Punishing Citron

It’s not easy to punish a “non-crook.” At least Bob Citron didn’t feather his nest. The only real greed was displayed by the finance officer clients who thought [Citron] was getting something for nothing for them.

Trying to figure out a punishment for a non-crook may be a problem for some, but certainly not me.

Give him a million hours of public service if you want to. We at the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Orange County need some, or all, of his time. We serve only a modest percentage of Orange County’s mentally ill. We’re a seriously overworked volunteer organization and we could be much more useful if we had an executive director with experience such as he has.

Not only AMIOC, but many other hard-working charitable, volunteer organizations could stretch their horizons if they had access to a professional mind of his caliber.

Of course a stretch in the “slammer” would teach him a thing or two, I guess. One thing it wouldn’t teach him, though, is how to enrich the lives of the mentally ill in Orange County.

BEN GEORGE

President-Elect

Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Orange County

* At long last! I am reading what has run across my mind from the very beginning of the Orange County investment pool debacle: “There’s no evidence that [Citron’s] illegal transfers of public funds were used for his personal enrichment.” Whatever this man has done, it appears he did not do it for himself.

I’ll not speculate on what his motivations were, but I respect him for his personal victory over greed. For if we believe the supervisors, pool participants, brokers and county employees: This man acted on his own. Yet, with a few billion dollars at his disposal and no one (theoretically) overseeing his work, he did not siphon off funds for a villa in the south of France or to buy oceanfront property in Malibu.

A portion of my retirement funds are in that pool, but it is not Mr. Citron I hold responsible for any diminishment of those funds. All those people who surrounded him and are now quick to point the finger at him are who I hold responsible. It wouldn’t have taken a seasoned Wall Street broker to realize that high returns, compared to other funds, meant there were risky investments.

I can only believe that those closest to the situation simply smiled, winked, said “Great job, keep it up!” and then looked the other way. But, as in Aesop’s fable of the military trumpeter who, when captured by the enemy, protested his innocence because he carried no weapon. I feel that he who incites men to evil deeds is as much to blame for those deeds.

Where are those recall petitions for the Board of Supervisors when you need them?

K. SHAWN THOMPSON

Irvine