Florida Courier - April 08, 2016

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CELEBRATING OUR 10TH YEAR STATEWIDE!

Miami officer to become Ferguson police chief See Page A3 www.flcourier.com

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

VOLUME 24 NO. 15

LEFT BEHIND: PART 2

Six-yearold Trinity Bailey, second from left, looks down at her father’s open grave as she is comforted by her mother, Patdrica Bailey, and her sister, Keyerra Francoeur.

As the Florida Supreme Court wrestles again with the state’s dysfunctional workers compensation law, the Florida Courier follows the fight of Patdrica Bailey, whose husband was allegedly killed by his employer’s negligence.

BY THE FLORIDA COURIER STAFF

A tradeoff

FORT LAUDERDALE – Patdrica Bailey isn’t an attorney.

She’s a secretary at a Broward County public middle school.

But the ineffectiveness of Florida’s so-called “workers compensation” laws forced her to stand alone, hurt and disappointed, before a Broward circuit court judge in an attempt to seek compensation and justice for the death of her 38-year-old husband on a construction site.

The state’s decades-old workers compensation system is set up as a tradeoff. Injured workers cannot pursue civil lawsuits, but in exchange they are supposed to receive medical care and other benefits aimed at providing compensation and getting them back on Deaths treated the job. differently However, one injured workBailey was killed instantly er has filed a case that was more than two years ago afheard Wednesday by the Florida Supreme Court, arguing ter being allegedly crushed by See BEHIND, Page A2 that the system has become

Scott signs repeal of ‘shacking up’ law

FLORIDA COURIER / 10TH STATEWIDE ANNIVERSARY

Trayvon, the ‘Gunshine State’ and MLK FC

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Fantastic Voyage 2012, Day 2 B1

WHAT’S NEXT?

BY CHARLES W. CHERRY II FLORIDA COURIER PUBLISHER

Trayvon Benjamin Martin, 1995-2012, was a child of ours. He was born, raised, educated, and killed in Florida. He wasn’t the first Black child to die as a consequence of gun violence in Florida. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the last to die – even during the month of February 2012.

So after the rallies, the marches, the radio and TV shows, after the social networking tweets, texts, and postings, where do we Black Floridians go from here? A few thoughts, not meant to be a complete list: • Let's stop the commercial symbolism. Quit buying Skittles, AriZona Iced Teas, and hoodies. Such symbolism is just making

As Black Floridians, we find ourselves in the forefront of what could be a Trayvon Martin-inspired ‘movement.’

Where should we go from here? rich White folks richer, and some of them have interests that may not align with ours.

According to Forbes magazine, Jacqueline Mars and her two brothers, John Mars and Forrest Mars, Jr.,

See NEXT, Page A2

Armed and dangerous

CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD/MCT

Remembering Black America’s saddest day SNAPSHOTS ‘Stand Your Ground’ tweak ahead?

if they believe themselves in danger.

But the investigation could take more than a year, said Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, and an attorney. Smith has already called twice for Scott’s task force to meet sooner.

He’s also asked Scott to call a special session to address the State Sen. Chris Smith stand your ground law.

On Tuesday, Smith said the delay is hurting Florida’s image and appeal to tourists. He compared Scott’s reaction to that of Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1993, when two British tourists were shot – and one killed – in a robbery attempt at a rest stop on Interstate 10, east of Tallahassee.

Within hours, Chiles, facing reports that

“In Florida, being armed in public is such a casual formality that law enforcement does not issue the license to carry a loaded, concealed gun; that is done by the Department of Agriculture – the same agency charged with issuing permits to pick tomatoes or transport livestock,” said Dan Gross, of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, during recent congressional testimony.

Among Floridians over 18 years of age, about 6.5 percent have applied for and received permits to carry a concealed weapon. Add the 104,210 permits brought into the state by out-of-state visitors and the total rises to 906,924 as of Feb. 29, according to Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which administers the licensing program Dixie County leads the state in the number of concealed weapons permits issued per capita, with nearly one in 10 residents of the rural county licensed to carry. It is followed by Monroe County, which is the Florida Keys, where 7.3 percent of the population is licensed.

Seven Florida Counties – Gilchrist, St. Johns, Sumter, Lafayette, Glades, Liberty and Calhoun – have the lowest per capita concealed weapons rates in the state, all under 3 percent.

Statewide, the per capita average is 4.2 percent. Take out children under 18, who

See PANEL, Page A2

See GUNS, Page A2

Smith launches ‘stand your ground’ panel

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Learn about Passover FINEST | B4

Meet Cybil from the Joyner cruise

Saying Florida is in “crisis mode” over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, State Sen. Chris Smith said Tuesday he’s launching a task force on Florida’s “stand your ground” law because he’s tired of waiting for a panel created by Gov. Rick Scott to convene.

Scott has said repeatedly that he wants to wait for the results of the criminal investigation into Martin’s death, and he did so again after Smith’s announcement.

Scott’s panel set Last month, Scott created a statewide task force to review the stand your ground law, which allows Floridians to use deadly force

The laws have come under scrutiny since the death of Trayvon Martin, who was shot to death in February by a neighborhood watch member, a convicted felon who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. George Zimmerman, 28, contends he was defending himself under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” statute passed in 2005. He has not been charged.

Gun control advocates say lax gun laws in Florida are at least partially to blame for Martin’s death. They also say Florida is being used as a test case for gun control legislation in other states.

‘Casual formality’

In 2008, Memphis sanitation workers Elmore Nickelberry, 76, center, and his son Terrence, left, held a replica of the placard used by strikers in Memphis, Tenn. in front of the former Lorraine Motel. Dr. King was murdered there on April 4, 1968. See page A2 for a commentary on MLK and Barack Obama.

HOLIDAY | B3

CoMMenTaRY: WilliaM ReeD: WHaT Does iT CosT To RenT a neGRo leaDeR? | a4

WORLD | B4

More arrests, dissidents in Cuba now

ALSO INSIDE

cealed carry” and “stand your ground” laws that were critical factors in Trayvon’s death were conceived and passed on the GOP’s

Laws scrutinized

Trayvon case goes national

Diana Ross to headline Joyner cruise

fles like iced tea and candy, are going?

And for you Black Republicans, party-affiliated donations are relevant because the GOP “owns’’ Florida politically. The “con-

With more than 800,000 issued, nearly one in every 15 Florida adults has a license to carry a concealed weapon, according to data compiled by the state.

The number of concealed weapons permits has risen dramatically in recent years as new laws making it easier to obtain them have been placed on the books by lawmakers, spurred on by the National Rifle Association, one of the most effective lobbying forces in the capital city.

NATION | A6

TRAVEL | B1

porting Mitt Romney.

This is America. Folks rich and poor can write checks to whom they so desire. But don’t you want to know where your dollars, especially for symbolic tri-

BY MICHAEL PELTIER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

FLORIDA | A3

No ‘free’ food stamps Recipients face work requirement

BY MARGIE MENZEL THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – About 300,000 Floridians who qualified for food stamps now face a work requirement that went into effect Jan. 1 – and the possibility of at least temporarily losing benefits if they don’t meet the guidelines.

As of the first of the year, able-bodied, childless adults ages 18 to 49 were required to work, get job training or volunteer 20 hours a week to receive food stamps through what is formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Otherwise, they’re limited to three months of food assistance in each 36-month period.

Similar requirements also took effect in 21 other states.

More jobs available BILL DAY / CAGLE CARTOONS

State ‘concealed carry’ licenses approach 1 million

See REPEAL, Page A2

State approves another pot grower

privately own Mars, the world’s largest candy company, with $31.6 billion in sales last year. Mars candy brands include Milky Way, M&Ms, and Skittles, among others.

AriZona Iced Tea is privately owned by John Ferolito, a rich South Florida resident (coincidentally a large Republican donor) and his partner Domenick Vultaggio. Their company pulls in nearly $1 billion annually.

If you buy your hoodie from Walmart, you are directly supporting the Walton family of Bentonville, Ark. They are Walmart’s largest shareholders and have contributed millions of dollars to GOP and conservative political action committees and Super PACs, including one sup-

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. / 1929-1968

Rep. Richard Stark, a Weston Democrat who co-sponsored the repeal, argued on the House floor that the ban had impacted seniors as well as younger singles.

“I represent communities of seniors, where a lot of them are technically not married,’’ Stark said. “They are living together, but it makes more sense financially or for whatever reason like Social Security to not be married.

I don’t think that they want to be considered to be violating the law.”

Opposing the repeal were Republicans Janet Adkins of Fernandina Beach, Brad Drake of Eucheeanna, Mike Hill of Pensacola Beach, Jennifer Sullivan of Mount Dora and Charles Van

FLORIDA | A3

www.flcourier.com

APRIL 6 - APRIL 12, 2012

VOLUME 20 NO. 14

Seniors affected

SNAPSHOTS

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TALLAHASSEE – For the first time since shortly after the Civil War, it is no longer a crime for unmarried men and women to shack up in the Sunshine State.

Gov. Rick Scott signed 20 bills into law Wednesday, including a long-discussed repeal of the state’s rarely enforced ban on unmarried men and women living together.

The repeal became law with Scott’s approval.

The signing (SB 498) leaves Michigan and Mississippi as the only states that make cohabitation illegal, according to a Senate analysis of the bill, which was approved during this year’s legislative session without opposition in the Senate and with only five dissenting votes in the House.

FLORIDA COURIER / CHARLES W. CHERRY II

FR

BY JIM TURNER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

unconstitutional because workers are giving up legal rights – but are not receiving adequate benefits in return.

The benefits were unquestionably inadequate in the case of the death of Clayton Bailey.

ALSO INSIDE CoMMenTaRY: MaRian WRiGHT eDleMan: ouR naTion MusT PRoTeCT CHilDRen noT Guns | a5

Four years ago, the Florida Courier featured a front-page publisher commentary on Trayvon Martin’s death and commemorated the April 4 anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gov. Rick Scott’s administration pointed to job opportunities in the state, but Sen. Bill Montford, a Tallahassee Democrat who represents a massive swath of rural communities, said food-stamp beneficiaries can’t find work in some areas.

“Especially in North Florida, in these rural counties that I represent, they have not felt this economic revival that people talk about,” Montford said. “Unemployment is still high. The jobs are not there. … The needs the SNAP program meets, I would say the needs in these rural counties are just as great as they were in 2009.”

The work requirement dates back to a 1996 welfare overhaul, but the federal government waived it in 2009 during the economic recession. Now, after unemployment rates have dropped, states are resuming the use of the work requirement.

Florida ‘hard hit’ The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said 21 Florida counties have jobless rates high enough and sustained enough to qualify for an exemption from the work mandate from the federal government.

“A few Southeastern states are electing to re-implement the time limit statewide even though some or all of the state qualifies for a waiver,” the center reported last month, noting that 500,000 to 1 million people will lose their food stamps in 2016. “Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and North Carolina will be particularly hard hit.”

Scott’s administration sees a brighter picture because of the economy, and people will be able to continue receiving food stamps if they meet the work requirements.

Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Michelle Glady said in an email that the state’s unemployment rate is at an eight-year low of 4.9 percent.

COMMENTARY: DR. WILMER J. LEON III: HISTORY DID NOT BEGIN YESTERDAY | A4 COMMENTARY: GLEN FORD: TRUMP RIGHTLY QUESTIONS AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY | A5

See FOOD, Page A2

FOCUS

A2

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

Lucius Gantt ain’t ‘Lucius Lyon’ Who is this Lucius? Who is this man that says things in the media that many African-Americans want to say, but don’t?

Who is this guy that lives and works in Florida, but is not from Florida? Who is this fellow that walks with all of the spirits – good and bad – that seems to be a man of the past who lives in the present and sometimes walks in the future?

Well, he is not the TV Lucius that built an “Empire” and let some woman walk into his office and take his company from him.

Not afraid Lucius Gantt is the Lucius that is not scared!

He is not afraid of his shadow.

