Lies

In the midst of a nice LA Progressive article about Trump's lies, the author quotes Hannah Arendt:

Writing about 50 years ago, the German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote:

"If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end, you get not only one lie—a lie that you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such people, you can then do what you please."

"She wrote that as a German Jew who had escaped the Holocaust and made it to America, obviously, she was reflecting on how the Nazis had managed to take control of Germany, not by convincing people to believe their propaganda and their lies, but by leaving them bereft of a willingness to believe anything."

Personally, I'd add that the worst consequence of lies, really anywhere, is that the liar starts to believe his/her own bullshit. Then all that remains is delusional thinking--not a good way to guide public policy, or one's personal life strategy. Of course that is the cynical object of many Trump fans: destruction of the political system as it crazily motors off a cliff. That means Trumps "negatives" are all positives if he's simply a cluster munition aimed at D.C.

John Kenneth Galbraith was right: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”

County Supervisor Frost Supports Prop 36 and Requests Even More Incarceration,

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

County Supervisor Frost's latest newsletter touts her support for Proposition 36 - a measure that rolls back recent attempts to diminish our reliance on prisons to prevent crime, namely Props 47 and 57. Ms. Frost says "Our community has been increasingly troubled by crimes...over the past decade," [emphasis added] and she cites the "drug-addicted homeless...and rampant retail thefts." 

Her description of crime is the opposite of true.

As the population has aged, crime has steadily declined since its peak in the '80s. There is no massive surge in 2011 when Jerry Brown shifted felons from state prisons to local jails, or in 2014 when Prop 47 passed.

Incidentally, a recent Los Angeles survey of homelessness discloses the real culprit for the majority of the unhoused: rents have been rising faster than incomes. Where's Ms. Frost's support for rent control?

In "October of 2022, journalist Heather Vogell at ProPublica published a story on rising rent prices, which were spiking as the country opened back up after the Covid shutdowns. But Vogell’s investigative piece was not about Covid, it was how one algorithm of a single software firm - a private equity owned corporation called RealPage - was behind the increases. 'I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,' she reported one executive of the corporation telling clients." (from here)

In other words, illegal price fixing is behind rent increases. Where's the Frost comment about that?

Even now, with 5% of the world's population, the US has 25% of its prisoners. We need bigger jails like a hole in the head. Police spending is what has surged, not crime. It's currently 70% of the County's budget, and Ms. Frost has been voting to spend scarce County resources to build an even bigger jail--one that costs nearly a billion dollars. We may have lots of potholes in county roads, but we can console ourselves that our jail is bigger.

Hollywood says the cops almost always get the bad guys, but how are police/courts/jails at solving crimes in reality? In California, despite increased spending, they solved less than 14% of reported crime in 2022. 

What actually prevents crime? Better social safety nets. No medical bankruptcies making people desperate. Affordable housing--something Richard Nixon stopped the Feds from building in the '70s. 

 Given her record on the Sacramento Board of  Supervisors Ms. Frost's support of Prop 36 is no big surprise. By her lights, police, courts and jails are the smart response to crime. And that's true if 14% is your idea of an excellent outcome.

Update: "However, research overwhelmingly shows that criminalizing homelessness perpetuates the problem. It creates a cycle of arrest, incarceration and release, without addressing root causes, such as economic inequality, inadequate mental health and addiction services and a lack of affordable housing." (from here)