The 500 MILLION dollar * library. Why is there no outrage?

[Maraya1969]

I wrote in a previous thread that I think he should be forced to use the money to rebuild New Orleans if that is possible. At any rate I think people should be screaming about this waste of money for this man who has managed to destroy just about everything he has touched. I think if he raises money it should be forced to good use.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/475052p-399492c....


BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

WASHINGTON - He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.

Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans told the Daily News that SMU and Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million a pop.

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential "mega" donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.

"You can't ask people in Dallas for $20 million until they can be sure the library won't be in Waco," one Bush source noted.

The rest of the cash will come from donors willing to pony up $25,000 to $5 million.

"It's a stretch," said another source briefed on the plans. "It's so much bigger than anything that's been tried before. But the more you have, the more influence you can exert."

The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.

The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.

More at link: