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’.
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.
All most Americans want from the government is to be treated fairly. But in the perversity of today’s various legal ‘interpretations’, no American can read the law and find what’s legal and illegal. Perversity is a mild word.
Just read the following link and figure out how far the courts have strayed from the original intent of the founders of the country:
And if you still don’t believe you can be stripped and handcuffed to the bars of a police holding cell for four hours just for raising questions about the financial health of your HOA, just read this story about Col. Robert Frank and Tim Stebbins.
I have a lot of sympathy for Chris Gilson, a homeowner in the Brandermill Community Association in Chesterfield County Virginia. But I also have a prediction. He’s about to lose his home and his life savings.
After years of unsuccessful attempts to plant a lawn in his rocky front yard, he planted a vegetable garden, which has grown quickly. Now his HOA is fining him ten bucks a day until he removes it. The HOA says it’s going to assess that fine each day for 90 days. Gilson says he’ll be glad to pay $900 for the privilege of keeping his garden. But the poor fellow just doesn’t get it.
Disobey a mindless demand from your HOA and you’ll be fined, of course. But the HOA doesn’t like being scorned. So what’s waiting for Gilson at the end of those 90 days is a lien on his home, massive new fines, legal fees, debt collection costs, a lawsuit, and eventually the foreclosure and sale of his home at auction. His house, of course, will be auctioned for just a few thousand dollars. The most likely buyer will be a friend of a board member or a buddy of the lawyer that brings the lawsuit. That ‘buddy’ will then kick back some money to the board member or the lawyer, and the home will quickly be sold and resold through a series of quick transactions. Those quick sale transactions are designed to make it impossible for Gilson to ever get back his home.
It’s the same kind of scam that cost Captain Michael Clauer his home while he was deployed in Iraq. His home was sold and re-sold in several transactions designed to make it impossible for him to get it back. The foreclosure against a serviceman deployed overseas was a blatant violation of federal law. So in Clauer’s case, a judge ordered a secret settlement that allowed Clauer to partially recover what he had lost.
Chris Gilson doesn’t have that kind of protection in the fight over his garden. He will lose. He will lose big time. With a scam as well-entrenched and as profitable as the HOA scam, very few if any people win. The one percent, or so, who actually win in court against an HOA end up with a massive net loss once the legal bills are paid.
Chris Gilson? Get out. Leave the neighborhood. This HOA will forever slander you, harass you, and vandalize you. Your daughters will be tormented by schoolmates. Anonymous calls will be made to your employer demanding that you be fired.
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