May 19 2013
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May 19 2013
Here’s that Sierra Club piece I promised.
It’s Not Easy Being Green: Are Some of the Biggest Enviro Groups Giant Sell-Outs?
Jason Mark, Alternet
May 15, 2013
About a year ago, on March 26, 2012, Sandra Steingraber, an environmental writer and activist against natural-gas fracking, wrote a public letter titled “Breaking Up with the Sierra Club.” Breakups are never easy, and the letter, published on the website of the nature magazine Orion, was brutal from the start: “I’m through with you,” Steingraber began.
The proximate cause of the split was the revelation that between 2007 and 2010 the nation’s oldest environmental organization had clandestinely accepted $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries associated with Chesapeake Energy, a major gas firm that has been at the forefront of the fracking boom. “The largest, most venerable environmental organization in the United States secretly aligned with the very company that seeks to occupy our land, turn it inside out, blow it apart, fill it with poison,” Steingraber wrote. “It was as if, on the eve of D-day, the anti-Fascist partisans had discovered that Churchill was actually in cahoots with the Axis forces.”
…
The Sierra Club, under the leadership of its previous executive director, Carl Pope, wasn’t the only prominent environmentalist organization heralding natural gas as a bridge fuel that could take our energy system from carbon-intense coal to renewables like wind and solar. (When burned, gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal.) Among the most vocal proponents of natural gas today are Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, founders of the Oakland-based liberal think tank the Breakthrough Institute. Nordhaus and Shellenberger ticked off greens in the early aughts with the essay “The Death of Environmentalism,” which urged green groups to rethink the core assumptions of their political strategy. The pugnacious pair is often bashed for their rhetoric, but the two are genuine in their hawkishness on the climate and their commitment to global equity.
…
(S)ince the fracking boom began in earnest, a larger, anti-fracking grassroots has emerged. Small towns in the East that were unaccustomed to the thrum of the fossil-fuel industry have been shocked to find themselves surrounded by trucks and heavy machinery and with compressors in their back lots whirring all night long. Some homeowners had their wells contaminated with flammable methane. Places like Ohio and Arkansas that weren’t used to seismic activity started to experience earthquakes when underground wastewater injections stimulated geologic faults. Today, the movement against gas fracking has become a cause célèbre (Yoko Ono and Mark Ruffalo have an “Artists Against Fracking” group) and is one of the most invigorating issues among grassroots environmentalists. At February’s Forward on Climate rally near the White House, easily a fifth of the placards in the crowd of 35,000 had to do with gas drilling.
…
“Of all the forms of fossil-fuel extraction, fracking is the only one that is wrapped up in a green myth,” says Sandra Steingraber, who wrote the letter against the Sierra Club. “The demand for energy is not some inexorable thing like gravity. We control that. And it’s plain to me that we could reduce our energy use by half and entirely run our economy on renewables.”
…
Whether the question is shale-gas development, nuclear power, utility-scale solar and wind, or GMO crops, the core of the debate among environmentalists comes down to what’s realistic. That, of course, is the same dilemma that confronts any political movement, whether on the right or on the left. But environmentalists’ conundrum is especially complicated because it involves a system beyond our control: Earth.Nordhaus and Shellenberger say their pragmatism is grounded in what is politically possible given a range of shitty options. In the other camp, Steffen, Steingraber, and Stephens also claim the mantle of pragmatism, one based on geophysical necessity. The existential threat of climate change has become a sort of projection screen: Either it confirms that we are locked into business as usual, or it’s proof that we need to make a societal 180-degree turn in how we relate to the planet.
“Those of us who are calling ourselves the latter-day abolitionists, our idea of what’s possible is grounded in physical and natural laws. How much water and land and resources do we need to feed ourselves?” Steingraber says. “My hope that is that we can help people imagine, have a vision of a future when blasting gas out of the ground to make our tea kettles whistle is just barbaric, which it is.” It’s a view Nordhaus and Shellenberger call naïve.
Of course The Sierra Club also sells out for access advocacy.
Who’s being naive now Kay?
May 19 2013
First of all I’m not a lawyer, don’t even play one on TV.
What I have been (and still probably am on some obscure piece of paperwork) is an officer or director of a community group (told you I was a community organizer), a 501 (c) 3.
Now a 501 (c) 4 is flat out allowed to lobby and endorse candidates. Think Sierra Club (more on their Keystone sellout later maybe). In return contributions are not tax deductible for the contributor. For a 501 (c) 3 it’s more problematic but as a practice when we were pan handling in front of grocery stores (poor day when I couldn’t make my $35 an hour) we promised nobody nothing.
