timesjoke

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bell-council-20100723,0,4500089.story 3 Bell leaders to quit in pay scandal Bell's top administrators, whose hefty salaries have stirred public outrage and calls for investigations, agreed to resign Thursday night during a closed-door City Hall meeting. City Manager Robert Rizzo, Police Chief Randy Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia will not receive severance packages. Rizzo will step down at the end of August and Spaccia will leave at the end of September. Adams will also leave at the end of August, after completing an evaluation of the Police Department. The decision was announced at midnight to a crowd of angry Bell residents who anxiously had been waiting since the City Council began its meeting at 4:30 p.m. None of the administrators attended the session. The crowd erupted in applause after the announcement but immediately yelled out questions about what would happen to the council members. Four of the five are paid close to $100,000 annually. When their questions were not answered, they shouted, "Recall!" "Definitely letting go of these three top officials is the first step we need to fix the city," said Christina Garcia, a member of BASTA, or the Bell Assn. to Stop the Abuse. Throughout the evening, several residents complained that the council was taking too long, while others clapped in unison to urge the members to come out. "This is outrageous," said Marcelino Ceja, who has lived in the city for 17 years. "They have to hurry up. I've got kids to feed." The emergency meeting followed several days of negotiations between the officials and attorneys for the city to reach deals.The crowd began shouting when Councilman Lorenzo Velez's request to open the meeting to the public was overruled by the city attorney, who said the city would be at legal risk if it discussed personnel matters in public. Emotions ran so high that the council chamber was briefly cleared. Several residents taunted council members, including yelling "rude, rude" when Mayor Oscar Hernandez's cellphone rang. Several urged the entire council to resign. The Times revealed last week that the city's top officials have lucrative contracts that pay them some of the highest municipal wages in the country. Rizzo is paid $787,637 a year; Adams makes $457,000 and Spaccia makes $376,288. Velez, who makes only $8,076, has expressed shock at the amount his fellow council members are paid. Vice Mayor Teresa Jacobo said Velez makes less than the others because he was appointed, not elected. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office is looking at the salaries of council members to see whether they violate state law. On Thursday, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said he had ordered an investigation into the high salaries, calling the compensation packages "almost beyond belief." He said that the administrators' pay "morally borders on a gift of public funds" and that his office would "exhaust every possibility under California law'' to determine if Bell's leaders acted illegally. In an interview with The Times earlier this month, Rizzo and Hernandez defended Rizzo's pay, saying the city had been on the brink of bankruptcy when Rizzo came aboard and quickly turned the city's finances around. Rizzo lives in Huntington Beach and owns a sprawling horse ranch in Auburn, Wash., that is valued at more than $1 million, according to property records. Rizzo was arrested in March on suspicion of drunk driving when he crashed into a neighbor's mailbox and then pulled into a nearby alley, police said. His blood-alcohol level was measured at 0.28% — more than three times the legal limit, police said. He is enrolled in an alcohol-abuse class, court records show. Imagine being able to set your own paycheck. Money was never a consideration, if money fell short, just take more from the taxpayers and give yourself a raise, another raise, and more while your residents you represent are making less. Three guesses what political party Robert Rizzo belongs to....... Robert Rizzo will make about $600,000 a year on his retirement, making him the highest paid retired person from the California system, for managing one of the smallest towns in California.

But you claim a single idiot with a racist sounding sign represents thousands of other people at a tea party? All those thousands of people without the sign must believe what that one guy believes? Your doing exactly what they are doing, your avoiding talking about real problems buy calling everyone racist.

Did you even read the story IWS posted? Why were they so angry with Stephanopoulos if they don't want to control the flow of information? Why not just let each reporter do their own reporting?

Yep, a knee jerk reaction. Guess it could have been a worse knee jerk reaction... maybe something like a starting a war in the middle east under false info type knee jerk reaction... but, since it's the Obama administration, let's blame the president for not micromanaging every little department out there and say it's his fault. Let's make it out to be an even worse decision then Iraq and impeach him. . . Again, my point had nothing to do with the lady speaking, it was about the NAACP audience who were all displaying great pleasure while the lady spoke about giving "whitie" a hard time. Bender, You go on and on trying to claim that the tea party movement is racist but you can't show one example of how the average members are involved in any racist actions or speach. The most you can do is offer a couple idiots who are not part of the main audience with a stupid sign or maybe even saying something bad but that is the exception, not the rule Bender. As I already pointed out and you refuse to admit, there have been idiots with nasty signs at Democrat meetings in the past too, the sign saying they support troops who shoot their officers is one great example, does that sign at one of your big gatherings mean that "EVERY" person there where that sign also agreed that it was good for troops to shoot their officers Bender?

