Maine’s GOP governor: I started working at 11 years old, so why can’t other kids at 12?

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Raw Story

Maine’s GOP governor: I started working at 11 years old, so why can’t other kids at 12?
By Travis Gettys
Thursday, January 9, 2014 11:17 EST

Maine’s conservative governor said the state was not using one of its greatest resources by keeping children out of the workforce until they were nearly old enough to join the military.

“We don’t allow children to work until they’re 16, but two years later, when they’re 18, they can go to war and fight for us,” said Gov. Paul LePage.

The Republican governor, who has said he started working at age 11, claimed the state economy was harmed by not allowing children to enter the workforce.

“I started working far earlier than that, and it didn’t hurt me at all,” LePage said. “There is nothing wrong with being a paperboy at 12 years old, or at a store sorting bottles at 12 years old.”


Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/09/maines-gop-governor-i-started-working-at-11-years-old-so-why-cant-other-kids-at-12/

[rocktivity]

1. Ooooh! Ooooh! Ooooh! I know the answer! Call on me, PLEASE!!!!

Last edited Fri Jan 10, 2014, 02:26 AM - Edit history (1)

[font size="7"]Because it's ILLEGAL!!!!![/font]

P.S. You forgot the "Not from the Onion" disclaimer.


rocktivity

[warrant46]

15. Aah ---the Good Old Days

AND THE BREAKER BOYS




Breaker Boys1910

What Charles Dickens did with words for the underage toilers of London, Lewis Hine did with photographs for the youthful laborers in the United States. In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee was already campaigning to put the nation’s two million young workers back in school when the group hired Hine. The Wisconsin native traveled to half the states, capturing images of children working in mines, mills and on the streets. Here he has photographed “breaker boys,” whose job was to separate coal from slate, in South Pittston, Pa. Once again, pictures swayed the public in a way cold statistics had not, and the country enacted laws banning child labor.

[Tx4obama]

2. You can tell he is old...

Most newspapers are delivered by folks driving cars nowadays.
And parents do not want their 12 year olds walking around in the dark mornings where crazy people can abduct them.

Stores don't have tons of bottles like in the old days - soda/pop comes in cans and plastic.

The world is much different than it used to be.

There aren't enough jobs now as it is for the folks 16 and older.

[Nanjing to Seoul]

3. Governor Mandateless Plurality burps up another vomit of stupidity!

[Kelvin Mace]

4. YEah, when was the last time

anybody returned bottles to the grocery store for the deposit?

Due it is 2014, not 1954!

[naturallyselected]

10. In Maine, we all do

Kids may not sort them anymore, but there is a mandatory deposit on all beverage cans and bottles. Everyone I know collects them somewhere in their house until there are enough to make it worth their while to redeem them. And then there are the people who make daily rounds of all the public trash cans picking through them for cans and bottles to return for deposit.

[modrepub]

12. Yea, then I wind up

waiting in a line at Shaws to redeem my cans with everybody else. Usually I just hand my bags to the person in front of me (who has their entire cart full with bags of cans) or leave them with my sister. I don't see as many people riding their bikes along the road picking cans up as I used to though.

ME

[naturallyselected]

17. There are redemption centers

Redemption centers pay 6 cents instead of 5, and there are rarely lines. Hannaford uses a service that comes and collects all the containers - all you have to do is leave your bag of cans and bottles and you get a credit slip once the containers are processed. It's not a big deal, and I'm so grateful we have the law every time I visit relatives in NJ and see all the cans and bottles littering the sides of I-80.

[crim son]

20. Clynk!

I've got one of their bags in the back seat of my car right now, ready to be dropped off.

[4bucksagallon]

28. Yep and Patrick Dempsey's father ran the one in Maine for many years.

We would see young Patrick there with his father Bill. There were a lot less bottles and cans on the roadside after the bottle bill was passed, much to the dismay of the Republicans that fought against it.

