Thread: PROOF WE ARE BECOMING MEXICO

PROOF WE ARE BECOMING MEXICO

Cluster of SoCal cities caught in string of corruption cases

By: MICHAEL R. BLOOD - Associated Press
December 3, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- Handcuffed and led away to 10 years in prison, the former treasurer of South Gate became the latest in a growing parade of officials from the gritty suburbs south of Los Angeles jailed for government corruption.

The area abutting Los Angeles and the coastal pearls of Manhattan Beach and Rancho Palos Verdes is known for clotted freeways and fading neighborhoods, but the tally of charges has generated unwelcome notoriety for thieving, bribe-grabbing public officials.

Illegal schemes on a scale usually associated with big Eastern cities have devoured tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, prosecutors say, paying for everything from a seaside condo to massages.


South Gate Treasurer Albert Robles aspired to build a "power machine" to secretly control cities throughout the economically struggling area, according to trial testimony. One now-jailed former mayor sought to steal $6 million by steering city contracts to a shell company he owned.

With little civic involvement by local residents and only glancing media scrutiny, the cities "essentially laid themselves open for corruption, not through any fault of anybody's, but more or less through some sense of benign neglect," said Jennifer Lentz Snyder, an assistant head deputy in the Los Angeles County district attorney's public integrity division.

She believes the corruption is more pervasive than prosecutors have uncovered.

The cities that dot the area -- South Gate, Lynwood, Bell Gardens, Maywood, Huntington Park, Vernon and others -- don't get boldface listings in tourist guides. Postcard California is nowhere in sight.

Once blanketed with cauliflower and berry fields, the area was marketed decades ago as a suburban refuge where homes were affordable, the weather mild and opportunities rich.

Within a generation, there has been great change. A largely white, middle-class population mostly vanished, replaced by many Hispanics, including a large immigrant population.

Corruption charges have cut across racial lines.

"When new groups come to power, and become entrenched ... then they tend to rule it as a fiefdom," said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. "What they are is fledgling machines."

And what might be driving the corruption?

"It's a combination of the local, insular political structure ... with the context of poverty and limited opportunity," said Becky M. Nicolaides, author of a book about Los Angeles' working-class suburbs. "That's a recipe for problems."

California government has roots in the century-old Progressive Era, when reformers sought to curb official corruption and unchecked corporate powers. But such cases have recently given southeast Los Angeles County at least a whiff of rogue politics that are the stuff of legend in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

In the South Gate case, Robles, 41, was sentenced Nov. 28 to 10 years in federal prison for extracting nearly $2 million in bribes from contractors that he funneled to family and friends.

"There are different levels of hoodwinking, but I didn't think hoodwinking was a crime," Robles, who was recalled by voters, said in court.

The case's federal prosecutor said Robles turned South Gate into a "pay-to-play" city where bribes were a cost of business.

Some other cases in southeast Los Angeles County include:

-- In March, the former mayor of Lynwood was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison for funneling millions of dollars in city contracts to a sham consulting company he secretly controlled. Paul Richards, 50, was found guilty of multiple counts of mail fraud, money laundering, extortion and making false statements to investigators.

-- Long-serving Vernon Mayor Leonis Malburg was charged with voter fraud in November, and a former city administrator was accused of bilking $60,000 in public money to pay for massages, golf outings and other personal perks. Critics have long depicted the tiny city as a virtual company town, where election shenanigans, secrecy and even thuggery were used to maintain power for a few. Malburg has pleaded not guilty.

-- In 2004, Compton's self-proclaimed "gangster mayor" Omar Bradley was sentenced to three years in custody for misappropriating public funds and making an unauthorized loan. He and two others were charged with using city-issued credit cards as "personal piggy banks."

-- Two former mayors and one City Council member in Carson received prison sentences ranging from home detention to nearly six years for a series of bribery schemes that cost the city more than $12 million. "I have failed you," then-Mayor Daryl Sweeney told residents in a July 2003 statement, after pleading guilty to 15 corruption charges.

To Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, whose office created a special unit to concentrate on public corruption, the run of cases can be easily explained.

"I think it was going on all the time," he said. "No one was investigating it."

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12 ... ogcomments

Comments On This Story

I think it is the culture of corruption wrote on December 03, 2006 4:00 PM:"we have imported along with the illegal immigrants"

May 19, 2003 issue

The American Conservative


South Gate: Mexico Comes to California

How an all-American town became a barrio.