Can you make money? I just told you it was a poor day I couldn’t rattle my can for $35 an hour.
In fact some of the organizations I’ve worked with had cash flows of 10s of millions. It’s not as much as it seems when the money goes right out the door as expenses. Non-profit? I funded one club out of my pocket $10,000 to keep them going.
Now, is this money going to a worthy cause? Hell no.
A lot of them are just subsidized bars where well drinks are a dollar and top shelf $2.50 (no, you can’t drink if you’re not a member or guest, that will be $100 and I’ll swear you in right here).
Do they bring value to a community?
I dunno. How valuable is your Town Fair or Carnival? Your Parade or Craft Show? Your Community Theater?
Umm… these are all projects I’ve worked on. For weeks or years. For nothing.
I do it because it’s fun and I love Stars Hollow. I do it because I get to hang out with my buddies who are similarly “community minded”.
And there’s usually free beer.
But my point is that, for a club, 501 (c) 3 or 4 mostly means that you don’t have to keep a lawyer and accountant on retainer and the problem is not your tax status- it’s that the IRS has targeted particular clubs for political purposes.
And that’s just Nixonesque (2.1).
May 19 2013
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
May 19 is the 139th day of the year (140th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 226 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1935, T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, dies from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident near his home in Dorset, England.
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916-18. The extraordinary breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title popularised by the 1962 film based on his First World War activities.
Lawrence was born illegitimately in Tremadog, Wales in August 1888 to Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Junner, a governess, who was herself illegitimate. Chapman left his wife to live with Sarah Junner, and they called themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence. In the summer of 1896 the Lawrences moved to Oxford, where from 1907 to 1910 young Lawrence studied history at Jesus College, graduating with First Class Honours. He became a practising archaeologist in the Middle East, working with David George Hogarth and Leonard Woolley on various excavations. In January 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War, Lawrence was co-opted by the British military to undertake a military survey of the Negev Desert while doing archaeological research.
Lawrence’s public image was due in part to American journalist Lowell Thomas‘ sensationalised reportage of the revolt as well as to Lawrence’s autobiographical account Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922).
At the outbreak of the First World War Lawrence was a university post-graduate researcher who had for years travelled extensively within the Ottoman Empire provinces of the Levant (Transjordan and Palestine) and Mesopotamia (Syria and Iraq) under his own name. As such he became known to the Turkish Interior Ministry authorities and their German technical advisors. Lawrence came into contact with the Ottoman-German technical advisers, travelling over the German-designed, built, and financed railways during the course of his researches.
Even if Lawrence had not volunteered, the British would probably have recruited him for his first-hand knowledge of Syria, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. He was eventually posted to Cairo on the Intelligence Staff of the GOC Middle East.
Contrary to later myth, it was neither Lawrence nor the Army that conceived a campaign of internal insurgency against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, but rather the Arab Bureau of Britain’s Foreign Office. The Arab Bureau had long felt it likely that a campaign instigated and financed by outside powers, supporting the breakaway-minded tribes and regional challengers to the Turkish government’s centralised rule of their empire, would pay great dividends in the diversion of effort that would be needed to meet such a challenge. The Arab Bureau had recognised the strategic value of what is today called the “asymmetry” of such conflict. The Ottoman authorities would have to devote from a hundred to a thousand times the resources to contain the threat of such an internal rebellion compared to the Allies’ cost of sponsoring it.
At that point in the Foreign Office’s thinking they were not considering the region as candidate territories for incorporation in the British Empire, but only as an extension of the range of British Imperial influence, and the weakening and destruction of a German ally, the Ottoman Empire.
During the war, Lawrence fought with Arab irregular troops under the command of Emir Faisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca, in extended guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. He persuaded the Arabs not to make a frontal assault on the Ottoman stronghold in Medina but allowed the Turkish army to tie up troops in the city garrison. The Arabs were then free to direct most of their attention to the Turks’ weak point, the Hejaz railway that supplied the garrison. This vastly expanded the battlefield and tied up even more Ottoman troops, who were then forced to protect the railway and repair the constant damage.
In 1917, Lawrence arranged a joint action with the Arab irregulars and forces under Auda Abu Tayi (until then in the employ of the Ottomans) against the strategically located but lightly defended town of Aqaba. On 6 July, after a surprise overland attack, Aqaba fell to Lawrence and the Arab forces. After Aqaba, Lawrence was promoted to major. Fortunately for Lawrence, the new commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Sir Edmund Allenby, agreed to his strategy for the revolt, stating after the war:
“I gave him a free hand. His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign.”
