HELLLLLOOOOOOOO? Is anyone out there? You have all checked out for the long holiday weekend, right? I’m basically talking to myself, or maybe to the two – max, three – people who are as type-A workaholic as me.
Well, if you are reading this: Good morning; it’s Friday.
Programming note: There will be no Rise and Shine on Monday, Labor Day. Even obsessiveness need a rest now and again. (I’m sure I’ll experience withdrawal for much of it and sneak away to the computer at some point).
Habits are hard to break.
So, while this is the unofficial end of summer, the last hurrah before everyone has to return to a more “normal” work schedule (whatever that means these days) and the school year gets underway, there is actually a significance to Labor Day. It is, technically speaking, an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of the U.S. workforce.
The holiday has its roots in the late 19th century, when labor activists pushed for federal recognition of the many contributions of workers to the country’s wellbeing and prosperity.
At the time, the country was at the height of the Industrial Revolution, and workers were toiling away for 12 hours a day, seven days a week just to support the most basic of lifestyles. Even though child labor was restricted in some states, young children still worked in mills, factories, and mines across the U.S., and were paid just a fraction of what their adult counterparts brought home.
Labor unions grew more vocal about the need to establish and protect workers’ rights. Strikes and rallies were organized, and the idea of a “workingman’s holiday” started to take shape. Long before the federal government came on board, however, a number of municipalities and states were early adopters in the late 1800s.
True to its progressive roots and its habit of leading the way, New York was the first state to introduce a bill recognizing Labor Day, but Oregon beat us to the punch when it came to actually passing legislation, taking action on Feb. 21, 1887. That same year, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – followed suit.
About six years later, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and Congress really didn’t have much choice but to do something so as not to be left out in the cold. In June of that year – 1894 – it passed an act making the first Monday in September a legal, federal holiday, and President Grover Cleveland signed the measure into law not long after.
Congress and the president were acting in hopes of mending the relationship between the government and American workers, which had been sorely tested by the Pullman strike, led by Eugene V. Debs, in which the American Railway Union called for a nationwide boycott of the company’s railway cars and crippled rail traffic across the nation.
The federal government sent troops to Chicago to break up the strike, which sparked riots that lead to the deaths of several men.
Apparently, there’s a bit of an historical rivalry when it comes to the question of who first proposed Labor Day: Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor; or Matthew Maguire, who reportedly proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.
Both men attended the first Labor Day Parade held in New York City on Sept. 5,1882, which was actually a worker action, as some 10,000 people took unpaid time off from their jobs to march from City Hall to Union Square.
As for today, before I sign off for a few days – and before this post gets unreadably long – I should note that it’s V-J Day, (Victory Over Japan Day, which I know is a trigger for some folks), although the date of commemoration of that historic moment when Japan’s Emperor Hirohito broadcast the surrender to the Japanese people on Radio Tokyo depends on where in the world you live.
The U.S. marks the day on Sept. 2 because it was on this day in 1945 that the Instrument of Surrender was formally signed aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Japan’s Tokyo Bay.
The weather for this holiday weekend is looking like a mixed bag. Today will be nice, with temperatures in the low 80s and sunny skies, but things will go downhill from there, with scattered thunderstorms on Sunday and Monday. Enjoy the clear skies while you can, and get outside to stock up on that Vitamin D.
In the headlines…
President Biden traveled to Philadelphia to warn that America’s democratic values are under assault by forces of extremism loyal to ex-President Trump, using a prime-time address to define the midterm elections as a “battle for the soul of this nation.”
In a 24-minute speech, Biden blamed his predecessor for stoking a movement filled with election deniers and people calling for political violence, but he went out of his way to declare that not all Republicans embrace extremism.
Biden declared – with U.S. Marines stationed behind him against a dark red-backlit Independence Hall – that American citizens who support Trump “do not respect the Constitution” and may support violence to achieve political ends.
Biden responded to people who heckled him during his speech, saying that a democracy allows them to protest, adding: “They’re entitled to be outrageous. This is a democracy.”
Republicans blasted the speech, casting it as condescending and at odds with uniting the country, while the White House insisted it had not been overly political.
Democrats are entering the homestretch before November’s election in better shape, boosted by gains among independent voters, improved views of Biden and higher voting enthusiasm among abortion-rights supporters, a Wall Street Journal poll shows.
Initial filings for unemployment insurance fell to their lowest level since late June last week, a sign that the labor market is resilient amid a slowing economy.
Claims totaled a seasonally adjusted 232,000 for the week ended Aug. 27, a decline of 5,000 from the previous period and the lowest since June 25, the Labor Department reported.
The decline in first-time claims beat expectations from economists, who had predicted claims would increase. It also comes on the heels of several weeks of unexpected declines.
A retired New York Police Department officer was sentenced to a record-setting 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol and using a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Trump supporters.
Thomas Webster, 56, of Goshen, who swung the flagpole before tackling one officer and yanking his gas mask off during the riot, received the longest punishment handed down among the nearly 250 people sentenced so far for their roles in the insurrection.
A federal judge heard arguments on whether to appoint an outside legal expert to review government records seized by the FBI last month in a search of Trump’s Florida home, but made no immediate ruling or and did not provide a timeframe for one.
The judge did say she would make public a more detailed list of the items the FBI took during its search last month of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, opening the prospect of a much fuller picture of what documents might be among the classified material seized.
The judge signaled that she remained open to granting former Trump’s request to appoint an independent arbiter to go through documents the F.B.I. seized from him last month, but stopped short of making a final decision.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, aligned himself with Trump’s efforts to undercut federal law enforcement over the search of Mar-a-Lago, condemning the court-ordered seizure of classified documents as an “assault on democracy.”
