Obnoxious Manchildren

 

Anyway, the South African-born acting president of the United States changed his name on the site formerly and mostly currently known as "X" to the delightfully childish "Harry Bōlz" which is a call-back from 2023 and seems less like the act of a 53-year-old with an important government job and more like the stunt of a 13-year-old with 40 years' experience with "Big Balls" envy.  (Very young, and already a special little piece of work.)

You know, you could be tempted to believe that maybe, Elon Musk isn't really a person you can treat as particularly responsible. He seems to be "eccentric", which is the culturally acceptable term for very wealthy people we suspect of being a bit batshit. (I think it's wild that he carries his frankly adorable toddler son about in a way that in my darkest imagination looks like "ready-made Greg Stillson event horizon.") 

Malicious Compliance?

 

Monday night, people became aware of a memo from the Trump Administration that halted payments regarding all sorts of things.  That memo said to pause "all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance." 

Well, that wasn't very specific. So maybe the memo was drafted by someone who didn't exactly know what all the programs were, but figured they were all suspect. Or maybe the memo was crafted by someone who really did want all the programs everywhere halted, but didn't know they would be leaving the Administration red-faced and red-assed.

Trump loves doing stuff, and also hates to be blamed for doing stuff. Somebody might get "you're fired'd" for this. I would like it to be Russell Vought, who hasn' t even been confirmed for OMB yet, but who is the Project 2025 guy who thought up this exact kind of thing, was singled out by the Trump Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt as the guy to contact, and is forever stuck in my mind as being the guy in the first Trump admin who halted the aid to Ukraine for the first Trump impeachment.

Texas and the Empty Cradle

 

My heart leapt up when I heard that Kate Cox would be allowed to terminate her genetically ill-fated pregnancy, but I knew she better have a surgical theater in her living room, because the AG of TX, Ken Paxton, impeached, indicted, self-anointed protector of the fruit of the Texan wombs, has nothing better to do than threaten doctors who engage in a court-sanctioned medical procedure. He would ruin this woman's health and future fertility, and the careers and lives of the doctors who help this woman, because?

Because he's so pro-life? Because Texas isn't pro-life. Not when it comes to the death penalty.  The strict abortion ban isn't necessarily saving lives. But it would be better to make an example of this woman, and force her to give birth to a child that might exist just to die, because?

I've long felt that while life doesn't necessarily begin at conception, mothering does. You can decide to eat right or not drink or smoke and maybe figure out how to get pre-natal care. But sometimes even basic ability to take care of your body and your baby's body isn't in your means. You can't afford to eat right. You have an addiction. You don't have access to health care. And sometimes, you just get a bad genetic draw. Nothing you do will ever make you carry a wanted child to term, because that isn't what was in the cards. 

Texas and the Cruelty of "Pro-Life" People

 

Texas women are telling their stories about their troubled and forced pregnancies under their state's strict anti-abortion laws, through tears and even vomit. They are testifying that they do not feel safe to be mothers in Texas, because it is not a safe state to be pregnant if abortion care does not exist there. It is a brutality that they have to tell these deeply personal stories under derisive and uncaring questioning under the assumption that the state's penalizing of fertile women for the heartbreak of reproductive mishap is not responsible for their misery is appalling, but worse is that they did undergo unnecessary injury, expenses, pain and suffering, because surgical options they could have had were made inoperable for them. 

Texas has a shitty record for maternal mortality. Let's get that upfront. Infant mortality as well. An actual pro-life position might well include trying to improve these stats with better health care access. But the rate of uninsured, access to hospitals for rural folks, and cost of getting medical care in Texas isn't a priority. I mean, not for the supposedly pro-life psychopaths in charge like Abbott, Patrick and Paxton. 

Figuring out ways to punish women and doctors for even having abortion as an option, apparently is. 

Or People Could Just Mind Their Own Business

 

lmfao pic.twitter.com/frUDUD76He

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) August 4, 2021

This is a very deeply weird thing to decide: that leftists hate babies. Now, I am not their biggest fan, largely for aesthetic reasons. Often they are so basic and derivative of their parents. (Given what we know, the recent Domenech child is probably a cut and paste job.)  Also they are lousy conversationalists and not one of them can mix a proper drink. But as a general rule, I think of having children like getting a pool or a nipple piercing--it isn't my thing, but if it's yours, you just go ahead and be sure to take care of it. 

