Florida Courier - June 09, 2017

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JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

VOLUME 25 NO. 23

‘AMERICA’S DAD’ ON TRIAL

Bill Cosby’s lawyer grills accuser about details of alleged attack as ‘Dr. Cliff Huxtable’ tries to avoid jail.

COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

NORRISTOWN, PA. – In the nearly three years since women began stepping forward en masse to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, none ever achieved what most abuse victims wish for: a day in court.

No longer.

Andrea Constand took the witness stand at the Cosby trial Tuesday and faced off against her alleged attacker in a dramatic moment that has long been called for by survivors of sexual violence.

“There, wearing a dark-colored coat, brown tie and white shirt,” Constand said, gesturing, when asked to point out the entertainer who is accused of violating her at his Philadelphia-ar-

Supreme Court schedules Ayala arguments

ea mansion. He glanced down quickly at his clothing, then sat stoically.

Detailed testimony With that, the 44-year-old massage therapist from Toronto embarked on an emotional and detailed account of a friendship that began when she met Cosby while running operations for the women’s basketball team at Philadelphia’s Temple University in 2002.

It continued through a halfdozen dinners and social engagements in which he mentored her for a sports broadcasting career, till the night in January 2004 when she says he gave her three pills and penetrated her with his fingers.

Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand and could face a decade in jail if he’s found guilty.

Dozens of women have made similar allegations against the once-beloved celebrity, but Constand’s were the only ones recent See COSBY, Page A2

ED HILLE/PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER/TNS

Bill Cosby walks to the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa., for the second day of his sexual assault trial.

Crowdfunding for racists

2017 NBA FINALS

Winning at home

Neo-Nazi gears up to fight lawsuit

BY MATT PEARCE LOS ANGELES TIMES / TNS

COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

LOS ANGELES – A neo-Nazi blogger has been promised donations of more than $150,000 for his legal defense after the Southern Poverty Law Center sued him for organizing a “troll storm” against a Jewish woman in Montana.

The donations to Andrew Anglin and the website he founded, the Daily Stormer, came in over the course of less than two months on a crowdfunding site that caters to far-right causes, overcoming the difficulties that White nationalists often face in raising money online.

The mainstream crowdfunding websites GoFundMe and Kickstarter have policies forbidding fundraisers that promote hate speech.

TALLAHASEE – The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments June 28 in a battle about whether Gov. Rick Scott had the legal authority to transfer death-penalty cases from Orlando-area State Attorney Aramis Ayala, Florida’s first Black elected state attorney, to another prosecutor. The court issued an order Tuesday scheduling the arguments in the high-profile dispute.

Scott shifted death-penalty cases to Ocala-area State Attorney Brad King after Ayala said she would not seek death sentences, including in the case of alleged Orlando cop killer Markeith Loyd.

Ayala, who was elected last year in the circuit made up of Orange and Osceola counties, challenged Scott in the Supreme Court, arguing she has broad legal discretion in decisions about issues such as whether to pursue death sentences.

Lawyers for the state contend Scott has the authority.

Bigots raising cash The donations to support Anglin were made possible by a Californiabased site called WeSearchr, which has attracted donors hoping to fund rallies for the far-right and post “bounties” for damaging information about liberals, leftists and moderate Republicans such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

WeSearchr is run by Chuck C. Johnson, a Los Angeles blogger and right-wing provocateur who was banned from Twitter in 2015 after soliciting donations to support “taking out” Black activist DeRay McKesson.

Johnson’s business is set up to profit from people who want to donate to controversial causes. It keeps 15 percent of every donation, or three times the base rate of GoFundMe and Kickstarter. That’s more than $22,000 of the money pledged for Anglin.

The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.

NHAT V. MEYER / BAY AREA NEWS GROUP / TNS

Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson fouls Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James (formerly of the Miami Heat) in Game 2 of the NBA Finals. The Warriors won both their home games as the series travels to Cleveland for two games there.

Aramis Ayala

SNAPSHOTS FLORIDA | A3

Governor signs Dozier bill into law

ALSO INSIDE

NATION | A6

US vets deported trying to return

Blacks slam Trump’s budget

HEALTH | B4

Another challenge for HIV patients

Considering surgery? Here are questions to ask doctor

‘Free speech’ “Like my mentor Alan Dershowitz my position is the same as the ACLU’s was in Skokie: free speech even for the speech we dislike,” Johnson said to the Los Angeles Times in an email.

He was referring to a 1978 legal case in which the American Civil Liberties Union defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Ill. Dershowitz, the famous Harvard University law professor emeritus See RACISTS, Page A2

COMMENTARY: HARRY C. ALFORD: SAY ‘NO’ TO UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE | A4 COMMENTARY: ANTHONY HALL: BLACKS HAVE GIVEN WHITE LIBERALS LICENSE TO SAY RACIST THINGS | A5

FOCUS

A2

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

Here’s the lowdown on ‘Trump sheet’ I have a Facebook profile page, but I block people from posting things on my personal page.

It wasn’t a genius move that caused me to do that.

I blocked everyone because people I didn’t know were flooding my page with self-promoting advertisements, booty pictures, fight videos, hypocritical religious messages, and political attacks on people and political parties that I may have to work with sometime or someday.

I enjoy playing poker, for instance, on Facebook. Recently I have been posting brief educational and inspirational messages about Black life and righteous living.

Soon gone But my Facebook profile page will soon disappear. I’m going to delete that page and other personal social media pages I have, like the one on LinkedIn. I was late to get on the Internet. I got on because I felt it was a good way to access knowledge,

LUCIUS GANTT THE GANTT REPORT

wisdom and truth.

Well, those things may still be there. But to get to that information, you have to go through post after post of lies, false truths, misguided opinions and criminal cyber-mischief!

What irked me the most was how sites claimed your personal info could be made “private,” but the truth was that everything about you and about your Internet activity was being sold to make Internet executives and Internet companies very wealthy.

Killing our government Anyway, the misuse of the Internet is not only hurting us individually. It is killing our government.

Cyber spies and criminals have

successfully used the Internet to destroy the political candidates they dislike and to assist in the election of candidates they can control and influence.

The United States has a president that apparently coordinated with, colluded with and conspired with a foreign enemy to disrupt an American election.

‘Following’ a clown It hurts me so bad to see my people, Black people, sign up for every app that they can. Too many Blacks are on sites like SnapChat, Instagram, WhatsApp and President Trump’s favorite, Twitter!

Why in the hell would anybody want to “follow” a “Clown in Chief” on Twitter?

I’m not a Twitter guy. But from what I seen on news reports, most of Trump’s Twitter sheet is nothing but pure “bullsheet.”

(If you read The Gantt Report, you know “sheet” is a substitute for a similar- sounding word!)

I’ll say it first The president that lives by the tweet will die by the tweet!

Trump’s tweets are probably used mainly as diversions to get media to focus on things they should have ignored.

Most major media reporters of today merely parrot each other and primarily repeat stories they have read or heard from competitive news sources.

But The Gantt Report could have gotten to the bottom of all the issues being investigated by congressional committees and numerous federal, legal and private agencies long ago.

Follow bodies, money Instead of following the tweets to find out about Russian involvement with American elections and government officials, investigators should have been following the trail of dead Russians that may have been poisoned, shot or murdered in some other way to keep them silent.

Even better than that, inves-

RACISTS who reportedly once employed Johnson as a researcher, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Most of the Daily Stormer’s donors on WeSearchr are anonymous, apart from the comedian Sam Hyde, who pledged $5,000.

When contacted for comment, Hyde asked the reporter if he was Jewish and then boasted that $5,000 was nothing to him.

from A1

enough to be prosecuted. Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations for sex assault crimes is 12 years.

Friend, mentor “He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me,” Constand said of the entertainer, who served as a trustee at the Pennsylvania school.

After meeting Constand via a mutual friend, Cosby started calling her on her university-issued cellphone about issues such as renovations to the team’s facilities.

Constand described the ways Cosby would soon come to inquire about her personal life and eventually act like a patron. He introduced her to important people in the Philadelphia restaurant business, figures of distinction in the city’s university community, even a television writer and agent in New York, on trips he partly subsidized.

She showed her appreciation by calling on him often and even giving him gifts – bath salts, Temple apparel.

Warning signs?

But Constand also recounted details that raised red flags, at least in retrospect. She told of the time he invited her to his show at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and asked her to

Knowledgeable people may have been knocked off or snuffed out, but the money never dies!

Stop following “Trump chumps” and follow the Benjamins if you want to see a criminal connection.

Be careful with your Internet usage. What you post can help you. But it could also haunt you, kill you – or get you impeached!

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.

‘Terrorist’ attack In response, the Daily Stormer posted a “SAVE THE STORMER!” notice on the site and claimed it was being sued by “Jewish terrorists.” “This site will be shut down if we don’t win this,” the site says.

Anglin said that many of his supporters, including Johnson, don’t agree with his views. “People also feel very strongly about free speech, and look at attacks on free speech as something that needs (to be) fought against,” he said.

Anglin also accused the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish anti-extremism group, of trying to silence constitutionally protected speech by shutting down “my access to PayPal, credit card processors, (the crowdfunding site) Patreon, advertisers, even webhosts, with threats to defame these companies in the media.”

‘Don’t worry’

COSBY

Money lives on

by harassment, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremist groups and sometimes drives them into bankruptcy through lawsuits, sued Anglin on her behalf, alleging invasion of privacy, intimidation and infliction of emotional distress.

from A1

Hyde’s TV show on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” programming block was canceled last year, but not before Hyde amassed a following among the loosely knit movement of White nationalists, misogynists and anti-Semites that has come to be known as the alt-right.

“Don’t worry so much about money. Worry about if people start deciding to kill reporters.

That’s a quote,” Hyde said in a phone interview, laughing, when asked why he donated to support the Daily Stormer.

The Daily Stormer, thought to be the Internet’s most popular neo-Nazi website, is named after the German Nazi tabloid “Der Sturmer” and features sections titled “Jewish Problem” and “Race War.” The anti-Semitic, anti-Black and anti-Muslim articles are often written by Anglin, who is in his early 30s and from Ohio.

