Florida Courier - March 18, 2016

South Florida’s April Raquel ready to rock on Jazz in the Garden stage See Page B1

U.S. POSTAGE PAID DAYTONA BEACH, FL PERMIT #189

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CELEBRATING OUR 10TH YEAR STATEWIDE!

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MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 12

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FC

PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL

JUST PASSING THROUGH

contest on the floor of the The Democratic and Republican Republican convention. presidential front-runners meet to Trump electoral expectations in Florida as the Turns “We are moving closer to securing the Democratic 2016 election rolls on.

Editor’s note: The Florida Courier will analyze the campaigns’ efforts to reach Black Floridians as well as African-American turnout and voting next week.

COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

Democrat Hillary Clinton won primaries in Florida (64.4 percent to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 33.3 percent), as well as in North Carolina

Party nomination and winning this election in November,” Clinton told supporters, and she quickly moved to an attack on the Republican she expects to face in that election – Trump – whom she accused of offering “bluster and bigotry.”

“Our next commander CAROLYN COLE/LOS ANGELES TIMES; JILL TOYOSHIBA/KANSAS CITY STAR/ (TNS) in chief has to be able to defend our country, not Presidential primary candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump embarrass it; engage our overwhelmed their respective opponents in Florida’s primary election on

and Ohio, as Sanders struggled to close the gap in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Republican Donald Trump romped to victory in Florida, winning 66 of 67 counties and chasing Marco Rubio from the race. But Ohio Gov. John Kasich won his home state, raising hopes for those seeking to stop Trump and settle the presidential

Snyder says Flint is ‘failure at all levels’ DETROIT – Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is expected to tell a congressional oversight committee Thursday – after the Florida Courier’s Wednesday night press time – that the contamination of Flint’s water supply was a failure of government at every level and call on Congress to strengthen the regulations governing lead levels in the nation’s drinking water supply.

Separately, a USA Today Network investigation published Wednesday identified almost 2,000 additional water systems, spanning all 50 states, where testing has shown excessive levels of lead contamination over the past four years Flint’s drinking water became contaminated with lead after the city, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its drinking water source in April 2014 from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit water system to Flint River water treated at the Flint water treatment plant.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality failed to require the addition of needed corrosion-control chemicals as part of the treatment process and the corrosive Flint River water ate into pipes, joints and fixtures, sending unsafe lead levels into Flint homes and businesses. The city returned to Detroit water in October, but a potential hazard remains because of damage to the water distribution system.

Rick “Let me be Snyder blunt. This was a failure of government at all levels. Local, state and federal officials – we all failed the families of Flint,” Snyder is to say, according to excerpts of the governor’s prepared remarks to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating Flint. “This is not about politics or partisanship. I am not going to point fingers or shift blame; there is plenty of that to share, and neither will help the people of Flint.”

The governor is expected to call on Congress to toughen the federal Lead and Copper Rule that regulates contaminate levels in drinking water supplies nationwide.

Tuesday.

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

The more things change �������

PRESORTED STANDARD MAIL

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BY MATTHEW DOLAN DETROIT FREE PRESS / TNS

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More of the same Obama’s pick fits ‘profile’

BY MICHAEL DOYLE MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU / TNS

WASHINGTON – Save for his age, Judge Merrick Garland seems to fit the mold for a contemporary Supreme Court nominee.

Garland, who is married to a fellow Harvard College graduate and is the father of two daughters who attended Yale, mirrors a high court on which every justice attended an Ivy League university either as an undergraduate or for law school.

The outdoors-loving, 63-yearold Illinois native has been a lifelong high achiever, epitomized early on by his selection as a National Merit Scholar when he was in high school in Skokie.

Little diversity Like four of the high court’s current justices, he’s a Harvard Law School graduate. Like three of them, he once clerked at the court. He’s Jewish, as are three of the court’s four Democratic nominees; the remainder of the court is Roman Catholic.

And, like all of his potential future colleagues, Garland lacks any direct experience with elected office, though that could have turned out otherwise.

“I come from the land of Lincoln … and so my first desire was, maybe I thought I’d like to be a politician like Abraham Lincoln,” Garland told a law school panel two years ago.

Garland has even known the friction from political tug-ofwar, something he’ll feel again as See COURT, Page A2

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Black woman named acting surgeon general NATION | A6

Publishers question federal ad dollar budget HEALTH | B3

Ten years ago this month, the Florida Courier focused on Floridians who died after being hit with tasers by law enforcement. The deaths continue. Just last year, the City of Miami Beach changed its arrest rules after an 18-year-old died after being tasered.

See FLINT, Page A2

ALSO INSIDE

COMMENTARY: CHARLES W. CHERRY II: RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A FREE BLACK MIND | A4 COMMENTARY: DR. CHARLES QUIST-ADADE: THE COUP THAT SET AFRICA BACK 50 YEARS | A5

How theft ring stole drugs from hospital pharmacy

FOCUS

A2

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

It’s the same old political ‘sheet’ The Gantt Report appreciates the long-time followers and readers of this column.

Those readers that have been reading TGR over the years know that I seldom seek to write how or what people like me to write.

The Gantt Report tries to write the truth whether readers, followers, editors, publishers or others like it or not!

If some of the columns appear somewhat similar to previous columns, it is because ain’t a damn thing changed!

ethnic group immediately and dramatically.

Don’t believe the hype! The most that Black voters will get in 2016 from the federal, state and local elected officials is symbolism!

Nothing different

Don’t blame me

The 2016 election year is just like every other election year when African-Americans are told it is important to cast their ballots for the “best” candidates.

Well, the smart Black people know there is little difference between the very best and the very worse candidates.

They all talk loud and say nothing. They all make false promises. They all try to trick you into believing a single politician here or there can change your lives, your community and your

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

Blame the people that you voted to represent you. Blame the people you elected to serve you. Blame the Black community political pretenders that will sell you out for a wink and a smile!

Before I talk about what you get from politicians, let me talk about what you can get.

The main thing you can get from politicians is money!

The only thing that Congress, state legislatures and local governments are required to do

is pass a budget!

Collect and divide They have to divide the tax money collected. They have to pay the government bills that have been incurred like loans, bonds, salaries, education costs, health care costs, capital outlay or building costs, transportation costs and so forth.

When the sub-committees of opposing political factions and parties confer to work out differences in budgetary proposals, the other elected officials have time to look out for and propose legislation for their campaign contributors, their friends, allies and cronies. If you don’t know, Black people are in none of the relations listed above.

Politicians pretend to be the friends of Black citizens, fake like they are Black community saviors, act like supporters of Black political interests and, more often than not, trick registered Black voters to vote for them!

Yes, they con you, they fool you, they mislead you, they bamboozle you and they politically punk you!

‘Campaign jibberish’ And how do they do that to get your votes, they always use “symbolic sheet!” Symbolic sheet

usually comes in the form of useless campaign jibberish!

Politicians propose laws and policies that will help women, aid Hispanics, benefit big businesses, please gays, satisfy immigration supporters, protect foreign traders and finance military industrial complexes, bad wars and defense contractors!

But all African-Americans get are symbolic phrases about criminal justice when every Black family in every city in the United States has a parent, a sibling, a neighbor, a friend or a coworker in jail or “on paper” (probation) in a criminal situation.

Blacks are told by politicians about “equal rights” even when Black voters are denied equal rights at polling places, denied equal access to capital from beast bankers, and denied equal opportunities in government purchasing transactions!

Love them all If you listen to phony political ads, every politician loves Historically Black Colleges and Universities, loves Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., loves Barack Obama, and loves the oppressed and exploited Black masses!

Why can’t 2016 be the election year when Black voters stop putting up with symbolic sheet from politicians that only want to trick Black voters by saying what

COURT from A1

President Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Republicans made Garland wait 18 months before confirming him to his current job.

Long record But Garland is a distinct choice, in several ways. As chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on which he has served since 1997, Garland would bring to the Supreme Court a remarkably long record on the bench.

“He has more judicial experience than any nominee since Oliver Wendell Holmes,” said White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston. Holmes was 61 when appointed in 1902; he went on to serve for more than 29 years.

Garland is also older than any of the current justices were when they were nominated; six of them were in their 40s or 50s when tapped for the court. While Garland has been considered for past Supreme Court openings, his selection now bends the general rule that presidents favor younger nominees who can shape the law for decades to come.

GOP bind?

As a White man, moreover, Garland’s selection surprises those who thought Obama would explicitly rally certain constituencies with an ethnic minority or female candidate.

Instead, Garland’s selection puts Republicans in a different kind of bind, as seven still-sitting GOP senators previously voted for him.

ELECTION from A1

allies, not alienate them,” she said.

Still going If Sanders was chastened by the results, he didn’t let it show while speaking to supporters in Phoenix.

“Do not settle for the status quo when the status quo is broken,” he said. He once again attacked Clinton’s vote in favor of the war in Iraq and demanded she release the transcripts of lucrative speeches to Wall Street firms.

Sanders’ attacks on corporate America, particularly on trade, clearly connected with many voters.

Yet Sanders’ effort to translate that sort of sentiment into votes came up short. He needs big victories in big states to catch up with Clinton’s growing lead in the delegate race.

Not over yet Clinton’s decisive win in Florida will net her a large majority of the state’s 246 delegates to the Democratic convention – the third-largest delegation after California and New York.

The three wins mean Clinton will significantly expand her already large lead among

RON SACHS/CNP/SIPA USA/TNS

On Wednesday, President Obama introduced Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“His intelligence and his scholarship cannot be questioned,” Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said during Senate debate on March 19, 1997, adding that “his legal experience is equally impressive.”

During the time he was growing up in Illinois, Garland’s mother was a community volunteer and his father ran a small business out of their home. He earned a scholarship to Harvard, from which he graduated summa cum laude.

“He put himself through Harvard Law School by working as a tutor, by stocking shoes in a shoe store and, in what is always a painful moment for any young man, by selling his comic book collection,” Obama said delegates to this summer’s convention, building a margin of roughly 300 delegates over Sanders, without counting the roughly 400 so-called “superdelegates” who back her – party leaders and elected officials who automatically get convention votes.

That does not, however, mean she has clinched the nomination.

Under the Democrats’ rules, which allocate delegates proportionately to each candidate’s vote, Clinton probably would not be able to do that until the primary season ends in California in June.

Not ‘realistic’ Exit polls suggested voters were more confident in Clinton’s agenda. In Florida, only 46 percent of voters expressed confidence that the Sanders agenda was realistic, according to the exit polling conducted for the major television networks and The Associated Press.

Female and non-White voters came out in force for Clinton in Florida. She won 67 percent of women and 73 percent of nonWhites. Seniors supported her by a margin of nearly 4 to 1.

But Sanders is not going away.

His impressive fundraising machine continues to churn, and there is every indication it will do so until every state has voted.

Even as winning the nomination becomes increasingly unlikely,

Wednesday.

Experienced prosecutor A former Justice Department official, Garland oversaw the prosecution of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bombing cases in the 1990s, saying Wednesday that the latter work showed him “the devastation that can happen when someone abandons the justice system.”

“He was always there to remind us to do what was right and just,” said attorney Beth Wilkinson, who prosecuted the Oklahoma City bombers. “It wasn’t just words for him. He always figured out how to vigorously prosecute the case, honor the victims and the Vermonter will be there to push Clinton leftward.

