy.
Probably because Japan and South Korea don't devalue the health of their citizens the way Britain and America once did and the way America still tries to get away with.
I think the height of dishonesty is making up bullshit about how not hiring kids for less than minimum wage to rake leaves is what's driving corporations out of business at the same time that they enjoy record profits. (See your blogmate Bag'Oh's comments for evidence of that one). But then, you're starting to get feistier Synova so I'm not surprised that your arguments are becoming even more desperate.
Kids need real jobs in middle school.
Developmentally, that's the age they need to start working at something that is not make-work, where they actually earn a wage. It doesn't have to be a lot of work or a lot of pay. But one of the most vital needs of humans is a feeling of efficacy. The experience of real work and real money (if it goes to help the family or in their own pockets, makes no difference) is an expression of efficacy... of personal power. Your efforts are worth someone paying you for them.
Yes, this can happen later, but *developmentally* the correct age is, yes, between 9 and 14 (which I believe are the ages Newt gave.)
That Newt presents this experience as vital, particularly, for minority kids living in poverty makes him compassionate and wise.
That commentors at Politico automatically reject the greater morality involved in a capitalistic answer is entirely expected.
If my eye closes with every other comment, will your drumstick actually swing downward as well?
But then, you'd actually have to come up with things to say every now and then for the effect to work. Ha.
I'm another former paperboy. Our routes were smaller than yours, Allen. We could add as many customers within our zone, but we couldn't poach into another kid's route. I think I got my route up to 90 customers. Collecting was my favorite part. I had a number of chatty customers who loved sharing stories.
Evening paper. It was quite the big deal when the paper dropped the Saturday edition and started up a Sunday morning edition.
Roger J:
Shouting Thomas--had that been in the south she would have asked you want do you want, honey.
What do you want, hon?
11/19/11 9:27 AM
Raking leaves for less than minimum wage is all that's left. Or babysitting.
The things we *allow* children to do are not particularly safe. And babysitting isn't, in my opinion, usually appropriate. The responsibility is all out of proportion... which, again, is another indication about what labor laws are actually about. Let's not allow a 17 year old to operate the bread slicer at the grocery deli, but let's let a 13 year old take responsibility for an infant.
The child labor laws I've come up against are almost entirely about preventing teenagers from choosing employment over attending school. Perversely, permission to work is dependent on being a very good student and getting permission from the school, when logically, the very students most in need of experience being employed and learning those skills (show up clean and appropriately dressed, do your tasks) are the ones unlikely to get permission. (According to the stated requirements in any case, school officials holding the authority might know better.)
People here have been saying how they worked at night, had this job or that job, and all I can think is that what they describe is ILLEGAL. If someone follows the rules not even their 16 year old can work more than a few hours doing nothing more demanding than bagging groceries, and then their employer has to be willing to take on the extra responsibility of treating them differently, doing more work for the privilege of employing them, than they would if they just hired someone who was 18.
Our kids aren't supposed to spend hours playing video games, nor are they supposed to loiter about the neighborhood, nor can they work at a job that pays them.
It really is perverse. How better to encourage someone "at risk" to continue school than by allowing them to earn money and so have cause to dream of being able to move up to something better.
Instead we pretty much enforce idleness by law and hope they'll be so bored that they'll spend time on their studies? Seriously?
I am with the fools Ritmo and J on this one. Teaching the poor to work at an early age is bad business. Especially if corporations are making record profits because as you know you can't expect anyone to strive if that is the case. Plus, every dime the poor make is a dime that the one percent don't make.
So, learning good work habits is for the one percent and their spawn. Not for the poor. At least not while there are record corporate profits and such a disparity in income, the income gap!!, that would only be exacerbated if the young poor took low paying jobs. Like slaves. Like chattel.
So, yes, the second rate thinkers are right about this one. No jobs for the poor unless they are really high paying jobs. Or welfare, which is better still.
