Labor Day 2025, hits different this year.

 

-Norman Rockwell, "The Lineman" 1948

Labor Day 2025.  

Usually Labor Day is the perfect holiday for me.  No expectations to buy or fulfill some ritual - just a day to celebrate working people and spend time with the ones you love.  

I did that part.  I had dinner with my wife and sons (and my older son's wife and son).  Saw a movie with my younger son, enjoyed to perfect weather, spent time with my lovely wife.  But the part where we celebrate the working people of the world?  Felt different.

I started a new job in 2025.  A position I trained and worked hard to move into.  One that was something I could work in with stability and maybe retire out of.  I was proud of what I had accomplished.

Then the President of the United States and The Wealthiest Man in the World created a scheme to take away my livelihood.  I had never missed a day, I had never had anything but positive statements in my review, I had never not fulfilled a single duty of that position.  None of that mattered.  

The Unions sued for breach of contract (which is was) and won and then Donald J. Trump declared almost all Federal Employee Unions illegal.  In one fell swoop he became the most Anti-Worker, Anti-Union President in a century.  The NTEU had represented Treasury Workers for 87 years. The NLRB, which has functioned for 90 years, was declared unconstitutional.

Worker's rights are being eroded like every other right American's have enjoyed since the New Deal.  My Governor is calling a special session to take away Congressional representation for my city. I fear for my family, I fear for my community. I fear for my nation, I fear for the world.

People speak out - we were not silent, my city joined my nation in a giant Labor Day Middle Finger towards those who would unravel this thing called America.

https://fox4kc.com/news/workers-unions-community-members-gather-for-mass-rally/

But despite this the reality of the Post-Prosperity America has hit most of us:

Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

https://www.wsj.com/economy/wsj-norc-economic-poll-73bce003?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

That sounds astoundingly negative - but is it wrong?  After a BRIEF period of post-covid employee empowerment aided by the Joe Biden being the most Pro-Labor President of my lifetime - the new reality is setting in.   Corporations collude to lay off and downsize workers even in years of record breaking profits and know they are not limited by courts, lawmakers, or mass/social media because they own all three.  The astonishingly wealthy President and Richest Man in the World who decided the world could not afford the good health insurance my child has had these last 8 months both own their own Social Media platforms where they elevate their own ideas of a world of Avarice and Suffering and suppress any notions of the dignity of hard work, honesty, and integrity.

I fear for this world.  The world could lose all the billionaires tomorrow and we would *ALL* be just as fine or better off for it.  We could not say the same about Linemen, Plumbers, Teachers, IT People, Sanitation Workers or Nurses.

I am still proud of my working class heritage and values.  But I fear for a world where it is open season on the people who get the work done.

Getting out the Message in the year of Chaos.

 At the encouragement of local Democrats in Kansas City I reached out to local news regarding various DOGE cuts back in February.  I learned if you have a compelling story and do your homework to make it easy to present, screen time is not hard.  I gave interviews, went to rallies, communicated events to journalists, and gave an informed but from the heart sharing of what was happening.

The first round of illegal cuts/firing, the return to work after a ruling, and then later with the dissolving of Federal Unions and the most anti-worker, anti-veteran, anti-American administration in American history and the impact of that administration's actions - got a chance to comment on all of it.

Really impressed with the speed and professionalism of our local journalists here in Kansas City.

KCTV5 

4/3/2025 MSNBC Repost:

KCTV5 from MSN Clip (Video from above)

FOX4

P Published Mar 3, 2025

Fox4 Clip from Above

KCTV5 follow up after Court Case:

Published: Mar. 17, 2025

KCTV5 Clip from Above

And I responded to interviews, went to rallies, promoted rallies and generally tried to get information out of there.  

It's important to let us all know that we are not alone.  Most people don't want soldiers in the streets, cuts to the most vulnerable, important services stripped bare and made ineffective, and America and what it means to be diminished at home and in the world.  

*-Note - The camera REALLY gave me the motivation to stop stress eating as a response to all of this.

Shocked and Awed

If you ever box or wrestle, you might have to fight an opponent where you know the strategy is to wear you down, not to necessarily throw the best attacks out there but to always be attacking in every way to just exhaust you.

That is how it feels to be an American right now.  As more military is deployed inside the U.S. not to fight some Army or to rescue people from disaster, but to back up ICE and other agents mass arresting people who show up to work. or school, or court... our Supreme Court is teeing up another blow.  6 decisions getting dropped on a Friday on the last day of a session which is where they put stinkers.  

