Meet California Public Employee Robert Rizzo: News of His $800,000 Salary (And 12% Annual Raises) in City of 38,000 Causes Riot (VIDEO)
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Community groups were demanding the resignation of Bell's city council members, most of whom make $100,000 a year; police chief, who makes $457,000; and city manager, who makes $787,637.
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Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.
An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.
It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 -- with annual 12 percent raises -- and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work.
Residents shouted in protest. Lee said he would have the room cleared if people continued to speak out of line. Police Chief Randy Adams said the fire department wanted to end the meeting because the crowd outside was blocking the door.
‘Obscene Pay’
De La Torre said that after his bill was passed, Bell’s City Council voted to operate under its own charter, rather than adhere to state laws on how cities should be run.
“It seems obscene to me,” De La Torre said in a telephone interview. “People making $30,000 a year are paying taxes so that their council members can make $80,000.”
Adams, Bell’s police chief, said in an interview after the council meeting that he had retired as chief of police in the much larger city of Glendale, California, when Bell officials approached him.
“I told them they would have to pay me what I was making in retirement and the $165,000 I would make as chief of police,” Adams said.
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DB here. Further proof that Obama's proposed bailout for poorly-managed states will not sit well with the voting public. Did you see my story last month on Neil Codell -- an Illinois educator with a $28 million state pension.
Jul 20, 2010 at 5:55 PM
Reader Comments (38)
Councilman Lorenzo Velez said he is being paid $8,076 a year, while his colleagues are drawing nearly $100,000 annually.
Ahead of Monday night's council meeting, Velez called for an investigation, saying that if The Times' report is true, the city manager, assistant city manager, police chief and entire council should resign.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bell-20100720,0,6229042.story?track=rss
Robert Rizzo, Bell City Manager, Makes $800k
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/business/19training.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1
More wasted dollars...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7896340/Barack-Obama-finally-makes-his-peace-with-Bill-Clinton.html
Regulators Seen Diluting Strictest New 'Basel' Curbs; Fear of a Credit Crunch
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704746804575367193230588972.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_business
Wash Mu agrees to Chapter 11 probe
American politics, at least since after the Civil War, has always been the grease gun of big business and a revolving door to and fro the halls of political power where the big boys place their friends so they can get restive labor under control, pacify the natives, steal the land they need from their fellow citizens and pass the necessary laws to keep themselves out of jail and put their enemies in jail when possible.
It sounds cynical but it isn't. Start your education in this dirty history (if you can stand the stench) with the history of the Robber Barons and the building of the railroads. It is so horrific that you can only laugh to keep from going viral, as you like to say. If you survive that venal phase in business history, move on to the history of the monopolists who rose to power just before World War I and then proceed to the post World War II period and into the present.
$800,000 a year? I've known people who consistently made that much every month speculating in real estate, selling worthless software and moving numbers around on Wall Street. Rizzo must be a real loser if he has to make money stealing it from the citizens of a small town.
The BIG illicit money is going to big business, not government. I'm surprised you don't see that.
The immediate effects of the railroad were to make automatic boom towns out of unknown cities along the route of the tracks. But in their haste to build the railroad, the companies often sacrificed quality. The government had to spend millions more to repair the shoddy work.
Thousands died during construction due to the extreme weather conditions, snow avalanches, explosions and just plain burnout.
Three years later, a New York newspaper exposed the incredible depth of corruption within Union Pacific Railroad. The scandal reached the highest levels of government, implicating cabinet secretaries, numerous members of Congress, and the vice-president,. Union Pacific had created a company called Credit Mobilier and awarded all contracts to them. Investigations revealed that Credit Mobilier had been paid $73,000,000 for work worth $50,000,000. Bribes were offered to officials to keep the situation quite. Central Pacific had engaged in the same practices, but it wasn't discovered till later.
Not much has changed...
Have you ever looked into Maj. General Smedley Butler and the attempted business coup?