He is not afraid of the government.

He is not afraid of the police. He is not afraid of the Vatican and he is not afraid of the hooligan!

Lucius Gantt is God-fearing only.

This Lucius Gantt is not a graduate of a historically Black college

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

or university, but Lucius Gantt IV did graduate from Florida A&M University. Two of my three children attended and/or graduated from HCBUs.

Do a search If you want detailed information about Lucius Gantt the journalist, the columnist, the lobbyist or the businessman, do an extensive Google or Internet search; or just ask anyone that knows about world-class media professionals or the most versatile, professional and most successful Black political consultants in Florida.

Most people who say they “know” this Lucius Gantt don’t really know me. They know of The Gantt Report.

They know The Gantt Report newspaper and Internet column has been around since 1980, has been read more than other editorial and opinion columns, and has been more prolific, versatile and prophetic than columns written by other writers.

Leonard Pitts, Joy Reid, DeWayne Wickham, Cynthia Tucker and others get the teaching jobs and big bucks for speaking, so they shouldn’t be scared to share the panel discussion with this Lucius. Put us together and let the people decide who is the media champ and who are the media chumps!

But when the HCBUs, “major” universities, churches, organizations and groups seek people to pay to give lectures, conduct workshops, talk to students, address graduations, give testimonies at churches, speak at rallies at so forth, the name Lucius Gantt is not even on the radar!

Not controlled Why? Because they can’t tell this Lucius what to say.

They can’t control this Lucius with a $5,000 honorarium or stipend, a coach-class plane ticket, and a cheap hotel room!

If this Lucius is asked to speak, Lucius will tell the truth whether

the HCBU, the church, the association or the group wants him to tell the truth or not!

‘Don’t quit’ I’ve been trying to quit writing The Gantt Report for years but my longtime readers and true friends say Lucius, don’t quit.

I asked my “Mom” Julia from Daytona why she reads The Gantt Report. She said “Lucius, you always tell the truth.”

I asked her what made her think that, and she said, “If you weren’t telling the truth, you would have been dead, jailed or sued for slander a long time ago!”

So, without speaking engagements, lobbying contracts, media contracts or a plain old job, how can I survive?

Well, survival is simple. Good men, or good journalists, are never honored in their own communities.

No hometown honor Jesus Christ wasn’t honored in Nazareth or Galilee. When you are a God-fearing and righteous writer in America, you are treated like Jesus was treated by haters in his time.

The biblical haters wanted the “miracles,” but they didn’t want Jesus. People want to read truth-

FOOD “No Floridian currently receiving benefits will lose their eligibility,” Glady said. “However, they must meet minimum federal requirements for work, volunteering or active job search activities.”

Trying to help

BEHIND from A1

an 18,000-pound pipe valve assembly as he worked on a project in Miami-Dade County. He had been employed a pipelayer for almost nine years by Ric-Man Construction Florida, Inc., of Deerfield Beach.

Workers compensation benefits are capped in Florida at a low $150,000 when a worker is killed on the job. The money is then split among the surviving spouse, if any, and all minor children.

The Baileys had been married for more than eight years. The couple has five children – two each from previous relationships and a daughter, Trinity, that they had together. Trinity was 6 when her father was killed.

Under Florida law, the $150,000 was split among Patdrica, Trinity, and a son Clayton Bailey had in Jamaica before he emigrated to America and became a U.S. citizen.

The total amount paid to the entire Bailey family is about 18 months of Clayton Bailey’s regular salary.

His widow Patdrica doesn’t know what she’ll do when regular payments run out in less than two years – when Trinity turns 11.

“I’m hoping for a promotion on my job. I’m trusting that God will provide,” she explained.

Killed instantly Patdrica retained the legal services of Eugene K. Pettis of the personal injury firm Haliczer Pettis and

Getting ‘crumbs’ Yes, you may call me a rabid, vicious media dog. But you socalled religious fanatics should know the Bible says, “even a dog gets crumbs from the table.”

This Lucius can say what he wants to because he gets crumbs from his clients that sit at the billion-dollar roundtables!

Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. “Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook. Contact Lucius at www. allworldconsultants.net.

act of noncompliance, the penalty is the loss of benefits for at least three months.

“By the nature of the work requirements and the exemptions and exceptions to the work requirements, it’s really mostly affecting the most vulnerable people that don’t have any other social safety net in place,” said Liam McGivern of Legal Services of Greater Miami.

Food-stamp benefits are typically worth $150 to $170 per month. The potential loss of benefits does not apply to people who have children or disabilities or to seniors.

from A1

Department of Economic Opportunity spokeswoman Morgan McCord echoed Glady and also said the state is trying to help people meet the requirements.

“In every county around the state, Florida’s CareerSource centers are working to help beneficiaries meet those requirements,” McCord wrote in an email. “Since January 1, 2016, 106,129 people have been placed into new jobs by the state’s 24 CareerSource locations.”

But others, such as Montford, say the state is diverse, and economic conditions vary.

For instance, in the district of Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, people have been coming to his office for help after losing their food-stamp benefits. He said many are working, but their low-wage jobs don’t add up to 20 hours a week.

“They’re being penalized even though they’re trying, even

ful columns, but they don’t want anything to do with the truthful writers!

So this Lucius, not the TV Lucius, will soon be invisible. He will not be back for future seasons on the Fox Network. This Lucius will disappear!

If you don’t see Lucius begging for minimum-wage jobs or lowpaying political or governmental business, it is because this Lucius works with billionaires in the USA and wealthy people around the world who invest in commodities, or do financial trading platform transactions, or healthcare product manufacturing!

Possible waiver

KARL MERTON FERRON/BALTIMORE SUN/MCT

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants getting ‘food stamps’ must prove they haven’t been just sitting around, or risk losing their benefits. though their effort is good,” Bullard said.

Stamps taken away What’s more, tens of thousands of Floridians were sanctioned for not complying with the mandate in the first month.

Schwamm of Fort Lauderdale.

The firm got worker’s compensation payments flowing; tracked investigations by the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homicide Division, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and MiamiDade County Medical Examiner’s Department; and filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Ric-Man. Patdrica and Trinity began to get regular grief counseling.

Legal roadblock Pretrial investigation revealed that Ric-Man, Clayton Bailey’s employer, was the only contractor on the job.

It was responsible for paying only $150,000 when Clayton Bailey was killed.

Under Florida law, in exchange for taking the benefits, Patdrica Bailey could only file a wrongful death action against Ric-Man under extremely limited circumstances – even if the benefits received are not enough to support the surviving family.

And over the years, the Florida Legislature has made the legal standard of proof so high that it’s akin to proving Clayton Bailey was killed as a consequence of first-degree murder on the jobsite.

Pettis’s firm didn’t believe they could meet that standard. The firm withdrew from the Bailey case. Patdrica tried to get other personal injury lawyers, including some of the best in South Florida, to take over.

No takers “When they saw it was a workers comp case, they all said no,” she explained.

She was forced to stand alone before the trial judge

“If you don’t comply, what will happen is that you will immediately be sanctioned and lose your food stamps, even though you haven’t yet used up your three-month time limit,” said Cindy Huddleston of Florida Legal Services.

In January, 67,982 Floridians

arguing why the case should not be dismissed – at the same time Ric-Man’s attorney tried to blame her husband for his own death.

The case was dismissed.

She plans to appeal.

The attorneys’ refusals and the dismissal is what current Florida law was designed to do.

Key court case Patdrica Bailey is now watching the Florida Supreme Court. She’s praying that the justices throw out the current law.

On Wednesday, justices tried to sift through arguments about the constitutionality of the workers compensation system – and whether they should decide the issue at all.

Mark Zientz, an attorney for former Hialeah Hospital nurse Daniel Stahl, argued that the state has unfairly stripped benefits from injured workers, with much of the focus on a 2003 overhaul of the workers-compensation system that was designed to reduce employers’ insurance rates.

“These benefits get cut over and over and over,” Zientz told the court.

Up to legislators But Ken Bell, who represented the hospital and Sedgwick Claims Management Services, argued that Zientz is making a “kitchen sink” argument to challenge the constitutionality of the system. Bell said the Supreme Court shouldn’t make such a decision.

“He is asking this court to make a policy decision to declare that entire law ineffectual or ineffective,’’ Bell said.

“The court simply doesn’t

were sanctioned for not meeting the work requirement, thereby losing their food stamps “for a minimum of one month or until they comply with the work requirement, whichever is longer,” according to a letter sent to beneficiaries by the state. For a second

have the power. The issues need to be addressed. The first place to address it is in the Legislature.”

Concerned about benefits Justices Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quince and James E.C. Perry made statements that indicated they shared concerns about workers’ benefits being diminished.

“It’s hard to deny that what’s happened over the last 50 years has not been a diminution in workers-compensation benefits,” Pariente said at one point.

‘Hurt by the system’ Zientz said the Supreme Court can resolve the constitutional issues.

“This is an important issue. This is something that involves tens of thousands of people who are hurt every day – not hurt on the job, but hurt by the system,’’ Zientz said. “And this is the court that has to make that decision as to whether or not they continue to get hurt or whether or not we can stop that.”

Patdrica Bailey agrees. She wants the existing workers comp scheme completely thrown out.

“The law works only for companies, especially when a death involved,” she said.

“They are saying my husband’s life is worth little or nothing.

“My daughter asks me, ‘When are we going to court?’ She sees criminal trials on TV when somebody gets killed. She’s looking for somebody to be held accountable. How do you tell a child that’s not going to happen?”

The Department of Children and Families could ask the federal government to waive the work mandate. But a budget bill passed during a special legislative session last June would require the department to get legislative authority before applying for such a waiver.

“I would certainly encourage DCF to approach the Legislature, get permission, and request another waiver,” Montford said.

Debra Susie, executive director of Florida Impact, which works to reduce hunger and poverty, said the group is also concerned about what will happen to food banks and other non-profits that were already stretched thin by the recession.

REPEAL from A1

Zant of Keystone Heights.

A House staff analysis noted the cohabitation law has rarely been used to bring criminal charges, but it has been used in other ways. As an example, the analysis said the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation suspended a company’s liquor license in 1979 after finding that six people tied to the company were in violation of the law.

Civil War-era law Enacted in 1868, the law declared it illegal for men and women to “lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together” without being married. Violators could face second-degree misdemeanor charges.

The measure signed by Scott does not impact another part of state statute on lewd and lascivious behavior, maintaining the misdemeanor charge for men and women, married or unmarried, who engage in “open and gross lewdness.”

Other new laws Among the other bills signed into law Wednesday was a wide-ranging measure (SB 698) that, in part, will allow the state Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco to issue alcoholic beverage licenses to the owners of railroad transit stations that are used for passenger service between two or more cities.

Another new law (SB 218) will make it a firstdegree misdemeanor to have two or more electronic benefit transfer cards and to sell or attempt to sell one of the cards. A second offense would be a third-degree felony. The intent of the law, which goes on the books Oct. 1, is to crack down on the trafficking of EBT cards, which help provide food assistance to low-income Floridians.

Also, starting July 1, a new law (SB 1202) will require county and municipal parks to offer full or partial entry-fee discounts to current members of the military and honorably discharged veterans. Also, the discounts will apply to spouses and parents of members of the military who died in combat, and spouses and parents of emergency first responders who died in the line of duty.

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

FLORIDA

A3

Miami officer to lead Ferguson police Major Delrish Moss called ‘right man’ to head Missouri department

BY CHRISTINE BYERS ST. LOUS POST-DISPATCH TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

FERGUSON, Mo. – Major Delrish Moss, a former homicide detective who serves as spokesman for the Miami Police Department, has been named the new chief of police for Ferguson, the city announced last week.

Moss was one of four finalists announced about a month ago to replace Thomas Jackson, who resigned after a Justice Department report strongly criticized the city’s police and municipal court practices. That report was triggered by the controversial shooting of Michael Brown Jr. by a Ferguson officer, setting off riots, in 2014.