By Roger D. McGrath


While we are engaged overseas in a mission to recreate countries in our own image and likeness, many of our own cities are being transformed into the image and likeness of Mexican villages. Nowhere is this more apparent than California. The city of South Gate, a dozen miles southeast of Los Angeles, is a prime example. Until the 1920s the area that is today South Gate was home to dairies—many of them operated by Danish immigrant families —and vegetable and fruit farms. Then subdivision began, and housing tracts and industrial parks started to replace fields and barns. In 1923, with a population of 2,500, the city of South Gate was incorporated, and a volunteer fire department was organized. Firestone Tire and Rubber Company built its factory on a 40-acre former bean field, and a chemical plant and foundry were established. Jobs were plentiful and housing was relatively inexpensive. The local economy boomed.

The market crash of ’29 slowed development, but new industries continued to be established, including a General Motors plant that employed 4,000 workers assembling Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, and Buicks. The population was mostly blue collar: many of the new arrivals during the 1930s were Dust Bowl migrants who brought with them “hillbilly” music, Protestant fundamentalism, and a rawboned toughness. The coming of World War II initiated a second boom, which continued in the postwar years until the population reached some 55,000 by 1964. The next year South Gate began to change. In August 1965, the Watts riots erupted. Watts was virtually 100 percent black, and South Gate, immediately to the east of Watts, was nearly 100 percent white. Although the rioters were mostly confined to black areas of south-central Los Angeles and did not cross the line into South Gate, younger whites in South Gate started to look elsewhere to buy their first houses. As the white population of South Gate began to decline, the Mexican population, which earlier had established a foothold, began to increase.

By the mid-1970s, with illegal immigration unchecked, Mexicans were a substantial minority of South Gate’s population. By the 1980s they were the majority. Today, South Gate is 93 percent Hispanic. Of the town’s 90,000 Hispanics, 1,100 are from South America, 1,300 from Cuba or Puerto Rico, 6,200 from Central America, and the rest from Mexico. Exactly how many are illegal aliens or children of illegal aliens is difficult to assess, but two-thirds is probably a conservative estimate. Nearly half of South Gate’s population was born outside of the United States, and 80 percent of the town’s residents speak Spanish at home.

South Gate High School is 99 percent Hispanic. Of almost 3,400 students there are only 15 blacks and 17 whites. A quarter of the students speak little or no English, and 85 percent of the students receive free meals at the school. Test scores are abysmal. On a state testing scale of 1 to 10, the high school scores a 2.

Many, if not most, of Los Angeles County’s cities may soon resemble South Gate. From 1980-1990 the number of Hispanics residing in the county increased by 62 percent while the number of whites decreased by nine percent, and a similar pattern continued through the next decade. The change in demographics has brought a change in politics. As South Gate resident Julia Barraza said, “It’s like I never left Mexico.”

One reason is Albert Robles. A former aide to a Mexican-American state legislator, Robles moved to South Gate when the demographics turned to his favor and was elected to the city council in 1992. At that time the job was part-time, and council members were paid $600 a month. A few years later, while still serving as a councilman, he was elected to the local water board at a compensation of $23,000 a year. In 1997, he won the race for city treasurer and began collecting an annual salary of $69,000. Meanwhile, Robles had seen to it that his friends and business associates were awarded city contracts worth millions. What Robles was getting out of these deals is anybody’s guess, but his political opponents were not faring nearly as well. City councilman Henry Gonzalez was shot in the head but survived the wound. Another political rival had his car firebombed. The crimes remain unsolved.

In the spring of 2002, just when Robles was on the verge of turning South Gate into his personal fiefdom, he was arrested on felony threat charges. Astonishingly, after his arrest his cronies on the city council appointed him deputy city manager at $110,000 a year and ordered the city to pay his legal bills.

At his trial in December, prosecutors argued that Robles threatened to rape state Senator Martha Escutia and kill her husband. Escutia testified that she had hired personal bodyguards and had dared to set foot in South Gate only twice in two years even though she represents the city in the state legislature. A friend of state Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh testified that Robles had threatened to kidnap the assemblyman, throw him in a car trunk, drive him across the border to Tijuana, and “blow his brains out.” Robles’s attorneys acknowledged that he had said such things but argued it was protected speech and nothing more than bombast typical of South Gate politicians.

