The Dems complain about cronyism and �living off a legacy� when the Repubs hire their friends, even the ones who are over-qualified for the position, or get placement in a good university.
How strange, this is the first I have heard on this matter, that I found at the blog of The Grouchy Old Cripple (in Atlanta) and Cynthia Tucker at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (subscription req’d),
In the years after her husband’s assassination,
Coretta Scott King tapped into a deep wellspring of guilt, regret and longing to raise funds for a memorial: the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. In 1981, she completed a landmark $8 million building, with her husband’s tomb as its centerpiece. The King Center was to be a dynamic institution that would keep the dream alive.
But the center never came close to its potential. Now, it is close to collapse. Nearly 40 years after King’s death, the facility is crumbling; educational and advocacy programming is nonexistent; staff layoffs have claimed even the janitor.
The King Center has been ruined by the King family.
King’s heirs have always been at least as interested in self-aggrandizement and material comfort as they have been in advocating civil rights and social justice. Even as fund-raising has lagged, King’s adult sons � Martin III and Dexter � continue to pay themselves six-figure salaries as executives of the institution. They have even mortgaged a nearby landmark, their father’s birth home.
Now that the center is barely able to meet payroll, its staff cut by nearly three-quarters and repairs desperately needed on the leaking roof and the crumbling reflecting pool, King Center advocates want more government funds to help with the estimated $11 million needed for maintenance. According to former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, who was once a close confidant of King’s and continues to be a staunch defender of his heirs, “A lot of money needs to go into maintenance, and that can’t be the responsibility of the family.”
Oh Bullshit! You built it, you have to keep gathering funds for it’s maintenance.
It is a little something called ‘RESPONSIBILITY’.
You broke it (literally), you buy it!
Perhaps, if you tried actually reading some of the things your father wrote, you’d know about it.
My tax dollars are not to be used to fund anyone�s lifestyle, least of all those who deserve it the least.
Although, I wouldn�t be too object to Ms. Tucker�s suggestion,
Congress should not set aside another dime for the King Center until the family agrees to deed the facility � lock, stock and barrel � over to the National Park Service.
Give this a couple weeks. If the King family doesn�t get what it wants, the media will jump on this story and start implying that Bush and Company are all racists who don�t like King�s legacy.
I�d put money on that.