“The only option now is charismatic leaders and revolution,” Anglin wrote in a post Monday arguing that the West was being “invaded and conquered” by Muslims. “That is my purpose.

I want you boys to be ready for

tigators should be following the money to find a Trump campaign-Russian connection.

There may be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there is treasure trove of information in tax returns, laundered money, suspicious real estate purchases, foreign government lobbying fees, payments for foreign lectures and speaking engagements, and so on.

Dodging the lawsuit?

COURTESY OF SPLC

The Southern Poverty Law Center, located in Montgomery, Ala., specializes in filing civil rights and public interest litigation. war. Because a war is coming.”

‘Troll storm’ Anglin made headlines in December when he accused a Whitefish, Mont., real estate agent, who is Jewish, of trying to extort money from the mother of Richard Spencer, one of the na-

his room to share “baked goods,” then lay back on the bed and brushed his knee against her leg.

Or a series of awkward dinners, in which Cosby would invite her to his mansion and have the chef prepare a meal that she would then eat by herself, with Cosby popping in only occasionally to check on her.

The alleged assault She recalled a night in January 2004.

“What are they – are they natural? Are they herbal?” she recalled saying when Cosby handed her three blue pills after a dinner at his home.

“He said, ‘Put them down (your throat). They’re your friends; they’ll take the edge off,’” she said.

Constand was dubious. So many, she asked? She says he nodded and she told Cosby she trusted him – in their conversations about basketball they had discussed herbal supplements – and swallowed them all.

Things soon went awry, she testified: “I began slurring my words. I told Mr. Cosby I had trouble seeing him – that I could see two of him. My mouth was very cottony.” She said she stood up and found that her legs could barely support her.

He led her to the couch, helped her lie down and provided a pillow for support, and she lost consciousness, she testified.

An indeterminate amount of time later, she said, she was jolted awake by physical contact: “I

tion’s most prominent White nationalists. The real estate agent, Tanya Gersh, denies the claim.

On Dec. 16, Anglin asked his readers to start a “troll storm” against Gersh and posted her address and phone number as well the Twitter account belonging to Gersh’s 12-year-old son, whom

Anglin referred to using a derogatory word for Jewish people.

“You can also leave a review of her business on Google, and perhaps note that it is (a) front for an extortion racket,” Anglin wrote in the first of many posts about Gersh.

Gersh said she was barraged

felt Mr. Cosby’s hands groping my breasts under my shirt. I also felt his hand inside my vagina moving in and out. I felt him take my hand and place it on his penis and move it back and forth.”

Why didn’t she stop him? a prosecutor asked. “I wasn’t able to.”

Push him away? “In my head I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move but I was frozen and those messages didn’t get there.” She said she could only retreat into her own mind.

“I wanted it to stop,” she said on the stand, her voice cracking. “I felt really humiliated. I just wanted to go home.”

Constand said she was finally able to summon the strength at about 5 a.m. She rose and prepared to walk out the door, back to her car. She said Cosby was waiting for her in the kitchen, and offered her a muffin and tea.

She had a few bites and sips, then left.

she feared losing her job.

Prosecutors also asked why she had taken a year to come forward.

“If I went to the police, I thought Mr. Cosby would retaliate and try to hurt me,” Constand said. “What had happened to me … it was overwhelming.”

Consensual relationship Cosby’s defense maintains that he and Constand shared several consensual romantic dalliances.

He has denied assaulting Constand or any of the more than 60 other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.

On the stand, the prosecution sought to preempt one line of attack by the defense: why Constand had maintained contact with Cosby after the alleged assault. She said she had done so only because he continued to call about Temple business and

Many calls After the alleged assault, Constand acknowledged that she had called Cosby many times – sometimes several times in one day, according to phone records presented by defense lawyers.

Constand countered that while the records show that she called Cosby more times than he called her from his phone number in New York, he also called her frequently from other numbers.

She had testified Tuesday that she felt obligated to continue taking his calls after the alleged assault because she worked for Temple University, where he was a trustee.

The defense also spent time pointing out inconsistencies between the details of her testimony and a police report, such as in the circumstances preceding the alleged incident.

‘I was confused’ Constand explained during the direct examination why the accounts didn’t always square: “I was just really confused. I had a lot going through my mind.”

Constand rebuffed defense attorney Angela Agrusa’s suggestions that she had admitted in past statements to a prior roman-

Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he was “surprised” that Anglin could raise the money so quickly, saying that Anglin’s popularity was rooted in “vicious, incendiary racist rhetoric.”

Cohen also noted a problem with the case against Anglin: locating him to serve him with the lawsuit. A process server has unsuccessfully tried to find Anglin at several addresses in Ohio, Cohen said.

tic relationship with Cosby.

And while jurors focused on her responses from the stand, Cosby offered little in the way of reaction.

Whether Constand’s testimony will resonate with the jury in the way the prosecution hopes remains to be seen – experts were debating the matter after court adjourned for the day. At least in part it will depend on the rest of the cross-examination.

Other issues But strategic issues were not on the minds of some people at the trial.

Outside the courthouse, as evening crept in, Lili Bernard, a co-star of Cosby’s on “The Cosby Show” who accuses the actor of assaulting her, spoke to reporters about the testimony of Constand, whom she’s come to know over the last few years.

“She’s seldom emotional,” said Bernard, who had sat in the back of the courtroom wearing a “We stand in truth” button and holding pink gladioluses in solidarity with Constand.

“To hear her talk about something I never heard her talk about, to see her cry, was really difficult for me.

“But what I witnessed today in the courtroom is something she taught me,” the activist artist added. “Even in the most vulnerable state you can find courage.”

Jeremy Roebuck and Laura McCrystal of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times / TNS contributed to this report.

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

FLORIDA

A3

Governor signs Dozier, BP settlement bills into law

BY JIM TURNER THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – A measure that calls for creating a pair of memorials to boys who were abused at a notorious state re-

form school, and directs the reburial of remains of unidentified victims, was signed into law on June 2.

The bill (HB 7115) provides $1.2 million to cover the costs of the reburials and memorials for young-

sters who suffered physical and sexual abuse at the now-shuttered Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna. It was among 33 bills signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

“Today’s signing, cou-

pled with an official apology led by the House earlier this year, will hopefully bring some closure and healing to all those affected directly or indirectly by the atrocities that occurred at the Arthur Dozier School

for Boys,” House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land `O Lakes, said in a prepared statement.

Funds for eight counties Also signed were mea-

sures (HB 7077 and HB 7079) that will release BP oil-spill settlement money to eight Northwest Florida counties most impacted by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“Our beautiful beaches were devastated by the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” Scott said in a statement. “While the surrounding communities have worked hard to recover, this funding will allow them to make critical local investments and continue our efforts to market the state.”

The measures allocate $300 million of $400 million received by the state last year to Bay, Escambia, Franklin, Gulf, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Wakulla and Walton counties through the non-profit organization Triumph Gulf Coast.

A ‘bright, new economic future’ Kim Wilmes, president and CEO of the regional economic-development organization Florida’s Great Northwest, said the money will allow the region “to begin building that bright, new economic future.”

The bill sets minimums for how much each county will receive and expands the Triumph board from five to seven, to provide more representation from less-populated counties.

The eight counties are also slated to get threefourths of the remainder of the $2 billion the state is expected to receive for damages associated with the BP disaster, which dumped millions of gallons of oil less than 100 miles off the Florida coast.

11 ‘claim’ bills signed Also among the bills signed Friday were 11 measures known as “claim” bills, which typically stem from lawsuits filed against government agencies because people have been injured or killed.

Among the claim bills is a measure (HB 6515) that would provide $1.8 million to the family of Devaughn Darling, a Florida State University football player who died during a training session in 2001.

Site of Dozier memorials

When you live and work here, reliability is more than just a job. It’s what drives us. At FPL, we keep our eye on the big picture, to be ready for you in good weather and bad. We train, plan, and prepare all year so that once the storm does pass, we can help get your life back to normal, fast. And now, in the unlikely event you lose power during a storm, get notified via text, voice or email with the new FPL Outage Alerts.

Storm season is here. We’re ready. Are you?

The Dozier issue drew widespread attention during the legislative session that ended May 8. As lawmakers took action on the bill, they were watched by men who had been sent as children to the school.

The Dozier memorials will be placed at the Capitol complex in Tallahassee and in Jackson County, the site of the reform school.

The legislation also provides for the reburial of unidentified remains from Dozier at a cemetery in Tallahassee. Victims of a 1914 dormitory fire at the reform school would be reburied at the Boot Hill cemetery on the Dozier property.

The remains were uncovered by University of South Florida forensic anthropologists who found 55 graves at the school, which operated from 1900 to 2011. The legislation also directs the state Department of Environmental Protection to investigate the 1,400-acre Dozier site for additional unmarked graves.

Formal apologies

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This advertising is paid for by FPL shareholders, not our customers.

The bill names a Florida Department of Law Enforcement forensic training center in Pasco County after Thomas Varnadoe, who died after being sent to Dozier in 1934. His remains were identified and returned to his family during the investigation.

In addition to the legislative directives, the House and Senate passed resolutions that formally apologized for the treatment of the juveniles sent to Dozier and a related facility in Okeechobee.

EDITORIAL

A4

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

Say ‘No’ to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Call the scheme the “Make America Weak Act.” That is exactly what the evildoers and the ignorant of the world do when they come together to sell our great nation down the drain.

Listen! Ain’t nobody going to cause us to fall into an abyss and never come back again. It is like the “crabs in the barrel” syndrome. How foolish they are to think we will become foolish.

Global leader Coming out of the Industrial Revolution, we proved to the world that our capitalistic system works. We became the “rock” of this world. We led the way in defeating rival economic theories.

The United States defeated two very strong nations, Germany and Japan, and supplied arms and food to the rest of the world, all at the same time. Today, there is no nation stronger or richer than the US. Our belief in God (most of us) ensures that we will maintain our glorious status no matter how many haters there may be.