Can courts prevent illegal actions by the government?  Can President's revoke citizenship?  Does Congress matter?   These are going to come down hard.

Meanwhile the Senate is deciding just how much SNAP and Medicaid need to be cut to offset tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations.  Sick people.  

I refuse to fall, but the constant attacks on everything good and decent our nation has made by a cabal of the most avaristic people of all time is gruesome.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-meets-friday-decide-040150225.html

Feb 28th to Buy Nothing

 

Give Thanks and Celebrate in Times of Plenty

Give Thanks and Celebrate in times of plenty.

These times are not guaranteed.

It's Thanksgiving 2024.  I'm blessed with loving family and wonderful friends.  My household has steady income, working cars, a roof over our heads and the chance to spoil ourselves from time to time.

My countrymen are booking record travel for the Holidays and are likely going to enjoy record Gift Giving for each other.  This is good.  Celebrate one another.  Celebrate good times.

Enjoy this Holiday Season, it may be the last "Normal" Holiday Season we have for a while.

Much has happened.  The election hit like a knife in the back of everything we are when Americans are being our best.  We have gone from Early November when the winner of the election claimed to have never heard of Project 2025 to Late November when he is appointing the authors into Cabinet Positions.

There is a project for Billionaires to engage in their favorite hobby of explaining why our society can't afford food stamps of $6 a day for poor children and demanding - via messages sent from their yachts - that they eat just a little less.  Someone must sacrifice you see.

Unlike 2017, the institutions and guardrails and checks and balances our nation built for centuries have been declared unconstitutional by our Federalist Society Courts and there is no power to reign in what is coming.  What is coming is chaos.

The principle of Chesterston's Fence is "Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place." and when "Deregulators" put the trespassers in charge of fence removals we are about to learn - in hard and painful ways - why our institutions were made.

The elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Labor Relations Board, the Department of Education, The Affordable Care Act and many others has been on the radar of Project 2025ers for some time.  All of these have saved American dollars, American jobs and American lives.

Brexit inflicted tremendous pain on most Britons and now we have voted to inflict a much greater pain.

I expect a sugar high for months, maybe a year, where "Boy, we never needed those hand guards on the grinding machine!" before the bleeding and looting become unignorable.

I don't know how to stop this pain.  Be twenty times as cautious in your personal dealings and assume no rules protect you? But I know this:

Appreciate the good times with your family and loved ones.  Put up the tree, share gifts, give thanks, appreciate each other.  Build those bonds that may be tested in harder harsher times. 

Photo Credit: Johnny Dare

Another Labor Day!

 Another Labor Day has come to a close.  I spent the day teaching my son about medical self care and then closing the pool the last day we could swim in it.

I'm blessed with Family.

I'm blessed with love.

Some big challenging changes are happening with my family bit we will get through.

This was going to be a big year, Election, Olympics, big pushes in technology.  People are feeling it... the sensation that 5 years have happened in the last 6 months.

I'm hoping we see some Labor wins soon.  During the Pandemic there was alot of loss but a moment of power and leverage when "Essential" people learned that the world grinds to halt without them, but the we can have the wealthiest jaunt off to some island and everything keeps going smooth.  A big backlash to that... but the fundamental truths remain.

Happy Labor Day!

INDEPENDENCE DAY (A Nation Worth Fighting For)

 July 4th, 1776 was the day of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We rejected Kings and the idea that it was the will of God that a handful of Despots rule over us, unaccountable to laws or to the people they preside over.

Rather:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

And:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Over the next centuries most of the world followed suit to some degree.  The idea of being born into this life with "Rights" instead of a "Station" spread.  Slavery was abolished, protections for everyday people became an endeavor of the state.  Lives lengthened, knowledge expanded, innovation grew.  

Later today I am going to drink red white and blue energy drinks and shoot off fireworks and enjoy being an over-the-top silly patriotic American.  But I while doing so I am reminded of my beliefs and our American values.  I believe that, despite recent opinions of a few, we are still a nation of laws where all men and women are created equal and that it is place and ideal worth fighting for.  Liberty and Justice for All. No More Kings.

We are lucky to be the inheritors of such a tradition.

The full text and image of the Declaration of Independence is here via the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript