Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to the final day of January. Spring will be here in about 49 days. Right around the corner.
We just have to get through some sub-zero weather first. No biggie. Seriously, though, I’m looking at the week ahead and I see both 40 degrees and – not 24 hours later, mind you – minus 8.
WTF Mother Nature? Who peed in your cornflakes?
I am the sort of person who spends a lot of time dwelling on the past. Spare me the lectures, OK? This is neither healthy nor smart, I am well aware.
In the interest of equal opportunity obsessing, I spend a fair bit of time “what-ifing” about the future, too. So, you know, I’ve got the anxiety thing covered on both ends.
Anyway, this is not meant to be true confession time, but rather an ask that you indulge me a bit of a look back to something that occurred over the weekend. It was something I definitely noticed but didn’t have a chance to share with you, because, you know, a girl’s got to take a break from the computer sometime.
On Jan. 29, 2009, then-President Barack Obama signed the first piece of legislation of his historic administration: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (“Act”).
This landmark act overturned the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which had severely restricted the time period for filing complaints of employment discrimination based on discriminatory pay.
In case you’re not aware of the backstory here, Lilly Ledbetter was hired by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Gadsen, Alabama in 1979 as one of the company’s first women hired at the management level. She was an overnight supervisor at first, and at the time, earned the same as the men who held that title.
Ledbetter faced considerable prejudice and discrimination during her employment, but she stuck to her guns and stuck around Goodyear, because working there had been – believe it or not – her dream job.
Almost two decades into her employment, and shortly before she was planning to retire, Ledbetter received an anonymous tip that she was, in fact, earning considerably LESS than the men who were doing equivalent jobs – like thousands upon thousands of dollars less – even though she had out-performed many of them, and received formal recognition for that.
And so what did she do? What any red-blooded American would, she sued.
Ledbetter’s sex discrimination case made it all the way up to the nation’s highest court where, as you already know, she lost.
The decision said she was supposed to have filed her complaint within 180 days of receiving her first unequal paycheck, which was, of course, impossible, since she had no way of knowing that she was making less than her male counterparts until someone spilled the beans on that, because she signed a contract promising not to discuss pay rates with her co-workers.
By signing the act into law, Obama amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act and made it the last of the land that each paycheck containing discriminatory compensation is a separate violation. When the unequal pay actually started is irrelevant, which means you can file an unpair compensation complaint within 180 days of any paycheck, because the timeline resets ever time to get paid.
This past weekend marked the 14th anniversary of the signing of the Lily Ledbetter Act, (I KNOW! Where does the time go?). Sadly, however, we still have a lot of work to do as a country when it comes to getting women on equal financial footing as men.
As President Biden, who, of course, was VP Biden when the aforementioned act got signed, noted in statement marking this milestone: “Women workers, who perform essential work for our economy and families, are still paid, on average, 84 cents for every dollar paid to men. For women of color, the gap is even greater.”
And the gender wage gap is even worse for women of color.
And pay discrimination is lurking everywhere – even at the very highest levels of society, in corporate America, certainly, and also in athletics.
Just last week, as it happens, Biden signed into law the Cantwell-Capito Equal Pay for Team USA Act, which ensures all athletes representing this country in international competition, (Olympics, Paralympics, World Cup etc.), receive equal pay and benefits, regardless of their gender.
At the state and local levels, New York has made some advancements on the pay equity front in recent years. And as of this past September, private employers in NYC are required to disclose salary ranges (or “range of compensation”) in job postings. (The debate over who benefits when this information is disclosed is ongoing).
As for Lily Ledbetter the person, well, she’s doing pretty well for herself. She’s still around, and at the ripe old age of 84, has become an women’s rights advocate, public speaker and author. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2011.
I started with the weather, and, as usual, I will end there, too. Today will be colder – in the low 30s – with partly cloudy skies.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden intends to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11, the White House said.
The statement from the Office of Management and Budget came in response to two pieces of legislation introduced by House Republicans seeking to end both emergency declarations.
The move would formally restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.
The World Health Organization said Covid-19 remains a global health emergency as the world enters the fourth year of the pandemic, but it’s hopeful that the world will transition out of the emergency phase this year.
Covid-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death among children in the United States, according to a study published yesterday.
Children are significantly less likely to die from Covid-19 than any other age group – less than 1% of all deaths since the start of the pandemic have been among those younger than 18, according to federal data. But it’s rare for kids to die for any reason.
New research in the journal Nature Human Behaviour concludes that the combination of pandemic-related school closures, the shift to virtual learning where it was even an option and the mental health toll on students set kids back by about a third of a year.
The analysis concluded as much based on a review of 42 other studies conducted in 15 countries. Nearly all the world’s student population experienced school closures because of COVID.
The federal government awarded more than $5.4 billion in Covid loans to businesses with “questionable” Social Security numbers, according to an alert issued by the government’s Covid watchdog, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC).
In 2021, the U.S. spent 17.8 percent of GDP on health care, nearly double the average of 9.6 percent for high income countries, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund.
Fertility rates in the U.S. increased in 2021 for the first time since 2014, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Biden’s State of the Union address, set to take place on Feb. 7, will be attended by the parents of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who was brutally beaten by Memphis police officers before his death.
The Memphis Police Department confirmed that two additional officers had been taken off duty in connection with Nichols’ death, saying little except that the two were under investigation.
A police report written hours after officers beat Nichols was starkly at odds with what videos have since revealed, making no mention of the powerful kicks and punches unleashed on him and instead claiming that he was violent.