And how can janitors make thirty dollars an hour if the kids are doing it for next to nothing!
Thank God for the one percent.
I want a bag of whatever shit J is smoking. It's gotta be Primo stuff.
Ah yes, a Republican's dream. Newt's dream. Keep the poor (usually black of Hispanic) children in their place, working as janitors and burger flippers...preferably forever.
Also, notice that his "idea" isn't about how to create well-educated children or a more intelligent, intellectually robust generation. It's about how to create a generation of dull, minimum-wage earning janitors. USA! USA!
No, Zachary, that's their future now, in the socialist dream of the Democrat Party.
High unemployment to protect the overpaid union jobs, until the entire economy collapses. Defer adulthood by going to overpriced universities learning nothing useful, only to find the promised high level positions no longer exist.
We are all Detroit now, thanks to the left.
Gingrich is merely pointing out what used to be common knowledge. Work is good. The habits of a successful worker are learned early. Get to work on time, defer to the boss, do a good job, start at the bottom and move up.
Work is a dirty word for Democrats. Shameful, a thing to be avoided.
No wonder they're so fucked up.
Of course... keeping them on the dole is the Democrat's dream. Keep people grateful for their hand-outs.
Right?
Can a single one of you speak to the problem of how and when to allow entry into employment, particularly for the poor you care about so well?
Or is it just too important to somehow express entrance into the work world as a bad thing that we must ensure never happens?
Because a teenager having a job is proven, statistically, to ensure that they always have that same job?
I KNOW you have a brain.
But you just said, ZPS, that a teenager who gets a janitorial job or a burger flipping job will be kept doing that job forever. This is not only flagrantly illogical, it's moronic.
OTOH, Newt has, at the very least, anecdote on this side, and I would suspect he's got hard data on his side as well.
But never mind that inconvenience! If the poor we care about so well can't have, as their first employment, a professional job at age 24 when they finish college, then screw it. They can stay on welfare and in prison, because that at LEAST saves them from the horrific Republican Dream.
Dont know how this factors into the discussion, but having been on the hiring side, there were a few things I looked for in a job applicant. At the basic level: do they have an address? do they have a phone? do they have reliable transportation (public trans works here). How much experience have they had in previous jobs, if any. Have they shown the ability to progress in their jobs? And is their work history stable?
Thats the first screen, then we can talk about how their attributes match up to the job.
Anyway--it always seemed to work for my hires. Needless to say other employers criteria may vary.
"Also, notice that his "idea" isn't about how to create well-educated children or a more intelligent, intellectually robust generation. It's about how to create a generation of dull, minimum-wage earning janitors. USA! USA!"
No, what I *notice* is that his "idea" is specifically and explicitly stated in purpose to "give people a chance to rise very rapidly."
Make the experience of employment available to people at a young age so they can experience its value.
"He added, "You go out and talk to people, as I do, you go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age. They all were either selling newspapers, going door to door, they were doing something, they were washing cars.
"They all learned how to make money at a very early age," he said. "What do we say to poor kids in poor neighborhoods? Don't do it."
Now, I do understand why it is absolutely necessary to lie and say that what Gingrich desires is a generation of dull persons held forever in poverty at low wage jobs.
Because there is no other option if one believes that intentions and desires automatically get the intended result. There is no way to fit a refutation on fact in that paradigm. No way to fit an argument that what Gingrich suggests won't get the result that he *wants*, because *wanting* is what determines results.
The only thing left is to say that what he WANTS is the bad result.
Give it up. I'm not buying it, and I will point it out when someone tries to sell it.
I think it was John Gardner who said: “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”
My first job was in the apricot orchards of the Santa Clara Valley at about the age of 11 or 12. We would stand on our feet for hours cutting the pits from the 'cots and laying them out on the wooden trays to be smoked with sulfur and dried in the sun. The pickers would bring us box after box of 'cots to cut. By the end of the season the 'cots were pretty ripe and we had big buckets of slop at our feet to cut out the moldy and rotten spots. Nom nom nom.