“Major Moss exemplifies the type of experience in law enforcement that we believe will enhance the many new programs within the Ferguson Police Department,” City Manager De’Carlon Seewood said in a prepared statement. Seewood made the final choice.

“Our officers have worked extremely hard to implement community policing and community engagement in their daily practices,” he continued. “Mr. Moss is the right man for the job to continue those initiatives.”

‘The right choice’ In the same statement, Mayor James Knowles III called Moss “the right choice.”

The city said that from more than 54 applicants nationwide, 16 were selected to fill out a 15-page questionnaire. Six of them were interviewed by several panels of residents, officials, police executives and criminal justice experts.

That left four: Moss; Frank McCall Jr., chief in nearby Berkeley; Mark Becker, a former FBI agent who recently resigned as chief in East Chicago, Ind.; and Brenda Jones, a behavior specialist for a school in Georgia who formerly served as police chief in Pine Bluff, Ark.

HECTOR GABINO/EL NUEVO HERALD/TNS

On March 26, 2015, City of Miami Police Major Delrish Moss consoles Tramele Harris, mother of 16-year-old Richard Hallman, who was shot and killed in Overtown, on March 24, 2015. Community and religious leaders from Overtown met with Miami police and walked door to door distributing leaflets of two children shot and killed in the community.

Moss has been the Miami Police Department’s public voice for controversies ranging from use-of-force issues to whether officers miffed at a Super Bowl performance by Beyonce might refuse to work security at a subsequent concert. He joined the department in 1984.

Why he joined force He is president of the Miami Police Athletic League, which reaches out to youths, and is on the board of the Urban League of

Greater Miami and an organization called A Safe Haven for Newborns. He also is a member of the NAACP, National Association of Black Journalists and Tender Essence Inc., which deals with issues such as teen pregnancy, substance abuse and violence.

Moss told the local National Public Radio affiliate in Miami in 2015 that unpleasant encounters with police motivated him to join the force.

His active presence on social media includes a posting: “Say-

ing that all cops are bad based on the actions of a few is as horrible a stereotype as saying all black men are bad because of a few (who) commit crime.”

Community relations expert A Miami Herald profile earlier this month quoted Moss, 51, as saying that Ferguson “needs a massive recruiting drive to become more reflective of the community. You can’t tell me there

State approves another nursery for pot production

BY DARA KAM THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – State health officials on Monday paved the way for Gainesville-based San Felasco Nurseries to join five other dispensing organizations authorized to grow medical marijuana in Florida.

San Felasco’s approval came after an administrative law judge ruled in February that health officials wrongly rejected the nursery’s application last year because of a decade-old drug crime.

The nursery’s approval to start the process of growing medical marijuana was also made possible by a new law, passed by the Legislature during the session that ended in March and signed

by Gov. Rick Scott less than two weeks ago.

Erroneously disqualified Under the new law, the five dispensing organizations can keep their licenses, and applicants

Scott’s political committee hauls in $250,000 in March THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

Legal challenges The new law authorized fullstrength marijuana for terminally ill patients and also addressed long-running problems in carrying out a 2014 cannabis law that was primarily billed as a way to help children with severe forms of epilepsy.

Doctors were supposed to begin ordering the non-euphoric cannabis products for patients more than a year ago, but administrative issues and legal challenges delayed implementation of the 2014 law, spurring frustrated lawmakers to propose the changes in this year’s legislation.

Health officials in November selected five nurseries, of more than a dozen that sought licenses, to become “dispensing organizations” that would grow, process and distribute low-THC marijuana. Three of those sought-after licenses were challenged, including one in the Northeast region, where San Felasco lost out to another grower, Chestnut Hill Nurseries.

are no qualified African-Americans in that community.”

It also quoted Miami Chief Rodolfo Llanes as saying, “He is an expert in police community relations and that is what that community needs now.”

Andre Anderson, of the Glendale, Ariz., police, became interim police chief in July, and left early, in December. Lt. Col. Al Eickhoff who has served stints as interim Ferguson chief, was among the applicants but not chosen as a finalist.

Under a new law, the nurseries chosen, process and distribute marijuana low in euphoriainducing THC. They also will be responsible for growing the full-strength medical marijuana for terminally ill patients. whose challenges are successful can also get licenses. The law gave the Department of Health until Monday to approve as dispensing organizations applicants that had won legal challenges.

Health officials last year rejected San Felasco’s application because Daniel Banks, the nursery’s director of research and development, failed what is known as a “level 2” background screening. State law bans convicted felons from being owners or managers of the dispensing organizations.

But Administrative Law Judge R. Bruce McKibben ruled in February that health officials erroneously disqualified Banks.

Banks, then 18, pleaded no contest to illegal possession of Phenobarbital in Kansas in 2004.

While the crime is a felony in Florida, it is a misdemeanor under Kansas law.

“And since he was charged in Kansas, not Florida, his crime was a misdemeanor, not a felony, for purposes of determining whether it was a disqualifying offense,” McKibben wrote.

Record expunged Banks later had his record expunged of the crime, which, under Kansas law, means “the conviction and nolo plea would not be a disqualifying event … because the conviction never happened,” McKibben wrote.

In a letter dated Monday, health officials gave San Felasco 10 days to post a $5 million performance bond, required by law.

The nursery has 75 days to request cultivation authorization.

Under the new law, the five nurseries – and their affiliates – chosen to grow, process and distribute marijuana low in euphoria-inducing THC will also be responsible for growing the fullstrength medical marijuana for terminally ill patients.

The expectation is that the same dispensing organizations would also be allowed to provide pot products to a vastly expanded patient base if a constitutional amendment on the November ballot passes. That proposed constitutional amendment would allow patients with a variety of conditions to have access to full-strength marijuana.

With chunks of cash coming from the business community, Gov. Rick Scott’s “Let’s Get to Work” political committee raised at least $250,000 in March, according to information posted on its website.

Candidates and political committees face an April 11 deadline for filing state campaign-finance reports showing activity through the end of March.

The Let’s Get to Work website lists contributions through March 25. The biggest contribution, $100,000, came from a PAC called “Floridians for a Stronger Democracy,” which has ties to the business group Associated Industries of Florida and has received money from major corporations.

As an example, Florida Power & Light funneled $600,000 to Floridians for a Stronger Democracy in January, according to the state Division of Elections website.

Other large contributions to Let’s Get to Work in March included $25,000 from “Florida Jobs PAC,” which is affiliated with the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and $25,000 from the security company ADT, according to the Let’s Get to Work website.

EDITORIAL

A4

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

History did not begin yesterday “We – all of us representing countless nationalities – have a message for those who inspired or carried out the attacks here or in Paris, or Ankara, or Tunis, or San Bernardino, or elsewhere: We will not be intimidated...We will not be deterred. We will come back with greater resolve – with greater strength – and we will not rest until we have eliminated your nihilistic beliefs and cowardice from the face of the Earth.”

– Secretary of State John Kerry On March 22, 2016, three coordinated suicide bombings occurred in Belgium: two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, and one at Maalbeek metro station in Brussels. In these attacks, 32 innocent travelers and three suicide bombers were killed, and over 300 people were injured.

On November 13, 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis. Three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in central Paris. The attackers killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan, where they took hostages before engaging in a stand-off with police. Another 368 people were injured, 80-99 seriously.

Direct links Even though ISIS or ISIS-affiliated groups claimed responsibility, it has now been determined that there are more direct links between the bombings in Belgium and the bombings in France. According to The New York Times, European investigators and the Belgian prosecutor’s office have determined that DNA matches show that one of the bombers who blew himself up at the Brussels Airport had been a bomb maker who helped pro-

DR. WILMER J. LEON III TRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM

duce two suicide vests used in the November Paris attacks.

As I listened to the news coverage of the most recent tragedy in Belgium I quickly concluded that these attacks were cowardly, reprehensible and immoral. The killing of civilians to further whatever perverted “religious” and/or political agenda ISIS claims has no place in a civilized society.

From there, my thoughts quickly turned to places like The Congo (formerly known as The Belgian Congo), Vietnam, Algeria (formally French Algeria), and Haiti. These countries are some the former colonies and playgrounds of the global imperial hegemons of the world.

I realized that in spite of the monotonous and myopic coverage of the Belgium attack by all the media outlets, history did not begin yesterday.

Millions killed What has been lost in the Eurocentric coverage of this atrocity is the historic fact and context that King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for the deaths and mutilation of between 5 million to 10 million Congolese during the late 1800s.

In the 27 years (1885-1912) Leopold II ruled the Congo, he overworked, underfed and massacred Africans by cutting off their hands and genitals, flogging them to death, holding children ransom and burning villages. These atrocities were committed to control the land and its people, and extract its resources (primarily rubber). The spoils of modern-day Belgium owe much

No more Black celebrity charter school crooks Celebrities they say, are people who are famous for being well known. Entrepreneurs, in popular lore, are those with a talent for detecting opportunities to get paid, in much the same way crocodiles and sharks smell blood in distant waters. So the celebrity entrepreneur is all about finding ways to leverage that celebrity to get paid.

In this neoliberal age of privatization, the surest way for the well-connected to get paid is to bribe public officials to help you convert public assets into your private property.

Look at entrepreneur Ervin “Magic” Johnson, who gave Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel a perfectly legal $250,000 cam-

BRUCE A. DIXON BLACK AGENDA REPORT

paign donation and received an $80 million contract to replace the formerly unionized janitors in Chicago Public Schools. That’s entrepreneurship. Now principals in some of those schools are buying mops and brooms out of their own pockets to keep the filth at bay.

Different rules Since the Clinton era, char-

Trump’s whining supporters have limited influence It’s very disturbing to see and hear Black television and radio commentators, newspaper columnists, politicians, and civil rights “leaders” talk and write about Donald Trump’s most ardent low-income and workingclass White supporters as though they have real power in this country.

Those Whites, we are told with certainty, are the biggest threat to

A. PETER BAILEY TRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM

our efforts for equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity. It just ain’t so.

Throughout this country’s his-

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: TAX HAVENS

to the people of the Congo River Basin.

As the world cries and mourns for those who lost their lives and were injured in the Belgian bombings and their families and loved ones, I asked myself, “Who cried for Leopold’s victims, their families and loved ones?”

Has anyone tried to make them whole?

It is important to understand that Black lives really do matter; they always have. History did not begin yesterday.

STEVE SACK, THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

Other victims As I think about the atrocities in France and pray for the victims and their families, I think about the actions of France in the colonization of Vietnam, Algeria and Haiti. All of these countries have been victimized by the colonial and imperialist forces of France.

Vietnam – or what was formerly a part of French Indochina – was victimized by three waves of French genocide. From as far back as 1850, France occupied Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. From 1940-1946, the Vichy French Colonial Army aided in the confiscation of rice for export to Japan and starved up to a million Vietnamese during that period. From 1950-1954, fresh French troops – brought back into Vietnam in U.S. ships – murdered Vietnamese for eight years.

In what was known as French Algeria from 1954 through 1961, France slaughtered 960,000-1.5 million Algerians in the Algerian War for Independence.

In Haiti in 1791, enslaved Africans revolted against French rule, and in 1804 they defeated Napoleon’s armies and founded the world’s first Black republic. This victory was not without a cost. Former French slave owners demanded reparations for their losses and petitioned the French government for payment.

In 1825, King Charles X of

France demanded that Haiti pay the French for the value of their lost slaves. Haiti was forced to finance this debt through the French bank. France sent warships off the cost of Haiti to force the Haitian government into compliance. This was similar to the tactic used by the United States to capture the Sandwich Islands – what is now Hawaii – in 1893.

Despite many international calls for France to repay Haiti for the funds that were extorted, to this day France refuses to repay Haiti and Haitians continue to suffer.

