http://nnpa.org/nnpa_newswire/wrongful-death-what-happened-to-sandra-bland/?_sf_s=lead+story
http://nnpa.org/nnpa_newswire/president-obama-spends-day-in-federal-prison-houston-leaders-bring-attention-to-texas/?_sf_s=lead+story
CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
7-3-15
By Cash Michaels
POWERFUL COVER – The latest cover
of New
York Magazine with 35 of the over 40 female accusers of Bill Cosby featured, is powerful,
indeed. It is not hard to believe their accusations, for during the time that
Bill Cosby was at his zenith as a comedian and national television icon, the
entertainment industry was awash in drug and sex parties, where the perversions
flowed like water, and women were seen as ripe for the pickings.
True, it is still hard for many of
us to see Bill “Cliff Huxable” Cosby as anything other than “America’s favorite
Dad” from “The Cosby Show.” The man who built his career on the concept of
family and being a loving husband, laughed all the way to the bank to the point
that to even say his name meant you were referring to someone many considered
to be in a class by himself.
But now we know, by his own words,
that Cosby was lying about what his true values were.
And everyone, including the Disney
Theme Park, to Spelman College this week telling Cos to keep his $20 million
endowment, wants nothing to do with this man.
There’s no need to go into the
specific allegations here, but suffice it to say that this should be a dramatic
lesson for everyone. What goes around comes around. What you do in the dark
will one day see the light. Bill Cosby is only now, after so many years, paying
for his sins.
It is a shame to see this happen.
SANDRA BLAND – It is a perplexing
case, what happened to 28-year-old Sandra
Bland. A Texas police officer stops her for not signaling while changing
lanes, brutally arrests her and takes her to jail, where she dies three days
later.
Thus far the official local
investigation confirms what the local police say, that the young black woman
committed suicide, but no one believes that.
What’s more puzzling is the police
chief there saying that Bland told her jailers that she’s tried to commit
suicide before. If that is true, then automatically that means police were
under every obligation to place her on suicide watch to ensure that she didn’t
hurt herself.
Apparently that didn’t happen.
We can only hope that a federal
investigation clears the air on the Sandra Bland case. Black lives do matter,
especially young ones like hers.
NEW SEXY BOSS ON “SLEEPY HOLLOW” –
When the Fox television series “Sleepy Hollow” returns for its third season
Oct. 1st, lead character Lt. Abbie Mills will have a new boss, FBI
Special Agent in Charge Daniel Reynolds, portrayed by actor Lance Gross. As many of you know, Lt.
Mills ‘ previous boss, Captain Frank Irving, has now been written out of the
show. Gross, who recently starred in Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, last year
portrayed a Secret Service agent in the short-lived NBC series “Crisis,” so we
know he has the chops for this role. He also is a great looking guy, so
hopefully there will be some sexual tension between him and Abbie, who is
portrayed by the beautiful Nicole Beharie.
We’ll see how it all shakes out when “Sleepy Hollow” returns to Fox in October.
ICE T IS GOING TO BE A DAD AGAIN –
Rapper/actor Ice T, one of the
veteran stars of the long-running police drama “Law and Order: Special Victims
Unit” has announced that at age 57, he’s going to be a father again. For him
and his wife, Coco, 36, this will be
their first child together, though Ice has two adult children from previous
marriages. We will them well.
BOBBI KRISTINA IS GONE – What more
can be said about such a sad, sad life as lived by Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of superstar parents Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. She
grew up around drugs and domestic violence. She saw how drugs literally
destroyed her mother, causing her death in February 2012. Her father has had
numerous problems with the law. So the young lady hasn’t had the best role
models surrounding her. And now, at the tender young age of 22, the child dies
after falling into a six-month coma after her body was found floating face down
in a tub, just like her mother died.
There can be no question that Bobbi
Kristina came from a dysfunctional family, and despite gallant efforts by her
loving grandmother, Cissy Houston,
the young woman was intent on following the footsteps of her mother, somehow
becoming a star even though she didn’t possess even a ounce of her mom’s
talent.
But the turmoil is over, and Bobbi
Kristina is at peace now. It must have been a sad reunion, indeed when her
spirit reunited with that of her mother’s.
Bobbi Kristina Brown will always be
remembered in sorrow, We don’t know what she would have been because she didn’t
know. A young life wasted, cursed from the very beginning.
MSNBC CHANGES – Well, looks like my
favorite news and talk channel is in for another serious change. MSNBC has been
dragging something serious in the ratings over the past year and change, which
means something has to be done to attract more eyeballs to the party. Fox News
is soundly kicking everybody’s behind in the ratings department, and CNN is in
distant second place, though still doing better than MSNBC, which is losing
viewers faster than Donald Trump loses combs.
