Senator Claims U.S. Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/01/14/senator-claims-u-s-child-labor-laws-unconstitutional/

by James Parks, Jan 14, 2011

Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S. child labor laws are unconstitutional.

In Lee’s view, the federal government doesn’t have authority to enact federal minimum wage laws, civil rights laws or to provide Medicare and Social Security.

Lee’s diatribe shows just how determined he and his ilk are to fight the gains workers have made. And we must be as determined to stop them, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said. Speaking yesterday to the federation’s annual King Day celebration, she said:

We must protect Social Security and Medicare, and we need jobs. We must put our people back to work, to build an economy built on shared, broad-based prosperity.

And there is only one way we can prevail—and that is together. We can only succeed if we are “greater than 1.” We can only succeed if we harness the strength of our numbers.


FULL story at link.

[bluerum]

1. Taking the country back - 200 years. What an ass.

[louis c]

14. The Teabagging Republicans want to return America to the Eighties

The Eighteen Eighties

[Drale]

2. We should see how they like it

when we take a page out of their book and start through out wild accusations around with no evidence. Here it goes. I think that being a republican is unconstitutional, I think that birds are falling out of the sky because the republicans control the house again and so on and so on.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Anybody surprised ain't paying attention

[Dappleganger]

6. +100000

[RKP5637]

8. +1000 +++ n/t

[RKP5637]

4. People like him and others are straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. With all of

the problems this country faces in the 21st century, I can't believe crap like this is being raised by these damn fools. What a joke the US is to the rest of the world. What is even more of a joke and dangerous are those that vote people like this into office.

[bluestateguy]

5. US v. Darby Lumber (1941)

When the Supreme Court says something is constitutional, it's constitutional. Even if you think it shouldn't be.

[Hannah Bell]

7. yay for child labor!!!! let everyone compete for jobs in the brave new laissez-faire world!

and people ask "how could bill gates possibly profit from destroying public schools?"

in the brave new world, people will compete for access to any education beyond grade school.

people who think the masters of the universe "need" most people to be educated are idiots.

they don't need it & they don't want to pay for it.

[formercia]

9. Least of all, the overlords don't want the serfs asking questions.

At least with slavery, there's a chance you were given somewhere to sleep and enough food to keep fit enough to work.

I their Brave New World,the serfs have to pay for everything with not enough wages to cover expenses. Wait...we're already there.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Ok - his kids go first

[msongs]

11. imposing his religion's family values on all american kids. way to go nt

[Odin2005]

12. These people are evil. when are we gonna wake up?

[louis c]

13. Follow the logic

If you follow he trend lines, you will find that the American Economic Prosperity for the past 100 years rose and fell at the same rate as unions. In the 1950's, through the early 1970's union density was over 40%. Republicans, like Eisenhower and even Nixon, praised organized labor. With the reduced strength of of labor unions came the declining middle-class. The awful trade agreements made with both Republican nd Democratic support in the eighties and nineties was opposed by only one organized group, Labor. We will not have a vibrant middle class driving an economic recovery until we renegotiate our trade agreements, build and buy American and restore workers' rights so that labor unions can build our middle class. A strong middle class of workers is necessary in order to have consumers who can purchase our goods without going into outrageous debt.

Wake Up America.

[Historic NY]

15. Oliver Twist & the work houses for juveniles.

[krispos42]

16. The free market is a harsh mistress

The free-market fundamentalists of today don't truly know, or want to know, what the free market REALLY entails, in a similar way that Christian fundamentalist don't truly know, or want to know, what Christianity REALLY entails. They sit on their comfortable perches, not realizing that that perch is held up by "socialist" laws.