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More GOP voting gamesRepublican lawmakers reduce language interpreters

BY MARC CAPUTOTHE MIAMI HERALD / MCT

Desiline Victor, the 102-year-old North Miami voter who became a symbol of Florida’s elections woes, could again find it tough to cast a ballot now that the Republican-controlled state Senate voted Tuesday to crack down on foreign-language interpreters at the polls.

The Senate approved the last-minute measure on what appeared to be a party-line voice vote as it amended a bill designed to reverse the effects of an election law that helped create long lines and sup-press the vote in 2012.

Not enough translators

On Election Day at Vic-tor’s polling station, there weren’t enough interpret-ers for the Creole-speak-ing native of Haiti and hun-dreds like her. Turnout was heavy. And lines lasted for hours – partly due to a slew of proposed state constitu-tional amendments placed on the ballot by the Florida Legislature.

“My mom is a victim of this problem, if they’re go-ing to change something it should be to make voting easier. Just make it easy,” said Victor’s godson, Ma-thieu Pierre-Louis, whom she raised as her own child.

Victor, who couldn’t be reached, voted after an hour wait. Her struggle earned her an invitation and a shoutout from Presi-dent Obama at his State of the Union address.

Laying in waitNow, months later, Re-

publicans complained that they suspected the inter-preters were helping cast ballots on Election Day in Democrat-heavy North Mi-ami.

Republican lawmakers waited until the new must-

See GOP, Page A2

FROM STAFF REPORTS

ORLANDO – For the first time in the history of the Florida A&M University (FAMU) Col-lege of Law, the first-time pass rate of the February 2013 Flori-da Bar Exam exceeded the state average.

Law school graduates are re-quired to pass the exam to be able to legally practice law in Florida.

At 82.6 percent, FAMU beat the state average of 80.2 percent, better than five of the 11 schools reported – including the Uni-versity of Florida, Florida Coast-al, and Nova Southeastern. The score also exceeded the com-bined passage rate of the non-

Florida law schools.The good news comes on the

heels of the College of Law’s continuing accreditation pro-cess and a March school site visit by the American Bar As-sociation (ABA) that the school calls “routine.” FAMU must still submit additional information to the ABA for further consider-ation.

‘The right steps’“We are extremely pleased

with the efforts of the adminis-tration, faculty and students of the FAMU College of Law,” said Larry Robinson, interim presi-dent of FAMU.

“This news could not have

FAMU bar exam pass rate best in historySNAPSHOTS

NATION | A6

Obama urged to invest in nation’s ‘dark ghettos’

FINEST | B5

Meet Bobbi Marie

Slow change to state’s juvenile justice system

FLORIDA | A3

Employees being penalized for health issues

BUSINESS | B3

FLORIDA COURIER FILES

FAMU law grads are shown in this 2009 file photo. See FAMU, Page A2

BY JAMES HARPERFLORIDA COURIER

As the Florida Cou-rier reported last week, four separate profession-al sports companies – the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and Miami Dolphins, the Orlando Lions pro soccer team, and Daytona Inter-national Speedway (DIS) – are asking the Florida Leg-islature to give them some $300 million in Florida tax-payer money over 30 years to build or remodel their respective sports facilities. There’s also a measure to increase funding for spring training stadiums.

On Tuesday, members of the House Economic Af-fairs Committee narrowly supported an amendment that latched the DIS and Jaguar proposals together. That’s a move that some legislators believe could hinder both proposals, es-pecially since this is the second time Jacksonville has asked for – and may receive – taxpayer money.

It’s the first time DIS has approached the state for tax funds.

The Senate also has a proposal that would re-

quire the Florida Depart-ment of Economic Oppor-tunity to prepare an an-nual list of teams, spring training sites and profes-

sional sports seeking as-sistance from the state. That list would be ranked and then sent to the Legis-lature for a final vote.

As of the Florida Cou-rier’s press time late Wednesday night, all of the requests for taxpay-er subsidies were still on track. And Black business activists are weighing in statewide, especially from Miami and Tampa, on the Florida Legislature.

Similarities and differences

Backers of each propos-al claim the money offers the prospect of construc-tion and long-term jobs, along with increased lo-cal economic impact. And though they all ask for mil-lions of dollars, each re-quest is different in some way from the others.

Of the four proposals, only Miami’s will give lo-cal taxpayers a chance to decide for themselves.

See HEAT, Page A2

BRINGING STATEWIDE HEATWELFARE QUEENS?PART 2

Black Floridians in Miami

and Tampa are pushing

hard for Black business

participation in pro sports

deals involving millions of dollars in taxpayer

subsidies, as things get tougher in the Florida Legislature.

COURTESY OF THE MIAMI HERALD

In this screen capture, longtime South Florida activist Attorney H.T. Smith speaks in favor of the Miami Dolphins’ proposal for partial taxpayer funding.

‘LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL’ / 50TH ANNIVERSARY

‘The cup of endurance runs over’

AP PHOTO

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right, and the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy were arrested for “illegal protesting” and released after eight days in the Birmingham, Ala. city jail on April 20, 1963. Log on to flcourier.com to read the “Letter” in its entirety.

A2 APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013FOCUS

A hard lessonIn 2009, after threatening

to move his Major League Baseball team, multimil-lionaire Florida Marlins team owner Jeffrey Luria convinced Miami politi-cians to cover 80 percent of a new stadium’s $600 million-plus construction costs. Miami taxpayers will eventually pay $2.4 billion over 30 years to pay off the $500 million they chipped in for construction costs.

By contrast, the Miami Dolphins’ proposed deal for taxpayer money is one of the most complex and restrictive in the recent his-tory of public financing of pro sports businesses.

Miami-Dade County would help pay for at least $350 million in stadium renovations by charging an additional “bed tax” at most Miami-Dade hotels. The stadium would be re-quired to host a number of major sporting events, in-cluding Super Bowls – or pay a financial penalty to the county. The Dolphins would not leave Miami-Dade for 30 years.

The Dolphins would have to pay some of the money back in a lump-sum payment in 30 years. Billionaire Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is personally guaranteeing the Dolphins’ repayment. If he sells the team in the next five years, he pays a $20 million pen-

alty, and the new owner is on the hook for repayment to the county.

And before any of this happens, three things must occur.

The Florida Legislature must agree to give the Dol-phins a $90 million tax subsidy before the current session ends May 3; voters must approve the deal in a May 14 referendum, the cost of which the Dolphins will pay for up to $5 mil-lion; and NFL owners must award a Super Bowl to Mi-ami when they meet May 21-22.

Otherwise, the whole deal is off.

‘H.T.’ onboardAttorney H.T. Smith is

known for backing causes and projects that will ben-efit Miami’s Black com-munity, and has hard-won credibility by leading an economic boycott against Miami in 1990 for snub-bing South Africa’s new-ly-freed Nelson Mandela. The boycott cost the Mi-ami area millions of dollars in tourist and convention revenue.

Smith is wholehearted-ly backing the Dolphins’ project, as is Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce (M-DCC) President Bill Diggs. The stadium is lo-cated in Miami Gardens, a predominately Black city. Smith and Diggs spoke with the Florida Courier.

Last week, Smith partic-ipated in a press confer-ence, along with Dolphins management and Hispanic and GOP activist Jorge Ar-

rizurieta to appeal to their respective communities to back the referendum. Both are paid consultants to the Dolphins.

Smith said he is support-ing the project for the jobs that will come out of the renovation, especially for Blacks and other minori-ties if all goes as the Dol-phins plan. He said that every legislative bill that involves taxpayer mon-ey should encourage a fair disposition of money to all communities.

“Historically the Black community has been left out,” Smith explained. “The Black community should get its fair share of their tax dollars back,” he said, add-ing he would support “an aspirational goal” in the legislation for all four pro sports projects to hire mi-norities.

Dolphins agree to goals

Smith said he also is working with the Dolphins to set an aspirational goal to hire at least 70 percent of its construction workers from Miami-Dade County, with 10 percent from the city of Miami Gardens and at least 20 percent from low-income areas. The project is expected to cre-ate 10,000 jobs.

“The Dolphins would al-so provide a quarterly re-port on diversity hiring, contracting and purchas-ing, breaking down em-ployees by race and gen-der,” Smith said.

Smith said his sense right now is the majority of the

Miami-Dade community is against the referendum, “because people have not had an opportunity to un-derstand the agreement.”

“Taxpayers are not on the hook. The pro sports franchise has to take all the risk and assume all of the debt,” Smith said.

Long relationshipSmith has been working

with the Dolphins since 1995. He said that among their contributions to the Black community was $1 million to build a com-munity center in Liberty Center. He also noted ev-ery time the Super Bowl is played at the stadium, it creates 4,000 temporary jobs; the Black community gets $500,000 toward proj-ects.

Smith also says he has faith the current Dolphin administration will follow through on hiring minori-ties for the project. For ex-ample, he said Black par-ticipation on the construc-tion of Marlin Stadium was 22 percent.

Smith revealed that Diggs will be sitting down with Dolphins manage-ment and the project team to set hiring goals. Smith al-so noted that the Dolphins already have agreements with leaders in the Black community to assist with education and mentoring programs, internships and scholarships that are relat-ed to sports medicine and sports business.

Written agreementDiggs said M-DCC wants

to have a “community ben-efits agreement” with the Dolphins.

“It’s real simple. We want to support the referen-dum,” Diggs said, but first he wants the community benefits agreement signed by the Dolphins.

“It (the agreement) is very progressive and rad-ical. If you build a stadi-um, you are going to use our folks,” he said. “They can’t say we don’t have the ability to deliver. We have enough construction com-panies, trades, and people with particular skills. We will be able to meet the de-mand,” Diggs continued.

Action in TallyDiggs said he and M-

DCC will lobby Tallahas-see for the Dolphins bill, and he is optimistic the bill will pass. He said his orga-nization is currently work-ing on putting together a statewide agency that ad-vocates for Black business owners.

Diggs and M-DCC should work with the Tam-pa Organization of Black Affairs (TOBA), which also is now involved in the pro sports legislation.

Co-founded more than 30 years ago by Black law-yer-activist Delano S. Stew-art and others, TOBA has relentlessly pushed for lo-cal Black businesses and more public-Black private partnerships in the Tampa Bay area.

In a letter from board member James Ransom to selected legislators, TO-BA is demanding that the

four taxpayer subsidy bills be amended to “require stipulations that com-pel each potential recipi-ent to commit to and show proof of actually spending funds with African-Amer-ican, Hispanic, Asian, In-dian, Women and certi-fied Minority Business En-terprises, among others, in an ‘Equitable and Fair’ manner without sacrificing quality, service or signifi-cantly price.”

The letter also offers sug-gested language.

No opinionFlorida Democratic

House Leader Rep. Perry Thurston represents a por-tion of Broward County, just north of Miami-Dade. All four pro sports bills will come before the Appro-priations Committee on which he sits. He has not formed a opinion because the bills haven’t arrived yet to his committee.

Thurston – a small Black business owner himself – said he is cognizant of the fact that non-White and minority businesses are left out of major construc-tion projects, an issue he will raise when the bill is discussed.

Thurston said those back-ing the bills for their con-struction projects should not worry that the legisla-tive session ends May 3.

“A lot can happen in three weeks,” he noted.

The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.

HEATfrom A1

Ever since the Ronald Reagan presidency, Democrats and Re-publicans have done their best to put and keep the malefactors of great wealth, the 1 percent, on top. Barack Obama has done nothing to alter this awful trend.

Like all of his predecessors, he would never have become pres-ident if he hadn’t sided with the ruling classes. That simple fact explains everything the presi-dent has done to date and elim-inates any pretense of mystery surrounding his actions regard-ing budget negotiations.

His decisions to convene a deficit-cutting “cat food com-mission” and to propose auster-ity measures, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare, are easily understood when the

foundations of our system are understood.

