Category Archives: Crime

State Senator Bobby Singleton submits Constitutional Amendment for historic horse racing on computerized machines in Greene Co.

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State Senator Bobby Singleton submitted a bill, SB 324, to the Alabama Senate’s Local Legislation Committee for a Constitutional Amendment to legally allow for pari-mutuel wagering on historic horse racing on computerized machines in Greene County.

The bill also provides for levying a tax on pari-mutuel betting on the computerized historic horse racing machines of up to 4% for local distribution and 1% to the State of Alabama. The amendment includes the licensure and operation of a racetrack, and the distribution of fees, taxes and other funds collected, by the Greene County Racing Commission.

If this legislation passes during this legislative session and is signed by the Governor, it will then be subject to a referendum by the voters of Greene County at the primary election in 2024 or at a special election if one is held before 2024.

This Constitutional Amendment closely parallels one that created a racing commission and greyhound dog racing in Greene County in the 1980’s. When live dog racing ended, simulcasting of dog and horse racing continued at Greenetrack, under the pari-mutuel wagering rules, supervised by the Greene County Racing Commission, appointed by the Greene County legislative delegation.

The voters of Greene County then authorized the playing of electronic bingo, under the licensing and supervision of the Greene County Sheriff, in Constitutional Amendment 743. The Sheriff licensed a number of bingo charities and bingo operators, four of which remain. They are: Bama Bingo, Frontier, Palace and River’s Edge.

Greenetrack, which pioneered the development of electronic bingo in Greene County, was forced to give up its bingo machines earlier this year, when the Alabama State Department of Revenue assessed the company with a $76 million dollar sales tax bill. Greenetrack contested the sales tax assessment as illegal and unfair. The state tax was based on all funds wagered on bingo machines rather than the resulting profits generated for the operator and charities.

Electronic bingo in Greene County is under threat from a lawsuit by State Attorney General Steve Marshall, which is working its way through the courts. This case will eventually wind up in the Alabama Supreme Court, which in other cases defines bingo as a game played on paper cards and regards the electronic bingo machines as illegal slot machines. At a recent hearing, retired Circuit Judge Arthur Haynes, set a trial date in the Greene County case for October 2023. The future of bingo in the county is unclear and unsure.

Greene Entertainment Company, headed by Luther Winn, the prior main stockholder in Greenetrack, secured a license, earlier this year, from the Greene County Racing Commission, to operate pari-mutuel historic racing machines at the former Greenetrack facility.

The proposed Constitutional Amendment, submitted by Senator Singleton and Representative Travis would allow the voters of Greene County to set the framework for computerized historic horse racing in the county and the distribution formula for any revenues derived from these pari-mutuel wagering opportunities. The voters of Greene County will have a say in the matter, when they vote to approve or disapprove the proposed amendment at a future election.

The Democrat, received a statement from J. W. McFarland Jr. of the TS Police Support League, the charity connected with the Palace Bingo operation, objecting to Senator Singleton’s filing of SB324. McFarland argues that Greene Entertainment is trying to set up a monopoly control of electronic historical horse racing in Greene County. He also argues that Greene Entertainment was set up by Greenetrack to avoid paying the state sales tax debt and that the Greene County Racing Commission should not be working with a corporation that will not pay taxes owed to the state of Alabama.

The distribution formula for revenues generated by computerized horse racing in Greene County is spelled out in detail. Most of the public agencies like the County government, School Board, Hospital, Ambulance Service would share in the funding. Other smaller non-profits and groups getting assistance from electronic bingo are also included in the bill for some portion of the funds to be distributed.

The current Greene County Racing Commission, consisting of Linette Brown, Donald Means and Morris Hardy are in strong support of the legislation and urge Greene County citizens to contact their legislators and others in Montgomery to pass this proposed Constitutional Amendment.

Efforts at press time to reach Senator Singleton and Representative Curtis Travis to get an assessment of the status and chances for passage of the legislation were unsuccessful.