No justification This historical accounting and context is in no way an attempt to validate or justify the recent heinous attacks. However, all things must be examined within the broader historical context in which they exist as we search for answers to the question, “Why?” In talking about the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X talked about a “climate of hate” existing in both the domestic and international spheres. If America, France, Belgium and other allied countries are serious about solving the current scourge of terrorism, they are going to have to do some re-

ter school investments get automatic tax credits that allow investors to double their money in as little as seven years. Thanks in part to vigorous lobbying on the state and federal levels by charter schools and their investors and contractors the charter school industry is not subject to the same instructional, operational, fiscal and accounting, or conflict of interest rules as actual public schools.

In most states it’s perfectly legal for a charter school operator to give her brother the maintenance contract, her sister the instructional contract and her cousin the textbook contract, to replace the teachers with computer programs, while her own privately held company rents and subleases the school building at a hefty markup, all with public money, and misleadingly call yourself a “public school.”

So it’s no surprise that Black celebrity entrepreneurs want in on the charter school racket. Magic Johnson’s name is on a profitable charter school diploma mill

chain that substitutes computers for human teachers and awards quick high school diplomas not in its own name but in the name of the public school the student dropped out or was pushed out of. If that’s not educational fraud, it’s hard to imagine what is.

Deion Sanders and Jalen Rose have charter school train wrecks named after them, and they’re far from alone. The truth is that Black celebrity charter schools are not about giving back, they’re about cashing in. If Black celebrities cared about education for Black children they’d be siding with parents, students and communities instead of with their investment portfolios.

tory, Whites from those classes consistently voted their racial prejudices over their own economic interests.

illness away from having to declare bankruptcy. Yet many – if not most of them – strongly opposed universal health care because they have been convinced that such programs mainly help Black folks. They believe this, despite the fact that the United States government has never created assistance programs designed specifically for us.

The real deal is that low-income, working class Whites have limited influence over how this country operates. They don’t have real power. That is in the slick hands of the big banks, big oil companies, big insurance companies, big drug companies, big investment houses, big think tanks, big colleges and universi-

‘Because you’re White’ “You may be low-income or working class,” they are repeatedly told, “but you are superior to any Black man or woman because you are White.” All any power force had to do when opposing government assistance programs was to tell low-income, working class Whites that the chief beneficiaries of such programs will be Black folks.

Look at the Affordable Care Act. Practically every White family in the above-mentioned classes are one catastrophic family

Diddy’s turn The latest entries in the charter school feeding frenzy are Sean “Diddy” Combs, with accomplices Steve Perry and Iyanla Vanzant. Together, they’re fronting what’s called the Capital Preparatory Harlem Charter School, apparently part of the chain of Capital Preparatory operated

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

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al soul searching and determine how they have contributed to this “cultural global warming” or “climate of hate.” You cannot defeat an ideology with a military. You can only defeat an ideology with a better ideology.

Can’t be ignored As the West has continued to flourish, it cannot ignore its past.

The damage and destruction perpetrated against entire peoples and cultures that contributed to the growth of America, France, Belgium and others, still resonates within those former colonized societies.

To find long-lasting solutions to this current situation, one must remember that history has a long moral arc and it did not begin yesterday.

Dr. Wilmer Leon is producer/ host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon,” on SiriusXM Satellite radio channel 126, and a teaching associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University.

Contact him via www.wilmerleon.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

by Steve Perry, who’s not much more of an “educator” than Diddy, and has a history of abusive and threatening public rhetoric, and advocating the mass firing of qualified, experienced teachers – especially Black ones.

Despite PR flourishes like calling its teachers “illuminators,” and occasional references to “social justice,” Diddy’s charter school venture looks a lot more like another parasitic business venture than any kind of real educational institution.

It’s time we looked a lot closer at Black celebs who claim to be “giving back,” and at their kind of Black “success stories” as well.

The last thing we really need now is more Black celebrity charter school crooks... I mean entrepreneurs.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport. com. Contact him at bruce. dixon@blackagendareport. com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response. ties, big internet companies, big agricultural combines and big construction companies. They are the powerful forces that are denying equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity to Black folks.

These are the puppeteers who run this country; not the whining low-income, working-class White puppets who swoon over Donald Trump.

Contact A. Peter Bailey at apeterb@verizon.net, or 202716-4560. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

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APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

Trump rightly questions America’s foreign policy If the Bernie Sanders campaign has propelled the word “socialism” into common, benign American usage, Donald Trump may have done the world an even greater service by calling into question the very pillars of U.S. imperial policy: the NATO alliance; the U.S. nuclear “umbrella”; the global network of 1,000 U.S. bases; military “containment” of China and Russia; and U.S. “strategic” claims in the Persian Gulf.

Were the U.S. to actually rid itself of these strategic “obligations,” the military hand on the Doomsday Clock would immediately be rolled back, giving humanity the breathing space to tackle other accumulated crises.

Of course, Donald Trump may over time rephrase, reverse or “clarify” out of existence some of his profoundly anti-imperial, “America First” foreign policy points, elicited in extended interviews with major U.S. media.

Destroying assumptions However, if Trump’s tens of millions of White so-called “Middle American” followers stick by him, despite his foreign policy heresies – as seems likely – it will utterly shatter the prevailing assumption that the American public favors maintenance of U.S. empire by military means.

If the rank-and-file right wing of the Republican Party is not a pillar of such policies, then who is? Rank-and-file Black, White and Brown Democrats? If the Trump candidacy can continue to thrive while rejecting the holiest shibboleths of the bipartisan War Parties, then we must conclude that the whole U.S. foreign policy debate is a construct of the corporate media and the corporate-bought duopoly political establishments. Thus, there is no popular consensus for U.S. militarism and no true mass constituency for war in either party.

If Donald Trump is to be the catalyst for such a revelation, then may all the gods bless him – because lots of assassins will be out to kill him.

No mistake Trump’s language is sloppy, but there can be no mistaking the thrust of his position on key points.

He calls NATO, the globe-strutting Euro-American military juggernaut that extended its domain to Africa with the 2011 war of regime change in Libya, an alliance that is “unfair, economically, to us.” Trump told the New York Times that NATO should focus on “counter-terrorism” – clearly a fundamentally scaled-down

URSULA WOLFEROCCA GUEST COMMENTARY

mission.

He repeated his often-expressed willingness to withdraw U.S. forces from Japan and South Korea, where American troops have been stationed since the end of World War II – unless both countries pay a lot more money to maintain them. Trump actually seems eager to get out of the region, based on the number of times he has brought the subject up in his campaign.

As with everything else in the Trump paradigm, he hooks the alliance to his quest for a “better deal” – but the point is that he doesn’t think the “price” of the far-flung U.S. military commitment is “worth it.”

Trump’s stated intention to renegotiate virtually all of the “deals” the U.S. has made around the world – the military architecture of imperialism – means he No ‘nation-building’ is pointedly applying a cost-benThe presidential candidate efit test to the 1,000 U.S. bases shows no interest in “spreadaround the globe. He is reluctant to offer other nations the “pro- ing democracy,” like George W. tection” of U.S. nuclear weapons. Bush, or assuming a responsibility to “protect” other peoples from their own governments, like Crucial point Barack Obama and his political Trump does not accept the twin, Hillary Clinton. fundamental premise that these On the contrary. Trump has bases exist for U.S. security inter- stated that the U.S. should not ests. He frames them as a kind of have invaded Iraq and Libya and “service” that the clients should killed their leaders, Saddam Huspay for. Once the “national se- sein and Muammar Gaddafi, becurity” veneer is withdrawn, the cause they killed terrorists – in military-imperial rationale evap- contrast to Hillary Clinton’s maorates and all that is left is a busi- cabre cackling over Gaddafi’s ness transaction – not enough to body. He opposed the U.S. proxy call a nation to war, or to risk a war against the al-Assad governworld over. ment in Syria, for similar reasons. He even briefly defied the Saudis should pay ultimate taboo, using the word Trump appears to welcome a “neutral” to describe the stance strategic break with Saudi Ara- he would take on Palestine.

In sum, albeit sloppily – and bia, threatening to cut off U.S. purchases of oil from the king- with no guarantee that he won’t dom unless it “substantially change his mind at any moment reimburse[s]” Washington for – Trump has rejected the whole fighting the Islamic State, or un- gamut of U.S. imperial war ratioless the Saudis and the other nales, from FDR straight through rich oil states commit troops to to the present. He is busily delethe anti-jihadist battle – at their gitimizing U.S. imperial policy own expense. It’s all nonsense, since World War II. It’s not that “the Empire has no of course, since Washington and Saudi Arabia have been partners clothes;” it is being stripped of in global jihadism for two gener- its rationale to march around the planet in battle gear thanks, not ations – but so what?

Trump seems to relish the idea to Bernie, but to The Donald.

Trump has reduced White of severing the Saudi connection. “If Saudi Arabia was with- American nationalism to race, out the cloak of American pro- his “trump” card – but withtection, I don’t think it would be out his hero, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet sailing the around,” he said.

His threat to withdraw the world to plant the flag on distant “cloak” unless the potentates shores.

GOP pays lip service to Black Americans As I continue my swing through Eastern Europe, I had every intention of writing about my conversations with the all the political and business leaders that I was spending time with. I wanted to write about how the U.S. is viewed by those in Eastern Europe and the relevance of this part of the world to the U.S. But I have received so many phone calls and emails asking me about the continued firings of the few Black staffers at the Republican National Committee (RNC) that I have decided to share my thoughts on this issue and deal with Eastern Europe at a later time.

Not qualified First of all, these staffers deserved to be fired. It should have happened a long time ago. They were in way over their heads and their level of arrogance was just astonishing. But in fairness to them, they were set up for failure by the GOP from the very beginning.

Many in the party felt the need to hire Blacks, not because they really wanted to diversify the party. In some of the party’s thinking, they can’t be called “racist” because they hired a few Blacks.

I am not joking; this really is the thinking of many in the Republican Party.

pay for protection would negate the U.S. national security rationale in the Persian Gulf going back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1943 declaration that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.”

President Carter, another Democrat, upped the ante in 1980 with his doctrine that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its “national interests” in the Persian Gulf. Bush presidents One and Two were simply building on these previous national security rationales. Trump recognizes no such imperative – without which U.S. imperial policy in the region has no political basis.

Trump plays the trade card rather than the military gambit in dealing with China. He would threaten economic retaliation for China’s fortification of islands in the China Sea – not military encirclement. “We have tremendous economic power over China, and that’s the power of trade,” he said. The same, presumably, would apply to Russia.

JAMES CLINGMAN GEORGE CURRY MEDIA

can’t have engagement with the Black community without the active participation of the Republi can congressional leadership.

The RNC is not, let me repeat, is not a policymaking body in regards to legislation. But it is political malpractice to claim to want more Blacks in our party without equipping staff to go into the Black community with specific legislation that deal with issues relevant to our community.

You can’t go into the Black community and not address the issue of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court told Congress that they needed to update the formula used to determine how Section 5 is enforced.

Did nothing

Republicans have controlled both chambers of Congress since the court’s decision, but have done absolutely nothing to address this issue. Jim Sensenbrenner (RWisconsin) has tried to work on a bipartisan solution to this issue, but the House leadership has refused to let his proposed legislation come to the floor.

The Black unemployment rate Legislation needed is still teetering near 10 percent, Let me be perfectly clear. You and yet the Republican-con-

trolled Congress has made no targeted policy proposals that would address this issue. Some in leadership have made stupid statements like, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Message to leadership: Everyone doesn’t have at boat. Therefore, a rising tide would drown them.

No engagement These fired staffers had absolutely no engagement with the GOP’s congressional leaders, rank and file members, or their staffers. So to this extent, they were set up for failure.

So, you have staffers going into the Black community with no specific solutions to the problems that are important to them – voting rights, access to capital, education reform, etc.

An insult Blacks are being told that the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of lower taxes, the party of more individual freedom – yada, yada, yada.

This is where the rising tide theory becomes insulting to Blacks.