People are dreaming of moving to our nation and becoming citizens. We understand it and don’t mind. In fact, it is flattering and that is why we have a formal immigration process. Yes, we encourage it.

US targeted There are others envious and

HARRY C. ALFORD GUEST COLUMNIST

sick to no end about that. They get together to find a way to bring us down.

One entity is the “environmental extremists.” Their strategy is to manipulate the United Nations, force us to give up our extremely strong wealth, and transfer it to people who refuse to pay the price for where we are. They want a transfer of wealth from us to them.

Silly people! We aren’t giving this up. You will not take our jobs, our economy, and our strong capitalistic infrastructure.

We will never transfer our wealth to those who do not have a clue of how we got there.

‘Freezing,’ then ‘warming’ This movement started after a campaign to stop “global freezing” didn’t get any traction. So they went the other way: “global warming.” The venue to operate is the United Nations, chiefly funded by the United States itself.

The first daring move against us was the Kyoto Protocol back in 1992. To succeed, all members must enter into a written agreement or treaty. Per our Constitution, a treaty must be approved

Climate agreement is smoke and mirrors There has been worldwide condemnation of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The anger is warranted, but it must also be said that the accord was more deal making and public relations than an attack on carbon production and global warming.

Climate change is definitely not a hoax or a “con job,” as Trump has said in the past. There is so much consensus from scientists on the issue that there is little to debate.

Arguments about economic harm are the real con job. American industries can survive quite well and even find new profit centers as they move toward green energy solutions. But the substance of the climate accord is far less significant than we are led to believe.

Biggest polluter The United States is the world’s biggest carbon-producing culprit, and its assault on the environment escalated during the Obama

MARGARET KIMBERLEY BLACK AGENDA REPORT

administration. Fracking and natural gas production soared despite all the lip service he paid to environmental protection during his term in office. He cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015 to look good on the eve of the international meeting and because its construction was no longer needed.

Domestic fossil fuel production increased so much that transportation of tar sands oil from Canada was no longer necessary. In addition, the United States approved other pipelines that were less visible and train transportation handled the rest. Production increased so much that oil prices plummeted and have still not recovered.

This is why HBCUs must engage As president/CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), I spend much time working to build strategic government alliances that extend beyond our traditional Democratic support.

Why? Look where America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are located.

Most of TMCF’s 47 memberschools are clustered in Southern and Midwestern states where the governor, both U.S. senators, both chambers of the legislature and most of the U.S. House members are Republican.

The next largest group occupies states that are under majority-GOP control.

Only three of our memberschools are in states and the District of Columbia that are completely controlled by Democrats.

by the majority of the United States Senate.

So here come President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore trying to sell it to us. They came up with terms like “environmental racism “to get the civil rights groups to fall for this.

Landside defeat The business community, which is the most important segment to our security, roared up and began to educate our Senate. When time came for the Senate to vote on this crazy protocol, they voted 96-1 against it.

It took them more than a decade to get a little traction through this new progressive but inexperienced leader, Barack Obama. He came up with a similar mantra of environmental doom. As soon as he won the presidency in 2008, he charged to the Senate with his “cap and trade” program. We shot that down so fast and furious.

He then began taking out pieces of the old Protocol, things like “the Ozone Rule” and “the Clean Power Plan.” As it became clear that he would not get far, he decided to once again cling to the United Nations to get us to reduce our might.

Out came the Paris Accord which is the Kyoto Protocol dusted off. He knew it would get nowhere with our Senate, so he did that anti-constitutional trick of signing an executive order.

Self-imposed benchmarks In any case, the agreement still has not taken effect, as it gives signatories five years to continue their carbon addiction. Industrial nations gave themselves a get out of jail free card by postponing the day of reckoning and by choosing opportune benchmark dates from which they said they would reduce carbon output.

Russia chose 1990, the year they were in the throes of an economic collapse. Any reductions based on that era are meaningless.

The same goes for the European Union and the United States, who all cherry picked the most advantageous moment to claim environmental concern.

Of course, Donald Trump is easy to condemn. He always is.

Big business doesn’t need protection from the climate agreement.

Most of Corporate America were already on board precisely because it didn’t do very much.

Temps will rise The signatory nations had little to fear because the agreement actually permitted world temperatures to rise 2 degrees. Even a seemingly small increase has devalmost exactly one year after Louisiana’s state auditor reported nearly $111 million in deferred maintenance at another Louisiana public HBCU campus, Southern University in Baton Rouge.

We must talk JOHNNY C. TAYLOR, JR. GUEST COMMENTARY

Millions needed Many HBCUs are in desperate need of operating dollars and serious capital infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Earlier this year, for instance, Grambling State University President Rick Gallot announced that his school will need to abandon the campus library – an unprecedented decision for a university seeking to expand its national imprint in research and training for its students.

Gallot’s announcement came

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: DONALD TRUMP ON TWITTER

The people who currently hold the purse strings, nationally and on a state level are, in most cases, Republicans. Yet, some will still suggest that we not even talk to them because of their party affiliation.

When the media released photos of our meeting at the White House with President Trump, some derided it as just a “photoop.” Tell that to the administrators who were wondering how they’d possibly fill the gap in funding should their already strained budgets face sudden drastic cuts.

The payoff We can’t pick and choose whom we engage with. We saw firsthand how positive strategic engagement paid off when I

JEFF KOTERBA, OMAHA WORLD HERALD, NE

We’ll all die It became clear that that “dog” would not hunt. So the mainstream press came to Obama’s aid and began a propaganda script saying that President Trump must sign the Paris Accord, or we will all die someway.

Then last week, it went down.

President Trump let out a roar like a hungry king lion, “MAGA (Make America Great Again) !!!”

Like the Senate did over 20 years earlier, our economy remains intact.

China and India thought they could keep our growth at a standstill, while they could continue activities like building new coalfired utility plants 24/7 until at least the year 2030. Many dictatorships could keep from paying their dues, while the US would astating impacts, particularly on nations that are least able to protect themselves.

The Paris agreement even gave rich nations the ultimate “getout-of-jail-free” card. It explicitly states that they would not have to pay poor countries for the damage that global warming does to them and to their people.

The United States isn’t alone in using marketing to give the appearance of progress. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is like former president Obama in many ways. He is young, photogenic, and good at giving the right impression.

But his liberal government has made less progress on carbon reduction than his conservative predecessor and won’t meet even minimal targets. The Keystone XL pipeline starts in Canada’s tar sands producing regions, the scene of some of the worst environmental degradation on the planet. Trudeau joined Trump in supporting Keystone and every other pipeline going from Canada to the United States.

Permanent damage?

If the signatory nations were as concerned about climate change as they say, why is the planet now worked with our member-school presidents and chancellors to ensure that their federal budget dollars would not be cut in President Trump’s first budget proposal.

Working with the White House, through open communication and lots of effort, HBCU leaders and I delivered flat funding for HBCUs in the upcoming fiscal year budget. That’s a big win, considering President Trump proposed a 13.9 percent overall funding decrease in federal education dollars this year.

But that’s not the end. We must ensure Washington doesn’t cut the vital capital financing program that provides about $20 million a year to support more than $280 million in capital financing for our schools.

The need to work across the aisle extends beyond just elected officials. In January, TMCF announced a $25.6 million gift from the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch Industries. This was a direct result of proactive outreach I initiated with Mr. Koch, a man often associated with support of con-

Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher

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be forced to cover the losses.

What American officials would play that game? John Kerry and Barack Obama.

The UN should spend the future coming up with a strategy that is fair and inclusive of all its members. That is the only way to have a peaceful and productive earth.

In effect, we have paid Iran billions of dollars to continue their nuclear program that has the goal of destroying Israel and other allies. We have sat idly by while North Korea is on the verge of starting Armageddon.

Wake up, America!

Harry C. Alford is the cofounder and president/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Contact him via www.nationalbcc.org. on the precipice? Some scientists predict that there is in fact no way out, that the damage done to date cannot be undone.

It wasn’t done by Donald Trump, who only became president a few months ago. The world leaders who condemn Trump are even more guilty because they have used sleight of hand to give an appearance of concern and of action when they lie to the world and continue killing the planet.

The United States, Canada, Japan and Russia are all rated inadequate in their anti-global warming efforts.

Trump’s antics make him an easy target. When he isn’t misquoting climate change studies he is shoving other presidents, tweeting typos in the middle of the night and otherwise behaving as a parody of himself.

But the car wreck we can’t turn away from is no reason to believe lies told by the global elite. The earth is getting warmer, and leaders all over the world are responsible.

Margaret Kimberley’s column appears weekly in BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com. servative and libertarian causes.

Shared concerns What I found is that we share a deep concern about the impact of over-incarceration and lack of educational opportunities that disproportionately impact fragile communities.

Together in January, we launched a new, HBCU-based research institution known as the Center for Advancing Opportunity that is studying barriers to opportunity in those communities.

In reaching across the aisle, we should never forsake our historic alliances. But for the sake of the young people our HBCUs seek to educate, we must also realize the need to grow new and different alliances.

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. is the president and CEO of Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the largest organization exclusively representing the Black college community. Follow him on Twitter at @JohnnyCTaylorJr.

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JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

Black-hating Negroes and their uses David Clarke, the sheriff of Milwaukee County who appears slated for a top post at the Department of Homeland Security, has made himself valuable to the White Man’s Party through ostentatious display of hatred and contempt for his fellow Blacks.

Clarke is the go-to Negro for denunciations of Black Lives Matter (“Black Lies Matter,” in his words) as Islamic State sympathizers who should be “scooped” up, charged with treason and detained “indefinitely at Gitmo.”

Cast of characters Clarke shares his repugnant political specialty with a debased cast of domestic and international characters, including presidents Yoweri Museveni and Salva Kiir of Uganda and South Sudan, respectively, and Roy Innis, the late former leader of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.

All three of the living professional Black-hating Negroes make themselves readily identifiable as eager allies of Americanstyle White supremacy by wearing huge black cowboy hats.

