Ishmael Beah

The Middle East flight from madness has begat the Euro crisis, which has certain people decrying the influx of foreigners into the west. Not everyone, though.

The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing "democracy" at the barrel of a gun.

--Ron Paul

Given that the West has played its hand and the dealer's still dealing, this disconnect obviously doesn't serve the refugees. Cue our peculiar American ego of ours, wrapped in the flag of lofty ideals, with just enough leftover food to fuel the pr machine. Even if you come up in one of our tough urban environments.

And here's the question: Is coming  up in East LA, South Central, Compton, the South Bronx, Cabrini Green... really tough? My Auntie Kathy told me she hated her childhood because they were dirt poor, Ma told me of having nothing to eat unless Uncle George went out and killed some game, otherwise it'd be cabbage and some listless white sauce made out of flour. Most self-proclaimed "gangstas" would run screaming from the room if faced with the prospect of being in a really tough context. You either eat or you don't. You can dodge bullets, not hunger.

Nebraska high school yearbook photo. Yep.

Then there's war torn places the likes of which are relegated to privileged gazes like the neocons or our mass media, as distorted and twisted a view as any. One  of the things I asked in the wake of the City of Bell scandal, which saw the government liquidate the holdings of that puss sack otherwise known as former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo, was this: How much of that money found its way back to the citizens of Bell? While covering the scandal, the LA Times, whom I applaud for breaking the story, never once mentioned this, nor reparations of any kind.

I once told a young kid from the inner city who thought he was hard, that if he thought he was tough, to go live in Gaza and support Palestinians. Or see if he could get into the looniest bin on earth, North Korea. Stay there, year after year, eating crap day and night. Then write us and let us know how hard you are.

Hearing about insanity from Others can be like opening a new door. Whether one has the capacity, the energy to go through is another subject. Ishmael Beah walks through from the Other side, and shakes up our so-called hard gangstas with hardcore reality, pragmatism, humor, and, a profound vision of humanity born and bred in the crucible of horror and struggle.

Listen to this young man.

Bureaucrooks Gone Wild, The Taming Episode

The lifestyle that Robert Rizzo enjoyed during his run as Bell city manager included a stable full of thoroughbreds, among them a gelding named Depenserdel'argent — French for "spend money."

And Rizzo had plenty to spend, with an annual compensation package that swelled to $1.5 million in one of Los Angeles County's poorest cities.

--LA Times 

Beyond the trillions hoovered up by psycho bankers and bureaucrooks, there's perhaps the question of EM08: Why has no one gone to jail? 

Well, if "EM08" is used as I define it -- government and corporate psychopaths preying on the underclass -- then ex City of Bell city manager Robert Rizzo and his cohorts sitting on ice is a lesson.

Now, Bell is in the east portion of LA, southeast to be more precise. It's a tiny, about 40k populated city, all brown, blue collar. That these bureaucrook scums, some of whom were brown, speaks to just how seductive money is. When you jack anyone innocent it's bad, but when you jack your own kind, well, speaks for itself. Ask Jews about Bernie Madoff, Muslims about Boko Haram or ISIS, or Koreans about kid slob in Pyongyang.

Critics of the death penalty say that it's not a deterrent, and, in fact, statistically, that's apparently true. But that's for capital crimes. EM08 is in another category. Rather than bore you I think what I'll do is make an index of crimes and players, as extensively as I can, in another post. But that's a big project.

For now, let's be content with the following story below. We can't say for sure whether jailing Rizzo and his shithead cohorts was the catalyst for change, but it sure seems coincidental coming a year after jailing those psychos.

And now, faces of evil:

Asian sellout? NAH! It's love, even if he woulda been bricklaying.

Extra chili on the fries. Oh, and Skittles. Lots an lots a Skittles.

Bureaucrooks as only crazy LA can do, in white and now new LA brown.

Yes, my cell mate was Bubba, and yes, I ate him. I am sahwee.

Public CEO at: publicceo.com/2015/04/city-of-bell-scores-top-grades-for-open-data-access-one-year-after-trials-conclude

City of Bell Scores Top Grades for Open Data Access One Year After Trials Conclude

PUBLICCEOAPRIL 10, 2015IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

By Bill Britt.

One year ago this month, former Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo was sentenced to 12 years in prisonfor his role in what became known as The Bell Scandal. Five former elected Bell officials were convicted of corruption for paying themselves salaries of up to $100,000 a year for part-time positions.