Newswire: More women sue Texas saying the state’s anti-abortion laws harmed them

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Pro-choice protesters march outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin. (photo: Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

Sarah McCammon/NPR

Eight more women are joining a lawsuit against the state of Texas, saying the state’s abortion bans put their health or lives at risk while facing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.
The new plaintiffs have added their names to a lawsuit originally filed in March by five women and two doctors who say that pregnant patients are being denied abortions under Texas law despite facing serious medical complications. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the women, is now asking for a temporary injunction to block Texas abortion bans in the event of pregnancy complications.
“What happened to these women is indefensible and is happening to countless pregnant people across the state,” Molly Duane, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
The new group of women brings the total number of plaintiffs to 15. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Austin, asks a judge to clarify the meaning of medical exceptions in the state’s anti-abortion statutes.
The Texas “trigger law,” passed in 2021 in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, makes performing an abortion a felony, with exceptions for a “life-threatening physical condition” or “a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
Another Texas law, known as S.B. 8, prohibits nearly all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. That ban, with a novel enforcement mechanism that relies on private citizens filing civil lawsuits against anyone believed to be involved in providing prohibited abortions, took effect in September 2021 after the Supreme Court turned back a challenge from a Texas abortion provider.
In an interview with NPR in April, Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted Texas lawmakers in crafting the language behind S.B. 8, said he believed the medical exceptions in the law should not have prohibited emergency abortions.
“It concerns me, yeah, because the statute was never intended to restrict access to medically-necessary abortions,” Mitchell said. “The statute was written to draw a clear distinction between abortions that are medically necessary and abortions that are purely elective. Only the purely elective abortions are unlawful under S.B. 8.”
But many doctors in Texas and other states with similar laws that have taken effect since last year’s Supreme Court decision say they feel unsafe providing abortions while facing the threat of substantial fines, the loss of their medical licenses, or prison time.

Newswire : NAACP issues travel advisory warning Black people against traveling to Florida

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 Black family enjoying one of Florida’s beaches

By: Sharelle Burt, Black Enterprise

The NAACP is warning Black people to stay away from the Sunshine State.
CNN reports the historic advocacy group released a statement issuing a travel advisory in response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ deliberate attempt to erase African American history and DEI initiatives in schools.

“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP said. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”
The NAACP, long an advocate for Black Americans, joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, and Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group, in issuing travel advisories for the Sunshine State, where tourism is one of the state’s largest job sectors.
The advisory has been in the works for months as the Hillsborough County Chapter of the organization met with other NAACP members back in March and agreed to work with the national office on this advisory.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson says DeSantis’ antics conflict with the ideals that the group was founded upon. “Let me be clear–failing to teach an accurate representation of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced and continue to face is a disservice to students and a dereliction of duty to all,” Johnson said.
Since winning the governor seat, the controversial Republican politician has focused heavily on social issues. Last year, the state made headlines after DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act” into legislation, putting restrictions on how race and gender are discussed in classrooms, NBC News reported.

Under his administration, several areas of “concern” have been removal including Black Queer Studies, Movement for Black Lives, Black Feminist Literary Thought, The Reparations Movement and Black Struggle in the 21st Century. Books by Bell Hooks, Angela Davis and other Black authors have also been banned.

Dr. James Douglas Anderson, noted scholar of American education and Stillman College Commencement speaker, is a native son of Greene County

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John and Carol Zippert interview Dr. James D. Anderson at the Democrat office

 

 

Exclusive Interview with the Greene County Democrat

By: John Zippert, Dr. Carol P. Zippert and Dr. Monty Thornburg


Dr. James D. Anderson visited his hometown of Eutaw, Alabama on Friday, May 5, 2023, just before presenting the commencement address at his alma mater, Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the next day. The Co-Publishers of the Greene County Democrat and an associate had the honor of interviewing this native son of Greene County on his life and important intellectual view of the changes in Black education in the South over his life time.
Anderson attended Carver School in Eutaw, from 1950 to his graduation in 1962. At that time, the school had grades 1 to 12 and was a segregated school for Black students. “ We had great and dedicated Black teachers, who were genuinely concerned about their students. There was no social promotion and many students were failed and had to repeat grades until they mastered the subjects.”
Anderson lived on Kentuck, a neighborhood north of the Eutaw City Hall. “My mother worked as a cook for the Wilkes Banks family. We lived in a small shack out behind the Banks’ house.

