Federal Reserve Lent Banks Nearly $8 TRILLION During Crisis Without Asking ANYONE’S Permission!

The Federal Reserve is as “Federal” as FedEx! This private banking cartel being allowed to run our economy is one of the greatest criminal acts ever perpetrated against the citizen’s of this country. 

The Federal Reserve is robbing Americans blind.

Wake Up America!

While the nation's largest banks were publicly reassuring nervous investors of their stability during the height of the financial crisis, they were also quietly approaching the Federal Reserve, hat in hand. The total price tag: $7.77 trillion, many times the amount of the better-known TARP bailout.

The magnitude of the government's assistance to struggling banks allowed them to grow even bigger and continue paying executives billions in compensation, a report in Bloomberg Markets January issue said Monday.

A win in court against a group representing the banks and a FOIA request filed by Bloomberg LP revealed the extent of the central bank's largesse - as well as the $13 billion in profits banks earned from those bailouts. The so called "big six" - JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - accounted for $4.8 billion of that total - nearly a quarter of their net income during that time. 

Those borrowed trillions were a deeply-buried secret. It appears that even high-ranking Fed officials didn't know about the scale of the handouts. According to Bloomberg, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Gary H. Stern “wasn’t aware of the magnitude,” and unnamed sources say that even top aides to Treasury Department head Henry Paulson were kept in the dark. 

The six biggest banks in the country received a total $160 billion in TARP funds, but as much as $460 billion from the Fed, raising the question as to how and why this nearly $8 trillion in loans, guarantees and limits remained under wraps for so long. According to the Fed, the massive scale of banks' borrowing - and the red ink that prompted it - had to be kept secret to avoid spooking investors and prompting a panic or bank runs that would have had even more devastating consequences on the shaken economy. 

The Fed defended its actions back then by contending that the biggest financial institutions in the country were too big to fail - a phrase that has become a bone of contention among lawmakers, some of whom argue that a "too big to fail" bank is one that's too big to exist.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown sponsored a bill last year that would cap a bank's non-deposit liabilities at 2 percent of gross domestic product, and crack down on workarounds banks currently use to bypass a 1994 law that prohibits any one bank from holding more than 10 percent of all deposits in the country.

Original Source

The Moral Example of UC Davis Students. If America Needs A Turning Point, This Is It. (Video)

This video should shock every American who has a conscience, every American who loves this country and what it stands for! What you are witnessing might just as easily be the actions of some totalitarian regime; Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Myanmar….

A line of students sitting on the ground, heads bowed. A police officer dressed in riot gear walking up to them, holding a pepper spray gun. He theatrically raises his arm, as if about to carry out an execution, and presses the trigger. A foul-looking orange spray shoots out.

Methodically, deliberately, he walks to the end of the line, saturating each student. He might as well be casually spraying bug spray. When he reaches the end he begins walking back in the other direction, spraying each of them again. The students huddle in obvious pain. People in the crowd nearby gasp in shock and began chanting, "Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!"

This event is powerfully symbolic. It is about contempt from those in power and the wanton use of force against the powerless.

We have seen similar things over and over again in the past few years. We have seen it in banks lobbying for public handouts and then denying relief to millions of exploited homeowners. We have seen it in tax breaks and bonuses for the rich while millions of Americans are out of work. We have seen it in church and university officers abusing children and then covering it up. We have seen it in the censorship of climate science performed in the public interest. We have seen it in the absurd declaration that corporations are "people" and entitled to spend billions of dollars to elect representatives that they will then own. We have seen it everywhere we turn.

The police officer is Congress. Our banks. Our clerics.

The students are us.

If I had to sum up the attitude of America's governing classes in one word, I would say: contempt.

We are seeing the beginning of a worldwide movement to fight for dignity and intelligent, collective governance.

It is time for UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to resign. I simply cannot fathom a university administrator bringing riot police onto campus to assault peacefully demonstrating students. At the most, campus police could have simply carried them away. In her blog, Duke prof (and former teacher of mine) Cathy Davidson deftly dissects the craven claim that tent camps present "health and safety concerns." And Bob Ostertag, a UC Davis prof, shows how the administration lost its moral compass.

