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CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
6-16-16
By Cash Michaels
TV SCREENS
– Lots of controversial stuff we’re seeing of late on our TV screens. Hard not
to have an opinion on some of it.
ORLANDO –
They all deserved to live. Every one of Omar
Mateen’s 49 victims in the deadliest mass shooting in recorded American
history deserved to live out their young lives, free of discrimination, and
certainly free of threat of death because of who they were, or where they chose
to celebrate their lives.
They were
American citizens, and no matter what anyone thought of them, they all had the
right to live.
Apparently
Mateen didn’t think so. Because he reportedly saw two men exchanging affections in front of him and his young son
one day, instead of either ignoring it, or explaining it to the boy, Mateen – a
mixed-up , angry terrorist wannabe – decided to take matters into his own hands
and express his hatred of gay people the only way his feeble mind knew how –
through deadly, senseless violence.
Let’s be
clear about something … it takes a particular brand of coward to pack two fully-loaded firearms, one of them an AR-15
military assault rifle capable of firing multiple rounds of ammo in a clip, to a club where 350 unarmed men and
women are partying and minding their own business, and start firing at will.
Not much courage required for that behavior.
And yet,
Mateen apparently felt that it was his duty to kill as many human beings as
possible at the “Pulse” club in Orlando
Saturday night. Somehow it made him feel…. more like a “man,” I guess.
Here’s the
problem – there are plenty more Omar Mateens out there just waiting for their
chance to explode and “prove” just how “manly” they are in a similar way. And
because, despite all of the protestations of Pres. Obama, this country refuses to do anything to ban military
assault weapons (as we once did under the Bill
Clinton administration), weapons of war continue to flood our streets -
legally and otherwise. And so every weekend, the streets of Chicago,
Philadelphia and New York become war zones. And the body counts of our young
people just keep on rising. And the National
Rifle Association continues to insist that it’s every citizen’s right to
get their hands on as many guns as possible.
And Pres.
Obama continues to throw his hands up in frustration. The Republican-led
Congress he’s stuck with refuses to do anything at all because it’s so deep in
the NRA’s pockets.
And so it
goes. This week Orlando. Last December it was San Bernardino. Before that a black
church in Charleston. and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. A college campus. An
elementary school with young children.
They all
had the right to live.
NO NAME –
CNN’s Anderson Cooper refuses to
mention the name of the killer, or show gis face, not wanting to give the
monster any glory at all. That’s cool with me.
TRUMP’S
SOLUTION – Needless to say, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has now reiterated his call to ban all Muslims from
coming into the United States as a result of the Orlando massacre.
Like it or
not, Trump does have a following here in the South and the Midwest – two areas
where many whites believe this really isn’t their country anymore because they
feel they don’t have “control.” Trump gives them that sense of control with his “Make America Great Again” mantra,
and apparently the best way to accomplish that near trick is to throw the
values most of all were raised on in the toilet. So we build walls instead of
building bridges. And we treat women like second-class citizens instead of
equal partners in our democracy. And of course, we fool ourselves into thinking
that we’re keeping potential terrorists out of the country, when all we’re
really doing is proving real terrorists right by acting like a nation with no
sense.
Yep, there
are a lot of folks who are buying what Trump is selling. The question is, are
there enough of them to elect him the next president of the United States?
We’ll see.
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.
-30-
WAKE, FORSYTH COVERED
IN
HOUSE-PASSED EUGENICS
BILL
By Cash Michaels
EDITOR
Victims of
North Carolina’s notorious state sterilization program are now also eligible to
be compensated by either Mecklenburg, Forsyth, Wake or Guilford counties if
they were “asexualized or sterilized” under those counties authority, under a
bill passed by the NC House Monday night.
But it’s
nowhere near a done deal. There are looming questions involving where more
counties will be added to those eligible, whether local county commission
boards will use their discretion to pay eligible victims out of their county
general funds and how much, and whether the NC Senate and House can agree on
final details so that the bill can be made law. The measure that passed the
House Monday differs substantially from the original Senate bill which passed
in March 2015.
Almost
8,000 white, black and mostly poor female North Carolinians were falsely
identified as “feeble” or “mentally retarded” by the state Eugenics Board from
1929 to the mid-1970’s, and involuntarily sterilized under state law. It was
all part of the infamous eugenics movement of the early 1900’s that sought to
“purify” the human race by preventing poor people from having children, thus
minimizing what many in government felt were problem and needy populations.
