Free Republic

Barack Obama is attacking the family farm – an American tradition. The administration’s Department of Labor implemented new regulations to restrict children from working on the family farm. This is despite the fact that farm accidents and injuries have decreased over the past several years. For generations children and adults have worked together on the family farm. Those days are over. Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced the Preserving America’s Family Farm Act, to prevent the Department of Labor (DOL) from enacting its controversial proposed restrictions that would ban children from working on family farms. Recently, Senator...

Marlene Stasinos believes the best food is local food. “It’s more healthy. It’s less processed,” she says as she walks from her farm stand toward her home in Haverhill, Mass. “It’s just better for you when you eat it.” Stasinos’ family has been farming in and around Haverhill for three generations, but she says backyard farming is under attack.

Regulation: For centuries, children have played an indispensable role in family farms. Their efforts have been and still are often essential to survival. But the nanny state wants to outlaw their contributions. What do the Labor Department bureaucrats in urban, elitist Washington who are writing the rule that would prohibit children under 18 from working on farms know about farm culture? How familiar are they with agricultural society and its age-old traditions and its timeless demands? Who are they to interfere with a way of life that has been the backbone of America? None of that matters to the busybodies...

Under pressure from farming advocates in rural communities, and following a report by The Daily Caller, the Obama administration withdrew a proposed rule Thursday that would have applied child labor laws to family farms. Critics complained that the regulation would have drastically changed the extent to which children could work on farms owned by family members. The U.S. Department of Labor cited public outcry as the reason for withdrawing the rule. “The decision to withdraw this rule — including provisions to define the ‘parental exemption’ — was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of...

The U.S. Department of Labor is withdrawing a rule that would have limited the sorts of work that children can do on farms.

Let’s establish this right out of the gate so as not to confuse issues: It is wrong when corporations use child labor. Forgetting the law for a moment, whether it is here in the U.S. or overseas, children are children, and corporations should not exploit children. Got it? With that said, this is not about corporations, this is about families and farms. More specifically, family farms and the overreach of the federal government. For centuries, even before there was Willie Nelson and FarmAid, farming throughout the world (including here in the United States) has largely been a family affair. That...

The Labor Department today announced that it had approved Trade Adjustment Assistance for the former employees of the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra. That means all of the firm’s 1,100 ex-employees are eligible for federal aid packages, including job retraining and income assistance. The department has valued packages at about $13,000 a head.

As a preface, sometimes it helps to have been “on the other side” when trying to determine what the unions’ game plan is within the Obama Administration. What you are about to read comes from having been on the other side and, quite frankly, putting two and two together. And, if you are not alarmed when you finish reading this, you should be, because there may be something much more sinister afoot at the Department of Labor than most people realize. Yesterday, information was shared with you about the importance of submitting a comment by Wednesday on the Department of...

America’s Job Creators Are About To Be Sucker Punched & You Have Until Wednesday To Comment September 19th 2011   ·   You need to act before Wednesday. At a time when the Obama Administration is clamoring to save or create jobs, his Department of Labor is about to sucker punch America’s job creators with an unprecedented regulatory overreach—all to curry more favor with union bosses.On Wednesday, the public comment period will be closing on a Department of Labor proposal that the majority of America knows nothing about and even fewer understand. If enacted as drafted, the union cronies within the...

America first put an equal-pay law on the books in 1963, when women earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. While this legislation was landmark at the time, its core provisions require updating if it is to fulfill its promise. Nearly 50 years later, the wage gap has narrowed by only 18 cents. Despite news reports that the gap narrowed in the last year, the census report released Thursday showed otherwise. Working women are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man -- and are paid less than men even when they have...

Ah, the start of Labor Day weekend. Wouldn't it be nice if tomorrow's monthly employment report was good enough to honor its namesake holiday! This is the point where I usually have the nerve to make a prediction on whether or not the numbers will live up to the expectations of the experts, who believe tomorrow's figure will show that 120,000 jobs were lost in August. If that's the number, it would be only slightly better than the 131,000 jobs that disappeared in July. I'm not going out on a limb this time. I don't want to ruin my good...

Whoopee! There was a big drop in the unemployment rate for January. But if you look at the numbers closely the sound you'd hear is more Whoopee Cushion than cheering. According to the official Labor Department numbers, the jobless rate in the US dipped impressively from 10.0 percent in December to 9.7 percent in January. Since I have kids who need jobs, there is nobody in this country who'd be more happy to leave it just like that -- the recession is over, employment is on the way up. But I'll share with you some discoveries that a few inquisitive...

This'll make you laugh. Back in November 2003 an economist named Austan Goolsbee from the University of Chicago wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times criticizing a Labor Department announcement about job growth the month before. And he attacked the idea that the country had just experienced nothing more than a mild recession. "Unfortunately, underreporting unemployment has served the interest of both political parties," wrote Goolsbee. "The situation has grown so dire, though, that we can't tell whether the job market is recovering." OK, I promised you a laugh. So here it comes. Goolsbee no longer works at...

THE experts are very confident that Friday's report on the employment market for November will show the least number of job losses in quite a while, perhaps as few as 114,000. I hope that's true. But I don't think it will be. As you know, these monthly job figures are very important to traders on Wall Street who can make money when the financial markets are confronted with surprises. And with all that's going on in the world -- Dubai's problems, America's economic crisis and the US stock market's seeming indifference to both -- a bad report Friday will just...