Yeah. Whatever Happened to the Days When Poor Kids Had to Work First and Study Whenever They could find a few Minutes (or not at all).
Gingrich and his creepy followers want those days back.
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In a news clip I saw a few days ago Newt Gingrich was talking about how he wants to make "poor" school kids work at their schools and exposed his heavy class-ism and most likely his racism when he said (paraphrased) "those kids don't want to do anything that isn't illegal" (end paraphrase).Since I don't know anyone who says such things about poor white kids, I have to assume that Newt barely controls his egomaniacism, and barely hides a deep seated racism. Also one can assume that his white followers know this and love him for it. Mainstream news colludes in hiding it most of the time like they colluded on hiding the fact that he was living with Callista (who was his his staffer at the time) while he led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton over a brief affair with an intern, and while his Newt's real, who was suffering from MS was home in Georgia.
Even the GOP's majority in the House may not have been enough if mainstream had reported what they proudly announced they knew all along after the information emerged from the divorce proceeding between Newt and Maryanne, but they should be ashamed to cover up Newt's philandering. And the fact that the Gingrich campaign already has so much power over the press should make people worry how far Newt who is obviously dismissive of women's and minority rights could take this if he should win the presidency.
Politico did expose some of Gingrich's creepiness recently, though they made sure to schmooze him with compliments on keeping it under wraps for most of the last 6 months since he's entered the race for the Republican nomination. (See The Return of Bad Newt.)
I love how he took credit in a quote in that report for part of President Clinton's job boom that started about the time the 42nd president started tax reform more than a year before Newt became Speaker. Gingrich is such a eager liar.
And in the same news clip mentioned at the top of this post Gingrich specifically named cleaning the bathroom as a job that could be done by kids at school. Lets put aside the fact that would be the most demeaning job for a student to have to do at his or her own school or any other one, and I bet Gingrich is salivating at that idea, but I showed why the chemicals used make the bathroom one of the most dangerous places to clean in the body of an earlier post, because the most effective cleaners and sanitizers are dangerous for untrained people to use, and can instantly turn a bathroom into a gas chamber if mixed. See: Scientific Studies, News, Show Students Should Not Be Put To Work as Janitors.
Do you think maybe the child cleaners could just use less toxic chemicals? We actually shouldn't send kids in to face possible exposure to Listeria (which recently killed 29 people in the US), e Coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Amoebic Dysentery, or even Typhus and try to fight them with some kind of soap? (SARS the severe respiratory disease that spread from China in 2002-2003 hit Hong Kong hardest because the water supply to at least one apartment building was being contaminated with human sewage showing it probably can be transmitted via bathroom cleaning, as well. This is even more important because the disease can then be transmitted via breath or the water droplets from the intense coughing that takes place often before the patient even knows how severely ill he or she is. This is not what a kid should do, Mr. Goingrich. He or she shouldn't be on the front line against these deadly diseases with lemony scented cleaner. (BTW many other kids, even those who don't clean bathrooms could be affected by that same diseases with an improperly sanitized lavatory.)
Some of the cutesy sprays do probably use chemicals that are safe as long as you are not spraying it in your eyes. But they are for use in the home. If a member of your family comes down with one of the deadly feces-transmittable diseases hopefully a doctor or nurse will advise you that you will have to clean with stronger chemicals than those lemony and pine based cleaners. I note many of them honestly admit that they only promise to kill germs that cause odor, not deadly diseases.
If you make enough money maybe you think your kid won't be affected because you aren't poor. The blog post I linked to above (starts with "Scientific Studies...") shows how any damaged child can become a killer (even affluent and white ones) and that could affect your family, even in a high incarceration state like California. Demeaning a child by having them clean a bathroom in the presence of his schoolmates (as Gingrich specified the program should be run) is one of the best ways I can think of to scar a child deeply. That might even be more effective than hearing an old, white politicians announce that you have no work ethic and need to be treated like a virtual slave to get some just because of your skin color or your parents' economic status.
Another point is that adults do not supervise children workers well, whether volunteers or paid. Gingrich mentioned that some kids might do clerical work. Okay, so now you have poorly paid young people working in an office possibly with grade records or other sensitive materials. I'm not saying a child working in an office might deliberately do something illegal like change scores for jocks, but you are leaving sensitive material in the hands of a child. I lost things all the time when I was a kid. And yes, there were always some older students already working in the office for a few hours a day, but to make Newt's magic work there are going to have to be a lot more working with less supervision. What if when your young adult student needs his or her grades to apply for college and they aren't there, or they've been skewed by test or grade recording errors.
Newt is using coded language to tell his rich and affluent followers that he can cut their taxes by making poor kids take over the jobs of unionized school employees - nothing his type hates more than public education and unions. Since the rich people he wants to send him money send their kids to private school, what do they care? And the racists see this "make them work" program as a just cause.
And if ordinary people and minorities gather together to effectively use their free speech rights, just bring out the weaponized pepper spray (UC Davis and other places), tear gas (Oakland, CA), or overwhelming force ( Los Angeles). F*ck the constitution. We have a plutocracy to run here.