People say that the Occupy movement has not been clear in its demands. I would say that their demands could not be more obvious.

They are already being articulated everywhere: the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Salon.com, the New Yorker. They are full of luminous writers: Nicholas Kristof. Paul Krugman. Gail Collins. Hendrik Herztberg. George Packer. Steve Coll, Bill McKibben. Dozens of intelligent books have appeared on the shelves in the past few years, examining the country's problems and offering thoughtful proposals for reform.

They want a fairer tax system. They want a sane energy policy that addresses climate change and searches for cleaner ways to power our civilization. They want a government that is not wholly owned by the rich. They want access to justice and education. They want a reasonable hope of getting and keeping a job that gives them a living wage and the ability to invest for the future.

They want a rational health care system that they can afford. They want government policy that is driven by thoughtful attention to rational research, not ideology. They want a transparent government that holds the powerful accountable. They want a government that understands the importance of investing now in human capital and infrastructure.

The obstacles to reform seem overwhelming. The country's far right has systematically obstructed every attempt to change things for the better. The electorate seems hopelessly divided. For decades, it has voted to create legislative deadlock. Despite the overwhelming failure of the Bush administration, half of the country has not grasped how utterly the Republican philosophy of governance has been discredited. The Democrats are uncoordinated and have no coherent philosophy at all. In our Internet age, the media are so fragmented that no single idea can seem to hold the country's attention for long. America has never seemed more divided and paralyzed in living memory.

Nonetheless, America's two most famous recent political movements - the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street - have taught us several things. It is possible to get the country's attention. And getting its attention is equivalent to setting its agenda. 

Occupy Wall Street needs to start setting a moral example. Moral examples move people to action. I am very proud of the students at UC Davis, both the ones who remained seated, heads down, and the ones in the crowd surrounding them. They vastly outnumbered the police officers. They could have torn them apart. I have no doubt that many of them wanted to. I wanted to.

But, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King so well understood, nonviolent resistance is extraordinarily powerful. It shows who holds the moral high ground. It reveals the thugs and bullies in high places for who they are. It creates sympathy and evokes principled action. It clears the way for thoughtful men and women of conscience and character to speak out for rational courses of action.

I think we have just reached a turning point.

Article by Michael Corost, Ph.D Original Source

"The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse". Corzine's Criminal Act And Its Ripple Effect

The following letter was sent by Ann Barnhardt, of Barnhardt Capital Managment, to her clients, colleagues, and friends. The successful trader quit the business (and returned her client's funds) because she was disgusted with Obama and his government cronies who have destroyed our country's futures and options markets by allowing corruption to rule the day.

Wake Up America!

BCM Has Ceased Operations

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. 

That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.

Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.

And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.

Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.

Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.

To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.

As for me, I can only echo the words of David:

“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

With Best Regards-
 

Ann Barnhardt

Source

A Bold Way to Save Education in America

Dr. Art Robinson is an internationally respected scientist, educator, successful businessman, skilled public speaker, and expert on energy, medicine, and emergency preparedness. He worked on medical and defense issues during the Reagan administration and on energy issues during the Clinton and Bush administrations. He is a Republican candidate for Congress. He is hoping to replace the very liberal Peter DeFazio in Oregon District 4 in the 2012 election. 

The American tradition of public education began in one-room school houses when frontier farm families hired dedicated teachers to teach their children.

When I attended public schools in the 1950s, I received an excellent education. American schools were rated the best in the world. Those schools prepared me for Caltech, and Caltech prepared me for a wonderful life in science. I owe my career and accomplishments to the great start I received in the public schools.

Those public schools were locally controlled and locally funded. Teachers and parents worked together on the content of curriculum, student discipline, and all aspects of school life. In addition to being academic institutions, public schools became centers of sports competition, social events, and other aspects of community life.

Unfortunately, our public schools are no longer locally controlled. They are largely controlled by federal and state agencies and special interests empowered by government. Local school boards still meet, but the most important decisions are out of their hands.