Under controlWe do not live in a true democ-

racy. We live in a country con-trolled by corporate interests and wealthy individuals. They choose the politicians before we know their names and Barack Obama is Exhibit A in that regard.

Barack Obama’s name was new to most Americans when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic

convention, but his presence was proof that he already had buy-in from the movers and shakers and that he was planning his run for the presidency even then. The ambitious senator knew where his bread was buttered and showed his acumen and his loy-alties early.

In 2006, Obama was only in his second year in the U.S. Senate when he spoke at an event con-vened by the Brookings Institu-tion’s Hamilton Project, a neolib-eral think tank created by Clin-ton administration Treasury Sec-retary Robert Rubin and Deputy Secretary Roger Altman.

The speech is a cornucopia of right-wing fantasy made palat-able by the supposedly liberal Black man. “Too many of us have been interested in defending pro-grams the way they were written in 1938.” “The forces of global-ization have changed the rules of the game.” “The coming baby boomer retirement will only add to the challenges.” “Most of us are strong free traders.”

Knows the languageLike every smooth-talking pol-

itician, Obama knows how to use the right language for each audience and the audience was larger than those present in the room during his speech. Barack Obama became president be-cause he told the Rubins and Alt-mans of the world that he was on their side while simultaneously convincing millions of voters that he was on theirs. That is a recipe for electoral success.

Americans are uninformed and deluded in many ways, but they are not complete fools. Tell-ing them that their Social Secu-rity benefits will be slashed is not a way to win votes. Convinc-ing them that the other side is more evil and responsible for all the bad choices is a winner and Obama has mastered that art.

Time for changeWhen a Democrat gets away

with austerity and wars of aggres-sion, it is truly time to admit that a new paradigm is needed. The

plea to stick with the Democrats should by now be completely discredited. Barack Obama has become the Teflon president like his idol Ronald Reagan.

The next Democratic presi-dent may not be as gifted at dis-sembling but will definitely be as beholden to the rulers as Obama is. Changing the name at the top is not the solution. Changing all the assumptions about politics is the solution. Voting for the Green Party or other parties will be the answer for some. Others will dis-engage from the political process and choose other avenues of ac-tivism.

It is time for everyone to de-cide where they stand – with the rulers or with the ruled.

Margaret Kimberley’s col-umn appears weekly in Black-AgendaReport.com. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@B l a c k A g e n d a R e p o r t . c o m . Click on this story at www.fl-courier.com to write your own response.

Barack Obama and the class war

BLACK AGENDA REPORT

MARGARET KIMBERLEY

GOPfrom A1

pass elections bill was on the Sen-ate floor – instead of in commit-tee – to tack on the new limita-tion without taking any significant public testimony or receiving any evidence that any illegal act had happened.

“This is a horrible amendment,” said Sen. Oscar Braynon, a Demo-crat who represents the North Mi-ami area where Victor voted.

“During the election, we couldn’t get enough interpret-ers,” he said. “The lines were long because of all the constitution-al amendments. They were hard to read in English and they were even harder in Creole.”

Limited useBut the architect of the amend-

ment and the new elections bill, St. Petersburg Republican Sen. Jack Latvala, said his measure doesn’t ban interpreters, but it limits those who use foreign-lan-guage speakers for partisan ends.

“It’s become kind of a political tool in many areas to have folks who stay at the precincts all day offering their services to go in and help people and in many cases in an intimidating fashion,” said Lat-vala – providing no examples.

“What it does away with,” he said, “is the right of someone to stand outside a polling place and say, ‘I want to go in and help you because I’m here.’ It limits one person being able to do that 10 times a day.”

But that’s a major change, says Braynon and liberal-leaning elec-tion-rights groups.

If a person can only provide as-sistance to 10 people, then certain precincts could have required up

to 50 interpreters during the 2012 elections, Braynon said.

“We had trouble finding five people to help interpret,” he said.

Possible lawsuitThe new limitation could trig-

ger a lawsuit because it violates the Voting Rights Act, which “says any voter who can’t read or write has a choice of who gets to help them,” said Gihan Perera, execu-tive director of the liberal Florida New Majority. He pointed out that translators are already regulated and have to submit affidavits to affirm they follow the law and act in a nonpartisan way.

Democrats were quick to note that Latvala’s inability to provide evidence of voter fraud by inter-preters had echoes of the 2011 de-bate over the law known as House Bill 1355. It limited pre-Election Day early voting, loaded constitu-tional amendments on the ballot

and cracked down on voter-regis-tration drives.

Republican lawmakers said the bill was needed to cut down on fraud, but they provided no evi-dence of fraud committed during early voting – at which Democrats excelled.

Plus, the bill that they said tar-geted fraud did nothing to target the most likely type of illegal vot-ing: absentee ballots, which Re-publicans excel at casting.

By limiting early voting and stuffing the ballot with lengthy, wordy time-consuming amend-ments, the GOP-led Legislature helped create long lines. Some people cast ballots well after mid-night after eight-hour waits. Many dropped out of line, unable to ear-ly vote during the weekday and unable to cast ballots on Elec-tion Day because they had to get to work.

Those problems should large-ly go away under Latvala’s new

bill, which would increase early voting again, expand the types of sites where early voting can be of-fered and would limit lengthy bal-lot questions.

A House bill has similar provi-sions to reverse the effects of HB 1355.

Democrats targeted?

Miami-Dade has Florida’s larg-est number of foreign-born and foreign-language voters – many of whom lean Democrat – and would therefore be more affected by the limitation on interpreters in the Senate bill. SEIU Florida, a union, reported providing about 4,000 voters throughout South Florida with voter translation and literary assistance.

Herald staff writers Nadege Green and Mary Ellen Klas con-tributed to this report.

come at a better time. The examination re-sults clearly demon-strate that the right steps are being taken to ensure that our law students are prepared to enter their profes-sion.”

Historical achievements

In addition to ex-ceeding the state aver-age for the first time, this rate represents the first time in FAMU’s history that the College of Law scored above 80 percent for either the February or July Bar Exam. The 82.6 per-cent rate represents a 17.1-point increase from the prior highest rate for the February 2012 exam.

“We are very proud of our recent graduates and we commend them for the dedication they have shown to achieve this milestone,” said LeRoy Pernell, College of Law Dean.

The history-making test passers will return to the College of Law on April 22 to be sworn in during the college’s ninth Oath of Admis-sion ceremony. The public event will begin at 6:30 p.m.

FAMUfrom A1

Miami resident Desiline Victor, a

102-year-old native

of Haiti, joined

First Lady Michelle

Obama during

President Obama’s

2013 State of the Union

address.

ROD LAMKEY JR./MCT

A3FLORIDAAPRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

Senate prepares to replace no-fault auto insuranceBY JIM TURNERNEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – A proposal to scrap the state’s no-fault auto insurance system was backed by a Senate committee on Tues-day, but the measure will rev in idle pend-ing an anticipated appeals court ruling.

The Senate Banking and Insurance Committee voted to support the measure (SB 7152), which gives up on last year’s ef-fort to remove fraud from the state’s de-cade-old Personal Injury Protection (PIP) auto insurance system.

The proposal would abolish PIP and set bodily injury coverage as the new bargain basement system.

But the Senate measure will sit until a decision is reached on the state’s chal-lenge to Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis’ ruling in March that sided a chal-lenge by chiropractors and massage thera-pists to the 2012 law.

“I’ve got it in a posture so we can deal with it and we’re poised to take action in the event that we get further direction from the courts,” said committee Chair-man Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland. “I think it’s important to wait and see if the court decision is resolved. When we get that information we’ll have a basis for making a decision.”

Warming to changeLewis ruled the law that Gov. Rick Scott

signed last May illegally prevents accident patients from using PIP claims to pay for treatment by acupuncturists and massage therapists. He also found fault with the law’s lower limit on how much it will pay for non-emergency medical care.

Simmons said he believes time remains during the regular session if the court rules against the state in the next week or two.

“We wouldn’t want to have a special session if we could deal with it now,’ Sim-mons said.

Insurance companies have indicated they are “warming” to the proposed auto insurance change. Meanwhile, Scott and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, propo-nents of last year’s law, have made public overtures that they’d prefer giving the 2012 reforms a chance to take hold.

But Simmons said even if the court rules the law is constitutional he could see the Legislature eventually moving forward with his proposal.

Still some fraud“I think we’re finding that rates haven’t

gone down. I think we’re finding the fraud is still prevalent and the litigation is volu-minous and indications are that it’s going to get more voluminous,” Simmons said. ‘I think (PIP) is on its last gasp unless there is a dramatic reduction in litigation, in fraud and its rates. And that’s not happening.”

According to OIR, of 135 rate filings sought since the 2012 law went into effect, 52 percent have been for a decrease in pre-miums. About 28 percent have shown an increase.

Race enters debate over booming radio ban NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

A measure re-enacting the state’s law against loud playing of car stereos unani-mously cleared the Senate Judiciary Com-mittee on Monday, but only after the panel rejected an effort to require police to keep track of whether the law is used more often to ticket Blacks and Latinos.

The state had a statute that made it a crime to play a car radio too loudly, but it was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, because it treated different types of noise differently.

The old law exempted political noise, or commercial noise, and the court said that was impermissible. The bill (SB 634) to re-store the law would make it illegal for any type of sound coming from a car to be able to be “plainly audible” at 25 feet away or more.

Violations would bring a $30 citation.

Racial profile concernSen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, had

sought an amendment to have the new law require a check box on tickets to note the race or ethnicity of the person receiving it, with an eye toward deter-mining whether it is used disproportionately against minorities.

“The proclivity is that we make more noise than any-body else,” said Joyner, who is African-American.

Several members of the committee, however, said they were uncomfortable having the race of ticket re-cipients on the tickets, though it is done on other types of citations, such as those writ-ten for seat belt violations to track whether there is profiling occurring.

The amendment failed before the panel approved the bill, sending it to the full Sen-ate for a vote. A House version (HB 1019) of the bill, which also doesn’t include the check box requirement, is on the House calendar waiting for a floor vote.

Advocates pressing for more measures to curb abuse of incarcerated teens

BY MARGIE MENZELNEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – The Flori-da House last week unanimous-ly passed a bill protecting teens from abuse by staff in lock-ups run by the Department of Juve-nile Justice – but for many ad-vocates, the Legislature should be putting more protections in place.

The Dream Defenders, a youth group focused on juvenile justice issues, called last week for pro-tection from arrests at school for minor incidents. The group also called for an end to pepper spray and solitary confinement in jails run by Florida counties and to stop putting teens in the juvenile justice system for misdemeanor first offenses.

Florida incarcerates more youths per capita than any of the 10 most populous states. Last year, more than 58,000 were ar-rested – a rate 40 percent higher than the national average.

So members of the Dream De-fenders staged a sit-in at Gov. Rick Scott’s office and called on the Legislature to give their bills a hearing, but the measure that passed on April 12 wasn’t on their radar screen.

Death sparks billDJJ had asked Rep. Gayle Har-

rell, R-Stuart, to sponsor the bill (HB 353) after the death of Eric Perez of a cerebral hemorrhage at the Palm Beach Regional De-tention Center in 2011.

A 2012 inspector general’s re-port found that agency employ-ees didn’t call for help because they thought Perez was faking his illness. A grand-jury report was scathing, but found criminal charges couldn’t be filed against the staff because there was no basis in state law. So HB 353 ex-pands the definition of child abuse to include youths in DJJ

detention facilities. DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters

said the bill was necessary but the incident itself was “an outli-er – and it was swiftly dealt with. And that certainly sends a mes-sage.”

Policies changedSince Perez’ death, DJJ has

developed a yearly audit to re-view its employees for compli-ance with policies and proce-dures, and a tool to screen poten-tial employees for their ability to work with detained youths. The Palm Beach lock-ups telephones were reconfigured so teens could make free calls to lawyers, proba-tion officers and the state abuse hotline.