Yoweri Museveni, Ronald Reagan’s favorite African since seizing power in Uganda in 1986, turned his country’s army into a Central African military appendage of U.S. imperialism.

Millions of deaths Under Washington’s direction, Museveni incorporated minority Tutsis from neighboring Rwanda into his armed forces, then supported their 1990 invasion of Rwanda, which led to mass tribal slaughter and the overthrow of the majority Hutu government, followed by the invasion and occupation of the Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwandan Tutsi forces under Paul Kagame, resulting in the death of more than

GLEN FORD BLACK AGENDA REPORT

six million Congolese, and still counting. (Kagame should also wear a cowboy hat, but prefers the military beret.)

As mercenaries of U.S. Empire, both Museveni and Kagame contribute troops to virtually every Western-funded “peace keeping” operation on the continent.

Salva Kiir sports a cowboy hat reportedly given to him by President George W. Bush during a visit to the White House in 2006, five years before South Sudan declared independence under U.S. sponsorship. The hat has become an even more important signifier that Kiir has superpower support, now that he has reverted to the role of warlord in his country’s catastrophic tribal conflict.

About Innis

Going too far But the fallout from comedian Kathy Griffin’s sick prank shows that one can go too far. No doubt you’ve seen the viral image of Griffin holding up a dummy of Donald Trump’s blood-soaked, severed head, ISIS style.

The (viral) outrage was such that TV stations and concert venues began canceling her gigs, making her as bookable as Michael Richards. Remember him?

Now ballsy, wanna-play-ISIS Griffin is crying me a river about Trump and his sons bullying and breaking her. As much as I despise Trump and pity his kids, I

He fills both a psychic and political need of the racists, insulting Blacks with words that even modern-day Klansmen hesitate to use in public: “Let me tell you why Blacks sell drugs and involve themselves in criminal behavior instead of a more socially acceptable lifestyle – because they’re uneducated, they’re lazy, and they’re morally bankrupt,” Clarke said on a rightwing podcast.

Clarke and his ilk serve to sanitize and normalize the most vile, blatantly racist behavior (and thoughts), simply by playing “crackers” in blackface. (The hat conveys the message to even the dullest bigot.) He invoked a lynching party when he vowed, during the campaign, to bring out “pitchforks and torches” against the media and political establishment in Washington.

Clarke and his despicable domestic cohort do not proselytize to Black people. They are not seeking to build a base of support in their “own” community – which they constantly dis-own – so they cannot sway significant numbers of Black people to vote for racists. They are the AntiBlacks, useful because their antics drive other Black folks up the wall, to the delight of White racists.

Biden, and Obama’s putative successor, Hillary Clinton – for racist quips like this for years.

In 2012, Biden injected the following not-so-subtle dog whistle about race into a speech he delivered before a predominantly Black crowd in Southern Virginia, according to C-SPAN: “Romney wants to let the, he said the first 100 days he’s gon’ let the big banks once again write ANTHONY L. their own rules. Unchaaain Wall Street … they gon’ put y’all back HALL, ESQ. in chains.”

FLORIDA COURIER I noted that Republicans decryCOLUMNIST ing racism in this context is rather like prostitutes decrying promiscuity. That said, I find what Biden feel no sympathy for her. said was insulting. Far too many Blacks react to racist remarks by Which brings me White Democrats (or liberals) by to Maher simply pointing to racist remarks He too just went too far. His by White Republicans (or conser(latest) outrage stems from an ex- vatives). I do not. change he had on Friday with Republican Senator Ben Sasse on Liberal entitlement his HBO show, “Real Time.”

Here, for example, is what I According to the New York wrote in 2006 when Hillary ClinTimes, the offense came when ton declared that (White) RepubMaher lamented the folly of licans were treating (White) Demgrown-ups dressing up for Hal- ocrats in Congress like slaves: “This … demonstrates the inloween.

“When Mr. Sasse said this did sidious entitlement White liberals not happen in his state, Mr. Ma- have been granted – by politically her said, ‘I’ve got to get to Nebras- compromised Black leaders – to make all kinds of racial jibes with ka more.’

“Mr. Sasse replied: ‘You’re wel- impunity; so long as those White come. We’d love to have you work liberals are celebrated supporters/members of the Democratic in the fields with us.’

“Mr. Maher said: ‘Work in the Party.

“And, in this case, it only addfields? Senator, I’m a house niged insult to the racial offense that ger.’”

Hillary made these remarks in the front of an ‘Amen’ crowd at a Calling them out Black church in Harlem – where I’ve been calling out White she ‘came back home’ like a proliberals – including President verbial prodigal daughter.”

Just as it was with Hillary’s, Obama’s vice president, Joe

MSNBC isn’t giving her four hours of Saturday and Sunday morning time any more, but Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry is still the BRUCE A. unofficial obfuscator-general for DIXON the up-and-coming faction of our Black misleadership class.

BLACK AGENDA REPORT This special status elevates her brain farts to New York Times opto darken or make opaque – to eds, the latest one of which takes blow smoke in our faces and oththe NAACP and some older parts er places – which is exactly what of the Black political class to task.

Harris-Perry attempts in her May 30 New York Times piece.

Making it cloudy She notes the NAACP’s chief is For those who didn’t take high resigning, and declares it makes school Latin, the word “obfus- little difference because the civcate” comes from the verb “ob- il rights dinosaur “has become fuscare” which means to becloud, marginal” and “an entrenched

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: TRUMP AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Fills a need

Roy Innis, who died in 2017, usually went hatless. He kicked Whites out of staff positions in the Congress of Racial Equality in 1968, then almost immediately endorsed Richard Nixon for president.

Innis’s vicious diatribes against fellow Blacks earned him a steady stream of speaking engagements at rightwing Republican functions. He backed Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork for the Supreme Court in the 1980s, Clarence Thomas in 1991, and Rudolph Giuliani for mayor of New York in 1989.

David Clarke plays cartoon BLM America’s enemy?

Patrisse Cullors, of the MoveBlack cowboy kiss-up to the same White supremacist audi- ment for Black Lives, has good ence on the U.S. domestic cir- reason to think that David Clarke cuit, and has counterparts in the would use his influence at Home-

Melissa Harris-Perry blows smoke again

A5

far-flung Black diasporas of the other White settler colonies and “mother countries.” His talent is to cultivate a crude and shameless contempt for his own ethnicity, tuned to the sick receptors of his White patrons.

Blacks have given White liberals license to say racist things Comedian Bill Maher is known for his politically incorrect shtick.

He knows better than anyone that nothing guarantees viral attention in this age of social media quite like a snarky point, sick prank, or salacious photo.

Moreover, it’s self-evident that the aim of most points, pranks, and photos is not to provoke enlightened thought or stimulate informed debate. Rather it’s to attract mindless YouTube views, Twitter followers, Facebook and/ or Instagram likes, etc. – all as a testament to one’s own popularity or in service to one’s own narcissism.

Granted, in some cases, easy money motivates too, as the Kardashians would readily attest.

EDITORIAL

bureaucracy.” As evidence, she points to the impending departure of North Carolina NAACP head Rev. William Barber, another darling of liberal media.

The NAACP, she continues, “... does not seem willing to shed blood, literally, or in terms of the uncomfortable work that characterizes effective activism...” How anybody can “shed blood” any other way but literally is unclear, but this is how the professionals blow smoke.

BLM vs. NAACP Harris-Perry’s contrasting example of “effective activism” is Black Youth Project 100, a formation that originated in Chicago and has been prominently identified as part of #BlackLivesMatter.

She retells the familiar tale of #BlackLivesMatter emerging from outrage over the vigilan-

DARYL CAGLE, CAGLECARTOONS.COM

land Security to make her a political prisoner.

“The way he demonizes Black Lives Matter is befitting for an enemy in a war zone,” she writes.

“He openly dismisses civil liberties and suggests introducing limitless detention.”

Clarke’s services to White supremacy became much more marketable with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. He became a regular on Fox News in the aftermath of the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. In that sense, he is in debt to Cullors and her comrades for his political fame and new job.

But let’s be clear. The pursuit of upward mobility through cultivation of White folks’ political favor is not confined to base and conniving caricatures like David Clarke. Sadly, it has become the main route to political fortune in Black America.

No Black leader

most acceptable and attractive to White Democrats and moneybags – “articulate and bright and clean” –in the Whitest kind of way, not “like Jesse Jackson.”

What’s more dangerous? A Black opportunist that curries favor with the worst elements of the White Man’s Party – but whose primary effect on Black politics is to make Black folks more vigilant – or a smooth Black operator who is so good at gaining the confidence of the ruling class that they entrust him to wage war on most of the world, and to impose capitalist austerity at home, knowing his mere presence will pacify Blacks and neutralize them as a force for change?

Neither of these political actors advance the cause of Black political self-determination, and one of them is a threat to human survival in general.

Malcolm X would see them as two sides of the same treacherous coin.

The best (or worst) example is Barack Obama, who spent a lifetime making himself acceptable to the more politically correct section of the White ruling class.

Obama was not a Black leader. He was the Black politician

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

what added insult to Biden’s remarks was the way he exaggerated his intonations and broken English to, gasp, sound Blacker (i.e., ignorant). Yet in each case, instead of jeering, Blacks cheered.

uters, led a (still-too-small) chorus of Blacks in condemning Maher: “‘Bill Maher decided to get on television last night and sanitize and normalize the n-word,” civilrights activist Reverend Al Sharpton said in his Saturday sermon in New York. ‘Just because Bill Maher is liberal and our friend, you don’t give him a pass … you never get the right to use that term.’”

It’s almost as if I wrote that for him, for the glaring, self-subjugating fact that nobody has done more to “sanitize and normalize the n-word” than ignorant and misguided Black folks, especially in the hip-hop community.

