By George E. Curry

NNPA Columnist

Dr. Ben Carson became the darling of conservatives earlier this year by stridently attacking the Affordable Care Act with President Obama sitting just a few feet away. Carson, who was serving as the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast at the White House, said,

"Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed - pretax - from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.

"Number one. And also, for the people who were indigent who don't have any money we can make contributions to their HSA [Health Savings Account] each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care."

Predictably, the Right wing rushed to embrace him. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the crew at Fox News were ecstatic that a prominent Black neurosurgeon shared their world view. Jonah Goldberg, a columnist for the Right-wing National Review, compared Carson to racial apologist Booker T. Washington. David Graham, writing in The Atlantic, called him Herman Cain without the "personal skeletons." And the conservative Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed under the headline, "Ben Carson for President."

Carson became a paid contributor to Fox News, was hired to write a weekly column for the Right-wing Washington Times, and became in demand as a speaker at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and any national event that attracts more than three conservatives.

Professionally, Carson is no dumb man. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his M.D. from the University of Michigan. At the age of 33, he became director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the youngest major division director in the school's history.

In 1987, he led a 70-member surgical ream that separated twins who had been joined at the back of the head. After the successful 22-hour surgery, Carson gained national recognition. His autobiography, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,was published in 1992. The book recounts how his mother, Sonya, reared him and his older brother, Curtis, after she and her husband, Robert, divorced when Ben was 8 years old. In 2009, TNT released a television movie with the same title as his book, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. as Ben Carson.  In 2008, George W. Bush presented Carson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Carson has made several controversial remarks after his appearance at the White House.  In March, he said on Fox TV: "Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are. They don't get to change the definition."

Under pressure, Carson withdrew as commencement speaker for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He also apologized for "not the best choice of words," called his critics racist, and then apologized again.

Of all of his outrageous comments, his latest one ranks among the most egregious.

Speaking at a Voter Values Summit, Carson said, "I have to tell you that Obamacare is, really, I think, the worst thing that's happened to this nation since slavery. It was never about healthcare, it was about control."

First, the Affordable Care Act does what its proper title implies - it makes health care affordable to millions of people, including the uninsured. If making insurance more affordable, not allowing insurance companies to reject people with pre-existing conditions and allowing children to remain on their parents' insurance policies until they are 26 years old isn't about healthcare, the esteemed neurosurgeon doesn't know the definition of healthcare.

Second, any idiot knows that having access to healthcare is not worse than slavery.

Enslaved Africans had no rights, as the Supreme Court ruled in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, "which the white man was bound to respect." They were brutalized, degraded, whipped, killed, and raped at the whim of the slave master. Marriage was not recognized and the slave codes in various states made it illegal to teach Blacks to read or write.

The Affordable Health Care Act is worse than that?

It's a ridiculous comparison.  At the rate he is going, Carson's photograph will be slapped on boxes of rice. Dr. Ben will be more appropriately known as Uncle Ben.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA). He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

By George E. Curry

NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Four months after the Supreme Court declined to invalidate affirmative action in a case brought against the University of Texas, it heard oral arguments to determine if a Michigan referendum violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by amending the state constitution to prohibit the consideration of race, sex, color ethnicity or national origin in public university admissions decisions.

The case, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, was argued before the court on Oct. 15.  While the case is not exclusively about affirmative action, it will determine whether Michigan and other states with similar bans can outlaw affirmative action through statewide initiatives rather than judicial channels.

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Selling Out Black College Football to Make a Buck

By George E. Curry

NNPA Columnist

I cringed as the scores came in over the weekend. Ohio State 76, Florida A&M 0. Florida State 54, Bethune-Cookman 6. Miami 77, Savannah State 7. Our HBCUs have traded their proud, rich football heritage for money. And I don't think it's worth it.

There's only one reason our HBCUs schedule games against schools whose head coaches make more than their entire athletic budgets: they earn a big payday, even if that means being publicly humiliated along the way.

The irony is that the SEC wouldn't continue to have a lock on national football championships were it not for their Black players. And it wasn't all that long ago that Blacks were as unwelcomed in the SEC as they were at KKK rallies.

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By Tresa Baidas and Jim Schaefer 

© Detroit Free Press

Kwame Kilpatrick can't hurt Detroit anymore.

It's time, the judge said, for the city to start healing.

"That way of business is over," U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said today in sentencing the former Detroit mayor to 28 years in prison in the historic public corruption case. "We're done. We're moving forward."