Published reports say MSNBC’s The Ed Show at 5 p.m. will be replaced
with a political show hosted by Meet the
Press moderator Chuck Todd. But
the changes won’t stop there.
The 8 p.m. hour has been a ratings
failure with All In with Chris Hayes,
while 9 p.m.’s Rachel Maddow Show is
holding its own against Fox’s The Kelly
File. There are also questions about PoliticsNation
at 6p.m. with the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Some folks see Rev. as a liability and have been trying to get him gone for the
longest.
The most tantalizing rumor has been
that now that he’s left ESPN (last Friday was his last show), Keith Olbermann might bury the hatchet,
similar to what he did to get back with ESPN two years ago, and return to
MSNBC and the 8 p.m. weeknight time slot
he used to occupy with his hit “Countdown” show. Keith was beyond funny, and
beyond controversial when he helmed the program to the point where management
couldn’t stand him, and he openly couldn’t stomach management. But now they
need each other.
MSNBC needs another star beyond
Rachel Maddow (whom Keith discovered and had put on the air before he left) to
at least take back second place from CNN. So the question remains…does MSNBC
want the ratings that a controversial Keith Olbermann can bring to the party,
knowing that he can explode any moment, or do they have someone else they can
bring onboard to become competitive again?
I know of no one like that but
Keith. Let’s see what happens.
Make sure you tune in every Thursday
afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk radio show, ''Make It Happen'' on Power 750
WAUG-AM, or online at www.waug-network.com. And read more about my
thoughts and opinions exclusively at my blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html).
Cash in the Apple - honored as the
Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best Feature Story
Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP’s
President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until next week, keep a smile on your
face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in your life. Bye, bye.
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CONTROVERSIAL TWEET BY BLACK NC REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN HASAN HARNETT
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 7-30-15
FIVE NORTH CAROLINA
HBCUs RANK IN TOP 25
[DURHAM] Of
the top 25 historically black universities and colleges across the country,
North Carolina proudly boasts of five of
them, according to the 2015 Rankings of the Best HBCUs national survey
published by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. With Tuskegee
University in Tuskegee, Ala. logging in at the number one HBCU in the nation,
closely behind was Winston-Salem State
University at #5, Elizabeth City State University at #8, NC Central University
at #9, NC A&T University at #15 and Fayetteville State University bookended
the list at #25. The schools were ranked
according to academic reputation, average financial aid, average net price
(tuition) and average starting salary.
NCDOT SEC. TONY TATA
RESIGNS AMID CONTROVERSY
[RALEIGH] NC
Dept. of Transportation Secretary Tony
Tata abruptly resigned from Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration Tuesday, saying
that he needed more time for his family and his book career. The resignation
was effective immediately. Tata’s two and a half years in office, just like his
failed tenure as Wake County Public Schools superintendent, weren’t without
controversy. The Republican and one-time
“Sarah Palin for president” supporter involved himself in numerous partisan
events, bashing Democrats on many occasions. During the height of the
snowstorms which crippled roads across the state, Tata was in Chicago on a book
tour. And he appeared on Fox News recently as a political commentator and
author without identifying himself per his official position. There are rumors that Tata is preparing
himself for a run for Congress. He says all options are on the table.
GREENSBORO TO GET
$3.5 MILLION IN HUD GRANT MONEY
[GREENSBORO]
Thanks to a grant from the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the
city of Greensboro is slated to receive over $3.5 million to assist those
needing affordable housing, according to the office of Congresswoman Alma
Adams. The grant money comes from four special HUD programs. “Having access to quality
and affordable housing is critical for our communities,” said Congresswoman Adams. “This HUD funding
for Greensboro will help tackle homelessness and help enhance the quality of
life for so many in need.”
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TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 7-30-15
IS WAL-MART OPENING A
NEIGHBORHOOD GROCERY STORE IN SE RALEIGH?
Published
reports say a developer has unveiled plans for a proposed shopping center at the intersection of Poole and New Hope
roads that may feature a national anchor grocery store. Richard Brown, a representative for the
developer, Kimley Horn, could not identify what the anchor grocer would be, but
there’s speculation that it could be a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, a scaled
own version of the super stores’ grocery section. The project is scheduled to
go before the city planning commission sometime in August, and if approved,
construction would commence in 2016.
