CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
8-18-16
By Cash Michaels
HANG ON! –
I know what the poll are saying regarding the presidential contest – that if
the election were held this week, it would be Hillary in a wash over Trump in
what’s shaping up to be a major landslide. That’s what all of the indicators
seem to point to.
Here’s the
problem – the election is not this week, but rather three months away. That is
a literal lifetime in politics, where events can chnge on a dime and anything
can happen that can change what seemed to be a certain future.
That’s why
if there’s one thing this, or any election for that matter should teach you,
it’s that the smart people take nothing for granted. When things happen to
fast… and go too smoothly, that’s the time to duck, because in life, there’s
always a catch. Watch what I say….when Election Day finally comes, this
presidential election will be every bit the nailbiter wnowith surprises galore.
That’s why,
no matter who your candidate is, best to put the hard work in now, and know
that you left nothing to chance, b ecause what you do, or don’t do is
ultimately going to show itself on Election Day.
But by that
time, it will be too late to do anything about it.
FIGHTING
THE PRESS – One of the things that always amuses me during elections is when
the candidates decide that they want to fight the news media instead of each
other. It always ends up being a losing proposition, because one way or
another, your friendly neighborhood newspaper of TV station is going to have
the last word.
Normally,
when political candidates want to square off with the press instead of each
other, that tells me they have something to hide, and they need to come up with
a misdirection in order to throw everyone off the scent for GOD sakes. Always
ask yourself, when a candidate feels the need to come after the press with all
abandon, what is he hiding? What’s he trying to protect? Why won’t he just
answer questions straight-away without so much dancing around the facts?
You see,
the answers to those questions usually reveal a much, much juicier story that
has nothing to do with the economy or affordable healthcare or any number of
important issues.
Instead,
the answers may indeed point to a more important truth, like why this person
who seems so, so good at rhetorical dodgeball may actually not be fit for public
office to begin with.
Thrust me –
the harder they fight the press, the bigger that something is they just don’t
want you to know about them.
Trust me,
it never fails.
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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KOUREN-RODNEY BERNARD THOMAS
FAMILY DEMANDS JUSTICE
FOR KOUREN-RODNEY THOMAS
By
Cash Michaels
Editor
The family of a 20-year-old black
man who was fatally shot while walking by the home of a white Raleigh homeowner
is demanding justice, saying that the gunman had no right to pull the trigger
because neither nor his family were ever at risk.
Published reports confirm that
Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas was just attending a party in the Northeast Neuse
Crossing neighborhood on the evening of August 7 when he and some friends
decided to leave. They carried no weapons, and walked on no one else’s property
as they left.
However, to neighbor Chad Cameron
Copley, 39, Thomas and his friends were “frigging
black males outside my frigging house with firearms” and also a “bunch of hoodlums.” He told the police
dispatcher he needed to scare them off with his shotgun from in front of his
Singleleaf Lane address. Copley allegedly fired once through his garage window,
fatally hitting Thomas.
Copley contended that the group in
front of his home was rowdy, cursing and threatening, thus the warning shot.
None of the witnesses to the shooting or the events leading up to it confirmed
Copley’s version.
Copley as charged with first-degree
murder and remanded without bond.
Days later, at a press conference by
the Thomas family and their attorney,
Justin Bamberg, Copley was called “George Zimmerman 2.0” after the
infamous killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida several years ago when
the black youth was innocently walking home one night.
The Thomas family said there was “nothing
‘hood’ about him, and there was no
evidence that he was doing anything other than walking home from the party that
night peacefully, not disturbing anyone.
Attorney Bamberg vowed that the
family will seek justice in the courts.
Kouren’s distraught mother cried, “
I don’t have him no more, and there’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing I can
do.”
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NO SURPRISE, FEDS
STRIKE DOWN
28 LEGISLATIVE
DISTRICTS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Once again the US Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals has ruled that North Carolina’s Republican-led General
Assembly has illegally employed race to ensure partisan, yet unconstitutional
outcomes. This time, it was nine state senate districts and 19 NC House
districts of the state’s 170 legislative districts that the three-judge panel
ruled were racially-gerrymandered in absence of any compelling state interests.