Don’t tell me that your solutions for other people’s problems will “trickle” down to me and my community as a byproduct of your legislative priorities.

They go into the Hispanic community offering amnesty; they go into the homosexual community offering protective class status; but they come to the Black community with trickle-down legislation.

No surrogates The other issue is the party has

EDITORIAL

A5

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: AMERICA’S WATER SYSTEMS

STEVE SACK, THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

Supporters don’t care The first effect of Trump’s intervention in the Republican primaries was to demonstrate that his White hordes really don’t give a damn for the GOP establishment’s corporate agenda. Indeed, Trump gave them a chance to show they hated what global capitalism has done to “their” jobs.

The fact that this cohort despises and fears non-Whites of whatever citizenship status is nothing new. It’s a constant in U.S. politics, which is why there has always been a White Man’s Party.

What makes this electoral season different – and, hopefully, a turning point in U.S. history – is that much of the rank and file of the White Man’s Party, the GOP, is rejecting the economic agenda of its corporate masters.

If the Republican voters accept Trump’s assault on the ideological rationale undergirding U.S. foreign policy and its imperial structures, there will be nothing left of the GOP for the corporate rulers to defend. The Republican house of cards is collapsing, inevitably throwing the whole duopoly system out of whack.

Break the system The job of the Left, at this historic juncture, is to ensure that the two-party duopoly is permanently broken, to create the space for a much broader national discourse and, especially, to free Black America from the “trap within a trap” of the corporate-controlled Democratic Party. As we have written before, the best scenario of 2016 would be a fracture at both ends of the Rich Man’s Duopoly.

It is insane – although perfectly explainable – that the most leftish constituency in the nation, Black America, is aligned with the right wing of the Democratic Party in the person of Hillary Clinton, while White Democrats

man the barricades for the nominal socialist, Bernie Sanders.

Blacks are the most pro-peace ethnicity in the nation, but have also been the indispensable bloc behind Hillary Clinton, the warmonger who is on her way to becoming the sole candidate of both Wall Street and the Pentagon.

In trouble It is magnificent, grand and glorious that the duopoly system is in deep trouble. But it is sad beyond measure that the near-extinction of independent Black politics has placed AfricanAmericans in the most untenable position imaginable at this critical moment: in the Hillary Clinton camp.

Fortunately, key elements of the movement for Black lives have pledged not to endorse any candidates this election season.

We hope that they stick with that commitment, continue to build a grassroots movement, and resist the corporate Democratic hegemony that has strangled and subverted Black politics for the past 40 years.

Push now This electoral season will see massive realignments of parties and coalitions – events that will happen whether Black people are organized or not. But Black self-determination is only moved forward if people push it.

The most optimum time to press issues of Black self-determination is when the larger polity is in flux, such as exists today – thanks, in great measure, to the racist billionaire, Donald Trump.

Glen Ford is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com. Email him at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Blacks are being told that the Republican Party is the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of lower taxes, the party of more individual freedom – yada, yada, yada. This is where the rising tide theory becomes insulting to Blacks. Don’t tell me that your solutions for other people’s problems will “trickle” down to me and my community as a byproduct of your legislative priorities. no understanding of political optics when it comes to the Black community. You have no Blacks be they staffers or surrogates, that represent the Republican Party on radio, TV, or in newspapers.

Typically, Republicans are only interested in hiring folks they are comfortable with, not Blacks who know what the hell they are doing. They hire Blacks who are afraid to go up against groups like the NAACP or The National Urban League; they feel like “they [RNC] needs them [Black groups] more than they need us.” This is a direct quote by a staffer to me.

You have people inside the RNC who actually think they know more about the Black community than Blacks. I am speaking from personal experience.

The party needs to hire Blacks like Allegra McCullough, Shannon Reeves, or Jennifer Carroll to have total control over engagement with the Black community, then empower them to hire millennials to work under their leadership.

These three people are adults who cannot be bullied by RNC staff into being timid and subservient. They have relationships with the Black business community throughout the country. They have personal relationships with various members of Congress, and know how to get them to move on specific legislation relevant to the Black community.

So you can hire all the Blacks that you want. Butt if the hiring is not paired with specific policy initiatives, the party will once again show that it is not serious about engagement with the Black community.

Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC, a D.C.public relations/government affairs firm. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

TOJ A6

NATION

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016 Organizers have turned prime time at the conventions into ads for their candidates and platforms, featuring speakers or videos adept at wooing persuadable viewers.

Those viewers now have a stake in the process they didn’t have long ago. “Primaries put an end to brokered conventions,” said Carter Wrenn, a veteran Republican strategist based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Unbound delegates

ANTONIO PEREZ/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

Republican candidate for president John Kasich rallies the crowd of hundreds during his town hall rally on March 9 at the Navistar Atrium in Lisle, Ill.

How brokered convention would work still unclear Presidential nominee decision could lead to plenty of drama in Cleveland

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — The 2016 Republican National Convention is shaping up as a free-forall where every delegate is a kingmaker, rules could change and no one will have an easy time figuring out what’s going on.

In other words, no brokered convention. There aren’t any more brokers.

“This is not something that will be decided wholesale,” said Morton Blackwell, a Virginia Republican national committeeman and

rules expert.

Smoke-filled rooms? No. Smoking isn’t allowed inside Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena, where the four-day convention convenes July 18.

“If there is a back room, it’ll have yogurt and granola in it,” said Katon Dawson, former South Carolina Republican chairman.

Cameras everywhere Front-runner Donald Trump currently leads the Republican field with 736 delegates, trailed

by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas with 463, and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio with 143. A candidate needs 1,237 for the nomination.

Cruz’s forces see momentum, and talk of a multi-ballot convention is growing.

If that happens, Republican

Chairman Reince Priebus has promised transparency.

“If it’s an open convention, then we’re going to have to be clear, open and transparent on what the rules say and how they’re administered. And it will be very clear and there will be a camera — cameras at every step of the way,” he said last Sunday on ABC. On the first ballot, virtually all delegates are bound to their candidates. Most are freed on a second ballot, and by the third ballot, almost anything goes.

Looked presidential Brokers, smoke-filled rooms and multiple ballots used to be standard ways to pick the nominee. The smoke-filled room got its name 96 years ago, when the Republican convention couldn’t

agree on a nominee.

A handful of powerful senators adjourned to a room at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel to break the logjam. They discussed several candidates, and around 2 a.m. they sent for Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio. His chief asset: He looked like a president, and later that year he won the election.

“His dark complexion contrasting with blue eyes and white hair … gave the appearance of mental and physical vigor,” Francis Russell wrote in American Heritage Magazine in 1963.

Post primetime event The last Republican nominee to be picked after the first ballot was Thomas Dewey in 1948.

Since then, the rise of television and primaries have spurred party leaders to get the nomination over with quickly.

In recent conventions, the roll call of the states — a lengthy affair with virtually no drama and lots of short speeches promoting each state — has sometimes begun after 11 p.m., after major networks ended convention coverage.

Thirty-nine states are holding Republican primaries this year.

In 1948, there were 12, and four chose “unpledged delegates at large.”

Delegates then were chosen largely by party bosses, usually for their loyalty. Today, most delegates are savvy activists. Once unbound on a second or third ballot, they’re likely to fall into two groups: one concerned about promoting an ideology, the other about electability.

The first fight might come in the convention’s rules committee, which will have 112 delegates: two from each state, territory and the District of Columbia. Currently, the rules dictate that only candidates who’ve won majorities of delegates in at least eight states can be nominated.

So far, only Trump has met that threshold, though Cruz is close, and the committee could change the rules.

Eight-state rule The committee is highly unpredictable. Most members haven’t been picked yet, and once they are, no one knows whether they’ll change the rules.

Priebus noted that the eight-state rule was put in place four years ago.

“So it is true that the 2016 rules committee will review the rules and they will decide on what the rules are for the 2016 convention,” he said.

“That all being said, you know, major changes to the rules are very — are not very common,” he added.

On the floor, too, it’s impossible to say how delegates will be influenced. Many have not been chosen. That often comes later in the process, at party meetings, and can also be unpredictable.

In Louisiana, for instance, Trump won the primary, but Cruz could wind up with more delegates. And there’s some talk in South Carolina about whether delegates would be bound to Trump on a first ballot, after he said last week that he would no longer be bound by his pledge to support a Republican nominee.

Knife linked to former Simpson property not connected to case TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

The GEO Group is billed as the world’s leading provider of correctional, detention, and community re-entry services.

Caucus urged to cut ties with private prisons

Akin Gump, the lobbying firm that makes millions lobbying to protect their private prison client, Corrections Corporation of America, from increased regulation and transparency.”

Color of Change says CBC PAC shouldn’t accept funds from institutions that target Blacks

Millions to candidates

BY FREDERICK H. LOWE TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

Color of Change, the nation’s largest online civil rights organization, is in the midst of a national campaign to force the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) to sever corporate ties with a lobbyist for the private prison industry.

Color of Change wants the CBC PAC to reorganize its board so new board members won’t accept funds from groups that advocate for private prisons, which Color of Change argues targets African-Americans.

There are about 130 private prison companies and they have combined annual revenues of $3.3 billion.

Includes Florida group The two largest are Corrections Corporation of America, which is based in Nashville, Tenn., and GEO Group, which is based in

Boca Raton, Florida.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) who was seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for president before he dropped out the race, is closely associated with GEO Group, according to The Washington Post.

The CBC PAC said in a statement that it works to increase the number of African-Americans in the U.S. Congress, support nonBlack candidates that champion our interests, and promote African American participation in the political process.

‘Worst of the worst’ Color of Change claims the lobbyists, some of whom are CBC PAC board members, are not working in the best interests of the Black community.

“The lobbyists and corporate funders wielding influence over the CBC PAC represent the worst of the worst,” Color of Change wrote in an email to supporters.

“Perhaps the most disturbing corporate funders of the CBC PAC are the lobbyists from the private prison industry. Ironically, both Democratic presidential candidates have shunned contributions from private prison lobbyists but the CBC PAC has taken thousands of dollars from

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld is an international law firm based in Washington, D.C. Its current and former employees are a who’s who of former Congressman, governors, cabinet officials and presidential advisors.

Vernon Jordan, former advisor to President Bill Clinton and former head of the National Urban League, is one of the firm’s top officials. The firm employs 900 lawyers.

Color of Change added, “Private prison companies are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses, targeting Black communities in America….”

Over the past 25 years, CCA and GEO Group, the two largest private prison operators, have given $10 million to candidates and spent $25 million lobbying for laws that put more people in prison.”

In 2015, The Washington Post published an article headlined, “How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about.”

This story is special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com.

LOS ANGELES – Forensic testing concluded that a knife reportedly found at the former home of O.J. Simpson is not connected to the 1994 homicide case, Los Angeles police confirmed on April 1.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) performed a variety of forensic tests on the knife before make the conclusion.

Sources told the Los Angeles Times last month a preliminary review suggested that the weapon appeared to be unconnected to the brutal 1994 slayings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Simpson was tried for murder but a jury found him not guilty.

The weapon has been described as a relatively small buck knife, and some experts in the case say that is different

from the type of knife investigators believe was used in the killings.

Officer had it The knife was supposedly found while crews were tearing down the Simpson estate in Brentwood after the property changed hands.

A retired Los Angeles police officer given the knife found by the construction worker called the LAPD to report it years ago, his attorney said.

When the department showed no interest, the retired officer, George Maycott, put it in his toolbox for more than a decade, attorney Trent Copeland said.

Copeland said Maycott, who retired in 1998, was working security on a movie set around 2003 when a construction worker at the demolished estate handed him the knife.

KEN LUBAS/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Heavy machinery tears into the former home of O.J. Simpson in a July 1998 file image as demolition crews raze the home in Los Angeles’ Brentwood neighborhood. Police recently tested a knife that was reportedly recovered from the property.