In a city where one-quarter of the residents live below the poverty line, their elected officials not only bilked the city out of millions, they left it unable to afford the experienced administrators and staff who are now needed to replace them.

But first, the good news: The City of Bell now boasts one of the more open municipal websites when it comes to accessing data. Not only are city procedures and salaries posted, but Mayor Nestor Enrique Valencia points says the names of the people earning those salaries are listed as well. “Before the scandal was exposed, we didn’t even have a website. For years, if you clicked on it, it was the same online picture of a little girl and boy with the caption, ‘Website under construction.’ Our new Finance Director has since turned things around.”

That would be Josh Betta. He’s so good at his job that, during his tenure as Finance Director for the City of Glendora, he received the Certificate of Achievement, the highest form of recognition for governmental accounting and financial reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United Stated and Canada. He regarded Bell as a city worth saving.

“The idea of having a useful and viable website is simply good business,” said Betta. “The challenge is letting people know it exists. After they find it, the challenge for users is perspective. Sure, you can see our salaries but if you want to know whether a salary or increase is appropriate, you have to find the contract pertaining to that union. It’s also on the website, but you’ve got to do the work. It’s not all laid out for you.”

Which is why Mayor Valencia wants to take the website a step further by at least making that contract easy to find. “Visually,” Valencia says, “I’d like to see a tab where people go right to the specific things they’re looking for, but personally, mindful of those fake bonus rewards that were exposed in the scandal, I want us to post total compensation. Not just salaries but pensions, health care benefits and any potential, legitimate bonuses as well.”

While Betta boasts that the city’s website earned an A-minus grade in 2013 from the Sunshine Review, an organization that evaluates the transparency of government websites, Valencia points out that Bell has replaced one image problem for another: It can’t afford to hire quality administrators and support staff. Valencia says the city’s interim city manager has moved on, and both Financial Director Betta, and the Community Development Director are also leaving.

“Our current city manager did great work,” said Valencia. “Our Finance Director, who was key to this turnaround, is moving on. They’ve done their work and other cities are able to pay them more money. We just don’t have the funds to compete.”

And that fact alone causes the mayor to wonder if Bell can survive as a city. “If you can’t hire the right people and they won’t stay for whatever reason, it questions the sustainability of a city. We need good, dedicated professionals with proven experience. Right now, I’m proud of what we’ve done to turn things around. We’ll continue making data easily available online and other cities should follow as well.”

Two Studs

Little Bear Park, the kiddie park where the
Rizzo gang told Vives & Gottlieb to meet them.

I've resisted following up on the City of Bell crimes til now, but the trial of assistant city manager Angela Spaccia -- guilty -- and the plea by slimeball Robert Rizzo of no contest to 69 counts has resurfaced this "huge little story." So, while the big EM08 dawgs (continue to) sip cognac on yachts and laugh at the little peeps, at least these medium gangsters are getting bracelets. 

Here's a pretty good talk with Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb. What I appreciated was how they detail that from deciphering contracts to interviewing to forensic accounting to making simple requests that can stretch for days if not weeks... this is long, painstaking work that only investigative journalism can do. They remind me of my television hero, Columbo; persistent, a focus on detail and a poker pro's nose for horseshit when they smell it.

More, their talk underscores why media is so crucial to freedom. Rather, a media that values sunlight, can figure out the dollars and has the balls to stand up to power.

Back on the ground, reporters Vives and Gottlieb deserve some kind of medal. An unlikely pair, Gottlieb is the grizzled vet, having bounced round honing his skills, while Vives shouldn't even be in his position if we listened to some. As a kid he was an undocumented immigrant (Guatemala). That he's here, standing with a Pulitzer in hand speaks well for our country.

These guys are studs, and really make me proud. Sometimes our country works pretty well.
(Doesn't Gottlieb have a passing resemblance to Bob Odenkirk? Don't know who Odenkirk is? Better call Saul....)

The Killing of a City Manager

Though I'm in Berkeley now, I know a bit about Bell, because I've driven through it, but it's like Maywood, its neighbor, which is just like all of the other little brown towns in LA. Like the one I was raised in.

Today that fat pig Robert Rizzo and some of his cronies from the Bell City Council were arrested; yeah, it's good cuz it looks like everyone from current state attorney general Jerry Brown on down to City Attorney Steve Cooley are gonna skin this fucker sideways. But it begs the question; with cities across the nation going belly up, one wonders if local reporters will have the wherewithal, let alone the support, to dig deeper. Hope so.

