The longest-serving African-American elected official in Congress said the President cannot play nice with the the Senate to get health care legislation passed.

From the Associated Press

“The president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson’s book…and start knocking heads together,” said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Conyers, who spoke to reporters in Detroit, first came to Congress in 1965, the year Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both passed under the strong hand of Johnson, by then the president. Obama was not yet 4 years old.

The House passed the sweeping health care legislation late Saturday on a narrow 220-215 vote. By Sunday, the bill was being declared a nonstarter in the Senate.

A government health insurance plan included in the House bill is unacceptable to a few Democratic moderates who hold the balance of power in the there. These senators are locked in a battle with liberals, with the fate of health care legislation at stake.

On Sunday, Obama urged the Senate to follow the lead of the House, like a runner in a relay race. The president says he’s confident senators will do the right thing.

A number of activists and artists, including Dionne Warwick, have joined forces to attack entrepreneur, television personality and Radio One founder, Cathy Hughes. They say she is guilty of not paying artists for their recordings played on her AM and FM radio stations.  Hughes has been firmly pressing against what is known as the Performance Rights Act or Civil Rights for Musicians Act (sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus’ John Conyers (D-Mich.). The activists say the radio business should be equated to all other music platforms, in which the artists receive some fraction of royalties produced when their music is featured on the airwaves. The Act also secures the survival of smaller Black-owned radio stations up against the heavy reign of massive corporations like Radio One, Clear Channel or the National Association of Broadcasters. Hughes, the owner of 52 out of the 209 Black-owned radio stations in the nation, is intensely opposed to the act.  In a strongly worded editorial in the Huffington Post, Warwick wrote, “In defending her refusal to fairly compensate the artists on whose back she earns her living, Ms. Hughes now claims poverty, which is pretty amazing considering Radio One owns 54 radio stations and reaped $316 million last year alone. She even paid her own son, Radio One CEO Alfred Liggins, a $10 million bonus. Far from a struggling company, Radio One sounds more like one of those Wall Street rip off firms where executives pay themselves big bonuses while they rip us off and throw their workers in the street.” But insisting she’s doing the right thing, Hughes explains her side to ESSENCE magazine saying that this Act would do more damage to Black radio than anything else by immediately “putting a third of Black radio stations out of business.” Hughes also claims that due to the act “about $1 million a month” would be coming out of her pocket during one of the “worst times in our country’s history to impose a tax on the radio industry.”

Read Dionne Warwick’s Editorial at the Huffington Post.

Should Radio One and other stations compensate artists for playing their music on the radio?

Both listeners and owners of Black radio took to the streets and airwaves Wednesday, protesting a bill sponsored by one of the nation’s most respected Black congressmen. A long-time champion of civil rights, Democrat John Conyers has angered many communities that value Black-owned broadcast outlets by sponsoring a bill that some say will require stations to pay millions to record companies for the right to play music. Read the rest.

John Conyers wants surgeon general nomination blocked. One of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters in his run for the presidency could be his biggest opponent on the matter of a surgeon general nominee. Michigan congressional Rep. John Conyers, whose pride over Obama’s election reflected in his recent raffling of free inaugural tickets for lucky Detroiters, is disappointed about Dr. Sanjay Gupton’s endorsement. Read why here.