Remember why (and who)

As many of us gather for parades, barbecues and festivities in honor of the many men and women -- past and present -- who toil day in and day out in hopes of a better life, let us not forget the 31 million who will be celebrating this Labor Day from the unemployment line.

Let us not forget that their burden is not theirs to carry alone. Let today serve as a reminder that the jobless are jobless through no fault of their own. They are casualties of the gravest recession since the Great Depression -- and they deserve our help.

They deserve a hand in the fight to get back to work. They deserve a decent paycheck -- not a meager unemployment benefit. They deserve to know where they'll be laying their head next month when the foreclosure notice shows up.

Neil also has some good historical posting for today.

Happy Labor Day (more in the sense of "Happy it's a paid federal holiday and we can sleep in!" than "Happy everything's super awesome on the labor front!").

From that socialist/communist hive of scum and villainy, the United States Department of Labor:

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. ... In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states---Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York---created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

But Tsk Tsk to Democratic President Grover Cleveland, who signed the bill only as an act of political make-up sex during election season after his tough tactics backfired during the Pullman strike. And to think I set up an Act Blue page for him.

Today we salute the working men and women of America.  All six of you.