The main issue is work ethic. Encouraging and allowing your children to work at even menial jobs at a young age will instill this.
"The habits of a successful worker are learned early. Get to work on time, defer to the boss, do a good job, start at the bottom and move up."
Not everyone is going to go to college. And as we know not everyone who goes to college is qualified to get a job.
Employers are not allowed to hire young people for entry level jobs, by law. Minimum wage laws also discourage hiring the entry level workers who don't have the ethic or experience.
Like Synova, I agree that there are many good jobs that young pre teens could be doing that would be a good preparation for entering the world of work.
I also agree with Ritmo, we need to bring back apprentice programs. We had those in high school for the trades and for clerical work.
I subscribe to synova's and DBQs points--it isnt the kind of labor involved; it is the work ethic that is learned--and also agree that an expansion of apprentice programs would be a good thing--
bagoh20 said...
Cederford,
How about telling us what does work, or who is a great choice for President. You spend a lot of time attacking everyone and everything out there. That's not real helpful or challenging .
======================
I thought either Romney or Hillary would have been a better President than McCain or Obama...with McCain proving himself a guaranteed dismal President in the campaign that along with Palin, repelled the undecided voters. No one wanted McCain in the 2012 race.
This time around I had hopes for Romney, Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels, and Jeb Bush entering the race. Had he not been cursed with the last name of his dumb brother, Jeb would have been a no-brainer.
Early on, I liked Herman Cain, but had to quickly admit that the man had serious deficiencies, and huge holes of ignorance on matters a President would have to be good at.
And Ron Paul as many, do, I like his honesty. He isn't owned by the China Lobby like Newt is, isn't owned by Jewish money and the Christian Zionists into wanting more Neocon wars of adventure for our "Special Friend" - but Ron Paul would be a tremendously bad "fit" as President with half his ideas in the nutty or impractical areas.
Right now, Romney seems to be a good choice. Newt is a corrupt blowhard, Herman Cain is just too ignorant to work out. I think he would lose, but I would support Perry over Obama.
And lets hope we never have to face Rick Santorum. Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or Huntsman as the nominee.
Is there a way to look up specific reviewers at Amazon.com?
He signs them with his own name. Newt Gingrich.
Do you think Newtsy makes Candy eat his ass out?
He's really talking about emotional IQ, and developing it early.
He's right.
Here's a synergistic idea:
Remove all restrictions on licensed professions, especially those professions that poor people could enter without much capital:
a. Hair cutting
b. Restaurant
c. Taxi
...
I'm not sure that Michael realizes how funny he is.
Yes, Michael, it's good hard work that has led to record profits -- not greatly enhanced productivity derived from technology, combined with a return to the work structure of an era before those productivity gains were made. I mean, after all, who needs leisure in the first place? Not when there is labor to be squeezed and unnecessarily high unemployment to maintain and point to as the only alternative, anyway. I mean, should just anyone be allowed to have a life when 70 hour workweeks were the norm one hundred years ago? Damn! How can privilege and materialism be worshiped if he don't subsidize drudgery?
Other than that, it's good to know that Sorepaw's still obsessed with my every word, and no one else's. I mean, the guy ogles and follows every trace I leave as if I were a nude cheerleader making her way down the hall of a Catholic school.
He sees me the way a desert nomad sees an oasis containing pools of water.
Like knowledge to an imbecile who has been long starved of it, I somehow give him something that he now seems incapable of living without...
"Cederford,
How about telling us what does work, or who is a great choice for President. You spend a lot of time attacking everyone and everything out there. That's not real helpful or challenging is it? Stop coasting downhill and show us something."
Here they are:
Ron Paul
David Duke
Dennis Kucinich
Peppermint Patti Buchanan
IOW any and every deranged Jooo-baiter like himself.
