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Are Kid-Care’s Porters guilty of success?

When you analyze the Kid-Care tragedy objectively, you can’t help but compare how the system dealt with Carol and Hurt Porter with how it unjustly treats falsely accused people, who’re arrested, jailed and charged, but are grudgingly released when the state can’t make a solid case against them, or they refuse to cop a plea. If you’re thinking. “You can beat the rap,” but must take a helluva ride, you and I are definitely on the same page. But, in case you haven’t been keeping up with what every citizen of good conscience should consider a gross injustice, perhaps I should update you.

Let’s start with this excerpt from an article in the July 13, 2004 edition of Houston, Texas’ only daily newspapers that revealed, “Attorney General Greg Abbott has agreed to drop a lawsuit against Kid -Care Inc. in exchange for a $495,000 insurance payment that will mostly be used to carry on the charity's work without the help of founders Carol and Hurt Porter. The settlement, reached after a 12-hour mediation session that ended Monday night (July 12th), ends a 15-month legal dispute that raised allegations of fraud and mismanagement by the founders of a charity once praised by two U.S. presidents and the United Nations for its innovative meal-delivery program for children. The Porters and their attorney, Valorie Davenport, portrayed the agreement as a victory.

“Davenport said Abbott could not prove his allegations that the Porters had used charitable funds for their personal expenses…. Rusty Hardin, the attorney for Kid -Care 's former business manager, Rudy Labombarda, laughed out loud when told of Davenport's remarks. ‘That is an outright lie,’ said Hardin, whose client was sued by the Porters after Abbott's suit was filed. "The Porters and their conduct is what resulted in a payment by the insurance carrier." Abbott, in a statement released late Tuesday, said $300,000 of the settlement will be given to the charity, now known as "The New Kid -Care," which has been operating under a new board for the past year. The balance will cover the costs of litigation. In his lawsuit, filed in April 2003, Abbott contended the Porters spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for airline trips, costly meals and other personal expenses.

“Abbott said that his staff's investigation had demonstrated ‘gross misappropriation of funds to enrich’ the Porters. Carol Porter continued Tuesday to deny these charges, saying she and her husband had been forced to rely on gifts of food and gasoline from friends because they had exhausted their assets building Kid -Care and defending themselves against the lawsuit. In a settlement offer a year after the suit was filed, Susan K. Staricka, chief of the attorney general's charitable trusts division, said the Porters may have been guilty merely of negligence rather than of ‘intentionally malicious or fraudulent conduct.’ Kid -Care 's insurance policy excluded coverage for fraudulent or dishonest acts. In her April 5 letter to lawyers in the case, Staricka proposed a $1.6 million settlement, more than three times the amount agreed upon
“Monday. Abbott, in his statement, said his office and Kid -Care 's new board had agreed that Kid -Care would have no further association with the Porters. The board's attorney, Jay Hirsch, said the agreement also bans the Porters from coming to the organization's north Houston offices. Hirsch acknowledged that the Porters and Davenport had not been informed of this agreement. Gilbert Baker, Kid-Care 's board chairman, held the office door closed to ensure the Porters did not enter the building when they arrived for a late-afternoon news conference they had scheduled. The Porters and Davenport spoke to reporters in the parking lot. Davenport had hoped to speak in the building to reinforce the point, she said, that the organization had deteriorated since the Porters resigned last year.

“Porter said she has no wish to be involved with The New Kid-Care, which she described as a shell of the group she and her husband created.” I know our regular readers are waiting for the rest of the story, because as usual the mainstream media report failed to ask that all-important question WHY? You know damn well that the system didn’t just decide to cut the Porters a break because they are such nice, hard working, God fearing “colored folks,” so why did they cut and run after figuring out a way to save face? Surely, as much as I respect Carol, she does have a mouth on her. And the only thing angry White plantation owners hated worse than an arrogant Black “Buck,” was a sassy Black “Wench.” Jokes aside, Carol and Hurt didn’t just talk the talk, but walked the walk. They had the good sense to document every second of their ordeal in minute detail.

Carol and Hurt, who’ve always had a true common sense Black perspective, probably remembered their elders saying, “Sooner or later a liar is going to tell lie that will make a lie out of all of his or her other lies.” And one only has to read the well documented “Kid-Care Discovery” journal (Shared with African American News & Issues), to realize that they stood a better chance of winning a counter suit against Channel 13 and it’s intellectual assassin, Wayne Dolcefino, than Rep. Sylvester Turner had when he proved in court that outright lies robbed him of an opportunity to make history as Houston’s first Black mayor. Although we’d be waiting until hell freezes over to before the Attorney General or mainstream media to admit that the Porters have been unfairly and maliciously wronged. The Black community should certainly consider them heroes.

Nevertheless, it didn’t take long --after reading the documents-- for the Jewish Herald Voice to conclude in it’s May 13, 2004 edition) that only “evil people” would do what Dolcefino, et al did to the Porters. I agree, because only evil people would add insult to injury by barring the Porters from Kid-Care But the question is still why? With all of the real problems in our city, why would evil in high places focus on an inner-city charitable organization… that only wanted to feed hungry children? That’s a good question and I’m glad you asked, because we’re already researching for a future article that will address the conspiracy that is in place to make sure African Americans will never control our own destiny.
The article will go all the way back to 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street” to today’s Kid-Cares to prove that it’s perfectly alright as long as if Black enterprises remain small, under funded and mostly unnoticed, but it’s a different story when they become so successful until they garner national attention. Could it be that Kid-Care was guilty after all? Guilty of being too successful?