My knowledge of history is adequate but probably weak compared to yours. The reason is, I think, that I can't stand it it after awhile and find it necessary to take very long vacations, usually into literature. In fact, I was just getting ready to take another plunge into Shakespeare's King Henry IV parts one and two before I checked in here to see if DB would have anything to say.
I've heard of Butler but it's one of those embarrassing events in U.S. History that I can't bear to look at. The history of the Supreme Court, unfortunately, is another.
Maybe Shakespeare's understanding of Prince Hal and Falstaff will make me feel better. Shakespeare seems to know more than I do about these things and I'm eternally grateful. And we shouldn't forget that Shakespeare lived in a period that was similar to our own: the great English upheaval occurred a mere one generation after his death.
let these states and municipalities do as they wish...but don't ask the rest of us to pay for it...i thought i had made myself clear in every story i've done on the issue...no state bailouts...
The reason it's dysfunctional is that business controls governments from the small county level to the highest levels. At all levels, regulatory agencies are simply training grounds and revolving doors for big business, from the SEC, NCI, FDA and the Pentagon itself to small City Managers like Rizzo.
"Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia makes $376,288 annually, more than most city managers.
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"If that's a number people choke on, maybe I'm in the wrong business," he told KTLA partner, The Los Angeles Times. "I could go into private business and make that money. This council has compensated me for the job I've done."
Spaccia agreed, adding: "I would have to argue you get what you pay for.
Far bigger fish to fry: Financial shady dealers (criminals?) like Jeff Greene.
The Meltdown Mogul (Greene) who stole billions from Hispanic communities in Florida, is far more significant. He and people like him are now wrapping themselves in the flag, calling themselves Tea Party progressives and running for office for the sole reason of consolidating and adding to their wealth and power. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/us/politics/23self.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
In America, you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get and that includes politics which sells the best politicians money can buy.
Why so much outrage at a little guy like Rizzo?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120036270913390155.html#printMode
it doesn't change the fact that public sector employees shouldn't make 800k...
Why shouldn't public employees make whatever the market (the voters) will bear?
Individual citizens don't have the right to set public employee salaries, elected politicians and their appointed henchmen do.
It's called democracy.
This is where we are to day. Every power person has been lining his pockets with as much as he can steal. The system is now broke, and the hail stone in in free fall.
Everyone is trying to get out of the way. But its to late. It is going to samch us to pieces starting next year. There will be nothing but small pieces left.
I have 12 mouths to feed and im worryed to death how im going to take care of them all. The histroy book of life is being wrote so fast its hard to have the next piece of blank paper ready.
I dought God thought man could screw something up so bad, in so few years, that mam would destroy him self all becouse of "Greed"......? There will be so much room in Heavin for the few of us that get to go.
I've been paying it forward long before thAre was a movie about it. I dont mind being poor, its just that its been the only way I knew. I thought I was rich becouse I was happy. Always had something to do. And loved life. Now man & Greed has taken it all away from us.
My father and his two brothers and two sisters grew up on the Texas Panhandle on a farm outside of Abilene. No air conditioning or refrigeration when they were growing up. They all prospered during the post World War II boom however.
America can always go back to that way of living, but this time with at least some electricity and air conditioning, with television and other electronic toys, and limited use of internal combustion engines.
We can make our own drinking alcohol for almost nothing the way it was done in the thirties and we can raise chickens and cows in the country as our grandparents did.
Beans and rice and all the vegetables we can grow and trade in cooperatives, combined with wild game and fish can do the rest.
The real problem with America is that we have never formed a community the way almost every other successful country-culture has done.
We are a perpetual nation of immigrants.
Each generation of immigrants has been exploited by the powerful, starting with bonded servitude and outright slavery used by the English property class and working up through the 19th century when the Chinese and Irish were exploited by the new wealthy class that was created by the American Revolution and who betrayed the American working class by refusing to hire them for respectable wages.
The story is long and complicated but it ends with the exploitation of braceros and what we now call illegal Hispanic immigrants by contractors and farmers today.
I think your fear is based on the horrific way that America has treated the native born working class (organized labor) and "foreign" undesirables (former African slaves, native Americans, and Chinese and Mexicans during the California gold rush for example.)
