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GOP chair Steele staying put despite latest gaffe
Michael Steele is staying put as Republican Party chairman.
Despite his widely condemned comments on Afghanistan, even his GOP critics want to avoid a drawn-out fight over the party’s most prominent African-American just four months before midterm elections. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Obama filling Medicare post, bypassing Senate
President Barack Obama intends to use the congressional recess to bypass the Senate and appoint Dr. Donald Berwick, an expert on patient care who’s drawn fire from the GOP, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the White House announced late Tuesday.
The appointment was to be made Wednesday, with lawmakers out of town for their annual July Fourth break, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a post on the White House blog. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Secret donors make Clarence Thomas’s wife’s group tea party player
When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife announced in 2008 that she was going to help run Washington operations for a Michigan college once described as “a citadel of American conservatism,” she said the move was her “way of pulling away from politics” and the “safest place for me to be when it comes to conflicts” with her husband’s position on the court. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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New Book, “Acting White,” Claims Integration Ruined Black Education
Author Stewart Buck has a new book, “Acting White: The Ironic Legacy Of Desegregation” in which he claims that integration has had a negative affect on African-American education. Richard Thompson Ford at Slate wrote this about the book:
It was desegregation that destroyed thriving black schools where black faculty were role models and nurtured excellence among black students. In the most compelling chapter of Acting White, Buck describes that process and the anguished reactions of the black students, teachers, and communities that had come to depend on the rich educational and social resource in their midst. Read entire story at newsone.com.
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NAACP Launches New Website
As the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, the NAACP has always been a leader in the fight for justice and equality.
Our work today is different but equally as important as our work 100 years ago. Read more at darkpolitricks.com.
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YMCA of Greater St. Petersburg Announces New Executive Director for Childs Park YMCA
The YMCA of Greater St. Petersburg is very pleased to announce Deborah Figgs-Sanders as the Executive Director for the Childs Park YMCA, located at 691 43rd Street South, in St. Petersburg.
Deborah Figgs-Sanders, a lifelong resident of St. Petersburg, brings more than 20 years of experience in community outreach, strategic planning, staff and volunteer management, as well as marketing and fundraising. Prior to joining the YMCA, Figgs-Sanders worked as the Business Manager for Power Broker Magazine and assisted with her family-owned business, Supreme Heating & Cooling. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems from Florida A&M University and received a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix. In addition to her broad range of experience and education, she serves on several boards, civic and community organizations and volunteers countless hours to youth and community service.
The Childs Park YMCA offers a variety of programs and services for people of all ages. For more information regarding the Childs Park YMCA please call
727-209-9622 or visit our website at www.stpeteymca.org.
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Bartow High makes Newsweek’s list of best high schools
Each year, NEWSWEEK picks the best high schools in the country based on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with advanced-placement college-level courses and tests. Just over 1.600 schools—only 6 percent of all the public schools in the U.S.—made the list. This year’s rankings have some fantastic new interactive features. Read entire story and see the list at creativetampabay.com.
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Post office announces 2-cent rate increase
The post office wants to increase the price of a stamp by 2 cents to 46 cents starting in January. The agency has been battered by massive losses and declining mail volume and faces a financial crisis.
Postal officials announced a wide-ranging series of proposed price increases Tuesday, averaging about 5 percent, and covering first class, advertising mail, periodicals, packages and other services. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Tupac Shakur and 'Dear Mama' to be inducted into the US Library of Congress
It was announced that late rap artist and poet Tupac Shakur will have his song "Dear Mama" inducted into the U.S. Library of Congress. The song is from his 1995 album, "Me Against the World," and was selected because it represents a "moving and eloquent homage to both the murdered rappers' own mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty and social injustice." The song was called "culturally and historically significant" by the Library of Congress. Read more at blackamericaweb.com.
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St. Petersburg Chamber CEO John Long resigns
John Long, president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, resigned Thursday saying he has accomplished most of his goals for the business group since relocating here in early 2006 from the regional chamber in Kalamazoo, Mich. Read more at tampabay.com.