[jmowreader]

11. Maine has a bottle bill

http://www.bottlebill.org/legislation/usa/maine.htm

Glass, metal and plastic containers for nonalcoholic beverages have a 5 cent deposit. Wine and liquor bottles have a 15 cent deposit.

They have a 90 percent return rate...so, a LOT of people in his state return the bottles for the deposit!

[Kelvin Mace]

36. Sensible actually

So, do they actually have 12 year olds who count the bottles or have they automated the process?

[Downwinder]

5. I started working at 10. And I saw a 14 year-old loose his

legs in a hay baler.

[Trillo]

6. He's a liar. School is work, unpaid labor.

So his primary lie is that kids are not "in the workforce". Kids are laboring for free.

[naturallyselected]

7. He's wrong

This idiot in Augusta is so full of it. Both my boys had paper routes here in Maine - my younger started when he was 8. He also started bagging at the grocery store at 15. If you're under 16, and someone wants to hire you, all you need is parental permission. There are hour limitations, both time of day and maximum number of hours, and restrictions on the type of work, but there are ways for those under 16 to earn some extra cash. No laws are stopping them from paper routes, babysitting, petsitting, etc.

He is constantly creating straw men for the sole purpose of demonizing others.

This is nothing compared to another of his moves today. The state commissioned, with tax dollars, a study looking at, among other things, the expansion of Medicaid in the state, which was passed by the legislature but vetoed by LePage. The Attorney General, a Democrat, wants the report released as the legislature is back in session and is debating, once again, whether or not to expand Medicaid as the ACA specifies. The governors office has the report, but is not releasing it, because the governor is "still reading it". He says if the Attorney General wants it released, "Let her sue me."

http://bangordailynews.com/2014/01/08/politics/maine-attorney-general-says-lepage-in-violation-of-state-law-for-failing-to-release-welfare-study/

I count the days until this national embarrassment is swept out of office.

[RBInMaine]

22. You're right on the law and how such a ROTTEN BASTARD this guy is. We NEED Mike Michaud to restore

decency to our state.

[muntrv]

8. Why Paul? So that other kids don't grow up to be stupid like you!

[peabody]

13. Thank you.

That's what I was going to say too.

[JoePhilly]

9. What century is this idiot living in?

[Thor_MN]

14. Yeah, we should be able to get 4 years of cheap labor out of them before we send them

to other countries to use up military equipment...

[Lucky Luciano]

16. Not The Onion. nt

[LukeFL]

31. Thought it was.

Crazy as most of them

[weissmam]

18. what a jerk

[Ken Burch]

19. Didn't LePage become the ward of some rich bastard when he was thirteen or something?

My impression was that he became a toady for the 1% out of gratitude to his own personal "Mr. Brownlow".

[crim son]

24. Good question.

I can't find anything concerning his youth except for the fact that he left his home before reaching his teen years because of physical abuse, and that he spent two years "essentially homeless." Then we learn he worked at various establishments and then, voila, got into school (with a little help) and the rest is history. I live in Bangor and have heard it mentioned that while homeless, LePage lived in homes of friends and was infinitely better off than he would have been had he remained with his parents. This may or may not be true but since his official biography avoids the issue, I'm betting on the former.

[Astraea]

21. Huh. I thought Maine was a blue state

How did this asshat get elected?

[mainer]

33. It is a blue state. He sneaked in with 38% of the vote

Because we had a three-way election, with two liberals beating each other out of the ballot box.

[Gormy Cuss]

23. So, everyone should have the same dysfunctional childhood as you, LePage?

Bulletin, LePage. Most "paper boys" these days are adults working their second job or working while the other parent is home with the sleeping kids. As for collecting bottles, kids don't do that as much anymore because the adults are redeeming their own damn bottles and cans. See the common theme, Governor Teabag?

