The Children's Hour

A 12-year-old girl picks cucumbers on a Michigan farm.

© 2009 ROMANO

It's certainly not that we like the little perishers, we never never ever wanted to have any responsibility for any of them, let alone actually create any, & we know damn well that children aren't our (or any) adult's "future" (because adults' only futures are as worm food, face it already!!1!1!!1) but (try as we might) we can't forget that we were once a child, & child labor horror stories only make complaints about our miserable childhood look petty, so help us to look better (& help the children to have childhoods followed by living to adulthood) by sending some money (or otherwise look as if you care by threatening the G.O.P. S.O.B. who's chair of the Education and Workforce Committee on Twitter, as also suggested).

Dear EmailNation Subscriber,

It's not allowed to happen in Russia, or in Kazakhstan—but in the United States, children as young as twelve are allowed to toil on tobacco farms, performing backbreaking work and putting their health and lives at risk.

As Gabriel Thompson and Mariya Strauss document in The Nation, agricultural work is dangerous: on top of exposure to heavy pesticides and the possibility of acute nicotine poisoning, young workers are vulnerable to hazards involving farm vehicles, grain silos and manure pits.

The Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE Act), introduced by Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard this year but blocked by the GOP-controlled Education and Workforce Committee, would bring child labor standards in line with protections in other industries and increase civil penalties for abuse. The measure faces stiff opposition, but the exploitation of children, in the final telling, should be impossible to defend.

Join The Nation in calling for an end to child labor in agriculture. Contact your representatives and demand they fight to bring the CARE Act up for a vote. Then tweet at Representative John Kline (@repjohnkline), chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, and demand his committee act to fight this gross injustice.

All best,
Sarah Arnold, The Nation

Motherfucking shit, this bill has been sitting around for four fucking yrs.? Enough! Get out there & shoot someone who owns tobacco stock. Or kill a farmer. Seems fair to us. We'd love to see Americans paying what their food is worth & what their gas really costs.

P.S.: Rep. Kline's Twitt-Bio:

Serving my sixth term in Congress,
I am married to wife, Vicky.
I served 25 years in the Marine Corps,
retiring at the rank of Colonel.

And of course his Twit-staff is spewing lies about the ACA.