Having worked 44 years in news, and 40 of those years in television news, I can personally tell you, DON’T TRUST THE NEWS! Oh, believe me, I worked my heart out to get the facts straight and to write provocative stories but stories that were absolutely true, not shaded, varnished or tilted to one side or the other. Were there mistakes? Sure. But once a mistake was detected, we went overboard trying to get the accurate information out there. For many years, a banner hung over our assignment desk that read “Be First, But Be Right!”
A competitor, Chuck Green at the Denver Post, was rumored to have a sign over his desk that read,”If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” The intent of both messages was, “if you don’t get the facts right, your career in the news media is dead!” That’s a tough standard.
But a television station in San Francisco, KTVU, will take decades trying to live down the monstrous mistake it made when trying to identify the pilots of the Asiana plane that crashed this week at the San Francisco airport. You’d better believe that five or six people were fired over this one The identification list started with Captain Sum Ting Wong:
Yes, sometimes a system fails. Sometimes it fails catastrophically.
A young man is dead, and that certainly is a massive tragedy. But another man’s life was ruined with all the racial allegations connected with the ‘murder’ of another man, and possibly ruined by a vengeful prosecutor who went to the bar with no evidence.
My big question is, should the prosecutor have charged Zimmerman in the first place? I’ll speak to some of the reasons he should not have, but first let’s look at a case of prosecutorial misconduct that happened at Duke University. Yes, the Duke Lacrosse team.
There was zero evidence of a rape of two strippers hired by the lacrosse team. Yet Durham County prosecutor Mike Niphong continued pushing, publicly calling it a gang rape, and making other outrageous statements about the alleged guilt of the lacrosse players. The players were later exonerated, Niphong lost his job as a prosecutor, and then was stripped of his law license by the North Carolina Bar Association.
Did justice prevail?
But let’s toss in one final bit of knowledge in the Trayvon Martin case. Everyone involved in the case knows that Florida has one of the strongest ‘stand-your-ground’ laws in the country. All you have to do to pull the trigger is to “reasonably believe that you were facing death or great bodily harm.”
Zimmerman had injuries to his face and the back of his head. If he didn’t believe he was facing great bodily harm, he would have been an idiot.
The prosecutor had to prove Zimmerman did not have reason to have such fear. Yet his star witness was a perjurer and was still allowed to testify. The standard for the jury is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Did the prosecutor think he could prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that Zimmerman was not afraid of bodily harm?
There are still some interesting things left to come. From the beginning, the national media and many public figures have tried to exploit every possible racial trigger. It’s impossible to predict how the public will react once the final outcome is announced.
George Zimmerman
I guarantee you, homes in The Retreat At Twin Lakes Homeowners Association are not going to be selling well.
If at all.
George Zimmerman has an incredibly good case against his Homeowners Association for not supporting him in his time of need. They were the ones who wanted a neighborhood watch. They were the ones who accepted Zimmerman’s offer to walk the streets at night. But when the time came for him to show heroism and stand up against a potential burglar, they walked out on him.
This neighborhood has already tried to walk out on Zimmerman by paying Trayvon’s attorneys a million dollars to ‘settle’ this case. But it’s not settled, not by a long shot. Now, it’s Zimmerman’s turn.
This particular Homeowners Association, The Retreat At Twin Lakes Homeowners Association, is about to bite the ‘big one’.
It’s another HOA Hall of Shamereport from our fearless TV reporter in Las Vegas. This time it’s a relatively peaceful HOA that’s being shamed.
Well, I might have spoken too freely. This HOA isn’t really peaceful. It’s full of accusations of board mismanagement, misspent money, and board meetings being held secretly when a pro-homeowner member of the board couldn’t possibly attend because of her work schedule.
Ah yes, and it’s about writing a blank check to lawyers, even lawyers of former bad board members and managers. And illegal transfers of money, such a nasty business, this handling of OPM (other people’s money).
Yes, it seems like another Las Vegas Homeowners Association ought to be avoided like the plague. If you buy a home in the Pueblo at Santa Fe HOA, you’re likely to be screwed.
All this talk about lawsuits and collapsing HOA property values leads me once again to encourage you to get a copy of my new book, “Neighbors At War! the Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association.” I don’t care if you buy it, check it out at the library or steal it from your next door neighbor. There’s information in this book that you NEED TO KNOW! All the five-star reviews on my Amazon page show that lots and lots of readers feel the same.
If you just plain can’t afford the discounted price on Amazon, then hold on! The eBook is imminent. And word for word, it’ll be the most important money you ever spent on a book.
More than three million pages of investigative information have been given under discovery to defense attorneys of Leon Benzer, the Las Vegas club owner and businessman accused of masterminding one of the largest HOA scams in history. The long running FBI and U.S. Attorney investigation uncovered dozens of lawyers, police officials, business owners and HOA management companies also involved in the scam.
Federal investigators say the suspects rigged elections in Homeowners Associations, putting their own associates in control of the HOA boards. Some of those faux board members were not even residents of the communities where they were ‘elected’. Those rigged boards then diverted tens of millions of dollars of insurance reimbursements into the pockets of Benzer and the other defendants.
One of the victims of the takeover scheme was the Vistana Homeowners Association. In a separate filing, attorneys for Vistana are asking a federal judge to allow it access to the Benzer documents.
At one point in the federal investigation, more than a hundred Nevada Homeowners Associations, primarily in Las Vegas were targeted by the feds.
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