Articles by Mark Taylor

  By Adam Gabatt The Guardian (6/10/17) Bernie Sanders has criticised the Democratic party’s current direction as “an absolute failure” in a speech at the People’s Summit in Chicago. Speaking to a crowd of 4,000 activists, Sanders hailed the “enormous progress in advancing the progressive agenda”, saying the increasing House and Senate support for a $15 minimum wage and the opposition to the Trans-Pacific partnership showed the success of the movement. But the Vermont senator said that establishment Democrats were standing in the way of further progress. “The Democratic party must understand what side it is on. And that cannot…

“This campaign would need to be people-powered and crowd funded. It would need to be small donations from a lot of people.” WisEye (6/9/17) On June 9, 2017, Senior Producer Steve Walters talked with Mike McCabe, formerly of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, on his potential challenge to Governor Scott Walker. Link to 20-Minute Video ***** Mike McCabe On Finding Common Ground: One trick is to think vertically instead of horizontally. “There is an opportunity to find common ground where we don’t see it today, and to help unite people who are currently divided and conquered.” – Mike McCabe Link to…

By Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit’s Facebook Page (6/6/17) Yo, people, part of what’s going on with this Intercept thing is that they’re recycling old news that more people–starting with the Intercept–are now ready to listen to. The hilarious thing is that the Intercept fellows kept telling us not to believe things from intelligence agencies but are now building their story on one document from the NSA. I heard this story about hacked voting machines in November but couldn’t get any major media outlet to follow up on it. But the stories go all the way back to AUGUST. Here’s ABC…

    The Cornucopia Institute (5/2/17) Based on a scathing front-page exposé in The Washington Post presenting strong evidence that the largest organic milk producer in the United States has been operating illegally, the organic industry’s most aggressive industry watchdog, The Cornucopia Institute, filed formal legal complaints against Aurora Dairy and their organic certifier, the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The nonprofit simultaneously wrote to the Trump administration’s new USDA Secretary, Sonny Perdue, asking for the removal of the agency’s lead organic regulator. This is not the first legal complaint Cornucopia has filed against Aurora. More than a decade ago, based…

  By Lee Moran HuffPost (6/2/17) Salvation sometimes comes from the most unlikeliest of sources. An African-American church in Greenville, South Carolina, is now able to fund one of its projects — thanks to an anonymous $2,000 donation from someone who said they used to be a “terrible racist.” The mystery person also left a letter of apology with the two $1,000 post office money orders in the Nicholtown Presbyterian Church’s mail box on May 13. “First, I am white and used to be a terrible racist,” the unidentified donor wrote. “Thanks to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, acting through the Presbyterian…

  By John Pilger Counter Punch (5/31/17) The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy. Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”. The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic…

Bob Wick, BLM/Flickr   By Colin Dwyer & Kirk Siegler NPR (4/28/17) President Trump has ordered the Department of the Interior to review all designations of national monuments greater than 100,000 acres created since 1996. That executive order, which he signed Wednesday, places at least 20 — and as many as 40 — monuments in the government’s sights. The areas now under review span a vast range of landscapes — from arid deserts to frozen mountain peaks, from striking craggy vistas to teeming underwater playgrounds. And, though these monuments were all established roughly in the past two decades, they all…

  By Marilyn Katz In These Times (5/26/17) The daily revelations of the entanglement of Trump’s entourage have Republicans squirming and Democrats salivating at the smell of blood in the water. Former boogeymen like the CIA and the FBI have suddenly become heroes to liberals. After years of relative quietude, Russia has emerged once again as the evil empire, as if we were living in the height of the Cold War. Even progressives have not been immune, with thoughtful In These Times writers like Kate Aronoff and Jeff Alson spending their considerable brain power on weighing the danger, in the…