Where did I ever say you did it in front of your kids? Why is it you socialists/progressives always have to insert lies into every discussion? You make it almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion because most of the ranting your making about me is about things I never said. Consider this, let's take legal/illegal out of the picture for a second and look at it another way. If you were to die driving your car without wearing a seatbelt that would be stupid, but some people still refuse to wear their seatbelt. That seems like a personal choice and risk only you take but my point about your kids is that while what you do may seem like your personal choice, the possible harm from making that choice involves more than just you. If you die because you refused to wear your seatbelt then your loved ones would suffer from that choice you made so that means it is not just a personal choice. Even if you have great life insurance, your kids grow up without a father and all the money in the world cannot make up for that. Almost without exception, my possitions are about responsibility. To me, once you have children of your own, it is time to stop acting immature yourself and conduct yourself considering the needs of your children first.

So now the CBO is psychic? The report was made in 2005. So when the CBO offers their numbers for what a bill will cost "in the future" are they psychic? You guys kill me sometimes with your need to ignore common sense just to try and take shots all the time, lol.

No Wez, again your being the slick guy and dodging the real point I am making. You Wez, you are the guy who constantly says it is wrong for people to Judge others. You say it is wrong for one group of people to bully another. You say punishing someone for refusing to conform is wrong. But then you turn around and do all of things yourself so how can you claim it is wrong to do these things? Set the example Wez, show us the right way to do things instead of preaching one thing and ignoring what you preach in your own behaviors. You playing the part of the bully and Judging me to deserve your punishments proves your a................. Hypocrite.

What this Country needs is for the Government to get out of the way of success. Every industry that has been lost to other Countries is because of Government interference. The more the Government meddles, the more harm they cause.

The CBO was using today's issues of lower tax collection "caused by the economic downturn" as their point, without the new conditions, the old cuts are irrelivent. You have to look at reality Bender, even with the old tax rates, the economic downturn would still have placed us in a hole with us not having enough tax revinue to pay out what you socialists want to spend. We should be running our Government the way we run our homes, if you can't afford it, you don't spend it. Living on credit cards will always end in disaster, but not one socialist including yourself will ask for your Government to exercise some common sense in their spending.

Lot's of actions by adults are childish in nature, it is a expression of a lack of maturity, the desire to screw with your brain to escape reality is one of these examples. I want to make irresponsibility illegal, it is not your own decision if someone else must pay the price for your decision. It does not matter if your the first or number 5,000,000. Either you would like your kids to grow up knowing their parent died doing something completely selfish and foolish just to get stoned or not. How do you think it would effect a child's development not having a parent and knowing they don't have them because the parent did not care enough about them to avoid things like using recreational drugs? Working to eliminate things that are 100% harmful to society like murder, rape, and drugs sure. Are you against speeding laws? Is making people behave in a reasonable way on the roads playing big brother too? There is no possible way you can experiment with drugs without doing possible harm to another person. And kids get all the booze they want to the age restrictions do not stop kids from getting it. If you use recreational drugs, then your telling your kids with your actions that it is good no matter what you say in words. Actions have always been louder than words so your usage will provide the example to all children that using recreational drugs is a good thing. The reason people commit crimes to pay for illegal drugs is because the fact the drugs are illegal drives the price up. Your kid may be killed by a drive by shooter fighting over drug turf. Whole neighborhoods in the US and whole nations south of our border are in chaos due to the drug war. Once it is made legal and is subject to Government regulation the price will go up, not down. That was the biggest point Milton Freedmon kept trying to teach people about and so many people including hugo here can't seem to understand.

I saw the video yesterday and it said it was 24 years ago, didn't post it because I saw it as a non-issue. TJ must have been "duped" by the same blogs that the Obama administration and the NAACP were, and they once again, in another knee jerk reaction, they "acted stupidly". I was not "duped" by anything, I was pointing out how the audience was cheering and clapping as the woman was telling her story. All those NAACP members in the room enjoying a story about "sticking it to whitie" and never saying anything about her for years. Those years was plenty of time to elapse for those members to complain about her and have her removed but they did not do anything until the video was made public. That proves the NAACP condoned racist attituded and commentary as long as it was against white people. Too bad both of you were incapable of understanding my point, I even gave you some hints before the video but you still missed it.

