You're my fucking hero man. I agree with Truth, that alot of the comments here completely miss the point, many of them, my own. However, you did a fantastic job of pointing out to Charles and his posse or just Charles, that regardless of the name calling, personal stings, or whatever, it came down to a broken promise that resulted in a huge monetary upswing for these guys. I don't how it can be different no matter how many ways we all try to slice it... Keep up the good work.

but you want to hear about money, mr. posse? ok. here's a cut and paste of a few paragraphs i've written too many times about the public and private money donated for a center in anacostia that, we now know, never opened: In November 2000, Monk and Mann announced that a host of local companies, including Andersen Consulting and Clark Construction, had “committed $1 million” toward the creation of the center. Also in the fall of 2000, Mann wrote a piece in the Good Samaritan Foundation newsletter that quoted a proverb (“Hope deferred makes the heart sick”) and asserted the center would open in 2001. Also in 2000, Monk and Mann said the Accenture Celebrity Golf Tournament had donated $120,000 to the cause, and in 2001, they put out a press release boasting that another $100,000 from that year’s Accenture event could be “used for a new training and outreach center for the group."Monk and Mann got tax dollars by promising to build the center, also. The federal budget for fiscal 2003 contained a $500,000 payment to the Good Samaritan Foundation “to acquire and renovate a building to expand outreach and mentoring services to at-risk District of Columbia youths.” In the 2004 federal budget, they were given another $275,000 earmark for the same purpose.

In June 2001, because of Monk and Mann’s purported plan, the D.C. government had leased the Carver Theatre property to the Good Samaritan Foundation, and Monk and Mann immediately announced construction on the center would begin that August. That didn’t happen. In fact, Monk and Mann had done nothing at the site other than hold groundbreaking ceremonies by 2004, when the city sold the property outright to the group."

years after taking over the building, Mann told me the construction was going to cost $2.3 million. Monk and Mann bought the site for $255,235 in 2004 after telling the city and everybody else for years that they'd open a job training center there. Monk and Mann sold the property for about $3 million about a month and a half ago having never opened a job training center there.

all these figures except the $2.3 million construction cost, which i got from Charles Mann personally, come from monk and mann's press releases or public documents, such as the congressional record. if you see anything inaccurate, Mr. Posse, please pass it along and i'll correct what's been written.

No one owes you or anybody else an explanation for anything.

I have to say this has been great reading....aside from all the name calling and swearing over each other.

Seriously, there is only one thing worse than when someone breaks a promise----when somebody then takes that opportunity to make everybody feel worse about it.

If the powers behind this promise ended up not keeping their word (and no we dont know what all the reasons are).... why kick the community when they are already down by making it ugly.

Dont ever be a parent Billy....because one day your wife will tell your child that she is going to take them to the zoo..and she will get stuck at work and not be able to make that happen. What are you going to do...tell your kids..."mommy didnt take you because she didnt love you"..... or maybe..."mommy didnt take you because she never really wanted to take you to being with"...

You don't know why this didnt happen for SE DC. I don't know why. Chances are Mr. McKenna in is infinite wisdom doesnt know either. If he knew, he'd be writing about why it didnt happen instead of just merely pointing out that it didnt.

Thanks for stating the obvious and getting everybody worked up Mr. Dave. When you can tell us what happened based on information you got from the people responsible themselves, then maybe you'll do a follow up and give us answers instead of hypothesis'.

You guys should all be ashamed of yourself for missing the main point in all this.....people didnt get something they needed....

but really...if we cant enjoy the civil liberties we all should be afforded..including the right to face your accusers and the premise of innocent until proven guilty..then whats the point of putting up a building to teach people skills in the first place?

I sure as heck wouldnt want anybody here (but perhaps Mr. Williams and Arrogant or whatever the hell their names are) teaching my kids anything at all.

They seem to at least make some sense in their desire to see truths uncovered.... not created....

and they both did a complete and beautiful whackjob on you too....which was much deserved if you ask me.

First of all, aside from the pointless stupidity you are pushing (none of your points make any sense- everything you say, however sarcastic as you think it is, really just support my position).

The usual problems associated with trying to discredit the stupid arises however, when I explore a line by line approach. It is established that the redundancy in your arguement, like mine, is probably the strongest thing you have working in your favor, but after that, it gets into the realm of what the fuck. Are you seriously trying to sit here and type in defense of a scenario that by all accounts, even your own, makes little sense to justify? Have Mann and Monnk contact Dave, get him the facts, figures, blueprints, draw requests, loan commitments, fundraising awards, the whole gamut of information associated with what these guys claimed to have done for this building. Then the general public might have a semblance of pity for them. Until that happens, why sit and defend, when Monk and Mann aren't willing to sit and defend. They have tools like Charles Williams come on here and make absurd but baseless points about the "good works" and stellar reputations of these guys.

For me, based on what's been reported and the pathethic interview given by Johnson to Mann and Monk, I just don't see how the hell these guys didn't make a killer profit on a deal that they couldn't deliver on.

As for the statement about Mann being the wealthiest, his business acumen has little to do with the stats he put up as a professional athlete. Art Monk doesn't seem to be stupid ( I can't say the same for Daryl Green), but Charles Mann is a supremely sharp businessman. This point makes little sense in your campaign to discredit me. I can discredit myself all on my own, thank you very much.

So, enjoy your night at the Holiday Inn, cause from what I can tell, it's probably the only the smart choice you've made since posting here bitch...