“We will not tolerate children being abused,” Walters said. “We will not tolerate children being neglected. Too many children have had that experience and found their way into our system, and our system will not do that to them.”

She pointed to the Milton Girls Juvenile Residential Facility, which was closed last winter after a former guard was charged with child abuse for her treatment of a

15-year-old inmate.

Abuse exposedA DJJ surveillance video sur-

faced in which Shannon Abbott appeared to slam the girl into a wall, throw her to the ground and pin her. Although Abbott filed an incident report saying the teen had resisted, the video did not appear to support her, and she was found guilty last month.

“I think there was a culture there that was really being kept secret and being hidden from our department,” Walters said. “But it has emerged, and fortunately law enforcement has gotten in-volved and people are being held accountable – after the fact, be-cause within a few months of that incident, that program was closed. And that will be our ap-proach throughout our system.”

SPLC lawsuitPerhaps the biggest issue for

advocates, though, is what the Southern Poverty Law Center’s David Utter calls “state-sanc-tioned child abuse down in Polk County.”

That would be SPLC’s top leg-islative priority, SB 506 by Sen.

Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, which would repeal a 2011 law (SB 2112) that allows Florida coun-ties to run their own juvenile jus-tice facilities. Three counties now do so – Polk, Seminole and Mar-ion – but only Polk uses pepper spray on juveniles.

SPLC has brought a federal lawsuit against Polk County and Sheriff Grady Judd for the prac-tice, which Judd strongly de-fends.

“Why would you rather us fight these kids – some of them well over six foot and 200 pounds – why would you want us to fight them on a concrete floor and take the chance of injuring them or us when they’re so incorrigible they won’t de-escalate, when a sim-ple spray from the pepper spray de-escalates most opportunities for there having to be a physical fight?” Judd asked.

Pepper spray debateHe said pepper spray quick-

ly wears off, whereas many ad-vocates say it shouldn’t be used on juveniles because their brains aren’t fully developed.

“The overwhelming view in Florida and the rest of the nation

regarding the use of pepper spray in juvenile settings is at odds with Sheriff’s Judd’s practice,” wrote Magistrate Judge Mark A. Pizzo last month. “He would be wise to develop a plan for reduc-ing the juvenile-on-juvenile vio-lence and limiting the use of pep-per spray.”

Judd also said Polk County complies with the Florida Model Jail Standards, which are differ-ent from the DJJ standards, and that housing juveniles at the jail – separately from adult inmates – saves Polk County millions of dollars.

Seminole County also operates its own juvenile detention center, and Major Scott Ballou told an audience at the panel discussion “Kids are Different: Youth in the Justice System” last month at St. Petersburg College that the cost was indeed a factor.

“(Senate Bill) 2112 was born of years of frustration over deten-tion cost reimbursement,” Bal-lou said. “I can tell you the last time we paid, the per diem rate was $282 per day per child – and that’s crazy.”

More billsSeminole County has cut the

daily average number of incar-cerated youths from between 40 and 50 to 15, he said.

“That’s why we wanted to do it. It wasn’t to abuse children by any stretch of the imagination,” Bal-lou said. “Because of local con-trol, we have a lot of options on detention avoidance.”

Joyner’s bill repealing SB 2112 hasn’t been heard, nor has its House companion by Rep. Mia Jones, D-Jacksonville.

Neither has SB 660/HB 603, requiring law enforcement to is-sue civil citations and provide di-version programs for first-time offenders who commit misde-meanors.

Neither has SB 1374/HB 1039, intended to reduce what the Dream Defenders call the “school-to-prison pipeline” by requiring schools with zero toler-ance policies to report to law en-forcement only serious threats to school safety.

Slow change to state’s juvenile justice system

RED HUBER/ORLANO SENTINEL/MCT

The Dream Defenders hold hands on April 9, 2012, in Sanford before marching to the Sanford Police Department in protest against the handling of the Trayvon Martin case by police. The group held a sit-in last week at Gov. Rick Scott’s office in Tallahassee to push for the passing of a bill that protects youths from arrests at school for minor incidents.

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EARTH IS A MEMORY WORTH FIGHTING FOR

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Sen. Arthenia Joyner

APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013A4 EDITORIAL

If you are given a lethal injection, shot by a firing squad, hung by your neck, drowned, impaled, cruci-fied, pushed off of a very high cliff or cut with a very sharp knife, it doesn’t mat-ter. You are still dead!

If you are living off of so-cial security that you paid for with deductions from every pay check that you earned and your health care program is Medicare, also paid for by you, and those programs are cut, you might die from the political

knife too.If President Barack

Obama insists on cutting Medicare and Social Se-curity programs to please rich people by limiting the amount of taxes wealthy Americans would be asked to pay, the president and

every Democrat that sup-ports his economic propos-als will be attacked by the right and the left, attacked by liberals and conserva-tives and attacked by both rich and poor United States citizens!

Attack on elderlyThe Republican right

will say the president’s pro-posals constitute an attack on senior citizens and the Democratic left will say that Obama is trying to help his rich friends and campaign

contributors at the expense of the elderly, the poor, the disabled and the needy.

No one will declare that their vote for Barack Obama was a vote for him to limit tax increases for the richest Americans by cutting every social service program he could cut. Those of you that believe the President can do no wrong perhaps have eyes but still can’t see.

Social Security and Medi-care helps but even if you combine all of the benefits of both programs the to-tal benefits will still not be enough for recipients to live a quality life style.

Yes, the people that love Democrats the most and vote for Democrats every time they step into a voting booth are probably poor and many of the Democrat-ic politician’s biggest sup-porters are elderly senior citizens.

Below poverty levelBelieve this. People with

full Social Security bene-fits still live below the pov-erty level, people on social security are still eligible for food stamps, people on so-cial security are still eligible for Lifeline, or discount tele-phone service, and people living on social security are eligible to receive food from local food banks.

If Democratic politicians think cutting Social Secu-rity and Medicare is good for people being helped by those programs, I’d like to see them live one month, just one month, on the mon-ey given to citizens eligible for social security benefits.

Pleasing donorsIf the Democrats dreamed

about living on Social Secu-rity and Medicare benefits they would wake up scream-ing like they just had their

worst nightmare.Cuts in social services

won’t just hurt Americans that get those benefits; many people will die if Medicare and Social Security are dis-mantled to please wealthy campaign contributors.

Democrats that hurt the poor in order to please the rich are not Democratic friends, benefactors, sup-porters or saviors of Ameri-ca’s poor and elderly. If you cut Medicare and social se-curity it will have deadly con-sequences and expose Dem-ocrats in Washington, D.C. as Democratic Assassins!

Buy Gantt’s book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” online or at any bookstore, like The Gantt Report page on Facebook and contact him at www.all-worl dcon sultant s .net . Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Cutting Medicare and Social Security equals deadly consequences

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

THE CREDO OF THE BLACK PRESSThe Black Press believes that Americans can best lead the world away from racism and national

antagonism when it accords to every person, regardless of race, color or creed, full human and

legal rights. Hating no person, fearing no person. The Black Press strives to help every person in

the firm belief...that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.

Obsession with testing is behind rampant school cheating

‘Chumps’ when it comes to politicsAs George Benson sang in “Moody’s

Mood,” “There I go, there I go, there I go…” making up words again. I couldn’t resist this one in light of our penchant to choose sides when it comes to economics versus poli-tics.

It seems we cannot understand, nor act upon, the fact that by combining the two dis-ciplines and leveraging the resulting power from such a sensible strategy we could build a stronger base and finally put an end to be-ing ignored and taken for granted.

So I made up this word in an effort to in-doctrinate us, to condition us, to program us, or whatever you want to call it, so that Black people can stop being sacrificial lambs led to the political and economic slaughter.

Choose economicsWe do not have to choose between the

two, but as I always say, if I had to choose I would definitely take economics over poli-tics. Why? Isn’t it obvious that while poli-tics runs most of our lives (because we have no real economic base) it certainly does not run the lives of those who are economically empowered?

Whatever Wall Street wants Wall Street gets. The stock market hits record highs; but Black people are sinking lower in net worth and income. Black people are too busy watching the Wives of …, or Scandal, or all of those BET Award shows to recognize the subordinated consumer-oriented role we are playing in the economy.

Like sister Sweet Brown said about the fire on YouTube, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”

As the war machine cranks up once again, the moneychangers are rubbing their greedy hands together in anticipation of another windfall from supplying the tools of war, the food for the troops, the equipment, the uni-forms, and all the accoutrements necessary to dispose of those pesky Koreans, Syrians, and Iranians.

Ignore political rhetoricWe get a daily dose of political rhetoric

and hardly ever take any economic medi-cine; it’s no wonder that many Black people see no way out of our economic/political dilemma. We have chosen political rhetoric over practical tried-and-true economic ini-tiatives to free us from psychological bond-age - a prescription that has not and does not work.

As Malcolm said, “…you are chumps…” when it comes to politics; and I say we are pawns when it comes to economics. How-ever, if we combine politics with econom-ics and not be led around by the ears by so-called leaders who only care about them-selves, their political connections, and the money they make from selling us down the road, we will be much better off than we are now.

Practice ‘Blackopoliticonomics’So, turn off the television and start read-

ing more, start learning more for yourself, and start initiating and participating in ef-forts, where you live, to combine and lever-age your collective economic and political clout – a winning strategy for sure. In other words, start practicing “Blackopoliticonom-ics.”

Jim Clingman, founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce, is an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati and can be reached through his website, blackonom-ics.com. Click on this story at www.flcou-rier.com to write your own response.

The Atlanta public school cheating scandal is but “the tip of the iceberg,” reports Bob Schaeffer, public edu-cation director of the Na-tional Center for Fair and Open Testing. A new FairT-est report confirmed cheat-ing incidents in 37 states and the District of Columbia in the last four years. It also lists 50 ways adults in public schools artificially boost test scores.

When everyone cheats, you know something is wrong with the test. In fact, high-stakes testing — in which jobs and even the ex-istence of schools depend on the results of a standard-ized test — is a perverse way to evaluate teachers and schools.

As Isabel Nunez, associ-ate professor at the Center for Policy Studies and So-cial Justice at Concordia University Chicago, writes, “Standardized testing has become monstrous” and is unsupported by the best re-search in the field. It’s the spearhead of an assault that is undermining public ed-ucation, turning teaching from a life mission to a badly paid, insecure job, and put-ting children at risk. We bet-ter step back and take an-other look to build, not de-stroy our public schools.

Schools limitedFirst, we have to get real

about what schools can do. A school cannot thrive as an oasis in a social desert. Even the best teacher can-not reach a student who is plagued by an untreated

toothache. Schools cannot bear the blame for all the maladies of poverty, unem-ployment, danger and pain. Parents with jobs matter. Ad-equate housing with a com-puter in the house matters. Transportation to schools matters. Nutrition and health care matters. School distance matters. Danger-ous streets matter.

There is no shortcut to equal opportunity. School funding remains sepa-rate and unequal. We know how to create great pub-lic schools. We see them in the affluent suburbs across the country. But in impov-erished urban and rural ar-eas, children go without text books, without computers, without adequate facilities to exercise. Don’t blame the teachers. Often the teachers reach into their own pockets to get needed supplies for their students.

No shortcutsThere is no shortcut to

high-quality teachers. The countries that are succeed-ing respect teachers and pay them accordingly. The cur-rent policy — using high-stakes testing to substitute for high pay, clear mentor-ing, peer review, social re-spect — virtually guarantees that the best teachers will not risk going to the schools

that need them the most.Closing neighborhood

schools has high costs. Par-ents must find ways to trans-port their children longer distances. Children must cross what often are contest-ed gang boundaries. Rous-ing parental involvement becomes even more difficult if the school is across town.

Invest in basicsAt this point, testing and

shutting down schools have become a way to avoid in-vesting in the basics. Let’s start there. Make certain ev-ery child has adequate nu-trition and health care. Pro-vide every child with pre-school, smaller classes in the early grades, after-school programs, and affordable training or college after high school.