GOP delegate fight Trump also won North Carolina and Illinois and was locked in a close fight with Sen. Ted Cruz in Missouri.

That is just the sort of extended nominating fight the GOP establishment sought to avoid by stacking the political calendar with big early contests, capped by Tuesday night’s winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio.

Now, many Republicans see an inconclusive nominating contest as the best and perhaps only chance of thwarting Trump, even if it threatens to shred the GOP in the process.

Trump critical The setback in Ohio, where Trump campaigned hard, was his most disappointing performance since he finished second to Cruz in February’s Iowa caucuses. His unhappiness was evident as he addressed reporters at his Mar-aLago private club in Palm Beach.

“Lies, deceit, viciousness.

Disgusting reporters. Horrible people,” the Manhattan businessman and reality TV star said.

For weeks increasingly desperate Republican opponents have mounted an effort to stop Trump, to seemingly little effect.

give each defendant a fair trial.”

Appointed by President Bill Clinton and eventually confirmed by the Senate on a 7623 vote, Garland has amassed what in some ways is a centrist record, sympathetic to law-andorder causes.

“Garland is a moderate, careful jurist with a broad, bipartisan array of admirers,” said Deborah Pearlstein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York. “He’s unassailably qualified, and at the same time a strategically clever choice.”

Various cases In recent months, for instance, he has written opinions upholding More than $10 million in negative ads blazed across the Florida airwaves in just the last week alone, attacking Trump for his ethics, the failings of his business empire and his all-overthe-map political ideology.

Questions remain No GOP candidate is as well positioned as Trump to win the nomination ahead of the July convention in Cleveland. He padded his overall delegate lead with Tuesday’s victories, putting him ahead of Cruz and Kasich, who had not won a state before Ohio.

But there were signs Tuesday that not just the establishment but rank-and-file Republicans have yet to rally around the party’s polarizing front-runner.

Nearly 3 in 10 Republican voters across the five states said they would not vote for Trump if he wins the party’s nomination, according to exit poll interviews.

Four in 10 said they would consider voting for a third-party candidate if the choice came down to Trump or Clinton.

Evan Halper and Melanie Mason of the Tribune Washington Bureau; Anita Kumar of the McClatchy Washington Bureau; and Mark Z. Barabak of the Los Angeles Times (TNS) all contributed to this report.

they think Blacks like – instead of giving Blacks in America the political support that they desire and deserve?

Finally, candidates for U.S. president are quick to say what they will do in their “first 100 days in office.” If you know how government works, you know that is a bald-faced lie!

Can’t vote A president can make an executive decision in areas or agencies that he or she controls.

But the president can’t vote on a single law that needs to be considered by the House and Senate!

A president can veto crime bills and other bills that negatively and wrongfully impact AfricanAmericans. But when has a president done that? Helping Black people politically doesn’t even happen in Hollywood!

Stop depending on politicians to help you. Start helping yourself.

A good way to start helping yourself is to stop basing your votes on symbolic sheet!

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.

Contact Lucius at www. allworldconsultants.net. a Federal Election Commission complaint against former Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig.

He has on multiple occasions rejected habeas corpus petitions from Guantanamo Bay detainees, and he joined a unanimous three-judge panel that rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for the Osama bin Laden death photos.

In a similarly deferential vein, Garland in January 2014 joined another unanimous three-judge panel in upholding genital searches of Guantanamo Bay detainees prior to their meetings with defense attorneys.

As a judge, Garland at times has dissented from support for some law enforcement positions. Garland can also press government attorneys persistently during oral argument, and his decisions have sometimes pleased civil libertarians. In a March 2013 opinion, for instance, he rejected the CIA’s refusal to even acknowledge whether it had documents about lethal drone strikes.

“As it is now clear that the Agency does have an interest in drone strikes, it beggars belief that it does not also have documents relating to the subject,” Garland wrote.

Gun issue Conservatives adamantly opposed to any Obama nominee seize on a 2007 vote Garland cast to have the entire D.C. Circuit reconsider a three-judge panel’s decision striking down Washington’s strict handgun ban.

Though Garland’s losing vote was not on the merits, and the full circuit didn’t hear the case, gun rights advocates say he tipped his hand as being insufficiently supportive of the Second Amendment.

FLINT from A1

“The truth is, there are many communities with potentially dangerous lead problems,” Snyder says, according to the excerpt of his planned remarks.

“And if the DEQ and EPA do not change … and if the dumb and dangerous federal Lead and Copper Rule is not changed … then this tragedy will befall other American cities.

Professor Edwards has been sounding this alarm for years. I look forward to joining with him to address this failure of government.”

Snyder was referring to Marc Edwards, a leading expert in lead contamination and professor at Virginia Tech University.

“We have uncovered systemic failures at the Michigan DEQ,” Snyder said in prepared remarks. “The fact is, bureaucrats created a culture that valued technical compliance over common sense – and the result was that lead was leaching into residents’ water.”

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

FLORIDA

A3

Governor names Philip as acting surgeon general FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Dr. Celeste Philip

Dr. Celeste Philip has been named Florida’s

acting surgeon general.

Gov. Rick Scott appointed Philip to the position on March 11 after Dr. John Armstrong failing to get

confirmed by the Senate.

The legislative session ended March 11 without the Senate confirming the appointment of Armstrong,

forcing him out of the job that doubles as secretary of the Florida Department of Health.

Philip has served as

deputy secretary of the Department of Health.

She filled in as surgeon general when Armstrong was diagnosed with colon cancer in September.

Armstrong, surgeon general since 2012, faced opposition from many senators, and his appointment could not get through the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

Philip, a familymedicine physician, has held various positions at the Department of Health since 2008, according to a release from Scott’s office.

Philip previously served the Florida Department of Health as medical director in Volusia County and Interim Bureau Chief for the Bureau of Communicable Diseases.

“Dr. Philip brings extensive academic and professional experience in public health,” Armstrong said in 2013. “I am delighted that she has accepted the call to serve in this way and know that she will add to our department’s collaborative outreach.’’

Praise for Armstrong

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In a release, Scott said Armstrong “has done an outstanding job serving our state as Florida’s Surgeon General over the past four years.”

He credited him with having been “instrumental in ensuring Florida is the leading destination for cancer research and treatment and has done a tremendous job preparing Floridians and visitors when our state has been confronted with health epidemics like Zika or Ebola.”

“Under his leadership at the Department of Health, Florida has the lowest infant mortality rate in our state’s history and record high funding for HIV prevention and cancer research,” Scott added.

“The Department of Health was also recently named the first integrated department of health in the nation to achieve national accreditation through the Public Health Accreditation Board. I again want to thank Dr. Armstrong for his sincere commitment to making Florida the healthiest and safest state to live and raise a family throughout his impactful career.”

Former CDC officer Along with her roles in the Tallahassee-based state health department, Philip also served as interim director for the Department of Health in Volusia, Calhoun and Liberty counties. In addition, she was medical director for Polk County’s health department.

She served at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC/ as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer where her research focused on sugarsweetened beverages in schools, national breastfeeding and obesity trends and infant mortality in Mississippi.

Philip also dedicated herself to maternal and child anemia projects in the Philippines and Niger, as well as a nutrition surveillance system in the Dominican Republic.

She graduated from Howard University magna cum laude, with a Bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish. She later received a Master of Public Health in maternal and child health and a Doctor of Medicine from Loma Linda University in California.

Philip completed her residency at Florida Hospital in Orlando.

Information from The News Service of Florida was used in this report.

EDITORIAL

A4

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 276 Bro. Prez’s legal legacy – The first Black president gets a chance to possibly appoint three Supreme Court justices. Who does he pick? A Hispanic female, a White Jewish female…then a White Jewish male.

So no one can serve on the Supreme Court other than IvyLeague educated Catholics or Jews? Aren’t there any Black women in the United States qualified to serve? Maybe not.

None even made his shortlist.

Again, Bro. Prez negotiates against himself by appointing a so-called moderate rather than a flaming liberal, thinking that the Republican-dominated Senate will be too embarrassed not to have a full hearing. After seven years, Obama is still thinking that “the fever will break” and the Republicans will play fair.

C’mon, man! They hate you!

Scott and ‘Cousin Don’ – Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott has shown Donald Trump the way.

Both are rich independent businessmen who decided to run for top elected jobs with no previous political experience.

Both could fund their own campaigns. Both have succeeded (Trump thus far), despite establishment GOP opposition.

Scott beat two weak Democrats – Alex Sink and Republican turned Independent turned Democrat Charlie Crist – after the state GOP fell in line and convinced conservative voters to hold their noses and vote for Scott.

Meanwhile, former state legislator Jennifer Carroll – Scott’s running mate during his first election – and GOP consultant Clarence McKee put together

QUICK TAKES FROM #2: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER

CHARLES W. CHERRY II, ESQ. PUBLISHER

a strategy that delivered the 60,000-plus Black Republicans and a small percentage of Florida’s Black Democratic voters to Scott. That was the difference in a close race against Sink – who many political pundits called the worst single candidate in the country that year.

Once Scott was a gubernatorial incumbent with the power of the line-item veto, the political terrain shifted in his favor and the state GOP easily supported him for re-election – especially against Charlie Crist, whom they hated as a party-switching traitor.

And ‘Democrat’ Crist didn’t do himself any favors by running a typical cheap, tight-fisted, ineffective Democratic campaign: hitting a few Black churches, getting a few endorsements from Black politicians, and not hiring Black consultants, using Black vendors, or making ad buys and writing commentaries for distribution to Black-owned media.

Many similarities Don’t get it twisted. Hillary Clinton ain’t Alex Sink. But as Hillary has publicly admitted, she ain’t Barack Obama, either. She’s as hated by the GOP nationally as Crist was hated here.

And I see troubling signs that

Why is Hastings helping predatory lenders?

Sometimes you just have to wonder what members of Congress are thinking about.

Consider the example of a bill known as H.R. 4018, first filed last November with only five cosponsors. By mid- December, the co-sponsor list grew to 24 representing districts in seven states. Most notably, 10 Florida representatives signed on as co-sponsors: Democratic and Republican, Black, Latino and White.

And who would object to a bill with the title, the “Consumer Protection and Choice Act?” What’s not to like?

Limits protection The bill is designed to severely limit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) ability to rein in predatory lending like car-title, payday and high-cost installment loans. For consumers, the only ‘choice’ is to

CHARLENE CROWELL NNPA COLUMNIST

allow unsuspecting borrowers to select loans from any number of debt trap products.

If passed, the bill would both sanction triple-digit interest rates and the excessive rollover loans that convert short- term loans into long-term debt traps.

It would also undermine stronger state laws that brought consumer victories to a diverse set of states including Arizona, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and others.

Since the late 2015 Capitol Hill introduction, advocates in multiple states already find themselves fighting efforts to weaken enacted state protections.

It is clear the payday industry

Was Scalia the second ‘Black’ Supreme Court justice?

When reading and hearing about the negative judicial decision and hostile attitudes toward our campaign for equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity in this country from recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, I am compelled to recall a book by Madison Grant.

Grant, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant White supremacist/ racist, wrote the book “The Passing of a Great Race”

A. PETER BAILEY TRICE-EDNEY NEWSWIRE

published in 1916 to express his total disgust at the huge number of what he considered low-life people coming into the U.S. from Europe. Included in that negative category were people coming

the Democrats are following the same template Sink and Crist followed; the same plan they followed nationally when they lost to Ronald Reagan twice, George Bush, and George W. Bush twice.