Can we form a community of Americans or will we tear each other to pieces and watch the unfortunate starve to death on television?
Stay tuned.
"The real problem with America is that we have never formed a community the way almost every other successful country-culture has done."
Sense of community is alive and well in rural areas James, and has been thriving for generations. Country folk are not as easy to compartmentalize and control as city and suburban dwellars have proven to be. You all might find this shocking, but I am really not the only one trying to live by my own whiles and disciplines, there are millions of us seeking the serenity of providing for ourselves without relying on Goobermints, grocery stores, or many of the other conveniences used to program people to be dependent and subservient.
Even city dwellars did it years ago during the big one, ever hear of victory gardens (as just one example)? Independence is a worthy lifestyle choice to seek, it frees the mind for loftier pursuits.
But we started as a nation of farmers, in early 1600, and this continued until the late 1880's. Even during the 1920's about 40% of Americans still lived on farms. I think the figure is as low as 5% today.
These farms usually existed in communities of immigrants from all over Europe which coexisted uneasily with other communities.
In a couple of generations America changed completely into a huge conglomeration of polyglot cities which are now held together by electronic communication and superhighways and a fluid American English, and the farms have been swallowed and digested by the agribusiness plutocracy.
In the beginning, many villages around America were settled by immigrants of every description and each with its distinct culture and way of doing things. They brought their own sense of community with them from places like Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany and other European countries. They didn't always welcome outsiders and they considered native Americans to be dirty, subhuman and in need of Christianity. Native American cultures were systematically suppressed and the natives were considered racially inferior and shoved to the sidelines.
These immigrant communities often maintained their languages over several generations and German, for example, was spoken all over America until World War I when speaking German was virtually made into a crime.
We have developed a unique American culture but we are still dominated by the idea of the frontier which has now shifted beyond our borders into the world, and we find ourselves 'bringing democracy to Afghanistan' the same way we brought democracy to the Mexican Territory and to the Spanish Empire in the 19th century. It's 'manifest destiny' for everyone this time around.
And we continue to be a nation of nations where Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Protestants of every possible description, African Americans, Chinese and other Asians, Haitians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hispanics of all descriptions and native Americans just as varied as the rest of America, coexist uneasily with mongrel European Americans of 'old stock' all under the watchful and nervous eye of the plutocracy.
We lack the sense of community/ethnic identity which prompted the Germans to call themselves 'das Volk' and which still prompts the Japanese to require birth certificates whenever a marriage takes place in Japan just to prove that there are no Chinese or Korean ancestors for three generations back.
Mexicans openly and proudly proclaim their intention to maintain the purity of 'la raza.' Native Americans want their territories back and claim the right to citizenship in sovereign nations, African Americans want reparations and a state of their own, Jews, Irishmen and others have the right to dual citizenship and divided loyalties, the Chinese maintain their language and ties to China ...
Rome didn't fall in a day as the saying goes. If America suffers a slow collapse during the next hundred years, resourceful and intelligent people will move back to small towns and villages all over America. Unlivable cities like Detroit are already being broken up into smaller, self-sustaining communities.
But most Americans have no loyalty to town and community the way people from the rest of the planet have. We have never 'circled our wagons' so to speak and truly built an American country.
My mother and father were both raised on farms outside of small villages but I was raised in the city and I could never start over as a farmer, hunter and fisherman living off the land in harmony with my neighbors. I'm a city dweller and I'll take my stand in the city.
But I don't think a sense of community will ever arise in American cities (at least not in my lifetime) and probably not in other cities in the world either. Which is another way of saying, "Jefferson was probably right," if you catch my meaning and you probably do.
You are right, there are to many forces at work in the cities maintaining polarization.
"Jefferson was probably right,"
I know exactly what you mean, have you ever heard of Square Foot Gardening? or maybe making your own wine, you seem to enjoy a glass now and then. If you try making wine, I would recommend the "nectar of the Gods", mead. Jefferson also considered gardening a noble pursuit, Jefferson always believed that ‘the failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.