And then focus attention on the areas most in need. Create jobs programs to put people to work doing work that needs to be done. Raise the minimum wage, make health care not just manda-tory but affordable. Build af-fordable housing.

The schools will rise as the neighborhood rises. And in-evitably, they will flail as the neighborhood fails.

Let’s provide every child with a fair start. There is no better return on the dollar.

Keep up with Rev. Jack-son and the work of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition at www.rainbowpush.org. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: UNPLUGGED INTERNET CAFES

JEFF PARKER, FLORIDA TODAY AN THE FORT MYERS NEWS-PRESS

Charles W. Cherry, Sr. (1928-2004), Founder Julia T. Cherry, Senior Managing Member, Central Florida Communicators Group, LLC

Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Cassandra Cherry- Kittles, Charles W. Cherry II, Managing Members Dr. Glenn W. Cherry, Chief Executive Officer Charles W. Cherry II, Esq., Publisher Dr. Valerie Rawls-Cherry, Human Resources Jenise Morgan, Senior Editor Lynnette Garcia, Marketing Consultant/Sales Linda Fructuoso, Marketing Consultant/Sales, Circulation Angela VanEmmerik, Creative Director Chicago Jones, Eugene Leach, Louis Muhammad, Lisa Rogers-Cherry, Circulation James Harper, Andreas Butler, Ashley Thomas, Staff Writers Delroy Cole, Kim Gibson, Photojournalists

MEMBER National Newspaper Publishers Association Society of Professional Journalists Florida Press Association Associated Press National Newspaper Association

W W W . F L C O U R I E R . C O M

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

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SUBMISSIONS POLICYSEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO NEWS@FLCOURIER.COM. Deadline for submitting news and pictures is 5 p.m. the Monday before the Friday publica-tion date. You may submit articles at any time. However, current events received prior to deadline will be considered before any infor-mation that is submitted, without the Publish-er’s prior approval, after the deadline. Press releases, letters to the editor, and guest com-mentaries must be e-mailed to be considered for publication. The Florida Courier reserves the right to edit any submission, and crop any photograph, for style and clarity. Materials will not be returned.

THE GANTT REPORT

LucIus GAnTT

NNPA COLUMNIST

JAMEs cLInGMAn

RIP, "Uncle Tommy" Gooden, 1933-2013: My kids asked me why I didn’t cry when I got the news. I told them I’m more familiar with death than they are, and it’s not such a shock. As I get older, death isn’t a distant eventuality anymore. It’s now ‘living’ around the corner...

Boston Marathon bombing: Before I heard the details of this crime, a pressure cooker always reminded me of Julia T. Cher-ry’s neckbones and collard greens, especial-ly the sssh-sssh-sssh sound it made while the food was cooking. Damn. Nothing is safe anymore in the world of global terrorism, not even my childhood memories of some of the best meals I’ve ever had...

Politicians and guns: Speaking of life and death, the U.S. Senate couldn’t even pass a lackluster bill expanding back-ground checks, even in the wake of New-town. Politicians are generally a spineless lot whose main concerns seem to be pre-venting the death of their political careers. Murdered kids and grief-stricken parents can go to hell, as far as much of Congress is concerned. Bro. Prez’s sputtering, plain-tive response to the Senate gun defeat doesn’t give me any confidence that he is ready to put his presidency on the line to fight the National Rifle Association and save some lives. When a politician accuses

other politicians of “playing politics,” you know nothing will get done...

FAMU College of Law: Schools are known by the successes of their graduates. The outstanding performance of FAMU’s law grads – the most racially diverse law school in the country – is a big middle-fin-gered salute to the various layers of FAMU haters throughout the State University Sys-tem who want pharmacy, law, engineering, journalism and everything else to them-selves. If you think FAMU’s exam scores won’t shake up the teachers’ lounge and the administrative suites at the Levin Col-lege of Law at my law school alma mater, the University of Florida, you don’t know the Gators. Success truly IS the best re-venge. The Rattlers struck (striked?) again!

Contact me at ccherry2@gmail.com; holler at me at www.facebook.com/ccherry2; follow me on Twitter @ccher-ry2.

PUBLISHER

chARLEs W. chERRy II, Esq.

quIck TAkEs fROM #2:sTRAIGhT, nO chAsER

Random thoughts of a free Black mind, v. 174

TRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM

REv. JEssE L. JAcksOn, sR.

A5EDITORIALAPRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

Obama should embrace helping the needy

The shifting sands of sequestration

The right wing seems determined to asso-ciate President Obama with any government program that helps people on the bottom. Thus the term Obamacare used to attack the health care program that President Obama fashioned and worked with Congress to ap-prove. While Obamacare is not perfect, it brings more people into the health care sys-tem, and further solidifies the safety net that many have attempted to fray.

ObamaphoneNow these folks are running with the term

“Obamaphone,” which speaks to the fact that President Obama has simply extended a Lifeline plan that was authorized by Re-publican President Ronald Reagan when it was clear that those who were either isolat-ed by poverty or by their rural status need-ed telephones to connect themselves to the world.

The Reagan program used taxes on some of us to provide telephones for the rest of us. People were able to get a telephone that of-fered basic service for a basic fee. With the onset of technology, Lifeline customers had the option of getting a landline phone or a cellular phone. This is not an Obama initia-tive. It happened in 1996.

Those who get a subsidized telephone have numerous restrictions. They don’t get to choose their phone, but are offered whatever is available, usually a refurbished phone. They get 250 minutes a month if they get a cell phone. The 250 minutes is about 4 hours a month, or an hour a week.

Obamaphone? Give me a break. Until the Tea Party began to hold sway on our nation-al consciousness, Republicans were among those who embraced the notion that every American should have basic telephone ser-vice.

Now, anything associated with govern-ment assistance is associated with President Obama, despite the fact that both Demo-cratic and Republican Presidents have at-tempted to assist people at the bottom, al-beit with different levels of energy.

Obama foodLet’s not forget that it was Democratic

President Bill Clinton who pushed the “wel-fare reform” that limited government assis-tance to 60 months or 5 years.

Associating President Obama with gov-ernment support to the poor is a subtle way of associating people of African descent with public assistance, and with the pejorative term “welfare”. This is a most understated form of racial coding, a coding that enabled former Congressman Newt Gingrich to de-scribe President Obama as a “food stamps” President and to assert that our President “put” more people on food stamps than any other President in history.

One in six Americans lives in poverty. More than one in four African-Americans and Latinos live in poverty. One in ten of all whites live in poverty. The Great Recession and economic restructuring have kicked these diverse groups of poor people, many who are grateful for food assistance, to the curb. President Obama has been responsive to this group of people to the extent that a hostile Congress has allowed it.

If I were President Obama I’d be flattered by descriptions of Obamacare and Obama-phones. I would not even mind having food stamps being described as Obama food. Would we prefer to describe poverty as Romney starve, or sequester starve? Make it plain. Associating President Obama with health care, Lifeline telephones and healthy eating is to his credit, not his detriment.

Julianne Malveaux is a D.C.-based economist and author. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

Sequestration is like the sand in an hour glass. When the sand starts falling, it does not seem to amount to much. The full section of the hour glass seems not to change, at least at first. Yet at a certain moment it becomes clear that the sand is disappearing and that what was once full is now approaching empty.

When sequestration began, it be-gan with a whimper. Discussions took place for months about the dangers of sequestration. We were led to believe that it was not very likely that it would actually happen because, after all, nei-ther side really wanted to court such a potential disaster. We were wrong on a number of counts.

Republican advantageThe first danger that we have to ac-

knowledge is that sequestration actu-ally is to the advantage of the Republi-cans. They are the ones looking for cuts. Yes, some of them are complaining about this or that cut, but the reality is that they are seeking cuts. In that sense, they can live with sequestration, or at least they think that they can. There is, as a result, no pressure on their side to end this.

The second danger is precisely the hour glass problem. In the beginning, there seemed to be little damage. Fed-eral workers, of course, were upset, but many people are prepared to write off federal workers. In fact, too many peo-ple have thought about sequestration as punishing federal workers for any num-ber of alleged evils. So, large segments of the public have been willing to let it happen.

Punch lineThe third danger is that no one seems

to have a clear sense as to how to ar-rive at a budget that would actually end sequestration. That is the punch line: there are vastly different views on what

government should look like and what it should fund.

Yet, with sequestration some strange things started to happen. An excellent example has been the closing of air-port control towers around the coun-try. In one story from the Midwest, pro-sequestration citizens were shocked to discover that sequestration meant that the airport control tower in their home town was going to be shuttered. Oops! Was that supposed to happen?

Sequestration, as with other austerity measures, is a response to an imaginary crisis. The notion that the main prob-lem facing the U.S.A. is debt is irrational. The main challenge is job creation and income. With job creation and income one gains tax revenue. Continuous cut-ting means fewer people on the payrolls and deeper levels of debt and poverty. One does not need to be an economist to see that reality.

Sequestration and other austerity plans are aimed at strangling the gov-ernment and forcing an end to various programs that have been won over the last century.

While many people have watched and yawned as sequestration has unfolded, the reality is that the sand is dropping faster and faster, and soon enough we will all find that we have been touched by further unnecessary, and frankly im-moral, cuts.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

The State of Equality and Justice in America” is a 20-part series of columns written by an all-star list of contributors to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Law-yers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Here’s the 13th op-ed of the series:

The state of equality and justice in America is shameful – especial-ly since the election of President Barack Obama. Unlike many of my friends who think America is going to hell in a hand basket, and have given up thinking things will get better for those who’ve been mar-ginalized for so long, I still have hope for a better day.

When Barack Obama was run-ning for President of the Unit-ed States, a close friend told me, “Mark my word. When Senator Obama is elected, some people will go absolutely crazy, and after he’s re-elected, they will go mad!”

His rationale was that the aver-

age White person had never had the opportunity to wake up every morning and see a brilliant Black man on television who was the most powerful man in the world! Unless they were wed to FOX News and the O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, Von Sustern programs, they would learn so much about us- so many good things they had refused to acknowledge before.

Brilliant BlacksSo many of our people are bril-

liant in what they do, but never had a fair chance to be seen in a positive light in their daily news-papers or on mainstream televi-

sion or heard on major radio sta-tions. Now, here we are after the Obama victories. He’s there ev-ery single day! The madness real-ly swung into high gear with the Tea Party, Michelle Bachman, Sar-ah Palin, Senator Ted Cruz and a whole lot of others.

Some I didn’t mention because they were already on the list of what most of us have come to know as the “crazies”, such as Rush Limbaugh and his horrible ilk.

Black women like our First La-dy, Michelle Obama, had not often been seen on the evening news, except when they were there cry-ing over a son or daughter who’d been shot or accused of being in-volved in some kind of wrongdo-ing.

Now, here she was-beautiful, smart, Mom in Chief, presiding over social events for world lead-ers and their first ladies. She was dealing with real American chal-

lenges-such as military families and childhood obesity. She was out making speeches and inspir-ing women of all backgrounds.

With people who could not stand all these positive scenes and unbelievable accomplishments, insanity set in, and instead of grin-ning and bearing the strides Amer-ica was making, they began trying to set us back to what they called “the good ole days”.

Some make every effort to send Black people to the back of the bus, send immigrants of color back to from wherever they had come, send gay people back into the clos-et, and force women to go back to the kitchen! They began talking about taking back their country as though they didn’t take it from the Native Americans and as though immigrants and enslaved peo-ple had done nothing to build this country.

No justice, no peaceMany in the U.S. House of Rep-

resentatives and the U.S. Senate

tried to block every thing President Obama supported-even if they had supported the same things in the past. They were tone deaf to the phrase “Where there is no jus-tice, there will be no peace!”