Hillary Clinton is a lackluster, “lesser of the evils” candidate who must depend on getting 90 percent of Black voter support AND energizing historically high Black turnout. How? By appealing to fear of the “racist” GOP – something Dems have done for 30 years, and that has never worked. (Compare Obama’s “hope and change.”)

Hillary’s already going down that “racist” road against Trump as we speak.

(Full disclosure: I am a “No Party Affiliation” candidate who became a Democrat to vote in the primary. I will go back to NPA status this week. I have no “party” dog in this fight.)

Hate motivates Scott’s Florida template is something Trump can follow – assuming Trump can consolidate the GOP nationally, which I believe he will.

The hatred the GOP has for Hillary and the Clintons is greater than their apprehension about whether Trump is truly conservative. And the GOP would love to send Hillary and Bill off into the sunset to collect Social Security and Bill’s presidential pension.

Here’s my warning to the tea party, lower-educated blue-collar workers, White supremacists, dissatisfied evangelicals, and other folks who are sincerely disgusted with is pushing hard to undermine key consumer protections.

Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization determined that since 2013, payday lenders have spent $13 million on campaign donations and lobbying.

Word is out The good news is that consumer advocates in many states are helping to fuel a barrage of media coverage. In California, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other locales, news articles, commentary and editorials are singing of chorus of ills against H.R. 4018. This elevated attention has led to calls for Florida’s Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign her post as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Rep. Alcee Hastings, cochair of the Florida delegation, an original bill sponsor and member of the Congressional Black Caucus, used a guest blog in the Huffington Post to defend the measure both he and Ms. Wasserman Schultz support.

“I acknowledge that some people have been harmed by small lenders,” wrote Rep. Hastings. “Yet such cases are far more common in areas that lack the tough standards present in from South Italy and Sicily such as the parents of Justice Scalia.

Three ‘races’ In the book, Grant broke Europeans down into three “races” – the Nordics (“the only true Europeans”), the Alpine (“clearly of Eastern and Asiatic origin”) and the Mediterranean.

The latter, declared Grant, “is a relatively small, light boned, long skulled race, of brunet color becoming even swarthy in certain regions of its range...”

Furthermore, he wrote, “Along its southern boundary, the Mediterranean race is in contact with either the long skull Negroes of Ethiopia or the ancient negrito population of southern Asia.

In Africa, this race has drifted

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: 2016 ‘PARTY ANIMALS’

DAVE GRANLUND, POLITICALCARTOONS.COM

modern American politics and the inability of politicians to accomplish anything: Trump would be to America what Scott is to Florida: a politically unpredictable wild card in which the usual rules won’t apply.

Floridians didn’t know who Scott was. Before he campaigned for Florida’s highest office, he had no political record of substance that was subject to review.

Black folks really didn’t know Obama, either. He had as much experience doing community organizing as he had in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate.

There’s not a single Republican – including the ones who will enthrone Trump during the GOP convention – who knows who Donald Trump really is. And sometimes you get what you pray for.

If you can live with that uncertainty, maybe Trump’s your man…

My Trump adventure – Your humble writer journeyed to Trump’s Mar-a Lago on Tuesday.

A security guard told me neither my name nor the Florida Courier was on his approved press list,

despite written confirmation.

I couldn’t talk my way in. I texted Trump’s personal Twitter account; no response. After I left Trump came out 90 minutes late, spoke briefly – and fielded no questions from the press.

On Wednesday, I saw this headline: “POLITICO reporter denied access to Trump event.

“POLITICO reporter Ben Schreckinger was denied entry to Donald Trump’s press conference on Tuesday night, despite having previously been granted credentials by the campaign…” Turns out the reporter got approved, then denied, then physically thrown out.

POLITICO says that’s nothing new: “The Des Moines Register, Univision, Fusion, The Huffington Post, National Review, Mother Jones and BuzzFeed have all been denied credentials to Trump’s events, often after publishing critical stories about the campaign.”

If this wasn’t an honest mistake, we are in good company…

Florida.”

It is simply inaccurate to characterize Florida’s laws governing payday loans as ‘tough’. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, the costs of payday loans in Florida reach upwards of 300 percent.

Sunshine State data show that on average, Florida payday loan borrowers are suck in eight loans a year, generally one right after another. These consumers are caught in a debt trap that largely resembles other states with weak or ineffective laws.

“If the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), moves forward with implementing the current rules they have proposed, it would put 70 percent of the industry out of business,” continued Rep. Hastings.

of consumers each year. People who needed only a few hundred dollars become trapped in costly and lengthy predatory loans that worsen – not improve financial dilemmas.

Whether by regulation or legislation, it is time to break this cycle of debt that harms all borrowers and disproportionately affects those of color.

Not true That too is untrue. Once CFPB’s rule is finalized, consumers will still have access to small dollar loans – but in a changed marketplace. The worst lenders will face their own choice: change their practices or exit the market.

CFPB should be applauded for giving lenders a chance to change.

Payday, car-title or high-cost installment loans affect millions southward the Sahara and up the Nile Valley and has modified the blood of the Negroes in both the Senegambian and equatorial regions...”

Though very ancient, Grant noted, “This race cannot be called purely European.”

‘Proved’ themselves The attitude of Grant and many others who shared his beliefs was surely known to the Italian immigrants pouring into the U.S. from Italy. That meant that Judge Scalia and his Italian compatriots basically had to prove to the Grants of the world that they were pure Europeans.

Ways of doing this consisted of becoming super Whites and super American patriots. And,

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

Opinions expressed on this editorial page are those of the writers, and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the newspaper or the publisher.

CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESS The Black Press believes that Americans can best lead the world away from racism and national antagonism when it accords to every person, regardless of race, color or creed, full human and legal rights. Hating no person, fearing no person. The Black Press strives to help every person in the firm belief...that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Sales Manager

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Contact me at ccherry2@ gmail.com; @flcourier and @ ccherry2 on Twitter.

Broad appeal A broad coalition of concern comprised of more than 250 state and local advocate and national organizations including the NAACP, made an unprecedented appeal to members of Congress.

“This harmful bill would limit the CFPB’s ability to protect all consumers against high-cost payday, car title, and installment loans,” wrote the coalition. “A lot.”

When it comes to predatory lending, maybe it’s time to remind some members of whom they represent.

Charlene Crowell is the Communications Manager for State Policy & Outreach with the Center for Responsible Lending.

Contact her at Charlene. crowell@responsiblelending. org. of course, anti- Black. What else could one do when one is suspected of having a bit of Black blood?

One does not have to be a psychiatrist to speculate that Scalia, and other Italian Americans who share his attitude concerning the civil and human rights of Black folks, may have to be persistently on guard less someone accuse them of being less than White. After all, there are still some Madison Grant-like folks around who are certainly keeping a close eye on them.

Contact A. Peter Bailey at apeterb@verizon.net, or 202716-4560.

Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC, P.O. Box 48857 Tampa, FL 33646, publishes the Florida Courier on Fridays. Phone: 877-352-4455, toll-free. For all sales inquiries, call 877-352-4455; e-mail sales@flcourier.com.

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MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

EDITORIAL

The coup that set Africa back 50 years In his book, “Dark Days in Ghana,” Ghana’s pioneer president Kwame Nkrumah revealed that the coup was the handiwork of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). His detractors quickly dismissed his claim as delusional and an excuse for his mismanagement of the country through his dictatorial leadership.

But in 1999, Nkrumah’s claim was borne out when the U.S. government declassified the Western-orchestrated plot to get rid of the man who was “doing more to undermine our interests than any other Black African.”

The U.S. was determined to depose Nkrumah before he managed to unite Africa under a united African government. As it turned out, the U.S. and its allies, including Britain, had financed, masterminded, and tele-guided the coup.

Prior to the declassification, John Stockwell, a CIA officer in Africa, had recounted the plot to undermine Nkrumah’s government and to sow antiNkrumah sentiments among Ghanaians. Stockwell wrote: “Howard Bane, who was the CIA station chief in Accra, engineered the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. Inside the CIA it was quite clear. Howard Bane got a double promotion, and was awarded the Intelligence Star for the overthrow of Kwame. The magic of it was that Howard Bane had enough imagination and drive to run this operation without ever documenting what he was doing and there wasn’t one shred of paper that was generated that would name the CIA hierarchy as being responsible.”

Africa’s ‘Black star’ In 1957, Nkrumah’s Ghana became a trailblazer for African liberation.

From the CIA headquarters in faraway Virginia, eyes were trailing what was happening in Ghana. Just nine months into independence, the CIA issued a report on Ghana

DR. CHARLES QUIST-ADADE GUEST COMMENTARY

in December 1957, which was distributed within the American government and intelligence community.

“The fortunes of Ghana – the first Tropical African country to gain independence –will have a huge impact on the evolution of Africa and Western interests there.”

It didn’t take long for that prediction to come true.

Within 10 years of Ghana’s independence, 31 other African countries had gained their own independence. And Nkrumah’s Ghana had had a huge role in liberating Africa. He set up training camps in Ghana for African freedom fighters, and through financial, political and other support, Nkrumah’s Ghana kept the African liberation torch burning very brightly.

Nkrumah firmly believed that political independence was meaningless without economic independence. Thus, by the time he was overthrown in the CIAinspired coup, Ghana had 68 sprawling state-owned factories producing every need of the population – shoes, textiles, furniture, lorry tires, canned fruits, vegetables and beef, glass, radio and TV, books, steel, virtually everything – including educated manpower!

Making progress Nkrumah wanted to industrialize Ghana within a generation. Everything was on course until the Americans and their British cousins (according to their own declassified documents) used some disgruntled and selfserving Ghanaian soldiers, to staged a terrible coup on February 24, 1966 that truncated Ghana’s progress. It was a major setback

If Clinton wins, time to split the Democratic Party As Black Agenda Report makes clear, Black voters make electoral decisions primarily based on fear of Republican victory. Nothing else is more terrifying to them than seeing the White people’s party emerge triumphant.

The fear is understandable if one thinks there is no other alternative to keeping Democrats in power. Not only are Black people convinced of the questionable claim that Hillary Clinton is more electable than Bernie Sanders, but they also fear being “spoilers” who guarantee a Republican victory.

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote. He lost in the electoral college because of suppression and theft of Black votes in Florida.

That same year, Ralph Nader ran for president as the Green Party candidate and was blamed for Gore’s defeat. Had he not syphoned votes from Gore, as the argument went, George W. Bush would not have become president.

MARGARET KIMBERLEY BLACK AGENDA REPORT

progressives from doing anything which is seen as harming the Democratic party. No matter how many wars Democrats support; no matter how often they fail to help working people; no matter how worthless their pretend efforts to fight Republicans; it seems unthinkable to speak the truth and say that a Democratic loss is no loss at all.

It is time to stop the quixotic search for better Democrats. It is time for a wholesale rejection of the reliance on electoral politics.

A rotten system can’t accomplish anything that leftists want to see realized.

for Ghana and all of Africa.

“If Nkrumah had been allowed to complete his industrialization plan, Ghana would today have been another Malaysia on the west coast of Africa, and the modern doomsayers who now mock Ghana by showing us the bright lights in Kuala Lumpur, would not dare show their warped tongues!” according to writer Baffour Ankomah.