Lawrence now held a powerful position, as an adviser to Faisal and a person who had Allenby’s confidence.
The following year, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1918. In newly liberated Damascus-which he had envisioned as the capital of an Arab state-Lawrence was instrumental in establishing a provisional Arab government under Faisal. Faisal’s rule as king, however, came to an abrupt end in 1920, after the battle of Maysaloun, when the French Forces of General Gouraud under the command of General Mariano Goybet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M… entered Damascus, breaking Lawrence’s dream of an independent Arabia.
As was his habit when traveling before the war, Lawrence adopted many local customs and traditions (many photographs show him in the desert wearing white Arab dishdasha and riding camels).
During the closing years of the war he sought, with mixed success, to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain contradicted the promises of independence he had made to the Arabs and frustrated his work.
In 1918 he co-operated with war correspondent Lowell Thomas for a short period. During this time Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot a great deal of film and many photographs, which Thomas used in a highly lucrative film that toured the world after the war.
Lawrence’s major work is Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an account of his war experiences. In 1919 he had been elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, providing him with support while he worked on the book. In addition to being a memoir of his experiences during the war, certain parts also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. Lawrence re-wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times; once “blind” after he lost the manuscript while changing trains at Reading railway station.
The list of his alleged “embellishments” in Seven Pillars is long, though many such allegations have been disproved with time, most definitively in Jeremy Wilson‘s authorised biography. However Lawrence’s own notebooks refute his claim to have crossed the Sinai Peninsula from Aqaba to the Suez Canal in just 49 hours without any sleep. In reality this famous camel ride lasted for more than 70 hours and was interrupted by two long breaks for sleeping which Lawrence omitted when he wrote his book.
Lawrence acknowledged having been helped in the editing of the book by George Bernard Shaw. In the preface to Seven Pillars, Lawrence offered his “thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw for countless suggestions of great value and diversity: and for all the present semicolons.”
The first public edition was published in 1926 as a high-priced private subscription edition, printed in London by Roy Manning Pike and Herbert John Hodgson, with illustrations by Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, Blair Hughes-Stanton and his wife Gertrude Hermes. Lawrence was afraid that the public would think that he would make a substantial income from the book, and he stated that it was written as a result of his war service. He vowed not to take any money from it, and indeed he did not, as the sale price was one third of the production costs. This left Lawrence in substantial debt.
At the age of 46, two months after leaving the service, Lawrence was fatally injured in an accident on his Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle in Dorset, close to his cottage, Clouds Hill, near Wareham. A dip in the road obstructed his view of two boys on their bicycles; he swerved to avoid them, lost control and was thrown over the handlebars. He died six days later on 19 May 1935. The spot is marked by a small memorial at the side of the road.
The circumstances of Lawrence’s death had far-reaching consequences. One of the doctors attending him was the neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns. He was profoundly affected by the incident, and consequently began a long study of what he saw as the unnecessary loss of life by motorcycle dispatch riders through head injuries. His research led to the use of crash helmets by both military and civilian motorcyclists.
Moreton Estate, which borders Bovington Camp, was owned by family cousins, the Frampton family. Lawrence had rented and later bought Clouds Hill from the Framptons. He had been a frequent visitor to their home, Okers Wood House, and had for years corresponded with Louisa Frampton. On Lawrence’s death, his mother arranged with the Framptons for him to be buried in their family plot at Moreton Church. His coffin was transported on the Frampton estate’s bier. Mourners included Winston and Clementine Churchill and Lawrence’s youngest brother, Arnold.
A bust of Lawrence was placed in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral and a stone effigy by Eric Kennington remains in the Anglo-Saxon church of St Martin, Wareham
May 19 2013
Will China mediate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?
By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News
BEIJING – An official visit to Beijing by Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week has prompted speculation that China may finally be ready to claim its place as a world power by trying to negotiate an end to one of world’s most caustic conflicts.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Chinese President Xi Jinping within days of each other in Beijing – the two Middle Eastern leaders having arrived in the country within hours of each other.
“China’s hosting of the two emphasized its active involvement in Mideast affairs and highlighted its role as a responsible power,” declared an editorial by China’s state news agency, Xinhua.
May 19 2013
We learn in this week segment of Up‘s “What We Know Now” with host Steve Kornacki that Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed marriage equality passed by the Demcratic held state legislature. Also, Jason Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation after revelations about his doctoral dissertation. In the aftermath, Pablo Pantoja, the director of the RNC Florida Hispanic Outreach, resigned and became a Democrat.