A new Marist poll found that 62% of Americans think the state of the union is not very strong or not strong at all.
Long-needed improvements are coming to train travel along the nation’s busy Northeast Corridor, thanks in part to the federal infrastructure funding package that Biden signed into law in the fall of 2021.
Biden is finally getting some good transportation news to talk about, with back-to-back appearances near rail lines in Baltimore and New York City.
The president celebrated the planned replacement of a 150-year-old tunnel in Baltimore, burnishing his “builder-in-chief” credentials on friendly political territory, a sharp contrast to Washington’s partisan debt battle.
Biden has ruled out sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, despite renewed calls from Ukrainian officials for air support.
Asked if the United States would provide the jets, Biden told reporters at the White House, “No.”
Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer was selected to head a new leadership arm for House Democrats, giving the congressman an elevated position in the caucus after he stepped down from his top post at the end of the last Congress.
Donald Trump is suing author Bob Woodward over eight hours of interviews taped between 2019 and 2020.
The lawsuit, which also names Woodward’s publisher, asks for $49 million in damages. Trump’s lawyers contend the release of the recordings in audiobook format violated Woodward’s promise to use them “for the sole purpose of a book.”
Trump trashed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for being too liberal on COVID and vaccine policies as their Republican presidential rivalry starts to heat up.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence to a grand jury about Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against him in the coming months.
Lawmakers pushed back after Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed 11th-hour changes to a measure expanding the types of damages that could be won in wrongful death cases.
Hochul said she will not sign the measure on her desk that seeks to expand wrongful death damages as it is written. Instead, she wants lawmakers to amend the bill to exempt medical malpractice claims from the changes that would be made to existing law.
With Hochul looking to make fresh changes to bail reform, lawmakers held a hearing in Albany yesterday to take an in-depth look at crime statistics.
“We’re not asking to gut bail, we’re asking how do we address it in the important questions,” said Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan, who is the head of the state’s district attorneys association.
Officials from Hochul’s administration shared data showing there’s been little difference in the number of people rearrested pretrial from before the changes were passed to a couple of years after implementation.
A pair of Democratic senators – Michael Gianaris and Brad Hoylman-Sigal – are calling for ethic reforms following a heated fight over Hochul’s pick to head up the state’s judiciary.
Campaigns that spend big to promote nominees for appointed office in New York state should be required to disclose their donors, Democrats in the state Senate said.
Hochul’s plan to build 800,000 new homes over the next 10 years statewide is running into a familiar obstacle: suburbanites.
Lawmakers are working with state Office of Court Administration officials to make changes to Kyra’s Law, a bill aimed at protecting children through divorce or custody proceedings.
A judge has tossed a former New York state lawyer’s suit claiming he was fired for cooperating with the probe into sexual harassment allegations against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Mayor Eric Adams is pushing for the city to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention, but Chicago and Atlanta are also contenders.
Adams admitted some fault when talking about the uproar over the Empire State Building lighting up green in support of the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Unfortunately someone did not get the memo at the Empire State Building,” Adams said. “That got away from us the way the Eagles game got away from us with the Giants.”
The building rocked green and white at its top following Philadelphia’s NFC Championship win over the San Francisco 49ers … and it was immediately met with a ton of backlash, considering the Eagles are one of the New York Giants’ biggest rivals.
By 2030, any Lyft or Uber will be an electric car, Adams promised in his State of the City – a key step to curb greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst outcomes of climate change. How ride sharers will get to that point, though, is still unclear.
Adams offered more detail into his thoughts on the police-involved killing of Tyre Nichols and defended his decision last year to reinstate an NYPD anti-gun unit similar to the one involved in Nichols’ death.
A group of asylum seekers in Midtown refused to board buses heading to a pop up shelter inside Brooklyn’s Cruise Terminal, calling it “inhumane.”
Dozens of asylum seekers continued to camp out in front of a Hell’s Kitchen, saying they’d rather sleep on the street than accept beds at the new mega migrant shelter, where they fear they wouldn’t be able to keep warm or access basic amenities like showers.
A spokesman for City Hall said that the facility was temperature-controlled and included assigned storage spaces, and suggested that the disruption at the Watson was incited by activists.
A lawsuit against Adams’ administration filed Friday accuses the city of illegally failing to process food benefits and cash aid programs in a timely manner, leaving New Yorkers destitute for months at a time.
The artist Shahzia Sikander calls the eight-foot female sculpture she has placed atop a New York courthouse an urgent form of “resistance.”
The City of Troy’s Public Utilities department found elevated levels of lead in the water of four out of 60 homes and buildings tested around the city last year.
The City Council has been reviewing the potential impact the 100 apartment units planned for the Troy Atrium Redevelopment project will have on the city-owned portion of the site that will be the future home of the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market.
A coalition of advocates who oppose an ongoing merger between Schenectady’s Ellis Medicine and St. Peter’s Health Partners has launched an online survey to assess whether existing agreements have already impacted access to services in the community.
Former state Sen. Sue Serino, a Republican who represented the 41st Senate District in the Hudson Valley from 2016 through 2022, will run for Dutchess County executive in 2023.
A 35-foot male humpback whale became stranded and died after it washed up on the shore of a Long Island beach yesterday morning, officials said.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin posted his first public video on Instagram since his near-death on-field collapse.
Actress Cindy Williams, who played the bubbly, optimistic sidekick to Penny Marshall’s edgier Laverne in the 1970s and ′80s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” has died at age 75.