The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reportedly worked behind the scenes to overturn the results of the 2020 election in at least two states, according to emails from Ginni Thomas to GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin she hoped to influence.
In a setback for Senator Lindsey Graham, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors can ask him about certain elements of his November 2020 phone calls with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.
Authorities in California asked residents to conserve energy as a heat wave scorched the western part of the U.S. and the state’s firefighters tried to contain two new wildfires.
California officials declared a statewide grid emergency to cope with surging demand for power amid a blistering heat wave, raising the prospect of rolling blackouts.
California state lawmakers this week passed an aggressive climate legislation package, including $54 billion in new spending on clean energy and drought resilience measures, and a bill to stop the planned closure of the state’s last nuclear plant.
An influential scientific panel recommended updated coronavirus booster shots to the vast majority of Americans, adding a critical new tool to the country’s arsenal as it tries to blunt an expected wintertime surge of the virus.
The new booster shot is a bivalent vaccine, meaning that it targets two versions of the coronavirus: the original strain, and the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. The previous booster shot targeted only the original version of the virus.
Deaths from Covid-19 are at some of their lowest rates in the United States since the start of the pandemic, but they’re still alarmingly high, according to some health officials.
Fall is on the horizon and public health officials are again bracing for another wave of Covid cases.
Ten weeks after the FDA and CDC opened the door for children under 5 years old to receive Covid-19 vaccines, the national drive to get the youngest children protected is off to an underwhelming and uneven start.
Some of the New Yorkers who left the Big Apple during the height of the Covid pandemic are starting to come back.
New state gun laws took effect yesterday in places like Times Square — but they might not remain that way for long, with a federal judge blasting Albany Democrats for their “unconstitutional” response to a controversial ruling by the US Supreme Court in June.
New York’s new concealed carry law, which sets requirements for applying for a license and where guns can be carried, survived an initial court challenge hours before it was set to take effect. But a federal judge in a ruling also called the measure unconstitutional.
Hochul declared at an event celebrating the implementation of stricter gun laws that the “theory” of “a good guy with a gun” stopping “bad guys” with guns is over in the Empire State.
Adams and Hochul are still at odds over what to do about the thousands of people who have sought concealed handgun permits statewide since the court’s ruling, which overturned New York’s prior restrictions in a major blow to supporters of gun-safety laws.
Hochul and Adams marked one year since the torrential rains and raging floods of Hurricane Ida left 13 dead across the city, mostly in Queens.
Contribution rates for public employers in New York are set to increase as Wall Street gyrations over the last several months have created headwinds for the state pension fund, New York Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office announced.
Next Tuesday the Farm Wage Board will make a recommendation to reduce the overtime threshold from 60 hours to 40 hours. And local members of the farming community worry about what this could mean for them.
The state Environmental Facilities Corp. agreed to pay a $500,000 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle allegations it repeatedly received payments from a clean water fund to pay for staffers working in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office.
Adams backed up embattled Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins on Thursday amid swirling controversy over his decision to go on a nearly two-week vacation in the midst of a city homeless shelter crisis.
“I have the utmost confidence in Gary — and Gary’s going nowhere,” Adams declared.
A NYPD police officer is under investigation after social-media video surfaced showing him knocking a woman to the ground during a scuffle as her boyfriend was arrested, prompting accusations of brutality and a vociferous defense from the mayor.
Adams backed an NYPD detective after police bodycam footage that showed a 19-year-old woman swearing and swinging at the officer before he shoved her to the sidewalk as the woman’s boyfriend was being placed under arrest.
An NYPD union may sue the 19-year-old woman who tried to interfere with her boyfriend’s arrest in Harlem — and was slugged by a city cop as a result.
New York Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell is helping Adams get a level of love from cop union leaders that would have been unthinkable while Bill de Blasio was still calling the shots in City Hall.
The New York City carriage industry along with Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents the people who drive them, called for legislation to bring more oversight to the controversial tourist attraction.
New York City workers are joining labor unions at a rate far higher than their counterparts in other cities — and at 10 times the national average.
Curtain Up, a three-day festival celebrating the return and revival of theater heads back to Times Square at the end of the month.
A federal labor official has concluded that the union victory by labor organizers at an Amazon.com facility in New York should be upheld, after the company contested the April results in which workers voted to establish a union at the tech giant.
City officials announced that second doses of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine to combat monkeypox, which had been held back because of supply concerns, would now be available.
The organization that runs a homeless drop-in center where a staff member was critically injured this week by a mentally ill man wielding a sword said the incident will not derail their resolve to continue serving “the most vulnerable in our community.”
In an ethics complaint filed this week, a Republican Assembly candidate, Dave Catalfamo, said he had proof that Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner’s district was redrawn to maximize her chances of winning reelection.
The town of Petersburgh is suing 3M, DuPont Co. and several other chemical manufacturers seeking compensation for the contamination of groundwater and drinking water supplies with manmade chemicals that were used at a local plastics company.
Nauman Hussain’s attorneys made clear that since his plea deal avoiding jail in the 2018 Schoharie limo crash case was tossed, he intends to place the blame on Mavis Discount Tire and the state of New York at trial.
The state Office of the Attorney General has served subpoenas on two former Saratoga Springs officials as it seeks more information for its civil rights probe into police treatment of Black Lives Matter protesters.
Three more cast members are departing SNL before the start of its 48th season: Melissa Villaseñor, Alex Moffat and Aristotle Athari.
Serena and Venus Williams lost in the first round of doubles at the U.S. Open to the Czech pair of Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova 7-6 (5), 6-4 in Arthur Ashe Stadium last night.
