Nasty Newt Gingrich: Poor kids have no work habits
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You know what the problem is with poor kids? They have no work habits, says Newt Gingrich. Simple as that.
“They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day, or the concept of: ’I do this and you give me cash’—unless it’s illegal,” Gingrich said. He made his comments to voters in Des Moines yesterday, reports ABC News, where he was called on to explain a plan he revealed last week to put schoolchildren to work as janitors (that’s when he also called child labor laws stupid.) “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work,” Gingrich said. “What if you paid them in the afternoon to work? What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”
He acknowledged there are still lots of details to work out in his plan, but the general idea is “exactly the right direction for America’s future,” he said. Whatever he’s saying must be working, because the latest poll puts him well ahead of the GOP pack. He has cracked open an impressive 21% lead over closest rival Mitt Romney—the largest lead of any candidate yet, reports the New York Daily News. The new Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters released yesterday also shows him with a razor thin 45%-43% lead in a hypothetical race against President Obama. Now that’s scary as hell.
Many thanks to Newser.
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One other thing. I doubt that Newt has ever had a callous on either of his hands.
Geez Bob! I happen to agree with you. Why don’t you expand on your comment so I can publish it? I had NO IDEA things were as bad as you describe, and doubt many of our readers understood. Mail me with your thoughts please Bob. This is important.
Over generalizations and simplifications and sound byte style comments are always dangerous, and Newt is the master of these troublesome art forms. It’s easy to pick on Newt….. I do it all the time.
But, as is also often the case, there is a great deal of demonstrable truth to his proposition. As a retailer I could cite literally a hundred anecdotal examples. We have job openings right now at between $8.00 and $10.00 an hour for part time work and almost no applicants in a city where unemployment tops 15%. Youth show up dressed inappropriately (to say the least), but expensively. They are unable to fill out a simple job application and, if they take one home to get help, they never return.
Our schools and also our “over concern” with political correctness are failing our children. They do not get guidance at school on how to dress for work, how to fill out an application, how to apply for a job or answer interview questions. We most assuredly don’t teach them how to spell! This leaves our youth intimidated and frightened by the entire job application process.
In many metropolitan areas the youth drop out rates exceed 50% and youth unemployment is horrific, sometimes also approaching 50%.
The bottom line is that Newt (heaven forbid) is actually right. We must change what we do and prepare our youth to join the work force. We need to give them the tools, give them real world work experience and help them understand the benefits of a real work ethic. Paying them to work at school would serve two needed purposes!
So Newt is still a jerk…. but we need to try his ideas anyway.
Bob, I agree with you to a degree. I don’t know where you are or what your business might be but I have run across many a kid that fit that description. Of course, I can also say that I have also run across many a kid that did not fit that description that you you would love to have work for you. But, as you say, stereotypes do not get us anywhere. The educational systems in this country have been going downhill in this country for a while. Mainly, in my opinion, when politicians started tinkering with it. These days education and its funding has become a political football and the issue of education has taken a back seat to political ideology.
We have become a nation of people who are taught to believe they are entitled to something just because they are born in this country. They have no sense of pride or duty to the country, community or to themselves. I believe if we rolled back time to a point where everyone, male, female, rich, poor, religious, non religious, no exceptions, had to give two years of service to their country in some capacity they and the country would be better off. This would include everyone when they finished high school, or reached their 18th birthday if they were not in school. They would go into 12 weeks of training for AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, or something similar or the military. No buy outs for rich kids or politician’s kids, no weekend warriors. You sacrificed for your country to some degree for two years. Then, the young people of today would start learning something about responsibility and caring about something other than themselves.