Obama admin wants to destroy the family farm

[off2bed]

The only way farming has ever been profitable or sustainable is for it to be a family occupation. That's how it's worked through history. There's just not enough money in it to pay employees and still put food on grocery store shelves at prices the limousine liberals are willing to pay.

But under new rules proposed by Obama's Dept. of Labor, it'll be illegal for kids to help out with the chores.

“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

Ahh, and that's not fair. Responsibility leads to income inequality and overachievement. And it leads to less government dependency...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/r...-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t3OVBCvS

 

[busybody..]

Obama admin wants to destroy the AMERICA AS WE KNOW AND LOVE IT



FYP

 

[off2bed]

One paper cut at a time.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Hahaha!!!

Talk about a leap of logic. Follow the link in the first post to the actual news release here.


You guys are so gullible.

 

[off2bed]

Any idiot who voted for Obama is the gullible one.

 

[Ishmael]

It goes way beyond the farm, it is essentially the destruction of the work ethic.

How many times a year do we read of some kids being fined, or jailed, for setting up lemonade stands? Or in one way or another being punished or prevented from engaging in one sort of entrepreneurial enterprise or another?

The authorities that enact these regulations tell us that it's for 'protection' of one sort or another. Protection of the child, protection of the public, protection of the environment. But one has to consider whether there isn't an underlying motive to 'protect' some special interest, even if that special interest is the creation of make work for the various 'inspectors' that run around trying to ferret out these threats to public peace and safety so that they will be able to justify their jobs, and their right to feed at the public trough. And one of the commentors in the article is quite correct, the work ethic is established early in life.

Going even further there is the consideration that government, in general, and the democrats in particular, just don't like small businesses, and that's what the family farm is in the end, a small business. They are hard to regulate (control) and produce little in the way of taxes because in the main the small farm operates barely above subsistence levels. Agribusiness is the preferred entity for government to deal with in that it gives government single point contacts for the exercise of control and the collection of taxes. It also provides the opportunity for the organization of unions (which the democrats love and the family farm provides zero opportunity to exploit). (For an example of how that all works one need look no further than the consolidation of the automobile industry over the last century.)

When will they go after all other expressions of small business? The enterprises where the kids come in and work after school and on the weekends, learning the business from the ground up and learning a work ethic? How long before the government 'protects' us into third world status?

Ishmael

 

[KingOrfeo]

The only way farming has ever been profitable or sustainable is for it to be a family occupation.

For all you know to the contrary, you have never in your life eaten anything grown on a family farm, unless you bought it at a roadside vegetable stand. Agribiz produces most of America's food these days, for better or for worse.

 

[off2bed]

Cloward and Piven would be proud.

 

[busybody..]

It goes way beyond the farm, it is essentially the destruction of the work ethic.



Ishmael

Indeed


Hence my comment

HE IS DESTROYING THE AMERICA WE KNOW AND LOVE

 

[cebalrai]

Why are conservatives so gullible?

 

[KingOrfeo]

Why are conservatives so gullible?

I think Cloward and Piven could explain it.

 

[KingOrfeo]

How many times a year do we read of some kids being fined, or jailed, for setting up lemonade stands? Or in one way or another being punished or prevented from engaging in one sort of entrepreneurial enterprise or another?

Zero, IME.

 

[cjh]

The only way farming has ever been profitable or sustainable is for it to be a family occupation. That's how it's worked through history. There's just not enough money in it to pay employees and still put food on grocery store shelves at prices the limousine liberals are willing to pay.

But under new rules proposed by Obama's Dept. of Labor, it'll be illegal for kids to help out with the chores.

“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

Ahh, and that's not fair. Responsibility leads to income inequality and overachievement. And it leads to less government dependency...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/r...-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t3OVBCvS

no--that would be attributable to all of the laws causing illegal aliens to flee.

It’s a long way from Forget-Me-Not Farms to the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.

But T.J. Curtis, a dairy farmer from Cimarron, Kan., drove the 300 miles because he’s desperate for workers for his family’s operation in western Kansas, where they want to hire another 75 people.

