That was almost coherent and restrained. Too bad it's so late and after I'm beat from tennis. Enron is your basis for needing more regulation? Should the government have run it? Maybe wiretapped them to find out what they were up to? First the lefties are complaining about spying, nazis, overbearing government, deficits, racism etc, then they're off complaining about deregulation, open borders, non-union Mexicans, lack of spending for anything but the military. It's just bitch, bitch, bitch.

Did any deregulation contribute to the enron deal?

Parenting and care of a child should ALWAYS be given to those with a true vested interest in the outcome...the parents. Fucc hurt feelings or embarassment...mom and/or dad should make those decisions...that's one of the reasons age of consent is not 11 years old!

Op-Ed Columnist
None Dare Call It Child Care

By GAIL COLLINS
Published: October 18, 2007

In the last presidential candidate debate, Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked whether this country would ever get back to the days when a young guy could come out of high school, get an industrial job “and provide for a family with a middle-class income and his spouse wouldn’t have to work.”

Given the fact that more than two-thirds of American mothers have been working outside the home since the 1980s, Matthews could just as easily have demanded to know when we’ll get back to using manual typewriters and rotary phones.

Still, it might have been a great conversation-starter. While it’s becoming virtually impossible to support a middle-class American family on one parent’s salary, we never hear political discussion about the repercussions. In a two-hour debate that focused on job-related issues, the Republican presidential candidates managed to mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff and trade relations with Peru but not a word about child care for America’s working parents. John McCain, who was on the receiving end of Matthews’s question, chose instead to focus on the fact that “50,000 Americans now make their living off eBay,” that the tax code is “eminently unfair” and that Congress wastes too much money studying of the DNA of Montana bears.

We live in a country where quality child care is controversial. It was one of the very first issues to be swift-boated by social conservatives. In 1971, Congress actually passed a comprehensive child care bill that was vetoed by Richard Nixon. The next time the bill came up, members were flooded with mail accusing them of being anti-family communists who wanted to let kids sue their parents if they were forced to go to church. It scared the heck out of everybody.

Right now, the only parents who routinely get serious child-care assistance from the government are extremely poor mothers in welfare-to-work programs. Even for them, the waiting lists tend to be ridiculously long. In many states, once the woman actually gets a job, she loses the day care. Middle-class families get zip, even though a decent private child care program costs $12,000 a year in some parts of the country.

The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, or Naccrra, (this is an area replete with extraordinary people organized into groups with impossible names) says that in some states the average annual price of care was larger than the entire median income of a single parent with two children. For child care workers, the average wage is $8.78 an hour. It’s one of the worst-paying career tracks in the country. A preschool teacher with a postgraduate degree and years of experience can make $30,000 a year. You need certification in this country to be a butcher, a barber or a manicurist, but only 12 states require any training to take care of children. Only three require comprehensive background checks. In Iowa, there are 591 child care programs to every one inspector. California inspects child care centers once every five years.

“You have a work force that makes $8.78 an hour. They have no training. They have not been background checked, and we’ve put them in with children who don’t have the verbal skills to even tell somebody that they’re being treated badly,” said Linda Smith, the executive director of Naccrra. “What is wrong with a country that thinks that’s O.K.?”

We aren’t going to solve the problem during this presidential contest, but it is absolutely nuts that it isn’t a topic of discussion — or even election-year pandering. The Democratic candidates for president happily come together to tell organized labor about their unquenchable desire to have a union member as secretary of labor. The Republican candidates flock to assure the National Rifle Association about their dedication to Americans’ constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in churches. But you do not see anybody racing off to romance child care advocates.

The only candidate who talks about child care all the time is Chris Dodd of Connecticut. He has been the issue’s champion of the Senate forever. People who work in the field know he’s their guy, but it’s hard to see what good it does him out on the campaign trail. “They aren’t inclined to be the kind of people who engage in the political process,” he admitted. “They don’t have the money.”

This is Hillary Clinton’s Women’s Week. On Tuesday, she gave a major speech on working mothers in New Hampshire, with stories about her struggles when Chelsea was a baby, a grab-bag of Clintonian mini-ideas (encourage telecommuting, give awards to family-friendly businesses) and a middle-sized proposal to expand family leave. Yesterday, she was in the company of some adorable 2- and 3-year-olds, speaking out for a bill on child care workers that has little chance of passage and would make almost no difference even if it did. Clinton most certainly gets it, but she wasn’t prepared to get any closer to the problems of working parents than a plan to help them stay home from work.

At least she mentioned the subject.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/opinion/18collins.html

Op-Ed Columnist
None Dare Call It Child Care

By GAIL COLLINS
Published: October 18, 2007

In the last presidential candidate debate, Chris Matthews of MSNBC asked whether this country would ever get back to the days when a young guy could come out of high school, get an industrial job “and provide for a family with a middle-class income and his spouse wouldn’t have to work.”

Why deregulate and who asked for it? Did the folks asking for deregulation approach the democrats first and when they didnt get what they want then they went to the republicans?

Did any deregulation contribute to the enron deal?

Half of the things you list are things republicans used to bitch about.

women want the right to go out and work, the consequence is the kids suffer.

Maine has a low instance of teenage pregnancies and aims to keep it that way.

Seems to me Alabama could take some tips from Maine, given the statistics.

http://www.teenpregnancy.org/america/stati...ID=3&sID=45

What if those parents abuse the child, physically or sexually, or allow abuse? What then, Fred?

The Courts side with the well-being of the children, and also side with their rights as individuals. Until we can come up with a better way, this is the best we can do given the alternatives.