In his own eyes, Thomas Jefferson considered himself first and always a man of the land. He felt that "those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God...." What made Jefferson unique in his time was his understanding of the interrelationship between humanity and the environment and how they shaped each other. This wisdom and his subsequent practices, such as crop rotation, use of fertilizer, and contour plowing, characterize him as one of America's early agronomists.
My brother is married to a Greek girl, and where she is from the streets are lined with lemon trees, the biggest I have ever seen. You know what they do with them? Bitch about the mess as they fall off the trees and rot on the sidewalks...
"I'm a city dweller and I'll take my stand in the city."
I hope that is not the introduction to a "divine comedy". Remember, Noah did not wait for his ship to come in, he built one...
Railroad tracks.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?' , you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah
The
engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.
Truth is stranger than fiction isn't it T. Dar.
Gompers. I'm one of those people who still think Jefferson was a great man and a great American even though I know the dirt.
But, as you know, Jefferson thought that America could only be built by and for farmers and he also thought it would take us a 1000 years to populate the entire continent from Plymouth Rock to Seal Rock.
I like the idea of self-sufficiency and I'm a great fan of Thoreau and Emerson also but, like I said, I'm a city dweller and I have to face facts. I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and the first time I saw New York City I was ecstatic to find Oakland raised to the fourth power. Then I lived in Paris and I was even happier.
I'm a libertarian myself but I've met few men or women who truly are. I've met at least 485 who think they are but aren't. Very few people can actually live and let live, let alone help one another without any thought of their own self interest.
We live in an age where you can't even say hello to a man walking his dog. He thinks you might want something from him. And he carries a bag to put the dog shit in.
What else can I say?
But I'll say anyway, as far as Noah is concerned, I am my own ark and human comedy and I'm not waiting for anything to come in and certainly not a ship.
No man is perfect, well, until the next herdist candidates are revealed...
TexD, that was SHEER GENIUS. GREAT post, thanks.
If you get Real-Water streamming from yr cheeks, as I do when you see someone further down than you are and down & out, You could be a "Real Libertarin", becouse you realy care about the other guy........?
If you put your country First & It's People...........you could be a "Libertarian-Red-Neck" like me.............! If you aint afraid to cry in front of the people that look up to you, You could be a "Libertarian", well thats me, dont know about you.
Did you see Dateline tonight, with Ann Cury, we would like to save everyone of them. But were MAX'ed out with 10 extra mouths to feed. Good thing is, we can eat what they eat, & its betterfor us too................?
So if, times get tough, we'll all be eatting out of the same bowls, on the floor....!
I opened the show for Earnst Tubb, 3 times, and after words on his " 05 Silver Eagle Tour Bus", ET told me, Son, if you belive in your self, dont let Anyone, talk you out of your Dreams, if you die on the way up, you did what you planed to do all your life, Good Point ET........!
I open'ed the show for "Box Car Willie" many many times back when I was based out of "Sconsion" 1 hr. west of Oshkosh-EAA Grounds, & Ol Box told Dar back stage one show that, You only get back, what you give forward. The greater Risks you take, the greater the gains.
So I was set to take it to the Top...................................OK, till that ol tick bite took it all a way from me. Shit, Stay@Home Dar, made it to #2 on the charts. You can hear it on MySpace, just type in my name. DB should have the link to it........?
But you can not count on yr health, ever, & I found out the hard way. Layed off 9 people, parked the bus, and tryed to find out what happned to Dar........? "Lyme & 5 More Things, from 2 tick bites. ( You can get up to 23 differant things from a tick bite)
Shit, I wrote, recored, & produced, Stay@Home Dar, after I lost it all. # 2 on the charts. I repaired after a failure, right.....? Still leaves 9 people unployed, dont it. My bus is a live-&-well, up in Canda.
Point is, one thing gos down, another should take its place, thats how it works. Till BHO got his hand on the raines of the 8 horse Stage Coach....Now its all down hill from here.