As local control diminished, so did the academic quality of our schools. U.S. schools are now rated as among the worst in the developed world. This is more than a tragedy – it is child abuse.

When 50 million American children – in whose hands the fate of our nation rests – receive poor quality elementary academic educations, the future of our country is in serious jeopardy. The federally and state controlled public schools that are ruining our children’s educations should be abolished – and replaced by the locally-controlled public schools that served our children so well in the past. No school should be permitted to ruin the life of a single student.

A vast federal bureaucracy and numerous special interest organizations it empowers now stand between our students and our teachers. It should be eliminated. All aspects of a student’s upbringing are the responsibility of the student’s parents and any professional whom the parents wish to engage. Together, they should provide the student with the best possible academic opportunities. This effort must not be imperiled by those who use education for their own purposes, rather than for the student’s best interest.

Americans have responded to the deterioration of their schools by providing more and more tax money, but more money has not worked. Much of the money never reaches the students or the teachers. It funds a literal army of non-teachers, administrators, and federal, state, and local bureaucrats – who generally spend their time making life miserable for the teachers and interfering with their efforts to teach.

Tax funding for Oregon schools is now, on average, about $10,000 per student year. Suppose that one of our thousands of great teachers were to be given 30 students, a check for $300,000, and asked to teach those students for nine months. Do you think the teacher would have sufficient resources? (Some schools receive less than the average of $10,000, but even $200,000 would suffice for this example.)

The teacher could rent the best room in town, hire an assistant, raise her own salary, buy everything the students need, fully fund all extracurricular activities, and have money left over. The teacher could, of course, do this more efficiently in a school with other teachers. This single teacher example illustrates, however, that education resources are sufficient – if the resources go directly to the classroom.

 

The local school board would assure that resources do go to the classroom and provide sufficient supervision, which need not cost much. Following World War II, my uncle taught school in Iowa. In addition to teaching a full load of classes, he was given a few dollars extra to be the superintendant of schools.

I have been an educator all my life. Starting with earning a little money for college by tutoring students in high school, I eventually became a faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, teaching chemistry to 300 undergraduates each year and supervising graduate students. Currently, our family business provides curricula, books, and teaching aids to approximately 60,000 home schooled students in the U.S.

In the 1950s when our schools were under local control, there was almost no home schooling in America because there was no need for it. Now, millions of American children are being home schooled because their parents want better educations for them than are provided in the academically inferior schools that are under federal, state, and special interest political control.

Not even nuclear war could “abolish” American public education. It is an integral part of our way of life. However, American schools must be returned to local control. The federal Department of Education should be closed, and education returned entirely to the states and the people as the Constitution specifies. The states and localities can collect the needed taxes. No increase in overall taxes would be needed.

Local control is close to the parents, where real concern for the student lies. Also, local control places our school districts in competition with each other for academic excellence, so students benefit.

Improvement of our public schools cannot wait. It cannot be neglected in hopes that they will gradually improve over the coming decades. The 50 million children in these schools now will not have a second chance at some future date.

Beyond high school, the U.S. system of private and public universities is also functioning below its potential because of political control. Oregon State University, located in Oregon District 4, serves as an example. This university receives more than $250 million in federal research dollars each year, including approximately $30 million as direct earmark funding from incumbent Congressmen during the last congressional session. By comparison, OSU private funding for research is now less than $6 million.

Is it any surprise, therefore, that in the 2010 election, OSU facilities and personnel were mobilized in favor of the incumbent Congressional candidate in District 4 and against the challenger? OSU courses often contain partisan political content, even science courses with no logical political purpose. OSU has become a very partisan political institution, which can lead to reprehensible injustices to students, as evidenced by my own family.

By contrast, the California Institute of Technology receives only about half of its funds from political sources. The other half is supported by income from Caltech’s endowment, which mitigates the effect of outside political influence.

Oregon State University and the University of Oregon (also in Oregon District 4) are very important institutions. Both universities would, however, be much better off if they were not completely dependent upon politicians for their immediate existence. Very large independent endowments should be built for both universities. These could be built with both public and private funds, but then be administered by the universities without political control.