We may be going through a rough period as far as progress on equality and justice, but I still believe there are enough good people who will work through their prejudices and biases with which they were reared as they understand that those of us who’ve previously been left out, won’t turn back. I still have hope. No one can change the change for which we’ve worked so hard.

Dr. E. Faye Williams is na-tional chair of the National Congress of Black Women. This article is written in commemo-ration of the 50th Anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civ-il Rights Under Law. For more information, please visit www.lawyerscommittee.org. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

There’s affordable health insurance for Florida small

businesses and workersFor years, we had a health in-

surance market that was broken for small businesses. Because they had less bargaining power, small businesses paid an average of 18 percent more for the same health insurance plan offered to the bigger business down the street, and their premiums could skyrocket if a single employee got sick. That made it hard for many small business owners to keep offering coverage and grow their businesses.

But because of the Affordable Care Act, Florida’s small business-es and their employees are getting better choices, starting with new protections that limit the outra-geous rate hikes many small busi-ness owners faced in the past.

Take Steve Miller’s dilem-ma: The president of EPReward in Boynton Beach values his 10 employees who run his medical waste recycling business. Though his lowest paid employee makes 2 ½ times more than minimum wage and receives profit sharing, the one benefit EPReward can’t afford to offer its employees is health insurance. The cost for a company policy is greater than what employees can purchase in-dividually.

An important investmentInstead, Miller offers a stipend

in employees pay to offset their cost to insure themselves. Miller, for one, is looking forward to tak-ing advantage of the benefits and affordable health insurance plans provided to businesses under the Affordable Care Act, saying the new health care law will go a long way in helping him attract and re-tain good employees who he con-siders “an important investment.”

Beginning in 2014, Florida’s small business owners will have access to a new Health Insurance Marketplace – which opens for enrollment on Oct. 1 – that will allow them to make side-by-side comparisons to find a plan that fits their budget and that’s right for their businesses and employ-ees. Each Marketplace will oper-ate a Small Business Health Op-

tions Program, or SHOP, focused just on small businesses, where employers will be able to choose from a range of affordable plans to offer their employees.

Tax credits availableSmall businesses are also seeing

savings thanks to new tax credits available to help them cover their employees. Many small business-es with 25 or fewer employees have already received a tax credit of up to 35 percent of their health insurance costs. And beginning in 2014, this tax credit will go up to 50 percent.

That’s just one of the ways the law is bringing down costs for small business owners. Insurance companies must also now pub-licly justify every rate increase of 10 percent or more, which has led to a sharp decline in double-digit rate hikes. Starting in 2014, insur-ers will have to justify every pro-posed rate increase, even if it’s a 1 percent bump.

Costs rising slowerAnd the law has also begun to

slow rising costs across the sys-tem by reducing waste and fraud and promoting higher quality care that emphasizes coordination and

prevention. These changes in care delivery have contributed to the slowest sustained national health spending growth in 50 years.

And while many small business owners have questions about the employer responsibility provision, it is important to note that busi-nesses with fewer than 50 employ-ees – that’s 96 percent of small busi-nesses – are not required to pur-chase insurance. Of the remaining 4 percent of small businesses with more than 50 employees, most al-ready provide insurance.

So the number of businesses that will have to begin offering employee health insurance or pay a penalty is very small.

No businesss owner wants to drop coverage for their employ-ees. For many, their employees are like a family. For others, of-

fering health insurance is critical to attracting the kind of workers they need to succeed.

By making the health insurance market work better for Florida small businesses, the law is letting them focus on what they do best: delivering great products and ser-vices, creating jobs, and growing our economy.

Dr. Pamela Roshell is the U.S. Health & Human Services Re-gional Director and Cassius Butts is the U.S. Small Busi-ness Administration Regional Administrator. To receive in-formation and sign up for up-dates, Florida small business owners can visit healthcare.gov. Click on this story at www.flcourier.com to write your own response.

VISUAL VIEWPOINT: TAXES

DAVID FITZSIMMONS, THE ARIZONA STAR

DR. E. FAyE WILLIAms, Esq.

TRICE EDNEY WIRE

DR. PAmELA ROsHELL AnD CAssIUs BUTTs

‘No one can change the change’

TRICEEDNEYWIRE.COM

DR. JULIAnnE mALVEAUX

NNPA COLUMNIST

BILL FLETCHER, JR.

TOjA6 NATION APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

Institute of the Black World plans ‘Day of Direct Action’ to address ‘War on Drugs’ and mass incarceration

BY HAZEL TRICE EDNEYTRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE

An organization that is escalating its call for the end to America’s so-called “War on Drugs’’ is organiz-ing a ‘Day of Direct Action’ with a goal of pressuring President Barack Obama to address ways to repair the havoc the ‘war’ has wreaked in the Black com-munity.

“Against the backdrop of what the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) believes is a state of emergency in urban, in-ner-city neighborhoods, which we are calling dark ghettos, we come today to announce a day of direct action, Monday, June 17, to call upon President Barack Obama to end the War on Drugs and mass incarcera-tion and to invest in Amer-ica’s dark ghettos,” said IBW President Ron Dan-iels at a press conference held April 4 at the National Press Club.

Daniels has established a coalition of like-minded groups called a “justice col-laborative” in order to tack-le the problems from sev-eral directions. The “Day of Action” will encompass a rally of sorts outside the White House.

From Prison A to Prison B

Courtney Stewart, chair-man of the D.C.-based Re-entry Network for Return-ing Citizens described how he has experienced injus-

tices firsthand.“A lot of us when we

come home we’re con-fused because we have to go from pillar to post to get papers signed and peo-ple shuffling us here and promising us jobs and re-ferring us to this place and referring us to that place. We can’t go back – in many cases - to our communi-ties; so therefore there’s a housing issue.

Fifty percent of those who return to the district report to a shelter. That’s just like leaving Prison A and going to Prison B. The only difference is the shel-ter has no supervision. You have rape, drugs and all the other things that you can get caught up in that sends you right back through the system.”

He said it takes an in-mate nine months to two years to find a job after get-ting out of prison, causing hardships - for even non-violent offenders - that could land him or her back in prison, he said.

‘Suffered enough’A former inmate at the

Lorton Reformatory, who was released in 1985, Stew-art quoted Dr. King’s let-ter from the Birmingham Jail in order to make his point: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice every-where. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What-ever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

It was 42 years ago that President Richard M. Nixon started the “War on Drugs.” It was said to be aimed at illegal importation as well as the street-level demand for illegal drugs.

But, more than four de-cades later, the most vis-ible and dominant results has been intensified police focus in Black communi-

ties, resulting in astronom-ical rates of Black males in prisons; hundreds of thou-sands of Blacks and Latinos dead from gun violence; and police corruption, in-cluding profiling, brutality, and abuse of power.

“We’ve come today to claim that we’ve suffered enough and suffered is the operative word. It’s time to bring an end to an ill-con-ceived and destructive pol-icy and strategy,” Daniels said. Referencing a poster on the wall behind him, he said the logo for the initia-tive “graphically illustrates and depicts what millions of Black people know to be the truth. The war on drugs is a war on us.”

Troubling statisticsIBW first announced its

initiative two years ago up-

on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s initiative. At that 2011 forum, dozens of so-cial and political activists – including the Rev. Jesse Jackson U.S. Rep. John Co-nyers - gathered to discuss the extreme social rami-fications of the anti-drug measures. Since then, not much has changed about the following statistics:

• Black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men.

• Drug transactions among Blacks are easier for police to target because they more often happen in public than do drug trans-actions between Whites.

• The disparities are par-ticularly tragic in individu-al states where Black men are sent to federal prison on drug charges at a rate 57

times greater than White men, according to Human Rights Watch.

• More than 25.4 mil-lion Americans have been arrested on drug charges since 1980; about one-third of them were Black.

• The Black populations in state prisons are ma-jorly disproportionate: For example, in Georgia, the Black population is 29 per-cent, the Black prison pop-ulation is 54 percent; Ar-kansas 16 percent to 52 percent; Louisiana 33 per-cent to 76 percent; Missis-sippi 36 percent to 75 per-cent; Alabama 26 percent to 65 percent; Tennessee 16 percent to 63 percent; Kentucky 7 percent to 36 percent; South Carolina 30 percent to 69 percent; North Carolina 22 percent to 64 percent; and Virginia

20 percent to 68 percent.• According to the Global

Commission on Drug Poli-cy arresting and incarcer-ating people fills prisons and destroys lives but does not reduce the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations.

• States are spending ap-proximately $17 million per day to imprison drug offenders or more than $6.2 billion per year.

IBW solutionsThese statistics reveal

the need to take a holistic to dealing with low income and impoverished com-munities, which means just ending the war on drugs is not enough, Daniels says.

Among the solutions that IBW is pushing:

Intensify efforts to elim-inate the disparity in sen-tencing between pow-dered and crack cocaine.

Issue an executive or-der terminating the War on Drug and replacing it with a national initiative that treats drugs and drug ad-diction as a public health issue.

Issue an executive order ending the practice of us-ing incarcerated persons as prison labor.

Publicly support decrim-inalization of the posses-sion of small quantities of marijuana.

Allocate more federal funds for drug education, counseling and treatment.

Form a Presidential Commission to initiate a national dialogue on the regulation and taxation of drugs.

Mobilize moral and po-litical support for direct public sector jobs and sus-tainable economic devel-opment programs with pri-ority inclusion of formerly incarcerated persons tar-geted to transform dis-tressed Black communi-ties.

Obama urged to invest in nation’s ‘dark ghettos’

FILE PHOTO

According to the D.C.-based Re-entry Network for Returning Citizens, it takes an inmate nine months to two years to find a job after getting out of prison, causing hardships - for even non-violent offenders - that could land him or her back in prison.

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LIFE | FAITH | HEALTH | MONEY | EVENTS | CLASSIFIEDS | ENTERTAINMENT | SPORTS | FOOD

www.flcourier.com

BSHARING BLACK LIFE, STATEWIDE | SECT ION

HEALTH | FOOD | TRAVEL | SCIENCE | BOOKS | MOVIES | TV | AUTOS

LIFE/FAITHT

Workers’ unhealthy habits having impact on insurance premiums See page B3

SuN coAST / TAmPA BAY

April 19 - April 25, 2013courier

New PBS show tells story of Central Park Five See page B5

The bombings inBoston put focus this week back on terrorism andnational securityBY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, MARISA TAYLOR AND GREG GORDONMCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS/MCT

Americans who’ve grown ac-customed to rigorous security procedures since the 9/11 at-tacks may have to endure new measures following the Boston Marathon bombings, but ex-perts on Tuesday warned that no amount of extra precautions can guarantee absolute safety from a determined terrorist.

“There is no way that people who run in marathons or people who go to baseball stadiums can be assured that they will be pro-tected from IEDs (improvised explosive devices) 100 percent of the time,” said Dennis Pluchin-sky, a former senior State De-partment terrorism analyst.

“Terrorists will always find some holes, some gap (in secu-rity) to take advantage of.”

‘Act of terror’As federal, state and local in-

vestigators scrambled to track down the culprits the day after two explosives-packed pressure cookers killed three people and injured more than 170 others, President Barack Obama sought anew to reassure the country that whoever was responsible would be found.

“Clearly, we’re at the begin-ning of our investigation. It will take time to follow every lead and determine what happened, but we will find out. We will find whoever harmed our citizens, and we will bring them to jus-tice,” said Obama, who for the first time referred to the bomb-ings as “an act of terror.”

The bombings were the first mass-casualty terrorist attack to take place in the United States since Feb. 18, 2010, when an anti-tax protester flew his small plane into the Internal Revenue Service office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one other person and wounding 15 peo-ple.

Some attacks thwarted

Experts noted that improved counter-terrorism efforts over-seas, security measures and in-

telligence sharing between fed-eral, state and local authorities and with other countries have succeeded in thwarting major and minor attacks on Americans at home and abroad.

