Bell, CA Officials Arrested

The major players in the Bell, California corruption scandal -- including million-dollar city manager Robert Rizzo -- have been arrested and charged in connection with mishandling of $5.5 million in city funds. The L.A. Times reports:

Rizzo has been charged with 53 counts of misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest.

Among those arrested were former city administrator Robert Rizzo, former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, Mayor Oscar Hernandez, councilmembers George Mirabal, Teresa Jacobo, Luis Artiga and former councilmembers George Cole and Victor Bello.

[…]

[L.A. County D.A. Steve] Cooley has said his office was examining whether the various financial transactions in Bell amounted to thefts of public funds. The office is also looking into allegations of voter fraud and whether the high salaries earned by Rizzo and others were legal.

Last week, California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown filed a lawsuit against current and former Bell city leaders demanding that their pay contracts be nullified and that they pay back some of their salaries and pension benefits.

Daily Pilot's Joseph Serna describes the arrest of Rizzo, who as you can see has actually grown superhumanly fat from sucking dry the marrow of the productive class.

Comments

[sage]

Caption Contest!

"And now police force the city food critic to do the perp walk. As an aside, he has furniture disease: his chest is in his drawers."

[Fiscal Meth]

"Mayor Rizzo learned the hard way that not all fruit diets are healthy and that feasting exclusively on the fruit of other people's labor encourages obesity"

[Rich]

"I woulda skipped town, if I could skip."

[MikeP]

"Did you really have to shoot my dog?"

[sage]

"and uh...you gonna eat that?"

[I am not the government's ATM]

"Keep that Eskimo with a club away from me"

[Episiarch]

"Grimace was arrested at his McDonaldland home early Sunday morning for child molestation."

[John]

+1

[SugarFree]

Very nice.

[jeffrey]

McDonaldland home??

Why not McMansion?

[Karl]

Fat jokes: the highest form of comedy.

[Billy Shakespeare]

Also: the widest form.

[Mark Young]

+1

😀

[Al Franken]

Hey! I financed my political campaign with money from fat jokes about Limbaugh!

[Ska]

The city manager imagines his hearing as he is escorted from his home -

"I hereby sentence you, Mr. Rizzo, to no less than nine years in a federal pound-me-in-the-man-tits prison."

[JW]

"Zippy the Pinhead, seen here without his trademark polka-dot mu-mu, had no meaningful or coherent comment."

[Solanum]

Greg "Fossilman" Raymer felted.

[x,y]

Ha, I thought the same thing.

[ClubMedSux]

I actually thought Cavanaugh's alt-text was pretty good, but I would have also accepted: "I was myself with a rag on a stick."

[SugarFree]

"2nd man arrested in connection to death of Virginia Rappe."

[The Mossy Spaniard]

That was pretty damn clever.

[tr0n]

"Hey, tubby, how about a little bathroom reading? I have the August 1983 issue of Wrestling World here. There's a terrific article about a wrestler named the Revolting Blob. Gee, you know somethin'? He kinda looks like someone I know."

[Abdul]

"Wow, as if the arrest wasn't humiliating enough, my porch collapsed under my own weight."

[Nooge]

"Can you guys squeegee up under my titties? It's hot out here."

[MITConserv]

I love this! Can I reuse this joke!

[silent v]

That picture looks like the number 101 walking toward the camera

[Abdul]

What's a number 101? A number 2 + 99?

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

I lol'd!

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

It's a "0" in between two "1"s. Like the two tall cops with the fat guy in between. Or like lol.

They're no good if you have to explain them.

[Abdul]

I was thinking rizzo looks like number 2, but plus 99.

[Ska]

Rizzo was thinking of grabbing a McD's number two, about 99 times.

[CavMedic]

Any legal types out there got an opinion on the likelihood of any convictions on this?

[IANAFL]

I'd say convictions are certain ... for the scum defaming these populalrly-elected, legitimately-salaried public servants.

[AlmightyJB]

Then they will get full back pay for the years the trial took, plus compensation for being wrongly accused. They are public servants after all.