And he doesn't *have* anything to show. He has never once sourced *any* of the lying bullshit he continually pulls out of his well-populated asshole, with some assistance from the Stormfront websites that provide him with most of his "ideas".
"Raking leaves for less than minimum wage is all that's left. Or babysitting."
My daughter had a pretty steady babysitting practice going before she went off to college. It kind of makes me feel bad for the neigborhood boys -- aside from highly seasonal stuff like yard work, there isn't much that seems acceptable and practical for them to do.
When my first two were small I hired the neighbor girl to babysit for $5 an hour. I tried to hire her to mow the lawn for $20 (a half hour job, at most) but she didn't want to do that.
Made me think about feminism.
All Right Thinking People just KNOW that a 12 year old kid having a part time job for less than minimum wage is JUST LIKE SLAVERY! And in America, once you have a low paying job, YOU WILL NEVER GET ANOTHER, HIGHER PAYING ONE!
This what dolts like Ritmo and ZPS are actually saying. And they are shocked when they are mocked and ridiculed for saying such patently stupid un-true things that fly in the face of what many of the posters here, myself included, have personally experienced in our own lives.
The thing that scares me a bit here is that this sort of thing might get Gingrich elected, or even worse, get him the nomination, and Obama reelected.
At one level, Obama and Gingrich are opposites - Gingrich the intellectual and Obama the poser who has a lot of supposed intellectuals around him. Gingrich really bright, and Obama pretending. Etc.
But what they do have in common is that neither is temperamentally suited to being President. Gingrich would be much more interested in brain storming new ways to solve society's problems than buckling down and solving them, while Obama is too interested in the perks of the office and getting reelected to ever get his hands dirty actually running the government.
The danger here with Gingrich is that he has stepped into a vacuum of sorts, the vacuum of being able to take the fight to the enemy. Or, you could view it as addressing a really big hunger on the right for this. And, yes, that is probably why Bachmann, Perry, and Cain took off too for awhile.
What Gingrich offers over these other candidates is that he can take the fight to the enemy the best. He is the best debater, and can hit the Dems the hardest. But, he also would, I think, make one of the poorer Presidents of all those running for the nomination.
And in America, once you have a low paying job, YOU WILL NEVER GET ANOTHER, HIGHER PAYING ONE!
This what dolts like Ritmo and ZPS are actually saying.
Nope. That's what anyone who has actual evidence is saying.
And they are shocked when they are mocked and ridiculed for saying such patently stupid un-true things that fly in the face of what many of the posters here, myself included, have personally experienced in our own lives.
Of course, dolts like you are shocked and ridiculed by people who have actual evidence and don't believe that personal experiences trump the reality of what is actually shown by the evidence.
And, your side, apparently sick of going to war against reality, is starting to come around to tackling the consequences of this wishful thinking and ridiculously misplaced incentives, as well.
Income immobility is higher in America than among comparable (i.e. first world) nations, and that's a fact. Wish it away and spout your pride all you want. Information does not come into existence, and the actual state of how the world works does not change, just because a drill sergeant ordered it so.
Go and yell at and berate and holler a halt to the world as it exists, man - and not to others who merely report on what IS and construct their view of life accordingly. It's tired but at least it helps you focus your angry ignorance appropriately.
Ah yes, a Republican's dream. Newt's dream. Keep the poor (usually black of Hispanic) children in their place, working as janitors and burger flippers...preferably forever.
If I were the Grand Dragon of the KKK I couldn't do a better job of holding down minorities than to convince them working an entry level job is beneath them.
Eric - the left has convinced minorities that there is more pride in poverty, drug use, gang banging then "working for the man". There is no greater humiliation then having to show up on time and take orders from a white man.
Newt's point could have been to also point out that Obama never had a part time or summer job as a kid or in college. Which could help to explain Obama's lacking any common sense and his being mystified by the basics of market economics and the real world.
If I were the Grand Dragon of the KKK I couldn't do a better job of holding down minorities than to convince them working an entry level job is beneath them.