Just for some perspective, I believe I read that teenage pregnancies are at a 14 year low. Do you think that might have something to do with the privacy laws that have been in effect for 30 years?

I do.

At the same time, keep in mind that child abuse is up. That's a sobering thought.

Got some evidence of that, dingbat?

Got any evidence that women having the right to go out and work (for pay) causes kids or their kids to suffer?

You incorrigible malaka!

Hey fred how was Yuba City you old dog?

Go north to chico and hang a right into the sierras/cascades and you hit one of my favorite vacation spots Lake Almanor. Check it out its the best kept secret in northern Cal.

hit that lake back in the 80's. Still a secret?

all the "PC Feminazi" propaganda and stuff.

Actually, according to the statistics on the site I left up, teenage pregnacies are down among blacks.

So it's 18 year old "boys" getting the little girls pregnant?
What planet do you live on?

13% of middle schoolers report being sexually active and you all apparently think it's ALL GIRLS?

I've got a bridge to sell you. Oh and Rush Limpbag drove across it once on a quest for jelly donuts. That ought to make it worth a cool million.

Do me a favor righties. LOOK at the statistics, and then come back for a debate.

Thanks

yeah, everyone know LP aint a racist.

According to Bee's post about a child being questioned in private by a doctor, then it would be kept secret from the parents if a child was using drugs as well. Don't you think the parents have a right to know about that?

Are you asking Bee or someone else?

Anyone.
Bee seemed to lump the items together as private: Sex, drugs, parental abuse.

Of course they aren't. Facts are statements which are either true or not. Your interpretation of evidence and the facts you make up are racist.

Sometimes the facts are just the facts. Accusations of LP of being a racist because he isn't a liberal don't really end up being based on any facts. The view that everyone is exactly equal but blacks still need special help based on skin color alone seems to me to be racist, but God forbid anyone that "cares" about blacks enough to want government to take care of them be questioned over their racial opinions.

It's fine with me if you hold that opinion, but I think it's based more on politics than race.

Well, as you saw above, my view is that unemancipated minors ought to have the presumption of ZERO privacy vis-a-vis their parents (their actual parents, legally and actually, not their progenitors).

There are PLENTY of Democrats who are racist, and plenty of 'lefties' with whose opinions on race and race-based policy I disagree.

LP pulls race out of his ass everytime he wants to score a point.

According to Bee's post about a child being questioned in private by a doctor, then it would be kept secret from the parents if a child was using drugs as well. Don't you think the parents have a right to know about that?

Children's Defense Fund

The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is a national organization committed to the social welfare of children. Founded in 1973, the nonprofit group uses its annual $9 million budget to lobby legislators and speak out publicly on a broad array of issues on the law, the family, and society. It is an influential shaper of the welfare debate: the CDF has consistently fought for federal welfare programs that directly help poor children, a cause that has enjoyed significant success in Washington, D.C. In the 1980s, its intensive lobbying efforts saved billions of dollars in proposed funding cuts, and in the early 1990s, close ties with the administration of President Bill Clinton increased its influence even further, leading to new federal legislation. Besides its work on Capitol Hill, the organization issues widely cited reports on the health and the economic and social well-being of U.S. children. The organization owes much of its effectiveness to the work of its founder and director, civil rights attorney Marian Wright Edelman.

The first black woman to pass the bar exam in Mississippi, Edelman fought race discrimination in the 1960s. She initially came to national attention by stopping efforts in Mississippi to deny African Americans money from the federal Head Start program. By the end of the 1960s she ran an advocacy group called the Washington Research Project, whose chief focus was antidiscrimination law. The group acquired powerful allies—one staff attorney was Hillary Rodham, who would become First Lady. Edelman lobbied extensively for federal health care and child care, but to little avail. By 1973, she realized that "the country was tired of the concerns of the sixties. When you talked about poor people or black people, you faced a shrinking audience. I got the idea that children might be a very effective way to broaden the base for change." She renamed her organization, made children's issues its primary focus, and began building the corporate sponsorship that has grown to include such major donors as American Express and Coca-Cola.

If [see below] wins the Democratic/Republican nomination for president would you definitely vote for him/her in the general election for president in 2008, would you consider voting for him/her or would you definitely not vote for him/her?"

PERCENT SAYING "DEFINITELY WOULD NOT"

Obama -- 39%
Clinton -- 41%
Edwards -- 43%
Giuliani -- 44%
McCain -- 45%
Thompson -- 54%
Romney -- 57%

"And thinking about all the candidates currently running for president, both from the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, which one do you think is most likely to win the general election for president in November 2008?"

Clinton 45 %
Giuliani 16 %
Obama 8 %
Thompson 5 %
Edwards 4 %
McCain 4 %
Gore 2 %
Romney 2 %
Biden 1 %
Dodd 1 %
Huckabee 1 %
Tancredo 1 %
Unsure 10 %

I joined a new political party. Its the ABHOR party.

Anybody But Clinton or a Republican.

You're smiling and posting what a duplicitous bitch she is at the same time?

That leaves Obama and Edwards. You might as well vote for the one with the darker skin and the northern accent.

Just think of it this way. Another Clinton White House sets up another Bush (Jeb) White House.
We can do this forever.

She, Clinton?

Are you sure we aren't dead in Hell?

I'll jump off the f___ing roof.

Don't ding your bike.

Are you sure we aren't dead in Hell?

Chelsea Clinton should be 35 in another 17 years.

I think after hillary it would be Laura bush and then Jethro.

Being first lady didn't used to qualify anyone for president.