International Workers' Day

International Workers' Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Khrushchev and Politburo members atop Lenin's Tomb, May Day, 1957

In 1889, a meeting in Paris was held by the first congress of the Second International, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne which called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests.^[2] May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891.^{[citation needed]} Subsequently, the May Day Riots of 1894 occurred. In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." The congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on 1 May, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."^[9] Across the globe, labor activists sought to make May Day an official holiday to honor labor and many countries have done so.

May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist and anarchist groups. May Day has been an important official holiday in countries such as the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries^{[citation needed]}.

In 1955, the Catholic Church dedicated 1 May to "Saint Joseph The Worker". Saint Joseph is for the Church the patron saintof workers and craftsmen (among others).^[10]

During the Cold War, May Day became the occasional for large military parades in Red Square by the Soviet Union and attended by the top leaders of the Kremlin, especially the Politburo, atop Lenin's Tomb. It became an enduring symbol of that period.

History for May 1

History for May 1 - On-This-Day.com
Benjamin Henry Latrobe 1764 - Architect known for his design of the United States Capitol and the Baltimore Basilica, Kate Smith 1909 - Singer, Glen Ford 1916 - Actor ("Gilda", "The Courtship of Eddie's Father") 


Jack Paar 1918 - Radio and television comedian, talk show host ("The Tonight Show"), Joseph Heller 1923 - Novelist, short story writer, playwright, Scott Carpenter 1925 - One of NASA's original seven astronauts 


Judy Collins (Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins) 1939 - Singer and songwriter, Rita Coolidge 1945 - Singer, Tim McGraw 1967 - Country musician 


1707 - England, Wales and Scotland were united to form Great Britain. 


1863 - In Virginia, the Battle of Chancellorsville began. General Robert E. Lee's forces began fighting with Union troops under General Joseph Hooker. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own soldiers in this battle. (May 1-4) 


1883 - William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) had his first Wild West Show. 


1889 - Asa Candler published a full-page advertisement in The Atlanta Journal, proclaiming his wholesale and retail drug business as "sole proprietors of Coca-Cola ... Delicious. Refreshing. Exhilarating. Invigorating." Mr. Candler did not actually achieve sole ownership until 1891 at a cost of $2,300. 


1898 - The U.S. Navy under Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines. 


1927 - Adolf Hitler held his first Nazi meeting in Berlin. 


1931 - The Empire State Building in New York was dedicated and opened. It was 102 stories tall and was the tallest building in the world at the time. 


1937 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II. 


1948 - The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed. 


1960 - Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Powers was taken prisoner. 


1961 - Fidel Castro announced there would be no more elections in Cuba. 



1992 - On the third day of the Los Angeles riots resulting from the Rodney King beating trial. King appeared in public to appeal for calm, he asked, "Can we all get along?" 



2011 - U.S. President Barack Obama announced that U.S. soldiers had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Report: Thousands of Lois Lerner emails recovered | TheBlaze.com

Report: Thousands of Lois Lerner emails recovered | TheBlaze.com:

"Federal investigators have found about 6,400 emails from disgraced former IRS worker Lois Lerner, and are in the process of getting those emails to Congress.

According to CNN, about 650 emails are from 2010 and 2011, and many of the rest are from 2012. Those are the years when the IRS has admitted to slow-walking requests from conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status."

The Climate Change War Heats Up

The Climate Change War Heats Up:

"We have to ask why our government is engaged in shutting down the coal-fired plants that provide the bulk of the electricity we use. This isn’t just a war on coal. It is a war on our entire economic system, capitalism. It is a war on Americans by their own government.

Lately, politicians at the federal level have declared war on those scientists whose research and findings have helped the public conclude, along with eighteen years of a natural cooling cycle, that “global warming” is no threat and that we have far greater threats to address than the vague notion that “climate change” is a problem we humans can affect in any way. We can’t and we don’t."