One way you could do a better job of it would be to implement a welfare state that disincentivizes working and incentivizes having illegitimate children. However, the Democrats have already taken care of this.
@ St Croix 1:13 PM
I read his reviews and I want to go out to my library and check out some of these books.
Thanks for the link in that. I'm looking forward to sharing it with TN Coates and and Andy from Texas on the Atlantic blog. It's interesting that the most recent 3 or 4 books Gingrich reviewed were on Lee vs. Grant in the last part of the Civil War.
I think there is something about working as a way to reinforce your sense of competence at any age. Thinking back about being moved to Dallas at age 13 reminds me of how good the people of Dallas can be. Picking up it seemed where I had left off in moving, I got a route across a busy interconnecting street. My younger brother came down the street on his bike to help me out and a black man in a 6 year old Cadillac drove into the ditch, stuck, to avoid him. One time a Siamese cat approached the highway and looked to see if any cars were coming. Not seeing any it trotted across the street but just then a car roared out of a side street and turned and ran over the cat breaking its back which was apparent as it twitched, dying at the side of the road. Perhaps another day, it was windy and my bike was blown over on my street spilling my papers and an adult driving along stopped and helped me get them and feeling sympathetic gave me some cash. Going back to my earlier route experience I used to make monthly collections on the suburban newspaper. I found that the best days to find people at home was on those holidays when people were announced to be out on the road such as Memorial Day.
One way you could do a better job of it would be to implement a welfare state that disincentivizes working and incentivizes having illegitimate children.
True. And for the real icing if I could convince people their fellow citizens were so racist there was no point in trying...
Anecdotes do not validate a presidential nominee.
However. It's nice to hear someone like Newt reinforce my take on kids and jobs. (The #1 thing about a job is it teaches you to show up if you want to get paid.) But more than that there is pride in making money that is *theirs.*
All of my kids worked as teens. A couple before they were teenagers. One helped an electrical contracting friend pull wire as an undocumented [pre-teen] worker ;-). He used his money to buy some great Christmas presents for us. I remember the day he came in the door with his arms full. He was so proud. (His dad still has -- and uses -- the come along he gave him.)
This is the kid who was washing dishes late on a Saturday night and called in reinforcements (his older brother and sister) after the crowd from the horse show showed up at 9 PM and he was washing dishes at 1 AM. It did not kill him. The restaurant owners (our neighbors) wanted any of my kids to work in a heart beat because they were respectful, worked hard, and were trustworthy.
The youngest girl babysat one summer and provided an on the spot summer nature program at our house for a friend's ADHD little kid who everyday met his mom with tales of snails in the creek and a stag in the buishes. He didn't want to go home. She used the money to help buy her first horse at the age of 11.
When kids have the opportunity to work for pay and learn how to handle money they have earned they tend to be more responsible than the "money tree" kids.
Or at least that's what we discovered.
(I know there are people on this list who had paper routes. My brother had a paper route before he was 14. He was responsible for delivering the papers [he walked -- too hilly for his bike] and *collecting the money* from which he got a cut for his pay.
Whatever happened to paper routes?What is the equivalent today, now that we have the internet?)
@ Bruce Hayden Gingrich would be much more interested in brain storming new ways to solve society's problems than buckling down and solving them
This actually is something I have wondered about re Gingrich.
Being President is hard work (something BHO did not comprehend). Gingrich can work hard, but would he get distracted and / or go all wonky?
It requires some managerial smarts (unless one has a really tough chief of staff who can keep herd on the POTUS?) And an ability to keep many balls in the air while focusing on releasing the problem solvers.
I'd like to see more of what Gingrich has been doing since he left Congress. I am aware of some of it. He is probably one of the most intelligent candidates we have had in decades. And would seriously Eat. Obama's. Lunch in a debate.
But I think we need someone who can oversee the whole thing (reducing the size of the government and debt while protecting our civil rights and providing a healthy and intimidating defense), and know how to delegate appropriately to the right people who aren't necessarily his/her best BFFs or donors.