He was in Topeka recently to lobby for a bill that would establish a state program that would help him and other ag businesses in hiring undocumented workers who could legally stay in the state.

“We came to Kansas looking for opportunity for growth and expansion and processing facilities in southwest Kansas,” Curtis said. “We came here looking for opportunity, and for that opportunity, we need good, reliable help and workers.”

Curtis is a supporter of the Kansas Business Coalition, an unlikely league of farms, businesses and social advocates that is pushing for a law that would create a state-sanctioned work program benefitting illegal immigrants. The bill, which has not yet had a full debate in the House or Senate, has divided the state Republican Party, pitting the pro-business segment against the anti-illegal immigration foes.

Feedlots, dairies and other farms are clamoring for more help and traditional recruitment methods – like running help-wanted newspaper ads in eastern Kansas publications – hasn’t been effective. Earlier this year, state Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman, a Republican, stepped into the fray and asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a waiver that would allow companies to hire undocumented workers. He had no success with that effort.

“Difficulty recruiting and maintaining a stable, legal workforce, especially in the western Kansas, is a concern we have heard consistently at the Kansas Department of Agriculture,” said Chelsea Good, a spokeswoman for Rodman. “It was one of the primary issues raised by producers attending the Animal Agriculture Summit in Garden City earlier this year.”

The coalition’s bill calls on the state to identify agriculture and other industries that are suffering from labor shortages and to create a program that could connect participating companies with undocumented workers. The illegal immigrants who are eligible for the program must have lived in Kansas for five years and have a clean record.

The state then supports the worker who is seeking legal documentation with the federal government, which gives the immigrant more heft than say, a church or individual who traditionally serves as sponsors, said Allie Devine, a former state ag secretary who is the coalition’s leader.

“The reality is when a state stands forward and makes the statement, it’s a louder statement than an individual or a private group,” she said. “It sends that message that Kansas is not interested in deportation policies. We’re interested in work policies.”

Devine, a self-described lifelong Republican who worked in the first Bush administration, said she and others watched as Arizona passed one of the country’s toughest anti-illegal immigration bills, AB 1070, which was drafted by Kris Kobach, currently the Kansas Secretary of State. Kansas lawmakers have fought off Arizona-style bills here, but wanted to take a more pro-active lead and so they created what they hope will become a model for other states, she said.

The Kansas plan acknowledges that immigrants came to Kansas to settle here and are not as transient as the populations in border states, Devine said.

“These are people that we know in small towns. They’re not foreigners…they’ve been our friends. They’ve been with our children in school. We’ve known them,” she said.

http://kbia.org/post/farmers-support-illegal-immigrant-work-program

 

[RobDownSouth]

The only way farming has ever been profitable or sustainable is for it to be a family occupation.

*points and laughs at off2bed

That's why the family farm has all but disappeared from America, and corporate megafarms have taken over...becuz there not profitable, amiright? but...but...but...SOCIALISM!!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It goes way beyond the farm, it is essentially the destruction of the work ethic.

How many times a year do we read of some kids being fined, or jailed, for setting up lemonade stands? Or in one way or another being punished or prevented from engaging in one sort of entrepreneurial enterprise or another?

The authorities that enact these regulations tell us that it's for 'protection' of one sort or another. Protection of the child, protection of the public, protection of the environment. But one has to consider whether there isn't an underlying motive to 'protect' some special interest, even if that special interest is the creation of make work for the various 'inspectors' that run around trying to ferret out these threats to public peace and safety so that they will be able to justify their jobs, and their right to feed at the public trough. And one of the commentors in the article is quite correct, the work ethic is established early in life.

Going even further there is the consideration that government, in general, and the democrats in particular, just don't like small businesses, and that's what the family farm is in the end, a small business. They are hard to regulate (control) and produce little in the way of taxes because in the main the small farm operates barely above subsistence levels. Agribusiness is the preferred entity for government to deal with in that it gives government single point contacts for the exercise of control and the collection of taxes. It also provides the opportunity for the organization of unions (which the democrats love and the family farm provides zero opportunity to exploit). (For an example of how that all works one need look no further than the consolidation of the automobile industry over the last century.)

