It is now day two in the LA Times/Mike Davis truth watch. When will the LA Times admit that Mike Davis does not just get his 'facts' wrong, but that he simply makes things up out of whole cloth?
When will the LA Times admit that if a writer has gotten not just hundreds, but thousands (yes - thousands) of facts wrong over the years - that should disqualify him from being asked to write for them? And if fabricating an entire interview in the LA Weekly (as Mike Davis did) does not disqualify a writer from writing for the LA Times (or teaching at UC Irvine) - what in God's name will?
Mike Davis' latest assault on the truth was - among other things - his statement that the housing bubble in San Francisco has already burst. Well, in a previous post, I showed that the exact opposite was true. And I further checked today with the California Realtor's Association and their January and February figures for sale prices in San Francisco show that not only has the market up there not collapsed, but that prices are still increasing in the double digit range - and that the latest figures show that the most current rate of price increase is actually INCREASING!
In January, for example - after San Francisco prices hit record highs last year - prices went up by 12.1% in January 2006 over January 2005 and in February 2006, the median price went up by 17.8% over February of last year!
And yet the LA Times still stands by Mike Davis' lie that the housing market has 'burst' in San Francisco!
Lastly - this further illustrates the problem with the LA Times now being increasingly staffed by people with no knowledge of either Los Angeles or California. For anyone - much less four layers of editors and filters - to read the claim that the San Francisco housing market has collapsed (particularly when it is written by a known pathological liar) and to then not instantly know that this claim was a complete lie - demonstrates how the the LA Times has become a civic embarrassment.
Robert, the LA Times investigation was in many ways - a white wash. It ignored the countless places in the book where I had proved - using Davis' own words - that Mike Davis knew the truth and blatantly lied. It also ignored the interview that he totally fabricated in the LA Weekly. Now since so many people do not recall the full extent of this fraud, I will shortly post some more details so you can see that, if anything, I am understating the degree of his deliberate dishonesty.
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