From Zombie:
Combined, the new 2010 allegations and the original 1974 allegations accuse Shirley and Charles Sherrod of:
• Paying farm workers as little as 67¢ per hour, far below minimum wage for the era.
• Employing underage children to perform hard labor.
• Compelling their employees to work in unsafe conditions, including getting sprayed with pesticides.
• Firing any workers who acted as whistleblowers.
• Forcing employees to work overtime in the fields at night with practically no advance notice.
• Having a capricious payscale under which employees doing the exact same jobs were paid different amounts according to the whims of the managers.
• Being unwilling to address the abuse even after it was raised by union representatives.
• Seriously mismanaging the farm to such an extent that it went bankrupt…
I saw the original article over at Counter Punch (certainly one of the most entertaining hard-left websites around, but never take everything they say at face value), but held off on talking about it. I tried to get the author of the original article to clarify a few things for me (I wanted to know if government money was used, as well as a few other things), but I received no reply. It is a searing indictment of the Sherrods – and this latest update just makes it more so.
It is a sad fact that while liberals often talk a great game of helping the poor they often end up being the most ruthless exploiters of the poor out there. And this is for both political and economic exploitation. Liberals have always had this problem of not being able to take the poor as they are – as people who have their own ideas, dreams, fears and needs. The Sherrods wanted to help – and the people would be helped, no matter how much it hurt, it would seem.
Such is the long, sad tale of liberals who are always trying to create a utopia for others. Shirley Sherrod is more than just a face on a video, it would seem – she’s a hard-left operator who has a trail of troubles running out behind her. The big question now is: just how did she get hired for anything, given her record?
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