Until my junior year in high school, I walked to school, with my brothers, about two miles. It was an adventure and we learned along the way. But you could not be late because the principal locked the school door at the start of the school day. We did get school buses, like the white children already had, in 1960.”
Anderson recounted a story that speaks to his growing up in poverty in Greene County. “My mother was very upset, this was when I was in high school, when Wilkes Banks told her that her son had a future after school as his ‘yardman’, taking care of mowing his grass. My mother had greater expectations for me and did not want me to aspire as a servant for white people.”


Stillman College

He was a good student and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1962. Anderson had not made any college applications because he did not have funds to attend college. Herman Hughes, his math teacher at Carver, who was a graduate of Stillman, went to speak with the Dean of Stillman and arranged a full scholarship for him to attend.
“As I was preparing to make my graduation speech at Carver, Mr. Hughes and the principal called me aside and into the office. I was fearful that they were going to tell me that I could not graduate but instead they explained that I had been awarded a full scholarship to attend Stillman.
This was the start of my academic career,” said Anderson.

Mr. Hughes was part of the family of Judge and Alverta Hughes of Mantua community of Greene County. Hughes went on from teaching math in Greene County to get a Ph.D. in Computer Science and became a Professor at Michigan State University. Anderson later reconnected with Hughes, when both served on the Stillman College Board of Trustees. He said that Hughes was a great inspiration to him as a math teacher and peaked his interested in majoring in math at college.
There is a fountain on the Thomas Gilmore Courthouse Square honoring Ms. Alverta Hughes for her contributions to Greene County.Anderson attended Stillman College during the turbulent 1960’s. “ I was among the Stillman students that joined Rev. T. Y. Rogers, civil rights campaign in Tuscaloosa. Rogers was the pastor of First African Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa and a close colleague of Dr. Martin Luther King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I was with Rogers on ‘Bloody Tuesday’ when police and deputized white citizens attacked peaceful marchers trying to hold the city to its promise not to have segregated water fountains and restroom facilities in a newly constructed Federal courthouse.
‘Bloody Tuesday’ in Tuscaloosa is often compared with ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma as milestones in the civil rights movement in Alabama.
Anderson graduated from Stillman College in 1966. He switched majors from mathematics to sociology. He went on to graduate school in social studies at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. In 1967, he graduated with a teaching certificate and went to teach social studies in Chicago.” I was in a bookstore in Chicago) and purchased a book on the history of Black education. It raised more questions for me than gave answers. I went back to a fellowship at the University of Illinois, to study and answer my questions about the history of Black education. I found my passion. I stumbled into the field where I have made a lifetime contribution.”

Educational Leader and Scholar

Dr. James D. Anderson is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutsell Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His scholarly career has focused mainly on the history of American education with a specialization in the History of African American education.

