Obama destroys yet another internship program

Boy, aren't these young people lucky not to have these internships?  It is fortunately that the Obama administration is protecting them.  As someone who has had a lot of interns over the years, the notion of paying interns is nice, but they might as well insist on getting paid by their universities to attend there.  Internships often take a lot more work on the part of those running them then on the students produce.  From the New York Post:

They work until 11 at night, lug 40-pound garment bags throughout the city and get scolded for not adhering tape to mood boards correctly. And yet being a Condé Nast intern remains one of the most coveted, sought-after unpaid jobs in town. 

To an aspiring media-ite, a Condé internship is a stiletto stacked in prestige wrapped in promises of opportunity. It is a fancy incubator for future media power players: Fashion designer Whitney Port, author Lauren Conrad and beauty blogger Emily Weiss all got their start interning at the media mammoth. 

So you can imagine the surprise when, last month, Condé Nast announced it was terminating its internship program. Starting in 2014, Condé publications including Vogue, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair will no longer give students the opportunity to toil — and learn — in their hallowed halls. 

The bold decision came on the heels of a lawsuit filed in June 2012 by two former Condé interns: Matthew Leib, who interned at The New Yorker in 2009 and 2010, and Lauren Ballinger, who worked at W magazine in 2009. 

The two sued the media conglomerate for failing to pay them minimum wage  . . .

“The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law do not allow employers to allow workers to work for free — even if the workers give their consent,” says Leib and Ballinger’s attorney, Rachel Bien at Outten & Golden. . . .