Republican says poor children should be required to work for food

[MrScorpio]

by Hunter

I'm still fairly convinced that Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston is not a real congressman but an elaborate hoax, but everyone insists to me he's real. Either way, he would appear to be the illegitimate love child of Newt Gingrich and the New York Post editorial page.

(O)n Saturday, Kingston came out against free lunches, saying that children should have to pay at least a nominal amount or do some work like sweeping cafeteria floors.

"But one of the things I’ve talked to the secretary of agriculture about: Why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria -- and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people -- getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch," he said.

Because nothing instills a good sense of American whats-what in a child like being forced to perform janitorial duties in school while the kids with better parents go off to play or learn or something. What's a little more lost government money when you can subject all the poor kids in America to a little bit more of that?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/18/1263706/-Rep-Jack-Kingston-Poor-kids-should-work-if-they-want-to-eat-school-lunches?detail=facebook#

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

[gollygee]

2. +1

[Journeyman]

5. +2 . . .

(my thought precisely when I read the thread title)

[shenmue]

3. Let's put 'em in coal mines so they can get black lung

What is this?

[lpbk2713]

4. Like what Newt said ...

[Aerows]

6. The reason for the institution of school lunches

was because 42% of Depression Era young men couldn't qualify for the military due to malnutrition. The program was instituted so that we would have a backbone of strong men and women that were not starving.

If you think a nation grows strong with starving people in it's breast, starving people near those that eat, and starvation of it's children, you haven't read much history. I think some Republicans think we can transform our nation into China. I don't think that they get that 99% of Americans don't WANT to.

If China kicks ass, Republican, move there. If you love your community, do what the rest of us are doing and fight for it, because we don't want child labor, slave labor, and visions of blowing you on demand because you have wealth. Our families didn't fight for the sovereignty of our country so that some oligarch can decide he owns the place. Our debt to China is a gnat to swat at while tigers are eating our asses, namely corporations. If the US and Europe don't collectively get them in check, no one will be able to do so.

[jtuck004]

16. "Republicans think we can transform our nation into China" < wrong country. China actually

invested in its people. They didn't get our jobs via the Free Market, they got it by buying, hiring Americans to teach their people, and buying the equipment and machinery to build the products, and finding traitors financiers and bankers who would make money by divesting us of the things we forgot were precious. We quit investing in our people, started paying more and more for less, began to support the financial sector with our borrowing, and began to compensate the Chinese for their large investment.

We are closer to becoming India. Or perhaps North Korea. Which, if you listen to them, is exactly what their visions describe.

[Aerows]

17. The Republican idea is closer to becoming India

and you are right, I probably erred there. Republicans believe very close to a caste system where one stays where one is born.

I'm not touching North Korea because I don't know enough about it to comment, other than the fact that labor camps are at least a little more horrible than prison labor for pennies. And the fact that we don't have guilt by association with all of the family members going to jail.

[jtuck004]

18. Funny, the 'pubs are all excited about stopping immigration. I was reading a story in the NY TImes

the other day about the growing middle class in Mexico, companies paying for people's school so they can employ them, investments in infrastructure, better jobs than the crappy ones they started with years ago.

We are now going down to where they started coming up from. A lot of them seem to be suggesting that only a nut would think they want to cross the border, like it would be a step backwards.

And I say Republicans, yet it is the Democrats who are, and have been paying the banks hundreds of billions of dollars to make sure they stay wealthy, supporting the financiers and rentiers while workers and others in the country get poorer and die. Which doesn't leave us much of a way out without a major change in how we have traditionally approached things...

[Wounded Bear]

31. I've often thought that was the Repub plan for immigration...

Turn America into a 3rd world shit hole that people wouldn't want to come to.

[Quantess]

7. That's messed up. (no text)

[Boomerproud]

8. Well, it sure would show them once and for all what the real America is about.

There are two Americas-and don't let the kids on the wrong side of the tracks forget it!

[HockeyMom]

9. Gingrich said this first

Remember? Let the poor children WORK for their free lunches, etc. Imagine how much $$$$$ this would save? Agenda. Eliminate Custodian jobs in schools. CHILDREN can do it.

[catbyte]

10. OMFG. Why not just chain them up in a sweatshop & be done with it?

Republicans are unimaginably evil, vile bastards. I wish I believed in hell because they all deserve to burn in it. I can't imagine how much it must suck to be like him.

[Incitatus]

11. This sounds familiar.

Didn't another Republican a while back suggest poor kids do janitorial work for food?

[markpkessinger]

32. Also from Georgia, IIRC n/t

[PeggyKR]

12. Compassionate Conservative? My ass.

And why don't we just send all these poor kids off to fight the wars, while the rich kids go off to college and get great educations. Seem fair right? Sickening..

[Brigid]

13. Does the GOP read Dickens . . .

And think he was describing some sort of Utopia?

[FiveGoodMen]

15. Apparently, yes.

[Moostache]

14. I wish there was a way to fast-forward karmic payback...(n/t)

[diabeticman]

19. Wonder if this guy would salavate over a Hunger Game like situation for poor kids. Last one

alive gets the bowl of gruel.



Seriously are we really living in a "Western country"? This type of talk is really making me sick.

[freshwest]

20. 'Teach 'em their place early in life!' says Jack. n/t

[sibelian]

21. There is no "myth" that there's such a thing as a free lunch. What's he wittering on about?

Methinks we have here a man burned by a grifter in Long Ago Times who wishes the rest of us to pay, in some way or another, for his poor judgement.

[Kurovski]

22. Why does Rep. Jack Kingston hate Jesus?

[cali]

23. too bad I can't say what I think that pig Kingston should be forced to do for a dime

[angstlessk]

24. And the kids whose parents are rich don't work...

they live off the largesse of their families wealth...when do THEY learn the lesson of hard work?

[gollygee]

25. They don't

and then that gets called "Affluenza" and keeps them out of prison.

[liberal N proud]

26. They have said they want to take the country back

They want to take it so far back that we have sweat shops and child labor. And they want the wages to be the same as they were those days as well.

[ryan_cats]

27. That's too easy...

That's too easy, shouldn't we ship underprivileged kids to Japan to work on Fukishima where they're really needed? Three Mile Island and Chernobyl needs workers too.

Man, what a tool.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

28. Yes, let's have them sweep floors at the time they could be studying.....

...all because you dislike the hedonistic, un-Christian idea of helping out the poor.

Dumbass.

[MADem]

29. They seem to get a charge out of making children work. Sick fucks.

Childhood should be a time when children are free from want, free from fear, and free from the oppression of worry. Unfortunately, it's not that way for far too many children.

This isn't the first time I've seen this topic brought up--but I have a better idea for this idiot. Howzabout we FUND school lunches so that children get a nutritious meal at midday that will encourage them to eat healthily.

[rustydog]

30. That stance wporked SO WELL for Newtered Gingrich's Presidential run

Why don't you stay with your hateful plan skippy, see where it takes you.

[Turbineguy]

33. In coal mines of course