The trial ended in a hung jury. Robles’s legal fees, paid by South Gate, came to a million dollars, about 10 percent of the city’s annual budget. Xochilt Ruvalcaba, then the mayor of South Gate and a Robles crony, declared, “Clearly, the jury’s message was a strong indication they understood this case was politically motivated and without merit.” Coming to a different conclusion was South Gate councilman and Robles critic Hector De La Torre, who said, “It’s making us look like some third-world, petty dictatorship where all kinds of political intrigue and craziness is going on all the time.”

The political intrigue included stripping the city clerk, Carmen Avalos, of all her authority. Known for her honesty and forthrightness, she made the mistake of complaining about corruption and election fraud in South Gate to California Secretary of State Bill Jones. After studying Avalos’s allegations, Jones declared South Gate’s city elections the most corrupt in the state. Reacting to her co-operation, several dozen supporters of the Robles machine cornered Avalos at City Hall and chanted “Malinche,” a reference to the Aztec mistress of the conquistador Hernan Cortes. To those supporters, both Avalos and Malinche had sold out to the white man.

As punishment, Avalos’s salary was reduced from $76,000 to $7,200. She was prohibited from attending staff meetings, her three-person staff was eliminated, and she was restricted to three minutes speaking time—the same given to any member of the public—at city council meetings. When Avalos exceeded her three-minute limitation, mayor Ruvalcaba pulled the plug on her microphone. (Ruvalcaba has carried a grudge against Avalos since she defeated his sister in the election for city clerk in 2001. Two days after the election, Avalos found a teddy bear on her front lawn with its throat slashed and its arms torn off.)

All of this finally sparked a movement to recall Treasurer Robles, Mayor Ruvalcaba, the vice mayor, and a councilwoman, who also happens to be Ruvalcaba’s cousin. When the city used every device imaginable to block the recall drive, Secretary of State Jones took action. “The voters of South Gate confront some of the most serious allegations of official misconduct and voter intimidation that I have ever seen,” said Jones. Enough signatures were eventually gathered for a recall election scheduled for late January 2003.

Campaigning could have taken place somewhere in Jalisco or Michoacan. Robles & Co. had the city give everyone a month of free trash collection, hand out baskets filled with groceries, present a plan for free medical care at a new city health clinic, and hold a drawing for a house. The drawing for the house was held at City Hall, gaily dressed with yellow balloons and reverberating with ranchera music.

To the credit of South Gate voters, the Robles junta came tumbling down in the recall election, an election the Los Angeles Times admitted had “echoes of Third World-style campaigns.” Treasurer Robles, Mayor Ruvalcaba, Vice Mayor Raul Moriel, and Councilwoman Maria Benavides were voted out of office, but they had one week left and one final city council meeting before those elected in the recall replaced them. At the meeting a dispute arose over allowing a resident to speak. The resident noted that he had properly filled out a speaker’s card and that it had been appropriately recorded. This left Mayor Ruvalcaba unmoved, and she refused to return the speaker’s card. Councilman Gonzalez then tried to pull the card from Ruvalcaba’s hand. Ruvalcaba responded with an overhand right that caught Gonzalez on the cheek. She then ran out of council chambers pursued by several police officers as the crowd chanted, “Arrest the mayor!”

Earlier in the day, the public learned that an FBI investigation into the corruption at South Gate City Hall had resulted in a federal grand jury issuing a subpoena for city documents germane to federal loans and grants awarded by the city to former business partners of Robles. It would be a few weeks before the public learned of the spending spree that the outgoing city officials had engaged in during their lame-duck week in office. Mayor Ruvalcaba and Treasurer Robles signed checks amounting to more than $2 million, mostly to pay for attorneys for themselves. On the day before the newly elected city officials came into office, Assistant Finance Director Yimu Chen said he was forced to use the city’s reserve fund as Robles, City Manager Jesus Marez, and several lawyers stood over him. “I was basically under duress to sign the checks,” noted Chen. Marez kept administrators at City Hall until 9:30 p.m., spending more than $1 million. The spending spree nearly exhausted what was left of the city’s reserves and has caused the state to initiate an audit. “It was a feeding frenzy of attorneys is what it was,” claimed South Gate’s new mayor, Hector De La Torre.