[R C Joke Handle]

If they seat a jury from Bell, I'd say close to 100%.

[Mister DNA]

Voter initiative-friendly California needs a proposition allowing for tar & feathering & running out of town on rails.

[aaron]

High speed rails?

[J sub D]

Then it would never happen.

[JW]

3rd rail?

[Apogee]

+1

[Spoonman.]

I think OSHA would have a problem with running that guy out of town on a rail.

[Billy Shakespeare]

As would the NTSB.

[P Brooks]

This is why I cannot completely reject the notion of the death penalty; if anybody deserves to be put to death, it's these vampires.

[Pro Libertate]

Vampires are already dead.

[AlmightyJB]

Technically they're undead.

[Fiscal Meth]

Then fucking unrevive them and unkill the bastards!

[AlmightyJB]

I don't know. Making them dig ditches the rest of their lives for commissary money sounds pretty good too. Maybe with a webcam so we can check it every now and then to lOAO.

[Robert Rizzo]

"Takin' it off, boss."

[Butts Wagner]

*shudder*

[Jason]

"Wipin' under the moob, boss."

[Tex]

Good, now go arrest these clowns: Amway has ripped off millions of people for several decades, to the tune of 10s of billions of dollars. If you were an IBO within the past 4 years and want to get your Amway Tool Scam money back, contact me at [e-mail] in order to join my lawsuit.

Read about the Amway Tool Scam on this website: http://texsquixtarblog.blogspo.....-scam.html and forward the information to everyone you know, so they can join the lawsuit and stopped getting scammed.

Amway is a scam, and here's why: Amway pays out as little money as they can get away with, so they support the higher level IBOs ripping off their downline via the tool scam.

As a result, about 99% of IBOs operate at a net loss, while the top 1% make several TIMES more from their Amway tool scam than from the Amway products. This was made illegal in the UK in 2008, but our FTC is unable to pull their heads out of their butts to stop it here.

[KingTaco]

The DA should have just gone to his home looking for a plea. Rizzo probably would have cut a deal just to avoid walking from his home to the patrol car.

[Mister DNA]

The amazing thing about this isn't that some politicians are being held accountable, but that the police were able to pull off such high-profile arrests without shooting any dogs.

[AlmightyJB]

They randomaly shot one later to make up for it Radley.

[Tank]

Either that, or they're getting better at it.

[Episiarch]

Some politicians are only being held accountable so that other politicians can campaign on doing something about this outrage.

[John]

Pretty much these guys are small fish. The day Jamie Gorlich or Chris Dodd are hauled off in cuffs is the day I will believe that they are serious about stopping corruption. These guys just got uppity and stole too much for their position. It is only the bosses who get to steal in the seven figures not the small time wiseguys like these people.

[Jake]

Yawn. You need some new material.

[Billy Shakespeare]

Rizzo raises dogs, but for food, and he'd just finished off the last batch. So there weren't any around to shoot.

People in the city offices used to wonder why Rizzo would often talk so much about "those tasty hot dogs."

[Tank]

That guy is not going to do well in prison.

I'm in favor of the death penalty in theory, I just don't trust the system to use it correctly. But vigilante justice? Oh hell yeah.

[AlmightyJB]

music from deliverance playing in background

[zeebs]

Once again, we have another alt text winner. I love that about Reason.

[Pip]

Ask not for whom the City of Bell tolls,
It tolls for thee, you fat fuck.

[Dello]

Winner!

[DG]

How would their salaries be illegal? This seems like posturing by some pols to show they are going to "stamp out corruption" but the most anyone will get is a slap on the wrist.

[Jake]

Your buzz-kill is spoiling the lynch party, DG.

[Episiarch]

Do you have a point?

[Jake]

Do you?

[Episiarch]

I asked you first!

[Enough About Plain]

He did in fact ask you first.

[Jake]

My point was made in my comment, but thanks for asking.

[Episiarch]

No, thank you for having no point!

[Jake]

You too.

[The Gobbler]

Jake? As in Jake and the Fat Man?