When will they go after all other expressions of small business? The enterprises where the kids come in and work after school and on the weekends, learning the business from the ground up and learning a work ethic? How long before the government 'protects' us into third world status?

Ishmael

I have a veggie garden and modest orchard, and get frequent visits from county bureaucrats checking on me. The cops got their tit caught in the wringer investigating customers of a local garden supply store. They installed a camera to get tag numbers, then borrowed uniforms from the electric company to check the yards of people.

 

[off2bed]

no--that would be attributable to all of the laws causing illegal aliens to flee.



http://kbia.org/post/farmers-support-illegal-immigrant-work-program

What laws? No one enforces immigration laws, and when they do, the Feds pounce on them.

 

[off2bed]

I have a veggie garden and modest orchard, and get frequent visits from county bureaucrats checking on me. The cops got their tit caught in the wringer investigating customers of a local garden supply store. They installed a camera to get tag numbers, then borrowed uniforms from the electric company to check the yards of people.

...meanwhile thugs are shooting and raping in the hood, and nothing is done to stop it...

 

[cjh]

What laws? No one enforces immigration laws, and when they do, the Feds pounce on them.

STEELE — A sponsor of Alabama’s tough new immigration law told desperate tomato farmers Monday that he won’t change the law, even though they told him that their crops are rotting in the field and they are at risk of losing their farms.

Republican state Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale met with about 50 growers, workers, brokers and business people Monday at a tomato packing shed on Chandler Mountain in northeast Alabama. They complained that the new law, which went into effect Thursday, scared off many of their migrant workers at harvest time.

“The tomatoes are rotting on the vine, and there is very little we can do,” said Chad Smith, who farms tomatoes with his uncle, father and brother.

“My position is to stay with the law as it is,” Beason told the farmers.

Beason helped write and sponsor a law the Legislature enacted in June to crack down on illegal immigration. It copied portions of laws enacted in Arizona, Georgia and other states, including allowing police to detain people indefinitely if they don’t have legal status. Beason and other proponents said the law would help free up jobs for Alabamians in a state suffering through 9.9 percent unemployment.

The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.

“This law will be in effect this entire growing season,” Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.

“There won’t be no next growing season,” farmer Wayne Smith said.

“Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They’ll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double,” he said.

Lana Boatwright said she and her husband had used the same crews for more than a decade, but only eight of the 48 workers they needed showed up after the law took effect.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Chad Smith said his family would normally have 12 trucks working the fields on Monday, but only had the workers for three. He estimated his family could lose up to $150,000 this season because of a lack of help to pick the crop.

“We will be lucky to be in business next year,” he said.

Tomato farmer Brian Cash said the migrant workers who would normally be on Chandler Mountain have gone to other states with less restrictive laws.

After talking with famers at the tomato shed, Beason visited the Smith family’s farm. Leroy Smith, Chad Smith’s father, challenged the senator to pick a bucket full of tomatoes and experience the labor-intensive work.

Beason declined but promised to see what could be done to help farmers while still trying to keep illegal immigrants out of Alabama.

Smith threw down the bucket he offered Beason and said, “There, I figured it would be like that.”

The farmers said they get about $10 a box for their tomatoes. The produce box costs $1, the workers get $2, and the remainder goes to cover the farmers’ other costs and provide their income.