UNC-CHAPEL HILL
STUDENT CHARGED WIH MURDER IN TRAFFIC TRAGEDY
Police have
charged UNC – Chapel Hill student Chandler Michael Kania, 20, has been charged
with three counts of second-degree murder, three counts of felony death by
motor vehicle, one count of felony serious injury by motor vehicle, driving the
wrong way on an interstate, careless and reckless driving after consuming
alcohol as a minor, possession of alcohol by a minor and having an open
container of alcohol in a vehicle, in the July 19th deaths of two
mothers and a six-year-old grandchild when he crashed his Jeep going the wrong
way on I-85 south. Kania allegedly used
a fake ID to drink at two Chapel Hill bars, and fought off friends who tried to
prevent him from driving while drunk. A nine-year-old child riding with the
victims was seriously injured, but has been released from UNC Hospitals. At
press time, Kania has bailed out of jail pending his next court date.
BISHOP CURRY READY TO
LEAD AS NATIONAL EPISCOPALIAN HEAD
The head of
the North Carolina Episcopal Church says he is ready to lead all Episcopalians
now after being elected in June to become the national Bishop. Bishop Michael
Curry has presided over the North Carolina Diocese for several years, but it
was his historic election to national leadership in Salt Lake City several
weeks ago that has placed him in the history books as the first
African-American to reach that pinnacle in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry
says he believes strongly in the involvement of the church in the community.
Curry will be moving from Raleigh to Manhattan, is expected to be installed in
November.
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BLACK NC GOP CHAIR
PLAYS “KKK” CARD
By Cash Michaels
editor
It hasn’t
taken Hasan Harnett, the first African-American elected as chairman of the
North Carolina Republican Party last June, long to endear himself to
rank-and-file GOP’ers across the state, if not the country.
Shortly
after taking office, Harnett went to Winston-Salem as the federal voting rights
trial was beginning, to publicly accuse NCNAACP President Rev. William Barber
of taking money from out-of-state unions to lead the Moral Monday movement, and
that those unions were paying demonstrators to take part in the Moral Monday
demonstrations because “They want to make it easier to cheat in our elections.
They are being paid by unions to fight Voter ID in North Carolina.”
After a
check of the documented record, the press quickly determined Harnett’s claims
to be baseless at best.
“NC GOP Chair Hasan Harnett and
spokesman Ricky Diaz “both made statements that aren’t fully backed by the
evidence at hand,” wrote Democratic commentator Thomas Mills on his “Politics
North Carolina” blogsite shortly after. “In other words, they lied.”
But that didn’t matter. The black
NCGOP chair’s job was to tarnish the Moral Monday movement as the NCNAACP
challenged the Republican-passed 2013 voter restriction laws in court as
unconstitutional.
Last week,
however, gave rise to a Harnett tactic that was even more daring than the first
– linking Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to the Ku Klux
Klan.
On Twitter
last week, Harnett tweeted “Say NO to the #Democrat Lies #Liberal Agenda.
#BlackLivesMatter #KeepGodFirst.”
Underneath,
Harnett displayed two pictures – one of a Ku Klux Klan meeting with a burning
cross, and then right next to it, a picture of a “winking” Hillary Clinton.
Underneath the Klan picture is the sentence, “The KKK was created as the
militant wing of the Democrat Party in order to fight Republican
reconstruction.”
The Harnett
tweet apparent got the effect it wanted, being reported on by The Associated Press, ABC News and the
New York Times, among other news outlets.
When
Raleigh television station WRAL-TV requested comment from Harnett earlier this
week, he reportedly declined. Instead the NCGOP’s Executive Director Todd Poole
told the station, “The
chairman isn't going to comment or give interviews on tweets, but as the first
black chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, he believes we have to
learn from history and move past it."
NC Democratic Party spokesman Ford
Porter didn’t see the black NCGOP chairman’s controversial tweet the same way.
"At a moment when Governor McCrory and leading
Republicans are fighting in court to enact new restrictions to the ballot box
here in North Carolina, Chairman Harnett’s comments are particularly ludicrous”
Porter said in a statement to The
Carolinian Newspaper. “North Carolina has long struggled to overcome racial
division – and for at least the last 50 years, that work has been led by the
Democratic Party. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the facts of history.”
Porter continued, “ Unfortunately,
Chairman Harnett's troubling comments pretty much encapsulate the current
Republican brand in North Carolina: inflammatory rhetoric, completely unhinged,
and totally focused on nonsense instead of job creation or improving our
schools. It's telling that Governor McCrory and senior Republicans have not publicly
distanced themselves from their Chairman’s comments and no great wonder why
everyday families are ready for a change in Raleigh."
On Facebook, black Democrats were
not pleased with what they saw was a weak but apparent attempt to paint their
party, let alone a prominent candidate to succeed Pres. Barack Obama, with an
undeserved racial brush.
“Another dumb a—, “ remarked a
poster named Ingrid, “…and I wonder how much he sold his soul for,” referring
to NCGOP Chair Harnett.
