My friend keeps telling me my blog is like the Oracle of Delphi, I having the ability to see into the future, and post on topics – yet to be topical! One explanation is, you have four very good and very gifted Presco Children, who should have all done exceedingly well, but, their dysfunctional alcohol parents put incredible obstacles in their way – and were not culpable to the day they died! To blame the Poor, for the huge mistakes of the Rich and the Right, is to act like a drunk, irresponsible parents, who blames everyone around them, is never culpable, thus the REAL problems never get fixed. Instead, you get these Dickinish hallucinations, inane Scapegoating that hurdles towards the Twilight Zone.
Well, that’s par for the course for the Prescos. It is obvious to me that Heather and Bill concluded I was a Master parasite when I posted pics of Uncle Samaclaus on their and my facebook. I am Newt’s mortal enemy, and he mine, I long comparing him to my brother, Mark Presco. I am certain they chit-chat on the phone.
Before I came to Bullhead City I practiced a skit in front of the mirror. When I was eleven, and Mark twelve, Vic put us to work on this huge patato peeling and french fry making machine, not unlike the machine above. Vic left us alone in a big empty warehouse with these instructions;
“Don’t cut your fingers off. You’re mother will never forgive me!”
We Presco children were put in fields as gleaners. We graded potatoes and hauled around gunny sacks! Vic paid us $1.00 dollar a day, which is illegal, and expounded with $800 dollars of my brother and mine money when he was thrown out of the house. It was everyone’s fault, but his, that he was a failure as a father. Vic was a huge parasite. Until powerful people at the top are blamed for what has gone wrong, made culpable for their huge mistakes, then I predict things will only get worse!
No Presco child was happy in their work. One child was chosen to speak for the others. I am America’s No.1 Scapegoat. I am Super Hippie! I challenge New to a debate! Pic on someone your own age – Leach!
I Scapegoat, have spoken!
Jon Presco
Mika Brzezinski let forth with an angry rant on Newt Gingrich and his criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement, calling him “the biggest hypocrite in the Republican field” on Monday.
The source of her ire was Gingrich’s recent barbs about the protesters, particularly his comment that they should “go get a jobright after you take a bath.” Brzezinski called his words “arrogant” and “disgusting.”
“Someone needs a bath and I don’t think it’s the people from Occupy Wall Street,” the “Morning Joe” co-host remarked, after noting that Gingrich had received huge payments from the beleaguered housing agency Freddie Mac.
She suggested that the soundbite would make some people “wonder if they should even live in this country anymore, if that’s who the Republicans are gonna pick as their nominee.”
She continued to rail against the GOP contender, questioning his recent surge in the polls and saying that his comments “literally made my skin crawl.”
“To hear Newt Gingrich standing on literally his high horse, after taking advantage of the system, cashing in on it, being literally the biggest hypocrite in the Republican field, probably in politics today, and then to cast aspersions and to speak down to these people as if they should be flicked away — it’s disgusting,” she blasted.
Last Friday, during an event at Harvard, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich offered up a modest plan for alleviating poverty in the United States. It was time, he said, to relax our “truly stupid” child labor laws. In particular, schools should fire their unionized janitors, and hire children as young as nine to do the work instead. Per The New York Times:
“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine,” Mr. Gingrich said. “You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”
This suggestion is, on its face, insane. It sounds like a bad Stephen Colbert joke. But if you stop and consider its merits for a minute or two…well no, it’s still quite insane. And if you spend an evening researching the nitty gritty of what public school custodians actually do for a living, it turns out to be downright cruel.
It’s not really worth engaging Gingrich’s idea as a serious policy suggestion. I just don’t see the buckets-and-books plan getting much traction in Congress. But his comments are worth dwelling on for a moment, because it’s a jarring illustration of Gingrich’s casual disdain for American workers.
My assumption is that Gingrich disagrees with the critics who quickly called his plan “Dickensian.” Instead, he probably believes that janitorial work is a relatively safe, mindless occupation on par a paper route or neighborhood car wash. Otherwise, there’s no reason to think a child could handle it.
So what do janitors actually do? It’s a lot more than mopping. To get a sense, look over this job descriptionfor a New York City public school custodial engineer–a “master janitor,” as Gingrich would put it. He and his team of cleaners and handymen are responsible for cleaning, yes. That part involves hazardous chemicals like hydrochloric acid. They also operate the school’s heating system, do electrical repairs, maintain the school grounds, take care of the HVAC equipment, and handle basic plumbing fixes, among other assorted jobs. I ask: What parent wants a nine-year-old, or even a thirteen-year-old, toying with the HVAC in her school?
None. Because this is hard. It’s adult work. It can also be brutal on your health. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, janitors miss work due to on-the-job injuries more often than almost any other occupation. They rank in the top seven on that statistic, along police officers and construction workers. Janitors get splashed with corrosive chemicals. They injure their backs bending over mops and toilets all day. These aren’t concerns you take lightly.
It would be easy to chalk Gingrich’s comments up simply to his well-known animus towards unions. But I don’t think that quite explains it. Rational people can argue about how much someone should be paid to clean. An average school janitor makes $12.45 an hour. It’s not an extravagant amount, but it approaches a living wage for a single person living in some areas. In some places, the unionized janitors may well be making too much. There are plenty of school districts that outsource their cleaning to private firms. But that decision starts from the respectful assumption that maintaining a school is something worthwhile for an adult to spend their lives on.
That’s not the case in Gingrich’s worldview. Forget that an adult might need that job to put food on the table for their own children. Forget that he’s suggesting we flood an ailing job market with part time, minimum-wage-earning students. This isn’t about labor economics. It’s about respect, and the fact that the leading Republican presidential candidate doesn’t have a spit’s worth of it for manual labor. In his eyes, a janitor’s job just doesn’t mean much. It’s so easy, a child could do it.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
I am having much trouble writing the first chapter in my autobiography because it discribes the twenty-five foot french fry cutter machine my brother and I were forced to opparate when we were eleven and twelve. It was very dangerous, and thus to be put to work on it violated Child Labour Laws. I don’t know how we did, how we survived. The psychoigical damage is incacuable. At my doctors appointment on December 26th. I asked to see the therapist in residence. I told her the falling out with enemy daughter and grandson was over this machine, and Heather’s new lover ‘Psycho Billy’. The Janitor makes her first appearance. When Rena told me her father brutalized her and her brother, I understood she was more than my lover and muse. She wss like a sister, but, she was something more. We were abandoned, and thrown away, when the damage our fathers did to us was no longer visible. We were damaged goods and outsiders began to notice.