Oh, did I tell you that I grew up in Stevans Point, right across from Dave Duddlys mom & dad. I opened the show for him many many times too. ( Six Days on the Road.......Smoke Blowin Blace as Coal ) Know what his real name is...............Darwin...........maJin That............they know Not how lucky they are to Day..................!
If you hang around great people, you too can be great, if the tick dont get ya.....................Now im stuck with "You Guys" what a life.........NO Im not tellin ya's whAre the fishin-Hole Is.......!
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James....what in any of the reading gave you the impression that rizzo or any of these other criminals was bringing in revenue to justify their outrageous salaries...bell california is one of the poorest communities in southern california...
maybe you also missed the protest part...the people who live in bell, CA went nuts over these salaries and now Rizzo has been fired along with 2 others...this isn't my outrage...it's the outrage of local voters...there is nothing defensible about these salaries...city council members making 100k in a town with a median income of 24k...and city mangers making from 400k to 800k
did you even read the stories...i don't get how you can make the case that these salaries were deserved...this was off the charts abuse of municipal budgets and now the guilty have been canned...good riddance...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iMcK7jSUn6TTLeVXuiL02gnLLA5QD9H4SO3O1
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38363379/ns/us_news-life/
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obscenely-overpaid-city-officials-in-Bell-Calif-hounded-out-of-their-jobs-99182129.html#ixzz0umyAJ1or
James...are you still in support of Mr. Rizzo...he has gamed the system perfectly...now fired he will still collect $1 million per year on average from his pension until he dies...if you don't see a problem with this type of abuse, then there's not much i can say...
The city manager, assistant city manager and police chief all agreed to resign after salaries that were completely out of kilter with the city's size and finances were reported by the Los Angeles Times.
According to the LAT, city manager Robert Rizzo made almost $800,000 annually. Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia made $376,288. Police chief Randy Adams earned $457,000.
The LAT placed these sums in perspective:
Rizzo earns nearly $800,000 a year, believed to make him the highest-paid city manager in California and possibly the nation. Adams makes $457,000 — 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck — and Spaccia makes $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.
In an earlier article, the LAT reported that Bell was one of Los Angeles County's the poorest cities.
Brown said the nearly $800,000-a-year salary of Rizzo and the salaries paid to Adams, Spaccia and City Council "morally borders on a gift of public funds."
"These outrageous salaries in Bell are shocking and beyond belief," Brown said.
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James...a quote from Jerry Brown above...i guess i'm not the only one upset...
Bet the countys people would start a lynch-mob when all the records were out in the open.......Its time to make the pay fit the job.
Gods gift to man, "Greed" ?
I'm not really criticizing you for being morally outraged at Rizzo and his cohorts I'm just pointing out that in America and many other places in the world, it's business as usual.
I've known several people like him personally and I'm not even going to hint at some of the things I've seen close up because I don't want even the whiff of a lawsuit on my hands. These people will try to sue you for defamation of character (sic) if they think they can get away with it. The legal system really IS broken in the United States: Money wins lawsuits.
The Rizzos of the world are aspirants for membership in the upper class which is about 1% of the population and whose members make at least one million dollars a year income and on average, far more. They own the police and the law courts and, therefore, are beyond the law.
Rizzo is just a small time operator who seems to have drunk the "conservative" Kool-Aid served up in large kegs during the last thirty years. In an odd way, I feel sorry for him because he is going to get massacred and not know why.
But these people are wily con-men and superb actors. When they show up "rehabilitated" they are capable of impersonating left wing liberals or becoming secret agents working for the FBI just to seek personal revenge.
Watch your back.
Obama is worth at least twice what the average community organizer at Acorn was being paid to help pimps. So, I say he should get paid $68,000. No wait, as part of his perks he gets a $50,000 annual entertainment expense account. Considering that Obama is a true man of leisure, he will blow through the entire $50,000 so let's deduct that from his salary on the principle of “social fairness”. If he decides to blow his wad on golf, cigarettes and those fancy egomaniacal Obama m&ms, so be it. That brings us to $18,000. I don't think he should make less than George, Washington not Bush, so we should bump him up to $25,001. That would be one Washington more than Washington got.