The argument is that children are a refutation of the left.  I've never felt refuted by them--frankly, a lot of what I want, like a cleaner environment and good schools and access to health care, is about people being able to raise their kids knowing they will have opportunities to live up to their potential. I'd love it if maternity was medically safe for all people, that the kids in this world could be sure of being homed, fed, and educated well, and that we were leaving a safe, and not-stupid world for them to live in--I'm pretty committed to it! 

But some of what he's saying is just dumb--

Children are brave—terrifyingly brave. Girls are fierce and independent. Boys are heroically reckless. They are not the helpless, timid victims leftists say people are. Just as important, neither are we. That’s the Left’s real problem with children: they create families. They turn boys into men, couples into parents, and women into the archangels we call moms

.Children are terrifyingly brave because they have no concept of consequences--that is learned over time. They do stupid things and we have to childproof the electric sockets and keep sharp things and household chemicals away from them. They might not be timid, but I'm pretty damn sure you wouldn't leave them all to themselves or think they can talk to any old stranger or would count on them to have your back in a knife fight. Parenting is, near as I can tell, steering kids away from being victims (and some parents are absolutely shit at that by victimizing their kids first off) but what about the sexism! Men without children aren't real patriarchs. Women without children aren't "archangels". 

Dare to Dream

In another pleasant shock this week, SCOTUS rejected the Trump Administration's attempt to kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, basically stating that Team Trump went about it all wrong.  Note: they didn't say that Trump and friends couldn't kill the program, and they certainly could decide to try it again. 

The Roberts' decision was that the decision to end DACA was "arbitrary and capricious", and Justice Sotomayor noted that there was a strong likelihood of negative bias against DACA recipients in that decision as well. It's about the process of ending the program, not the constitutionality of the program itself (which also has a strong basis, but we can leave that point for the moment) that was in question.

So where does Trump go from here? Heck if I know--but if Trump wants to go back to the drawing board and end DACA, the rationale will have to sound quite different than "because my base really, really wants me to deport kids and that's important to my getting re-elected", which, to be super honest, is how I think it could be depicted.  In the meanwhile, there is broad support for creating a legal status for Dreamers outside of Trump die-hards. (Not that Trump seems to be aware that people outside of his base exist most of the time.)

In the meantime, this is a relief for now for several hundred thousand young people who can live their lives without fear a little longer. But for those of us looking at a decision of our own in November, let's keep their situation in mind, because the current Senate is highly unlikely to take up legislation to give them a more permanent sense of relief.

Are We Really Doing This?

Really? Because when employers fire someone because they are pregnant, they probably aren't going to commit that to paper--they might even advise the employee to resign to make it easy on themselves. Now, I know that all anyone has to do anymore to make a smear stick is say it out loud and let people's biases do all the work, but yes, women have been let go from employment because they were pregnant. Sometimes it was difficult to prove--and other factors might have influenced one's decision whether to fight it or not. I just don't feel like this is an absolute "gotcha!"

I totally get people on the right running with the idea that she's claiming a form of victimhood, but I think that isn't really the situation, here. She's describing an experience many women had at the time. It really seems to me like a case where people who experience sex discrimination can also run into factors making it difficult to prove or to fight--and honestly? That's not a news flash. I don't think her statements have been disproved, and I don't believe people on the left (even if they favor another candidate) should want to run with this.

Everyone Needs to Learn "No"

I don't know if this is a common happenstance with youth Valentine's Day dances, but a recent story that has been making the rounds has me seeing red--and not the nice, Valentine's Day heart sort of red, either. It's this story where an elementary school dance for eleven and twelve year olds has a particular instruction for girls: "Be polite, and don't say no to boys who ask you to dance."

I, predictably, think this is a terrible idea. Kids at this age are kind of weird, right? They aren't adults by a long stretch, but are aware of what romance is. Some may be ready to participate in this "adult" exercise. But kids this age generally do self-segregate by gender, somewhat. It is awkward to arrange a dance and have boys hanging on one side and girls hanging on the other without a lot of interaction--but these are kids. Maybe some kids will dance, and that's great. But telling specifically girls that they have to say "yes" to boys is on a different level of awkward.

