[Publib] Tax Dollars Well Spent

[Backwage at aol.com]

Public sector budgets are tight here in California.  Government  services 
are being curtailed and layoffs are planned.  We only undertake  the most 
essential services.  Libraries suffer, but we know how to deal  with dangerous 
criminals.  This from L.A. Times.  
 
---------------------------------  
 
 _Former Orange school trustee on trial in ketchup theft _ 
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/04/but-your-honor-that-ketchup-is-worthless-.html
) 
 
He was the ultimate dark-horse politician, a school board member who  
murmured about conspiracies, refused to talk with colleagues, wore coal-black  
sunglasses during night meetings and survived a recall attempt. 
But former Orange school trustee Steve Rocco may finally have met his match 
 in a half-full bottle of ketchup. Rocco is being tried for stealing a 
14-ounce  Heinz bottle from a dining area outside the cafeteria at Chapman 
University, a  charge he claims is bogus because – in his calculations – the 
ketchup was  worthless.  
If Rocco made for an awkward and often mute politician when he served a  
four-year term on the school board in Orange, he seemed light, gregarious and  
engaged as his petty-theft trial opened today, jotting things down in a 
spiral  notebook, asking detailed questions and laughing with his public 
defender.  
Told he would have to adhere to courtroom etiquette and go without his  
standard knit beanie cap and dark glasses, Rocco showed up in a plaid shirt 
with  a black tie and flip-up sunglasses and had a white bandage the size of a  
slice of bread affixed to his head.  
 
Superior Court Judge Jacki C. Brown’s courtroom has become the latest stage 
 for Rocco, a 58-year-old unemployed recluse known for espousing shadowy  
conspiracy theories about a powerful, secret cabal he calls the Partnership.  
He made national headlines in 2004 when he won a school board seat in 
Orange,  listing himself as a “teacher/writer” on the ballot.  
Now a different panel will be asked to pass judgment on Rocco and decide  
whether he stole the 14-ounce, plastic squirt bottle of Heinz from a table at 
a  dining area outside Argyros Forum in September and put it in a paper bag 
before  speeding off on his bicycle. Or did he just take it, thinking it 
was trash and  in need of recycling?  
The case seems straightforward, if not a bit mundane and, well, cheap.  
According to prosecutors, the bottle had a value of $1.20 -- well below the $15 
 each juror is being paid a day for their civic service.  
So while Deputy Dist. Atty. Lynda Fernandez asked jurors to “focus on the  
conduct of the defendant rather than the value of the item,” public defender 
 Erica Gambale simply jingled two quarters and a dime in her palm. 
“This is it, ladies and gentlemen, this is it: 60 cents,” she told  
jurors. “At best, half that ketchup was left.”  
The trial continues.
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