His book, ‘The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935’, won the American Education Research Association (AERA) outstanding book award in 1990. The AERA is the largest academic research organization in the nation.
Anderson has also authored hundreds of articles in educational journals about the issues of Black education from Reconstruction to the present day.
Anderson has served as an expert witness in a series of federal desegregation and affirmative education cases, including Jenkins vs Missouri, Knight vs Alabama, Ayers vs Mississippi, Gratz vs Bollinger and Grutter vs Bollinger. He has also served as an advisor to documentaries and PBS television programs on the history of education and African American schools over the past twenty years.
At the interview, Anderson observed, “My book on Black education has
already been banned in Florida by the actions of Governor Ron Desantis and the Florida State Legislature. This is part of an effort by some states to take our nation backwards and to remove the truth about Black history and Black education from our schools and colleges.”
In October of 2014, Dr. James D. Anderson delivered the AERA’s Brown Lecture, an annual commemoration of the Supreme Court’s historic 1954 school desegregation decision. In his lecture, Anderson speaks to the equivalence in work toward equality in education with work toward voting rights in our nation. He suggests that the periods of greatest educational equality were matched with the greatest periods of voting rights and progress for democracy.
He cites the progress during the Reconstruction period, after Emancipation until the turn of the century, when Black people championed public education for all people. This was also a period when Black people were able to vote and did vote, especially in the South, where there were large numbers of Black people. When Reconstruction ended and southern states adopted Jim Crow legislation limiting the Black vote and imposing school segregation, democracy and social change were stifled and reversed.
Anderson specifically laments the failure to adopt the first versions of the 14th amendment which would have guaranteed a right to vote for all men.
“We do not have a Constitutional right to vote, which has made it once again possible to weaken and destroy the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by the Supreme Court in the Shelby vs Holder decision and voter suppression legislation in many states. In many areas, the local politicians are discouraging voters by telling us that our vote doesn’t count or will not be counted. We have to go back to door-to-door organizing to educate and mobilize Black people to vote in every election,” said Anderson.

As the interview ended, so Dr. Anderson could meet with relatives still living in Eutaw, he said that, “The Black teachers that I had at Carver, were truly dedicated and interested in the students. We need more Black teachers in our schools. Some young people go through their whole K to 12 educational experience, without seeing a single Black teacher. We need to change this.

Newswire: African migrants finding sanctuary in Maine

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African women farmers in Maine

May 15, 2023 (GIN) – An African migrant crisis in southern Maine?

Newly arrived asylum seekers have been overwhelming several Maine cities, straining municipal budgets to the breaking point. Surprising to some, many of the migrants are from Africa, notes Luc Kuanzambi, a Congolese refugee.

Kuanzambi is the founder of Xenos Communications Consulting and a former aide to foreign governments in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. With specific knowledge of Angolan and Congolese history, he’s been explaining to local Mainers the historical, political and economic roots of the state’s refugee crisis.

It’s a crisis driven by European colonialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and more recently various regime change operations in the DRC and elsewhere that fueled political discord and empowered brutal political leaders, he says.

“I will say, there are humane policies here,” said Kuanzambi. “Some of my American friends have called them lenient policies.”

Last year — with some 400 migrant families in hotels — it was reported that the Greater Portland Council of Governments would be raising $1.5 million to build 200 transitional units for migrant families over the next two years.

“People are connected, because of the service that they’ve received here, because of their families. Some have family roots here, some have just people that they know, speak their language, and their culture,” added Mufalo Chitam, executive director of the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition.

More so than most states, Maine provides welfare benefits to asylum seekers who arrive in the state, including General Assistance through municipal governments, state-run welfare programs, housing benefits, and education.

And the legislature is currently considering a proposal that would allow asylum seekers, refugees, and even illegal immigrants to receive free and low-cost healthcare.

Maine is home to a community of Somali Bantus who are practicing sustainable farming at the 30-acre New Roots Cooperative using traditional methods from Somalia.

Meanwhile, at the southern border, over three thousand citizens of Senegal, Angola, Congo, Ghana and neighboring countries requested humanitarian visas in Mexico during the first six months of 2022, compared to 1,901 requests in all of 2021, said Andres Ramirez, director of Mexico’s Refugee Commission, or COMAR.

Wilner Metelus, president of the Citizen Committee in Defense of Naturalized and Afro-Mexicans, said an international commission is necessary to oversee what is happening at the southern Mexican border, which he described as a living “hell” for African and Haitian migrants.

In addition to those lawfully seeking refuge, the Mexican immigration enforcement agency has detained 1,436 African migrants who were either coming with smugglers or trying to avoid detection. Of those, 348 were minors or family units and routed to the Children’s and Families Development agency.

