Articles by Mark Taylor

  By Darryl Fears The Washington Post (6/17/17) The Trump administration has ended a six-year-old ban on selling bottled water at some national parks that was aimed at easing plastic pollution and the huge amount of waste being recycled. In a statement that closely tracked the arguments of a campaign by the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) in opposition to the ban, the National Park Service said the 2011 action under the Obama administration “removed the healthiest beverage choice at a variety of parks while still allowing sales of bottled sweetened drinks.” The move follows a review of the policy “in close consultation…

  By Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility EcoWatch (8/2/17) A 30-year U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) senior official left federal service Tuesday convinced that her agency is being steered in a disastrously wrong direction, according to her farewell message posted by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). She is an eyewitness to the wreckage wreaked by Administrator Scott Pruitt and his cadre of political appointees. Elizabeth “Betsy” Southerland has a Ph.D. in environmental science and engineering and has worked in both the private sector and state government. At EPA, she served in both the water and Superfund programs as a senior executive, managing first…

  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (8/12/17) Corporate profits are up. Wages remain low. And, as always, the richest are angling for ever-lower tax rates. Only 0.1 percent of full-time workers earning the minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in any state in the U.S., but judging by their tax agenda, the Republican Party and President Donald Trump appear to feel it is massive corporations and billionaires—not American workers—who need an income boost. Attempting to justify his push to give massive tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations, Trump has repeatedly argued that businesses are being strangled by high…

By E.P. Milligan World Socialist Web Site (8/10/17) Drug overdose deaths in the United States are rising sharply, the National Center for Health Statistics reported Tuesday. For the year-long period ending January 2017, total US drug overdose deaths totaled 64,070, up 21 percent from 52,898 for the previous year. This is equivalent to 175 people dying every day from drug overdoses. Based on more comprehensive data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control, whose figures lag behind the social reality by about a year, more than 500,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses in the period between 2000 and 2015—roughly…

  By Caitlan Johnstone Medium (8/8/17) Political IQ test: What does it mean when CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the President’s Twitter account all agree that a foreign state poses a suddenly increased threat to America? A) If they all agree it must be true! B) Well I dislike some of those outlets, but I trust one of them. C) The US intelligence community would never lie to us. D) Hmm… this sounds an awful lot like the leadup to Iraq? If you said anything but D, you are of course a fucking moron. The United States power establishment has an…

By Noor Al-Sabai The Raw Story (8/9/17) “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question was asked in 1973 by Harold Hering, an Air Force major studying to be a missileer, or one of the people who turns the keys that unlock the deadliest of missiles. The question, raised again by the Washington Post on Wednesday, remains as prescient now in light of President Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” threat against North Korea as it did then — when Hering rightfully questioned whether or not President Richard Nixon was, at…

  By Mike Thomson BBC Magazine  (8/3/17) Late last year, the BBC’s Mike Thomson received a desperate call from a bomb shelter in the Syrian city of Aleppo. It came from head teacher and mother of three Om Mudar, who pleaded for help getting her terrified family out of the rebel-held part of the city. When Thomson was unable to make contact again, he feared the worst – but, as he explains here, months later a text message arrived that revealed Om’s fate. “The worse thing is the night, it’s so long,” Om tells me, speaking after an especially heavy…

  By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (8/2/17) A trove of Monsanto’s internal records released on Tuesday raises serious concerns about  company efforts to influence media reports and scientific research related to risks posed by is popular weedkiller, Roundup. As the New York Times reported: Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes‘s website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment. A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella,…

TheCommonerCall.org   By Julia Conley Common Dreams (8/2/17) The Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation are among more than 20 groups partnering to introduce a new website which tracks threats to press freedom in the United States. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker launched Wednesday to gather data on arrests of journalists, physical attacks on reporters, equipment searches and seizures, prosecutions of the legal spreading of information (recently denounced as “leaks” by the Trump administration), and other threats to the free press. So far in 2017, the site has tracked 19 arrests of journalists; 12 equipment searches and seizures; 11…