Girls should not be told that it is nicer to do things they don't want to do because...boys. It might be nicer to study hard if you don't want to because learning is cool and helps you in life, and it might be nicer to learn the value of work and earning money for yourself. It might be nice to learn to pay for things, to cook for yourself, to value the convenience of a neat workspace or appreciate what it feels like to complete a task where you've worked with your hands--but little girls and women don't exist to make boys or men feel good about themselves, and it is more than mere politeness to ask them to just say yes to any old boy who asks them to dance.

I have a personal reason I think this is important--I developed really early, and for me at that age, I was interesting to the opposite sex, and not in a kind way. Almost as a curiosity. The compulsion for a young girl to be kind to a boy by consenting to dance despite her inclination not to, is teaching her to override what might be a very real and keen instinct to avoid being pawed at or made a spectacle of in a public place by someone whose maturity isn't what it should be. A girl needs this instinct and it shouldn't be turned aside.

It doesn't teach a great lesson for later on, either. It tells girls they are expected to "keep sweet" in other areas of their lives, because boys and men expect that behavior of them. It is the behavior expected of child brides, submissive spouses, put-upon subordinate employees, and women who just all-around expect less and say "yes" when they want to say "no". That's infuriating by itself, but what does it also tell boys and men? That women should say "yes", or they are being rude, stand-offish, bitchy or insulting? The attitude that women owe men a "yes" has had fatal consequences.

I guess this is a pretty heteronormative take in general, and among the other reasons I see problems with Valentine's Day Dances and the like in general is that they seem to be part of an imposition of a very specific type of romantic behavior that just might not be any kind of fit for the young people it's being taught to. Some traditions of school-age Valentine-related nonsense involve counting Valentines and making less-popular kids feel like trash if they haven't got as many. It's nonsense to place so much value among developing tweens on their "likeability" when it would be so much better to encourage their independence, creativity, and ability to make decisions like when to say "yes" or "no".

The Trump Shutdown

It isn't an entire year that Donald Trump has been president, and yet, with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, the government is now facing a shutdown because, as everyone probably should have known during 2016 but just enough failed to take into account--he hasn't the least clue what he's doing. 

He articulated a lot of promises during the campaign about building a wall that Mexico would pay for (but it most certainly will not) and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. That sort of thing doesn't seem very in line with the idea of crafting "a bill of love" with respects to DACA recipients, anymore than his basically ending it by executive order did. 

It really doesn't make sense then, that Democrats should be faulted for the GOP deciding to hold both DACA and CHIP beneficiaries hostage in the continuing resolution debate. And yes, this is exactly what they had done, as Mitch McConnell, may his neck skin rise up to swathe his breathing holes, clearly Tweeted:

The intention being to bully the Democrats into picking CHIP kids over DACA, and probably ensuring DACA protection would never happen. I mean, the GOP basically considers DACA to be an amnesty. Trump put DACA on the line. Majority Leader McConnell never did boo about renewing CHIP. If the GOP cared about either, they could have easily ensured their continuation--even without Democratic agreement (although they would have had it). Instead, they held them to lord over Democrats for a continuing resolution that there's no real reason to believe the Democrats would have been against if there hadn't been hostage-taking by the party that happens to be the "government shutdown experts" in the first place. Thus resulting in the first time a government shutdown has occurred with a White House and Congress both in the same party's power.

And of course it's Republicans. Because they can't govern, because they don't seem to know what government is for.

Trump, the populist common guy communicator and all around deal-making sonofabitch, who bragged to all and sundry that he could get shit done, got no shit done. The wall isn't happening, the GOP, trying to pin the failure of the CR on Dems not loving DACA enough just made it clear who really is supporting Dreamers, and in the meanwhile, funding CHIP is now and always has been a thing McConnell could introduce, right?

The GOP owns this, but as with so many things a lot of people have a piece of the ownership of, let's put Trump's name on this one. This is the Trump Shutdown. The Shithole Shutdown. This is his inaugural 1st anniversary present.  He said he alone could fix it--he can't even explain it. 