A video of Kuanzami’s presentation can be seen on YouTube at “From Africa to Maine: The History of the DRC and Angola.”   

Newswire: IRS admits targeting Black taxpayers for audits

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 Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, D. C.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent


IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has acknowledged what many have known for some time: Black taxpayers face an IRS audit exponentially more than other groups.
Werfel acknowledged the disparity in a letter this week in which he responded to a request for information about the “apparent racial disparity” in selecting tax returns for audit, along with a plan to address the issue.

“Let me start by stressing that the IRS is committed to enforcing tax laws in a fair and impartial manner,” Werfel said in the letter addressed to the U.S. Senate.
“When evidence of unfair treatment is presented, we must take immediate action to address it. It is also important to reiterate that we do not and will not consider race as part of our case selection and audit processes.”

He continued: “Nevertheless, a recent study estimated, using imputed race values, that Black taxpayers are audited at three to five times the rate of non-Black taxpayers. “The research further suggests that most of this disparity is driven by differences in correspondence audit rates among taxpayers claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

“We are deeply concerned by these findings and committed to doing the work to understand and address any disparate impact of the actions we take.”

Werfel noted that as soon as Congress confirmed his appointment, he met with an IRS team that had already studied the issue of race discrimination in audits. He noted that the research has continued as authorities try to pinpoint what drives the disparity and how to fix the issue.

Researchers discovered that Black taxpayers are five times more likely to face an audit when filing federal returns than any other race.

When President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS received $80 billion, which the agency pledged to use to determine a better system to eliminate such discrimination.

“Back in March, my colleagues and I raised alarms with the new IRS boss about Black taxpayers being over-audited, and today he confirmed our suspicions,” tweeted Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.). “The IRS is making strides, but extra audits of Black Americans are disgraceful and must end.”

Werfel promised that the IRS would accelerate an existing research effort to detect and ensure compliance among “ghost preparers,” individuals who are paid to prepare returns for others but do not identify themselves to the IRS.

“Initial evidence confirms that unscrupulous and ghost preparers disproportionately prepare returns in minority communities,” Werfel noted.
“We are making broad efforts to advance our commitment to fair and equitable tax administration and evaluating the best ways to address bias within our audit program.”

Newswire: Study reveals staggering toll of being Black in America:1.6 million excess deaths over 22 years

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Sick Black person in hospital

By Liz Szabo | KFF Health News


Research has long shown that Black people live sicker lives and die younger than white people.
Now a new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) casts the nation’s racial inequities in stark relief, finding that the higher mortality rate among Black Americans resulted in 1.63 million excess deaths relative to white Americans over more than two decades.
Because so many Black people die young — with many years of life ahead of them — their higher mortality rate from 1999 to 2020 resulted in a cumulative loss of more than 80 million years of life compared with the white population, the study showed.
Although the nation made progress in closing the gap between white and Black mortality rates from 1999 to 2011, that advance stalled from 2011 to 2019. In 2020, the enormous number of deaths from Covid-19 — which hit Black Americans particularly hard — erased two decades of progress.
Authors of the study describe it as a call to action to improve the health of Black Americans, whose early deaths are fueled by higher rates of heart disease, cancer, and infant mortality.
“The study is hugely important for about 1.63 million reasons,” said Herman Taylor, an author of the study and director of the cardiovascular research institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
“Real lives are being lost. Real families are missing parents and grandparents,” Taylor said. “Babies and their mothers are dying. We have been screaming this message for decades.”
High mortality rates among Black people have less to do with genetics than with the country’s long history of discrimination, which has undermined educational, housing, and job opportunities for generations of Black people, said Clyde Yancy, an author of the study and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Black neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s — designated too “high risk” for mortgages and other investments — remain poorer and sicker today, Yancy said. Formerly redlined ZIP codes also had higher rates of Covid infection and death. “It’s very clear that we have an uneven distribution of health,” Yancy said. “We’re talking about the freedom to be healthy.”
A companion study estimates that racial and ethnic inequities cost the U.S. at least $421 billion in 2018, based on medical expenses, lost productivity, and premature death.
In 2021, non-Hispanic white Americans had a life expectancy at birth of 76 years, while non-Hispanic Black Americans could expect to live only to 71. Much of that disparity is explained by the fact that non-Hispanic Black newborns are 2½ times as likely to die before their first birthdays as non-Hispanic whites. Non-Hispanic Black mothers are more than 3 times as likely as non-Hispanic white mothers to die from a pregnancy-related complication. (Hispanic people can be of any race or combination of races.)

