Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Gingrich Calls Child Labor Laws ‘Stupid’, Wants To Replace Janitors With Poor Kids |

In an anti-government diatribe that would be funny if he weren’t serious, GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich told a crowd at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government yesterday that child labor laws are “tragic” and “stupid” and have “done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy.” In a proposal that he freely admitted was “extraordinarily radical,” he called for firing all school janitors and replacing them with poor students. Politico reports:

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.” [...]

“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Watch it, via CNN:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/11/20/372918/gingrich-calls-child-labor-laws-stupid-wants-to-replace-janitors-with-poor-kids/