It’s called “stacking and packing,”
where Democratic black voters were drawn into majority-minority districts for
the sole purpose removing them from swing districts so that white Republicans
could easily defeat white Democrats.
Those legislative maps have already
been used in two prior elections, and will be used again for the upcoming
November 8th general election because there isn’t time to redraw
them, the federal appellate court said. But when the NC General Assembly goes
back into session next January, the court has ordered it to redraw the voting
districts so that the maps comply constitutionally for the 2018 elections.
Democrats statewide weren’t
surprised, but they were outraged.
“This Republican legislature has
broken a record enacting the highest number of unconstitutional laws ever, and
all of them are raced-based,” Eric Ellison, chairman of the Forsyth County
Democratic Party said in blunt terms. “They’re
a bunch of racists, and our courts agree with us. These guys are underhanded,
they don’t believe in the Constitution, they
don’t believe in fairness, they don’t believe in democracy. They’re a bunch of
crooks, and it’s time to get them out of office, and get new leadership in
there, and the time to do it is now!”
Thirty-one North Carolina voters sued
the NC legislature in May, 2015 in federal court, claiming that the 2011
district maps unnecessarily increased the number of black voters in 28 districts
under the guise of complying with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Blacks and whites
were already in coalition electing black candidates of their choice in those
districts.
State Sen. Floyd McKissick Jr. was
one of those black lawmakers who previously enjoyed strong support from a
racial coalition of support which included 42 percent of black voters from Durham and Granville
County. But his district lines were suddenly changed in 2011 to where he had
over 50 percent black voters in his district.
Indeed, prior to 2011, not one
state Senate district represented by an African-American had a majority of black
voters, because it wasn’t necessary.
The 2015 federal lawsuit charged that the 2011 Republican redistricting was
just a ruse to feign compliance with the 1965 VRA in order to gain political
advantage.
“They were just packing
African-Americans into those districts, and making it more likely that
Republicans would win the other ones,” Sen. McKissick said.
When state lawmakers return in
January, their first order of business will be to redraw the 28 legislative
districts so that they are in constitutional compliance, McKissick says. The legislature can still draw
majority-minority districts, just as long as it can legally demonstrate
candidates are more likely to be elected because of race, observers say.
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TRIANGLE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 8-17-16
POLICE STILL TRYING
TO DETERMINE SOURCE OF CRABTREE MALL “GUNSHOTS”
It was last Saturday
afternoon when what appeared to be
gunshots were heard in the food court at Crabtree Valley Mall. Hundreds of
shopper fled the area as police searched for the source of the noise, but thus
far, authorities have not been able to determine what the source was. No one
was injure during te melee, and based on what is known so far, no guns were
fired, even though people clearly heard something that frightened then. Police
are still investigating.
WAKE SCHOOL BOARD
CUTS CLEANING IN ORDER TO BALAMCE THE BUDGET
Classrooms,
offices and hallways will be cleaned less frequently in the future in order for
Wake County Public Schools make do with over $17 million in cuts. Middle and high schools will be cleaned only
twice a week now, aas opposed to the standard three times a week. Elementary schools will be cleaned every five
days every two-week period. The board had to also cut back on instructional
supplies as well.
WAKE SCHOOL BOARD
CHANGES NAME OF NEW FUQUAY-VARINA HIGH SCHOOL
The Wake
School Board, after listening to leaders in the town of Fuquay-Varina, has
voted to vhange the name of a new high school there to Willow Spring High
School, after an unincorporated area there. The board also voted to name a new
elementary school in Holly Springs Buckhorn
Creek Elementary.
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WILMJOURN - DEMAND
GROWS FOR “BALANCED”
NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
A just
released “confidential memo” seems to confirm what many advocates for diversity
in NHC public schools have always suspected – that the Republican-led Board of Education
deliberately instituted
racially-imbalanced neighborhood schools, not caring what forced
segregation would do to black students.
