Canaries

On Dec. 30, 1986, BBC News reported that the basis in reality for one of my favorite analogous adages was disappearing. No longer would coal miners rely on little yellow birds to act as poison tasters of air for them. The canaries would soon be phased out by machines. The phrase itself is still useful, though, because the powerful imagery is still firmly planted on our collective conciousness.

I heard a news story today that I consider to be a canary story. The story should explain where we are and how much traction we've lost in the process of moving the American aesthetic of life upward and forward.

You see, the United States Department of Labor found 85 child labor law violations at Wal-Mart stores in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Arkansas. Child labor laws of course are supposed to frown on children operating cardboard balers and chainsaws, like kids were found doing as Wal-Mart employees.

So, Wal-Mart sat down and wrote its own settlement agreement. And the Labor Department accepted it. Would it surprise you to know that the terms of the agreement don't cause Wal-Mart to have to cop to any wrongdoing? That it incurred a penalty of $135,540? And that it allows those stores a 15-day notice before inspectors visit again?

Child labor is an issue that the United States began visiting at the turn of the last century. It should be one of the most well-settled issues of our time. The notion that children should be relieved from the tasks of earning a living, should be relieved from the risk of job-related injuries, that the job of a child is to become educated and whole, solving quadratic equations instead of mining coal, these notions seemed foreign as America phased out the agrarian economy for its industrial economy, but that was a century ago, and these notions should be hard-fused into us by now. But this government, currently rife with people who allegedly champion "family values" and who all seem to have hard-ons for the medical procedure of abortion because it's "baby-killin'," this government fines $135,540 to a company that reported profits this year of $2.04 billion for something as egregious as allowing kids to operate the big toys?

This is a canary story. Your federal government is falling down on the job when it comes to something as peremptory as enforcing child labor laws, and it is doing that because of the larger, more poisonous atmosphere of pro-corporate, anti-labor fascism that has full-nelsoned the American government. And I continue to wonder how much more it will take before this reality slaps 95 percent or more of the American public in the face.