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IFE/FAITH

Dietitian’s advice: Put down that salt shaker See page B3

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

SHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE

SOUTH FLORIDA / TREASURE COAST AREA

A glance at Don Cheadle’s busy, creative life See page B5

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WWW.FLCOURIER.COM

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The Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage generally books about 60 entertainers per cruise. Headliners for this year’s 17th cruise include a legendary group of performers - Diana Ross, Patti LaBelle, Charlie Wilson and New Edition.

Mr. Cheeks, Whodini, Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes, Eddie Holman, Blue Magic featuring Ted Mills and Russell Thomkins Jr.& The New Stylistics.

“The Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage presented

by Ford is one of those special experiences that stay with you forever. We’ve sold out annually for 16 years because we have set a precedent of premiere entertainment, outstanding service, and an unmatched purpose of supporting our students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” Joyner said.

Still time to board Tom Joyner’s

Fantastic Voyage

Cruise that supports students at HBCUs sets sail April 23 from Fort Lauderdale Legendary singer Diana Ross will be a featured headliner on the Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage presented

by Ford.

Referred to as the original “Party with a Purpose,” the cruise also will feature Charlie Wilson, Patti LaBelle, New Edi-

Fun, philanthropy Tom Joyner and his crew from the “Tom Joyner Morning Show’’ will be on the cruise. Shown with him is his longtime co-host Sybil Wilkes along with comedian J. Anthony Brown, seated.

Carnival Breeze, which departs from Miami on April 23.

The customized eight-day itinerary includes visits to St Thomas, St. Maarten and Grand Turk. It includes guest activities, empowering seminars, theme nights, and day parties.

tion and Jazmine Sullivan as it sets sail to support students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU). The Fantastic Voyage takes place on the

Cruise lineup The Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage, hosted by the renowned radio personality and philanthropist, is the longeststanding music themed and

empowerment cruise.

Along with the aforementioned artists, other performers scheduled this year are Johnny Gill, Angie Stone, Jazmine Sullivan, Faith Evans, Total, 112, Carl Thomas, The BarKays, Con Funk Shun, Switch, Brick, Steve Arrington, Tony Terry, Glenn Jones, Michael Cooper, Jon B, Case, Christopher Williams, Bone Thugs-nHarmony, DJ Quick, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Rob Base, Black Sheep, Dana Dane, Kwame, DJ Kool, Joeski Love, Positive K,

Ford’s sponsorship of the Fantastic Voyage is part of Ford Motor Company’s overall support of education in the AfricanAmerican community.

Each year, Ford invests millions of dollars in educational programs that include scholarships, innovative elementary, middle and high school programs, STEM initiatives and other opportunities.

The Tom Joyner Foundation started its annual voyage to raise money for HBCUs in 1999 as the first to ever charter and program an entire ship.

Now in its 17th year, the Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage also is the only charter that promotes philanthropy in a fun and uplifting environment.

For more information on the cruise and a full list of entertainment, visit BlackAmericaWeb.com.

CALENDAR

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APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

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South Florida park named after civil rights leaders THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

JAGGED EDGE

BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA & MAVIS STAPLES

Funk Fest 2016 takes place April 16 at the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando. Performers will include Faith Evans, New Edition, Kenny “Babyface’’ Edmonds, Jagged Edge, Uncle Luke and The 69 Boyz.

More information: www.funkfesttour. com.

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Coral Gables: The Women of Praise Mother’s Day Concert is May 8 at the BankUnited Center. Performers will include Shirley Caesar, Vickie Winans, Regina Bell and Dorinda Clark-Cole.

The renowned artists will be in concert May 4 at the Au-Rene Theater at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale and the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. ent 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: Wanda Sykes is scheduled at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood on April 17 for a 7 p.m. show.

Hollywood: A May 10 concert will feature George Benson and Boney James at Hard Rock Live.

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

Fort Lauderdale: The Dillard Center for the Arts and the Old Dillard Museum will pres-

Miami: Beyonce’s Formation World Tour stops at Marlins Park on April 27 and

Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on April 29.

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

Orlando: Catch Floetry at the House of Blues Orlando on May 8.

Pompano Beach: Keith Sweat and Silk are scheduled April 30 at the Pompano Beach Amphitheater for a

7:30 p.m. show.

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 407876-4991.

Naples: The Collier County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority will present a Red Shoe Fashion Show and Luncheon at noon May 21 at The Colosseum, 2059 E. Tamiami Trail. Tickets are $50. More information: Kimcartis@gmail.com.

Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday signed a bill that will rename a state park in Broward County to honor civil rights activists who led efforts to integrate beaches.

The bill (SB 288), sponsored by Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, and Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, will rename the John U. Lloyd Beach State Park as the “Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.”

Dr. Von Mizell, the founding president of the Broward NAACP, petitioned for the creation of a beach for Black residents in 1946 and continued pursuing the issue for years, according to information released Wednesday by the Senate Dr. Von Mizell Minority Office.

The county ultimately bought a site but didn’t build an access road or other facilities. That led in 1961 to Johnson, who was then the president of the local NAACP, leading “wade-ins” at White-only Fort Lauderdale beaches, according to House and Senate bill analyses.

The city sought an injunction to end the wade-ins, but a court re- Eula fused, effectively ending segre- Johnson gation of beaches in the county, the analyses said. The state bought the park from the county in 1973 and named it after Lloyd, who served as county attorney from 1945 to 1975. The park includes 310 acres and goes from Port Everglades Inlet to Dania Beach.

Albright, Bryson to perform at Seabreeze Jazz Festival The Seabreeze Jazz Festival is April 20-24 in Panama Beach. The three-day festival will feature Michael Albright, Mindi Abair, Peabo Bryson, Jonathan Butler, Brian Culbertson, Boney James, Najee, along with other artists.

The complete lineup of artists and other information about Michael the festival is available at www. Albright seabreezejazzfestival.com.

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TOJ

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

HEALTH

B3 Risk for diseases Additionally — especially for people with diabetes and high blood pressure — excess sodium puts the squeeze on blood flowing through arteries and can increase the risk for stroke and other types of heart disease.

So for the sake of our dear arteries, let’s say we want to cut back on sodium.

Here’s what we need to know: One teaspoon of salt contains 2,300 milligrams of sodium — the current recommended daily limit.

So less salt shaking is a good idea.

Most of the sodium we consume does not come from the salt shaker, however. Three-fourths of the sodium in our collective American diet comes from … ready? … restaurant meals and processed foods.

Processed foods are pretty much anything in a package.

Soups, sandwiches, chips, deli meats … it’s in there.

Read labels

FOTOLIA/TNS

One teaspoon of salt contains 2,300 milligrams of sodium, the current recommended daily limit.

Dietitian’s advice: Put down that salt shaker

BY BARBARA QUINN MONTEREY COUNTY HERALD TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

How much is too much sodium? Depends who you ask.

According to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans — based on the latest evidence from reliable research studies — more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day may be

harmful to your health. People with high blood pressure (hypertension) should not exceed 1,500 milligrams of sodium daily according to these newest guidelines.

Other experts don’t necessarily agree, so what else is new?

They point to studies that observed no direct link between higher intakes of sodium and a higher risk for heart attack. Fur-

thermore, not everyone is sensitive to the blood pressure raising effect of sodium; some people can eat tons of salt (well, maybe not that much) and their blood pressure stays normal.

We’re not off the hook yet, though. Excess sodium can damage the body in other ways, according to new evidence reviewed by experts at the University of Delaware. It can damage

Excess sodium puts the squeeze on blood flowing through arteries and can increase the risk for stroke and other types of heart disease. the lining of blood vessels and contribute to “hardening of the arteries.” Too much sodium can also weaken the heart and the kidneys, say researchers.

Start reading labels and compare the sodium content of your favorite foods. For reference, a food with less than 140 milligrams of sodium per serving is considered “Low Sodium” according to regulations.

Replace high sodium foods with those high in potassium. Experts say potassium-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans and low fat dairy products help counteract the harmful effects of excess sodium.

Don’t panic. Our taste for salt is an acquired taste; the more we use, the more we think we need.

When we start to cut back, our taste buds adjust very nicely.

By the way, there is very little difference in sodium content between the popular sea salt varieties and regular table salt. Although sea salt may have trace amounts of minerals like magnesium, potassium, and calcium, it is still salt — 40 percent sodium and 60 percent chloride.

Barbara Quinn is a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. She is the author of “Quinn-Essential Nutrition” (Westbow Press, 2015). Email her at barbaraquinn88@yahoo.com.

Old makeup can be hazardous to your health MAYO CLINIC NEWS NETWORK TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

There’s something lurking at the bottom of your makeup bag, and it’s not pretty.

According to Mayo Clinic Health System Dermatology physician assistant Mary Duh, old and expired cosmetics harbor dangerous amounts of bacteria.

This not only directly affects the individual wearing the makeup, but it also can affect anyone they come in contact with.

“Makeup can be infected with bacteria after only one use. The bacterium builds up over time and can cause harm to a person’s skin, eyes, lips and overall health,” says Duh. “When makeup gets old, it starts to break down, and this can cause issues from irritation and inflammation to rashes, blisters, eye infections and pink eye.”

In rare cases, women have even been temporar-

ily or permanently blinded by an eye cosmetic, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Rules for use Duh offers these rules for healthy cosmetic use: Look through your old makeup for chemical changes, including: a rancid odor, color change, changes in texture or consistency, and makeup becoming crusty/clumpy.

Protect your skin from the sun. Most foundations have some level of SPF. Expired makeup is less effective when protecting against the sun, which can cause painful and dangerous skin burns.

Never share cosmetics.

Cross contamination occurs when two or more people use the same application tools and makeup. The main danger with sharing makeup is passing an infection or virus.

Wash your hands and cosmetic tools before ap-

Appeals court backs DCF in nursing home expenses case THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

An appeals court Monday sided with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) in a dispute about expenses for a woman who went into a Tallahassee nursing home after suffering a spinal-cord injury in an accident.

The 1st District Court of Appeal issued a pair of opinions that upheld a department decision in an administrative case and rejected patient Gabrielle

Goodwin’s attempt to be a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit.

The dispute centered on Goodwin applying for help with nursing-home costs through what is known as the Institutional Care Program in Medicaid, according to the opinion in the administrative case. Beneficiaries in the program are required to cover co-payments based on their income levels.

Goodwin became eligible for the program effective in December 2011, and the Department of

FOTOLIA/TNS

It’s time to toss that old and expired makeup from your cosmetic bag. plying eye cosmetics. The bacteria on your hands and brushes increase the chance for an eye infection or allergic reaction.

Don’t store cosmetics at temperatures above 85 deChildren and Families said her co-payment was roughly $1,000 a month.

But Goodwin contended the amount should be lower because it did not take into consideration about $70,000 in nursingcare expenses before she was determined eligible for the program.

Deferred to DCF She appealed administratively and later filed a class-action lawsuit based on the same issues in the administrative case. A circuit court denied Goodwin’s attempt to move forward with a class-action lawsuit, and both cases were then considered by the 1st District Court of

grees Fahrenheit. Cosmetics held for long periods in hot cars, for example, are more at risk of preservatives in the makeup weakening.

When applying or removing eye cosmetics, Appeal.

In a 12-page ruling in the administrative case, the appeals court said it needed to defer to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) on the issue.

“Here, we defer to DCF’s reasonable interpretation and enforcement practice because it is the enforcing agency,’’ said the ruling, written by Judge Timothy Osterhaus and joined by judges Brad Thomas and Ross Bilbrey. “Its interpretation of Medicaid law prevails, irrespective of which interpretation we might prefer, because it is reasonable, and not clearly erroneous or contrary to law.”

be careful not to scratch the eyeball or some other sensitive area of the eye.

Scratches can cause infections and sight complications.

Date makeup when you

buy it. Write the month and year on the package with a permanent marker. If you’re not sure when to toss old makeup, six months is a good rule of thumb.

