Democrats Loot Poor, Working Class CA Town

Another example of how Democrat's corruption comes at the expense of working people!

How is it that Bell, California, one of the poorest cities in the state, a working class town of 40,000 mostly Hispanic immigrants near Los Angeles, ends up paying among the highest property taxes in the area? Because the Democrats who run the town have looted city government to line their own pockets.

Ann Coulter brings us up to speed:

There have been hundreds of news stories about Bell city officials' jaw-dropping salaries. In this poor city on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where the per capita annual income is $24,800 a year, the city manager, Robert Rizzo, had a salary of $787,637.

That's about twice what the president of the United States makes. (To be fair, Rizzo was doing a better job.)

Rizzo was the highest-paid government employee in the entire country, not counting Maxine Waters' husband -- pending further revelations. With benefits, his total annual compensation, according to the Los Angeles Times, came to $1.5 million a year.

Alerted to the Bell situation, the White House quickly added the Bell city manager to the list of jobs saved by its stimulus plan.

Not only that, but Rizzo was entitled to 28 weeks off a year for vacation and sick leave. To put that in perspective, that's almost as much vacation time as public school teachers get!

Reached in Spain, even Michelle Obama was outraged.
...
The police chief, Randy Adams, was making $457,000 -- $770,046 including benefits. The assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, had a $376,288 salary, with a total compensation package of $845,960. Being just an assistant city manager, Angela had to pay for her own yacht.

After the Los Angeles Times reported the stratospheric government salaries in little Bell, and the people of the town revolted, the millionaire government employees all resigned.

That'll show 'em! Oops, except upon their resignations, they qualified for lifetime pensions worth, by some estimates, more than $50 million.

These insane salary packages were granted by the mayor and four city council members -- who also set their own salaries. As a result, all but one was making $100,000 a year for these part-time jobs. After the council members' salaries came to light, the four looters cut their salaries by 90 percent.

According to Nexis, there have been more than 300 news stories reporting on the Bell scandal. Guess how many mentioned the party affiliation of the corrupt government bureaucrats?

One. Yes, just one. Now guess if the government officials were Democrats or Republicans? Yes, that is correct.

Congratulations -- you've qualified for our bonus round!

The one newspaper to cough up party affiliations, The Orange County Register, admitted that the corrupt officials were all Democrats only in response to reader complaints about the peculiar omission.

You'll want to read the rest of Ann's column here.

No wonder govt. workers get paid so much!

Readers may recall that a short while back, USA Today published a story detailing how much more government workers earn than their private sector counterparts. No doubt the crooks in Bell helped push up the average.

The next time Obama or some Dem insists we need another bailout for big government or complains that budget cuts might adversely impact the services of the federal government or local and state entities you can remind yourself that Democrats who run most of these operations are already being overpaid. Sometimes criminally so. Let them give back what they have taken before they come and ask for more from the rest of us.