[Apologetic California]

They weren't arrested for their salaries, there was a shitload of looting going on. $5.5 million in misappropriated funds according to the DA. He was signing off city loans without the required approval of the council.

[Pip]

"Takin' it off, boss."

[Pip]

Pay no attention to the above miss posting.

[Warty]

Why are they perpwalking Danny DeVito?

[Pip]

You haven't seen It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

[ClubMedSux]

Or, specifically, this?

[Episiarch]

"Frank's balls...they're like planets, dude!"

[Dan]

What's your point?

[Zero]

I could just be crazy, but when did this become a corruption case. I thought it was a "haha we voted each other huge pay raise" case, I didn't know there was a criminal element involved.

[John]

That guy cold smuggle in an arsenal into jail under those moobs.

[Bingo]

In reality the only thing this guy is guilty of is giving himself a salary from the largesse. Pols in DC take taxpayer dollars on a much larger scale and give them to their friends and cronies, while reaping side benefits or securing themselves a fat paycheck when leaving office.

[John]

Yup. As I said above, these guys just got uppity and stole above their station.

[Rob McMillin]

You think so? There are two reasons I believe that's wrong:

1) The city was giving out "loans" to its employees.

2) The perps involved were giving themselves titular jobs for which they received sizable salaries that did not show up registering against their main job. This is fraud.

[Mosquevite Sandwich]

This is an outrage. This man shouldn't be arrested, he should be on the ballot for a Congressional seat. The man shows early signs of ambition in public service, and this is how he is treated?

Rizzo 2012 - "He won't piss your money away on ineffective, inefficient government programs, he'll fucking eat it!"

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

Rizzo? Any relation to Ratso?

[John]

http://www.nationalreview.com/.....iel-foster

Either one of those cops is Shaquille O'Neil or that guy is like five foot two 330.

[Brett L]

I thought it was a Spawn outtake.

[PapayaSF]

I think they're going down steps, with the perp on a lower step.

[SugarFree]

I wonder how many quarters he could fit in his belly button.

[John]

That would be a good trick to know in prison. Could find a really tough lifer and be his court jester.

[SugarFree]

You gotta watch that though... belly button that deep and moist you risk ending up as some dude's belly bitch.

[John]

Sometimes you have to take the best of the bad options available. There are worse kinds of bitches to be.

[SugarFree]

I wonder if you can prolapse a belly button. I mean, you can have the button pop on a pregnant women, like a turkey timer, but can you turn one that deep inside-out? What anchors the belly button?

These are the times I really miss Groovus.

[Episiarch]

Why don't you go find out? We eagerly await your research report.

[SugarFree]

As far as I can tell, there isn't a medical term for a prolapsed belly button. Totally needs to be on House.

[John]

I am sure someone in prison has the answer to that.

[Tonio]

Navel hernias are fairly common in fatter guys; not quite a prolapse, but turns an innie to an outie real quick.

[Episiarch]

NutraSweet would understand that.

[Enough About Plain]

I seem to reacall that happening to a guy named Mr. Creosote.

[SugarFree]

By the way... sexual attraction to the belly button is omphalophilia.

[AlmightyJB]

interesting. So what would a sexual attration to to ompa lumpas be?

[Enough About Plain]

Twenty bucks. Same as downtown.

[Pip]

I find that statement sounds best when done in a Dora the Explorer voice.

"Did you know...sexual attraction to the belly button...is called omphalophilia?"

[AlmightyJB]

So do you often imagine Dora talking about sexual facts?

[Pip]

All the fuckin' time.

[AlmightyJB]

I haven't before but I probably will now. Thanks.

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

I'm sure you would happily compose some prose to set the scene for the rest of us.

**shudder**

bleaghhh...

[SugarFree]

I'll spare us all the madness that would result. Although I do wonder if one would prefer a waxed belly button in that situation. And how do you wax things in prison?

[Episiarch]

Yo make the wax out of the same thing you make your escape tools out of.