Obama is everything he claimed to be against. He is the definition of telling lies to win an election. Any honest person would not want to dirty their image during a campaign by having someone eo dishonest next to them.

Bender, I can't believe how uninformed you are in almost every discussion. Sticks and carrots. The Government uses a a series of incentives and penalties to control the doctors and lead them by the nose to a desired outcome. By telling doctors that they will get paid more money if they "CONFORM" to the specific treatments to save the Government money, then the doctors are no longer going to be doing what is the best for the patient but instead will be doing what is best for their bank accounts. Control the money, control the industry, and the socialists/progressives have taken control of the money.

Sooner or later we will see the 'little boy who cried wolf' effect. People are getting tired of the socialists/progressives crying racism every other day, that is their only tactic. What do they have other than the race card? Their record? Higher deficits, a completely failed stimulus, a healthcare bill then even they are now admitting is a new tax on the middle class, a unemployment way, way over the 8% cap they promised, and the only created jobs are all Government jobs with nothing being done to help the private sector and that is where we needs jobs to help the economy. No, the socialists/progressives can't run on their record, so they are forced to keep using the same old and tired tactic of calling anyone who opposes them racists.........they really have no other options.

I don't want you to stop Wez, I am simply pointing out the fact that by your desire to punish me with name calling, harassment, and negative repping, you prove yourself to be a Hypocrite. Just like emkay, Builder, and Chi, all of you are now the new estrogen mafia, your the bully now Wez, how does it feel?

Don't forget the drug addicted parents who spend all their money on drugs and the kids hardly get to eat much less get the extras in life to help them succeed. Parents who use drugs will raise kids who will most likely use drugs too and it is a never ending cycle of abused kids growing up to abuse their kids. Lok at those who populate our prisons and see what kinds of parents they had and you will find a lot of drug users. If RaE went out to the dsesert and killed himself with meth and had no children or other living family to mourn his death, there would still be the chance a innocent dirtbike rider may run into his corpse and crash

What's with the starting the name calling. And leave me out of it douche bag. Typical Wez the bully. He is always out to punish those who do not conform to his beliefs. Be careful, he will start spamming negative rep on you too, lol.

Great post eddo and this is one of my points as well, instead of gaining more maturity and being more responsible, society has been going in the reverse so bad that entire generations don't even take responsibility to feed themselves, mush less take the time to be responsible when using recreational drugs. When society in general demonstrated the inability to drive responsibly, the Government had to impose restrictions to driving and penalties for failure to follow those guidelines. The concept of recreational drug use is the same, almost all people cannot control their usage of recreational drugs. There are always inintended harms done to some other innocent party. Even so, let nature take it's course. I don't need the nanny state telling me that I'm not allowed to do crystal meth because it's going to kill me. I understand (better than 99% of the people on this board) what alcohol does to families and people. But it should all boil down to a personal choice and living with the consequences. Easy to say when it is not your dead child who is killed by a drunk driver. Personal choice is only personal if it only involves you, only your decision harms another human being, it is no longer a personal choice. People who use drugs always harm other people and that makes it wrong. Is murder and rape also just a personal choice? Should we let nature take it's course in this way too? After all, anger, lust, greed, sexual arousal, all these things are "natural" aspects of humanity. We as a society have made choices that we want to discourage things like murder and rape because it is harmful to society on a very basic level. Something liek a hamburger has a "potential" for harm but it also has a non-harmful aspect and does not lead to criminal activity so I would be against any regulation for things that are in that category. But recreational drugs have not one positive aspect for society, just like murder and rape it only feeds the worse man has to offer. Restricting access to harmful drugs is one of the "core values" of society and just like abortion, once the Government condones it, people will flock to it because suddenly it is acceptable. Let's consider another element, we have age restricted products like tobacco, model glue, and booze but kids still get these things pretty much at will. If we cannot enforce age restriction to these items what makes anyone believe we could do it for other things like drugs? RaE, do you have kids? Is the America you want for them one where your kids can walk up to the local 7/11 and buy Government taxed Heroin and needles to get high with? I don't know about you, but I want more than that for my kids, and my grandkids.

Great post eddo and this is one of my points as well, instead of gaining more maturity and being more responsible, society has been going in the reverse so bad that entire generations don't even take responsibility to feed themselves, mush less take the time to be responsible when using recreational drugs. When society in general demonstrated the inability to drive responsibly, the Government had to impose restrictions to driving and penalties for failure to follow those guidelines. The concept of recreational drug use is the same, almost all people cannot control their usage of recreational drugs. There are always inintended harms done to some other innocent party.