“Literally dozens of plots have been disrupted and prevented since 9/11,” said Christian Beck-ner, deputy director of George Washington University’s Home-land Security Policy Institute.

“For the most part, we’ve been extremely successful in prevent-ing plots and making it much more difficult for al-Qaida ... to conduct attacks inside the Unit-ed States.”

worldwide cooperation

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism ex-pert at the RAND Corp., a Califor-nia-based policy institute, point-ed to what he said was “an ex-traordinary improvement” since 9/11 in intelligence internation-ally and domestically.

At the international level, the unanimity of focus and degree of cooperation among the in-telligence services and law en-forcement organizations world-wide is unprecedented.”

At least 37 of the more than 40 suspected al Qaida-related plots since Sept. 11, 2001, have been thwarted “as a consequence of bits of information from differ-ent foreign intelligence sourc-es being assembled and passed along,” Jenkins said. “And it ends

up with a plot being thwarted in Europe or the United States. That is a remarkable change.”

Al-Qaida involvement doubted

The last attack linked to al-Qaida took place on Nov. 6, 2009. U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Ma-lik Hasan, a psychiatrist who was exchanging messages with a cleric of al-Qaida’s branch in Ye-men, is awaiting trial on charges of killing 13 people and wound-ing more than 30 others in a shooting rampage at a medical facility at Fort Hood, Texas.

Some U.S. officials and in-dependent experts expressed doubts that al-Qaida was direct-ly involved in the Boston bomb-ings, although whoever was re-sponsible may have been incit-ed by jihadist propaganda. The terrorist network’s attacks tradi-tionally have been more devas-tating and have been followed by claims of responsibility, they said.

“It will surprise me if this is not domestic terrorism,” said Michael Greenberger, a former senior Justice Department offi-cial. “It would also surprise me if this is al-Qaida. But it can’t be taken off the table.”

Heightened securityFBI Special Agent-in-Charge

Richard DesLauriers told a Tues-day evening news conference in Boston that the list of suspects

remained “wide open.”Homeland Security Secretary

Janet Napolitano in a statement said, “There is no current indi-cation to suggest that the events in Boston are indicative of a broader plot.”

Nevertheless, she said that the department would maintain undisclosed “enhanced secu-rity measures at transportation hubs.”

Security was boosted in cit-ies, railway stations and air-ports across the nation after the bombings, and it was unclear how long they’d remain in ef-fect.

miami run still onThe Mercedes-Benz Corpo-

rate Run in Miami on April 25 will go on as scheduled, with added security, said race direc-

tor Hans Huseby.Experts cautioned that abso-

lute security can’t be assured at major public events.

“These are soft targets and they’re very, very difficult to de-fend against,” Jack Tomarchio, a former principal deputy for in-telligence and analysis for the Department of Homeland Secu-rity, said Tuesday.

“I think what happened yes-terday is going to be some-what of a game changer. In the last couple of years, the idea of homeland security has become kind of blasé.’’

Susan Miller Degnan of The Miami Herald, Bill Lindelof of The Sacramento Bee and Scott Wuerz of The Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat contributed to this article.

In the midst of another storm

90

93Two bombs exploded near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon about four hours into the race. The area was filled with the 17,000 runners who had already crossed the finish line and spectators attending the annual Patriot’s Day race.

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Source: Boston Globe, AP, Reuters, SB Nation, ESRIGraphic: Melina Yingling, Judy Treible, Robert Dorrell © 2013 MCT

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First blast at about 2:50 p.m., on north side of Boylston St. near the corner at Exeter St.

Doctors, nurses ran to scene from nearby medical tent set up to treat runners

About 12 seconds later, second blast at Boylston Street and Ring Road, about a block west

Photo bridge set up over Boylston St. marks the finish line

Marathon routeRunners approachfrom west

About 550 feet

Emergency personnel assist the vic-tims at the scene of a bomb blast on Monday during the Boston Marathon.

STUART CAHILL/ BOSTON HERALD/MCT

Martin Richard, 8 years old, seen in this Facebook photo, died in the Boston Marathon bombing. Richard was wait-ing to give his run-ner father a hug at the finish line.

WHITEHOTPIX/VIA ZUMA PRESS/MCT

Jacksonville: Avant will be at the Florida Theatre Jacksonville May 24 for a 7 p.m. show.

Orlando: An Art of Networking workshop teaching entrepreneurs how to “work a room so it works for you” will be held May 15 from 8 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. at the Chamber of Commerce building, 75 South Ivan-hoe Blvd. RSVP is required. More information: 407-835-2486.

Tampa: The Dance Theatre of Har-lem presents “Gloria, Black Swan, Return and Agon’’ April 21 from 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. at the Straz Center.

Tampa: The Tampa Bay Chapter of National Black MBA Association is hosting a networking social and membership drive April 23 from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at the Anise Global Gastro Bar, 777 N. Ashley Drive. More information: www.tam-pablackmba.org

Jacksonville: Sample barbecue from up to 60 teams and cast your vote for the best barbecue in Jack-sonville at the fifth annual Jackson-ville Backyard BBQ Championships featuring food, live music and games April 27 from noon – 5 p.m. More information: danielkids.org.

Jacksonville: The Ideas and Inspi-ration Home Show will be held May 3-5 at the Prime Osborn Convention Center featuring celebrities from HGTV. More information: www.ideasandinspirationhomeshow.com.

St. Petersburg: The 2013 Men and Women of Distinction awards ceremony and luncheon will be held April 21 from 2 p.m. – 6 p.m. at the St. Petersburg Country Club. More information: www.thegatheringof-women.com.

Tampa: The 2013 Black GIRLS Rock Tampa Bay Award Show showcasing local Black women who have worked in the Tampa Bay community within the business, civ-ic, education, health and wellness as well as religious sectors will be held April 20 from 5:45 p.m. – 8 p.m. at 1301 South 78th St. More information: www.bgrtampabay.com.

Tampa: The Black Businesses Bus Tour takes off again on April 20 – this time from Frank-El Soul Food, 1141 E. Fletcher Ave. Stops at Black businesses in the Tampa area. More information and RSVP: Candy Lowe at 813-394-6363.

Jacksonville: Jazz and Blues group Fourplay will be at the Florida The-atre Jacksonville along with Harvey Mason, Chuck Loeb and Nathan East April 21 for an 8 p.m. show.

Tampa: The Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Centennial Torch Tour makes a stop in Tampa on May 18. The day, hosted by the Tampa Alumnae Chapter, will include an event for students at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. A Crimson Yacht Soiree on the Yacht StarShip starts at 6:30 p.m. More informa-

tion: Call 850-284-3386 or visit www.dstta.com. Orlando: Funny man Mike Epps will be at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre on May 24 and the Jack-sonville Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts April 12.

Tampa: 1990s rap stars Salt N Pepa are among the artists slated to perform at Funk Fest 2013 at Tampa’s Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park May 3 and 4. Concerts also are scheduled in Jacksonville and Orlando. Complete lineup: http://funkfestconcerts.com.

Jacksonville: The stage play and musical “Dreamgirls” will be at the Times-Union Center for the Per-forming Arts May 21 at 7:30 p.m.

St. Petersburg: LL Cool J, Ice Cube,

De La Soul and Public Enemy will be at The Mahaffey in St. Peters-burg during their Kings of the Mic Tour on June 6. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.

St. Petersburg: Youths ages 7 to 11 can enjoy a night of football, kickball, ping-pong, foosball, video games and dance parties during “Freestyle Fridays” at the Fossil Park & Willis S. Johns Center, 6635 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N. First visit free; $6 each following visit. More information: 727-893-7756.

St. Petersburg: First Fridays are held in downtown St. Petersburg at 250 Central Ave. between Sec-ond and Third Avenues from 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. More information: 727-393-3597.

Fort Lauderdale: The Florida

Minority Community Reinvestment along with a coalition of Florida minority non-profits and neigh-borhood associations are hosting the 2013 Let’s Do Business Florida & Summit June 28-June 29 at the Westin Beach Resort & Spa. No cost to women-minority-veteran businesses and nonprofits. More information: www.letsdobusiness-florida.com.

St. Petersburg: Athletic dogs from around the country will make their way to Spa Beach Park, 615 2nd Ave. NE to compete in the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Eastern Regional on May 4 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. This canine sporting event features dogs competing in a variety of “Olympic-style” events. Qualifying day: May 3. More infor-mation: www.barknetwork.com.

TOJCALENDAR APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013B2

FLORIDA COMMUNITY CALENDAR

JB SMOOVEComedian JB Smoove will be at the Fort Lauder-dale Improv nightly through April 20.

THE SPINNERSOld-school R&B group The Spin-ners, who sang such hits as “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” and “Then Came You,” will be at the Casino Miami Jai-Alai on April 20.

DE LA SOULDe La Soul will be at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre on June 7 for the Kings of the Mic Tour.

Former Alpha Kappa Alpha president Mary Shy Scott dies

SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is mourning the passing of Mary Shy Scott of Atlanta, who died on April 15. Scott was the sorority’s 23rd inter-national president from 1990-1994.

Speaking on behalf of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s 260,000 members worldwide, the sorority’s In-ternational President Carolyn House Stewart, hailed Scott as a pioneer, visionary, civil rights activist and leader whose contributions to the world are unmatched and unparalleled.

“Mary Shy Scott was revered and leaves a leg-acy of love and service that is a model for all. Ev-

eryone she touched was inspired by her dedication, her grace and her rare sense of resolve and purpose,” declared Stewart. “She will be greatly missed and will be forever cherished.”

Scott spearheaded the effort to erect the first non-military memorial to those who fought at Pearl Harbor. The memorial, in Honolulu, was dedicated to the heroism of World War II veteran Doris “Dorie” Miller, an African-

American sailor and unsung hero.

Spelman alumnusA proponent of education, she leveraged her

position as international president to forge a partnership with the Library of Congress in their mutual mission to promote reading. She also introduced the conceptual Ivy AKAdemy where every chapter committed to address the reading needs of African-American children.

Scott’s influence extended beyond the soror-ity to the city of Atlanta. She is an alumnus of Spelman College and was a Class A member of the Human Rights Commission of the Atlanta City Council. The Dr. Mary Shy Scott papers, 1981-1996, 1999 are held at the Auburn Avenue Research Library.

She was an elementary school music special-ist whose commitment to education earned her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Miles College in Birmingham, Ala.

She is survived by her husband of over 60 years, Alfred, Sr.; daughter Alfredene Scott Ben-ton; and two sons, Arthur and Alfred Jr.

SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

Dhyana Ziegler, profes-sor of journalism at Florida A&M University (FAMU), has co-authored a book with a member of the famous singing group Gladys Knight and the Pips titled “Midnight Train FROM Georgia: A Pip’s Journey.’’

The book is a memoir about the life of William Franklin Guest, one of The Pips, who also is Ziegler’s brother-in-law.

“Midnight Train FROM Georgia: A Pip’s Journey’’ chronicles the life of Guest

from childhood through his life with Gladys Knight and the Pips and discusses his activities since the breakup of the group.

Forward by Marvelette

Katherine Anderson-Shaff-ner of The Marvelettes wrote the forward of the book. She said, “ ‘Midnight Train FROM Georgia: A Pip’s Journey’ re-minds me of all those fun times we had together. It was a wonderful time in the his-tory of musical performance. It captures the love of family, entertainment and survival

in the music industry.”Ziegler grew up in the en-

tertainment business. She said the Ziegler and Guest families have been united since she was 11 years old. “I lived the story,” she said.

Paul Miliken, a features

reporter for Fox 5 Atlanta, said the book chronicles the life of one Atlanta man who made musical history. “...If you ever wondered where the name Pip came from, I found it in the book.”

The book is published by Branden Books and avail-able on Amazon.com. To view an interview with Ziegler discussing the book, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFetQg0Ld1k&feature=youtu.be.

Ziegler, an author and multimedia producer, has held several administrative positions at FAMU.