Hold on, I wish it were that simple. Here is where it gets tricky, Michelle “for the first time in my adult life” Obama has invited her mom, Mrs. Robinson, to live in the White House. That is not without precedent. Bill Clinton invited Monica to live under his desk or did he just take her to the Lincoln bedroom to show her his Andrew Johnson? Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus may love you but why are the taxpayers picking up your tab? Go back to Chicago Mrs. Robinson.
Then there is Barry’s tendency to give away taxpayer funded White House perks to his top donors. Buzzing the Statue of Liberty, come on!!! Giving your bundlers an all day pass to the White House’s cinema and bowling alley is blurring the lines just a bit, no? The taxpayers should be reimbursed from the revenue of his two memoirs. Can you still call it a memoir if a ghostwriter was involved? Bill Ayers did what? Get out of town! Next you’re going tell me that Obama hasn’t got a birth certificate and the taxpayers are housing an illegal alien in the White House. They call it what? Oh, sorry, correction, an undocumented immigrant living in the White House.
As for the new basketball court and Obama’s hard fouling assistant, Reggie Love, I don’t even want to go there. Suffice it to say, Marv Albert was the first to interview Obama courtside and was quick to comment on how much he liked Obama’s backyard. So, Obama wants a basketball court rather than a bowling alley. As Obama himself pointed out, he doesn’t look like “all those other Presidents on the dollar bills”. I don’t want to stereotype but I do think Jimmy Carter looked more like a bowler than a baller. By baller, I mean a basketball player, not a thug that has “made it” to the big time. Wow, I better stop before I end up calling Obama a “this black boy”. I will leave that to the peanut farmer. Not to mention that Sarah Barracuda Palin just called him “half white or half black”. That is crazy talk, everyone knows Obama is, ummm, are we going by the one-drop rule or are we using those pesky facts. I would have to side with the mama grizzly on this one if cornered. They don’t care. Repudiate-refudiate, it doesn’t matter and it is so very unnecessary to go there.
Finally, there is Camp David. Being able to fly to Camp David for Malia’s birthday party or for some quick r & r is quite the perk. A weekend getaway to recuperate from the stresses of the golf course and his speedy descent into Marxist Socialism may be just what the socialized doctor ordered. I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t feel more comfortable at Gitmo. Considering the comforts of the brotherhood, the ethnic food, and the fact that it has turned into quite the luxurious abode under his watch, why should the taxpayers be paying for both?
I don’t want to cry over the communist bread kiosk, we shouldn’t be shy about giving Obama a fair wage, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need!” He truly has the work ethic of a Stalinist. Let’s just get rid of the White House wine cellar and give him his monthly vodka ration. Wait a tick, Obama is in the top one percent. Kennedy didn’t take a salary for being President, why should Obama. Give the $25,001 to Biden. The VP only gets a museum. The President gets a Presidential Library to fall back on if and when times get tough. Ask Clinton, the Presidential Library is a very lucrative business. Not global warming sex poodle money but enough to pay off the campaign loans and spring for an Oscar de la Renta gown for Chelsea.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/defiant-bell-mayor-defends-city-managers-high-salary-hours-after-official-resigns.html
16% unemployment in Bell, shrinking job market, and taxes, wonderful, wonderful taxes. I cannot believe anyone would think they might deserve it.
http://recenter.tamu.edu/data/empct/CT068000.htm
They're not as positive as projected. Here's how to turn them around.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/26/employment-recession-economy-finance-opinions-contributors-mallory-factor.html?partner=dailycrux
POST ALL CHECKS DISBURSED - NAME OF PAYEE - AMOUNT AND WHAT IT WAS FOR ON THE INTERNET.
TOTAL DISCLOSURE WILL ELIMINATE WHAT HAPPENED IN BELL AND KEEP OUR POLITICIANS HONEST.
PETITION FOR TOTAL DISCLOSURE OF EXPENDITURES - IT'S THE TAXPAYERS MONEY THEY SHOULD KNOW WHERE IT'S GOING. STOP FRAUD WITH TOTAL DISCLOSURE.