“Yes in [the] period of
Reconstruction…a lot of Klan members were Democrats…mostly in the South,”
another Facebook poster named Odessa wrote. “After the civil rights bill was
past…those Democrats…Jesse Helms…Strom Thurmond…and George Wallace and the
like…became Republicans…”
Another Facebook poster named Greg
saw the situation pragmatically.
“The only way of solving all of this
buffoonery is to get out and outvote [Republicans] instead of letting them
outvote us.”
Dan Blue III, former chairman of the Wake County
Democratic Party, says the black NCGOP chairman’s pre-election year strategy is
both sad, and transparent.
“This is a political strategy of attacking your
opponents strength,” Blue told The
Carolinian. “NCGOP believes it can weaken the strong support in the African
American electorate for the Democratic Party in general and Hillary Clinton in
particular by linking them to the KKK.”
“It is a
difficult argument to make given the actions of the GOP at all levels, whether
represented by the unhinged hatred for the President and his family, the antics
of the GOP presidential hopefuls, the election reform legislation passed in the
North Carolina General Assembly or the defense of the Confederate flag and
monuments,” Blue added.
“[Chairman
Harnett’s] rhetoric is inconsistent with his party's actions.”
If recent history is a guide, Blue has a point.
Unlike former Secretary of State Clinton, several
Republican and conservative Tea Party members and elected officials in recent years
have been found to have ties to white supremacist organizations.
According to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League in a
May 2009 report right after President Obama’s first election, “An anti-Semite
and white supremacist created the Tea Party Americans Coalition (TPAC) as “a
working group for serious White racialist activists in the US who want to
effectively coordinate our efforts and intervene for effect in Tea Party-type
events.”
Just last December, Washington was rocked by news that
incoming House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R- LA) had spoken before the
European – American Unity Rights Organization, a white supremacist group in
2002 spearheaded by KKK leader David Duke. Scalise says he never “affiliated”
with the group, and was only trying to build support for his policy agenda.
Duke called him “a sellout” who he might
run against.
In Sept. 2012, during the Republican National
Committee Convention in Tampa, Fla., South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay
Graham, currently one of sixteen candidates running for president, remarked on
how the Republican Party was failing miserably to attract more blacks and
Latinos to its ranks, saying, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to
stay in business for the long term.”
It was at that same convention where two convention
attendees threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman, telling her, “This is how
we feed animals.”
Only two percent of the attendees to that Republican
National Convention were black.
And recently, in the aftermath of the Charleston
Church massacre where a young white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers
in an effort to start a race war, it was learned that the Council of
Conservative Citizens – the white supremacist group the suspect read and
followed closely online, had contributed to the campaigns of three prominent
Republicans – Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and former Sen. Rick Santorum. All
three immediately returned the contributions.
Indeed, virtually all of the elected officials in and
outside of South Carolina protesting the removal of the Confederate Battle flag
– the 1960’s symbol of white resistance to racial desegregation in the South –
were all Republicans.
Whether it was North Carolina conservative firebrand
Sen. Jesse Helms, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, or Sen. Trent Lott, who
years ago was forced to step down after praising the racial politics of Sen.
Thurmond, the Republican Party has had strong ties with the white supremacist
movement, historians agree.
That doesn’t mean that the Democratic Party was not
once white supremacist led, as the Wilmington, NC 1898 race massacre would
attest to. And indeed, racially controversial figures like Helms and Thurmond
were popular segregationist Democrats before they led the white male exodus to
the Republican Party during the late 1960’s after Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed
the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“The Klan’s push for white voters to focus on voting
against policies that would help Blacks encouraged many of the voters to toss
their political affiliations aside and gravitate towards politicians who were
opposed to desegregation and anything else that would treat Black people as
equals,” wrote reporter Taylor Gordon in the December 2014 edition of the Atlanta Blackstar in a story titled,
“Study: The Ku Klux Klan Played a Serious Role in Garnering White Southern
Support for the Republican Party.”
But ever since then, historians confirm, the Democratic Party
has led on civil rights, voting rights and other issues of equality, compared
to its GOP counterpart, ultimately electing the first African-American
president of the United States in 2009.
Saying that the Democratic Party
today, and Sec. Clinton in particular, subscribe to the racial politics of the
Ku Klux Klan, is beyond reality, Casey Mann, former NC Democratic Party
executive director says.
“The actions of the NCGOP Chair are shameful,” Mann
told The Carolinian. [NCGOP Chairman]
Hasan Harnett is playing 3-card Monty with the political process, trying to
confuse people about where the parties stand on the issues of today. His is a
game of labels; it has nothing to do with values. The real issues are where the
NCGOP stands on voting rights, issues of equality, and confronting the
disparities in economics and social justice that exist in North Carolina today.”
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