Regulators OK Anthem-Cigna insurance deal

ing the acquisition was dated March 31. In the announcement, the Office of Insurance Regulation said an analysis indicated the deal would not reduce competition in the state.

“The economic analysis found that both companies, either individually or in combination, are not a dominant factor in the Florida market and would not increase market concentration on a statewide basis,’’ the Office of Insurance Regulation said. “It also revealed that Anthem and Cigna compete only in the Medicare Advantage product market and ‘the combined entity would have a nonmaterial impact on competition.’ “

State insurance regulators have approved Anthem’s purchase of Cigna’s Florida companies as part of a broader merger of the major health insurers.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation last week announced the approval of Anthem’s application to purchase Cigna Healthcare of Florida, Inc., Cigna Dental Health of Florida, Inc. and HealthSpring of Florida, which does business as Leon Medical Centers Health Plans.

A 19-page order approv-

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More dissidents since change in U.S./Cuba relations More Cubans are now willing to speak out about their frustrations.

BY FRANCO ORDONEX TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

HAVANA — In one of her first public acts of opposition, Aymara Nieto Munoz joined three other Cuban dissidents who rushed toward Pope Francis last fall screaming “libertad” as his Popemobile arrived for a scheduled Mass at Revolution Plaza in Havana.

“In my heart, I was hurting,” Nieto said in an interview last month. “I was hurting watching my neighbors who didn’t have food for their children to eat.

There is too much pain to see.”

Nieto is part of what Cuban opposition leaders say is a growing activist network that’s sprung up since President Barack Obama began warmer relations with the communist nation 15 months ago. They say people are more willing to speak out about their frustrations as they see an opening for change in new relations with the United States.

That growth is in part the reason for the step-up in the government’s crackdown on dissent that was evident during Obama’s 48 hours on the island in March.

Dozens of activists were arrested before Obama’s arrival.

‘Afraid to lose control’ More Cubans screaming “freedom for the people of Cuba” were handcuffed and thrown into squad cars during a downtown protest two days after Obama spoke directly to the Cuban people about the importance of human rights and peaceful dialogue.

“The government, without a doubt, is afraid to lose control,” said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a group that tracks human rights and political repression in Cuba. “They’re afraid to lose control. That is why they repress so much at demonstrations. It’s an ongoing situation.”

Dagoberto Valdes Hernandez, who runs the Catholic magazine Convivencia, said the increase in arrests reflects not only the government’s growing nervousness, but also the fact that there are more people to arrest.

“In the beginning, it was just a handful of people. Now, it’s thou-

FRANCO ORDONEX/TNS

Activists Arcelio Rafael Molina Leyva and Carlos Amel Oliva discuss human rights in Cuba from the offices of the Cuban Patriotic Union in Havana. sands,” Valdes said. “So the repression has had to increase.”

Thousands of arrests Arrests for political disobedience now top a thousand a month.

Sanchez’s human rights commission reported more than 8,600 politically motivated detentions in 2015 — a 315 percent increase from five year ago. In just the first two months of this year, there have already been more than 2,500 arrests.

The Cuban Patriotic Union, or UNPACU, the island’s largest opposition group, formed five years

ago, already boasts more than 3,500 members and sympathizers.

Carlos Amel Oliva, 28, who heads the group’s youth wing, was detained for “antisocial behavior” in March after meeting with Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

In an interview, he said the group has worked to organize in Habana Vieja, Calabazal and La Palma — impoverished neighborhoods where frustration with the government is high. The group also has opened five satellite offices for training, community support and planning dem-

onstrations.

“This type of activism didn’t exist one year ago,” Oliva said.

Preventative tactics Many activists don’t see jail cells. Short-term detentions a few hours or days long are cheaper, but also very effective to promote fear, Sanchez said.

Another recent strategy, he calls, “preventative political repression.”

That tactic consists of government authorities blocking known activists from leaving their homes or streets during highprofile events. The effort can be

as direct as posting someone at an activist’s front door to prevent anyone from coming or going.

During Obama’s visit, for example, a rotation stood outside Nieto’s front door 24 hours a day for three days, she said. They told her husband, who was also among the group that rushed Pope Francis, that if he left the house he’d be detained.

“Constantly, the patrol was changing,” Nieto said. “On Tuesday, at 6 p.m., they left, just like that.”

Obama’s plane had taken off for Argentina two hours earlier.

European anti-terror efforts crippled by lack of trust, shared intelligence “Especially in intelligence, knowledge is power,” he said. “No one willingly gives away power.”

It’s not really a secret that secrets are not shared. Hungary isn’t really trusted. France is notoriously difficult to work with.

German intelligence is a difficult-to-track mix of national and regional offices.

And that’s just inside the EU. Consider the recent Brussels attacks, which killed 32 people and wounded hundreds. Not long after the attacks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed that Turkey had deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who triggered a suitcase bomb at the Brussels Airport.

BY MATTHEW SCHOFIELD TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

BERLIN — At the beginning of this year, the acting president of the council of the European Union asked the respected International Centre for CounterTerrorism in The Hague, Netherlands, to figure out, among other things, exactly how many Europeans have gone to Syria to fight in a civil war that’s entering its sixth year.

The request, on its face, seemed simple enough. It came from the governing council of the European Union, a collection of the heads of state of the 28 member nations in the EU. Its importance has been made clear by three deadly terror attacks in the past 15 months all linked to Syria and the Islamic State.

And yet, in the end, only a rough approximation could be done. There was no EU central database and, when asked, only 23 of the countries responded. Researchers were able to use open-source materials to figure out what was going on with another three.

When the report was issued last week, there was no information for Hungary or Greece. The “estimate lies between 3,922 and 4,294,” the report said. About 30 percent of those are thought to have returned to their homes in Europe.

Needed: Common definition Undercutting the accuracy of the estimate, the report noted, was that the EU lacks “a common and agreed definition” of what exactly makes a foreign fighter.

Bibi van Ginkel, a co-author of the report who’s a counterterrorism expert in the Netherlands, said that in counterterrorism terms, the fighters and especially re-

Warnings not heeded

GARETH FULLER/PA WIRE/ZUMA PRESS/TNS

Members of the public gather at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to leave messages and tributes following the terrorist attacks on March 22. turnees who most mattered were those who’d studied and fought with the Islamic State or other anti-Western terror organizations.

“But the numbers include those who joined the nonsectarian rebels, those who took one look and fled, and those who were broken by the experience, people who aren’t likely to be threats to European governments,” she said. “A common definition of exactly who we need to be most closely watching is needed.”

Agencies don’t agree But that is made more difficult by something that is not in the report. A common definition implies a common effort, and as is the case with all European intel-

ligence-related issues, it’s pretty much every nation for itself.

“It’s always been a problem,” she noted.

A potential terrorist who enters the European Union in Spain or Italy or Denmark or Poland can travel across the rest of the EU with the same ease that an American can drive from South Carolina to North Carolina.

But when someone makes the drive in the United States, the FBI can handle the investigation in both states. In Europe there is, at best, a very limited shared security effort.

German intelligence is set up to serve German needs. French intelligence serves France. British intelligence serves the United Kingdom. Beyond the lack of a common definition on who

constitutes a threat, the disconnect has wide-ranging ramifications. For example: European intelligence agencies don’t agree on the transliteration of Arabic names.

That means a name that’s spelled one way in France can be spelled another way in Germany, and on to potentially 28 different spellings in 28 different countries. A computer search is virtually worthless — even before the notion of false identification papers comes into play.

‘Knowledge is power’ Magnus Ranstorp, an international security expert at the Swedish National Defense University, said the problems were well known but the cause wasn’t easily overcome.

Erdogan said Turkish intelligence had warned Belgium that El Bakraoui had been detained at Gaziantep along the Turkish border with Syria.

“Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism,” he said.

Ranstorp, however, noted that it’s not simple for a European nation to act on a warning from Turkey. It wasn’t long ago that many in European intelligence believed that Turkey at best turned a blind eye and at worst opened the doors to those looking to join the Islamic State.

“There’s a very low degree of trust,” he said. “Turkey has an agenda. When they tell security forces he’s a terrorist, the immediate reaction is ‘What’s their angle?’ Intel sharing is notoriously difficult.”

“Everyone is focused on their own file,” Ranstorp said. “And no one can see how it fits into the whole picture of Europe.”

STOJ

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

submitted for your approval

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.

JAY L. CLENDENIN/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS YONG KIM/PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/TNS

Villanova’s Kris Jenkins celebrates his game-winning three-point basket over North Carolina on April 4 at NRG Stadium in Houston. Villanova defeated North Carolina 77-74 due to Jenkins’ three-pointer at the ending buzzer.

“Scandal’’ star Kerry Washington has called out Adweek magazine for excessive photoshopping of a cover photo of her, noting that she was “taken aback’’ by the cover image. “In a way, we have become a society of picture adjusters – who doesn’t love a filter?!? … It felt strange to look at a picture of myself that is so different from what I look like when I look in the mirror.” She’s shown above on Feb. 28 at the Academy Awards.

Cheadle adds jazz legend to his gallery of portraits invited her to breakfast, though.

We were both hungry, is all.”

BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS CHICAGO TRIBUNE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

CHICAGO — We’re in a strangely busy cycle for musical biopics. Now in theaters, Tom Hiddleston plays singer-songwriter Hank Williams, cheatin’ and boozin’ his way through “I Saw the Light,” while Ethan Hawke portrays jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, the cool, forlorn subject of “Born to be Blue.”

Now another, greater jazz trumpeter enters the fray: Miles Davis, the chameleonic visionary at the center of “Miles Ahead.” It’s not the usual biopic.

It’s a freewheeling imagining of Davis at a creative crossroads, his mind and the movie toggling between time periods and musical styles. The more you care about the historical record and straightahead narrative conventions, the less it’ll appeal to you.

Years in development, “Miles Ahead” was produced, co-written and directed by Don Cheadle, who also stars as Davis. For the record: It didn’t happen overnight, but with stealthy technique and rock-steady instincts, Cheadle has asserted himself as one of a handful of American actors who, practically everybody agrees, is great.

He improves every project just by being in it, watching, listening, interpreting. Honestly: Do you know anyone who doesn’t admire Don Cheadle? I’d love to hear the reasons.

Busy actor The Academy Award nominee (for “Hotel Rwanda”) is all over the place, juggling assignments.

In Season 5 of the Showtime series “House of Lies,” the 51-yearold Kansas City, Mo., native continues on his merry way as rascal management consultant Marty Kaan, a J. Pierpont Finch for a new age of corporate blather.

Cheadle’s also now firmly a part of the Marvel “Avengers” movie universe, as Rhodey, aka, War Machine, Iron Man’s comrade in arms.

“Miles Ahead” is not that sort of enterprise. For one thing, Cheadle and company made it for a tick under $9 million, which

Key gangster role After a decade of guest and recurring roles on TV and small parts in the movies, Cheadle turned a wider circle of heads in 1995 opposite Denzel Washington in “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the Walter Mosley adaptation directed by Carl Franklin.

As Mouse, the gangster from the South who said little but scared everybody, Cheadle made his mark. This was a meaty, nasty, funny role, a lot more interesting than the one he played in 38 episodes of the David E. Kelley quirkfest “Picket Fences.”

‘Mister Everything’

ARMANDO L. SANCHEZ/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

Actor Don Cheadle plays the piano before talking with a member of the press at Andy’s Jazz Club on March 26 in Chicago.

Miles Davis wouldn’t pay for Robert Downey Jr.’s goatee maintenance. For another, it’s not designed to appeal to the widest possible spread of presold fans worldwide.

It’s smaller and wilder than that, focusing on a period in Davis’ life in the late ‘70s when he’d succumbed to drug-fueled reclusiveness and paranoia, before breaking through to a new career phase back in the public eye.

Financing a challenge The movie took many years and several rewrites to find backers.