We are now left with nostalgia and what might have been.

After the coup, the International Monetary Fund rubbed salt into our injuries by sending a delegation to Accra to tell the military junta to discontinue Nkrumah’s industrialization program. And they did! As a reward, some of them got airports named after them!

Fifty years after the coup, almost every Ghanaian (except those still suffering from acute blindness and amnesia) now realizes our great loss.

It has taken the country half a century of blood and tears to hang on to the straws that have barely kept us afloat through five turbulent decades to arrive at the current political and economic stability achieved, since 1992, under six terms of constitutional rule – first under President Jerry Rawlings’ NDC (1992-2000), President John Kufuor’s NPP (2000-2008), John Atta Mills and then John Mahama’s NDC (2009 to date).

Ghana has learnt its lessons the hard way.

The Pan-Africanist prophet

People, not ballots

The ballot didn’t win the day in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, it was ordinary people who created the much needed political crises.

We have them to thank for the Civil Rights Act and the existence of Medicaid and Medicare. The duopoly tag team and failure to deliver for working people should Had their chances Long memories mean an end to the unending Bernie Sanders and other masochistic exercise.

The trauma of this memory Most Bernie Sanders supporters keeps Black people and other Democrats controlled Congress

Human trafficking in Turkey and Europe Europe ravaged the world for 500 hundred years, exterminating hundreds of millions in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific.

Europe – which owes the rest of humanity a debt of blood and treasure that it can never repay – last week announced that its victims should give up all hope of sanctuary from the wars, enforced poverty, civil chaos, and environmental devastation that Europeans have inflicted on the darker and non-Christian peoples of the planet.

European Council president Donald Tusk warned millions of refugees from Asia and Africa, “Do not come to Europe... It is all for nothing.” He was putting

GLEN FORD BLACK AGENDA REPORT

the last bricks in a wall that is far larger, and vastly more unjust, than anything ever erected in Berlin.

Millions sold And Turkey – whose Ottoman empire was consumed by Europe, and has ever since begged to be accepted as a member of the European tribe – sealed a deal

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: REPUBLICAN ORATORY

BILL SCHORR, CAGLE CARTOONS

visionary Pan-Africanist who dreamt of a united, prosperous Africa, was a man of foresight.

He had a noble vision for Africa and the Black race. He saw the metropolises of Africa becoming the headquarters of science, technology, and medicine. He saw in Africa a hypnotized giant, made dormant by years of foreign tutelage and exploitation, and he sought to awaken this giant.

But time and his contemporaries were not on his side. As celebrated British historian Basil Davidson put it: “Nkrumah lived far ahead of his time. It is in the years ahead that people would read about his works and wonder to themselves why such a man should have lived at such a time.”

Nkrumah’s and, indeed, Africa’s tragedy was that he came to power at the wrong time, in the “heat” of the Cold War, a period when the bipolar East-West ideological confrontation made leaders like Nkrumah sacrificial lambs on the alter of superpower chauvinism.

Cold War politics brooked no homegrown nationalists and patriots; it did not forgive leaders who refused to worship the gods of Soviet communism or American capitalism.

our narrow furrows instead pooling our efforts, human and material resources in order to compete in the globalized 21st century. If we fail to take up the challenge of continental unity now, the continent will inevitably be gobbled up by the colossus of capitalist globalism this century, just as in the last century it was enslaved, balkanized, and exploited of its human and natural resources through the trilogy of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.

Listen to what Nkrumah said on that score: “If we do not formulate plans for unity and take active steps to form a political union, we will be fighting and warring among ourselves with the imperialists and colonialists standing by behind the screen and pulling vicious wires, to make us cut each other’s throats for the sake of their diabolical purposes in Africa.”

How prophetic!

will not fall in line if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee. They probably won’t vote for the eventual Republican choice either, but they won’t turn obediently to Clinton.

They should choose to start over with a new party. The Democratic Party crackup should not be avoided or feared. It must be embraced. But that will only happen if so-called leftists want a victory outside of the voting booth.

Hard questions

When Nkrumah wrote that long after he was dead and gone, the torch he had lit in Africa would continue to be held aloft to give light and hope to his people, his detractors called him a selfdelusional megalomaniac.

But testimonies since his death bear him out. How so true the old saw: “a prophet is not unknown, It’s our fault We Africans have ourselves to except in his own country.”

Kwame Nkrumah, the blame if we continue to plough under a Democrat presidency in 2009 and 2010. They could have – but chose not to – reform immigration laws, end mass incarceration, enact card check legislation, or end military occupations and interventions.

They did bail out the thieving financial services sector that was responsible for destroying the economy.

The renewed focus on modernday lynching at the hands of police hasn’t resulted in even one federal prosecution under a Democratic Justice Department.

Donald Trump is excoriated for saying that he would not only kill terror suspects but their families as well. Barack Obama already did that to Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, but Democrats don’t dare mention that inconvenient fact.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and discredited beliefs in the Democratic Party and in the value of electoral politics.

that essentially sells the lives of millions of refugees in exchange for semi-European status and billions of dollars.

The Turks accepted $3.8 billion to keep the nearly 3 million refugees that have gathered on its soil from crossing over into Europe – a vastly richer place, but one that claims it cannot absorb any more Africans and Arabs and Kurds and Afghans and others that are non-White and/or nonChristian.

The great bulk of Turkey’s refugees are victims of Turkey’s role in the war against Syria, in alliance with Europe and the United States and the royal oil aristocrats of the Persian Gulf. In effect, Turkey has cashed in on the people it has helped make homeless, and established a human trafficking enterprise on a scale not seen since the Atlantic slave trade.

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Want to be liked

Charles Quist-Adade, Ph.D, is the past immediate chair of the sociology department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Contact him at cquistadade@gmail. com. This article previously appeared in Pambazuka News.

Black voters, who have no legitimate reason to prefer Clinton over Sanders, must also do serious self-examination. In their case, that will mean asking what the bought-off Black misleaders have done for them lately. The answer is that they have done nothing – except look out for themselves and dredge up the specter of Republican bogeymen and women at opportune moments.

A Republican president would be a political disaster, but so is another Clinton in the White House. Hillary will be even worse than her husband because she will make the case for openly moving to the right in order to defeat Donald Trump, or whomever the Republican nominee happens to be.

There is no need for Black people – the most left wing in the Democratic constituency – to stand aside or to participate in the train wreck.

If Sanders is denied the nomination, a movement-based politics ought to emerge from all sectors of the Democratic constituency. That is the only way to take victory from the jaws of defeat.

Too many progressives really yearn for acceptance rather than bringing about systemic change.

That is why many of them love Bernie Sanders, even though he is as willing to be the drone-killing commander-in-chief as Hillary Clinton.

Rejecting Hillary Clinton isn’t proof of left-wing bona fides. It isn’t hard to be less repellent than Hillary Clinton. She is such a bad liar and so obviously in bed with banksters that anyone looks better in comparison.

The implosion of the Democrats should not be just about getting Bernie Sanders the nomination. It is an opportunity to break with a system which is incapable of being truly democratic. The Sanders people will have wasted a golden opportunity if they do nothing Margaret Kimberley’s column but sulk in the event of a Clinton nomination or try once more to appears weekly in Black reform the unreformable.

AgendaReport.com.

This ghastly crime against humanity is further compounded through blackmail among the thieves and plunderers, as Turkey springs its vast protections racket trap – agreeing to protect Europe from further incursions from the formerly colonized peoples whose labor and lands have fattened Europe and its White settler states for half a millennium.

Cutting a deal

European terms – as White.

Certainly, Turkey is playing by all the European rules. as a member of NATO, it violates international law and wages aggressive war with impunity. it traffics in the flesh of Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Africans, Afghans – anyone who can be bought, sold or bartered. Yet Turkey holds itself up as a model of civilization.

However, the Europeans will never accept Turkey into the fold, because it is Muslim and notquite-White, and so Turkey will have to prowl and growl on the periphery – a wannabe European.

Or have a revolution, and come to its senses.

There is a further condition to Turkey’s cooperation. The regime in Ankara wants Turks – all 75 million of them – to be allowed to enter Europe without visa restrictions. Ankara also demands reconsideration of Turkey’s request to join the European Union. Nearly a century after the French and British divided the Ottoman Turk empire Glen Ford is executive editor among themselves, Turkey is still striving to be recognized – in of BlackAgendaReport.com.

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MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016 demanding both accountability and constant feedback on a matter so crucial.

“Then-Sen. John Kerry had a meeting in 2006 and requested a report. The only three agencies on the list were NASA, the Department of Defense and one other,” recalled Montoya, publisher of El Mundo in Seattle, Wash. “We have to also blame ourselves because we should have demanded the report every year.

It should be standard compliance because it’s data everybody needs.”

Congressional help

FREDDIE ALLEN/AMG/NNPA

National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President Benjamin Chavis speaks outside of the U.S. Capitol during a joint press conference between the NNPA and the National Association of Hispanic Publications. Shown far left is D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Minority publishers seek answers about ad dollars Congresswoman calls for probe of how much federal government spends with Hispanic and Black newspapers

BY BARRINGTON SALMON TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

The federal government, through its various agencies, spends considerable sums of money every year on advertising and representatives from two prominent newspaper organizations are pushing to find out exactly how much of these dollars flow to Hispanic and Black newspapers.

Leaders of the National Association of Hispanic Publications (NAHP) and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) are convinced that federal agencies aren’t fulfilling their mandate to direct advertising dollars to their member newspapers and businesses. An investigation, they assert, will provide concrete

evidence of their suspicions and allow them to push hard for their fair share.

The publishers were in the Nation’s Capital March 9-11 attending Black Press Week activities. The annual Black Press Week, led by NNPA, celebrates the founding of the first Black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in 1827 and the legacy of the modern Black Press.

a study of the federal agencies whose outreach is to people of color,” said Norton on March 11. “We don’t want our federal agencies to forego their mandate and responsibilities. There is a mandate to engage small businesses. We want to discuss if that is, in fact, taking place. There’s no more authentic or trusted way to do so than to engage the Black and Hispanic press.”

Conference at Capitol

No dollar figure

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) held a press conference on the front steps of the U.S. Capitol announcing that she would call for an investigation by the Government Accounting Office (GAO).

She said she wasn’t aware of this issue until it was brought to her attention by a group of representatives from both organizations, which worked out the terms of a strategic alliance prior to the press conference.

“I’m requesting a report from an objective arm of the federal government, the GAO. We’re asking them to conduct

Norton and other publishers said no one could accurately pinpoint a dollar figure of what the federal government spends.

“We have no sense of the numbers,” Norton explained. “If you don’t even know what they do, you can’t know what they spend. We want to know how much they spend and with which press. We don’t even know if they (the federal government) have a strategy.”

Despite this blind spot, Norton and several other speakers estimate that the federal government spends billions in advertising each year with little of that reaching Hispanic and

Black media outlets or advertising agencies.

The implications of securing additional ad revenue is clear.

According to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2013, “the story about how African American-oriented news media coped … was a difficult one at best.”

‘Outrageous disparity’ Many historic AfricanAmerican-owned publications both lost circulation and struggled to find advertising revenue, the report’s authors said.

On top of circulation challenges, declining advertising revenue is a problem for every AfricanAmerican newspaper examined.

Decreased revenue has caused many publications to cut staff and reduce publication schedules.

