Criminal Charges Possible In The Michael Jackson Funeral Fiasco

Forgive me if you don't live in Los Angeles, but I have to go on another rant about paying for the funeral of Michael Jackson. I want to make it clear upfront that I am willing for taxpayers to pay half. I have no problems with that at all. It is the other half for which I bitch.

First, all everyone heard about the entire time leading up to and immediately after the funeral was that it cost approximately $4M. That figure was everywhere. Suddenly, that number dropped all the way down to $1.4M. I actually think it cost more than $4M. I know it cost more than $1.4M. Just the police alone cost $1.1M. Are they trying to say the rest of the funeral only cost $300K? And I also want to know if you can get all of that for $1.4M, then what in the hell do celebrities spend their money on when they have a $1M wedding? Think about that.

The next item on my list is the fact that AEG just sold the footage of the last rehearsal Michael gave prior to his death. It was sold for between $50M-$60M to Sony. So, now that you are so flush with cash AEG, how about shelling out the money to pay for the funeral? Are you going to split the $60M with the tax payers? No, but you want us to foot the bill for the funeral and I bet there may have been some exclusive AEG footage of the funeral that was included in the deal with Sony and so if that is true then you used taxpayer money to benefit your company.

Finally, the City Council yesterday learned that there has been possible criminal activity in relation to the funeral and that one of the reasons it cost so much was that people were taking advantage of the fact the city would pay. $50,000 was spent on sandwiches for police officers. Now, granted there were 4,000 police helping out on the event, but if every one of them ate a sandwich that would still be a $12 sandwich. I'm guessing there was a little pad to that bill and there is probably a lot more where it came from.