[Not Prose, Exactly]

There once was a fat man in prison.
One day he was standin' there whizzin'.
A guy walked up behind,
Said, "I'm wantin' to grind,"
"And your moobs got me totally jizzin'."

[Welcome to the new USSR]

Threadjack.

http://www.economicpolicyjourn.....erica.html

Wanna get rich? Snitch.

That's the new money-making mantra for folks with access to confidential information on Wall Street.

With the release of Oliver Stone's new movie, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" in mind, Stuart Meissner, a securities lawyer based in Midtown, is tweaking a message made famous by the first "Wall Street": that greed is good for people standing on the right side of the law, too.

Uncle Sam recently started offering rich bounties to folks who help put away bad guys -- like Gordon Gekko, the central character of Stone's film, played by Michael Douglas, who goes to jail for insider trading.

Meissner came up with the idea to advertise for snitches who know of illegal activity at their firm. His in-theater ads and fliers will recruit whistleblowers with the promise of riches to come.

"Having the ad right there with the movie reminds people who have information regarding securities violations, 'Hey, I can make money and also do a good thing,' " said Meissner, who previously worked with the financial crimes unit of the New York State Attorney General's Office.

The ads, which are set to music similar to the theme from "Law & Order," tell moviegoers they can remain anonymous with their tips if they go through a lawyer.

[cynical]

No snitchin

[Enough About Palin]

So it's bad if the city elders of Bell, CA steal, but not bad when inside traders do it?

Please explain. Thanks

[cynical]

What part of "stop snitchin" do you not understand? Besides, inside trading isn't stealing, it's just trading with more intelligence than most people.

[Mosquevite Sandwich]

Clearly he never saw Anderson Cooper's landmark segment "Don't Be Snithcin'." That's a shame.

[R C Joke Handle]

I'm sure they can find them some voter fraud, if they look hard enough.

"Theft of public funds" is an interesting one. If it includes collusion to pay or receive above-market rates for services, then I do believe they have a good case.

[R C Dean]

Dammit! I told you I always screw up the joke handles.

[JW]

Is this a new RC'z Law?

[R C Dean]

The sequel:

RC'z Law: This Time, Its Personal.

[Abdul]

I'm sure they can find them some voter fraud, if they look hard enough.

Hey, if you weigh as much as three voters, you should have three times the voting power.

[John]

Threadjack. But this is astounding.

Maran recounts the 1980s feminist-inspired campaign to expose molestation, which hit feverish levels in 1988 with the book 'The Courage to Heal." As an early reporter on the story, Maran observed family therapy sessions, interviewed molesters and steeped herself in cases where abuse clearly took place. Meanwhile, she divorced her husband and fell in love with a woman who was also an incest survivor. Maran began having nightmares about her own molestation and soon what had been a contentious relationship with her father turned into accusations of unspeakable crimes. Eventually, she came to realize the truth. She was the person who had done wrong.

http://www.salon.com/books/int.....index.html

[dave c]

Rotten bitch. Hope she burns in hell.

[John]

The Salon interview is horrible. She takes absolutely no responsibility and blames in on "mass hysteria". And rather than portray her as the rotten bitch she is, Salon pitches the interview as

" Salon wanted to know, too. We spoke with Maran recently about how a false memory is born, what she thinks of "Courage to Heal" today, and what her story can teach us about such dangerous political narratives as the undying "Obama is Muslim" lie."

Seriously WTF?

[JW]

"...I was working as a feminist journalist..."

One of these things does not belong with the others.

[R C Dean]

"working"?

[JW]

"Let me think abou this for a second. I ruined my father's life with these unspeakable allegations. How can I redeem myself for such inhuman behavior?

Should I throw myself at his feet and beg forgiveness? Write a long piece for the NYT style section? have Slate or Salon publish a well-written mea culpa? Take out an ad in the WaPo?

Nah. I'll just write a book and hope to sell as many copies as possible."

[John]

That woman is truly evil.