“We’ve been saying it and writing about this. We’ve done all we can to this point. What the report is going to show is an outrageous disparity affecting all our publications,” said Denise Rolark Barnes, NNPA chair and publisher of the Washington Informer. “Our organizations have a combined readership of 40 million people. We want to do and continue to carry out our mission and I think this report will make a great difference for us.”

NAHP Vice President Martha Montoya faults Black and Hispanic newspapers for not staying on top of the issue and

Norton said it’s also unclear how long it will take for the GAO to complete the report, saying that the NAHP/NNPA request will join the queue.

During a subsequent meeting in the Cannon House Building with Congressional staffers, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis informed publishers and staff that U.S. Reps.

Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Congressional Black Caucus Chair G.K. Butterfield had joined Norton in calling for the GAO investigation.

This joint initiative seeking answers from the federal government is the result of the coming together by both parties.

The NNPA represents 205 AfricanAmerican-owned community newspapers nationally, and NAHP, also a non-partisan trade advocacy organization, represents America’s largest Spanish language publications.

Both have a combined reach of 43 million readers each week across the United States.

“With close to 97 million African Americans and Hispanics in the U.S. today – representing 33 percent of the total population – this consumer segment demands attention,” Montoya said. “The buying power of the African-American and Hispanic communities, currently at more than $2.3 trillion combined, continues to outpace the national average.”

Chavis, NNPA president and CEO, said he looks forward to seeing what the report produces.

“Calling for the report is itself hugely significant because the call presupposes that there are legitimate questions that need to be raised,” he said. “The federal government should practice what it preaches.

“We have very lofty language about freedom and equality. The GAO report will put facts on the table. We expect to see inequities, unfairness and wide disparities in how the government procures and does business with businesses, large and small, majority and minority owned.”

Emails about Flint water crisis crafted to stay secret

BY PAUL EGAN DETROIT FREE PRESS TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

LANSING, Mich. — In midOctober, as the massive scope of the Flint drinking water scandal and public health crisis was beginning to sink in, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality engineer Adam Rosenthal wrote an email to two of his then supervisors in the department’s drinking water section.

The contents of the email were purely factual: a Flint resident’s name and address, along with two lead readings for water samples taken from faucets at the home.

But typed just beneath the message were the words: “Preliminary and Deliberative not subject to FOIA.” The Rosenthal email is just one of thousands the administration of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has made public related to the lead contamination of Flint’s drinking water after calls from the public, elected officials, advocates for open government and the media for information as to who knew what about the public health crisis and when, and what was done in response.

Thousands of others have been released voluntarily by the governor, whose office is not subject to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

Avoiding disclosure Besides answers to some questions, a review of the emails also revealed a potentially troubling trend: Many of the emails display what appears to be an active effort by state employees to avoid disclosure of public records under FOIA. “There’s a culture in state government that’s filtered

down to employees that says, ‘That’s just FOIA; this is how you get around it,’” said Jane Briggs-Bunting, president of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government, which promotes government transparency yearround, but especially during Sunshine Week, which is this week.

The “not subject to FOIA” label was not unique to the Rosenthal email.

Michigan’s FOIA law includes an exemption for records that are notes between and within government agencies that are advisory in nature, don’t deal with purely factual matters, and are preliminary to an agency’s final determination of a policy or action.

Many draft reports are withheld from disclosure based upon what is sometimes called the “preliminary and deliberative” exemption. But even when it meets the other criteria, the exemption is only supposed to be applied when the public interest in encouraging frank discussions among government officials clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

‘Preliminary and deliberative’ The emails released related to the Flint crisis show that although in some cases a draft document was being discussed, some DEQ and Department of Health and Human Services employees appeared to include “preliminary and deliberative,” and “not subject to FOIA” as standard subject headings on emails, regardless of the contents of the messages.

Also popular as a subject heading: “Attorney Client Privilege. Not subject to FOIA.” That was the heading former DEQ Director Dan Wyant used Oct. 13 when he sent a Flint water plan “action update” by email to six officials in the

REGINA H. BOONE/DETROIT FREE PRESS/TNS

Sincere Smith, shown at age 2 in a January photo, was one of three children living with his single mom Ariana Hawk in Flint, Mich. He was suffering from a severe skin rash that his mother believed was due to bathing in the contaminated Flint water. governor’s office: Allison Scott, Dennis Muchmore, Jarrod Agen, Beth Emmitt, Morgan Bedan and Sarah Dickinson.

Again, Michigan’s FOIA law exempts from public disclosure records that are subject to attorney-client privilege.

Problem is, neither Wyant nor any of the recipients is an attorney and — not surprisingly — the email contained no legal advice.

Use of ‘code words’ Labeling an email as “not subject to FOIA” doesn’t make it so, which is demonstrated by the

fact dozens of Flint water emails that were marked up that way have seen the light of day.

But Briggs-Bunting and other advocates of open government said the emails are disappointing because of what they demonstrate about many state employees’ attitudes about the public’s right to access government records. Also, such labels may be enough to pause or satisfy a state FOIA coordinator who decides which emails will be released.

“They definitely learned the code words,” said Melanie McElroy, executive

director of Common Cause in Michigan. Exempt from FOIA in the governor’s office, “this administration prefers to operate in secret, and that has unfortunately spread to other departments as well.”

Agen, Snyder’s chief of staff, said Snyder is examining possible changes to the executive office FOIA exemption.

More generally, “we want to clear up confusion over what does fall under FOIA and what doesn’t,” said Agen, who feels some of the labeling may display a lack of understanding of how FOIA works.

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New guideline on cutting carcinogen from fried foods See page B4

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

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Terrence J a leading man in ‘Perfect Match’ See page B5

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South Florida’s April Raquel has landed roles in television, film and music video roles. She has released two singles, “Nobody Does It Better” and “Dat Fire.’’

COURTESY OF APRILRAQUEL.COM

READY FOR

JAZZ IN THE GARDENS STAGE

April Raquel’s self-proclaimed musical style is urban, rock, soul and funk. She’ll be one of the local artists showcasing her talent at the Miami Gardens music extravaganza.

BY PENNY DICKERSON FLORIDA COURIER

Jazz in the Gardens will kick off on March 18-20 with a starstudded lineup that includes Usher, Aretha Franklin, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Michael McDonald, Average White Band, Kool & the Gang, Fred Hammond, and Brian Culbertson.

Along with internationally known artists, the multi-day concert at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, will introduce attendees to homegrown favorites like artists CriStyle Renae, Lavie, and regulars on the Broward County nightclub scene – April Raquel and Kouture Band.

Singer, model, actress

April Raquel and her band, Kouture Funk, have a weekly residency on Miami Beach at the famed Ocean’s Ten as well as a monthly standing performance in Palm Beach Gardens’ Dirty Martini.

Raquel’s talent has poised her for success and continues to catapult her on to national entertainment scenes. The South Florida native is a model, actress and lead singer for her band Kouture. The ensemble succinctly promotes Raquel’s unique brand and self-proclaimed musical style that she calls: urban, rock, soul and funk. Her musical influences include Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, MC Lyte, Pat Benatar, Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé.

“Speaking as a professional, full-time singer, it is so important to have local representation at a music festival the stature of Jazz in the Gardens. To share the stage with other musicians and artists that you admire is an invaluable learning opportunity,” said Raquel.

She’s scheduled to perform on Saturday, March 18, at 5 p.m.

“It’s important that local artists are present because this is a huge career-defining moment that I hope will lead to other amazing opportunities, networking and media exposure. The local artist does not have the backing of the big label, or resources,” she added.

In the same vain that Franklin

started performing locally on what was intimately known as the “chitlin circuit” and musicians like Najee got their start in local bands who played at the Miss Black America pageant, Raquel has paid her dues and looks forward to finally being a major contributor to Jazz in the Gardens.

“We are makers, forging our dream into reality. There’s talent in all corners; having local music artists share the stage with bigname acts ignites inspiration.

I have prepared for over two years to be on this stage and it is here; I’m ready to RaQ out,” she remarked.

Igniting a dream On stage and under the bright lights first ignited a dream in Raquel while she was a student at Florida A&M University (FAMU), where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Management and a Master’s in Business Administration. A member of the Broward County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the driven artist was a member of the on-campus group, The Epicurean Fashion Experience while at FAMU and portrayed the likeness of Tina Turner in a Tallahassee stage production of “Ebony Lipstick.’’

Without haste, Raquel traded the east coast for west and headed to Los Angeles following her college graduation. She walked directly into success and landed roles in television, film, and music video roles, including the featured model in “I Like the Way You Move” and “Hey Ya!” for the hip-hop group Outkast.

Her credits include on-screen appearances in the motion picture “Hair Show,” starring Academy Award nominated actresses Mo’Nique and Taraji P. Henson, and she additionally teamed up with the Golden Globe winner Mo’Nique again with her appearance in the hit sitcom “The Parkers.” As a contract model, Raquel has appeared in numerous television commercials, including spots for Time/Life’s Body & Soul Collection and Luster’s Pink Hair Lotion.

Unique brand But for all her early accomplishments, Raquel has found her home on stage and created her own lane that she has no problem staying in.

“Urban, rock, soul, funk is a lane I created for myself. Each genre is a reflection of how these great contributors to music

influenced me, as well as a reflection of my energy, creativity, and style,” explained Raquel, who firmly believes an audience at Jazz in the Gardens or elsewhere embraces an appreciation for all music genres, including rock.

“I think music is music. It evokes emotions, regardless of race or creed. Some of the greatest African-American artists were true rock stars. Tina Turner is still the queen of Black rockers.

She was daring and unapologetic.

You see the influence of rock in so much “Black” music, including Prince, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, even Run DMC. These are iconic geniuses who stretched beyond the limitations of just one genre; they were not especially limited to a specific Black music box,” she added.

Recording career Currently, Raquel and her band, Kouture Funk, have a weekly residency on Miami Beach at the famed Ocean’s Ten as well as a monthly standing performance in Palm Beach Gardens’ Dirty Martini. The regular performances are complemented by national and international performances and the fulfillment of every artist’s ultimate goal: writing and releasing new music.

“So far, I’ve released two singles. The first, “Nobody Does It Better” last fall, and the recent single “Dat Fire’’ said Raquel.

“After Jazz in the Gardens, I will return to the studio to complete my first EP release this summer.

I go big all the time. I love live instrumentation on my songs because it conveys energy and feels good to the soul.”

Described as fiery, captivating, exuberant and energetic on stage, Raquel’s self-marketing takes advantage of every social media outlet and she maintains a strong online presence.

“To know who I am, I invite fans and potentials to visit my website: www.aprilraquel.com, or like/ follow/engage in my social media and listen to my music and if they like it to support and download the music,” offered Raquel, who admits that her quest to promote herself and find successful has been a grind, but one well worth it.

“So much effort, no sleeping, endless sacrifice, and obsession all goes into creating a piece of art, then releasing it to the world for consumption,” she shared. “Just knowing there is an audience out there is a challenge, so I invite the readers to experience a bit of my gift.”

For more information on the festival, visit www.jazzinthegardens.com.

CALENDAR

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MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

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FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR

BEYONCÉ The superstar’s Formation World Tour stops at Marlins Park in Miami on April 27 and Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on April 29.

Jacksonville: Catch Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire during the Soul Tour 2.0 at the on March 23 at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena and the MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa on March 26.