And for the record, no law needs to be changed for children to deliver newspapers or turn in redeemables but I suspect you know that so what's this REALLY about? Hmmm?

eta: I worked for pay at 15 in Maine. All it took was a permit and adherence to the laws on times and nature of the work. I also had lots of informal jobs at an earlier age.

[defacto7]

25. Just goes to show...

Just because you're governor it doesn't mean you're logical or intelligent. Maybe if he was in school instead of the workforce he would have developed a brain.

[DinahMoeHum]

26. Hey, LePage, you're a fuckin' moron.

n/t

[jberryhill]

27. And look what it did to his mental development

[jtuck004]

29. Partly because their parents can't even get jobs at 22, 32, 42...and also because we want

them to grow up to be more capable than you.

[SheilaT]

30. Jeez. I can remember when most people delivering the

paper were boys, but I'm old.

For quite a few years now, when I've gotten the paper, it's been tossed onto my front driveway from a car. I'm certainly hoping it's not being driven by an eleven year old.

There are valid different opinions on this topic, but when my kids were in high school, I only let them work during Christmas season or in the summer, because I felt that school was by far the most important job in their lives. And my sons didn't even do sports, which is a huge time sink for athletes.

And they didn't work during college, either. I have enormous admiration for the students who do work and attend college, and I'm glad mine didn't have to.

Thank whatever that I'm retiring soon.

[Turbineguy]

32. Are there coal mines in Maine?

Maybe their parents can just beat them.

[sendero]

34. Way to go Maine..

.... keep electing morons like this and the sky is the limit.

Where do these idiots come from? Hey doofus, there aren't enough jobs for adults, much less kids.

[penultimate]

35. But wait, isn't it still legal for kids to have paper routes?

And there is nothing that prevents kids from mowing lawns, collecting bottles or anything else, right? So clearly this guy really means he wants to be able to go back to the days in which kids worked in coal mines and factories...

[drynberg]

37. Yeah our Gov. wants kidos to labor like "real men", and if you don't like it, kiss his butt!

Yes, we have 24 months of putting up with "Glueboy" (LePage). Most of the electorate are so embarrassed, but that what happens in a 3 way race, a less than 39%er can win. Uncle Paul's gaffs are legend, and personally, I can't wait to have him a winning answer in a nice 2025 game of Trivial Pursuit. Yeah, he's a mistake that I want to forget very soon.

[sinkingfeeling]

38. "...at a store sorting bottles"? What bottles? We stopped returning

glass bottles to stores about 30 years ago.

[One_Life_To_Give]

39. Maybe he should read the Law

Minors Who are Under 14: There is no minimum age under Maine law to work in nonhazardous jobs in children's camps, hospitals, nursing homes, municipalities, domestic work in or about a private home or in the planting, cultivating or harvesting of field crops in agriculture. (Federal law does not allow minors under 14 to work in businesses under their jurisdiction.)

http://www.maine.gov/labor/labor_laws/publications/minorsguide.html#Special

Given the agricultural history it's not surprising for a state the relied upon closing school to get the harvest in. That the use of youth labor would have a number of permissible exceptions.

[Recursion]

40. Because for once our problem is lack of jobs, not lack of labor

We need *fewer* people working now, not more.

[Wernothelpless]

41. Because it is hard on young developing bodies

As a child of 10 I worked in the citrus groves of California pulling irrigation hoses ... My neck is a mess from leaning forward and dragging those hoses through the mud as a child ... take a look at the xray of my neck, Governor, and you'll see the damage from child labor ...

[Marthe48]

42. My parents owned a grocery store

All of us kids worked there from age 8 or so. I didn't get paid, because as my dad famously said, "You have a roof over your head, don't you? You eat, don't you?" My sister and brothers had substance abuse problems, and all of us had bad backs, at the least. And no social life unless it was talking to the delivery guys at the store. I made darn sure my kids had a childhood. They learned how to do things, so they were ready to live on their own, but I didn't make them work. And they are great