[Nooge]

There is this amazing scene in the book when your father calls after you've sent him a birthday card for the first time in years and you recall that you sort of floated to the ceiling and could look down at yourself. And you hear your therapist say floating to the ceiling is what little girls do when they're molested. Can you tell me a little bit more about what happened to you that day?

That was a really good example of mind control, of brainwashing, that I had been so steeped in the symptomatology of incest survivors. How do you know it's true and what happens to little girls when they've been molested? All that stuff had gone into my head. That is a symptom of mass hysteria. I was actually transposing what I had heard from these little girls into my own psyche. When I heard my father's voice, I just went there.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

[JW]

"As someone who managed to fabricate a complete reality out of absolutely nothing, you should take every word I say as the gospel truth. I sincerely mean every word of my blame-shifting.

Oh...buy my book and be sure to watch me on Oprah."

[Spoonman.]

Jesus. She went from pretending she was a victim of her father to pretending she was a victim of "societal panic". Take some personal responsibility, you idiot.

[woman]

What is this "personal responsibility"? Is it the responsibility of male figures in my life (daddy, boyfriend, husband, or Uncle Sam) to take care of me because I am a delicate, easily manipulated, emotionally fragile flower?

[dave c]

I love this line: "In the early 1990s the culture flipped, and so did I".

What? So she didn't feel it was fashionable any more to accuse her father of molestation?

I hope her and her therapist die in a fire.

[aaron]

The comments are surprisingly hostile. But this one is awesome:

Although I understand her emotional pain she caused her father, plus the anguish her ?false?memory caused her and others who love her, perhaps, her memory may not really be all that false. I'm speaking about what's called ?past life memories?.

Ms. Maran may actually be remembering experiences from another lifetime. We live thousands of them, and overleaves of traumatic experiences live on in our cellular memories from lifetime to lifetime until they are acknowledged and cleansed. Regression therapists and parapsychologists work with millions of people who have traumatic memories from other lifetimes. Such memories damage and often paralyse our present lives unless they are acknowledged and healed.This is not psychic gook, it is fact and universities both in Europe and the US have serious, well funded parapsychological departments that study phenomena known and respected for millennia in Asia and other countries but sneered at in the West, although belief is growing apace even here where religion and psychology fail. Psychology and Psychiatry are not really sciences, and in the future, may be as much mocked and laughed about as our ancestors' seeking answers through reading the entrails of a goat.

Perhaps consulting a parapsychologist will open up those memories and truly absolve her of her present sense of guilt and shame for accusing her present-life father. Try it, Ms Maran. You may like it.

[Mike Laursen]

...overleaves of traumatic experiences live on in our cellular memories from lifetime to lifetime...

Umm, wouldn't your cellular memories belong to just one lifetime?

[Cunctator]

So let me get this straight.

Psychology and psichiatry are not science (I happen to mostly agree), but parapsychology and regression therapy are? And millions of people have been through this process?

*CITATION NEEDED*

[Cunctator]

psychiatry (I even previewed)

[Hobo Chang Ba]

Through most of the interview I was thinking you guys were exaggerating. She said she'd "never be able to forgive herself" for her false accusation (which didn't actually happen except inside her own head and with similar-minded friends).

Then the ending:
In the middle of the book, while you are still deeply in the mind-set of being molested, there's a notion you agree with that if one innocent man goes to prison, but it stops a hundred molesters, it's worth it. Do you still agree with that notion?

I'm fairly close to a man still in prison, and really believe he is innocent. I know how he's suffered. I know he's 80 years old and in ill health. He's spent 20 years in prison, for no reason. If every elementary school child is now taught how to protect themselves from sexual abuse -- and even more to the point, some father or preschool teacher who feels the urge to molest a child will be inhibited from doing so because they think there are guys still in jail for doing that -- but innocent people are in prison, do I have to make that choice? It is a Sophie's choice kind of thing. Would I allow an innocent man to sit in prison if it meant keeping children safe?

So would you make that choice?

I think so.

Jesus. She's freaking despicable, and the only good part is that thankfully she never actually sent her dad to jail for something he didn't do. Some feminists would love it if every man was in jail, simply for being a man.

