It's For Our Own Collective Good. Shhh. Everything Is Gonna Be Alright. Shhh.

It's always a source of entertainment to read government literature.

"One day. One day, Maude, I swears peoples are-a gonna wake up and git it."

"Children employed in agriculture are some of the most vulnerable workers in America," said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. "Ensuring their welfare is a priority of the department, and this proposal is another element of our comprehensive approach."

How are they vulnerable? That they can get gonorrhea from a tractor? Where are the statistics showing kids are sawing off their hands with shed tools thus becoming a burden on health? What does comprehensive mean exactly? If so, what makes the DOL think it has the right to make that call on family farms?

I'm learning to ask such questions in daycare in Quebec. Lemme tell ya, they ain't got answers. It's bureaucratic sophistry. It's actually quite comical. They should make a Broadway musical. I'm not kidding.

Anyway. I'm disappointed no one has come up with the "Lawn Mower Safety Act."

"The proposal would strengthen current child labor regulations prohibiting agricultural work with animals and in pesticide handling, timber operations, manure pits and storage bins. It would prohibit farmworkers under age 16 from participating in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco. And it would prohibit youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic, including communication, devices while operating power-driven equipment."

Storage bins? Really? So, at 15 you can't help daddy out, but magically at 16 you can? It's quite remarkable the reach here. Well, I guess they're protecting kids from disfigurement that could lead to one of them going psycho like in The Burning.

It's no different here in Quebec. I've witnessed first hand the racket of "strengthening our safety" garbage.

Oh, well I guess that's...

"The department also is proposing to create a new nonagricultural hazardous occupations order that would prevent children under 18 from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions."

Damn.

The first time I handled a firearm I was 14. A 9-gauge. No permit. At a gun club. Yahoo! *Slams down glass of hootch.*

My uncle put it in my hands with zero experience. All he said was "be calm, aim and shoot." In Italian. Make that Calabrese. Other than the shells rattling of my arm (I'm left handed), it was a blast.

My off topic point is never try.

Read the rest of it here.

I wonder what the unintended consequences are going to be to this. How about...from The Daily Caller:

"The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course."

There. Done and done. Fixed. *Sign falls*

At least someone is thinking of the children.

I guess.

Can I get an 'Amen?"