In Other News, Day Brighter Than Night

We pretty much have lost the capacity to be surprised at what our new Teabagger overlords want to take away from us next. Collective bargaining? Forget it, negotiate your own salary. Benefits? Forget it, buy your own with the salary you negotiated. An equitable tax base that contributes to adequate funding of things like education, public safety and efficient infrastructure? Who you think you're talking to?

Still, even with the new social order we were a little caught off guard by this.

Gov. Paul LePage has signed into law a bill to ease Maine's child labor restrictions so teenagers can work longer hours. The bill signed today by the governor will allow students to work as many as 24 hours rather than the 20 per week under current law. It also increases from four to six the number of hours students can work on school days. Students can work as late as 10:15 p.m. on nights before school.

We've generally come to the conclusion that our betters don't like poor people, or old people, or sick people, but we still kind of thought they liked kids. Should have known.

It's pretty obvious, even to our Stoli infused thinking processes, that when your value in society is directly proportional to how much money you have to spend on things you probably don't want and definitely don't need so CEO's can continue to make 250 times what the average worker in their company makes, poor people, old people, and sick people are dragging down the bottom line.

So why should we be surprised that they want kids thrown in the workforce sooner and for longer? We mean come on, they're just little parasites, living off mom and dad, and we've already pretty much sucked mom and dad dry. Besides, their schools are either going to go bankrupt or change to pay as you go pretty soon anyway, so why not?

Supporters said the new law helps businesses looking for youthful help, and also helps teenagers who need the money.

Darn straight. Kids are great. You can pay them illegal immigrant wages, and not worry about ICE showing up on your doorstep. Plus they're still on their parents insurance--well if their parents have insurance that is--so there's none of that pesky benefits stuff that seems so important to adult workers. It's win win man!

Well, unless you're poor, old, sick or young, but hey, omelet eggs, you know?