Lost respect Back in 2005, I chastised Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in a column titled, “US Senator Calls Bush’s Black Female Judicial Nominee an Ape.” The White liberal involved in that case was no less a person than “liberal lion” Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

I lost what little respect I still had for them when neither Jackson nor Sharpton, both putative civil rights leaders, failed to utter a word of condemnation against Kennedy. But you can imagine their outcry if he were a White conservative, especially considering that Kennedy hurled this subsimian slur during a public hearing on Judge Janice Brown’s nomination.

This is why I am less outraged by what Maher said than by the apparent license influential Blacks gave him to say it.

They should have joined me years ago in condemning White liberals who say racist things. What’s more, we should condemn them with even greater indignation than we do when we condemn White conservatives for the same.

After all, we expect more of our so-called White liberal friends.

Some criticism I am heartened that at least some of these Blacks are coming to their senses. Because here is how Sharpton, according to Rete murder of Trayvon Martin, the failure of a Florida jury to convict him, and the lived experience of police brutality and impunity in Chicago, Philly and a hundred other places.

She brings it back to a supposed contrast between BYP 100 and the NAACP, declaring that if the older outfit doesn’t “become radical” by looking to “undocumented women… queer women...Black women” for leadership it may deserve to remain irrelevant. Not much substance there, but that’s the nature of smoky brain farts.

Corporate funding What Harris-Perry never mentions is that the NAACP and BYP 100 share at least one thing in common. Both outfits are funded – by millions, in the case of the NAACP, and hundreds of thousands, in the case of BYP 100 dol-

Just an apology Unsurprisingly, Maher hastened to apologize. But I suspect that if he were a conservative, Sharpton would have demanded his head, and that he suffer the same career-ending fate Richards suffered and Griffin is now suffering.

And so the double standard persists. Regrettably, this not only undermines the moral authority of influential Blacks on race matters, but also affirms the selfrighteousness far too many White liberals display when it comes to the lingering scourge of racism in America.

Anthony L. Hall is a Bahamian native with an international law practice in Washington, D.C. Read his columns and daily weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com. Click on this commentary at www.flcourier.com to write your own response. lars – from corporate one-percenters.

Truth be told, the beef HarrisPerry and BYP 100 have against the NAACP is not about any political issues affecting the Black masses. She’s just with the new crew, and NAACP is the old crew.

Harris-Perry and others like BYP 100 would like to replace the NAACP as the official spokes-Negroes of Black America, and the prime recipient of one-percenter dollars that come with that recognition.

Bruce Dixon is managing editor of BlackAgendaReport.com.

Contact him at bruce.dixon@ blackagendareport.com. Click on this commentary at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

TOJ A6

NATION

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

Black organizations slam Trump budget The proposed includes extreme cuts in spending in education, food stamps, Medicaid, access to student loans, nutritional assistance, small business and the environment.

BY BARRINGTON M. SALMON TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

President Donald Trump has unveiled his 2018 budget to resounding criticism and derision from a range of critics, including the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the U.S. Black Chamber Inc., policymakers, pundits, and other Congressional lawmakers.

“President Trump’s budget is based on the ill-advised idea that the poor can pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” says CBC Chair Rep. Cedrick Richmond (D-La.).

“The truth is Cedrick that some folks Richmond don’t have boots and tax cuts for the wealthy won’t help them buy a pair. A budget that threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans who, through no fault of their own, depend on social safety net and other federal programs, will not make America great again.”

Extreme cuts Richmond is among AfricanAmerican politicians, civil rights advocates and academicians and political experts who contend that the budget, if enacted, would unduly affect Blacks, people of color, the poor and the vulnerable.

The budget reveals the administration’s fiscal priorities and includes extreme cuts in spending in education, food stamps, Medicaid, access to student loans, nutritional assistance, small business and the environment.

Over the next 10 years, the proposed budget would strip more than $800 billion from Medicaid and $272 billion over all from welfare programs. Meanwhile, domestic programs would see funding reduced by $57 billion.

Benefit for wealthy The largest beneficiaries would be the military – to which $54 billion is being directed – Homeland Security and the nation’s wealthiest who would again receive massive tax cuts, which people like billionaire Warren Buffett has said is totally unnec-

OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/TNS

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney speaks during a press briefing about President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget proposal that includes boosts for military and spending cuts on safety-net programs for poor at the White House on May 23. essary and unneeded.

“This budget is immoral and irresponsible and confirms what then-candidate Trump showed us time and time again – he only cares about people who have bank accounts that look like his,” Richmond continued.

“We encourage President Trump, Office of Management and Budget Director (Mick) Mulvaney and the Administration to learn from the CBC budget, which is moral and responsible and invests in families and our nation’s future. The CBC budget will move every American forward, not just those at the top, all while reducing the national debt.”

Unusually brazen Politico Senior Staff Writer Michael Grunwald skewered the budget proposal, calling it a scam and castigating the Trump team for played fast and loose with the numbers. “ … This proposal is unusually brazen in its defiance of basic math, and in its accounting discrepancies amounting to trillions-with-a-t rather than mere millions or billions,” Grunwald writes.

“Budgets hinge on assumptions about taxes, spending and economic growth, and the Trump budget plays fast and loose with all three to try to achieve the illusion of balance, relying heavily on spectacular growth assumptions as well as vague and unrealistic promises to eliminate tax breaks and additional spending

programs that go conveniently unnamed in the text.

He continued, “It proclaims that “we have borrowed from our children and their future for far too long, but it is a blueprint for far more borrowing and far more debt.”

Minority agency cited Ron Busby, president of the U.S. Black Chambers Inc., a D.C.-based national advocate for Black-owned businesses, expressed disappointment and puzzlement at a president who claims to business-friendly but who has proposed to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency.

Busby said the program accounts for less than .001 percent of federal spending, has produced 125,000 jobs, supports business centers throughout the country and has helped secure $36 billion in contracts and capital for minority-owned businesses.

Three weeks before Trump’s announcement, Busby said that Congress increased the program’s funding to $34,000,000 after he testified before the House Appropriations Committee and explained to Congress the importance of continuing funding.

“Yet again, the Trump Administration that campaigned on job creation turns its back on the very programs proven to spur minority business growth,” said Busby in a statement. “Eliminating the only program dedicated to a diversity of job creators is an affront to the millions of minori-

ty entrepreneurs nationwide. We urge Congress to resist this ludicrous proposal and maintain their bipartisan support of the Minority Business Development Agency.”

Impact on children Kimberly Hall and Michael Hilton of the Poverty & Race Research Council (PRRAC), cowrote an op-ed arguing for the Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to make a high quality education for all American children a priority.

“This proposed budget will close the doors of opportunity to hundreds of thousands of young minds around the country,” the op-ed said.

“We urge Congress to reject this attack on equal access to a quality public education, students’ civil rights, and ultimately our country’s long-term ability to continue as a global leader.

The editorial continued, “As we seek to prepare our students to compete on a global stage, the Trump Administration proposes to divert support from programs that have proven to benefit students’ life outcomes to fund programs that have shown to cause academic harm. But it does not stop there.

CATO support The already short staffed Office of Civil Rights is on the line for considerable cuts in funding and staff positions.

At a time when the complaint levels are near historic highs with

a record number of complaints year after year, this budget will cripple the already understaffed office charged with protecting the civil rights of all students.”

Not everyone is upset about the proposed cuts. The CATO Institute, for example, praised Trump’s proposal. CATO says the plan would eliminate the budget deficit within a decade and be beneficial for a number of reasons.

CATO believes the cuts would spur economic growth, while reforms to welfare programs will encourage more people to join the labor force and add to the nation’s output.

Other proposed cuts In order to pay for defense, Homeland Security and a wall at the border, Trump’s cuts also include the reduction or elimination of: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Public service loan forgiveness Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants Community services block grants The Low Income Home Energy Assistance program The Home Investment Partnerships program The Energy Star and voluntary climate programs National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Humanities The Overseas Employment Corporation

‘An injustice’ The congressional delegation was led by Hispanic Caucus Chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and First Vice Chair Joaquin Castro of Texas.

About 60 deported veterans live in the Tijuana area. In a report last year, the American Civil Liberties Union said there were at least 239 deported veterans in 34 countries.

“This is an injustice. These veterans fought for the United States,” said Rep. Lou Correa of California. “They broke the law and paid for this mistake. You shouldn’t have to pay twice for the same sin.”

‘Do something right’

ALEJANDRO TAMAYO/SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE/TNS

U.S. veterans hold up a flag outside the Deported Veterans office on June 3 as seven members of Congress visit the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana, Mexico.

Deported US veterans trying to return from Mexico

BY SANDRA DIBBLE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE/TNS

TIJUANA, Mexico –– Deported U.S. military veterans told members of a U.S. congressional delegation that they had paid dearly for their crimes and wanted to come home.

“I committed a crime and I accept it,” said Eduardo Agustin Garcia, 59, a former U.S. Navy

airman who grew up in Oxnard, Calif., but was deported to Mexico in 1999 after serving a fouryear sentence on a drug charge.

Garcia, who works in a call center in Tijuana, was among a dozen deported veterans who spoke briefly to members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all Democrats in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

The deported veterans told of the pride they had felt in the

U.S. armed services, some serving in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They talked about how they missed their families in the United States and needed access to Veterans Affairs services.

Deported after jail The delegation’s visit to the Deported Veterans Support House near the U.S. border on

June 3 was meant to bring attention to this issue affecting lawful permanent residents who served in the military and were honorably discharged, but then were convicted of crimes.

Because they had not become U.S. citizens, they were deported after serving their sentences, returning to a country that many had left as children.

Castro presented the veterans with a U.S. flag that had been flown over the U.S. Capitol. “We can’t wait to get you guys home,” he said.

The presence of the legislators offered encouragement to the group.

Reps. Juan Vargas of California and Raul Grijalva of Arizona have proposed legislation that would allow the veterans to return to the United States, and would take measures so that non-citizen members of the military are informed of their opportunities to become U.S. citizens.

Two other members of the delegation are also preparing legislation.

“This is an opportunity for Donald Trump to do something right,” Vargas said. “We weren’t able to get anywhere with the other administration, and we should have.”

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Interracial marriage since the Loving case

In the Supreme Court case, Mildred Loving, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a White man, had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other.

