(Xinhua) -- Robert Ratso Rizzo, former manager of a small Southern California city and the central figure of a public corruption case, has been released on a 2-million-dollar bail early Thursday.
Rizzo, 56, was set free after Los Angeles County Judge Mary Lou Villar made the ruling, saying that she was satisfied that the assets that were posted for his bail did not come from public coffers. Rizzo, who had spent 15 days behind bars, is awaiting trial on multiple felony charges of misappropriating public funds.
"The defense has met its burden and I'm gonna allow the bond to issue," Villar said at the end of a three-hour hearing.
Rizzo would be required to surrender his passport and submit to electronic monitoring as conditions for his release, the judge ruled.
Rizzo was arrested on Sept. 21, along with seven other current and former Bell officials including the mayor, council members and former administrators, for allegedly bilking taxpayers out of about 5.5 million dollars through lofty salaries and benefit packages, along with illicit loans of public money.
The former manager of Bell City is charged with 53 criminal counts, including misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest and falsification of public records by an official custodian. He is expected to be arraigned on Oct. 21 along with his seven co-defendants.
The time of Rizzo's release was listed in inmate records as 11: 58 p.m. Wednesday. News video cameramen spotted Rizzo outside the Twin Towers facility in downtown Los Angeles.
Rizzo was arrested on Sept. 21, along with seven other current and former Bell officials including the mayor, council members and former administrators, for allegedly bilking taxpayers out of about 5.5 million dollars through lofty salaries and benefit packages, along with illicit loans of public money.
He was described by Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley as "the unelected and unaccountable czar" who pocketed vast sums of money from the city treasury as if it were his personal cash box. The illegal activity in the small, poor working-class community is "corruption on steroids," he said.
Five properties, some owned by Rizzo's mother-in-law and worth more than 2 million dollars, were being used as collateral to secure the bail, Rizzo's attorney James Spertus said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/08/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
He's warning that the jobs picture could get even a bit worse over the coming months and that there might not be enough job creation until next year to deal with the rising population.
Rising population?! Of what, unemployed? Did we suddenly have a baby boom of some 1.4 million insta-adults when I wasn't looking?
This guy is really a moron and should never have been handed the reins of power. He and his corruptacrats are to blame for the worsening economy and he tries to pull anything out of his butt to try to cover it.
#4
The University of Cambridge resides in the city of Cambridge which is one of five districts within the county of Cambridgeshire, and Cambridgeshire is in......East Anglia, and well East Anglia is in Old Albion, and so on. And good God we know what Obama thinks of England.
Posted by: Eric Holder ||
10/08/2010 16:50 Comments ||
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#3
Harry Reid said today that Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy are two of the Greatest Living Americans. I guess they are now in Chicago on the voter rolls.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/08/2010 17:55 Comments ||
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#4
did Rahm send the dead goldfish? Sounds more like Tiny Dancer
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/08/2010 20:30 Comments ||
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#2
Experience the arrogance first hand. Delta Airlines provides non-stop service from Atlanta to eight major cities throughout the continent of Africa.
(Xinhua) -- What to expect at a world renowned business forum? Strategies, leadership, innovations, and Obama.
Criticizing voices about White House economic team, harsh or mild, echoed several times in New York's Radio City Music Hall, where the annual two-day World Business Forum was held.
The first blast burst from Jack Welch, former General Electric Co. chief and management guru, who called B.O. regime " just plain anti-business."
Welch, who didn't favor Obama as president in the first place, attacked Obama's policies from trade, foreign taxes on multinational corporations and the bailout of the U.S. auto industry.
Welch said the last time he had the feeling of "malaise" was under President Jimmy Carter ... the worst president ever... , who "was moaning about malaise all the time."
"We've got to fix some of this crazy stuff going on now," Welch said, "We've got to grow the pie. We've got to celebrate entrepreneurship. We've got to grow businesses."
Even someone who used to be inside White House agrees that President B.O. needs bring more business people on boards.
Former White House adviser David Gergen told the audience that he believes Obama should have "heavyweight CEOs" in his inner circle.
Gergen said that adding new business voices would strengthen and diversify President Obama's administration.
"One of the dangers of putting together a team is whether you get people who are all alike," he said, and he believes the current administration is an example of that.
There has long been doubts and criticism on Obama for employing too many academics on his economic team.
"He has too many people on his inner circle from Chicago. He needs to break that team up a bit," he said.
Interestingly, University of Chicago economist and "Freakonomics" author Steve Levitt was skeptical of economists' role in government. Levitt, a colleague at University of Chicago and friend of new White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee, said most times the policy is decided and politicians are just looking for economists to back them up.
When later the moderator threw the question at Joseph Stiglitz if he thinks there are too many academics in White House economic team, the Nobel laureate economist paused for a while, spurring laughers in the audience.
Stiglitz then went on and explained that he, too, sees the potential of more business people in White House.
"You need both," he said. "Academics have had time to think about the big problems facing the economy, but business knows the real problems facing the country now."
Stiglitz ruled out that he would take Lawrence Summers' role as the head of the National Economic Council. Appointing someone from the business community as Obama's chief economic advisor would be a good start, Stiglitz said.
But Obama may find it difficult if he wants to go after the big- name CEOs, Gergen warned. He said those senior executives are worried that the President's agenda isn't sufficiently friendly to corporate America.
"It may be harder to find them, frankly, today than it was two years ago. A lot of people in the business community feel alienated," he said, pointing to perceived uncertainty on tax and regulatory policy.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/08/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Obama's a socialist. He hates you people with the power of a thousand fiery suns.
#2
"You need both," he said. "Academics have had time to think about the big problems facing the economy, but business knows the real problems facing the country now."
This is a comment from a Nobel Laureate?
Yes, academics sit around in ivory towers thinking big thoughts about the "big problems" while the people who live in reality do actually work, and not only think about the "big problems" but put policies in place to fix those problems.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
(Xinhua) -- 