One of those lawyers was South Gate City Attorney Salvador Alva who was paid $269,000 during the final week. Another was Cristeta Paguirigan, a disbarred attorney with three convictions for embezzlement and one for forgery who was paid $200 an hour for advice on litigation. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to criminal defense lawyers representing Robles and his allies.

South Gate, nearly bankrupt, has been forced to layoff 200 employees, and more layoffs are expected. Ironically, those employees who were part of the Robles machine need not fear being fired—they all have contracts with guaranteed severance packages should they be terminated. Most of them have been with the city only a year and were hired after Robles got the city council to eliminate South Gate’s traditional standards for employment, including a college degree and municipal experience. The city manager and department directors have severance packages that include 18 months of salary. Should they be fired, the cost to the city would be upwards of $3 million.

Albert Robles is one of those protected. While he was voted out of office as city treasurer, he did not lose his additional job as deputy city manager. He has been placed on administrative leave but, as required by contracts, continues to receive some $11,000 a month. He also continues to use city cellular phones and to drive city vehicles. If he is fired, the city will have to pay him some $200,000. Although recently convicted for violating a California gun law, Robles is by no means down for the count. He will be back, if not in South Gate then in another California town that is on its way to becoming a Mexican village.

http://www.amconmag.com/05_19_03/feature.html

...and yet people do not seem to wake up. Or are they to scared to act?

I live there. Corruption is rampant in the state in which I grew up, went to school, and am now residing. Our Governor grew up in Mexico City, granted over thousands of illegal immigrants driver licenses "so they could work", and appointed over 80 people to positions not authorized by the state budget. My state government resembles a third world government and it is scary. I have protested and sent contributions to those politicians I believe will support the US Constitution, buy, even now. I doubt the effectiveness of changing an entrenched corrupt system.

The corrupt politicians in Mexico have nothing on the corruption that we have here in the United States.

Affirmative action has changed trhe character of government. It used to be unheard of to have large scale corruption in INS now you read every day about someone charged with bribery. How many don't get caught? I'm sure that they get frustrated knowing they are trying to plug a hole in the dyke(sorry Rosie) but that's what they are paid and trusted to do.

Unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico equals ethnic cleansing of America. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

And this is what we have to look forward to.

This one of those posts that leaves you feeling sick.

From March, 2003:

Our Mexican Future

South Gate, California, is a town of 98,000 about 12 miles southeast of Los Angeles. It is 92 percent Hispanic, and its politics have taken a distinctly Mexican turn. Until January 28, city treasurer Albert Robles was the real power in town, and he and his pals seemed intent on lining their pockets and doing favors for friends. Mr. Robles is a colorful figure who, last year, stood trial for telling a California state senator he would rape her and kill her husband, and also for threatening to blow the brains out of a state assemblyman. His lawyer argued that threats were just politics as usual in South Gate, and Mr. Robles got off with a hung jury. His cronies on the city council approved more than $1 million in city money for his defense, but he now faces new assault and weapons charges.

During Mr. Robles’s tenure, the city council voted itself a 2,000 percent raise, and stripped the elected city clerk of most of her duties when she refused to act as a rubber stamp. The council also hired a convicted embezzler as a litigation specialist, as well as a police officer who was once fired for tipping off drug dealers about raids. The FBI is looking into a shady deal whereby the city council tried to channel $4 million in federal money to a Robles crony, ostensibly to build a recycling plant. The Robles crew has managed to work its way through an $8 million city reserve fund, and the treasury is now empty.

The city’s two police unions, which call the current council a bunch of “klepto-crats,” arranged for a recall vote, which appeared likely to win. The four recall targets, Mayor Xochilt Ruvalcaba, Mr. Robles, a councilwoman, and the vice mayor, resorted to classic Mexican politics: giveaways. They announced free garbage pickup for a month, and anyone who registered to vote was entered in a city-sponsored raffle for a television set. Shortly before the vote, they approved $90-a-month rent subsidies to more than 400 low-income families for a year. In the biggest pre-election giveaway, the city raffled off a three-bedroom house. The drawing was a gala affair on city hall grounds, complete with rainbow-colored lights, thumping ranchera music, and crowds of eager residents. After announcing the winner, Mayor Ruvalcaba told the crowd, both in English and Spanish, “If God permits me, gives me life and I’m reelected, we’ll do this again.” She later claimed the raffle had nothing to do with buying votes; she meant to call attention to the high cost of housing in California.