In many of
these cases, the local county health departments, acting as agents of the
state, misidentified young women, and men, and even children as being mentally
unstable, and in many cases, had these victims sterilized under false
pretenses. Many of those still living tell how they had no idea what was done
to them until they married and tried to have children.
In 2003,
the state of North Carolina formally apologized for it’s eugenic program, but
it wouldn’t be until ten years later that a law minimally compensating eligible
survivors was enacted. Many of the
survivors are scheduled to get a third and final payment totaling $45,000 in
compensation.
However,
those who were sterilized by their county, not the state, have not been
compensated thus far, which is what the current bill passed by the state House
addresses.
The measure
calls for eligible counties with populations of at least 350,000 as of 2010,
which is why Mecklenburg, Wake, Forsyth and Guilford ate noted. The bill’s sponsors say they want to wait
until enactment before adding other counties, like New Hanover and Brunswick to
the list.
If passed
in it’s current form, SB 29 would give the four aforementioned counties until
July 1, 2018 to develop and pass ordinances “…to provide for the compensation
of qualified recipients asexualized or sterilized under county authority.”
Those eligible have until December 31, 2019 to make a claim application, to the
NC Industrial Commission.
Again, the
counties would make payments from their local General Funds.
If an
eligible claimant dies, payment is made to the estate.
Thus far,
representative of the four local county commission boards have not weighed in
on the measure by press time since it passed the House Monday night.
-30-
CONTROVERSY OVER
STATE –RUN
ACHIEVEMENT SCHOOLS
By Cash Michaels
EDITOR
Should
local low-performing schools be taken over by the state and run by for–profit
charter school companies in hopes that a different approach will improve
results, or should the state just give local school districts more resources to
improve those schools and bring them up to par?
That is the
debate now in the NC General Assembly over HB 1080 to establish the
“Achievement School District (ASD),” a proposed pilot project where the state
selects five of North Carolina’s lowest performing elementary schools, a
superintendent is assigned by the state Board of Education to oversee that
special district, and then choose a for-profit charter school company to
actually run the schools under a five-year contract, with a possible three-year
renewal.
The NC
House passed its version of HB 1080 two weeks ago, so now it’s in the Senate
Rules and Operations Committee, with no word as to when it will be reported out
and hit the Senate floor for a vote.
Once a low-performing
school has been selected for the ASD, the local school board has the option of
either closing it, transferring it to the ASD, or adopt a recommended
“principal turnaround reform model” for that school. A public hearing will be
held in that local school district before a final determination is made by the
local board.
The charter
school operator will be responsible for hiring all staff under the direction of
the special superintendent. Funding will come from both state and local
coffers.
Needless to
say, the political battlelines have been drawn, even though some Republican
House members have voted against ASD, and at least one black Democratic House
member, Rep. Cecil Brockman of High Point, is a co-sponsor of the bipartisan
measure.
Rep.
Brockman maintains that because urban and rural black children are, for the
most part, poorly served by low-performing schools, that ASD offers an
opportunity to dramatically change what has ultimately proven to be a broken
model that no amount of additional funding has fixed. “[The schools] have
failed black students,” Brockman insists.
But there
is controversy about whether the ASD model does indeed work. The inspiration
for the bill is the ASD in Tennessee. The Tennessee model has produced, “mixed results”
say researchers at Vanderbilt University, compared to pupils attending
low-performing schools. Published reports indicate parents in the local school
districts are not pleased with the state takeover, and oppose it bitterly.
Published
reports add there is solid opposition from the Tennessee Democratic Caucus and
the Tennessee Black Caucus. A bill has been introduced to do away with ASD
there by May 2017.
The state
of Michigan got out of the ASD business in February after four years, based on
spiraling costs and little progress.
“It’s unproven at best,” Mark
Jewell, president-elect of the North Carolina Association of Educators told
House members considering the bill. NCAE prefers the state bolster failing
schools with better trained, better paid teachers, stronger administrative
leadership and better resourced programs designed to help struggling students.
