Newt thinks poor kids should get busy scrubbing those toilets.

I believe the schools in at least a couple countries in East Asia have the students do a daily cleaning of the schools (sweeping and moppoing floors, washing windows, bathroom cleaning, etc.). Not the worst idea in the world to make students do some cleaning of the schools.

Of course, there it is just a duty that every student has, you don't get paid or anything and no one can pay someone to get out of the duty. So, it's not the Oliver Twist/Little Orphan Annie scenario that Newt prefers.

 

But being forced by law to sit in a government "classroom" for years of your life is completely moral and understandable.

 

Not to mention big brother requiring vaccinations, birth certificates and your very soul as the price for the brainwashing!

How you managed to avoid being an automaton is incredible. Your resistance was not futile.

 

Didn't know the president had the authority to fire school janitors.

 

If Newt keeps his lead and wins the republican nomination, I don't see how Obama won't be able to wipe the floor with this joker.

 

I've got to wonder if Newt had any kids with his wives. If so, hopefully they scrubbed toilets to work their way through middle and high school. Hopefully even Newt would let the kindergartners have a free ride.

 

Kids in Japanese public schools scrub their school toilets (they also do most of the cleaning around the rest of the school, maintain the school swimming pool etc).

 

You would think they're just cleaning....but cinema tells us otherwise:


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z4dkuYro4t8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Newt expounding on his welfare reform accomplishments...
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6w9XI79TK_k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

I think that's cool and I can see how that could work for them. But, it's the particulars and contents of Newt's suggestion that get one's back up.

* He criticizes child labor laws, which in this country were only instituted after grievous exploitation of children in unsafe work conditions. Maybe he's right that children should be allowed to do more jobs than they are currently allowed, but this is terrible rhetoric, at least without more detail.

* I'm imagining a Japanese school in which all children regardless of social class clean the school without pay as part of their responsibility as students and as part of their education/indoctrination to be dutiful and hard-working. What Newt is suggesting is that this is done for pay. So, only the poor kids will end up doing it, and the rich kids will have another reason to look down on them and down on blue collar labor.

* And, he goes so far as to address poor kids in poor neighborhoods, to imply their poverty is somehow a symptom of their lack of work ethic or the lack of work ethic in the sub-culture they are growing up in. And if only they could get up off their sorry asses and work for a change, they wouldn't be poor anymore, which is beyond laughable.

* And finally, he proposes to pay these children but obviously expects to get cost-savings over the wages of labor union janitors. So, he wants to pay less than the current market rate and essentially exploit the labor of children by taking advantage of their weak market power and underpaying them. And, he wants to use them as scabs to weaken the bargaining power of labor unions.

If his main purpose was to instill work ethic, pride, and civic-mindedness in students, he'd be suggesting making all children (regardless of class) participate in the maintenance of the school grounds without pay. Suggesting we hire poor kids at depressed wages sounds like he's primarily interested in finding some cost savings to keep his real estate taxes down without encroaching on the time his grandchildren have to play PS3.

This guy is getting consideration in the Republican primary? Seriously?

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said about Newt JuanValdez.

Yes, the students do it without pay, and I think it is a good thing. The main downside of their system that i see is things aren't as clean as they can be. (The cleanliness of the schools I've been to were acceptable, but would have been cleaner with hired janitors. )

 

The article didn't single out poor students as the ones that should be paid to do janatorial duties. I don't like Newt. In fact, I think he's crooked and should be in jail. But the OP doesn't exactly match what the article says.

 

Newt is ultimately a policy wonk and really is not good at politics. When he was down in the polls, he settled down because no one cared about his views. But now that's he's back at the top, he's going to say stupid things like this and get himself in trouble.

 

I'm confused? He wants to fire the people who have worked hard all their lives to get a union wage and hire kids for pennies on the dollar, so that they can have pride in their miserable, below poverty level existence.

This guy reeks of privilege. I bet 99 percent of those useless, fighting with their girlfriend kids, work harder than he has done in the last 25 years.

I'll be glad when the new blood takes over.

Oh yeah, an Newt, they already have that. It's called Deca, and Vica. The worst programs in the history of school.

 

Why just hire kids to scrub school toilets? I have a toilet at my home, as do most people. Why are we scrubbing toilets like suckers when we can just hire poor children to do it and give them pride?

 

I think this is a great idea. Let's elect Newt to the school board so he can implement it.

 

Literacy and basic arithmetic, who needs it?

 

Judging by what GOP candidates say, it's obvious that they think cruelty and contempt play well to their audience, but I don't think that's necessarily true. I think a lot of Republican voters are going to be turned off by that sort of nasty rhetoric, and either stay home on election day or maybe even vote for Obama.

But we have seen this before, a candidate will move to the center once they have the nomination, but all of these outrageous statements are going to follow these wall street shills around on the internet, and Democrats should be ready to remind voters just what Republican candidates have been spouting off, and just how reckless much of their rhetoric has been.

Ultimately, though, since Obama is considered a bust (sorry, it's true), it's really going to come down to whether America wants another Republican in the WH, just four short years after Dubya slithered out of Washington.