And tomorrow, there will be marches. Because we resist.

Labor Day: DACA Protects Working People

I'm going to make this Labor Day post about the possible undoing of DACA, which is probably going to be announced tomorrow by AG Jeff Sessions, because why not? Trump wants to curry favor with his base, but also wants plausible deniability because he thinks he can "onboard" moderates--also he will dump this in the lap of Congress. Eh? His people might call it politics, I would call it cowardly.

I would also call it, not merely cruel or stupid, because his base doesn't care what I think is cruel or stupid, but very bad business. Deporting these young people who have made their lives here is a waste of investment, talent, learned skills, education, and a complete failure not merely of compassion, but imagination. Losing these fine people will cost our economy, not add to it. The zero-sum logistics of anti-DACA debaters is the worst of sheer nonsense--DACA recipients aren't "stealing jobs from American workers". For one thing, except for not being born here, they are raised as Americans. And for another, how is anyone stealing a job on American soil from a worthy American? Because if you apply for a job, interview for it, ace it, turn up, clock in, and then work that job, you are just doing your own job. That job did not belong to someone else. It is the job of the person doing it.

My sympathy for people who worry about competition from immigrants like no one else in the world ever competes in a job market is limited.

But DACA recipients are doing truly patriotic work--as US military personnel.  They are sometimes even heroes.  Sometimes even the saddest kind of hero--the lost. In troubled times, we need all hands on deck,  not discrimination, recriminations, bigotry and abuse. Business leaders know the value of these workers.

I believe it is only right that these people, brought here through no fault of their own, acculturated and educated here, and having so much promise, be permitted to continue to contribute to our society. If Trump thinks otherwise, I will chalk this up to his bad business sense and also spinelessness in the dance with the devil that brought him to the White House.  He is being dipped, and very low at that.

Unfit to Serve

Wow. So, today President Obama weighed in on Donald Trump's very bad campaign, describing the GOP nominee as "unfit to serve" and inviting the GOP leadership to take note that if they genuinely disapprove of the things that Trump says, it rings hollow when they don't disavow the man himself. This is basically what I've been saying--you can't have it both ways. Every day that the leadership supports someone who clearly seems hell-bent on turning off large portions of the electorate in weird and almost deliberate-seeming ways, is another day that they are being part of his rolling disaster.

Now, while Obama was making this unprecedented statement for a sitting President (and to undercut what might appear to be the partisan nature of the comment, admitted that he felt no such sense of horrible lack in his own former opponents, Senator McCain and Governor Romney), Donald Trump was ejecting a lady with a crying baby from one of his rallies. I know, I know. You may be thinking that demonic Hillary Clinton enticed a fire marshal to plant the lady with a baby there, but no, he mocked a lady with a crying baby because of course he did babies are the worst. I guess it was stealing his attention. As you know, things are totally rigged for babies. Sad!

If it wasn't for being so unfit for office that POTUS had to comment on it, the baby-banishing thing, the fact that an oh-so-carefully-taught child was calling Hillary Clinton a "bitch" at Trump's event, and all that sort of thing, I guess we'd probably have time to note that he still hasn't apologized to the Khans, that he thinks if a woman is sexually harassed, she can just "change her career" (so in touch with working folks, you guys!) and that he accepted a Purple Heart as a gift, saying, "I always wanted one of these," which is utter madness for a guy with five deferments from serving his country to state.

Pretty much all of these things could be separate blogposts, if Trump could stop being horrendous long enough for a person to catch the hell up.

"Free-range kids" Used to be the "Old Normal"

I grew up in NE Philadelphia on a pretty basic row-home street three blocks away from my elementary school. From the age of six, I walked it myself. The deli we got our lunchmeat from was across Colgate Avenue, and my mom would sometimes send me there with a list since I was seven. The recreation center (with pool) was two blocks up the Avenue. I went alone from the time I was ten. I also went to the library, or to my friends' houses, who lived usually five or six blocks away, by myself since about nine or ten.

