Daily Archives: 23 July 2010

Leftists hire professional revolutionaries to pursue agenda

Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.

. . . . the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he’s grateful for the work, even though he’s not sure why he’s doing it. “I could care less,” he says. “I am being paid to march around and sound off.”

. . . . In California, one group is offering to pay $10 and up per hour to activists to hold signs in demonstrations against foam cups and plastic bags. (Read more from online.wsj.com)

Russia’s Rusting Gold

Here’s a head scratcher: as everyone knows from elementary chemistry courses, gold is the most inert metal in the world – it does not rust, nor corrode. Yet this is precisely what Russian commercial precious metal trading company, International Reserve Payment System, discovered on thousands of (allegedly) 999 gold coins “St George” issued by the Central Russian Bank. The serendipitous discovery occurred after various clients of the company had requested that their gold be stored not in a safe, but in a far more secure place: “buried under an oak tree.” As the website of IRPS president German Sterligoff notes: once buried, “the coins began to oxidize under the influence of moisture.” And hence the headscratcher: nowhere in history (that we know of) does 999, and even 925 gold, oxidize, rust, stain, spot or form patinas, under any conditions. (Read more from zerohedge.com)

Rusting Russian Gold

Obviously, global warming is much more severe than we thought.

re: Discrimination

Dear Sirs:
In his letter published in the August 2nd, 2010 edition Mr. Ken Jansen states that there is a “public accommodations principle” that requires Somali taxi drivers to pick up passengers who they find to be objectionable and that “we rightfully forbid many forms of discrimination”. In a rhetorical slight of hand Mr. Jansen states that these taxi drivers should “get out of the public accommodation business.” But the taxi drivers are not in the public accommodation business; they are in the taxi business. They have invested significant time and money in their businesses and have every right to defend their lives and property from those whom they deem objectionable. As a more powerful example, Mr. Jansen cites laws against discrimination in hotel accommodations. What Mr. Jansen overlooks in both cases is the sanctity of property rights and that failing to offer a service or buy a service does not cause anyone harm. The fact that I buy my groceries from A instead of B does not mean that I have harmed B. Likewise, by refusing to sell a product that I own to A and not B, no matter how objectionable the reason, causes no harm to B. Real harm is physical harm; but there is no physical harm in refusing to act in a manner that “society” dictates. In a truly free society, a business owner who discriminates for reasons that society finds objectionable would find his business in decline. My wife still refuses to eat at Denny’s due to media reports years ago, whether true or not, that some restaurants discriminated on the basis of race. Our modern theory of justice has been so perverted that property rights are deemed to disappear as soon as one offers a product or service for sale. This is not justice but tyranny. (from patrickbarron.blogspot.com)