Public education, from first grade to the university levels should be as independent of federal and state political influence as possible.

Art Robinson for U.S. Congress
 

P.O. Box 1250
Cave Junction, OR 97523
(541) 255-2785

www.ArtForCongress.com

Questions Arise Over $433M Drug Contract to Company Tied to Dem Donor. Is This a Solyndra De Ja Vu' All Over Again?

Political cronyism is running rampant! Both sides of the aisle are passing out taxpayer dollars to cronies as if the money is theirs to spend.

Wake Up America!

Scientists are questioning a $433 million government contract for a smallpox drug they say the country doesn't need, amid concerns over the way the project was secured for a firm tied to a Democratic donor.

The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend that U.S. officials took unusual steps to award the contract to Siga Technologies. Democratic donor Ronald Perelman has the controlling share of the company. 

The article cited emails showing the Obama administration replaced the lead negotiator on the project following complaints from Siga - Siga was apparently concerned about the government's objections to how much money Siga would make off the deal. [Doesn't the government have a right to object to exorbitant profiteering from taxpayer funds?]

Earlier, in December, the government also reportedly blocked other companies from bidding on the contract in a second round.

Siga ultimately won the contract in May, but some questioned the price of the drug -- approximately $255 per dose -- and the practicality of the project.

The government already has a smallpox vaccine on reserve. Siga's pill is meant to help people diagnosed too late for the vaccine to be effective, according to the Times.

But the drug has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and there are limits on how it can be tested.

One epidemiologist described the plan as a "waste of time and a waste of money."

But Nicole Lurie, the Department of Health and Human Services official in charge of biodefense, told the Times the contract was granted on merit. And she cited a 2004 study showing a "material threat" that smallpox could be a biological weapon. 

A Perelman representative also told the newspaper that his political donations merely represent "his right" to support candidates.

Grinding America Down. Communist and Socialist Agendas At Work Within Our Borders (Video)

Former Idaho State Rep. Curtis Bowers reveals how Communist (and Socialist) plans, designed nearly five decades ago, are still in place and active within the US. The agenda is to bring our nation down from the inside out. After watching this video, YOU decide if the strategy is working.

Wake Up America!

U.S. General Relieved Of Duty For Remarks Disparaging Afghan Government

When does a US General get chastised and lose his job for speaking the truth about the corrupt Afghan leadership? When the US has lost its standing in the world community and NATO has the power to fire our top military leaders. That's when! It is high time we tell NATO to kiss us where the sun don't shine.

Wake Up America!!

The commander of NATO's international security force in Afghanistan sacked a senior U.S. Army general Friday for making disparaging comments about the Afghan government.

Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, said Major Gen. Peter Fuller was relieved of duty, effective immediately, for making "inappropriate public comments."

Fuller, who was helping train and equip Afghan security forces, made less-than-diplomatic comments about the Afghan government and its leaders to a Politico reporter, including claims that some Afghan leaders are "isolated from reality."

Politico quoted Fuller as criticizing Afghan President Hamid Karzai for saying Afghanistan would side with Pakistan against America in war.

"Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle?" Fuller said. "You've got to be kidding me. I'm sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion, and now you're telling me, 'I don't really care'?"

U.S. officials have said Karzai's remarks were misunderstood.

Politico reported Fuller also as saying, in reference to Karzai, "when they are going to have a presidential election, you hope they get a guy that's more articulate."

He told Politico he recently told the Afghans:  "I said, 'You guys are isolated from reality.' The reality is, the world economy is having some significant hiccups.  The U.S. is in this (too).   If you're in a very poor country like Afghanistan, you think that America has roads paved in gold; everybody lives in Hollywood. They don't understand the sacrifices that America is making to provide for their security. And I think that's part of my job, to educate 'em."

In a statement, Allen said, "These unfortunate comments are neither indicative of our current solid relationship with the government of Afghanistan, its leadership, or our joint commitment to prevail here in Afghanistan.  The Afghan people are an honorable people, and comments such as these will not keep us from accomplishing our most critical and shared mission - bringing about a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan."