[Leroy]

What an utterly despicable piece of shit that woman is.

[Cyto]

I was just about to post the same quote. They end the entire article about her false accusations against her father with "yeah, I'd toss innocent men in jail to save the children". And yet the tone of the article leans toward what a wonderful and insightful writer she is. Or maybe my sardonic-radar broken...

[Nooge]

What a disgusting lardo sack of shit. He might as well have "I'M A PARASITE" tattooed on his forehead.

[?]

Are any of you guys super fat? I have a question.

When you walk, does it feel like you're a normal-sized person walking through a fat guy?or through a moving sphere of liquid beef or something? Is your skeleton, like, rowing lard and fighting the turbulence? Because that's how it looks. Even in stills.

I have about seven extra beer-pounds on me right now, and they don't move right. Their inertial foreignness (y'know?) startles me every time I move at normal human speed. Does that feeling scale? Does it go away? Do you repress it? Is keeping it out of your consciousness the reason you move so slowly?
WTF lardo?

[Spoonman.]

This shit is hilarious.

[Extended Warren T]

I'm certainly happy that these pig-men are being force fed ladles worth of personal misery, however this might not be the best thing.

See, the people in those communities and others following this scandal have been shown the system "works". And the illusion continues. So they may be more inclined to support it.

If these guys had gotten away scot free some people might have had an epiphany and rejected the concept of coercive government. The illusion might have been dispelled for them.

Which is likely the main reason they were arrested.

[Rob McMillin]

By the by, where's Chad with his predictable "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization" Holmsian horseshit?

[Cytotoxic]

He was eaten whole by...guess who.

[cynical]

The citizens outside looked from pig to manager, and from manager to pig, and from pig to manager again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

(Wow, "pig" actually wasn't a dig at the cops this time).

[Liberal Douchebag]

Hey! Public servants DESERVE to make good money!

[Mr. FIFY]

Well, dig this non-surprise:

http://www.ocregister.com/arti.....party.html

In the wake of the Bell salary scandal, our readers noticed one part of the story has been left out by virtually all media sources, including our related editorials and columns: the political party affiliations of the five city council members who not only failed to protect city coffers, but participated in what amounts to shameless, if apparently legal, self-dealing.

All five council members are members of the Democratic Party.

Tony? Chad? Max?

[Tony, Chad, and Max]

*cricket noises*

[Mr. Chartreuse]

"How The Blob has fallen, once the bane of the X-Men, now arrested by common local police. He was heard to be futilely screaming "Nothing moves the Blob!" , as he was put in the police cruiser."

[Justin Lancaster]

Is that guy's elbows backwards?

[The Peoples' Friend]

The fat jokes are amusing, but we need to remember that these acts of public corruption damage the nation just as much as the death of a police officer or soldier.

If found guilty, that corpulent creature and his cohorts should be immediately and lawfully executed.

[MITConserv]

If they are charged with Voter Fraud....that seems like serious federal charges. Does anyone know if they will be charged with that or what the max or min for that will be if found guilty?

[-]

It's so adorable how H&R "libertarians" just love law enforcement when the alleged criminals are fat Californians. Yee haw! Get a rope, boys! We don't need no stinking trial!

[The Peoples Friend]

Libertarian? I'm only speaking out in this Ayn Rand saturated forum because this blog entry was at the top of the list when I did my Bell, CA Google Search.

If found guilty (I do support a trial), these vermin need to be exterminated.

[-]

this Ayn Rand saturated forum

There are few Objectivists here. Pie-in-the-sky utopian anarchism and Objectivism are philosophically incompatible.

[Bill Deil]

Imagine owning a home in Bell, Calif where the corrupt government officials jacked up taxes to pay themselves $800,000 salaries. And every one of these corrupt government "leaders" is a democrat, but the nifong news media is totally silent about that. If it was all non-democrats who pulled this scam, the nazi media would be reporting it 24/7. Obama, Pelosi Reid, and the dems are Bell, Ca on a national scale.