CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Socrates justified fake news by citing the inability of the average person to comprehend reality. Hence, we have Socratic Lies. Jack Nicholson reduced this premise to its briefest form by his exclamation: “The truth? You can’t handle the truth.”
Our legal system has witnesses begin their testimony by promising “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” However, in the courtroom, truth suppression is more likely the goal. The most famous courtroom line for Baby Boomers was Perry Mason’s, “I object! Incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.”
As attorneys know, there is only one real objection: “I object, the witness is about to say something that will hurt my client. Make the witness shut up.” Mason was a truth-suppressor.
The U.S. Constitution’s Attempt to Introduce Truth into the Public Debate
The First Amendment’s protection of free speech attempted to bring the truth to the public. Its method was to prevent the government from censoring speech. While the constitutional prohibition allowed lies, it also stopped the government from suppressing the truth, leaving it to the public to figure out who was truthful and who was a liar.
During an auto accident trial, the attorney may ask, “Did Mr. Jones have a red or a green light?” If the witness knows that the light was red, and he says, “green,” he has lied. That is the type lie in which Trump specializes. His insistence that the crowds at his inauguration were the largest ever was patently false. Lies by omission, however, can be more damaging because the listener cannot assess what information has been omitted.
Perhaps, the most compelling example of the power of omission is found in the movie, “My Cousin Vinny,”where the prosecution makes it seem conclusive that Vinny’s cousin is guilty by omitting the determinative evidence. When Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) supplies the missing data, everything changes. It is worth viewing these YouTube clips as they are (1) fun, (2) show the power of omission, and (3) show the power of adding the missing data.
Dateline’s Foray into Fake News
Lies by omission can be devastating. A recent example is NBC’s Datelineshow, “City of Angeles,” about the homeless population in LA. The show omits the cause of the huge increase in Los Angeles’ homeless population which Datelineplaces at 25% of all homeless in the nation.
Datelinehides the fact from the viewers that since Mayor Eric Garcetti first took office in 2001 as CD13 councilmember and then later as City Council President, he has followed a policy to destroy rent-controlled housing. Rent-controlled apartments are the least expensive in the city and the supply is being reduced. To fall under the rent control law, an apartment had to been constructed prior to 1979. Using only the interactive Ellis Act map for destroyed rent-controlled apartments, you can see that by end of 2017, 23,024 units had been destroyed and about another 2,000 units are set for destruction in 2018. (The map does not include the thousands of units that were illegally destroyed outside the Ellis Act.)
Twenty-five thousand apartments would house about 60,000 people at 2.5 people per unit. If Garcetti’s policies had not destroyed those rent-controlled units, LA would have more than enough low-income housing for all of LA’s homeless.
When an elderly person on fixed income has her $450/month apartment demolished, her $950 social security check cannot cover the $1,000 rent for another apartment. If people evicted from the rent-controlled apartments do have enough income to rent new places, they bid up the rents at the lower end of the market, making some other poor person homeless. Datelineshowed a couple who became homeless when their rent increased by $150. Datelinewas silent on how Garcetti’s policies have been steadily increasing the cost of housing.
A small reduction in supply can increase prices. Whenever the supply has been constricted, it is the people with the most money who bid up the costs. Thus, a small reduction in housing supply pushes up rents for the lower market strata.
Dateline Concealed Garcetti’s Role in Manufacturing LA’s Homeless Crisis
Datelineinterviewed Garcetti and gave him a platform to pretend that he was a compassionate mayor who was committed to having all the homeless people live in homes. Datelinedid not ask, “If you care for the homeless, why do you pursue the policy that destroys rent-controlled housing?”
Dateline Has an Agenda
Datelinehas a Fake News agenda as surely as Humpy-Trumpty has an agenda with his absurd Fake News du jour. Garcetti is the newest darling of the Democratic Party and the media is grooming him for a 2020 Presidential race. It does not fit the image the media is crafting to point out that while he has been throwing tens of thousands of Angelenos onto the streets, Garcetti has been giving billions of dollars to billionaire developers to construct a glut of luxury housing. It does not fit their coiffured image of Garcetti that his policies have taken LA traffic congestion from bad to the worst in the entire world. It does not fit their mythical image that Garcetti is actually an anti-Green mayor who is destroying LA’s Tree Canopy and turning central LA into a heat island.
Corruptionism, Thy Name is Garcetti
The DNC and the media made the same mistake in promoting former Mayor Tony Villaraigosa, who disintegrated at the DNC convention. Compared to Garcetti, Villaraigosa was a Boy Scout. Tony V was too busy chasing skirt to do much except let City Council President Garcetti run the city. No one is more responsible for LA’s homeless crisis than Garcetti, but as they did with Villaraigosa, the DNC and the media will omit all the real-life info about Garcetti – until a real-life Mona Lisa Vito shows up.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