It was not laying around, I liquidated some investments including a piece of property I owned to begin the first stage of a new home. As long as I reinvested the money in something I could avoid any tax penalties but she took the money and made it dissapear and I had to not only "not" get my share but also had to pay the penalties, lol. She did get me More name calling Wez? Why do you need to be a bully Wez? Hypocrite. Very funny eddo, good stuff

No, I see your actions to go out of your way to call names, harass, and now to spam negative rep as what they are Wez. Your actions Wez, your doing what your doing. If you truly believe being a bully and punishing people was wrong you would not be doing it yourself. You seem to be busy trying to justify your punishments instead of asking yourself "WHY" you feel you must punish. Why can't I just be me Wez? Why must I conform to your beliefs "or else" you will give me negative rep? Hypocrite. This has nothing to do with me Wez, if I cared about what people thought about me I would cave into the pressure imposed on me to "fit in" long ago. This is all very funny to me and a great example of how you and a few other people like emkay have a double standard in life. You want other people to accept you for the way you are, but your not willing to do the same for other people like me. I don't "fit in" so I have to be punished. So go ahead bully, punish me, after all, I deserve it right? Tough guy with a negative rep button right? Funny sh!t right there

But there is the problem, it is impossible for it to ever be only about them doing the drug. Tax it? Does that not make the Government drug dealers only out to make a profit? Why would we want to make a profit off the suffering of man? We know there is not one redeemable quality in recreational drugs but sell it anyway just to make money? I pointed out things like how Bender could have died and left his kids alone in the world with nobody to take care of them, suddeny the Government is paying for the raising of children because the parents can't due to drug use. Even if they live a drug addicted person imposes a massive and heavy burdon on all taxpayers. Most crime is because of drug use, either directly or indirectly people need to feed their addiction and criminal activity is usually required to be able to afford it, then there are the mental side effects, even pot has some severe long term harms and this drug Bender is talking about does not have any long term studies to show if it is or is not harmful. How long did it take people to find out how harmful fen phen was? Nobody is an island, doing drugs in the privacy of your own home is still hurting everyone else in one way or another. The children being my biggest concern. Does Bender thing him doing drugs will not rub off on his children? Do any of you think the kids don't know? Children know more than you give them credit for, small and immature, but very observant. I have known parents who were shocked to know their small children knew things like the combination to the safe or passwords to their bank accounts. If nothing else drug use lowers the moral fabric of society in general, adding more recreational drugs will simply add to that general decline. If people are so mentally unstable they need to self-medicate to survive, then maybe they should be in mental institutions and under professional care, using the wrong medication for your disorders can cause great harms.

Always on the attack Wez? You need to punish me for daring to tell the truth about you? My ex-wife took off with $175,000 in cash she later claimed she spent and no longer had so I did not even get half of that cash as credit, no Wez, anything the Government could have given her would have been chump change in comparison to what she got and still gets from me. I pay her more in child support than you will ever earn yourself in your lifetime Wez. But on the other hand my ex-wife refused to allow me to see my own children for over 4 months before I could get an "emergency" hearing for visitation, I had to get a Judge to give me the right to see my own kids because men don't have an assumed legal right to their own children. So you done punishing me Wez? Do you need to attack me, my family, or otherwise make it clear that your displeased? You do support socialist takeover of private business, you have talked about taking down big companies many times, well those big companies are owned by people, when you disolve a company and give it to "the poor" you had to take it away from someone else. Someone else who earned what they had from their own work then you and your all poerful Government come along and take it away by force like what happened with GM and your socialist buddies setting aside contract laws and giving part ownership of the new GM to the Union while real leinholders who owned certain aspects of GM based on established laws were all told to piss off.

There were rules, you broke the rules, nobody enforced the rules. All I did was ask for rules to be enforced equally to all members Wez, there is nothing wrong with that. But, YOU say there should not be rulkes, you say nobody should punish other people Wez, except for those YOU don't like or agree with, then suddenly it is okay to punish people. You have a double standard Wez, you complain when other people are a bully but the second you get a chance to punish someone with name calling, harassment, or negative repping them you jump on it. You keep saying that your not me, and at the same time you say I want to punish people, so tell me how your not like me when your doing what you claim I do? You admit to harassing and bothering people on purpose, now you admit to negative repping me because your angry with me, so your exactly what you have always claimed to hate............and that is why you hate them.....you hate them because they are just like you Wez. When you have the ability, your a bully, you never take a different path, you always attack, you always punish. Hypocrite.