Racial disparities in health are so entrenched that even education and wealth don’t fully erase them, said Tonia Branche, a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago who was not involved in the JAMA study.
Black women with a college degree are more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white women without a high school diploma. Although researchers can’t fully explain this disparity, Branche said it’s possible that stress, including from systemic racism, takes a greater toll on the health of Black mothers than previously recognized.
Death creates ripples of grief throughout communities. Research has found that every death leaves an average of nine people in mourning.
Black people shoulder a great burden of grief, which can undermine their mental and physical health, said Khaliah Johnson, chief of pediatric palliative care at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Given the high mortality rates throughout the life span, Black people are more likely than white people to be grieving the death of a close family member at any point in their lives.
“We as Black people all have some legacy of unjust, unwarranted loss and death that compounds with each new loss,” said Johnson, who was not involved with the new study. “It affects not only how we move through the world, but how we live in relationship with others and how we endure future losses.”
Johnson’s parents lost two sons — one who died a few days after birth and another who died as a toddler. In an essay published last year, Johnson recalled, “My parents asked themselves on numerous occasions, ‘Would the outcomes for our sons have been different, might they have received different care and lived, had they not been Black?’”
Johnson said she hopes the new study gives people greater understanding of all that’s lost when Black people die prematurely. “When we lose these lives young, when we lose that potential, that has an impact on all of society,” she said.
And in the Black community, “our pain is real and deep and profound, and it deserves attention and validation,” Johnson said. “It often feels like people just pass it over, telling you to stop complaining. But the expectation can’t be that we just endure these things and bounce back.”

KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Newswire: President Biden selects Black Air Force pilot as next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

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 Gen. Charles Quinton Brown Jr.

SPECIAL TO THE TRICE EDNEY NEWS WIRE FROM BLACKMANSTREET.TODAY

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Joe Biden has named Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Quinton Brown Jr., a Black Airforce fighter pilot as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff. He will succeed American General Mark Milley, according to multiple reports. General Milley is scheduled to retire in October.
If confirmed by the Senate, Brown would become the first Air Force general to hold the position since Gen. Richard Myers stepped down in 2005—and only the fifth airman in the 73-year history of the job.
Brown, an F-16 fighter pilot, would bring nearly four decades of military service to the nation’s top military job, including stints as a Pacific and Middle East commander.
He is also the second Black service member to serve as Chairman, following Army General Colin Powell, who served as chairman from 1989 to 1993.
After he was commissioned in 1984, Brown served as an instructor at and later still was the commander of the U.S. Air Force Weapons School. He then led fighter pilots in South Korea and Italy before taking on key positions in major commands at the heart of U.S. national security. 
In 2014, Brown was the director of operations for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration for U.S. Air Forces in Europe, shortly after Russia invaded Crimea; from 2015 to 2016, he commanded U.S. Air Forces Central as the U.S. and its allies conducted an air campaign against the Islamic State group; and from 2018 to 2020, he led Pacific Air Forces just as the U.S. shifted its strategic focus from countert errorism in the Middle East to deter China in the Pacific. 
Omar Nelson Bradley was the first Joint Staff chairman from 1949 to 1953.
As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown will face both social and strategic challenges, as the military not only strives to stay ahead of China but also struggles to attract new talent. Though the chairman has no operational command authority over the armed forces, Brown would be the top military adviser to President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Brown is a native Texan. He earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, in 1984.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff consist of the Chairman, the Vice Chairman, the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the Commandant of the Marine Corp, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and the Chief of Space Op

