The American labor movement began as a way to recognize the contribution of workers to the development of the United States.
It was proposed by trade unionists late in the 19th century and in 1894 became a federal holiday celebrated in 30 states.
To progress! (from 1913)
Imagine, a holiday not only honoring workers in unions but also giving them equal credit – with corporate leaders – for this country’s achievements.
Is that socialism?
Is it communism?
I don’t think so.
Once upon a time this was the American way.
Amen to that!
We still celebrate Labor Day in 21st century America but these days it’s more about the long weekend and the sales being offered online. The latter corporately curated for our shopping pleasure by an elite, profit-driven tech oligarchy of owners.
They are said to be innovators but what they do remains a mystery to most of us. It’s not like they are constructing bridges, buildings or cars.
Whatever this monstrosity is doesn’t count
Instead they create methodology behind-the-scenes and deliver it to us.
Not primarily in the form of a cool phone or easy-to-use computer anymore.
But in platforms of supposed digital connection and technology credited to a very small cadre or mostly bro-y guys who take the lion’s share of the bows for the societal changes they’ve wrought and the many billions they’ve earned.
Ugh do I have to see this movie?!
But that seems apt.
Because if it felt as if they were bringing us together at one point that is no longer the case.
More recently the overbearing reality of “artificial intelligence,” whether we like it or not, not to mention the brazen algorithms that shove whatever product you clicked on last down your throat in endless ads and variations each time you scroll one of their platforms, have made us pretty much loathe their product and them.
That’s a hard pass from us
And made us prouder than ever to be a mere laborer.
It’s true.
Almost no one else can compete with the lavish homes and grand ballrooms they party at all across the world.
And often with interchangeable versions of each other.
“Cool” should definitely be in quotes
They launch themselves into space, get married in over-the-top gazillion dollar weddings for the world to see and hopefully envy, and endure a series of state-of-the-art cosmetic procedures and makeovers that change them physically but make them no more attractive to anyone with what we used to refer to in my younger days as a moral conscience.
Case in point on the latter score: The many millions contributed by each to the construction of an almost half a billion dollars’ worth of ballroom no one asked for that will replace the historic east wing of the White House.
A vision into the not so distant future
Rest assured they didn’t do it so they could have an event to celebrate their workers one Labor Day in the future.
They did it….
…Well, we know why they did it and for whom they did it.
Money money money
The question is, what the heck is the point of being a billionaire if you can’t say no to something you don’t want to do?
Which leads us to only one conclusion.
Their actions are exactly who they are.
That is affirmative
As for we workers, it’s always good to remember there are A LOT more of us than there are of them.
And that we Americans built the country too And have a holiday named after us.
They don’t.
There is no Federal Oligarch Day.
Yet.
Let’s keep it that way
So this weekend, and week, have a barbecue and ponder that.
And know that you don’t have to just accept a data center in your backyard or listen to a fake new computerized songstress whose talent was illegally stolen, I mean programmed, from every great singer who ever lived, on your Apple Music or Spotify playlist.
I live in Los Angeles and Adam Schiff is my senator.
Yup. Him.
This guy right here
The guy who was head of the House Intelligence Committee from 2019-2023. The one who was lead impeachment manager in the first impeachment trial of the 45th president of the U.S.
The Jewish guy Trump still refers to as Shifty Schiff.
Cannot roll my eyes more
I can’t claim to know FOR SURE what POTUS means by the nickname, meaning I can’t prove it in a court of law. But what I do know is that one of the racist stereotypes about we Jews is that we’re shifty. Meaning you can’t trust us.
Apparently this dates back to the 12th century when French theologian Peter of Blois introduced the idea that we Jews could change shapes in order to deceive people. He likened us to The Devil, who I guess is a guy able to morph into monstrous shapes in order to advance his own nefarious, and bottom line poisonous, agenda to turn the world against itself.
Obfuscating who you really are and what you truly want to do by posing as a bottom line nice guy who cares?
Imagine!
Red tie and all
Well, what do I know? The fact is, we Jews don’t believe in the Devil or even Hell.
Though nefarious and bottom line poisonous agendas are a fact of life you accept the older you get. You can’t prove them in a court of law but, like obscenity, you get to know them when you see them.
As I watch tens of thousands of federal workers fired without reason by button-pushing twenty-something DOGE bros, many of them self-avowed racists; veterans benefits being slashed, and the hollowing out of every major government agency by new leadership who previously questioned the very necessity of that agency, my obscenity buzzer has been going off non-stop. (Note: As opposed to getting off, which seems likely to soon become a punishable felony if Project 2025’s plan to outlaw porn on the Internet becomes the reality there is no reason to believe it won’t be.)
