Is There No End To This Nonsense?

It's funny how once a theme appears, relevant articles seem to pop up everywhere. Here's the latest example.

Recently I've put up a couple of posts about regulatory nonsense oozing out of the obama administration's numerous and varied orifices (here and here). Now we have this latest piece of cow manure (literally).

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

You've got to be kidding me! Kids can no longer work on the family farm? What genius came up with that idea? Oh yeah - Hilda Solis ("A former four-term California congresswoman, Solis is President Obama's Labor secretary. An opponent of free trade, she is a pro-union voice in the cabinet...).

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.

Oh my aching back. Groups that have been around for decades composed of people who actually work on farms can no longer train farm workers? But the government - the friggin' government, which can't find its asshole with two hands, a roadmap, and a flashlight - is going to require a training course that takes more than two weeks? Words fail me.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.

“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.

“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.”

My grandkids both showed sheep via the FFA for the first time this year. I heartily second Mr. Blinson's comment about learning responsibility. They definitely improved their skills in that area, along with several others. It was a great educational experience for them, as well as being personally fulfilling (Well, up until the sheep got auctioned off. The granddaughter shed a few tears then.)

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field — literally on a tractor — when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis’s regulations are implemented, farming families’ labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.

“What would be more of a blow,” he said, “is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.”

Or just the values of working.

Which seems to be what obama's Department of Labor is trying to prevent

Working, that is...

Now contrast the above chart ("During the Obama Administration") with the one below ("During the Reagan Administration". Which one gives us the greater Hope?