Census data shows it’s more common, but acceptance is still not universal

BY ROBERT MCCOPPIN AND GRACE WONG CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

ELMHURST, Ill. — While volunteering at her daughter’s school, Rachel Gregersen noticed something that bothered her. Her 8-year-old daughter was the only African-American she saw in her class.

“I was seeing the world through her eyes for the first time,” Gregersen said. “It’s important for children to see a reflection of themselves, to see the beauty in themselves and know they’re not odd.”

Gregersen, who is Black, and her husband, Erik, who is White, don’t make a big deal out of living as a biracial couple in Elmhurst. But they decided to transfer their daughter to a private school with a greater mix of Black and White students.

It’s a small example of issues interracial couples still face, even 50 years after mixed marriages became legal nationwide.

Major shift It was June 1967 in the landmark Loving v. Virginia case — the subject of the recent film “Loving” — that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

Now a new analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center has found that the percentage of interracial or interethnic newlyweds in the U.S. rose from 3 percent since the Loving case to 17 in 2015.

And Americans have become more accepting of marriages of different races or ethnicities.

One measure reflecting the shift is that, according to a Pew poll, the percentage of nonBlacks who said they would oppose a relative marrying a Black person dropped from 63 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2016.

Subtle racism Asians and Hispanics in the U.S. are by far the most likely to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity.

Almost one-third of married Asian-Americans and about a quarter of married Hispanics are married to a person of a different race or gender, according to the study.

In interviews, interracial couples in the Chicago area said they rarely encounter overt racism but occasionally run into subtle signs that they’re treated differently. The Chicago metropolitan area’s rate of interracial marriages is 19 percent, slightly higher than the national rate of 16 percent, according to the study.

When Rachel Gregersen gets asked for identification at the same store where her husband does not, or when they eat out together and the waiter asks if

NUCCIO DINUZZO/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

Rachel and Erik Gregersen are shown with their children Eva, 8, and Wesley, 3 in their home on May 17 in Elmhurst, Ill.

Tensions since election

they want separate checks, she said, they notice it.

The couple has been married for 11 years and previously blended into more diverse communities like Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood and Oak Park.

Since Donald Trump’s election as president, Hughes said she feels heightened tensions over race, as dramatized recently by a group of White nationalists with torches demonstrating over the removal of a Confederate statue in Virginia.

But Hughes considered her parents’ mix of friends and family getting along despite their differences to be a good model for race relations.

“My perceptions were (that) the rest of the world was out of whack, not our family.”

Race reminders When they moved to Elmhurst to be closer to work, unlike some other newcomers, they said no neighbors introduced themselves. And after a woman next door asked them to recommend a painter, they didn’t find out their neighbors were leaving until they saw the moving truck.

More broadly, the couple is concerned about how their children might be treated by law enforcement.

Along with a talk about the birds and bees, they will have to talk about what to do when stopped by police.

“Being in an interracial marriage did open my eyes to things like that that I never would have thought about,” Erik Gregersen said.

Between the couple themselves, though, “race really is not an issue,” Rachel Gregersen said. “We forget about it until the outside world reminds us from time to time.”

Proudly biracial As the child of an interracial couple, Michelle Hughes identifies herself differently depending on the setting.

With Black friends or professionally, she might describe herself as African-American, while with mixed-race friends, like a social group called the Biracial Family Network, she’s proudly biracial.

The network, which will celebrate the anniversary of the Loving decision next month, al-

Interracial marriage stats

FOCUS FEATURES

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga portray Richard and Mildred Loving in the movie about the landmark Supreme Court decision. Negga was nominated for best actress for her role in “Loving’’ by the Academy Awards. so holds an annual family barbecue.

As a child, Hughes remembered being called the N-word exactly twice.

She reported one child to school officials, who ended the name-calling, and her father impressed on the other child that such language was not acceptable.

The backlash Hughes’ parents married in 1967, the year of the Loving decision, but she said they didn’t face as much backlash as some

other couples because they lived in diverse areas in Chicago and south suburban Homewood.

Some of her biracial friends had much worse experiences, she said, having their hair cut off or being beaten up. Some had grandparents or other family members who disowned them.

Others, whose parents divorced, got negative images of one race or the other, Hughes said, because if the ex-spouse was considered a jerk, “then everyone of that race was a jerk.”

Among the study’s other findings: Black men are twice as likely to intermarry as Black women while Asian women are much more likely to do so than Asian men.

The most common racial or ethnic pairing among newlywed intermarried couples is a Hispanic person married to a White person (42 percent). The next most common are couples in which one spouse is White and the other Asian (15 percent), and then where one spouse is White and one is multiracial (12 percent).

Intermarriage is slightly more common among the college educated, especially for Hispanics.

Nearly half of married, collegeeducated Hispanic Americans are intermarried, compared with 16 percent for those with a high school diploma or less education.

Thirty-nine percent of Americans polled think intermarriage is a good thing, 9 percent think it’s a bad thing and the rest said it doesn’t make a difference.

CALENDAR

B2

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR Tampa: A Juneteenth program is 11 a.m. June 16 at T Pepin’s Hospitality Centre hosted by the 100 Black Men of Tampa Bay. Tickets: 100blackmenoftampabay.org Orlando: An All White Affair starring Ginuwine and DJ Envy is July 21 at Hard Rock Live Orlando.

Miami: The Griots’ Gallery invites the public to the opening of “In the Spirit of Collaboration: Sam Gilliam and Lou Stovall’’ exhibit on June 10 at 1 p.m. Location: 8260 NE 2nd Ave. Free. More information: www. griotsgallery.com.

Orlando: Full Gospel Baptist presents Rickey Smiley and Friends on June 30 at Hard Rock Live Orlando.

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

STOJ

RICK ROSS

On July 8, Rick Ross and K. Michelle will perform at Jacksonville’s Times Union Center for the Performing Arts. MARCUS YAM/ LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

REGINA HALL

Actress Regina Hall is the ambassador for the American Black Film Festival. It’s in Miami Beach June 14-18.

Schedule: ABFF.com SIPA USA/TNS

Fort Lauderdale: The Christian McBride Trio performs June 10 at the Rose & Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center.

Miami: Diana Ross is scheduled June 21 at Miami’s Arsht Center, June 25 at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall or June 28 at Jacksonville’s Daily’s Place.

Tampa: Tickets are on sale for the Total Package Tour with Paula Abdul, New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men at the Amalie Arena on July 15.

Miami: Chance the Rapper is scheduled June 13 at AmericanAirlines Arena and June 14 at Tampa’s Amalie Arena.

Orlando: Plans are underway the 18th Annual Darrell Armstrong Classic Weekend Aug. 11-13 for his foundation that helps premature babies. Sponsorship info: Call 407-252-333 or email jbm395@gmail.com.

KING KEVIN DORIVAL

The fourth annual Black On Black Crime Solutions Panel is June 10 at Miami Dade College North from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

It’s organized by King Kevin Dorival of Courage to Believe International. Details: www.kevindorival.com

Tampa: Lionel Richie and Mariah Carey are scheduled Aug. 11 at the Amalie Arena for a 7 p.m. show.

Documentary explores Tampa Black business district, 1967 riot FROM STAFF REPORTS

A documentary titled “Tampa Technique: Rise, Demise, and Remembrance of Central Avenue’’ analyzes the strategic and calculated Civil Rights Movement in Tampa through the lens of Central Avenue.

Segregation created the thriv-

ing Black business district before a 1967 riot led to its physical and symbolic destruction.

University of South Florida instructor and Tampa journalist Travis Bell produced the hourlong documentary “Tampa Technique’’ as his dissertation project.

The film will debut at 6 p.m.

Saturday, June 10, at the Robert W. Saunders Sr. Public Library,

1505 N. Nebraska Ave., Tampa. The event, hosted by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists, is free and open to the public.

Arthenia Joyner

Joyner on panel

The date is significant because it is the eve of the 50th anniversary of Martin Chambers’ death that sparked the 1967 civil unrest. A panel discussion

will follow the film screening in conjunction with the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.

Panelists will include Clarence Fort, who organized the 1960 lunch counter sit-in at Woolworth’s; former State Senator Arthenia Joyner, whose father, Henry Joyner, owned the last business on Central Avenue; and pioneer journalist Dayle Greene.

Begins in park “Tampa Technique’’ explores the state’s first biracial committee, integration of public facilities and

schools, urban renewal/removal, interstate construction, and the 1967 death of Chambers.

The documentary begins and ends in Perry Harvey, Sr. Park to situate how Central Avenue is publicly memorialized.

“You couldn’t compensate for the years of living and community and all of the goodness, the goodwill, and all that Central Avenue had brought,” Joyner said. “All of that was devastated.”

For more information, contact Travis Bell at 727-465-4670 or via email at trbell@usf.edu.

12 are encouraged to read a financial literacy book of their choosing and write a 250-word essay or create an art project to show how they would apply what they learned from the book to their daily lives.

June 15 deadline Submissions must be emailed or postmarked

by June 15. The bank will choose 10 winners: one from the following eight cities (Akron, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh); and two from other locations in the U.S. Each winner will be awarded a $1,000 OneUnited Bank savings account by Aug. 31.

President writes book

“I Got Bank!” was written by OneUnited Bank’s president.

Bank taking essays, art projects for financial literacy contest SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

OneUnited Bank, the nation’s largest Black-owned bank, is expanding its seventh annual “I Got Bank!”

Financial Literacy Contest to include 10 winners, up from three. The contest has also evolved to include

the best essays and the best art projects that represent the “I Got Bank!” theme.

OneUnited Bank is partnering with BMe Community to expand the contest and celebrate more youth contest winners.

Middle school students from across the country between the ages of 8 and

Teri Williams, OneUnited Bank president and author of “I Got Bank! What My Granddad Taught Me about Money” wrote the book when she found that there weren’t any books geared toward educating urban youth about finances.

“We are very excited to partner with BMe Community to expand our financial literacy contest to include more winners and to include art,” said Williams.

