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CASH IN THE APPLE FOR
03-23-17
By Cash Michaels
THE YEAR IS
2017 - Yep, ten years from now. And all
of us, now ten years older, look back with amazement and ask ourselves, “What
the heck were we thinking when we elected Donald Trump president of the United
States?”
Oh, don’t
worry, I get it….most likely if you’re reading the Wilmington Journal, you didn’t vote for Trump back in 2016,
‘cause you knew what was coming.
That is, if
you voted for president in 2016.
It is all such
a bad memory now. That crazy rich man who kept making up stuff so that folks
wouldn’t pay attention to what he was really doing, namely getting us into wars
and conflicts he had no business getting us into. Boy was the Donald surprised
to realize that Kim-Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, is crazier than
Trump was, and actually meant what he said when Kim promised to send a missile
to Mar–a-Largo, Trump’s Florida retreat.
Luckily the
US intercepted the thing, so Trump still had someplace to play golf while the
Congress was investigating him for impeachment. Afterall, Trump had to know
that sooner or later, those videos of him from that Russian hotel he stayed at
during that 2005 business trip were going to see the light of day. It’s just a shame
(for him, at least) that those videos were released right before he announced
that he was going to run for re-election. Boy, I would have loved to see him
try that “Make America Great Again” garbage again, especially with unemployment
zooming sky high on his watch; inflation hitting at double-digits; the crime
rate tripled; civil rights violations all over the place, and even Republicans
filling the streets in protest because no one could get decent health care
anymore.
All of that
was ten years ago in 2017, when Pres. Trump was high on the hog…for a short
while anyway. I mean, it is still truly amazing that as many Americans bought
his “strong leader” act as they did. After all, the man lied and lied and lied
like falling rain back then, no matter how many congressional hearings they
had. And no amount of threats to take his Twitter account away stopped him from
giving federal investigators all the evidence they needed to for Democrats to
start impeachment proceedings against him in 2019.
Yes, it was
certainly glorious when the Dems took back the Congress – both houses. It took
them a long time, but they finally found their mettle after being pushed around
and profoundly disrespected after so many years. But at least they were able to
reverse some of the damage done by Trump and the Republicans in the previous
Congress.
Now, more
Americans have affordable health care than ever before, Meals on Wheels has
been up and delivering food to the elderly and needy again for the past several
years, and it took seven nominees to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions
after he was forced to step down, but at least he was somebody who cared about
civil rights and religious liberties.
Muslims and
Mexicans can breathe easier once again.
It is a
shame, however, that years after that blasted wall at the Mexican border was
finished, Pres. Trump finally admitted that he always knew that Mexico would
never pay for it.
Yep, the
Donald Trump era was ten years ago. Here’s hoping that we never make that
mistake again.
But let’s
all get behind Pres. Obama, and give her all the love and support she deserves.
I, for one, am glad that she got so sick of watching Trump and his
foolish-ness, that she changed he mind, and with the support of her husband and
family, decided to run in 2020 and defeat Pres. Mike Pence, who had to take
over when Trump was drummed out of office.
Folks
really got fed up with his “good ole’ boy” act, and limp excuses that he really
didn’t know what was going on in the Trump White House.
So now
Pres. Michelle Obama has finished her first term, and going on to her second.
Her husband is on the United States Supreme Court, and her oldest daughter is a
senator from Illinois.
The year is
2027, and all is right with the world once again.
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ROCK AND ROLL ICON, CHECK BERRY DIES AT 90
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Chuck Berry, who died Saturday, March 18, was held in such high esteem as the father of rock n roll that rock royalty often played backup in his bands.
At Berry’s 60th birthday celebration in St. Louis, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, huge stars in their own right, backed Berry as he sang and duck walked across the stage while the audience danced in the aisles or in their seats.
The late John Lennon, co-founder of the Beatles, who sang from time to time with Berry, paid him the ultimate tribute when he said, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.”
The 90 year-old Berry died Saturday at his home in St. Charles, Mo.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Chuck Berry, beloved father, grandfather and great-grandfather, passed away at his home today (Saturday) at the age of 90. Though his health had deteriorated recently, he spent his last days at home surrounded by the love of his family and friends,” according to his website.
On October 18th, his 90th birthday was supposed to be a celebration. He said he would release in 2017 his first album in 38 years. The album consists of new songs he had written and produced. He planned to dedicate the album to Thelmetta, his wife of 68 years. The release date for the new album, simply titled “Chuck,” has not yet been announced.
A signature guitarist and a prolific songwriter, Berry wrote songs about fast cars, women and the gifted, like the subject of one of his greatest hits, “Johnnie B. Goode.” The song’s lyrics said Johnnie B. Goode never learned to read or write so well, but he played the guitar like “ringing a bell.” In the song “Nadine,” she drove a coffee-colored Cadillac.
