In Bell, California there is still gold to be had, if the folks aren't looking. It's fools gold, as in snatching all the gold, no fooling.

Three so-called public servants of a small working class suburb of Los Angeles, with fewer than 40,000 residents, were helping themselves handsomely to the public gravy and piling biscuits on to their plates too. The three were paying themselves huge salaries. The Associated Press reports that, the town's Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo paid himself $787,637 a year, nearly twice as much as the President of the whole USA makes. Police Chief Randy Adams got $457,000, twice as much as the LA Police chief makes, and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia received $376,288 a year. To cover these huge salaries, and may be a few other things, property taxes in one of the poorest towns (Census figures from 2008 show 17 percent of the population lives in poverty), in Los Angeles County have doubled in recent years. These huge salaries were a secret until the Los Angeles Times reported on them last week. The citizens of the town were shocked and angry, and they demanded that the high dollar officials be fired.

After a week of citizen protests, the town city council announced, in the wee hours of this morning, Friday, that the three so-called public servants have agreed to quit, and without severance pay, but with huge state pensions! $650,000 a year for life, for Mr. Rizzo, more than $411,000 a year for Mr. Adams, and as much as $250,000 a year for Ms. Spaccia, when she reaches 55. She is now 51.

Ah, but the high dollar three weren't the only ones sponging up all the juice. The members of the City Council are paid very well too for representing a small town, in the middle of a recession, and if you buy it, a slow recovery. Four of the five hauls in $100,000 annually for part-time work. When this news got out, the local residents started shouting: "Recall!, Recall!"