JIM HIGHTOWER: Big News! Republicans Do Have An Idea: Bring Back Child Labor!

		JIM HIGHTOWER

I have to concede one point: Today’s far-right Republican party does not discriminate against women. In fact, the GOP is giving its female political buffoons a higher profile than its male bozos.

Consider Sarah Huckabee Sanders, governor of Arkansas, who became a star in the new Republican Crusade to bring back child labor abuse. Pushed by their corporate backers, GOP governors and lawmakers exclaim that the answer to America’s so-called “labor shortage” is not to make jobs more attractive, but to fill them with cheap, compliant children.

Huckabee Sanders rushed to the aid of these corporate powers, eliminating a bothersome Arkansas law that required Tyson, Walmart, and other big employers to get a special state permit to put any child under 16 to work. “The meddling hand of big government creeping down from Washington, DC,” she bellowed, “will be stopped cold… We will get the overregulating, micromanaging, bureaucratic tyrants off your backs.”

So she is using the meddling hand of big state government to creep into the lives of vulnerable children. She is not alone. Ohio’s Republican controlled state government is moving to extend the number of hours bosses can make children work; Iowa wants to let 14-year-olds work in industrial freezers and laundries; and Republicans in Congress have shrunk the number of investigators and lawyers policing child labor abuse, so abusive corporate managers know there is little chance they’ll be caught.

Most damning, these corporate politicians value children so little that they’ve set the maximum fine for violating the workplace safety of minors at $15,138 per child. For multimillion-dollar conglomerates, that devaluation makes it much cheaper to endanger children than protect them.

America should not even be talking about child safety rules in dangerous workplaces – it’s shameful to have any children working there.