Nanny State Alert: Obama administration wants to ban children from family farm chores

Having been raised on a small family farm, I can testify how asinine this proposal is. There is no better place to learn a strong work ethic and sense of responsibility than on a family farm. Instead of banning it, the government should encourage it. The problem with many young people today is they feel entitled to a free living off their parents or the government. You won't learn that on a family farm. On a family farm, everyone pulls their weight. The Obama administration hates that kind of self sufficiency and work ethic. They want Americans to be dependent on the government.

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district member 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.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

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. Read more here...