by James Glaser
January 18, 2006

Monday was Martin Luther King Day. This National Holiday was passed by Congress in 1983, but it took until 1993 to get every state to observe it. Until this year I lived in Northern Minnesota, and the only thing going on to celebrate the life of this civil rights leader up there, was the closing of the bank, the school, and the Post Office.

This year I'm in Tallahassee, Florida, and the only thing I could see happen on this day was the closing of the banks, schools, Post Offices, and because this city is the State Capitol, all the government offices were closed.

If you shut down the government, in any city, close the schools and banks, you make it a nice day to drive around. There is almost no traffic, which tells you how many people work for the federal, state, county, and city government.

The people Martin Luther King worked so hard to help, the poor and the underprivileged of any race, had to work just like any other day of the year. If there were festivities or memorial services on Monday, they were attended by those who worked for the Government or were in a banking job. Everyone else was working like every other day of the year.

So, I propose that they no longer call Martin Luther King Day a National Holiday, but a Government Holiday.

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