Spokesmen for both the International Security Assistance Force and the training mission said Fuller was quoted accurately.

"Gen. Fuller was not misquoted," said Col. David Johnson, a spokesman for the American-led training mission. "What was reported by Politico is accurate."

Fuller was on his way back to Afghanistan from Washington on Friday and could not be reached for comment.

ISAF issued a statement earlier Friday that said, "These unfortunate comments are clearly MG Fuller's personal opinions. However, they in no way represent the policies or positions of the International Security and Assistance Force."

An ISAF official said it is expected that senior commanders will speak with Fuller on his return to ask him for further details. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been made aware of Fuller's comments, according to spokesman George Little.

Fuller was the deputy commander of the NATO training mission in charge of programs. That put him in command of $11 billion in equipment, supplies, training and contracts.

On the same day as the Politico article, Fuller gave a news conference in Washington where he spoke about many of the same topics as in the article but took a much more positive tone toward the Afghan government.

At a National Press Club event, the general said the Afghan National Security Forces was drawing recruits.

"We're having more people come that want to serve their country than we can accept," Fuller said. "We deny about 1,500 people a month that are coming in."

Article by Barbara Starr

Scandal-Plagued Former California City Official Sues City for Failing to Pay $1.5 Million Salary

Ex-City Official, Robert Rizzo, along with a few other ex-officials, who cheated the small community of Bell, CA out of $6 million in exorbitant (self-voted) salaries and benefits, is now suing the city for back pay! Rizzo's greed surely knows no limits. 

Americans are sick and tired of these self-serving leaches. They need to be dealt with in the harshest of measures!

It is our opinion, this scumbag ought to be strung up by the good citizens of Bell. 

Note: See No Evil first covered this story back in July 2010. Click here for link

 

The former city manager of scandal-plagued Bell, Calif., filed a lawsuit against the city Monday, claiming his contract was breached when the city stopped paying him nearly $1.5 million in salary and benefits.

Robert Rizzo claims he's owed benefits and wages -- with interest -- because he hasn't been convicted of a felony and hasn't resigned his post, according to court documents he filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

According to the lawsuit, Rizzo hasn't been paid since a public meeting in July 2010, when the small, blue-collar community of Bell learned of his outsized pay packet.

Protesters were outraged by compensation of $100,000 to City Council members that met once a month, but it was Rizzo's $787,637 salary, along with numerous perks that amounted to almost $1.5 million a year, that it led furious residents to view him as the poster child for corruption in government.

They came out in droves to let that anger be known at city meetings.

"In response, the City Council locked Rizzo out of his office and stopped paying Rizzo his salary and benefits due to him under his employment agreement," the lawsuit said.

Rizzo notified the city that he hadn't resigned, retired or terminated their agreement in August 2010, but never got a response, according to the lawsuit.

Prosecutors say Rizzo orchestrated a scheme to bilk the Los Angeles suburb out of more than $6 million.

Rizzo and seven other Bell city officials face charges of fraud and misappropriation of public funds. Rizzo has pleaded not guilty.

Bell Mayor Ali Saleh said he'd leave it to lawyers to talk about the legal merit of Rizzo's filing, but says "Rizzo's lawsuit is just another example of the gross disregard he has had towards all the working families in Bell and is just another distraction from the injustices Bell residents suffered under Rizzo."

Saleh expressed hope the lawsuit would be thrown out and that Rizzo would be found guilty of the criminal charges against him.

"The real atrocity is that taxpayers have to respect due process and spend precious tax dollars on defending ourselves from the same person who had a complete disregard for due process and misappropriated millions of taxpayer dollars," Saleh said.

Rizzo filed the lawsuit on his own behalf. Numbers for Rizzo's former homes in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Washington state were disconnected. A message left at the number listed for Rizzo on Monday's lawsuit filing was not immediately returned.

Rizzo's lawyer on fraud and other charges, James Spertus, said Monday that Rizzo's claim is just -- even if the outraged public may balk at paying Rizzo his salary.

"Thank God judges are not guided by emotion," said Spertus.