So to me, this thing where "free range children" are picked up by the police for being some walkable distance away from their homes without adult supervision strikes me as absolutely bizarre. (I don't have kids, though. But I do know that violent crime has gone down since I was a kid. Seriously--why aren't people raising their kids to do stuff like play outside?)

Now, I'll admit that some of the ways kids in my day were raised might have been ill-advised. I will admit I played with matches, threw rocks, ate Rio Snappers on a dare, jumped off of second-story porches onto hard-ass lawns, and had monumental schoolyard fights where faces were rubbed with snowballs and permanent scars were received. But this helped me get that being older meant sometimes dealing with consequences. I was followed by a presumed perv from a card shop up Rising Sun Ave three blocks from my house when I was nine--ducked him. I got knocked over by a sixth-grader when I was in second grade and chased his ass with a piece of ice like the size of my head and plastered him.

The Pakistani Taliban Are Full of It.

I'm not the only person to realize this, but making a statement that killing over 100 schoolchildren is because of revenge over the Pakistan military's assistance to the west is, not to put to fine a point on this--bullshit. The apparent statement by a Taliban spokesperson:

Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani said that the Taliban had targeted the army's school "because the government is targeting our families and females," and that "we want them to feel the pain."

is particularly galling when the Taliban are being targeted, to the extent they are, because among their hobbies is attacking schools and targeting women and children. It is especially hard for us not to take note that these are the bastards that killed Benazir Bhutto (having killed 140 people in the Karachi bombing attempt to kill her before the attack that succeeded) and tried to kill Malala Yousafsai--an assault by anti-intellectual cowards who shot a young girl in the head. That's what they've got. And it would be ever so much easier to spare a moment of sympathy for their poor families--were it not that they've indicated these are, in their considered opinion and actual practice,  quite legitimate targets. And considering that they have intended to make people hurt--no surprise, they do. If there was little sympathy for the Taliban among western-looking Pakistanis before, though--what should there be for them now?

What they have done was revolting. The families of those slain in this assault have my sympathy.

A Decadently Wandering Uterine Minstrel, I--or, WTF Is Douthat on About?

Ross Douthat regularly seems to struggle with the idea that the little people who become big people are made in the bodies of already big people. I've covered this before, regarding Douthat, even having examined his works employing a device I think of as The Rumpy Chair, and am still a little taken aback when he reveals still more misunderstanding about the agency of the baby-having sex.

The general argument of his latest column is that wimmens is having less babies, and this means less general productivity as less workers are being created. Okay--I will grant that generally, young'uns are the toilers, and they gotta come from somewhere. What I resent is the notion that this social need obliges any individual woman to cease with her decadent tired-ass excuses, and gets with the baby-making, already.

No, really:

Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place. 

Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made.

My barren individual womb isn't stagnating. It isn't undeveloped real estate. It isn't exhausted.  My ass is. You know what? If more women, men, etc, were paid a living wage and could get a nest egg going--they might even choose fertility. But some might not anyway, because 7 billion people on this planet is a fuck-ton, and probably not a sustainable population what with our environmental demands in terms of various resources. In other words, if we've fallen below the replacement rate as a society, it might not really be such a bad plan in the long run, even if there's a short-term economic downside.  My recommendation regarding allocation of resources isn't to fashion new, cheap human worker units, but to address the concentration of the control of resources in the hands of people at the top of our "food chain" and consider whether their lifestyles are, perhaps, more decadent than any individual's (for which read, mostly woman's) childlessness.

I used to have an Easy-Bake Oven--

When I had one, it looked like this:

It kind of has a very early microwave oven appearance, doesn't it? And sure, it's got pink accents on it, but it's clear that it's just a toy appliance. It isn't going out of its way like this is:

This is the souped-up pretty purple 2012 edition of the classic baby-foodie starter kit. Well, I don't know about you all, but I melted crayons in mine to do encaustic art and threw Playdough ashtrays in to see what would happen (and discovered that you do not use Woolworth cheapie nailpolish as a glaze and then expose it to heat unless you want to asphyxiate your fool self.) I hardly ever used used my "girl toys" for what was on the label, though. I turned doll highchairs into rudimentary rockets and converted most baby dolls into "patients" for playing doctor--if I didn't alter their appearances in peculiar ways and design new outfits for them. So I kind of wonder if the "new, improved" but "super, duper girly-girl-colored" Easy-Bake Oven of today is actually sexist. 