Think I should try wiggling my nose?
I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to wonder if it’s a good thing to have our new Secretary of Health and Human Services reacting to a concerning outbreak of measles in the southwest by suggesting the use of cod liver as a remedy before a proven 97% effective measles vaccine. A shot that quickly became a CURE for a lethal and HIGHLY contagious disease that infected 3-4 million people annually and killed many, many thousands, mostly children, prior to the mid-1960s.
A disease that was deemed eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, before vaccine skeptics like Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began muddying the waters.
Too much?
Can I prove in court Sec. Kennedy is responsible for the rise in measles, or that his heroic father, the late Robert F Kennedy, Sr., is rolling over in his grave at his son’s actions? Certainly not.
No more than I can prove it’s not a good idea to have a guy who has zero medical training who very publicly waxed nostalgic recently about his early days as a heroin addict because it allowed him to finally focus in college, as HHS secretary for 360 million people.
You just get a feeling about things.
That sums it up
And when you pay attention to facts and deeds – not as you want them to be but as what they really are – you begin to find that your instincts about more than you can imagine turn out to be spot on.
For instance, imagine literally watching one very large and powerful country – okay, let’s say Russia – drop a bunch of bombs on a much smaller country – fine, for argument’s sake let’s say the Ukraine – three years ago in videos from right, left and center news sources all over the world.
What videos??
Then imagine, just a week or two ago, the president of another large country – YOUR country – and for lack of a better example and because so many readers live in America, let’s say it’s the United States – claiming that Ukraine was the real culprit because it was Ukraine that actually invaded Russia three years ago?
Would you believe that leader of the United States, or what you and everyone else saw through their own eyes. More importantly, based on facts and experience, would you blanketly believe ANYTHING said, by that particular leader of the United States, about anything important ever again?
Uh… sure
And let’s go further, would you even believe them about the price of eggs???
When the richest man in the world – Elon Musk – gleefully bounced up and down brandishing a bejeweled chain saw a few weeks ago at an ultra-conservative political conference, reveling in all the billions of dollars in government jobs and services he was, ahem, cutting (Note: In fact, it turned out it was merely in the low hundreds of millions, not billions) it was bad enough.
But once you heard the president of U.S. encourage him to cut even more, it began to make me wonder about…a lot of things.
I’m getting good at these
And as I listenied to #47 bore into Social Security during his speech before Congress last week, lying about billions of dollars of payments to scamming and dead US citizens up to 350 years old that were still listed on the digital payroll (Note: It turns out that these dozens of thousands of people listed digitally receive ZERO payments because it’s more expensive and confusing to the system to erase their names digitally) my obscenity buzzer began to go off.
Again.
And incessantly.
Red flags everywhere!
Especially after in his speech he declared Mr. Musk the head of DOGE, publicly and forcefully contradicting the legal briefs he had government lawyers file just days before that Mr. Musk was NOT running the agency but was merely an advisor.
And especially in light of DOGE’s most controversial move weeks before. The courts granting them permission to copy ALL of the digital information on EVERY AMERICAN the social security administration has on file in the entire country. That’s everyone who works or has ever worked. Almost ALL of us.
And not just our payments. Where we live. Where we bank. How much we earn. Our next of kin. Our medical records. Where we vote. What we own.
ALL. OF. IT.
I’m outtie
Now, what could the richest man in the world – a tech genius with billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts, a guy who contributed approximately $300 million, likely more, to get #47 elected, be planning to do with that information, along with the guy he helped get elected? What did that money buy him but, more importantly, was his technological acumen able to provide #47 anything ELSE in return?
If you believe what he was spouting while waving that chainsaw up in the air, like a Roman warrior about to make a kill, this is all about saving the government money. But in what way? And how will we ever know?
Uh oh they’re back
Social security payments in the hands of the richest man in the world who grew up in apartheid South Africa with a father who was a proud neo-Nazi and has blamed the LGBTQ woke community for turning one of his children trans, does not bode well for people like me and Sen Schiff. (Note: And forget he’s got 13 offspring. And counting).
Nor does #47’s proclamation in his speech last week that “God saved” him from an assassin’s bullet during his presidential campaign to make America great again.
Am I repeating myself again?
Instead consider — what exactly does THAT mean? And for whom? And how?
I can’t prove it in a court of law, but whatever it is it doesn’t bode well for democracy.
notes from a chair 