“Not finding our financing for so long, and hearing so many ‘no’s, gave us a lot of time to work on the script,” Cheadle told me

recently over breakfast in Chicago. He also told me that films such as “Run, Lola, Run” (the breathless, time-skipping German thriller) had a more considerable influence on Cheadle’s ideas for “Miles Ahead” than anything in the standard-issue biopic genre.

Cheadle said there’s a misconception about the film’s other major character, a (fictional) music journalist played by Ewan McGregor. The character was there in all the drafts of the “Miles Ahead” script co-written

by Cheadle and Steven Baigelman.

“We always knew we wanted a journalist to sort of break into Miles’ life,” Cheadle said, noting that he’s a “composite of several people who didn’t know if they’d be writing a profile of Miles or an obituary.”

Cheadle does acknowledge, however, that McGregor got the project off the runway. “We cast the role in a certain way in order to get the financing,” he said.

Cheadle and company shot the New York-set “Miles Ahead” in

Cincinnati two years ago, just after Todd Haynes filmed “Carol” there.

At the restaurant table, Cheadle and I were not alone. He brought along his high school drama teacher.

Now a Chicago-area resident and freelance director, Catherine Davis cast Cheadle in a slew of shows, everything from “Oklahoma!” to “Oliver!” to “The Fantasticks,” back at East High School, part of the Denver public school system. Cheadle’s parents settled the family in Denver when Don was in fifth grade.

“Whenever I come through Chicago, I make sure to see her,” he said of Davis.

“He was fabulous,” she replied.

“Even then.”

Cheadle again: “We also wrote plays and had a mime show. I don’t know if you saw ‘The Tonight Show’ the other night, but Jimmy Fallon showed a picture from the high school yearbook of me in the mime show.” He turned his head to his right and smiled.

“This woman’s a big part of why I’m here right now. It’s not why I

The steady, blandish supporting role of the small-town Wisconsin district attorney, Cheadle said, “was a big deal for me at the time, being 12th person on the call sheet. I was the ‘heart’ of the show. The ‘spiritual center,’ and all around me it was, like, this dude’s got a foot fetish, that woman’s baby was born in a cow, and I’m stuck being the ‘soul’ of the piece.”

He’s laughing but clearly he has no trouble recalling the frustration he felt as an actor, a generation ago. “Black people, you’re either the beast or the saint.” The protagonist of “Miles Ahead” defies both extremes.

A couple of days after, I called Davis to hear more about the early ’80s Don Cheadle, the one she got to know just before he took the leap and headed west from Denver to the prestigious, progressive California Institute of the Arts.

“In the most subtle and humble way,” she told me of Cheadle’s high school career, “Don was Mister Everything. He was in everything. He was in the a cappella choir, the jazz band, he was in all my shows. He communicated with everyone. He wasn’t quiet as in ‘shy,’ but he was quietly assured in his own accomplishments.”

She paused, and added: “I think he just tries to be honest in his work. And he’s done so much that speaks so loudly without him having to brag about it.”

B6

FOOD

APRIL 8 – APRIL 14, 2016

STOJ

In a large bowl, with clean beaters, beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently add whites to the batter, folding them in with a spatula — just barely mix everything together.

Scrape batter evenly into Bundt pan. Level batter. Rap pan sharply on countertop, rotating the pan slightly each time, to eliminate any air pockets.

Bake for 30 minutes. If the cake is getting too brown on top, turn down oven to 300 degrees, then test again in 15 minutes.

The cake is done when the top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes to 1 hour in all.

Cool on a rack for 15 minutes, then run a knife around the rim and center tube and invert the cake onto the rack to cool completely.

Transfer cake to a serving plate or a cake stand. Dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Serves 16 to 20.

Dora Charles, “A Real Southern Cook” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

MICHAEL HENNINGER/PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE/TNS

Lillian Cannon of Pittsburgh uses Creole seasoning and garlic powder to help season her fried chicken.

African-American dishes: The epitome of comfort food

BY ARTHI SUBRAMANIAM PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

African-American foods bring comfort by being down-to-earth and heavenly at the same time.

While cookbook authors and home chefs hang on to recipes that were handed down from their grandmothers and mothers, they also improvise on the classics.

Fried chicken that was once seasoned with only salt and pepper gets flavored with garlic and onion powders and a host of other spices. Grits are served plain or with shrimp and even tomatillo and squash.

Vegetable shortening is replacing lard in some recipes, and smoked turkey is being used instead of ham in greens to meet changing tastes and dietary needs.

Nothing wasted Before the days of refrigeration, stews were a way of stretching foods in the house and not wasting anything. Over time they are still a way of using leftover vegetables and meats and have gotten richer in flavor with the addition of heavy cream to an oyster stew or half-and-half to a corn soup.

Sweet potato pie, also known as potato pie, remains the queen of desserts and is a must-make for any holiday. The tubers are either baked or boiled and redolent with nutmeg, cinnamon and all-spice.

Vanilla, lemon and imitation rum extracts are added in some cases for more flavor.

Pound cake is an all-occasion dessert and served plain, dusted with powdered sugar, with fruits and ice cream or sauce.

It’s important to remember African-American cooking is not monolithic.

“It is nuanced and is different from region to region depending on the availability of ingredients, cooking techniques and socio-economic bracket,” says author and food historian Jessica B. Harris.

PAM PANCHAK/PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE/TNS

Shrimp and grits with cornbread area shown at Carmi Soul Food Restaurant in Pittsburgh.

1/2 teaspoon Adobo Seasoning 1/2 teaspoon Creole seasoning

MICHAEL HENNINGER/PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE/TNS

Lillian Cannon of Pittsburgh uses Creole seasoning and garlic powder to help season her fried chicken.

FRIED CHICKEN When stand-up comic Lillian Cannon fries chicken, she starts by cooking the bigger pieces before the smaller ones and places the meat skin-side down.

Vegetable/canola oil blend for frying 8 pieces of chicken (legs, breasts and thighs) Premix seasoning (recipe follows) 1/2 cup buttermilk 1 egg, beaten 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup cornstarch 2 large resealable plastic bags Preheat oil in a deep cast-iron pan. Rinse chicken pieces, pat dry and then lay them flat on a cutting board.

Season chicken with premix seasoning and let sit for about 1 hour.

Place chicken pieces in a resealable plastic bag. Pour in the buttermilk and beaten egg.

Mix flour and cornstarch in a bowl and then pour the flour mixture into a second resealable plastic bag.

When oil is hot (test by dipping a wooden spoon in the oil; if oil starts to boil around the spoon, it is hot enough), add the meat pieces. After the bottom side of pieces turn golden brown, flip them over so that other side turns golden brown. Then flip the pieces two more times.

Carefully remove pieces with a pair of tongs, shaking off the excess oil, and place them in a pan lined with paper towel.

Serves 4.

PREMIX SEASONING 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 teaspoon paprika 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/2 teaspoon Sazon allpurpose seasoning

SWEET POTATO PIE This pie recipe from Niara Sudarkasa, the first woman to serve as president of Lincoln University in Oxford, Chester County, is delicious, aromatic and perfect in every which way.

2 eggs, beaten 2 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar 1/4 cup sugar 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1 can (12 ounces) evaporated milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 (9-inch) unbaked pastry shell Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix eggs, sweet potatoes, sugars, margarine and spices in large bowl.

Gradually beat in milk; mix thoroughly. Stir in flour until well blended.

Pour into pastry shell and bake 20 minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until set and knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Makes 8 servings.

Niara Sudarkasa, “Celebrating Our Mothers’ Kitchens” by The National Council of Negro Women (Wimmer Companies)

CORNBREAD It would be a sin to buy cornbread mix when you can make a memorable one like this one from scratch. For a wellbrowned and crisp exterior, it is best to bake it in a cast-iron skillet.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 3/4 cups fine cornmeal 1 teaspoon coarse salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1/3 cup pork crackling pieces (optional) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Add butter to an 8-inch castiron skillet and place in oven for about 10 minutes.

Combine cornmeal, salt and baking powder in a large bowl.

Whisk together well. Stir in buttermilk and egg.

Remove pan from oven.

Carefully, pour hot butter into the cornmeal mixture. Whisk together well. If using cracklings, stir them in.

Pour batter into the hot skillet.

This ensures a deep brown crust.

Place in middle rack and bake for 45 minutes. Serve warm.

Serves 6.

Nicole Taylor, “The Up South Cookbook” (Countryman Press) LOST-AND-FOUND LEMON POUND CAKE Cookbook author Dora Charles says, “Follow step by step, and it will be like no other pound cake you’ve ever eaten.”

1 pound good creamy butter, softened 1 (1-pound) box powdered sugar 1 cup sour cream 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract 1 tablespoon pure lemon extract or 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice plus grated zest of lemon 3 cups cake flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 8 large eggs, separated while cold, then brought to room temperature Powdered sugar, for dusting Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Spray a heavy 10-inch Bundt pan well with baking spray.

In a large bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat for several minutes, until the mixture is satiny. Add sour cream, vanilla and lemon extract or juice and zest and mix well.

Sift flour and baking soda.

Add 1 cup of flour mixture to the butter and mix in well. Then mix in half the egg yolks. Mix in another cup of flour and the remaining yolks. Add the rest of the flour. Don’t overmix, or the cake will be tough. Do the final mixing by hand.

SHRIMP AND GRITS Carleen King of Carmi Soul Food Restaurant got the idea for this recipe after she had shrimp and grits for the first time. She uses stone-ground grits.

For grits 4 cups water 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup grits 3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese, plus 1/4 cup for garnish For shrimp 1/2 cup salted butter 1/2 cup onion, diced small 1/2 cup green pepper, diced small 1 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined and tails removed 1 1/2 tablespoons blackened seasoning To prepare grits: Heat water and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until just simmering.

Stir grits into the water.

Cook, stirring often, until grits are tender to the bite and have thickened to the consistency of creamy oatmeal, for about 20 minutes.

As grits thicken, stir more often to keep them from sticking and scorching. When done, remove from the heat and stir in 3/4 cup cheddar cheese.

To prepare shrimp: Melt butter in a pan over medium heat. Add onion and green pepper. Saute until onions are transparent.

Add shrimp; cook until firm and pink, for about 2 minutes.

Sprinkle seasoning on shrimp and continue to cook for 1 minute.

To serve: Add 1 cup of prepared grits into 4 large bowls.

Ladle shrimp mixture equally on top of grits. Garnish with remaining cheddar cheese.

Makes 4 servings.

Carleen King, co-owner of Carmi Soul Food Restaurant SMOTHERED PORK CHOPS Restaurateur Carleen King says she improvised her grandmother’s recipe, which called for cooking the pork chops in brown onion gravy for 40 minutes on simmer until the meat fell off the bones, so that the kitchen could meet the needs of the other items on the menu.

4 pork chops (with bone) 2 tablespoons seasoning mix (combine 2 teaspoons each of seasoned salt, garlic powder and black pepper), divided 1 cup all-purpose flour, divided 1/2 cup vegetable oil for frying 2 cups water or chicken broth 1 sweet onion, thinly sliced 1 tablespoon seasoned salt 1 tablespoon garlic powder 2 teaspoons black pepper Lightly sprinkle pork chops on both sides with 1 tablespoon seasoning mix.

Combine 1/2 cup flour with 1 tablespoon seasoning mix in shallow pan. Dredge pork chops on both sides in flour mixture.

Fry pork chops in vegetable oil on medium heat until golden.

Don’t worry about cooking through because they will be cooked again later. Set pork chops aside.

To make gravy, use oil that the pork chops were fried in, and saute remaining 1/2 cup flour until brown. Stir constantly. The darker you brown the flour, the richer the gravy color will be.

When flour reaches desired color, add water or chicken broth and stir constantly while gravy thickens. Bring gravy to a full boil, then reduce heat to low.

Don’t worry if gravy mixture is a little lumpy, it will smooth out while simmering.

Stir in onion, seasoned salt, garlic powder and black pepper.

Add pork chops and simmer on low for 20 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.