A Reason

The government now has got the break it's
been waiting for to investigate Al Sharpton.
But wait a minute, just because his corporation
owes 1.5 million in back taxes why should the
Justice department have to investigate? I'm
sure there are hundreds of corporations that
owe Uncle Sam but is the Justice department
investigating them? What's your take on this?


Big corporations give him money. Presidential candidates seek his endorsement. He has influential friends in Congress and the governor's mansion.

The Rev. Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation's most prominent civil rights leader, a status that was demonstrated again this week when he led protests against police brutality that briefly shut down six of Manhattan's major bridges and tunnels.

But he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator: Government records obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and associated penalties.

Now the U.S. attorney is investigating his nonprofit group, a probe that an undeterred Sharpton brushes off as the kind of annoyance that civil rights figures have come to expect from the government.

``Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop,'' he told the AP. ``I think that that is why they try to intimidate us.''

Over the past year, Sharpton's lawyers and the staff of his nonprofit group, the National Action Network, have been negotiating with the federal government over the size of his debt, which they dispute. The group has also been trying to pay off tens of thousands of dollars it owes for failing to properly maintain workers compensation and unemployment insurance.

Charlie King, the organization's interim executive director, said both Sharpton and the group he leads were unprepared for their rise in stature in recent years and had trouble dealing with big jumps in donations and income.

``The infrastructure was trying to keep up with that pace, and it was not a perfect fit,'' he told the AP on Friday. ``The National Action Network may not have been perfect, but nothing was going on that was untoward.''

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http://www.kingprogram.net/ posted by iloveeur @ 4:05 PM