Ironically, HB1080 also allows
local school districts that transfer a school to ASD to then identify several low-performing
schools and designate them for “innovation zones” or “iZones”, where public
schools can run failing schools as charter schools, where the rules are not as
stringent.
What little
research there is shows that student achievement in iZone schools is much
improved over ASD and standard low-performing
schools.
Supporters
of the ASD measure include the Raleigh-based conservative think tank, the John
Locke Foundation, which says that the bill offers “promise of improvement” for
the state’s low-performing schools.
But
opponents, like Dr. Henry Johnson, former associate state schools superintendent at the NC Dept
of Public Instruction, and Professor Andre Overstreet (retired) of the College
of Education at NC State University, say based on the Tennessee results so far,
there is very little “promise” to hope for.
“[ASDs] have a short history
and little effectiveness research,” wrote Dr. Johnson and Prof. Overstreet in a
recent op-ed. “They spend large amounts of public tax dollars on often sketchy
private companies that collect significant fees. And there is no evidence that
they work.”
-30-
POLICE, COMMUNITY
CLEANUP MINI-PARK NEAR FATAL SHOOTING
Several
Raleigh police officers, workers with the city’s park and Rec Dept. and neighborhood volunteers came together
Tuesday morning at the Bragg Street
Mini-Park in South Park to clear leaves
and fallen branches in a show of unity in the aftermath of the fatal
shooting of Akiel Denkins by a Raleigh officer last February. Since then, at the requjest of the community,
Raleigh police have increased foot patrols in the neighborhood in an effort to improve relations.
WAKE PRINCIPAL SAYS
ARREST WAS “MISTAKE” BY AUTHORITIES
The
principal of West Cary Middle School claims that authorities mistakenly
arrested her last weekend because of a stolen license plate on her car she had
no knowledge of. Nikia Davis was arrested RDU International Airport and charged
with possession of stolen property. Davis says she has no idea how the stolen
plate got on her car, and she has owned the vehicle for six years.
DEMONSTRATORS PROTEST
CONDITIONS AT DURHAM COUNTY JAIL
An
estimated eighteen people demonstrated in from of the Durham County
Administrative building Monday night, calling for “people’s” investigation into alleged poor
conditions at the Durham County jail. In a press conference prior to the County
Commissioners meeting, speakers said improvements were needed in the food
served inmates, their treatment by guards, and the conditions by which medical
treatment is administered. They also alleged that prisoners were allowed to
practice their religious beliefs. The Durham Sheriff’s Dept. has gotten a
federal assessment of jail conditions, and says that it is now acting on 33
recommendations from that study.
-30-
STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 6-16-16
GUN PERMIT
APPLICATIONS RISE IN ORLANDO AFTERMATH
[GREENVILLE]
The FBI says it happens after every well publicized mass shooting – the number
of gun permit applications goes up primarily because people want to prirct
themselves, and also want to obtain a firearm beforr the laws get sgtiffer. In Pitt County, the Sheriff’s
Department there says the number of gun applications there has exploded since
the Orlando massacre Sunay, where 49 people were killed at a nightclub, 53 injured.
There have been numerous local vigils commemorating the victims held in
Raleigh, Durham, Carrboro and throughout North Carolina.
TWO NORTH CAROLINIANS
AMONG ORLANDO MASSACRE VICTIMS
[ORLANDO,
FL] Among the 49 victims in the Orlando
“Pulse” Club fat; shooting
tragedy, two North Carolinians friends say
were building promising lives for themselves. Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33,
was a graduate of East Carolina University
and sang lead vocals for the band, Frequency, in the Orlando area. He
was known for being “kind-hearted, funny and passionate.” Tevin Eugene Crosby
was a graduate of West Iredell High School in Statesville. He studied business administration at Strayer
University South and was working in Michigan.
TRUMP RIPS OBAMA
DURING GREENSBORO VISIT
[GREENSBORO]
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ripped into
President Obama Tuesday evening, “telling a packed house t the Greensboro
Coliseum that th president was doing a “hell of a terrible job” when it came to fighting terrorism and managing
immigration. Trump did take time to praise North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat
McCrory, whom Trump said was doing “a fantastic job.” McCrory endorsed the
billionaire industrialist weeks ago. Trump has flamed controversy for saying
tat all Muslims should be banned from coming to the US. Twenty protesters were
escorted from Trump’s rally.
-30-
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