FAMU professor co-authors book with original Pip

Mary Shy Scott

Dhyana Ziegler

William Guest

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AD COUNCIL

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B3BUSINESSTOJ APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

BY KATE SANTICHORLANDO SENTINEL/MCT

If you’re overweight, have high blood pressure, smoke or are diabetic, your employ-er may soon require you to im-prove your health, get coun-seling on the issue or pay a fine, especially if you work for a large corporation.

In an effort to rein in soar-ing medical-insurance costs — now estimated at more than $12,000 per employee — big companies are increasing-ly turning from incentives to penalties to change their work-ers’ unhealthy habits.

The most recent example is CVS Caremark, which has ig-nited controversy by requir-ing its 200,000 employees to undergo screenings to record their weight, body fat, blood glucose and blood pressure levels. If they don’t do so by May 1, they’ll have to pay an extra $600 for health insurance in the coming year.

Workers penalizedAlready, 20 percent of firms

surveyed impose consequenc-es on employees if they “don’t utilize the health-awareness tools the company provides,” according to a recent report from human-resources re-searcher Aon Hewitt. And roughly 60 percent of employ-ers said they plan to impose penalties in the next three to five years for workers who don’t take action to improve their health.

The shift is drawing fire from patients’ rights groups, which consider the policies coer-cive and a violation of privacy. At Michelin North America, the tire manufacturer, work-ers with thick waistlines — 40 inches and over for men, 35 and over for women — will

have to pay up to $1,000 more a year in health insurance pre-miums than their leaner co-workers.

And Honeywell Internation-al Inc. has imposed a $1,000 penalty for workers who un-dergo certain joint-replace-ment or back surgeries with-out first participating in a pro-gram that provides data on nonsurgical options.

“We have had a lot of dis-cussion about sticks versus carrots,” said Karen van Caulil, president of the Florida Health Care Coalition, an employer group. “Studies have shown that some people are more motivated by concerns of loss than by gain or positive rein-forcement.”

‘Slippery slope’But Dr. Michael Siegel, a

professor at Boston University School of Public Health, sees policies such as CVS’ as “a slip-pery slope.”

“What are people going to be penalized for next?” Sie-gel said. “Will they ask how many times you go out for fast food each week? Are they go-ing to ask how much people drink? Are they going to ask about sexual behavior? What if an employee is having unsafe sex? It opens the door to ask-ing people all kinds of person-al questions that have noth-ing to do with how well you do your job.”

For its part, CVS insists the policy is merely “the most ef-fective way to encourage our colleagues to take control of their own health, reduce risks and manage their costs.” Fur-ther, chief medical officer Dr. Troy Brennan said the require-ments “meet all federal and state privacy regulations.”

The information will be han-dled by a third party, the com-

pany said, and not shared with any CVS personnel. Nor will there be penalties for work-ers whose results reveal health problems.

‘Coercive’ and ‘invasive’

Patient Privacy Rights, a na-tional bipartisan nonprofit based in Texas, labels the pro-gram “coercive” and “invasive” and complains it “doesn’t give patients any control over the extremely sensitive health in-formation they are required to submit. Not only can they not be certain that their employ-er will never see this informa-tion, the data can also be col-lected, sold, and used in dif-ferent circumstances without their knowledge or consent.”

Supporters claim that’s far-fetched.

LuAnn Heinen, vice presi-dent of the nonprofit Nation-al Business Group on Health, said few employers would risk intentionally misusing such information.

“It would be stupid on so many levels — for ethical rea-sons, for business reasons, for legal reasons, for employ-ee relations,” Heinen said. “Of course, there is the fear of the technological glitch, and, yes, every once in a while some-body’s records get stolen.”

Her agency recommends that employers implement more than a single incentive or penalty, but rather a com-prehensive wellness strategy. That should include healthy food in the cafeteria and vend-ing machines, a walking pro-

gram, gym membership subsi-dies, free filtered drinking wa-ter and perhaps time off from work for “health-promoting activity.”

Smokers not hiredOnly if incentives fail, she

said, should penalties be con-sidered.

“What companies are really trying to do is get people more involved — to get more skin in the game,” she said, “because we are giving our pay raises to the health-care system, and we have been for a long time.”

That’s because escalating health care costs have out-paced pay increases. Employ-ees now contribute 42 percent more for health care than they did five years ago.

In many ways, the trend to-ward penalties began with cig-arette smokers, who for years have been charged higher rates on individual health poli-cies before being banned from lighting up on employer prop-erty.

Starting this month, Orlan-do Health joined the 4 percent of employers across the coun-try who won’t hire smokers — period.

While federal law bans em-ployers from discriminating against workers with disabil-ities, insurance surcharges that penalize workers for un-healthy behavior have yet to be tested in court. Even if they withstand challenges, though, some business leaders say the harm to employee morale may make penalties unsavory in the long run.

Employees being penalized for health issues

CVS Caremark employees will be required to pay an extra $600 for health insurance in the coming year if they don’t reveal weight and undergo health screenings.

Florida Supreme Court could decide online travel tax fightBY JIM SAUNDERSTHE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

TALLAHASSEE – After years of debate in courthouses and the Capitol, a high-stakes tax battle between counties and online-trav-el companies could wind up in the Florida Supreme Court.

The 1st District Court of Appeal on Tues-day asked the Florida Supreme Court to re-solve a dispute about whether companies such as Expedia and Orbitz are paying the proper amounts of tourist-development tax-es to counties.

The move, known as a certifying a ques-tion of “great public importance” to the Su-preme Court, came after a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled 2-1 in favor of the online-travel companies in February. Also Tuesday, a request for a hearing before the full 1st District Court of Appeal was denied.

17 counties involvedSeventeen counties are parties in the

case, which centers on whether online-trav-el companies have to pay tourist-develop-ment taxes on all of the money they collect from customers. The companies serve as sorts of middlemen between travelers and hotels, charging customers for room rentals and fees related to providing the service.

The lawsuit – and others like it in Flori-da and elsewhere in the country – centers on whether the online-travel companies should pay tourist-development taxes on the full amounts they collect from custom-ers, or only on the portions that go to room rentals. The companies contend the por-tions that do not pay for room rentals are service charges, which are not subject to the hotel bed tax.

Similar case pendingCounties, however, argue that the online-

travel firms should have to pay the taxes on the full amounts, which would lead to mil-lions of dollars in additional revenues. The debate has flared repeatedly in the Legisla-ture in recent years, though lawmakers have not resolved it.

The counties that have been involved in the case are Alachua, Charlotte, Escambia, Flagler, Hillsborough, Lee, Leon, Manatee, Nassau, Okaloosa, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, St. Johns, Seminole, Wakulla and Walton. Also, a similar case is pending at the 1st District Court of Appeal that has been spearheaded by Broward County.

Making Home Affordable is a free program from the U.S. government that has already helped over a million struggling homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

The sooner you act, the better the chance we can help you.

MakingHomeAffordable.gov | 1-888-995-HOPE (4673)

If you’re struggling to keep your home, there is help.

To hear the homeowners’ story, go to MakingHomeAffordable.gov

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TOjB4 STOjEARTH DAY APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

1We buy reusable shop-ping bags and use them for gift wrap. They are

comparable in price to a paper gift bag, and they provide recip-ients with something that they can use.

— Carrie TurneyIndependence, Ky.

2 We try to buy food grown locally or in

the United States. This supports our econ-omy and cuts down on the fossil fuel used to transport food across the world.

— Julie FuerstenbergSammamish, Wash.

3 I make my own laundry detergent from Ivory soap, washing soda and borax.

It takes me less time to make 31/2 gallons of detergent than it would take to drive to the store. I also stopped using fabric soft-ener; I use vinegar in the wash, and skip the dryer sheets.

— Dawn DisneyTucson, Ariz.

4 For gift-giving, our family has a rule: We purchase items only from garage

sales. It keeps down costs for us and helps others find a good home for their used items. It’s fun to see who finds the best gift or bargain.

— Stephanie ThompsonGig Harbor, Wash.

5 Our two girls bring home tons of paper from school. I save the sheets that

have printing only on one side and use them for crafts and for printing emails and recipes.

— Jeanine MartinVoorhees, N.J.

6 We purchased a kilowatt tester that shows how much electricity is used

by the different plug-in devices around our home. This enabled us to see where we were using the most energy — and where we could cut back.

— Julie FuerstenbergSammamish, Washington

7 This past summer, I pur-chased cups with lids and a Brita water pitcher. Now,

instead of using bottled water from the store, we just refill our cups with the water from our pitcher.

— Robyn WilgisWindham, Conn.

8 I got my son, Raymond, a bento lunch box from Laptop Lunches. It has

five containers as well as a wa-ter bottle, fork and spoon, so it’s really helped us cut down on waste. It’s made making lunch-es more fun, as I’ve become creative with the foods I put in the containers. We also bought reusable sandwich bags called Happysacks. They come in dif-ferent sizes and cute patterns and are machine-washable.

— Heather VanMartenManahawkin, N.J.

9 During the summer, when we have the air condi-tioning on, we minimize

the use of our stove and oven. We move our toaster oven and slow cooker to the screened porch and use those instead as much as possible. Less heat in the kitchen means less energy needed to cool the house!

— Kary PhillipsMount Crawford, Va.

10 For my children’s “no trash” lunches, I made reusable cloth

napkins. For my 12-year-old daughter, I made napkins from fabric printed with flipflops and soccer and volleyball themes. My 4-year-old son has “Toy Sto-ry,” “Batman,” “Spider-Man,” and race car-themed napkins. We all use cloth napkins at home too.

— Karyl HokeRedwood City, Calif.

11 My kids and I pick one or two days each week when we don’t

drive our car. If we need to do errands, we walk. This reduces our carbon foot-print, sup-ports our local busi-nesses and gets us an extra dose of fresh air!

— Carolyn ThomasArvada, Colo.

12 We signed up for the free National Wild-life Federation Back-

yard Habitat program ( http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife.aspx ). This helped us change our back-yard to make it more welcoming for wildlife. Our yard now has a butterfly garden and an owl

house, and we have added na-tive plants that provide food for butterflies and birds.

— Liza AyusoMiami Shores, Fla.

13 We keep empty pitchers in our kitch-en and bathroom

and collect water from the fau-cet or shower while we are wait-ing for it to get hot. We use this water for plants, pets, birdbaths and more.

— Sandi HornungGrayslake, Ill.

14 My girls, Kenzie and Laney, and I are av-id crafters. Instead

of buying scrapbooking chip-board, we cut cereal boxes into shapes and cover them in pat-terned paper.

— Kimmie YoungLevittown, Penn.

15 Our kids are envi-ronmentally minded but had a bad habit

of using lots of paper towels. No matter how much I nagged, our family went through almost a roll a day. So I gave a roll to each person and told them it was a contest to see who could make their roll last the longest.

— Claire McLauchlinRochester, N.Y.

16 We have a row of rain barrels hooked up to collect rain-

water from our roof gutters. We then use it to water our garden and flower beds.

— Julie FuerstenbergSammamish, Wash.

17 We shop for kids’ clothes, toys and books at thrift

stores, consignment shops and on Craigslist.org. We’re not afraid of hand-me-downs; after a quick clean, they often look as good as new and work just as well!

— Caroline HuddersSeattle

18 We installed a laun-dry line. We live in the Southwest, so we

can line-dry our clothes year-round. As a bonus, my older kids (ages 8 and 10) and their dad help hang and take down the laundry. Less work for Mom, everyone spends time outside and we save on the electric bill!

— Lynn WilsonAlbuquerque, N.M.

19 Instead of buying fruits and vegeta-bles that have been

shipped across the country, we buy a share in a local CSA (Community Supported Agri-culture) farm. Its organic fruit and veggies taste great, so my kids eat more of them, and we love to visit the farm and see where our food comes from.

— Leslie HarrisGlenview, Ill.