12 big car companies are trying to make working on your own car illegal

12 big car companies are trying to make working on your own car illegal - Watchdog.org
Going outside on a warm Saturday afternoon and working on your car is as American as apple pie, for now at least.

The Auto Alliance, a special interest group representing 12 big automobile companies from Ford to Toyota, is pushing an interpretation of a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that would put this do-it-yourself tradition in danger.

These 12 car companies are lobbying hard to make working on the electrical and computer components of your own car illegal. General Motors has told the Copyright Office that proponents of copyright reform mistakenly “conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle.”

General Motors also says that your car qualifies as a “mobile computing device.” Tinkering with it, therefore, could be a copyright violation because although you do own your car, you do not own the computer code inside it...

John Deere goes even further, making the case that you don’t actually own the tractor you buy. You’re just given a license to use it for an extended period of time. John Deere believes owners of tractors have “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.” 

Your tuition (and government money) at "work"---Due process for accused students would ‘chill’ assault reports, Texas Tech says

Due process for accused students would ‘chill’ assault reports, Texas Tech says

Texas Tech University doesn’t want anything to get in the way of students reporting their alleged sexual assaults. 
Not even a fair hearing for those they accuse.

The Daily Toreador reports that the administration wants students to see the disciplinary process as a “learning experience,” so giving them the common trappings of a courtroom would be harmful.

According to Dean of Students Amy Murphy:

Also a part of this model, she said, is the decision that students are not able to cross-examine witnesses, nor are the students’ advisers, during the hearing.

If cross-examination were to be allowed, she said, it would create a chilling effect for future possible reports.

“We want responding and reporting parties to talk to that investigator about the questions that they have for witnesses,” Murphy said, “the information that they want to see in that investigation report.”

That “investigator,” by the way, is “neutral,” according to Murphy.

Student Andy Johnson evidently has more intelligence than his dean:

“I can’t speak for other people and I’m only thinking about if I were accused,” he said, “but if it were me I’d be mad that no one could represent me. I’m a student. How am I supposed to know what to say and what not to say?”

He said if he could change the system, he would make it more like a court system because college is his real world right now, so it should resemble the real world.

In a related article, we’re told four times just how “unbiased” this investigator is:

The investigator, an unbiased fact gatherer within the Office of Student Conduct, will speak first with the student accused in the report or the person who initially filed the report, depending on the type of case, [Associate Director Brittany Todd] said. …

Susan Kruth of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education rips apart these justifications for depriving students of due process...

Senator Cruz Cosponsors Bipartisan Bill Protecting Individual Privacy

Senator Cruz Cosponsors Bipartisan Bill Protecting Individual Privacy:

"Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, released a statement about a bill which he co-sponsored, the USA Freedom Act of 2015, filed on April 28th, 2015. The bill works to reign in bulk record collection by the National Security Agency. His statement reads:"

Mo money for "edjukashun" gonna be the answer?---Not for the kids: 18 Detroit schools closed today because unionized teachers are at a rally

Marathon Pundit: Not for the kids: 18 Detroit schools closed today because unionized teachers are at a rally:
Not for the kids: 18 Detroit schools closed today because unionized teachers are at a rally
When public school teachers when they gather at rallies invariably they say their efforts are "for the kids."

Well, today thousands of Detroit students are staying home today because their teachers are at the state capitol for a protest.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Detroit Public Schools closed 18 schools today as hundreds of teachers headed to Lansing to rally against Gov. Rick Snyder's intended changes for the district.

"The union is up on its feet, ready to do what it takes to support our students and fight for their right to an equal, quality education," Steve Conn, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said in a news release.

The union said in the release that teachers were going to the Capitol to "express teachers' support for public education and determined opposition to Gov. Snyder's efforts to expand charters and the EAA [Education Achievement Authority] in Detroit."

"Hundreds of parents are probably taking an unplanned day off from work.

Why can't these teachers protest on the weekends when schools are closed?

Detroit parents should be rallying against their teachers."