No one was fooled. Julia Barraza said it was just like campaign season back home in Mexico, when politicians would roll up on flat-bed trucks, handing out blankets, food, and sombreros. “Igualito, igualito, (it’s the same)” she says; “It’s like I never left Mexico.” Councilman Henry Gonzalez, who has opposed Mr. Robles and who was not a recall target, says, “They’re trying to manipulate people by using old gimmicks from Mexico.”

The 37-year-old Mr. Robles modeled the city administration on the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which stayed in power in Mexico for decades. He and his friends seemed so likely to fight the recall with another favorite Mexican tactic—voter intimidation—that the state stepped in. “Election fraud investigators will be working . . . to ensure that the election is coordinated with integrity and the outcome reflects the wishes of the people of South Gate,” explained California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. He agreed this was an “extreme” measure, but explained that “the average voter in South Gate has felt somewhat intimidated.”

The recall won by a crushing 88 percent, but the lame-duck city council called a final meeting on Feb. 3 anyway to dish out last-minute pork. Despite a standing-room-only crowd of jeering citizens, they promoted 12 friends in city government, and tried to approve a $1 million low-interest federal loan to a Robles pal, even though a Superior Court judge had ordered the council not to award the money.

The highlight of the meeting was a shoving match between councilman Gonzalez and Mayor Ruvalcaba over a piece of paper, which ended when Mayor Ruvalcaba hit the councilman in the head with her purse, and then threw a solid right to the face. “Arrest the mayor, arrest the mayor,” chanted the crowd, as Miss Ruvalcaba raced into a back room. Several uniformed South Gate police officers jumped over the wooden railing separating spectators from councilmen, caught her, and cited her for misdemeanor battery. She now claims that in the middle of the shoving match, Mr. Gonzales made a grab for her breast, and she had to defend herself. She and the three other losers will not leave office quietly; they are on the ballot for new elections on March 4.

In the meantime, even the Los Angeles Times wants to know: “Have Third World politics come to South Gate?” The paper notes that threat-maker Robles and punch-thrower Ruvalcaba are not fresh over the border. They both grew up in America, graduated from UCLA, and took the traditional route into politics by working for established politicians. Their Third World antics appear to be an expression of something other than environment. [Richard Marosi, The Freebies Pile Up as South Gate Goes to Polls, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2003. Richard Marosi, State to Monitor Recall Election, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2003. Richard Marosi and Megan Garvey, South Gate Mayor Slugs Councilman, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 2003. Mayor Punches Councilman At Her Last Meeting, AP, Feb. 4, 2003.]

Third World politics is coming not just to South Gate but to the entire state. Some time in the late 1990s, whites ceased to be a majority, and in 2001 Hispanics accounted for an outright majority of births in California. Combined with the ones who immigrate legally and illegally, it will be only a matter of time before Hispanics are the undisputed majority. “The long-anticipated Latino majority has arrived,” says David Hayes-Bautista, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture. “In 2003, it is learning how to walk and will shortly learn to talk.” Somehow, it is not difficult to imagine what it will say. “They will be defining the American dream,” says Mr. Hayes-Bautista; “It’s in their hands, basically.”

Comments On This Story

Note: Comments reflect the views of readers and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff.

I think it is the culture of corruption wrote on December 03, 2006 4:00 PM:"we have imported along with the illegal immigrants"

Adam wrote on December 03, 2006 6:48 PM:"Has anyone noticed that all of the cities listed, are overrun with Illegal Aliens?"

Skip wrote on December 03, 2006 6:53 PM:"Just so you all know "large immigrant population" = "Illegal Aliens""

SANCTUARY CITIES wrote on December 03, 2006 7:24 PM:"Lets list the cities we KNOW are Sanctuary Cities : Maywood, California, Lakewood, California, Bell Gardens, California, Pico Rivera, California, Downey, California, Vernon, California, Cypress, California, .... and others. As posted on the Mothers Against Illegal Aliens WebPage. "

PROOF WE ARE BECOMING MEXICO wrote on December 03, 2006 7:25 PM:"RE: Within a generation, there has been great change. A largely white, middle-class population mostly vanished, replaced by many Hispanics, including a large immigrant population. "

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/12 ... ogcomments