County Commission expresses interest in county-wide Sunday alcohol sales

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The Greene County Commission met in regular session Monday, May 8, 2023. All Commissioners were present. At the Commission’s work session on May 3, Commissioner Allen Turner raised an interest in the county authorizing Sunday alcohol sales. Turner raised questions on the process – would the County have to present its request to the State Legislative Representatives, and would such a proposed bill have time to be advertised before the current session ended. Subsequently, State Representative Curtis Travis was invited to attend the Commission’s meeting on May 8. Rep. Travis stated that since Greene County is a “wet” county, the County Commission could authorize Sunday alcohol sales at prescribed times. He noted that the Commission should develop a resolution to that effect.
According to Mayor Latasha Johnson, the City of Eutaw has authorized Sunday alcohol sales, but currently that does not extend throughout the county.
The Commission approved a request by Probate Judge Rolonda Wedgeworth to secure a new contract for computer services in her office. In her initial request presented at the Commission’s work session on May 3, Judge Wedgeworth stated that her office was in dire need of an updated computer system. She noted that due to the inadequacies of the current vendor, her office is out of compliance with the State. “We are in a situation where we have to develop our own forms which is a set back to our work. Our current vendor will not respond to requests for assistance,” she said. As per her request, the Commission approved Ingenuity, Inc., business and technology services, as the new vendor at a cost of $28,000.
The Commission approved three members for the Board of Equalization: Mrs. Alfretta Crawford, Mrs. Loydleetta Wabbington, and Mr. John Vester.
Other items approved by the Commission are as follows:
* Repair Jury Building on old courthouse square at cost not to exceed $35,000.
* Engineer’s request to fill position of Shop Foreman.
* Engineer’s request for right-of-way acquisition for bridge replacement on County Rd. 220 for the sum of $20, 500.
Engineer’s request to move one driver from Highway Department to Solid Waste Dept.
Engineers’s request to adjust salaries of four employees in Solid Waste Department.
* Travel request for Assistant Engineer on June 7 and June 13-14, 2023.
* Replacing back doors at Eutaw Activity Center.
Sheriff’s request to replace commercial dishwasher at county jail.
The Commission tabled the following items.
* Request from the Water Authority Board.
Consideration of Sunday alcohol sales in the County.
The commission approved the financial report and the payment of claims for April 2023 as presented by CFO Macaroy Underwood. In his report Underwood noted the following: Accounts payable – $309,692.59; Payroll Transfer – $274,299.19; Fiduciary – $69,124.45; Total $653,116.23; Electronic Claims – $85,183.29. Bank totals at end of April: Citizen Trust – unrestricted $2,928,224.96, restricted $5,181,617.91; Merchants & Farmers – unrestricted $3,170,801.50, restricted $1,544,523.24; Total investments – unrestricted $877,979,73, restricted $881,522.99.

Newswire : African American jobless rate hits lowest level in U.S. history

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Black employment activity

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire

According to the freshly published jobs report for April, the jobless rate for African Americans in the United States maintained its steady slide to new historic levels, just one month after hitting a record low for the previous lowest level ever recorded. On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that the unemployment rate for African Americans dropped below 5% for the first time in US history.
This is new ground for the labor force in the country.
The employment report for April showed that the unemployment rate for Black people in the United States declined by three-tenths of a percentage point, a drop that cannot be considered negligible.
The employment report for April showed that the unemployment rate for Black people in the United States decreased by three-tenths of a percentage point, which is not an insignificant drop. That represents a 4.7% decrease overall.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for Black men, in particular, and for Black youths, fell.
After Black women reached a historic low in joblessness in March, their unemployment rate slightly increased, according to a jobs report.
Overall, the rate of joblessness in the United States has fallen to its lowest point in half a century, at 3.4%.
The rate includes white workers, and their rate fell one-tenth of a percentage point, reaching 3.1%.
 Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, referred to it as “an incredible milestone.”