Paco Wové said...
It kind of makes me feel bad for the neigborhood boys -- aside from highly seasonal stuff like yard work, there isn't much that seems acceptable and practical for them to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why do you think boys can't do babysitting. They certainly can. I employed my friend's son as a babysitter for my boys, and my younger son was also babysitting when he was in high school.
The manual and retail labor that pre-educated kids can compete with adults for is the answer, but not at that age. The idea is to bring back apprenticeships and benefits for occupations that even financially sound Germans realize never became obsolete. And if it comes at the expense of refusing to continue educating every idiot to the level of a bachelor's degree, then that's only as it should be.
I shudder to admit it, but I agree with Ritmo.
The thing that scares me a bit here is that this sort of thing might get Gingrich elected, or even worse, get him the nomination, and Obama reelected.
I think a Gingrich nomination would almost guarantee a Republican win. There is no way Obama beats him in a debate. Newt will hit so many ways, with so many facts, that Obama will just be sputtering. I almost want to nominate him just to see that bloodbath. Very adolescent of me, I know.
None of these Republicans are scary, compared to 4 more years of Obama, which is horrifying. To say Mitt is scary or Newt is scary or Perry is scary is ridiculous.
Whether or not Newt would be a great (or even good) president is beside the point. I would take a mediocre Republican at this point. I would take "Republican who has to learn on the job." Which, of course, they all have to do.
I heard Perry on the radio the other day and he was running against Congress, which is pretty damn smart. He is saying they should take a pay cut, and go home half the year, and insider trading from Congress should be illegal. Running against a corrupt Congress is a no-brainer. Perry was saying a lot of Tea Party type things. He was also bragging about running the 14th largest economy in the world.
I liked everything he said. But I think about him debating Obama, and that's what scares me. 4 more years of that asshole. And damn if Perry didn't say, "We've had four years of a great debater, now we need a President." Oh, so you're just determined to suck at a basic campaign requirement?
That's why nobody talks about the Lincoln-Douglas sputtering 3 minutes of brain fog.
My father and I, both Republicans, were talking about who we supported a month or two ago, and I said, "Maybe Perry" and he said "Maybe Romney," and neither of us were really happy. Just the other day we had this discussion again, and both of us said, "Maybe Newt."
Nope. That's what anyone who has actual evidence is saying.
Um, except your link doesn't provide any actual evidence.
And, your side, apparently sick of going to war against reality, is starting to come around to tackling the consequences of this wishful thinking and ridiculously misplaced incentives, as well.
Er, the President you voted for isn't "coming around" and in fact opposes the policies you claim to support. Because after all he and the party you support had a chance to do something about them and did nothing.
Another fun fact, the party you vote for has demagogued social security reform for the last 30 years. Now you're pretending that you're in favor of not sending social security checks to rich senior citizens.
You are a drooling imbecile.
"Why do you think boys can't do babysitting. They certainly can. "
I didn't say they couldn't; I said "there isn't much that seems acceptable and practical". Around here, girls babysit; I don't know of any boys that do.
Newt is such a better debater than any conservative candidate we've had in years.
Newt alone seems to be able to reject the premise of the liberal questioner and turn it against the left.
I'm tired of screaming at the TV when some dumb-ass liberal cub reporter throws some idiot softball 'gotcha' question at a Republican, who then proceeds to melt like butter instead of flinging it back at the idiot the way Newt does.
I almost want to nominate him just to see that bloodbath
Assuring BHO 90% of the idiot female vote in sympathy.
Ritmo... your evidence doesn't say a thing, not a single thing, about someone getting a job and keeping the same job forever. It's talking about *eventually* getting a better job and moving a step up from your folks.
It's impossible to even imagine that the chart has anything at all to do with what a person had for a *first* job compared to their eventual profession.
So you're lying again.
Post a Comment