During Berry’s long career, he was imprisoned twice for income tax evasion and a conviction for violating the Mann Act, which involved taking a 14-year-old girl across state lines for illicit purposes. The Mann Act also was used against heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson in 1912 and architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926. The charges were dropped against Wright but Johnson was convicted.
Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry was born October 18, 1926, in St. Louis. His parents were grandchildren of slaves.
Martha Berry, his mother, was one of the few black women of her generation to gain a college education. His mother was a school principal, and his father, Henry Berry, was a contractor as well as a deacon at the Antioch Baptist Church. Chuck Berry was the fourth of six children born to the couple.
He attended Sumner High School, a private institution that was the first all-black high school west of the Mississippi. For the school’s annual talent show, Berry sang Jay McShann’s “Confessin’ the Blues” while accompanied by a friend on the guitar. Although the school administration bristled at what they viewed as the song’s vulgar content, the performance was an enormous hit with the student body and sparked Berry’s interest in learning the guitar himself, according to his biography.
CONCERN ABOUT HIGH
NUMBER
OF NC EXONERATIONS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
“Twenty years I’ve been trying to prove my
innocence [of murder]…I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there. I can’t explain why
people say what they did or why they lied. Only God can.”
The late Darryl
Hunt,
exonerated of murder in 2004,
after over 19
years in prison.
It was just over a year ago, March
13th, 2016, when Darryl Hunt, 51, the innocent man Winston-Salem
held deepest in its heart, was found dead in a pickup truck.
After being
exonerated 13 years earlier for a murder it took almost 20 years to prove he
didn’t commit, Hunt, who was reportedly dying of cancer, and frustrated with
the struggles he encountered after being released from prison, took his own
life, police say.
Those who
knew Hunt say had he lived, had he continued to advocate for those falsely
locked behind prison walls like he once was, he would have found no surprise in
a recent report by the National Registry of Exonerations that showed in 2016,
North Carolina had the fifth highest number of prison exonerations in the
nation at eight (the state has had just 36 exonerations since 1943).
And of
those eight, six of them were African-American.
“It is hard to stem the tide of
racism that leads to such unjust actions like the incarceration inequality
…until we come to terms with our “shame” as a nation,” Rev. Stephen McCutchan,
retired pastor of Highland Presbyterian Church in the city, who also served at
chairman of the board of the nonprofit Darryl
Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, Inc., says. “Our shame causes us to
become defensive and seek to justify our mistreatment of others who are
different from us.”
“Darryl, by his lack of bitterness
from having been horribly mistreated and misjudged, and his devotion to
assisting other prisoners as they tried to transition out of prison, gave us a
model of good emerging from evil,” Rev. McCutchan continued. “Unfortunately
many saw him as both Black and Muslim, and couldn’t listen to the freedom of
God [that spoke] through him.”
The Hunt case fueled the movement in
North Carolina years ago that put the state’s criminal justice system under even
greater scrutiny than ever before, creating the environment that spawned the
Innocence Commission, and the Racial Justice Act in 2009 (before a
Republican-led legislature repealed in 2013).
But civil rights attorney Irving
Joyner, chair of the NC NAACP’s Legal Redress Committee, says the numbers show
that more must be done now.
“For decades, many North Carolina's prosecutors have used illegal means to obtain convictions against people who were innocent, poor and
defenseless. The statistics show that most of these innocent victims were
African Americans who did not have the resources to challenge their
prosecutions and were prohibited by North Carolina law from obtaining vital
information, prior to trial, which would have assisted in their defense of
tainted charges and, as a result, defendants had to encounter "trials by
ambush,"” Joyner, who also teaches at the NCCU School of Law in Durham,
says.
“African Americans, who were not able to
afford competent legal counsel, were the predominant victims of this process
because they were unable to properly defend themselves. In recent years, this
illegal process was reformed and allowed for discovery of the prosecutors'
records, which documented these abuses and misconduct, and thus allowed
illegally convicted individuals to test the illegally used evidence in court.”
Atty. Joyner
continued, “The use of these reformed procedures produced evidence to support
claims of misconduct by several prosecutors, and African Americans were the
primary beneficiaries. To this day, the prosecutors who were responsible for
these abuses have never been punished, which encourages prosecutors to continue
to conduct prosecutions in illegal, unconstitutional and unethical manners. As
a result, there is a need for additional reforms in order to insure that
African Americans and others will be fully protected by our constitutions and
laws.”
“Our
criminal justice system is broken,” says Rev. William Barber, pres. of the NC
NAACP, which is demanding the release of Dontae Sharpe of Greenville, whom they
say was falsely convicted of a 1994 murder. “We need serious reform because
incarceration of innocent people is criminal. If we are fifth highest in
the nation, this begs the question how many others are innocent but
incarcerated.