According to its website, BMe Community is an award-winning network of influential leaders inspired

by Black men to treat people as assets and then grow the assets of those people.

For more information about the official contest rules, visit www.oneunited. com/book.

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CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES

STOJ

JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

HEALTH

B3 Helping others Considering the effect on her young son if she died and learning about a new generation of medications moved her to “straighten up.”

She now religiously takes an antiretroviral drug and a study pill each morning. And though it’s not always comfortable for her, she forces herself to speak to the young women in her neighborhood about the dangers of drug use and promiscuity. She said she even will show them her pill box and tell them of her brush with death.

Scott views the study as another way to help herself and others.

“This is a good opportunity,” she said. “I hope it works.”

A top killer

ALGERINA PERNA/BALTOMORE SUN/TNS

Jamilla Howard R.N., a research nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital, left, is shown with Stacey Scott, 45, from Baltimore, who is HIVpositive. Scott is a participant in a trial to see if a cholesterol-lowering drug can stave off heart disease.

Another challenge for HIV patients Long-term study will explore way to curb heart attacks

BY MEREDITH COHN BALTIMORE SUN/TNS

BALTIMORE — People infected with HIV can now live long, healthy lives — so long as they don’t have a heart attack.

Cardiovascular problems among HIV patients are emerging as the latest threat they face and a major challenge for medical experts, whose success using antiretroviral drugs to prolong patients’ lives has given rise to new risks.

“When I first started taking care of patients in the 1980s they virtually would all die, but now they’re living and getting complications from the disease, the most prominent of which is car-

diovascular disease,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

National study Fauci said the search is on for a consistent method to stave off heart attacks and strokes in those with HIV. A promising avenue may be adding a daily lipid-lowering drug to the mix, even in patients without the usual signs of trouble such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

To test the idea, the National Institutes of Health has lined up about 100 hospitals, academic centers and health facilities around the globe — including the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore — to take part in a long-term study that will provide a drug known as pitavastatin to HIV patients without signs of

Jacksonville children’s hospital challenges trauma center denial THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

A Jacksonville children’s hospital is challenging a decision by the Florida Department of Health that prevented the hospital from opening a trauma center.

Wolfson Children’s Hospital wants an administrative law judge to back arguments that it should be allowed to open what is known as a “provisional” pediatric trauma center, according to documents posted Thursday on the state Division of Administrative Hearings website.

The Department of Health on May 1 rejected the proposal, saying Wolfson did not meet certain standards in its application. Wolfson, in a 14-page challenge, disputed the department’s conclusions.

“WCH (Wolfson) has already incurred the considerable expense of putting the necessary resources in place to operate a trauma center and will continue to incur substantial costs in order to keep these resources in place while it pursues a trauma center designation,” the document said.

“At the same time, absent the provisional license, WCH will be unable to receive offsetting revenue from the treatment of trauma patients. Also adversely affected are the pediatric trauma patients who are being denied access to what would be the only pediatric trauma center” in a fivecounty region of Northeast Florida.

Latest battle The Wolfson case is the latest in a series of legal battles across the state about whether hospitals should be allowed to open trauma centers. Another case emerged in recent weeks because of the department’s denial of a proposal by St. Petersburg’s Northside Hospital to open a trauma center.

Lawmakers this spring considered a proposal that would have changed criteria for approval of new trauma centers – likely allowing more to open – but the issue was not heard in the Senate. Trauma centers initially receive provisional approval to open and then pursue a morepermanent status.

cardiovascular disease to see if it prevents heart problems.

come in a few times a year for tests at participating facilities.

Years of study

Willing enrollee

Pitavastatin is used routinely in heart patients to lower cholesterol and has proven safe to take with HIV medications.

Doctors such as Fauci already had been giving it to their healthy HIV patients assuming it would help them not only by keeping high cholesterol at bay but by also lowering HIV-associated inflammation that can cause plaque buildup in the blood vessels.

However, there is no solid scientific evidence the statin works in healthy HIV patients, Fauci said.

The REPRIEVE trial, which stands for Randomized Trial to Prevent Vascular Events in HIV, will follow patients for an average of four years each. They will

Stacey Scott, a 45-year-old East Baltimore mother, didn’t hesitate to enroll in the study when she learned about it from her Hopkins doctor, Dr. Christie Basseth, who has been caring for her for a dozen years.

“I have HIV and a history of heart disease in my family, and if they want to spend the four years making sure my heart is good, I’m all for it,” Scott said.

She wouldn’t always have been interested in taking another pill.

Scott was devastated to learn she had the virus in 1994 but quickly abandoned her regimen HIV medications because they made her feel sick.

The virus soon took its toll; she developed full-blown AIDS.

There are about 1.2 million people now living with HIV around the country, though 1 in 8 don’t know. Experts say the untreated HIV not only causes harm to those infected but also allows the virus to be easily spread.

About 6,700 people die from HIV and AIDS in the United States each year, making it a top 10 killer for those age 25 to 44.

Most infected people die of related problems like cancers, infections — and heart attacks.

Previous research on HIV by Dr. Matthew Feinstein, a cardiovascular disease fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, showed that heart disease was being vastly underestimated in HIV patients.

Higher risk The risk of a heart attack is one and a half to two times higher in an HIV patient than a healthy person. Feinstein found the virus was still having this profound affect even when it was suppressed by medications.

The affect could not be attributed to patients living longer and suffering from the same health conditions as other Americans with poor diet and exercise habits, though aging does play a role.

Feinstein said it likely has more to do with chronic inflammation spurred by HIV that is harming the body’s vessels.

“There seems to be an accelerated risk of developing plaque in the arteries including heart arteries,” Feinstein said. “It leads to an earlier manifestation of heart disease.”

Considering surgery? Here are questions to ask doctor

BY MIKE BAKER SEATTLE TIMES/TNS

Surgery is a daunting moment in patients’ lives, with high-stakes decisions made difficult by jargon, uncertainty and a lack of public information that could help determine the best path.

In conversations with doctors, nurses and independent patient advocates, The Seattle Times has gathered advice to consider when you face surgery.

Is it necessary?

Some doctors are more aggressive about recommending surgery than their peers, and sometimes there is reasonable disagreement about the best approach.

If you are not facing an emergency situation, consider seeking a second opinion from a doctor at a different medical facility. It’s common practice, so don’t worry about offending your doctor. (If they are offended, that may be a red flag.)

And be sure to ask both doctors questions to help you assess whether to pursue surgery: What are the consequences of not doing surgery?

What alternatives could be explored first? What are the risks of surgery? What is the ideal outcome? Doing your own research can help, too.

Got the right doctor?

It can be difficult to assess whether your doctor is the right expert for your condition.

If you know someone in the medical community, they might have suggestions based on conversations with colleagues. When you do speak to your doctor, ask about their experience. How many times have they done the procedure?

What percentage of patients had a poor outcome?

STEVE RINGMAN/SEATTLE TIMES/TNS

It’s a good idea to ask your surgeon many questions before undergoing a procedure.

Having a friend or relative come to appointments with you can make it easier to remember what to ask and to make plans for your recovery.

You can check online reviews for your doctor, but they are often anonymous and may be unreliable. You should check the state Department of Health to see if your surgeon has had any enforcement actions against them. For facility-wide issues, such as infections, be sure to check your hospital at the federal Hospital Compare site.

A few organizations are using medical data to try to compare the surgical outcomes of individual doctors. You can try ProPublica’s Surgeon Scorecard or a site run by Bellevue, Wash.-based startup MPIRICA Health.

Will your doctor do the surgery?

As we’ve reported, some surgeons regularly run multiple operating rooms at the same time. And even if they’re not juggling other cases, some will delegate portions of the surgery to an assistant while they attend to other work,

such as meeting patients in a clinic.

If this concerns you, ask your doctor whether they will be the one performing the entire surgery. Ask them what role their assistants will play and how they will be supervised. And ask whether your surgery will overlap at all with another case.

Beware: If a doctor says they will be “present” for the whole case, clarify whether that means they will be present in the operating room or just somewhere nearby.

But also be realistic: If you’re going to a teaching hospital, you can expect assistants will likely play some role in your surgery. And if your operation is going to last many hours, you can expect your surgeon to take breaks to use the bathroom and to eat.

What about needs after surgery?

Patients sometimes find it difficult to get the attention

they need after surgery. Nurses often have overwhelming caseloads and may need to deal with something that’s urgent before getting to you. Advocates suggest being respectful and appreciative to build a positive relationship with your care team. But you may need to be assertive at times to get attention on a critical issue.

Sending a friend or relative to speak with the charge nurse could help. And be sure to ask what to do once you are discharged and whom to call if you have a problem.

Don’t go it alone It can help throughout the process to have someone at your side.

Navigating a surgery can be overwhelming. Even during an office visit, anxiety and uncertainty can make you forget the questions you wanted to ask. It can be helpful to have another person to help ask questions, remember instructions and take notes.

FOOD

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JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

STOJ

Smart snacks FROM FAMILY FEATURES

A busy summer schedule requires plenty of energy, and while relaxation is sure to help, what you eat is your essential source of fuel. Just like filling up your gas tank, food is what makes your body go.

A well-balanced approach to eating is a smart way to ensure your body gets the nutrients it needs to power you through each fun-filled day and keep you operating in tip-top shape. An eating plan such as Atkins offers a balanced approach with delicious foods that contain fiber-rich and nutrient-dense carbohydrates and good fats and proteins, while focusing on reduced levels of refined carbohydrates and added sugars.

Reach for snacks full of seasonal fruits and vegetables like peaches, cucumbers, zucchini and raspberries that will satisfy your appetite and fuel your summer days.

Find more warm-weather recipes and tips to stay energized throughout the season at Atkins.com.

TROPICAL RASPBERRY SMOOTHIE Recipe courtesy of Atkins Prep time: 5 minutes Servings: 1 1/2 cup coconut cream 4 ounces firm silken tofu 1/2 cup red raspberries, plus additional (optional) 2 teaspoons sugar substitute (optional) 1/8 teaspoon coconut extract 3ice cubes whipped cream (optional) In blender, combine coconut cream, tofu, raspberries, sugar substitute, if desired, and coconut extract; blend until smooth. To remove seeds, strain mixture through sieve then return to blender.