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Live with Regis ... and Sybil?
"Live with Regis and Kelly" has a contest looking for the Women of Radio to spend a day as co-host with Regis Philbin for a day. But in order to make this happen, Sybil Wilkes from the Tom Joyner Morning Show needs your vote! Each day, until July 16th, please go to the "Live with Regis and Kelly" website, www.LivewithRegisandKelly.com, to nominate/vote for her to join Reege for one day in August. Courtesy of blackamericaweb.com.
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Palm Harbor to get 70 new high-wage jobs
Here's a rare bit of good news. Seventy new high-wage jobs are coming to Palm Harbor.
Oscor Inc., a manufacturer of pacemaker components that was founded in Palm Harbor in 1983, recently had a choice to make: Should it expand its operations in Minnesota or here in Pinellas County? Read more at tampabay.com.
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NAACP Endorses Legalizing Marijuana Due To Black Arrest Rates
On Monday, the California State Conference of the NAACP announced its “unconditional endorsement” of a November initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
On Tuesday, the NAACP said why. According to a just-released study by the Drug Policy Alliance, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites — even though statistically, blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites. Read more at capitolweekly.net.
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Tea partyers clash, accuse each of other of intimidation
A group of Tea Party activists who say the "Tea Party" name has been hijacked for nefarious purposes tried to have a news conference Thursday — but it was hijacked.
The alliance of local leaders in the Tea Party movement called the news conference to renounce the newly formed Florida Tea Party as a front group meant to help Democrats. Read more at Orlando Sentinel.
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Civil rights organizations question nominee Elena Kagan’s record on race
On the eve of Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings, her record on race in the Clinton White House and at Harvard Law School is producing discomfort among some leading civil rights organizations, leaving them struggling to decide whether they want her to join the Supreme Court.
Their reservations have introduced the first substantive division among liberals in what has otherwise been a low-key partisan debate over Kagan’s merits to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Rev. Bernice King Says Conflict is ‘Suffocating’ SCLC
The Rev. Bernice King, elected nine months ago as the first woman president to serve at the helm of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has yet to be sworn in due to circumstances that she has described as “a sad state of affairs”.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the debilitating strife and conflict that has erupted in the 53-year-old civil rights organization and landed in court, King was pointed and clear. The second daughter and youngest child of Dr. Martin Luther King and Corretta Scott King, she told the attentive audience of more than 200 members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Black Press of America, that the infighting has been heart-rending. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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CARE CEO and Entrepreneur Inducted as Honorary Members
Dr. Helen D. Gayle, president and CEO of CARE, USA, a leading humanitarian organization, and entrepreneur extraordinaire Sheila C. Johnson were recently inducted into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority as Honorary Members, during separate members-only induction ceremonies. Read more at aka1908.com.
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Republicans kill Senate jobless aid measure
Republicans on Thursday defeated Democrats’ showcase election-year jobs bill, including an extension of weekly unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work more than six months.
The 57-41 vote fell three votes short of the 60 required to crack a GOP filibuster, delivering a major blow to President Barack Obama and Democrats facing big losses of House and Senate seats in the fall election. Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Rep. Kanjorski race remark sparks flap
Republicans are seizing onto racially-freighted remarks Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) made Wednesday evening at the financial reform conference committee.
Speaking before the committee, which is trying to reconcile the House and Senate reform bills, Kanjorski appeared to imply that “minorities” are not “average, good American people.” Read more at blackpoliticsontheweb.com.
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Gay marriage splits African-American church
Years before the nation's capital legalized same-sex marriage in March, one church in Washington, D.C., opened its doors to gay couples as part of its mission to establish an "inclusive body of Biblical believers."
Pastors Christine and Dennis Wiley performed a 2007 commitment ceremony at their altar. That action split the historically black church, prompting half of the congregation to leave. See entire story, including video clip at cnn.com.
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