That's is what a New Jersey 8th grader, McKenna Pope sees:

I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work. … I want my brother to know that it’s not “wrong” for him to want to be a chef, that it’s okay to go against what society believes to be appropriate. 

Please join me to ask Hasbro to feature males on the packaging and in promotional materials for the Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven, as well as offering the product in different, non gender specific colors, i.e. primary colors. … Help me in creating gender equality, and help the children of today become what they’re destined to be tomorrow.

She has a point. This toy oven doesn't look like the oven that's even used in the kitchen in anyone's house, let alone a professional kitchen. It looks like it's for turning out magical glitterbiscuits to be eaten by lavender unicorns who poop rainbows. Admittedly, I am a fan of wildly-colored kitchen implements, being of the DINKy homo neophilus gadget-loving breed--you can seriously get an espresso maker in any color you might want--but really? Defaulting to purple and pink? Why not stainless? And why aren't boys on the packaging?

The reason it gives me pause is because I'm seeing a metamorphosis backwards in gender roles and toy advertising. You all know about how awesome Legos are, right?

Well, here's Legos when I was a kid:

And then there's the Pepto Bismol-barf pink and raspberry sherbet purple of today's less imaginitive girl's Lego kits:

Where's the little girl discovering the joys of building totally new stuff with her hands and brains? It's just labelled "girl" and given "girl colors". I'm going to sound like "Hysterical feminist is hysterical"--but that's like marketing sexism right to girls, and telling them--"It's because you like it that way!"

And seriously, there is more of that brand of sexism as girls get older, too.

Anyway, I think kids toys should be for kids, and not so gender stereotyped. And yes, that absolutely means boys should play with dolls if they like, and girls can definitely play with trucks and tools. I don't really get why this is a big deal.  Grown men have children and feed and nurture them; grown women drive trucks and use tools where they work. Not knowing that is worse than childish. Thinking children can't figure it out is simply dumb. And restricting play based on gender stereotypes makes no sense if play is how kids figure out how the world works, whether it's how to bake cookies or how to make simple fireworks from a chemistry set. Or things like that.

Know your Class War: 1 in 2 People are Poor or Low-Income

The recent census reveals that one out of two Americans are living in poverty or have a low income.  From the link:

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.
"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax reduction, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

The picture above is from this article regarding children in poverty. Our elected officials have a choice in how they respond to people suffering in this country--and they should be deeply concerned about children who are living in poverty: these kids are our future--how are they being prepared for it?  Are they getting the security they need, the education, nutrition, support, to be the workers and leaders of tomorrow? Or are we letting them and ourselves down?

As long as budgets that would account for some of their needs are being cut, their futures and dreams are on indefinite suspension. Sorry, kids. You may have to grow up without us--we're still busy getting our shit together. Keep your expectations appropriately low (NO! Don't! Occupy the future!)

Hey, GOP? Wanna pick on someone your own size?

I've been thinking a bit about the question regarding the constitutionality of child labor laws. Oh, not because I think the child labor laws themselves are actually in any way unconstitutional, so far as they do protect the general welfare of the country by ensuring we don't condemn a generation or so of young people to laboring for a pittance in unsafe conditions at the expense of their education and development, and making laws promoting the welfare of the country and regulating commerce being things the Congress is actually supposed to do.  I'm wondering about them because other people are wondering about them--and isn't that how wonder works? Other people have "concerns".  Then we all have to give them the "deep think". Hm?

I don't know if, for example, Maine Governor Paul LePage, or his TeaParty cronies, really think child labors laws are beyond the pale, or if they are just posturing to promote that they are in favor of a "business-friendly" (and not, um, "child-friendly") environment.  But let's say they win--fine. Let's be honest--if kids aren't working, they'd only be in school, and we all know education is totally costly. And teachers! Let's not even think about what it costs to educate our little "looters" and "useless eaters"!  Once you've determined that they aren't a special class (and who needs that kind of designation? Not people who can't vote, have no money, and no power, that's for sure!) why have any special laws for them at all?