I'm thinkin' the most hurtful trigger-word for liberal minorities would be "work"--- The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words

Michelle Malkin | » The Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words:
Thumper the Rabbit’s parents always taught him, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” 
If the left’s self-appointed Omniscient Diviners of True Meaning have their way, conservatives in the public square won’t be left with anything at all to say. 
Ever.

It’s a treacherous business exercising your freedom of speech in the age of Obama. 

As a public service, I present to you: 

“The 2012 Condensed Liberal Handbook of Racial Code Words.” 

Decoder rings, activate!

—Angry. On the campaign trail this summer, President Obama has become — in the words of the mainstream Associated Press — more “aggressive.” But don’t you dare call him “angry.” According to MSNBC host Toure, that’s racist!

“You notice he said ‘anger’ twice,” Toure fumed in response to a speech last week by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “He’s really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man.” Or maybe Romney is just accurately describing the singular temperament of the growling, finger-jabbing, failure-plagued demagogue-in-chief. It’s about the past four years, not 400 years. Sheesh.

—Chicago. The Obamas and their core team of astroturfers, pay-for-play schemers and powerbrokers hail from the Windy City. This is a simple geographic fact. But in progressive of pallor Chris Matthews’ world, it’s an insidious dog whistle. The frothing cable TV host attacked Republicans this week who have the gall to remind voters of the ruthless Chicago way.

“(T)hey keep saying Chicago, by the way. Have you noticed?” Matthews sputtered. “That sends that message: This guy’s helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods and screwing us in the ‘burbs.”

Actually, it’s a pointed reminder that the radical redistribution politics of Chicago-on-the-Potomac have done little to alleviate the suffering of impoverished Americans in violence-plagued, job-hungry inner cities everywhere. Racist!

—Constitution. Fox News contributor Juan Williams, who proudly calls himself a “real reporter,” has apparently added real telepathist to his curriculum vitae. Earlier this year, he read the minds of Republicans and conservatives whom he accuses of deep-seated bigotry when they show any public reverence for our founding principles, documents and leaders.

“The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message,” Williams wrote. “References to a lack of respect for the ‘Founding Fathers’ and the ‘Constitution’ also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core ‘old-fashioned American values.'”

So, if you ever find yourself wanting to hum the “Schoolhouse Rock” version of the Preamble, heed these three words: Stop the hate!

Read 'em all!

Israelis Were Asked to Name the ‘Worst’ U.S. President for Israel of the Last 40 Years. Guess Who They Chose. | TheBlaze.com

Israelis Were Asked to Name the ‘Worst’ U.S. President for Israel of the Last 40 Years. Guess Who They Chose. | TheBlaze.com:

"More than 60 percent of Israeli Jews named President Barack Obama as the “worst” U.S. president for Israel in the past four decades, according to a new poll published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal."

Headbanger? Oh baby, the boyz in the hood ain't gonna like this------Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says

Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says - The Washington Post:
"BALTIMORE — A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.
The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him.
His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court.
The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van.
It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe."

Poll: MSNBC least trustworthy source of news, Fox News ranked first---Fishwrap: Just 2% of younger Americans trust media to 'do the right thing'

Fishwrap: Just 2% of younger Americans trust media to 'do the right thing' | WashingtonExaminer.com

The media limps in dead last among institutions younger voters trust to "do the right thing," according to a new and massive Harvard University survey.
In the school's Institute of Politics poll of over 3,000 18-29-year-olds, a tiny 12 percent said they believe the do the right thing.
A whopping 88 percent said "sometimes" or "never."
Just 2 percent said they trusted the media to do the right thing "all of the time," and 39 percent said "never."

RELATED: Poll: MSNBC least trustworthy source of news, Fox News ranked first 

The poll is the latest nail in the media's coffin, a downward spiral that has resulted in fewer younger Americans reading traditional media and especially traditional platforms such as newspapers and magazines.
And for the industry, it could be even worse, coming in behind perennial last place finisher Congress, Wall Street and the federal government.
Topping the trust list were "scientists," the military and local police.