Fort Lauderdale: Vanessa Williams performs during Parker Playhouse’s Broadway Concert Series on March 22.

Coconut Creek: Catch the Commodores at the Seminole Coconut Creek Casino on April 3.

Tampa: The Festival of Laughs featuring Mike Epps, Tony Rock and Cocoa Brown is March 19 at the University of South Florida Sun Dome.

Jacksonville: Singer K. Michelle performs March 20 at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville.

St. Petersburg: Catch actor and comedian J.B. Smoove at The Palladium on March 26.

Cape Coral: Afroman has a number of performances scheduled in Florida, including Dixie Roadhouse on March 31, Port Canaveral’s Millikens Reef on April 2, Café Da Vinci on April 3 in DeLand and State Theatre in St. Petersburg, on April 8,

JAGGED EDGE

ARSENIO HALL

Funk Fest 2016 takes place April 16 at the Central Florida Fairgrounds.

Performers will include Faith Evans, New Edition, Kenny “Babyface’’ Edmonds, Jagged Edge, Uncle Luke & the 69 Boyz. More information: www.funkfesttour.com.

Hall and Joe Piscopo will be at Hard Rock Live Orlando on April 15.

Orlando: Chris Tucker performs March 25 at Hard Rock Live Orlando. The show is at 9 pm.

Seminole Heights Library, 4711 N. Central Ave. More information: www.tbabj.com.

Tampa: The Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists will host a free Getting Your News in the News forum at 7 p.m. March 24 at the

Tampa: The Legends of Southern Hip Hop show is April 23 at the USF Sundome. Performers include Juvenile, Too Short, Trick Daddy

along with 8 Ball & MJG. Fort Lauderdale: The Dillard Center for the Arts and the Old Dillard Museum will present a tribute to poet Langston Hughes at 4 p.m. April 10 featuring the Ron McCurdy Quartet. The concert

will be at Dillard High School Auditorium, 2501 NW 11 St. Details: www.olddillardmuseum.org.

Hollywood: K.C. & the Sunshine Band performs March 19 at Hard Rock Live.

Orlando: A Ladies’ Tea Party takes

place April 23 at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, 4851 S. ApopkaVineland Road. The event begins at 1 p.m. RSVP: www.st.lukes.org/tea or call 407-876-4991.

Jacksonville: Jazz performer Najee performs April 9 at the Ritz Theatre.

Book traces the bango’s journey from plantation to Grand Old Opry DR. GLENN C. ALTSCHULER SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

Accompanied by a ragtag group of men from Senegal, the Caribbean and the United States, Lincoln Agrippa Daily made his living playing the banjo. Caressing the instrument, Daily declared that it was “more than a gal, more than a pal; it’s mahself.”

Originating in Africa, the banjo made its way across the Atlantic along with millions of slaves. According to Laurent Dubois, a professor of romance studies and history at Duke University, they made it an American instrument “that provided a sense of rootedness in the midst of displacement.”

In “The Banjo,’’ Dubois takes on “the difficult, even quixotic” task of understanding the meaning of this iconic folk instrument since the 17th century.

Drawing on a wide array of sources, including memoirs, journals, travel accounts, slave narratives, engravings, paintings, and plays, he provides a fascinating account of the role of the banjo in plantation life; blackface minstrels; hillbilly and bluegrass music; and the trenchant political lyrics of folk singer Pete Seeger.

A joyful diversion For centuries, Dubois reminds us, accounts of banjo playing “were refracted through the lens of debates about slavery.”

The banjo gathered African-Americans together, gave them moments of solace and joy, and at times a vision of what freedom might be like.

For Southern Whites, banjo performances “proved” that Blacks were “a gay, harmless, unthinking race,” freed by slavery from life’s burdens. Indeed, traders used music so often when they presented slaves for sale that the auction block became known as “the banjo table.”

Black and white abolitionists, of course, maintained that the musicality of slaves was scarcely a sign of “any uncommon degree of happiness,” but rather of “an uncommon depression of the spirits” which drove them to “sacrifice their rest for the sake of experiencing for a moment a more joyful oblivion of their cares” and the brutality of “the peculiar institution.”

Cultural change In the mid-19th century, Dubois reveals, White music aficionados attempted to “elevate the banjo.”

They distanced the instrument from its African and African-American origins; moved from loud stroke-style playing to what they regarded as more sophisticated fingerpicking; altered the banjo’s construction, adding a modern metallic sound; and changed its musical repertoire.

By 1900, mass-produced banjos appeared in “all corners of the culture and landscape of North American and beyond.”

A mainstay at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville, in recorded “hillbilly” tunes; in the bluegrass music of Earl Scruggs, who

BOOK REVIEW Review of “The Banjo: America’s African Instrument’’ by Laurent Dubois. Harvard University Press. 364 pages, $29.95. wowed audiences with his three-finger Carolina picker style (and in time his metal finger picks); a central symbol in the 1972 movie “Deliverance’’; and Pete Seeger’s favorite instrument, the banjo, Dubois points out, was increasingly coded as “white.”

Still vital This development, Dubois writes, was “a remarkable, almost surreal, act of historical silencing.”

And yet, he hastens to add, the origins of the banjo “at the center of the experience of slavery remained vital and alive.” After all, that origin has “made the instrument capable of finding new homes everywhere it went and creating a sense of home along the way.”

These days, Dubois concludes, the banjo is everywhere. It backs up Taylor Swift, is featured in Mumford and Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show and the solos of Bela Fleck. And, of course, it remains a staple for street musicians.

The musicians to come, Dubois predicts, “will keep it living, twisting, and spiraling through our cultural and sonic landscape.”

They will know – or should know – that the banjo was invented by African artisans who grew, harvested, and dried gourds, and attached skins to them with tacks or chords.

And that the sounds of string humming over skin “crossed cultural boundaries and created new solidarities.”

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

He wrote this review for the Florida Courier.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND GOLD CIRCLE ENTERTAINMENT PRESENT IN ASSOCIATION WITH HOME BOX OFFICE A PLAYTONE PICTURE “MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2” NIA VARDALOS JOHNMUSICCORBETT LAINIE KAZAN GIA CARI DES JOEY FATONE LOUIS MANDYLOR EXECUTIVE WITH ANDREA MARTIN AND MICHAEL CONSTANTINE BY CHRISTOPHER LENNERTZ PRODUCERS PAUL BROOKS SCOTT NIEMEYER STEVEN SHARESHIAN NIA VARDALOS PRODUCEDBY RITA WILSON DIRECTED TOM HANKS GARY GOETZMAN p.g.a. WRITTENBY NIA VARDALOS A UNIVERSAL RELEASE

BY KIRK JONES SOUNDTRACK ON BACK LOT MUSIC

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LOCAL LISTINGS FOR STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 25 CHECK THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES

Sharing Black Life, Statewide Check us out online at www.floridacourier.com

STOJ

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

BUSINESS

B3

How theft ring stole drugs from hospital pharmacy By the time Emory University Hospital Midtown reported its suspicions to law enforcement in 2013, some 2 million doses of opiates and other addictive drugs had gone missing.

BY WILLOUGHBY MARIANO ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

ATLANTA — The criminal drug scheme that ran from Emory University Hospital Midtown’s pharmacy was the biggest that Georgia investigators had ever seen at a hospital. Technicians ordered narcotics by the pint for the recreational drug concoction known as “purple drank.”

Security video shows them rolling cardboard cases of drugs on carts down Peachtree Street.

The five-year operation put an estimated $20 million to $40 million of the most addictive prescription drugs on the streets, at a time when the state’s prescription drug epidemic was growing to deadly new heights, said Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency Executive Director Rick Allen. And it was entirely bankrolled, unwittingly,

by Emory Midtown.

“They should have known,” said Allen, a 40-year agency veteran. “You’re talking a massive amount of drugs out there. It boggles the mind.”

By the time Emory Midtown reported its suspicions to law enforcement in 2013, some 2 million doses of opiates and other addictive drugs had gone missing. The suspects — all hourly employees — were driving Mercedes Benz and BMW cars, Allen said.

Ongoing investigation The Georgia State Board of Pharmacy recently fined Emory

WHAT WAS STOLEN Emory University Midtown Hospital lost more than 2 million doses of addictive prescription drugs from 2008 to 2013 during the theft scheme. They include: 1.2 million doses of hydrocodone with acetaminophen. Hydrocodone is an opioid, a class of powerful painkillers that can cause euphoria.

Acetaminophen is the generic name for the pain reliever Tylenol.

110 gallons of promethazine with codeine, a cough syrup. Codeine is an opioid.

Promethazine fights allergy symptoms. The drug is combined with soda and a Jolly Rancher to make “purple drank,” a sweet concoction that gained popularity in southern hip-hop clubs.

More than 420,000 doses of alprazolam. Sold under the brand name Xanax, this sedative is prescribed to fight anxiety.

SOURCE: RICK ALLEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGIA DRUGS AND NARCOTICS AGENCY; NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE

Midtown $200,000 and put it on two-year probation, which could end much earlier according to terms the hospital reached in negotiations with the board.

But two years after the case was turned over to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, not a single person is behind bars, Allen said. The registrations for three technicians were revoked by the state pharmacy board, and at least one longtime pharmacist left her post, he said, although the public agreement mentions only two technicians.

Allen said he could not release the names of the employees involved at this time to protect the investigation.

TAYLOR CARPENTER/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION/TNS

Crawford Long Emory Hospital Midtown in Atlanta is shown on March 10, where a criminal drug scheme operating in the facility’s pharmacy was the biggest that Georgia investigators had ever seen at a hospital.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard did not respond to requests for comment.

Emory Midtown’s case is yet another example of how prescription drugs can be put to illegal uses at top brandname hospitals, even when administrators think they’re following the rules.

Not just Emory There are no statistics on how often these kinds of cases happen, in part because the hospitals hush them up, said Kimberly New, founder of Diversion Specialists, which advises hospitals on how to prevent prescription drug theft, which is often called drug diversion. They let problem employees go quietly and fail to report the thefts to law enforcement and regulators, she said.

But in recent years, the Mayo Clinic, University of Michigan Health System and Massachusetts General Hospital have all had major problems. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration fined Massachusetts General — Harvard Medical School’s largest training hospital — $2.3 million on accusations that its failure to follow basic rules allowed employees to steal drugs for personal use.

State and federal rules regulate the sale and distribution of controlled substances, but certain common-sense controls are not required, said New, who has written for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

on drug diversion. Some states have published best practices, she said, but there is no national set of guidelines.

“The onus is on the hospital to say, ‘OK, we’re meeting the federal requirements, but we also want to do what we can to prevent diversion,’” New said.

Patient safety danger After a high-profile diversion problem at the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic health system, it instituted a set of stringent procedures that include surveillance cameras at loading docks, restricted access to pharmacy storage and the testing of drugs thrown away by staffers, said Dr. Keith Berge, chair of the hospital’s committee that assesses suspicious activity. He said drug theft declined because of the new rules.

“Any place these drugs exist, they’re under attack by somebody,” Berge said. “People are addicted and desperate and they’re smart.”

When diversion takes place, the results can be deadly. There was no evidence that patients were harmed in the Emory case, but nationally between 2004 and 2014, six disease outbreaks took place because hospital staffs injected patients with needles workers used to get high on drugs meant for patients, according to a CDC report, and more have been reported since. Dozens contracted the potentially deadly Hepatitis C virus.