The U.S. Justice Department, civil rights groups and others have challenged the law. U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn allowed major portions of the law to take effect Thursday. The opponents asked the judge Friday to put the law on hold while they appeal her ruling. Attorneys for the state filed court papers Monday asking the judge to leave the law in effect during the appeal.

http://www2.dothaneagle.com/news/20...ing-fields-result-immigration-law-ar-2506936/

 

[cjh]

Georgia Needs Migrant Labor, Commissioner Said
By WAGA Atlanta
Published October 05, 2011
Fox News Latino

A farm labor shortage that left crops rotting in the fields after Georgia passed a law cracking down on undocumented immigration*shows the need for a retooled or expanded guest worker program for migrant laborers, Georgia's agriculture commissioner told a panel of Washington lawmakers Tuesday.
Commissioner Gary Black testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing on immigration enforcement and farm labor that an informal survey showed farmers of onions, watermelons and other handpicked crops lacked more than 11,000 workers during their spring and summer harvest. Farmers say that's because the Georgia immigration law scared off many migrant workers.
Financial incentives aimed at getting unemployed Georgians and even criminals on probation to take their place picking crops were marginally successful, Black said, because the new workers were too slow and often quit because of the strenuous labor involved.
"A robust agricultural guest worker program, properly designed, will not displace American workers," Black said in remarks prepared for the hearing. "As my testimony shows, in Georgia, even with current high unemployment rates, it is difficult for farmers to fill their labor needs."
Black said it's still unclear how much the labor shortage will ultimately cost farmers. But one group says growers have already lost tens of millions of dollars.
Charles Hall, director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, released figures from an upcoming industry-funded study Tuesday that says farmers lost at least $74.9 million in unpicked crops harvested by hand last spring and summer because they didn't have enough labor. The farmers said they lacked 40 percent of the total work force they needed.
The numbers come from self-reported surveys completed by 189 farmers of onions, watermelons, bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, blueberries and blackberries, said John McKissick, director of the University of Georgia Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development, which is compiling the report.
It's a snapshot of just a small fraction of Georgia's farmers overall. The surveyed farmers hold just short of half the state's overall acreage for those seven crops.
And the seven crops examined in the study accounted for just 5 percent of Georgia's $11.3 billion in farm products from 2009, according to the agribusiness center's last annual report.
The growers association reported other figures estimating even broader economic losses, based on the $74.9 million figure, but McKissick said those numbers were not scientifically derived.



Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/po...igrant-labor-commissioner-said/#ixzz1t9X5VJVe

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/10/05/georgia-needs-migrant-labor-commissioner-said/

 

[TheOlderGuy]

Perhaps you didn't get the memo: Monsanto killed the family farm, and because no one spoke up, now they're coming for you.

 

[phrodeau]

Nobody wants to work for ex-slave owners? That makes a lot of sense.

 

[Ishmael]

Nobody wants to work for ex-slave owners? That makes a lot of sense.

I don't know what's more frightening. The fact that you were stupid enough to post that tripe, or the fact that there are probably more than a few readers sitting there going, "word."

Ishmael

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

...meanwhile thugs are shooting and raping in the hood, and nothing is done to stop it...

Oh no. We could never intrude upon the rights of violent criminals don't-cha know? It is more profitable to prosecute the ones that choose to defend themselves and hurt or kill the criminals that attack them in the process of doing so.

 

[phrodeau]

I don't know what's more frightening. The fact that you were stupid enough to post that tripe, or the fact that there are probably more than a few readers sitting there going, "word."

Ishmael

Harvesting onions and watermelons hardly qualifies as "strenuous labor", unless it's happening under a whip.

 

[Mike_Yates]

The only way farming has ever been profitable or sustainable is for it to be a family occupation. That's how it's worked through history. There's just not enough money in it to pay employees and still put food on grocery store shelves at prices the limousine liberals are willing to pay.

But under new rules proposed by Obama's Dept. of Labor, it'll be illegal for kids to help out with the chores.

“I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

Ahh, and that's not fair. Responsibility leads to income inequality and overachievement. And it leads to less government dependency...

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/r...-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t3OVBCvS

Family farms are being eliminated by the government to make room for corporate farming and the further industrialization of food production.

Family farms pose a threat to the profits and market share of agriculture conglomerates. Lobbyists for these evil, greedy, and destructive corporations have convinced the government to pass legislation which forces some family farms to shut down.

See this video.

http://vimeo.com/16513455