Thursday, July 15, 2010

Phil Greer was incompetent, says Chriss Street

     As you know, Orange County is slowly morphing into a less severely Neanderthalic habitat. The glaciers are receding, and the Cro-Magnons have the run of most of the county’s forests and beaches.
     Oddly, during this unstoppable transmogrification, the Old Guard—friends and associates of good ol’ Tom Fuentes (Mike Schroeder chief among them)—have managed to keep its crew of unscrupulous and cronyistic Cave People in key positions. DA Rackauckas is the best example. Former OC Sheriff Mike Carona was another (until he was convicted of one of the many crimes he committed). Lots of lower-profile pols are part of the network. They give each other prizes. They trade jobs. They smoke stogies.
     Until recently, an important member of the team was OC Treasurer Chriss Street, a corrupt bastard whose dark past cast a pall on his office even before he started knocking out walls and buying expensive furniture.
     Eventually, the lawsuit against him was decided, and, overnight, he became our latest big Orange crook. Plus he was broke—he owed people a zillion bucks—and Republicans hate a pauper.
     It was oblivion time.
     He dealt with the situation with an odd combination of realism and denial: he took himself out of the running for reelection, but he also commenced issuing opinions and policy statements, as if he were a seriously respected guy, which he definitely ain’t.
     Well, here’s the latest. According to the OC Reg (Chriss Street sues bankrupt trust for $40 million), Street is suing his adversaries for $40 million and appealing the court decision against him. As the Reg explains,
     Street was trustee of the End of the Road Trust, the … successor to the bankrupt Fruehauf Trailer Corp., from 1998 until creditors forced him out in mid 2005.
     He is suing the trust, Los Angeles money manager Dan Harrow, who replaced him as trustee, the trust’s current and former law firms and the hedge funds that supervised the trust.
     Street alleges that the two hedge funds … tried to embezzle money from the trust while he was trustee. When they failed, Street wrote, they “simply pushed him out and brought in someone ethically detached and morally flexible.”
     Sounds zany.
     Then there’s the appeal. In his filing, he “argues that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Richard M. Neiter wrongly applied Delaware trust law.”
     But here’s the best part:
The appeal also alleges that his lawyer in the two-day trial, Phillip Greer, was incompetent.
     The Reg lays out the amazing story Street offers regarding the conspiracy against him. Check it out.
     Back to Greer.
     Incompetent, eh?
     Greer is, of course, the Old Guard’s legal consigliere. Recently, he helped protect OC Public Administrator John Williams from the obvious implications of two damning and fun-filled OC Grand Jury reports. He helped that rat bastard Raghu Mathur negotiate a sweet exit from the South Orange County Community College District when Board Prez Don Wagner finally got fed up with his conniving ways.
     Who knows what else this shyster has been up to.
     I love it. Street’s on the outside, and he’s got no friends. But he’s fighting back, and he’s calling Greer a boob.
     Yes, Greer is a boob or worse. But there are other truths that are dying to be said.
     In my imagination, Street decides to turn a new leaf and cease being a corrupt and hypocritical Cave Man. He sells out his former knuckle-dragging friends.
     And it's wonderful.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...