Come on Dave be assertive...instead of hinting at unethical dealings.....just toss out some direct proof of wrong doing by specific folks...

oops....you cant...so sorry....

You know what they say..."if you cant say anything nice..."

National Enquirer is hiring in case you missed it.

Theres no crying in baseball !

p.s: You said in another useful bit of b.s. that "charles mann is the wealthiest and done the best for himself after football".....

that alone proves you are an unqualified participant in this discussion. Hall Of Fame members do much better and I am sure that "fact" of yours is 100% opinion and invalid to boot.

From now on you don't get to talk unless you qualify your drivel with "...i am not intelligent or well informed...but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night".

As for your point by point analysis of the venom spurred here, I agree that you need to have a semblance of decorum and integrity but in this cae, I just have one thing to say: Go fuck yourself.

As for me being self-employed with little going on, that doesn't mean I'm on welfare or getting unemployment benefits. Nice of you to take as it that, because it seems to the M/O of Monk and Mann.

"self employed and not alot going on these days".....

EQUALS

UNEMPLOYED and more than likely sucking the life out of society.

Any questions??

Look, I am a peaceful individual...and I'd appreciate it if you didnt go around cussing at me and such because I didnt sign on the dotted line of your smear campaign tactics. It just shows you are not working with the full deck of cards needed...

but since you are in the mood.......lets touch on a couple other points:

1- all of what I wrote was sarcastic.....because clearly two individuals are not responsible for a city wide, decade long issue. You just want to blame them for everything.

2- unless they drove on down there..and pissed on the property..then they are not responsible for other undesirables doing so.

3- all people should be held accountable for their actions.... AFTER their actions have been proven to be deserving of such, not before. Angry individuals looking for scapegoats to blame for the ills of the world- by injecting their own opinions and claiming them as fact....is not an appropriate substitute for actual proof. (hell...I have been thinking a certain actress is a post-op transexual for 20 years...and yet...my saying it..and backing it up with...."come on show me your vagina and prove youre not a dude... or else I'm assuming you have a penis and telling the world I am right about you")...is not a valid argument or mode of investigation to begin with.

4- you have ZERO right to demean the mission and philosophy of the Good Samaritan Foundation/Youth Power Center based on your vile and skewed beleifs. No one cares if you beleive the lady's story or not, and no one requires your stamp of approval on the good things that the organization did and may continue to be doing. You are out of line mixing up your frustrations with THIS situation and how it stands to represent the GSF/YPC as a whole. Even if you are right about your concerns..it doesnt change any good that was done by the organization just because you want to be angry NOW.

5- you have a cognitive disorder that is affecting your ability to think clearly. People that blame others for things w/o justification or claim to be a victim of a crime that wasnt committed against them are what most edumucated folks would call..... schizophrenic (sp?).

Do you have bad dreams that these two former redskins are coming to kill you in your sleep too? Are they secretly planting drugs in your community too so that they can keep you down? Do you hear their voices in your head alot or only intermittently? Have you asked your physician about perhaps a different medication or switching your dosages??

6- Whats your real issue friend? Did these guys not give you an autograph when you were as little physically as you are now mentally/socially? Did they hurt your feelings? Do you resent them as people because they have achieved and lived lives that your life will never come close to touching?

7- the guy above made a real good point too....if you have the potential to talk up these individuals at a church function ( as you say you know them and speak as if you have intimate knowledge of their characters and lives).... then why have you not done so? Why vent here if you are in a position to ask them your questions directly? Sounds to me like you just want to hear yourself talk and dont really care at all about the issues at hand. I'm thinking you just need to feel tied to this some way, and this is your means to do so! If you were truly concerned about this....AND had the opportunity to talk to these guys in church or wherever you claim to know them from....it would seem very counterproductive to sit here making an ass of yourself instead of going to the sources of your frustration and speaking up. my guess is 'Charles W' above isnt the one misrepresenting who he/she really is....but i bet you are.

Soooo for fun...what church do these guys attend????

In closing- Look, this isnt all your fault Sling Blade, truly you have been set up for failure by the writer here. So lets just add this little fact:

Mr. McKenna- please accept my humblest compliments. It is a tough and thankless job that you media people do. People like you that bring things out in the open so that we can discuss it and formulate our opinions based on what we learn are important to society. ...
BUT... can you please make sure you temper your writing to allow for the possibility that maybe just maybe, you dont have all the information either? I read your peices and see where this has been a long and frustrating issue for you and you have been on it for a while and thats great. HOWEVER, you also sir have written these pieces without giving us any smoking gun, and without a smoking gun...you have provided us with nothing but an editorial of sorts and thrown in some baised slants for good measure. YOU TOO SIR, seem to not have the full story, and some of your readers seem a bit too simple to figure out that you are nothing but an editorial artist. If you had real facts and tidbits that served to PROVE your points.. Im willing to bet we'd be seeing them in some other fashion...like maybe a real story in a paper people read, or on TV as some "7 on your side" piece where the whole world sees it and hears you.

YET...it's the two VILLIANS here that the legitmate media give the airtime on channel 9 too....and from what I understand from the interview... they sought out the chance to talk...hmmmmmmm......

I think this case is closed. There is no wrong doing here. The only wrong doing here is that the community didnt get something they needed. Blame that on whoever you want...but without proof of wrong doing....lets not create more victims.