The result
– a plethora of black students doing poorly in low-performing and failing NHC schools,
and only a handful of African-American pupils doing well in racially diverse
schools.
The July 21st
leaked confidential memo from NHC Supt. Dr. Tim Markley to the Board of
Education was forwarded to former NHC School Board member Elizabeth Redenbaugh,
who then forwarded it to the Wilmington
Journal.ww
In a telephone interview Monday, Redenbaugh was
satisfied that the memo was authentic..
Titled
“Student Assignment and Achievement,” Dr. Markley determined for board members
that there are very few black students in the system’s high-performing schools;
the district’s high –poverty schools are the worst performers; Alderman is
underperforming with black students; Myrtle Grove is also underperforming with
black students at certain grade levels; Murrayville and Castle Hayne consistently
outperform other schools in the district; and overall, blacvk student
performance in the district needs to improve.
In the
memo, Markley lays the blame squarely at the feet on the board’s student
assignment plan, which effectively sent the lion’s share of black students to
low-performing, segregated, high-poverty failing schools that offered those
pupils no chance to succeed.
Dr. Markley
continued that the assignment plan “places a huge burden” on high –poverty
schools like Freeman, Snipes and Virgo, but even with adequate resources to
those schools, it’s not enough to change the culture of those schools.
“The
long-term solution,” Dr. Markley continued, “ is to redraw the [district] lines
to help balance the schools bases on socio-economic levels.” He suggests using
the opportunity to redistrict for the new Porter’s Neck Elementary School “…to
make significant changes in the demographics of all of the schools.”
Markley continues
that needed diversity can be achieved while still maintaining neighborhood
schools.
“When we
begin the redistricting process this fall I am requesting that balancing
schools become one of the guiding principles,” Dr. Markley concluded, saying
that doing so would help “ALL” students in the district.
In her
cover email to The Journal, Ms.
Redenbaugh who served on the NHC School Board until 2012, wrote, “ [This email]
…is the smoking gun that proves our school board knows “neighborhood schools”
are detrimental to poor and minority students. [Former school board members] Dorothy
Deshields, Nick Rhodes and I fought hard against neighborhood schools when we
were on the school board because we
knew this would happen. I’m sorry to say we were right.”
During her
telephone interview with The Journal,
Redenbaugh said none of th hard data accompanying Dr. Markley’s memo “was new
to the board” in terms of how stringent racial segregation was in the district.
During her time on the board, she was able to track the direction of housing patterns in the county
and match those to how the chool board was redistricting the lines.
In each case,
more and more black students were being sent to high-poverty, low-performing
schools.
In her “Letter to the Editor,”
school board candidate Sandra Leigh while saying that NHC had many good schools,
“…we have not been able to provide a quality education for ALL children. Too
many poor and minority children are not sharing in the opportunity for a great
education and are not attending these “good” schools. In fact, almost half of
ALL the highest performing elementary schools in NHC have so few African
Americans they aren’t even included in the proficiency statistics,” she adds.
“When you look at the struggling
and “failing” schools in NHC, what you find is that they have very high
concentrations of poor students, who lack the “social capital” of students from
middle class homes’’ Ms. Leigh continued. ‘By concentrating poor students,
these schools are set up to fail. We created these low performing schools in
NHC by rejecting balanced schools in the last round of redistricting. “
“One way to begin to fix our
educational system and provide real educational opportunity for ALL students is
to provide for diversity in every school based on students’ social and economic
background. We can do this in NHC by redistricting our schools to create more
balanced attendance boundaries.”
“If the will of NHC is to have
excellent schools for ALL students in every neighborhood of the city,” Leigh
concluded, “and to build the growth and
expansion of our city on this premise, then we all need to rally around our
“failing schools” and ensure that NOT ONE SINGLE SCHOOL remains on that list.
We need to start with balancing every school to benefit ALL our students.”
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