“There is a terrible patient

safety danger,” Berge said.

Emory Midtown stands apart from these other high-profile hospitals because workers typically steal drugs to feed their own addictions, not to sell them, experts said.

“This is different than a lot of the stories coming out of the hospital systems,” said Charlie Cichon, executive director of the National Association of Drug Diversion Investigators.

How scheme worked Here’s how Allen said the scheme worked. After the hospital placed a legitimate order with its wholesaler, Emory Midtown technicians would use a pharmacist’s password to make an illegal purchase. Once the wholesaler approved it, they would erase the second order from the computer systems.

Both orders would arrive at the same time, but with separate receipts, Allen said.

The technicians would hide the paperwork from their portion and cart it away.

“If they’ve been doing this for a five years period — wow, they probably made quite a bit of money,” Cichon said.

The scheme may have gone unnoticed for longer had Emory Midtown not changed its financial accounting system, which helped administrators catch the suspicious spending within a month, Allen said.

Gap being bridged between medical and mental health care Partnerships improving patients’ overall health, reducing costs

who received primary care at mental health sites had better diabetes and hypertension control. People with obesity and those who smoked did not show improvement.

So far nearly 190 organizations have received one of the federal grants. They include groups such as LifeStream Behavioral Center in Florida, the Institute for Family Health in New York and Tarzana Treatment Centers in Southern California.

BY ANNA GORMAN KAISER HEALTH NEWS TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Even on her worst days, Tracy Young goes to her appointments at the San Fernando Mental Health Center. The counseling and medication, she says, keep her depression and schizophrenia at bay.

“I come here faithfully,” said Young, 50. “I have to come here or I be feeling I just want to give up.”

Young isn’t nearly as religious about her physical health, despite painful arthritis, a persistent backache and a family history of cancer. Until this month, she hadn’t seen a medical doctor in more than three years.

People with severe mental illnesses are more likely to die prematurely than those without, and it’s often from treatable chronic diseases — in part because many, like Young, don’t receive regular medical care.

They may be uninsured or unable to find doctors who take their insurance. They may be reluctant to seek care in traditional medical offices because of stigma or discrimination.

Even when they do have medical appointments, their doctors rarely communicate with their mental health providers. Experts said the lack of coordination could lead to medication problems, higher health costs and gaps in care.

Change in attitudes Now, though, providers are beginning to bridge the gap

Convenience counts

HEIDI DE MARCO/KAISER HEALTH NEWS/TNS

Tracy Young, 50, gets her ears checked by Brian Schlesinger, a physician’s assistant, during her physical exam at the San Fernando Mental Health Center on Feb. 8 in Granada Hills, Calif. between medical and mental care, forming partnerships aimed at improving patients’ physical and mental health, and reducing costs at the same time. Such holistic projects are underway in numerous states, including California, New York, Washington and Florida.

“There has been a sea change in attitudes,” said Garrett Moran, who directs an academy on the integration of behavioral health and primary care for the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. “If we are going to bend the cost curve, the integration of behavioral health care and physical health care is essential.”

Moran said the old model — simply referring patients with mental illness to a primary care doctor — doesn’t work.

Instead, the patients need close, coordinated monitoring by both providers.

The increased collaboration is driven in part by the Affordable

Care Act, which made more people eligible for mental health services and funding for improving coordination of care.

Programs working The integration of physical and mental health was declared a priority by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which has awarded $150 million in grants for that purpose since 2009. The grants are specifically intended to bring medical services into mental health clinics.

Numerous studies have shown the effectiveness of bringing behavioral services into primary care practices. But there isn’t as much research on doing it the other way around, as in the case of San Fernando Mental Health Center.

A review by the RAND Corp. of 56 such programs around the country showed that patients

The Institute for Family Health focuses on promoting healthy behavior among people with severe mental illness.

Medical assistants offer wellness coaching, while primary care providers help patients stop smoking and lose weight, said Virna Little, senior vice president for the institute.

“If you are anxious and using smoking as a coping mechanism, (providers) really have to address the anxiety as well as the smoking cessation and education,” Little said.

Linda Rosenberg, president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, said it’s often difficult for people with mental illnesses to get to a physician. They may be poor, homeless or live chaotic lives.

The mental illness itself may thwart their motivation.

“The best place to get their physical health care is the place where they are getting psychiatric care,” Rosenberg said. “They want the same things we do — they want convenience.”

The council assists organizations that want to coordinate health care. Often, Rosenberg said, integration starts with placing the primary care and mental health providers in the same office. But it can’t stop

there: To have an impact, they need to plan and deliver care in a coordinated way, she said.

Closing the loop Tarzana Treatment Centers used its federal grant, about $400,000, to start a partnership last year with Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Mental Health Center. Since September, about 180 patients have been seen there.

Richard Franco, a Tarzana Treatment Centers nurse, helps direct the collaboration. For many of the patients, he said, physical and mental health issues are closely linked.

A significant correlation exists, for example, between chronic illnesses and serious depression.

Major depressive disorder is found in 40 percent of cancer victims, 27 percent of diabetes patients, and 17 percent of people with heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lisa Wong, a district chief with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, said the partnership is enabling clients with untreated chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure to begin getting care. “We get to close the loop,” said Wong, adding that she hoped to see it expand to other county mental health facilities.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Blue Shield of California Foundation helps fund KHN coverage in California.)

ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH

B4

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

STOJ

Administration.

Their findings revealed that if the sea level rose 35.4 inches by the year 2100, some 4.2 million people in U.S. coastal regions would be at risk of flooding. But if the sea level were to rise by 70.9 inches, which lies at the higher end of projections by NOAA, then the number of those at risk of flooding would reach 13.1 million.

Count Florida in

CHUCK FADELY/MIAMI HERALD/TNS

The sidewalk along Alton Road in Miami is shown under water at 10th Street on Oct. 18, 2012. Scientists and activists held a news conference at the corner that day to draw attention to sea level rise.

Study: 13.1 million coastal residents could face flooding Rising sea levels could lead to forced evacuation, study shows

BY ANN M. SIMMONS LOS ANGELES TIMES TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

As many as 13.1 million people living along U.S. coastlines could face flooding by the end of the

century because of rising sea levels, according to a new study that warns that large numbers of Americans could be forced to relocate to higher ground.

The estimated number of coastal dwellers affected by rising sea level is three times higher than previously projected, according to the study published Monday in the science journal Nature Climate Change.

If protective measures are not

implemented, the study says, large numbers of Americans could be forced to relocate in a migration mirroring the scale of the Great Migration of AfricanAmericans from Southern states during the 20th century.

“We’ve been underestimating what those potential impacts could be,” said Mathew Hauer, one of the co-authors of the study.

He is an applied demographer at the University of Georgia, Athens and a doctoral candidate in the school’s geography department.

South Asia threat Rising sea levels, widely believed to be the result of climate change, are threatening to wipe out some of the world’s island nations, such as the Maldives in South Asia that scientists say could vanish under

water this century.

The traditional approach to assessing the effects of rising sea levels is to look at the current population and infrastructure, Hauer said. His study accounts for ongoing population growth.

“Coastal communities are among some of the most rapidly growing in the United States, so we have to think about the anticipated expansion of those populations that is likely to occur in this century,” Hauer said.

Millions at risk Hauer and his colleagues combined environmental data, such as elevations and flood risks for specific locations, with smallscale population projections for U.S. coastal states and projected sea level rise from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

FDA weighs in on cutting carcinogen in french fries

FOTOLIA

Acrylamide is a chemical that forms in foods cooked at high heat such as french fries and potato chips.

Protective measures Scientists say that implementing protective measures, such as raising homes and roadways, building wetlands as buffers against rising tides and constructing levees and sea walls, is key to preparing for sea level rise.

Forecasting the potential number of people who might be forced to move because of sea level rise, as outlined in the new study, underscores the urgency to take action.

“These numbers could be useful for policymakers to make decisions about growth management strategies, or protective infrastructure,” Hauer said.

Island’s 100,000 citizens healthier while helping local farmers is a priority.

“In the Virgin Islands, we see younger people coming up with renal failure because of diabetes, we see younger people going blind, folks with heart disease and all driven simply by the way we eat,” said Mapp, a hearty guy who has embarked on his own weight-loss journey and is working on shedding 75 more pounds.

MAYO CLINIC NEWS NETWORK TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing guidance to the food industry on how to reduce levels of acrylamide — a chemical that forms in foods cooked at high heat, such as french fries and potato chips.

“Acrylamide is a chemical formed when an amino acid (asparagine) reacts with sugar,” says Dr. Donald Hensrud, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program.

“It’s been demonstrated as causing cancer in animals and is classified as ‘reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen in humans’ (as opposed to proven carcinogens, such as asbestos).”

He continues, “It is difficult to know exactly what safe levels are in the food supply or in our bodies, so the FDA is taking the approach of providing guidelines to the food industry to voluntarily do what they can to decrease acrylamide. This involves things, such as not heating food to extremely high temperatures, choosing varieties of potatoes that are low in acrylamide and other methods.”

Hensrud recommends that consumers follow a healthy eating plan consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which may help to keep acrylamide levels low.

The Southeastern United States accounts for 70 percent of the potential populations that could be affected, according to the study. Florida accounts for almost half, Hauer said.

States such as Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana have more than 10 percent of coastal populations at risk under the 70.9-inch scenario, according to the study.

California does not fare too well either. Upward of 1 million people could be affected by sea level rise, Hauer said.

Orange County, for example, is projected to see 225,720 residents potentially affected under the 70.9-inch sea level rise scenario, and ranks eighth on a list of 319 coastal counties whose populations are at risk.

San Mateo County ranks seventh with a potential 249,020 residents at risk.

Pushing wellness Caribbean nations in general have among the highest prevalence of chronic noncommunicable diseases in the Americas, according to the Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM. The bloc has called on nations to push wellness, noting that diabetes mortality in some Caribbean countries is 600 percent higher than in the mainland United States and Canada.

“Everything doesn’t have to be fried; everything doesn’t have to be full of grease; everything doesn’t have to be five segments of starch on a plate to be healthy,” Mapp said.

OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS

Michelle Obama is joined by school children and chefs for the annual fall harvest of the White House Kitchen Garden in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14, 2014.

First lady inspires ‘farm-totable’ initiative in Virgin Islands

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES MIAMI HERALD (TNS)

MIAMI — When most people think of farm-to-table, the images that usually come to mind are fresh vegetables and fish being served up at a restaurant. But in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Gov. Kenneth Mapp is emphasizing something else — schools.

The territory in the Lesser Antilles spends about $13 million annually on its school lunch program, Mapp said. Most of that food, he added, is processed and shipped to the islands. Inspired by first lady Michelle Obama, he now wants the territory’s 16,000-plus schoolchildren eating healthier.

“What Michelle Obama did when she talked about health is how do you really push flavor and taste with health,” he said.

Initiatives launched With those instructions, experts are working with farmers in St. Croix to produce fruits, vegetables and spices for the school system. The dairy products, he said, will come from neighboring Puerto Rico, which is struggling financially but has a thriving dairy industry.

“It’s a better, healthier mix of milk,” said Mapp, who was in South Florida on Monday for the Seatrade Cruise Global industry show. “And we support each

other in that region.”

