By Raoul

February 5, 2012 9:37 AM | Link to this

My Dad was a school janitor Mark. Of course that was after he lost his union job to new technology. I worked at the college I attended after Reagan cut out a lot of the college tuition entitlements. Your points are wasted on me my friend. I know what happens when the government takes away all the gifties….you go to work! You have gone from shoveling manure to spreading it.

By null

February 5, 2012 9:30 AM | Link to this

Ilike to see newt make my child clean a bathroom at her school.newt you are a liar.and always will be.say hi to your next wife…..

By Irishguy

February 3, 2012 8:49 PM | Link to this

Mark, you do have a point, kids can be cruel. I did go to a parochial school, where we all had to police the lunch room and stack up the chairs. But I think getting paid for it would most likely remove any stigma. I’m sure all your union buddy custodians don’t consider cleaning up a “make work” job.

By Mark from St Paul

February 3, 2012 4:25 PM | Link to this

IG, Raoul, I’m embarrassed for you both. I know I’m older than you guys yet I have no trouble remembering how easily public school students divide up into castes based on family income. You honestly don’t think making poor kids clean the bathrooms wouldn’t stigmatize them? Honest work? Honest work would be a real job working for a real company. This is a make-work job that makes poor kids clean up after their peers. Cleaning the local gas station’s bathroom is something that gives you a sense of self worth. Cleaning up after your classmate’s sloppy bathroom habits just makes you feel like the low man on the totem pole before you even get out of school. Please tell me that now that I’ve pointed this out to you that you understand my point. Please tell me that. Please tell me that you’re not both so hyper-politicized you cannot empathize with a poor kids being his rich classmates’ janitor, or is it ALL just politics for you two? And don’t give me any more of the “self worth” crap. I shoveled enough manure on our family farm to bolster my personal self esteem to Empire State Bldg. heights, but I didn’t have to do it in front of my classmates, just my brothers and they were also working the business end of a pitchfork. Newt speaks without thinking all too often, and this is a classic case of being so privileged you can’t empathize with others. Now the word is out that when Newt was in college, he begged his dad’s family for money so he wouldn’t have to work (his step-dad thought he should and refused to give him an allowance on top of his tuition bills).

By Raoul

February 3, 2012 4:16 PM | Link to this

Irish, we are wasting our time. Mark already has his sound bites and out of context quotes lined up for spewage in his ever increasing search for the truth. Meanwhile, most poor public school students are marching forward, straight into the middle of the 99% herd. We used to want our poor to become rich; now we want our rich to become poor.

By Irishguy

February 3, 2012 2:28 PM | Link to this

Now Mark, you know Newt was just saying it’d be a good thing for kids to experience what it’s like to earn money at a young age. I’m sure you did it as a kid, with a newspaper route, mowing lawns, or shoveling snow. I know those tasks gave me a good feeling of self worth as a youth.

By Raoul

February 3, 2012 1:58 PM | Link to this

Mark, you and I both know that Newt Gingrich advances ideas about a lot of things. Yes, he suggested students and schools might benefit by having students participate in cleaning up their schools and it was reported on Fox News. What he certainly did not suggest was a return to the days of child labor and you know it. But as to his original idea, why the very thought of children taking an active role in their schools and education (considering the vast amounts of monyey spent on both with pathetic results) is CRAZY. Why would we want our children to be more involved and empowered in their public education? Crazy old Newt!

By Mark from St Paul

February 3, 2012 11:15 AM | Link to this

So Newt never generously offered to let poor children work as janitors in the schools they attend? That never happened? Really, Raoul? Really? Just because Fox News doesn’t air a story doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

By Raoul

February 3, 2012 7:47 AM | Link to this

Nice Mark. You would have to be either a simpleton or a propagandist to believe Gingrich wants to bring back workhouses and child labor. Since you are not a simpleton, that makes you a propagandist. It appears that truth is not such a valuable thing to you. But we all know that truth to progressives is defined as ‘whatever you can make people believe’.

By Mark from St Paul

February 1, 2012 7:08 PM | Link to this

Newt Gingrich does sound like a name out of Dickens, maybe because he’s so eager to bring back workhouses and child labor.

By Raoul

February 1, 2012 5:09 PM | Link to this

How about Old Fezziwig?

By Blowfly

January 31, 2012 3:23 PM | Link to this

My favorite is Newt Gingrich. I have to confess, I’m not sure I have ever read a Dickens book.

By Mark from St Paul

January 31, 2012 11:59 AM | Link to this

Took a look at Dickens bibliography and I’m not sure I ever read Oliver Twist. A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and Great Expectations for sure, and a Christmas Carol makes four but I’ve got everything he ever wrote on the Kindle so maybe some day….

By Slightly Right

January 30, 2012 9:53 PM | Link to this

How about Charley Bates, one of Fagin’s trained pickpockets?

By vick

January 30, 2012 7:52 PM | Link to this

Good choice, Mark. I was always fond of Fagin myself…

By Mark from St Paul

January 30, 2012 7:18 PM | Link to this

Uriah Heep. I prize Dickens not for his heroes and heroines, but for his marvelously loathsome villains. I also suspect that if I had read more than just 3-4 of his books, I could come up with someone worse than Heep.