Entries by Neal Barkus

Drinking Water From Plastic Bottles. Or Not.

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Here is the news my world-wide readers have been waiting for. The winners of the 30th Annual Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting for 2020 are in! A panel of twelve judges sipped over 100 entrants at the competition. Believe it or not, the principal criterion for success was that the water should have no taste. Three of the top five winners in the Bottled Water category were Japanese. The best bottled water in the world is Hita no Homare Cosmo Water from Japan. Of course I am going to run right out and buy some. Or not.

Trump’s Obstruction of Congress: The Real Constitutional Threat

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In the ongoing trial of Donald Trump, the House Managers have laid out a case on two articles of impeachment. Article I – abuse of Presidential power – received the most time and attention by the House Managers and the President’s defense team. However, Article II, charging the President with obstruction of Congress, describes conduct that will have more far reaching consequences for the nation. At the President’s direction, the White House and federal agencies have refused to produce a single document. He has also directed key federal employees to refuse to appear for testimony. If a President can unilaterally declare impeachment proceedings in the House to be invalid, and on that basis deprive those proceedings of crucial evidence, what is left of the impeachment power?

West Virginia’s Green Amendment

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On February 11, 2019, thirty-two West Virginia legislators — all Democrats — introduced Resolution 25 in the West Virginia House of Delegates. The Resolution called for an amendment to the West Virginia Constitution creating a right to clean air, pure water, and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and aesthetic values of the environment. Modeled on a similar amendment in Pennsylvania, the “Green Amendment” declares that these public natural resources are the common property of the people and appoints the State of West Virginia as trustee of those resources. These declarations would have sweeping legal consequences if the Green Amendment is adopted.

What Are We Going To Do About It?

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Even before the upcoming public impeachment hearings, we know the facts. Despite the blizzard of falsehoods issued by Presidential tweet to cover up the crime – it was a “perfect call”, there was no quid pro quo — all these have been discredited, one by one, then abandoned. We know this: the President used our money, not his own, to squeeze a desperate country into providing political dirt on Joe Biden, Trump’s possible opponent in the 2020 election. This extortion was intended to benefit himself, not the country. So the question is not what happened. Rather, the question is what are we going to do about it?

Paper or Plastic?

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Remember when grocery clerks would ask this question at the checkout counter? Now you practically have to leap over the counter to prevent your groceries from immediately going into plastic bags. I have always assumed that plastic bags became the grocery industry’s packaging of choice because of the cost savings to the grocers. This is basically true. I have also assumed that paper bags are both biodegradable in landfills and recyclable into other products, while plastic bags are not biodegradable and rarely recycled. But going beneath these assumptions a little further, the environmentally sound choice between paper and plastic bags is not at all clear.

Why We Should Not Wait Until The 2020 Election To Deal With Trump’s Misbehavior

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Democrats in the House of Representatives have decided they cannot ignore President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to produce dirt on Trump’s likely opponent in 2020. They have begun an impeachment inquiry, which may lead to the introduction and adoption of articles of impeachment in the House. Even now one can hear criticism of the move from those who ask why we just can’t wait until the 2020 election and let the voters decide whether Trump is guilty of a “high crime or misdemeanor?” But waiting until the 2020 election to deal with Trump’s conduct, up or down, would be a serious mistake. Here’s why.

When Will We Decide We’ve Had Enough?

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Nearly every day, the news reveals another outrage on the part of President Trump that violates constitutional norms. The most recent is his apparent threat to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless that country produces damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden. At present Biden is Trump’s most likely opponent in 2020. Trump’s arrogance, corruption and destructiveness are unprecedented. I viscerally feel that he is ruining my country. When will we decide that we’ve had enough?

Reforming Corporate Behavior

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We have heard for years that the sole purpose of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders, end of story. This notion gained ascendancy after a 1970 article published in the New York Times by economist Milton Friedman, who huffed that the idea that corporations have a broader responsibility to society is “pure and unadulterated socialism.” But today Friedman’s article seems like an odd period piece and his ideas out of step. There is a lot happening these days in boardrooms and the political arena to restore social responsibility to corporate behavior.

Undermining the Endangered Species Act

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We have just been treated to another example of what happens when conservation voters fail to go to the polls or, worse, when they vote for candidates who are antithetical to sound conservation values. On August 12, 2019, the Trump Administration announced its latest effort to modify the Endangered Species Act (ESA), not in the interest of the imperiled species the Act was designed to protect, but to satisfy the oil, cattle and mining industries who contribute so heavily to the Republican leviathan.

How Secure Are West Virginia Elections?

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The Mueller Report released earlier this year detailed numerous ways that Russian operatives sought to interfere with U.S state and local election apparatus in 2016. A Russian entity called the GRU targeted state boards of elections, secretaries of state and county governments with the intent of gaining access to databases of registered voters. In June 2016 they compromised the voter database of the Illinois Board of Elections and extracted information on millions of voters before the intrusion was blocked. Hundreds of outsiders probe West Virginia’s election computer security system daily. Just how secure will the West Virginia election process will be in 2020?