20 We keep a second recycling can up-stairs in

the bathroom. This makes it convenient for our family to re-cycle tissue boxes, magazines, toilet paper tubes, packaging and shampoo bottles instead of throwing them into the trash.

— Julie FuerstenbergSammamish, Wash.

21 I help organize a Put & Take in my church community.

People donate household items and clothes that they no longer want, and others take what they need. Instead of used things being thrown away, they go to people who need them. It ben-efits everyone.

— Trisha LuongLas Vegas

22 Our electric water heater is the biggest energy user in our

home, so we put kitchen tim-ers in each bathroom. This way, we can make sure our family of five keeps their showers five to 10 minutes long. We also bought a timer for our water heater and set it to heat water for 4 hours a day, rather than 24. We have yet to run out of hot water, and we’ve reduced our electric bill by 30 percent.

— Julie FuerstenbergSammamish, Wash.

23 Last Christmas, my husband and I picked out hooded

animal towels for our three children. A local seamstress embroidered the kids’ names on the backs. The towels were an instant hit! The kids know to hang up their towels after us-ing them so that they are dry and ready to use for the next bath. This has significantly cut down on the amount of laundry we do.

— Tracy KnudsenSpicer, Minn.

24 Styrofoam is not readily recyclable where we live. We

crush ours into small pieces and use it as filling in our bean-bag chairs! We also use crushed Styrofoam pieces as packing material.

— Julie Fuerstenberg,Sammamish, Wash.

25 We live in Florida, and we keep solar flashlights among

our hurricane preparedness supplies. We don’t ever have to worry about replacing batteries.

— Liza AyusoMiami Shores, Fla.

By ALIcIA POTTeRFAmILy Fun mAgAzIne

What can one family do to protect the environ-ment? Plenty. We invited our readers to share their top green tips for the home — simple actions they’ve taken to reduce their impact on the envi-ronment that other families could adopt. As you’ll see, we received great advice from folks all over the country, but we owe special thanks to Julie Fu-erstenberg of Sammamish, Wash., who appears six times on our list. Her family of five has made numerous small changes in their everyday routines to help keep the planet green.

As all of our “ecofamilies” show, small steps — taken together — can add up to big benefits for the Earth.

Readers share 25 great green tips

ILLuSTRATIOnS

By BOB DALy/

FAmILy Fun mAgAzIne

Water col-lected from faucets or showers while waiting for them to heat up can be used for pets, plants and more.

bobbi marie

Andre’ Alston is a 28-year-old health and fitness professional with a passion for healing and wellness through his South Florida client base as a licensed massage therapist and certified personal trainer. He also spends a good bit of time fitness modeling as well as delving into the art scene at various open mic lounge events around town. Contact Andre’ at MrAlston25@gmail.com.

Bobbi Marie has been featured in catalogs and has taken part in beauty pageants in Broward County. The South Floridian says, “Being a model has always been this dream that I had and I’ve never once lost focus of it.” Contact Bobbi at bobbimarie12@gmail.com.

B5FINEST & ENTERTAINMENTSTOJ APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

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.

FLORIDA'Ssubmitted for your

approval

Meet some of

finest

Young Blacks, Hispanics wrongly convicted in 1989 New York case

BY SARA SMITHKANSAS CITY STAR/MCT

No video cameras captured the “wolf pack” of teenagers that swept through Central Park beat-ing and harassing New Yorkers on April 19, 1989.

But cameras were on later at the precinct where police were booking the youths they’d picked up for unlawful assembly. The black-and-white NYPD imag-es from that night show scared Black and Hispanic teenagers waiting for their parents to show up and take them home.

Then a 28-year-old White jog-ger was found raped and near death in the park, setting in mo-tion one of the most spectacular failures of American justice in re-cent memory.

“The Central Park Five,” docu-mentarian Ken Burns’ collabora-tion with his daughter and son-in-law, takes us back to the ugly racial reality of New York City in the late 1980s, the days of crack and “subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz, when no one felt safe.

Naïve kidsCraig Steven Wilder, an Af-

rican-American historian, de-scribes his reaction to hearing the news about the jogger: “Oh please, don’t let it be us.”

Antron McCray, Kevin Rich-ardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise ended up going to trial because they were the most naive among the kids rounded up that night and the next morning. They were the ones whose parents didn’t push back, who didn’t know that cops have carte blanche to lie during interrogations.

Eventually, they made a series of statements that never matched up with reality — or their co-de-fendants’ versions of the story. Detectives told them they would be witnesses and promised them that they could go home.

“He just fed it to me. ‘What did he do? What did Antron McCray do?’” recalls Santana, who was

14 at the time. “He gave me the names, I put ‘em in. I couldn’t tell you who they were, who they looked like. If he would’ve gave me a hundred names, I would have put a hundred people at the crime scene.”

Defense lawyer nappedAround this time, politicians

began chiming in, with then-Gov. Mario Cuomo declaring, “This is the ultimate shriek of alarm.” Mayor Ed Koch scornful-ly dismissed the word “alleged” as he mocked the teenagers’ families.

Nearly lost in the fear-monger-ing coverage of the city’s news-papers, beneath a headline that read “Koch Calls Them Monsters” was one small sidebar: “Suspect’s Tales Don’t Match Up.”

The film lays out the compel-ling case for the five teenagers’ innocence, which seems clear in hindsight but was so poorly presented at trial that it couldn’t overcome the weight of the con-

fessions. One defense lawyer napped.

“A lot of people didn’t do their jobs,” Jim Dwyer of the New York Times observes, a massive un-derstatement.

Real rapist confessesWhen police and prosecutors

realized they had found the DNA of only one still-unknown attack-er, they never checked it against Matias Reyes, a serial rapist who’d been stalking the Upper East Side near the park when he was ar-rested that August. It would have matched.

Instead, the teens watched the rape survivor testify in court, wishing she could remember what had happened to her. They were all convicted, with sentenc-es ranging from five to 15 years.

Ronald Gold, a juror in the tri-al of the first three teens, remem-bers holding out for as long as he could during more than 10 days of deliberations. In the end, though, he gave in to escape the pressure,

just as the defendants had. “I just went along with it,” Gold says. “Just to get out of there.”

But the Central Park Five had learned not to do that anymore, and they all refused to capitulate in parole hearings for early re-lease. Wise, who got the longest sentence, was the only one still behind bars in 2001 when he ran across Reyes in prison. The Up-per East Side Rapist had a cri-sis of conscience and confessed, tossing out details 13 years later that only the assailant could have known.

Movie with a missionManhattan District Attorney

Robert Morgenthau threw out the Central Park Five’s convic-tions in 2002.

Amazingly, prosecutors still insist they had the right guys. “I think that Reyes ran with that pack of kids,” said Linda Fairstein, who made her career with the case. “He stayed longer when the others moved on. He

completed the assault.”After refusing to cooperate

with Burns, who made the film with his daughter, Sarah, and her husband, the city’s attorneys sub-poenaed their unreleased foot-age based on the argument that the movie “crossed from docu-mentary into pure advocacy.”

The city lost that argument, but there’s no doubt “The Cen-tral Park Five” is a movie with a mission, in the same vein as this year’s “West of Memphis,” Amy Berg’s powerful effort that helped to free three men, one from death row. The West Memphis Three were just a different verse in the same song: a heinous crime, a populace on edge, a desperate police force wringing a false con-fession from a teenager.

The documentary aired this week. If you missed it, check your local PBS listing for the repeat airdate. A DVD of the documen-tary also can be ordered online at www.pbs.org.

PBS documentary revisits Central Park rape case

PBS

Defendant Yusef Salaam walks into a New York courthouse flanked by police officers in “The Central Park Five.”

andre’

TOjB6 TOjFOOD APRIL 19 – APRIL 25, 2013

ItalIan WrapsMakes: 1 servingPrep time: 15 minutes 1/2 cup shredded rotisserie chicken�

1/2 cup finely sliced spinach leaves�

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese �

1 tablespoon finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes�

1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh basil�

2 tablespoons Hidden Valley Oven Roasted Garlic �Parmesan Sandwich Spread & Dip, or more to taste1 10-inch sun-dried tomato basil wrap �

Stir together chicken, spinach, cheese, tomatoes, basil and sandwich spread. Spoon onto wrap and spread to edges; roll up. For entertaining, slice into 1-inch pinwheels.

FFROM FaMily FeatuRes

It’s time to break out of your ordinary lunch routine and make boring turkey sandwiches a thing of the past. With a few innovative tricks, you can turn any regular sandwich into a delicious and satisfying meal.

Versatile and delicious, a sandwich is perfect for any occasion, whether you’re sitting down with the family or packing for a lunch on the go. And you don’t have to be a professional chef to take a classic sandwich and turn it into a tasty meal. Try these simple tips and recipes to help boost your creativity in the kitchen:• There are things better than sliced bread: Give

your sand wich a makeover by piling your favorite fixings on a better bread option, such as focaccia or whole wheat pita. The sky’s the limit — try waffles for a sweet and savory treat.• Embrace open-face: Load the toppings on each

slice of bread, then pop the two sides into the toaster oven to toast the bread and melt the cheese. • Smart substitutions: Lose the calories, but keep

the taste of your favorite BLT by using new Hidden Valley Bacon Ranch sandwich spread instead of mayo — you’ll get all the same flavor with a third of the cal-ories. • Repurpose your leftovers: Make extra meat and

vege tables for dinner, and use them for tomorrow’s lunch by placing leftovers between two pieces of your favorite bread.• Turkey sandwiches don’t have to be boring: Add

walnuts, avocado or apple slices to jazz up a child-hood favorite. • Go veggie: For the perfect Meatless Monday, try a

sand wich on whole wheat bread with slices of avoca-do and tomato, topped with your favorite cheese — an instant vegetarian masterpiece.

For more ways to turn a sandwich into something un-expectedly craveable, visit. www.HiddenValley.com.

Boost your kitchen creativity with unexpectedly

craveable sandwiches

spIcy pork sandWIchesMakes: 4 servingsPrep time: 30 minutes Vegetable oil �

1/2cup thinly sliced yellow onion�

1/2 cup diced green bell pepper�

1 pound lean pork strips, thinly sliced �

1/4 cup Hidden Valley Spicy Chipotle �Pepper Sandwich Spread & Dip4 sandwich buns�

In large nonstick skillet, stir-fry onion and pepper in oil for 5 min utes. Add pork and cook for 5 more minutes, or until cooked through. Remove from heat and stir in sand wich spread. Serve spicy pork mixture on buns.

turkey panInIMakes: 1 sandwichPrep time: 10 minutes Olive oil�

2 slices sourdough sandwich bread�

1 tablespoon Hidden Valley Country Herb Ranch Sandwich �Spread & Dip2 slices (2 ounces) oven-roasted turkey breast�

1slice (1 ounce) cheddar cheese (Havarti cheese as �alternative)2 tablespoons (about 1/4 pepper) roasted red bell pepper, �cut into stripsArugula or lettuce leaves, optional�

For best performance in panini maker, brush outside of each slice of bread with olive oil. Spread other side of bread with sandwich spread. Top with turkey, cheese and pepper strips. Close sandwich and cook for 4 to 5 minutes in panini maker or on griddle, until cheese is melted. If desired, pull open and add lettuce before serving.

salmon pItaMakes: 2 servingsPrep time: 15 minutes 6 ounces fresh salmon fillet, cooked and �chilled (about 1 cup flaked) or 1 pouch (5 ounces) ready-to-eat premium wild caught pink salmon, skinless and boneless

2 tablespoons minced shallot or red onion�

2 tablespoons minced celery�

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice�

1/4 cup Hidden Valley Oven-Roasted Garlic �Parmesan Sandwich Spread & Dip

2 pita pockets�

1 slice iceberg lettuce, optional�

Flake salmon; stir in shallots, celery and lemon juice. Add sandwich spread and gently stir to combine. Fill pockets with salmon mixture and lettuce slice.