Venezuela Rations Electricity, Blames Climate Change

Venezuela Rations Electricity, Blames Climate Change - Breitbart
The Venezuelan government will begin rationing electrical supplies this week in response to high demand triggered by heat. 
Public employees will only have to work six hours a day until further notice, and police units will be sent to inspect private businesses to ensure they only use their allotted amounts. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza blamed the measures on climate change.

El Universal reports that the rationing was described by Arreaza as a “preventive action” to avoid blackouts. 

The Venezuelan government is responsible for providing electricity in the socialist nation, and concerns that power is running out in the OPEC nation have triggered alarm that power may be next on a list of basic scarcities in Venezuela that include milk, laundry detergent, and vegetable oil.

...Vice President Arreaza also made a bizarre call for the use of “autogenerated” electricity to reduce demand on the government’s plants. 

“Both the public sector as well as large [private] consumers should opt for autogeneration,” he said in the statement announcing the new plan. 

“That is to say, that they use their own equipment and plants to generate electricity, especially in peak hours, and not use the National System.”

Arreaza blamed capitalism and climate change for the growing energy crisis. 

“This is, of course, linked to global warming and the excessive industrialization of capitalism, which never stops, nor has ever stopped, for the effects that it can have on the climate, on society and on Mother Earth,” Mr. Arreaza said in public statements quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

The Venezuelan government has blamed capitalism almost without fault in response to all the nation’s scarcities, though opponents of the socialist state suggest that government mismanagement is a far more significant factor in their economic decline. 

Venezuela boasts some of the largest oil reserves in the world, much of which is used to curry favor with Caribbean nations in exchange for public support. 

The result is a significant loss in resources that could have been sold at market prices or traded for the basic goods for which Venezuela installed ration cards in March 2014: cooking oil, flour, milk, and other household objects. 

At one point in the summer of 2014, the Venezuelan government was forced to begin rationing water. 

Supermarket lines to buy household items routinely last up to six hours as demand for products has failed to meet supply.

So Why Exactly Does Baltimore Own a Money-Losing Hilton?

So Why Exactly Does Baltimore Own a Money-Losing Hilton? - Hit & Run : Reason.com
In the comments of my previous post on Baltimore's corporate welfare-tastic Camden Yards, Plàya Manhattan wrote: 
"No mention of the City of Baltimore owned Hilton?... It only lost $5.6 million last year. That's practically making money!"

And OMG it's true. 
Here's The Baltimore Sun from three weeks back:

The city-owned Hilton Baltimore convention center hotel lost $5.6 million last year — a worse performance than 2013 despite its close location to Camden Yards and the Orioles' playoff run.

It was the seventh consecutive year that the hotel has underperformed financially, according to an audit of financial statements presented Wednesday to the city's Board of Estimates. Under the deal's initial projections, the hotel was supposed to be making $7 million in profit by now — pumping that mone into the city's budget.

Well, I hope we can at least blame a current presidential candidate. Oh look, we can!

The 757-room convention center hotel opened in August 2008, two years after then-Mayor Martin O'Malley and the City Council authorized more than $300 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance its construction. The interest rates on the bonds range from 4.6 percent to nearly 5.9 percent. The hotel paid $15.6 million in interest last year.

The hotel has lost more than $70 million since it opened.

Look, the economics on this stuff is not obscure. 
Reason was writing about the well-documented "municipal money pits" of publicly financed  convention centers in 2002. 
A search through our archives on "convention center" and "subsidies" begins spitting out stuff in early 1980s. 
Wasting money on government capitalism is a deliberate, conscious choice, one that does material damage to polities. 
Every dollar, every ounce of managerial effort wasted on these boondoggles is an energy unit not expended covering the basics—public safety, protecting citizens’ rights, a clear and hopefully low-hassle regulatory and tax climate that allows individuals and businesses to create their own success, and so on...