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NCNAACP THREATENS MASS
SIT-IN AT STATE
LEGISLATURE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In a
continuing effort to force the Republican-led NC General Assembly to back-off,
if not repeal various “extremist” laws and measures, the NC NAACP Tuesday rallied
supporters from across the state at the Legislative Building in Raleigh,
lobbying lawmakers to work with them, or else.
The “or
else,” according to Rev. William Barber, president of the NCNAACP, could be
thousands of chapter members and supporters returning to Jones Street in a few
weeks, and conducting a mass sit-in at each legislator’s office.
“They’re
really trying a political coup,” Rev. Barber told his gathering on the Halifax
Mall behind Legislative Building, noting how laws are being considered to
remove traditional powers from Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper; allow concealed guns
on college campuses; and makes it illegal to be a whistleblower if employees
see injustice or fraud.
“We may have to go in there again, and some of
us are thinking about having a mass sit-in, where we sit-in every room, every
hallway…all the sidewalks…and if they want to arrest us, they’ll have to arrest
5,000 people.”
That’s
considered nonviolent “direct action,” organizers say. But there are important
steps, like educating lawmakers on the issues, and negotiating with them.
Barber also stressed that before any direct action, there must be
“self-purification” so that demonstrators are acting with righteous purpose,
not their egos.
Several
weeks ago the NCNAACP, joined by national NAACP Pres. Cornell William Brooks,
called for a national boycott of North Carolina if GOP lawmakers continued draw
racially gerrymandered voting districts, and did not repeal HB2, the notorious
“bathroom law” which not only targets members of the LGBT community, but also
restricts municipalities’ ability to raise their minimum wage ordinances.
The state
NAACP also announced the filling of a bill that would call for special
legislative elections to be held now because the current legislature is “unconstitutional.”
The civil rights groups adds that because the Fourth Circuit US Court of
Appeals ruled last year that because the 2011 legislative map was
unconstitutional due to racially gerrymandered districts, then the legislature
elected based on that map was unconstitutional.
A federal
court ruled that lawmakers were to redraw the map by March 15th, and
have special elections planned beginning in September, however that ruling was
appealed to the US Supreme Court, which has not ruled either for or against as
of yet.
There are
also bills that the NCNAACP supports passage of, including HB303 – the Voter
Freedom Act, which would protect North Carolina voters from being improperly
challenged during the 25 days prior to an election; HB233 –the “Ban the Box”
law which will help formerly incarcerated individuals qualify for employment
without initially divulging their previous criminal history; and also HB13,
which provides greater flexibility in class sizes and would prevent mass
teacher layoffs in programs such as art, music, physical education and
languages.
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR
03-23-17
TRUMP BUDGET CUTS
FUNDING FOR NC PUBLIC BROADCASTING
[RALEIGH] If Pres. Donald Trump’s proposed budget is
passed, millions of federal dollars for public television and radio stations in
North Carolina will be cut, published reports say. The Corporation for Public
Broadcasting received $445 million for the current fiscal year, with PBS and
NPR stations in North Carolina getting at least $6 million each. That’s
anywhere from seven to 22 percent of their individual operating budgets. Right
now, there is a national campaign to urge Congress not to pass the president’s
budget cuts for public broadcasting.
BILL WOULD ELIMINATE
STATE FINAL EXAMS FOR SEVERAL SUBJECTS
[RALEIGH]If
a new bill is passed, high school students statewide will no longer have to
take state-sponsored final examinations in various subjects. A state House
committee Tuesday approved eliminating final standardized testing for high
school students, allowing teachers to develop their own final exams. Certain
end-of-grade tests required by federal law would remain.
MASSIVE BLAZE IN
DOWNTOWN RALEIGH DESTROYS FIVE-STORY, $51 MILLION APARTMENT COMPLEX
[RALEIGH] Investigators
are still mulling through the ash and debris left in the wake of an enormous fire
last weekend that totally destroyed a five-story, $51 million apartment complex
under construction in downtown Raleigh. Several surrounding buildings were
damaged by the intense heat and flames. At press time, the cause of the fire
had not been determined. There were only minor injuries reported, and no casualties.
ST. AUG’S STUDENT
FATALLY SHOT IN WASHINGTON, DC
[RALEIGH] A
freshman student at St. Augustine’s University was fatally shot late Monday in
Washington, DC while making a music video with friends, authorities say. The victim
was identified as 19-year-old Ayana McAllister. Reportedly, she was with
friends making the video when shooting began, with at least one bullet fatally
striking her in the crossfire, while another female was grazed. Ms. McAllister
was a native of DC. Police are still investigating.
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