With machine running, add ice cubes, one at a time, and blend until smooth.

Pour into tall glass and garnish with whipped cream and raspberries, if desired.

PEACHY PROSCIUTTO BITES Recipe courtesy of Atkins Prep time: 10 minutes Servings: 4 (3 bites per serving) 1/2 cup whole almonds 2 medium peaches (each 2 1/2 inches in diameter) 4 ounces cream cheese 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon sugar substitute (optional) 12 thin slices prosciutto 12 basil leaves (optional) Heat oven to 350 F. In single layer, toast almonds 10 minutes. Let cool then coarsely chop. Set aside.

Slice each peach into six wedges and set aside.

In small bowl, combine softened cream cheese with cinnamon and pinch of sugar substitute. Add almonds; blend to combine.

Lay out single slice of prosciutto, place 1 tablespoon cheese mixture on top of peach wedge and top with basil leaf. Place wedge at one end of prosciutto and roll up. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

Avoid the hidden sugar effect The frenetic pace of summer activities makes onthe-go foods the norm. While many portable snacks tout healthy benefits and good-for-you nutrition, it’s easy to be confused about what truly makes up nutritious foods, as well as how the body responds to various foods.

According to the recent Sugar Gap Study conducted by Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., there is a significant gap in Americans’ knowledge about nutrition and the “hidden sugar effect,” where certain foods turn into sugar during the digestive process. While a person can’t see these sugars, his or her body can. The study revealed that only 1 in 10 Americans are aware that certain foods can cause the hidden sugar effect.

Make better choices and avoid hidden sugars this summer with these tips for finding foods that won’t

SMOKED SALMON, CUCUMBER AND CREAM CHEESE ROLL-UPS Recipe courtesy of Atkins Prep time: 5 minutes Servings: 4 2 cucumbers (8 1/4 inches long each) 8 tablespoons cream cheese 12 ounces smoked chinook salmon (lox) Use mandolin or vegetable peeler to cut long, thin strips of cucumber.

Spread cream cheese onto smoked salmon, place strip of cucumber at one edge and roll up with salmon and cream cheese. Pin in place with toothpick. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

ZUCCHINI CRISPS Recipe courtesy of Atkins Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes Servings: 4 2 medium zucchinis 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated garlic powder (optional) Italian seasoning (optional) rosemary (optional) dill (optional) Heat oven to 400 F. Cut zucchini into 1/4inch slices. If small, cut diagonally. Brush both sides with olive oil and season with salt, pepper and Parmesan.

Season as desired with garlic powder, Italian seasoning, rosemary or dill.

Place in single layer on baking sheet and bake 10 minutes, turning once. Cool on wire rack.

create excessive sugar spikes: • Beware of sugary beverages, especially fruit juices.

Keeping well hydrated is especially important when temperatures rise, but sweet drinks can pack an excessive amount of sugar.

• Know that not all snack bars are created equal – with many packing a sugary punch. An option such as the Atkins Harvest Trail Coconut Almond Bar combines roasted coconut and almonds which can keep you feeling full and satisfied without the hidden sugars.

• Understand which foods can cause blood sugar spikes – it’s more than cakes and candy. All carbohydrates elevate blood sugar; even ancient grains and brown rice convert into sugar when digested, making it important to enjoy these foods in smaller portions.

Learn more at hiddensugar.com.

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JUNE 9 – JUNE 15, 2017

Meet some of

FLORIDA’S

finest

FINEST & ENTERTAINMENT

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.

Thousands of Caribbean culture lovers converge on South Florida every year on the Columbus Day weekend to attend the annual Miami Broward Carnival, a series of concerts, pageants, parades, and competitions. On Carnival Day, “mas” (masquerade) bands of thousands of revelers dance and march behind 18-wheel tractortrailer trucks with booming sound systems from morning until nightfall while competing for honors. Here are some of the “Finest” we’ve seen over the years.

Go to www.miamibrowardcarnival.com for information on this year’s Carnival.

CHARLES W. CHERRY II / FLORIDA COURIER

Berry’s final studio album comes out this month

BY RANDALL ROBERTS LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Rock ’n’ roll icon Chuck Berry, who died in March at age 90, left behind a legacy that includes seminal American songs, including “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Maybellene” and “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man.” He also left behind a final musical testament called “Chuck,” which NPR Music is now pre-

viewing ahead of the album’s release on June 16.

Berry’s 20th studio album is his first since 1979’s “Rock It” and sees him employing his longtime St. Louis backing band as support.

In addition to accompaniment by two of his children, Ingrid and Charles Berry Jr., the record also features guest appearances from guitarists Gary Clark Jr., Tom Morello and Nathanie Rateliff.

Needless to say, Berry didn’ hire Diplo or Skrillex to update his sound — nor did any of the album’s 10 songs get the Rick Rubin or T Bone Burnett treatment. Just Berry and some compadres holed up in his studio combining riffs and rhythm There’s even a sequel to “Johnny B. Goode” called “Lady B Goode.”

NUCCIO DINUZZO/CHICAGO TRIBUNE/TNS

Bill Maher is shown at the Chicago Theatre on May 6 in Chicago.

Maher’s guests since racial slur include Ice Cube, Dyson

BY LIBBY HILL LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Bill Maher continues to be embroiled in controversy after his use of a racial slur last week, and Ice Cube is prepared to give him some “Real Talk” about it.

The rapper was already scheduled to appear on the June 9 episode of HBO’s “Real Talk with Bill Maher” and has no intention of backing out now.

“Ice Cube will still appear on Bill Maher this Friday as scheduled to talk about the release of ‘Death Certificate: 25th Anniversary edition,’ an album that was recorded in the wake of the Rodney King beating in 1991, which sadly, speaks to many of the same race issues that we as a society are still dealing with today,” a representative for Ice Cube told The Times in a statement Tuesday morning.

Ice Cube

Michael Eric Dyson

Senator declines Maher made headlines last week when, during a conversation with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, he used a racial slur to refer to himself as a house slave.

Both HBO and Maher issued apologies shortly after the episode aired, but the conversation surrounding the word continues.

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota was also scheduled to

appear on this week’s episode of “Real Talk” but announced Monday that he was now declining the invitation.

“What Bill Maher said was inappropriate and offensive, which is why he made the decision not to appear on the next episode of ‘Real Time.’ He was glad to see Bill, who the senator considers to be a good friend, apologize and express sincere regret for his comment,” a spokesperson for Franken said in a statement.

Dyson scheduled Ice Cube was scheduled to be the mid-show interview guest, while Michael Eric Dyson — who had a notably mixed response to Maher’s use of the slur — was to be the top-of-show interview.

Also scheduled were CNN political analyst David Gregory, former Republican Rep. David Jolly of Florida and activist Symone Sanders.

GENARO MOLINA/LOS ANGELES TIMES/TNS

Chuck Berry plays at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles in a January 2002 file image. NPR Music is now previewing his final musical testament, called “Chuck,” ahead of the album’s June 16 release.

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Publix is proud to celebrate Caribbean American Heritage Month.

Tastes of the Caribbean are right around the corner. Stop by during our Caribbean Tasting Event for recipe tastings, giveaways, and promotions from Western Union, Iberia, Quirch Foods, and Grace Foods.

Visit publix.com/caribbeanheritage for more info.

S

FATHER’S DAY

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TOJ

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

FROM FAMILY FEATURES

Finding the perfect gift for dear ol’ dad may be easier than you think. Show that you’ve paid attention all these years and know what it takes to make him smile. From gifts that make practical tasks easier to accessories for his favorite pleasure pursuits, these ideas take the stress out of showing your dad how much he means.

Add a simple “thank you” and a big hug, and he’s sure to feel the love this Father’s Day.

Anywhere garage door control If your dad has ever driven away from home, wondered if the garage door is closed then turned around to check, give him the gift of peace of mind. Let dad use his smartphone with the Chamberlain MyQ Garage universal controller and free app to confirm the garage door is closed, open or close it remotely and even receive activity alerts. The controller works with most openers manufactured after 1993, installs in minutes and is available online at The Home Depot, Lowe’s and myqsmartgarage.com.

Father’s Day T-bone gift package Impress dad this year with the meal of his dreams from Omaha Steaks. Tender filet on one side, robust strip on the other, dad will love sinking his teeth into this 30-ounce T-bone. Plus, with gourmet jumbo franks, eight ground beef sliders, melt-in-your-mouth potatoes au gratin and rich New York cheesecake for dessert, this combo has something for everyone in the family. Find more delicious meals for dad at omahasteaks.com.

Outdoor cleaning made easy

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

Gear up for a good time

Get the job done

Whether it’s the thrill of the catch or the peaceful solitude that draws him, fishing is a pastime many dads enjoy. A true fisherman can never have too much fishing gear, so it’s hard to go wrong.

If you’re uncertain about the specifications of items like rods and reels, focus on access­ories instead. An assortment of lures, a new tackle box or a GPS device cre­­­ated specifically for fishing are all ideas sure to earn your dad’s appreciation.

If one of dad’s favorite places to spend time is the garage, a new set of tools might be just what he’s looking for to finish up his project list. When a little home maintenance is required, helpful items – as simple as hammers, screwdrivers and tape measurers or more job-specific items like ladders, saws and power tools – can really come in handy. Or, if he’s already got the tools he needs, consider a tool chest or work bench for optimal garage organization.

Give dad the power to quickly and easily tackle any outdoor cleaning task with a pressure washer that’s durable enough to pass a military-grade drop test while offering the convenience of electric power. From spraying down the grill after a meal to keeping his car and garage looking pristine, the compact Briggs & Stratton S2000 electric pressure washer with an onboard detergent tank is just the tool for

the job. Visit briggsandstratton.com to learn more about the full line of outdoor cleaning products or purchase at amazon.com.