Mapp, who comes from a farming family, has launched several initiatives in the territory since becoming governor 14 months ago.

Among them: Promoting technology and manufacturing investments from the U.S. mainland and elsewhere around the globe.

Getting healthy He’s also promoting improvements in the port in St. Thomas to keep the lucrative cruise business coming, while trying to build more hotels in the territory.

But getting the U.S. Virgin

Touting tourism, products Mapp’s emphasis is creating a trend,saidTourismCommissioner Beverly Nicholson-Doty. Island restaurants, for example, are increasingly offering a variety of foods, and more restaurants in St. Croix are using locally sourced products.

“We are finding that there is this opportunity for us to really showcase the cultural diversity in Caribbean food and the use of our local products,” she said, noting that an annual agriculture fair in St. Croix and a recently launched Dine VI initiative are also having the added benefit of promoting tourism to the territory.

“Tourism works best when it is an infusion of the community and the visitor,” she said. “People take away experiences and that’s what we see, agriculture, farm-to-table and food as a unifying method of one having an experience. So much of your vacation is centered around what you eat and the people that you meet.”

STOJ

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

JAY L. CLENDENIN/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Zendaya, 19, was named the favorite female TV star at the Kids’ Choice Awards last week. Zendaya is a star and co-producer on the Disney Channel’s “K.C. Undercover.’’ She is also is the face of CoverGirl, and a “Dancing With the Stars finalist.’’ Above, she’s shown at last year’s Academy Awards.

B5

Think you’re one of Florida’s Finest?

E-mail your high-resolution (200 dpi) digital photo in casual wear or bathing suit taken in front of a plain background with few distractions, to news@flcourier. com with a short biography of yourself and your contact information. (No nude/ glamour/ fashion photography, please!) In order to be considered, you must be at least 18 years of age. Acceptance of the photographs submitted is in the sole and absolute discretion of Florida Courier editors. We reserve the right to retain your photograph even if it is not published. If you are selected, you will be contacted by e-mail and further instructions will be given.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, star and creator of the popular Broadway musical “Hamilton,’’ is trending this week after his famous freestyling performance for President Obama at the White House on Monday. Miranda and the musical’s cast performed a few songs while there. Catch the #Bam4Ham video, which has gone viral, on YouTube.

Terrence J gets first leading role with ‘Perfect Match’

BY TRE’VELL ANDERSON LOS ANGELES TIMES TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Last December, Terrence Jenkins — known to the world as Terrence J — made a momentous decision. He announced on live television that he would be leaving his duties as co-host of E! News to focus full time on acting and producing. The Rocky Mount, N.C., native knew it was a gamble but one he felt he had to take.

“When you do a job all year around like E!, it becomes a job,” he said. “You’ve got to be somewhere Monday through Friday, 10-plus-hour days sometimes. Doing that, you don’t really have the flexibility to do other projects. I’m excited to now be in a place where I can balance and do different things and wake up feeling challenged. I’m 33 now and I want to be my own boss, completely.”

Jenkins’ first major gig since leaving the entertainment news post is as the star of Lionsgate’s “The Perfect Match” — his first in leading-man territory.

Plays a player Jenkins plays Charlie, a Hollywood agent and casanova for whom a long-term relationship is a nonstarter.

His sister (Paula Patton) and friends (Donald Faison, Lauren London, Dascha Polanco and Rob Riley), however, feel like it’s time he grow up and settle down.

Prompted by a bet between the guys, Charlie attempts to date only one woman for an extended, a way of proving that relationships and him don’t gel.

But upon meeting Eva (Cassie Ventura), he may have just met the perfect not-so-perfect match.

This is a romantic comedy, after all.

For those familiar with Jenkins’ film credits, which include “Stomp the Yard 2: Homecoming,” “Burlesque” and the “Think Like a Man” franchise,

Charlie is something completely different.

“I’m always the best friend or the momma’s boy,” he said. “But in this film, because I was the lead, it was such an emotional arc to have to play a player, then be vulnerable, to have to cry and curse people out, play drunk, to act.”

Consulted ‘Diddy’ Ventura, known by her first name as a singer and as the girlfriend of entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, faced challenges as well. During the early stages of filming, she said, Jenkins was a little hesitant to tackle the more physical aspects of the script in which the sex scenes needed to look real. But after a call with Combs himself, Jenkins committed fully.

“He told him to make it believable,” she said.

And believable is what audiences will get, said “Perfect Match” director Bille Woodruff, known for the “Honey” franchise (the third of which is in postproduction with Ventura as lead) and “Beauty Shop” starring Queen Latifah. He said Jenkins’ acting chops will surprise moviegoers.

“I think people will be able to see him in a new way … .

He’s funny, he’s likable, and his character has an arc,” Woodruff noted. “He has a good chance of a nice career ahead of him as a leading man.”

10 years on shows Acting has always been a career that Jenkins found appealing.

Long before hosting E! News, he took acting classes while a student at the historically Black North Carolina A&T. He also worked nights at the local radio station, but after an unsuccessful run of auditions in Los Angeles he settled for a job in NASCAR’s diversity development department.

It wasn’t until he heard of BET’s search for the next hosts

Terrence J is a casanova in “Perfect Match,’’ currently in theaters nationwide. of its now-defunct music video countdown show “106 & Park” that entertainment was once again the center of his life.

After a failed New York audition for the job, he drove to Atlanta the following day for another set of auditions for the same gig. He landed it and would host the show, with Rocsi Diaz, for seven years before joining the E! News team. During a total of 10 years on both shows, he picked up small acting roles along the way.

When he read the script for “The Perfect Match,” along with having the opportunity to take on a role as a producer, he knew a decision had to be made.

“Getting the opportunity to be a producer, a part of the decision-making process and the experience of being No. 1 on the call sheet and having more responsibility — that’s when I knew it was time to take my own destiny in my hand,” he said.

‘Coupled’ is next In May, he’ll return to television screens as the host of Fox’s “Coupled.” Produced by the Emmy-winning Mark Burnett, the reality dating show follows 12 women trying to find love in the Caribbean island of Anguilla.

Sitting at a table in his threestory Sherman Oaks home —

complete with three bedrooms, a theater, mini barbershop, fullsized pool and half basketball court — Jenkins reflects on his humble beginnings.

“You can’t get more blue-collar in this industry than me,” he said.

“I just got one job and worked really hard at it then another and worked really hard at that.

I’ve crawled my way to be able to have everything I have.

“I used to look at the word ‘success’ as some esoteric moment in life when you’re in a high office or on a beach looking out. But success for me is just being able to look in the mirror and being happy with what you see.”

B6

FOOD

MARCH 18 – MARCH 24, 2016

FAMILY FEATURES

Spring celebrations wouldn’t be the same without one classic centerpiece: leg of lamb.

Whether roasted or grilled, a leg of lamb is a tried and true addition to the Easter or Passover table. As elegant as it is, it’s also quite simple to prepare.

For a new take on tradition, swap conventional mint jelly with a vibrant salsa verde or mint-pistachio pesto for a fresh, but familiar, flavor that complements the rich taste of American lamb. Find more spring­ time celebration-worthy American lamb recipe ideas at americanlamb.com.

Boneless Leg of American Lamb Follow these easy guidelines for preparing the perfect roast: • For generous portions, figure on one half pound of American lamb per serving.

• Use a good meat thermometer to determine doneness. Medium Rare: 145 F; Medium: 160 F. • Remove the roast from the oven when the internal temperature reaches 10 degrees less than your desired temperature; it will reach desired doneness while it rests, allowing the meat’s juices to settle.

• Carve the roast across the grain so the meat will be tender.

GRILLED BUTTERFLIED AMERICAN LAMB LEG WITH MINT-PISTACHIO PESTO Serves: 6-8 3 pounds boneless leg of American lamb, butterflied salt and pepper (to taste) Mint-Pistachio Pesto 1 cup shelled pistachios 1 cup fresh mint (leaves only) 1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon lemon juice (to taste) 1 teaspoon lemon zest 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (to taste) freshly ground black pepper (to taste)

pinch red chili pepper flakes Heat oven to 350 F. Lay lamb leg open on a cutting board. Trim off visible fat. Season lamb generously with salt and pepper; allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes prior to grilling.

Toast pistachios by placing in single layer in shallow dish or pan and baking 8 to 10 minutes.

In food processor, add pistachios, mint, parsley, oil, vinegar, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper and chili flakes; blend until somewhat chunky.

Heat grill to medium-high. Grill lamb leg to medium-rare (remove from heat when thermometer reads between 130 F and 135 F), or to desired doneness. Rest meat, lightly covered, for at least 10 minutes before serving. Slice meat across grain into thin slices.

Serve lamb with pesto, grilled vegetables and salad.

SF

ROASTED BONELESS LEG OF AMERICAN LAMB WITH FINGERLING POTATOES, LEEKS AND MINT SALSA VERDE Serves: 6-8 Mint Salsa Verde 3 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled 2 cups loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves 1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves 3 anchovy fillets 1 tablespoon capers, drained and rinsed 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons plus 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided 3-3 1/2 pounds boneless leg of American lamb, butterflied 2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided 3 large leeks 2 pounds fingerling potatoes, halved lengthwise 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil Position rack in lower third of oven (so roast will be in the middle) and heat to 325 F. With food processor running, add garlic cloves.

When finely minced, stop motor, remove top and scrape down bowl. Add parsley, mint, anchovies, capers, salt and pepper.

Pulse until ingredients are finely chopped. Pour in 2 tablespoons olive oil and pulse to combine. Transfer about two-thirds of paste to small bowl and cover with remaining olive oil. Cover tightly and refrigerate until serving time, or up to 2 days.

Lay lamb flat on cutting board with fat side up. Trim fat to no more than 1/8 inch.

Turn meat over and trim away any large chunks of fat from interior, but leave the rest intact. Be careful not to trim away connective tissue that holds meat together.

Season lamb on both sides with 2 teaspoons salt.

Spread salsa verde paste over interior of meat to edges, rubbing into crevices.

Reserve remaining salsa verde. Roll lamb up length­ wise into cylinder. Use kitchen twine to tie cylinder at 1 1/2-inch intervals.

Tie another piece of twine lengthwise to secure ends.

Allow lamb to sit at room temperature 1-2 hours before roasting. (If you plan to wait more than 2 hours before roasting, loosely cover and refrig­erate roast, but bring to room temperature before cooking.)

Pat outside of roast dry using paper towels before roasting.

Trim dark green tops from leeks. Halve leeks lengthwise and rinse well.

Pat dry and cut into 2-inch pieces. Put leeks and halved potatoes in large roasting pan. Drizzle vegetables with olive oil, season with remaining salt and toss to coat. Spread vegetables around roasting pan in even layer. Place lamb roast on top, seam-side down and transfer to oven. Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into center of meat reaches 135 F for mediumrare, about 1-1 1/2 hours.

Transfer lamb to cutting board and allow meat to rest for 20-30 minutes, loosely covered with foil.

(The internal temperature will increase to 145 F.) Bring reserved salsa verde to room temperature. Toss vegetables in roasting pan to coat in pan drippings. If they are tender and browned, set aside in a warm spot while meat rests. If not, return to oven to finish cooking.

Trim away kitchen twine and cut roast into 1/2-inchthick slices. Arrange slices over vegetables. Stir salsa verde to incorporate oil, spoon it over meat and serve.