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Lies, More Lies, and Lies about Lying

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THE VIEW FROM HERE -The political strategy of both political parties is the same – non-stop lying about everything all the time. 

Part of lying is the concealing of material facts.  Another facet is not to admit your own horrible actions.  Both Dems and GOP have the same central lie – the other party is lying.  Well, ironically, that is a partial truth in that both parties lie non-stop, but it is a falsehood when the party pretends that it’s telling the truth. 

Justification for Habitual Lying 

Physicists are searching for the Unified Field Theory, which is one theory that explains everything in the universe.  Politics is ahead of physicists in that we have the one basic theory of politics. “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lord Acton 1887)  The saying, “Love of money is the root of all evil,” is a subset of Lord Acton’s rule in that money is a form of power.  Lies are a mechanism to gain more power. 

Why Truth is A Poor Way to Gain Power 

If a political party were committed to truth, it would have to admit when it made serious errors.  Since policy always cantilevers beyond the extent of our knowledge, rigorous adherence to truth will almost invariably result in admissions that had we known more back then, we would have made better decisions and life would be better now.  A lie, however, is a wonderful political tool as anything and everything can be justified.  Trump did not take classified documents because, he alleges, he had a standing order that when he took a document it was automatically declassified. 

The CDC Admission that it Needs an Overhaul 

“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to respond quickly enough during the COVID-19 pandemic and needs an major overhaul. . .”   US News & World Report, CDC Director Says Agency Needs Major Overhaul, By Cara Murez 

The huge lie by omission is the Biden Administration’s politicization of the CDC in May 2021 was an egregious abuse of power.  The polarizing politics was immediately obvious.  May 17, 2021, CityWatch, How the CDC Stabbed Joe Biden in the Back   On May 13, 2021, the CDC announced that good Dems who had been vaxed need not wear masks indoors, but bad GOP who were unvaxed had to wear masks as badges of shame for all to see.  Just as GOP uses code words to refer to Jews, e.g. globalists, communists, Hollywood elites, the Dems employs coded language which ended Biden’s Centrist Approach by casting vaxed Dems as the good guys and the unvaxed GOP as the bad guys.  

CDC Director Walensky’s exact words on May 13, 2021 were: “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing.”   May 13, 2021, CNBC, CDC Says Fully Vaccinated People Don’t Need to Wear Face Masks Indoors or Outdoors in Most Settings,  Berkeley Lovelace Jr.   Biden’s centrist policy of “Let’s all mask up to reach herd immunity by July 4th” was showing positive results in not only fighting the pandemic, but it was also cooling the political division.  Centrist cooperation was and is an anathema to Pelosi’s and the Wokers’ polarizing Identity Politics, which is based on the dichotomized dogma that Whites are evil and minorities especially Blacks are holy.  Dems’ Identity Politics is a complete rejection of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech where individuals are judged not by skin color but by the content of their character. 

When the CDC adopted its Identity Politics approach to the pandemic by dividing Dems against GOP, it knew for an absolute fact that The Delta Variant was here and that the virus mutated at an alarming rate.  Telling anyone to unmask was 100% against science, making the entire nation vulnerable.  To Pelosi and Wokers, nothing was more vital than halting centrist cooperation.

Almost Instantaneously Centrism Was Dead! 

The Trumpists went berserk, as they are wont to do, and by July 4th rather than having the pandemic in retreat, the infection and death rates were sky high.  Delta then gave rise to Omicron and then to Omicron BA.2.  Thanks to the intrusion of the Identity Politics’ trying to stigmatize the GOP in May 2021 as responsible for the pandemic, by May 2022 everyone had given up on Covid’s eradication.   

The CDC’s calling for reform without admitting its own most grievous sin, i.e., the politicalization of public health, is a huge lie by omission.  The reality is that by end of April 2021, the CDC had all the data required to know that everyone had to mask up.  It also knew that its social messaging on masking was woefully deficient in that millions of people who thought that they were masking up were using worthless masks, e.g. cowboy bandanas, and were wearing decent masks defectively, e.g. not covering the nose.  Covid death entered primarily through the nose.   

Gigantic Lies By Omission Have Killed Thousands of LA’s Homeless 

As many know, Stephen Schwarzman and the various Blackstone reality companies are essentially one and the same. He’s worth $31.9B. Blackstone has billions of dollars of Los Angeles real estate, and anything which slowed down the rise of Los Angeles real estate’s escalating prices in 2016 would be upsetting to Blackstone’s stockholders.  Through Invitation Homes, Blackstone was one of the nation’s largest owners of single family homes which it held off the market, thereby diminishing the supply of single-family homes. As the cost of homes increased, Blackstone raised the rents it charged.  The year 2016 was crucial as Blackstone was preparing to take the company public, which it did in 2017.  The last thing Blackstone stockholders needed in December 2016 was a black eye in the nation’s second largest city. 

Crucial to the fraudulent increase of Los Angeles real estate prices was the Vote Trading System at LA city council, where any developer could get unanimous approval of anything it desired by having the councilmember place the developer’s wish list on the city council agenda. This Vote Trading System operated very smoothly despite the fact it had been outlawed in 2006 by Penal Code, § 86.  Virtually 100% of all projects, no matter how horrid, received unanimous approval. 

One ploy to aggrandize developer profits was to destroy rent controlled units so that developers could Buy Low and Sell High. Due to the mandate of the Vote Trading System that every council had to vote “Yes” on every project without public discussion, tens of thousands of Los Angeles’ poorest renters were thrown onto the streets, where thousands needlessly died. (It has been estimated that 1/3 of the deaths of homeless is due to the fact of their being homeless.)  

After SaveValleyVillage sued the City of LA to stop the unlawful vote trading system, Judge Richard Fruin ruled in December 2016 that whatever the city council did was de facto non-justifiable. (The city wanted its actions to be de jure non-justiciable.) Non-justiciable is legalese meaning above the law.  Thus, the city could continue to destroy poor people’s homes which resulted in the Homeless Crisis which still plagues us today. It is the number one issue in the mayor’s race. 

In 2016 Judge Richard Fruin’s IRA Owned Between $100,000 - $1,000,000 in Blackstone Group LP 

What would have been the impact on Judge Fruin, if the city’s Vote Trading System had been halted?  How would stopping the requirement that each councilmember must vote Yes for each project have impacted the developers’ projects and the Spot Zoning scams which were fraudulently hyping LA Housing costs?  What career blowback would Judge Fruin suffer from throwing a monkey wrench into Los Angeles’ corruptionism? No one ever really knows what would have happen if they could turn back the clock.  We do know what did occur. 

The developers’ corrupt scams to destroy the homes of poorest Angelenos resulted in the huge influx of poor people on the streets.  Freeway underpasses became filled with tents and trash.  Homeless encampments arose in the brush near freeways, on the beach, and in parks.  Fires threatened residences.  Even Bel Air had homes burned due to the homeless encampment along the 450 Freeway. But all was well and good since Blackstone took Invitation Homes public in 2017 and since then has made another quadruple gazillion dollars.  At 83, Judge Fruin is still on the bench. 

From the highest offices in the land down to city councils and courts, habitual lying including lies by omission is ruining America.  Nationally, we have entered a sporadically violent civil war.  Locally, we have ravaged our poorest and most vulnerable and we’ve driven out our most product sector, Family Millennials. Yet, the powerful still rule from atop their mountain of lies.

(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor.  You may email him at [email protected].   The opinions expressed by Mr. Abrams are solely his and not necessarily those of CityWatch.)