Self Service

"Greed doesn't self regulate"
Ben Wiseley

Robert Salisbury has his Jacksonville, Oregon home ransacked by people who'd read a Craigslist ad claiming that he'd been forced to leave the area suddenly, and that he was abandoning all of his worldly possessions, including his horse, to anyone who wanted them. Sure enough, the locusts appeared.

I find it hard to believe that people honestly thought that this was on the level, especially in light of the fact that just last year, the same thing happened in Tacoma. It wasn't just a local story - it showed up in the New York Times, for crying out loud. One woman, after having taken Salisbury's horse, decided that something wasn't kosher and called the police to verify that things were as they seemed. And when they weren't, she returned the things she'd taken. Others however, when confronted, insisted that the ad was genuine, and that they were entitled to take what they wanted.

One wonders why we're so upset with our government for going out of its way to avoid finding out what they wanted to believe about Iraq to be false when it seems pretty clear that a segment of the general population is willing to turn a blind eye to the truth when it gets between them and looting someone's home.