In the meantime, hat's off to my pop's old employer and reporters Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives.

========================================

THE STORY OF HOW THE BELL SCANDAL BROKE: AN ACCOUNT FROM LA TIMES REPORTER JEFF GOTTLIEB

by James Spencer
August 11, 2010

for Public CEO.com

The world of local government shook on July 15.

It was the day that two Los Angeles Times journalists, Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives, broke the shocking story of corruption in the small city of Bell.

"Bell, one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County, pays its top officials some of the highest salaries in the nation, including nearly $800,000 annually for its city manager, according to documents reviewed by The Times."

Each day following the initial report, more news dripped from the leaky faucet in Bell, flooding the media world.

The city was exposed. The public's reaction was impassioned. Local government officials everywhere were examined.

Seemingly each new day, Gottlieb and Vives continue to break another outrageous angle of the Bell story. Nearly a month after the initial report broke, Gottlieb says the story is, "nowhere near dead."

How exactly did the scandal in the city of Bell break?

The trail began in early July, when Bell's neighboring city of Maywood laid off all of its city employees and outsourced its services to Bell. Gottlieb and Vives wrote the story, and soon learned that the Los Angeles County District Attorney was investigating Bell for high salaries.

Gottlieb said that they were hearing things about Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo's salary being near $300,000 to $400,000. So, the two reporters headed to Bell's City Hall looking for hard numbers.

"We expected to see the contracts," Gottlieb said in a phone interview with PublicCEO. "We expected they would just give them to us."

But, for reasons that are now obvious, Bell wasn't so quick to hand out the information.

Rizzo wouldn't come out of his office. The reporters were forced to fill out a California Public Records Act request for the information. The city even charged a dollar for the Xerox copy.

Then came the waiting. The reporters waited 10 days before obtaining the information, calling Bell City Clerk, Rebecca Valdez, each day to check on the status of their request. Sometimes Valdez wouldn't return calls, other days she would simply say the city was working on it.

On the ninth day of waiting, Gottlieb and Vives got a call from the city of Bell. Rizzo wanted to talk.

"Rizzo came to the phone and said they had the documents but wanted to sit down and talk," Gottlieb said.

The meeting was - somewhat oddly - held in a conference room at a park in Bell the next day. Rizzo wasn't alone. With him was Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia, Police Chief Randy Adams, City Councilman Luis Artiga, Mayor Oscar Hernandez and two lawyers.

"I knew something was up," Gottlieb said. "My first thought was, ‘why are two lawyers here?'"

The city officials delivered the documents with salary information. Neither reporter had looked at the documents when Gottlieb fired the obvious question towards Rizzo: "So, how much do you make?"

"He coughs out $700,000," Gottlieb said. "It was such an outrageous figure that I wasn't sure I heard him correctly. I said, ‘how much?' and he said it again. I turned to the police chief and asked the same question. He said $457,000. I then turned to Angela Spaccia and she said she didn't know. Rizzo said she made about $350,000."

Gottlieb said you could feel the tension in the room. He said it calmed down later and Rizzo was actually friendly. There was never a plea to the reporters not to write the story.

"He was utterly unrepentant," Gottlieb said.

At that point, Gottlieb told Rizzo that he must be the highest paid City Manager in Los Angeles County. Rizzo replied, "I am sure I am."

Talking with one another after the meeting, both reporters knew that Rizzo wasn't just the highest paid City Manager in the county, but also in the state - and probably in the country.

"Of all the stories I have written, this has brought the highest level of outrage," Gottlieb said.

With the outrage has come an outpouring of further tips and information to lead ongoing investigations into Bell and other cities. The result is a continuous stream of breaking news.

This past weekend, Gottlieb and Vives furthered the story by reporting that Rizzo received a package of benefits that increased his annual compensation to more than $1.5 million.

"From that story, we came up with five more stories," Gottlieb said.

The stories by Gottlieb and Vives have changed how local governments operate now and into the future. The impact of the Bell scandal is far-reaching, leading to transparency policies for local governments throughout California.

At a time when newspapers continue to take an economic pounding, caught between a loyalty to the print publication and a search for an online business model, the two L.A. Times journalists have proven the importance of keen journalism.

For that alone, Gottlieb and Vives are deserving of a Pulitzer.

James Spencer can be reached at jspencer@publicceo.com or on Twitter @PublicCEO