In an emotional sentencing hearing that included scolding, apologizing and a rehashing of Detroit history during Kilpatrick's tenure, Edmunds spent 25 minutes explaining not just what Kilpatrick did wrong - a long list that included taking bribes, steering contracts to his friend, extorting businessmen, deceiving donors to his nonprofit, living lavishly on the public's dime and loading the city's payroll with friends and family. She also stressed that Kilpatrick's misdeeds taught Detroiters a lesson about honest government. And she hopes her sentence sends a message to future politicians.

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Jesse Jackson in Havana with local religious leaders.

By George E. Curry

NNPA Editor-in-Chief

[FIRST OF TWO PARTS]

HAVANA, Cuba (NNPA) - Jesse Jackson says now that Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos has rejected an unconditional offer from rebels to turn over a captured former military veteran to the civil rights leader, it is now up to the United States government to pressure Santos to allow the transfer.

In an exclusive interview here with the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service, Jackson said: "The U.S. government must now use its leverage to get an American veteran out of Colombia who has been set free on an unconditional basis if I am able to bring him out. The question is whether the government is willing to leave him there rather than letting me bring him out. I hope that's not the case."

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By George E. Curry

NNPA Editor-in-Chief

[SECOND OF TWO PARTS]

HAVANA, Cuba (NNPA) - Jesse Jackson was ensconced in his 6th floor suite at Hotel Nacional, at the end of the hallway, as the four people he had invited to accompany him to Cuba - James Gomez, Director of International Affairs for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition; Lyle "Butch" Wing, the organization's National Political Coordinator; Brewster McCauley, Jackson's Chicago-based videographer, and this reporter - walked back and forth between the lounge and their rooms on the same floor.

Gomez and I were in the lounge discussing the utility of his iPhone charging case when a member of the local ministerial group hosting us rushed from an elevator and excitedly told Gomez, "They are here!" Gomez quickly went downstairs, returned about 10 minutes later and let everyone know it was time to move - quickly.

We all knew "they" were members of FARC-EP, the Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - the People's Army, a guerrilla group that has been fighting to overthrow the government since 1964. Gomez had been in close contact with the rebels for nearly two weeks. But once we landed in Havana after a 45-minute mid-afternoon charter flight from Miami, neither of the phones Gomez or Wing uses for international travel worked. Internet service in the hotel, when you could get on line, was maddeningly slow. A member of the Cuba council of churches, the group that had invited Jackson to Havana, offered the use of his phone to contact the rebels. But Gomez politely declined, thinking it wouldn't be wise to make the group's cellular telephone number available to others without their permission.

Shortly after 8 p.m., five hours after our arrival, "they" were in the hobby of Hotel Nacional. After sizing up the loud, crowded hotel lobby, a member of FARC decided the hotel wouldn't be an ideal meeting spot. We stepped out of the front door, the FARC member signaled the driver of a van parked about 30 yards away to pull into the narrow, circular driveway and we all climbed into the vehicle. Sitting three rows back, on the driver's side, was Pablo Catatumbo, a/k/a Jorge Torres Victoria, a member of FARC's high command, called the Secretariat of the FARC-EP.

Jesse Jackson slid in next to him and the two talked as we rode to a secluded compound less than 30 minutes from central Havana. When we arrived, the driver flicked his lights twice and two armed guards stared at the van intently as the metal gates slowly eased open to allow our passage. After riding several minutes through a neighborhood within a neighborhood, we unloaded at a large, stately house that had once belonged to the Cuban elite.

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Cheryl Pearson-McNeil

By George E. Curry

NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Although annual Black spending is projected to rise from its current $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion by 2017, advertisers allot only 3 percent of their $2.2 billion yearly budget to media aimed at Black audiences, a new Nielsen report has found.

The study, "Resilient, Receptive and Relevant: The African-American Consumer 2013 Report," was released at a news conference Thursday at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Weekend by Nielsen and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). The findings were released by Cheryl Pearson-McNeil, senior vice-president, public affairs and government relations for Nielsen, and Cloves Campbell, chairman of the NNPA and publisher of the Arizona Informant.

 "Advertising expenditures geared specifically toward Black audiences reflected only three percent of advertising dollars spent," the report stated. "Advertisers spent $75 billion on television, radio, internet, and magazine ads in 2012, with only $2.24 billion of that spent with media focused on Black audiences."

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Not Colorblind: New Report Shows 'Racist' LA Police Dogs only Bite Blacks and Latinos

By Aisha Harris  

© Slate

A few months ago, in support of a friend's work project, I found myself performing karaoke for a crowd full of strangers, at the most hipster-y of hipster affairs: A video performance art show in a Brooklyn museum that doubled as a karaoke event. 

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Austin says: "It's time to get an early jump on your tax returns. Let my Dad help you."

"We service clients throughout the U.S."