Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Taking Us Back To The 19th Century

Newt Gingrich has awesome plans for this country:
Speaking at Harvard (to remind us that he's a historian, no doubt) on Friday, Newt Gingrich not only called child labor laws "truly stupid," he did so as his answer to a question about income inequality. His answer had several prongs. First, use student labor to bust unions in schools:
"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. I've tried for years to have a very simple model," he said. "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."
"The process of rising" = Firing janitors so that kids can become janitor, which will help with their learning, because they're also janitors for the school, which is clearly a position of respect or something. Newt manages to take some pieces of libertarian thought (ownership breeds betters stewardship) and conservative ideas (Unionized janitors that have it too good!)and combines them into a nonsensical justification for getting rid of child labor laws. This is probably a good time to point people to the quote my dad sent me of Krugman saying that Gingrich is a "stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like".

Are we going to be lucky enough that reporters/other candidates don't reach into their constantly expanding Newt opposition research file during tonight's debate? I would really love to see him twist in the wind for a few more weeks, even if it's just for comedic value.

3 comments:

  1. Random mostly unrelated link:
    Have you seen XKCD today?
    http://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-6724&y=-3004&z=5

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  2. and while I'm throwing random links your way, here's that FMRI conservative vs. liberal article we were talking about again.

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/09/07/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives/

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  3. holy shit that is one fuckin idea he has right there, thats some real idea man shit. i mean god damn, man just sitting there coming up with ideas like that... why not replace janitors with children? excellent fuckin' idea. good job newt. idea man!

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