Guess Who the 1st Legal Slave Owner in America Was? Don't Expect the Media to Report This

Guess Who the 1st Legal Slave Owner in America Was? Don't Expect the Media to Report This:

"Many Americans think they know the history of slavery because it has been taught in schools, repeated through popular films, and mentioned on numerous occasions by those in the media.

But here is something you probably didn’t know: The first recorded American slave owner was a black man."

THE BLUE-CITY MODEL

Instapundit » Blog Archive » THE BLUE-CITY MODEL:  The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial today, explaining how the …:
THE BLUE-CITY MODEL:  The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial today, explaining how the Baltimore riots demonstrate the utter failure of progressivism in urban America:

The men and women in charge have been Democrats, and their governing ideas are “progressive.” This model, with its reliance on government and public unions, has dominated urban America as once-vibrant cities such as Baltimore became shells of their former selves. In 1960 Baltimore was America’s sixth largest city with 940,000 people. It has since shed nearly a third of its population and today isn’t in the top 25.

The dysfunctions of the blue-city model are many, but the main failures are three: high crime, low economic growth and failing public schools that serve primarily as jobs programs for teachers and administrators rather than places of learning.

Exactly.  John Nolte over at Breitbart has a similar take:

Baltimore is not America’s problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem. Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor. . . .

Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. . . .

Poverty has nothing to do with it. This madness and chaos and anarchy is a Democrat-driven culture that starts at the top with a racially-divisive White House heartbreakingly effective at ginning up hate and violence.

"Nolte’s right:  The rioting in Ferguson and Baltimore isn’t driven by poverty, race, or even police brutality.  It’s driven by progressive culture, which teaches that successful business people “didn’t build that,” accepts abortion/divorce/children out of wedlock as normal behavior, proclaims that poor children (particularly minorities) cannot succeed, that police and authority in general are the “enemy,” and that law is rigged against minorities.  Urban music, “leaders” like Al Sharpton, and a Democrat strategy of balkanizing Americans through identity politics–echoed daily by mainstream media–has created a culture that has no respect for the rule of law.  In the eyes of progressives, the American Dream is dead, and they are literally dancing on its grave.

Until this progressive culture changes (if it ever can) or is marginalized politically, we will have lawless behavior every time these destructive, sociopathic cultural expectations are reinforced by tragedies like the deaths of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray."

Study: 'Irreversible' Arctic Decline Is Totally Reversible

Study: 'Irreversible' Arctic Decline Is Totally Reversible | The Daily Caller:
"For years, scientists have been warning the Arctic was in a “death spiral” and could soon be ice-free during the summertime and shrink to unprecedented levels due to man-made global warming.
Such ice loss could be “irreversible,” some scientists claimed.
But new research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography says that predictions of an ice-free Arctic are based on “oversimplified” theories. 
..“Our results show that the basis for a sea ice tipping point doesn’t hold up when these additional processes are considered,” echoed Till Wagner, also a Scripps scientist.
“In other words, no tipping point is likely to devour what’s left of the Arctic summer sea ice...”
...“I would argue that, from a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multiyear sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” Barber said.
But such predictions have fallen flat, as the Arctic has seen a resurgence of multi-year ice since 2009...
NSIDC and European satellite data show that multi-year sea ice made a big comeback in 2013 and 2014 — increasing from 2.25 to 3.17 million square kilometers during that time and making up 43 percent of the north pole’s ice pack.
In fact, Arctic sea ice extent as a whole seems to be stabilizing despite this year’s record low maximum in February.
NSIDC data shows Arctic sea ice extent is currently within the normal range based on the 1981 to 2010 average extent.
“Global sea ice is at a record high, another key indicator that something is working in the opposite direction of what was predicted,” Dr. Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, told the U.K. Express in January.
“Most people think the poles are melting… they’re not,” he said. 
“This is a huge inconvenience that reality is now catching up with climate alarmists, who were predicting that the poles would be melting fairly soon.”"