Democratic nominee for the vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts, Ed Markey dis-invited former Georgia Democratic congressman Ben Jones from a fundraising event over Jones’ support of the displaying the Confederate flag public events.
According to Public Policy Polling, hipsters are no longer “in.”
Telling us what they have learned this week are Steve’s guests: Patricia Ireland, former President of the National Organization for Women; Anu Bhagwati, executive director and co-founder, Service Women’s Action Network; Goldie Taylor, MSNBC contributor, managing editor, The Goldie Taylor Project; and Jessica Hinves, former U.S. Air Force member, board member of Protect Our Defenders (a group that works to being attention to military sexual assault).
Minnesota Legalizes Gay Marriage: Gov. Mark Dayton Signs Bill Into Law
from Huffington Post
Minnesota officially became the 12th U.S. state to approve same-sex marriage May 14 when Gov. Mark Dayton appeared before a jubilant crowd to sign a marriage equality bill into law. [..]
Dayton’s signature came just a day after the state Senate approved it with a 37-30 vote, the Associated Press reported.
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should certainly include the right to marry the person you love,” he noted.
Echoing those sentiments was State Rep. Karen Clark and Sen. Scott Dibble, who are both openly gay.
Jason Richwine Resigns From Heritage Foundation After Dissertation Controversy
by Luke Johnson, Huffington Post
Jason Richwine, the co-author of a Heritage Foundation report on immigration who came under fire this week for arguing in his Harvard dissertation that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites, resigned Friday. [..]
The report put the cost of immigration reform at a whopping $6.3 trillion. Though Heritage’s 2007 report was one of the reasons an earlier immigration bill failed, the 2013 report was widely mocked, even by Republicans the foundation hoped would support it.
Harvard accepted Richwine’s 2009 dissertation for a doctorate in public policy. In it, he spoke of the “growing Hispanic underclass.”[
Pablo Pantoja Turns Democrat: RNC Florida Hispanic Director Cites GOP ‘Intolerance’ In Making Party Switch
by Chris Gentilviso, Huffington Post
Less than two months after the Republican National Committee announced a multi-million dollar campaign to improve minority outreach, one of its state Hispanic directors is leaving the Republican Party altogether.
In a letter released by The Florida Nation on Monday, RNC State Director Of Florida Outreach Pablo Pantoja announced that he is changing his political affiliation to the Democratic Party.
“It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today,” he wrote. “I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.”
Ed Markey Disinvites Ben Jones From Campaign Appearance Over Confederate Flag Beliefs
by Pam Lavender, Huffington Post
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) disinvited former Georgia Democratic congressman Ben Jones from a fundraising event after learning of Jones’ support for the Confederate flag. [..]
Jones defended the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern culture in 2012 when NASCAR canceled plans to have professional golfer Bubba Watson drive the General Lee — the car from “The Dukes of Hazzard” which features a Confederate flag on its roof — at Phoenix International Raceway. Jones called the cancellation of the event “an extraordinary insult to rural Southerners.”
Hipsters trail in the polls but survey’s worth called into question
by Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian
Public Policy Polling claimed 42% of Americans viewed hipsters unfavourably but methodology and purpose of poll questioned
A US polling company claimed on Monday that a shocking 42% of Americans have an unfavourable opinion about hipsters – in a telephone poll conducted among people who only have landlines.
Public Policy Polling was widely mocked for its survey, both for the frivolity of the poll, and for using a methodology that seemed guaranteed to produce the result that emerged.
May 19 2013
Our regular featured content-
These weekly features-
This featured article-
This special feature-
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Write more and often. This is an Open Thread.
May 18 2013
I once again have to try and find something interesting to say about Pimlico.
There have been 34 winners of both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes including the 11 Triple Crown winners.
Winners don’t get the real Woodlawn Cup to keep, but a half size replica (oh, and the Woodlawn Racing Club is defunct). Black Eyed Susans don’t bloom until 2 months after the Preakness. The Old Clubhouse was destroyed in a fire in 1966. They paint the winner’s racing silks on the weathervane. No one on the internet knows why it’s called the Alibi Breakfast.
I need a drink-
| Black Eyed Susan Recipe (Official, but without the brand names) Ingredients:
Preparation: Fill a highball glass with shaved ice, add the liquors first, then top off with orange juice and sweet and sour mix. Stir and garnish with an orange slice, cherry, and stirrer. |
Post time 6:20 pm ET, coverage starts at 4:30 pm on NBC.
I once saw a future Miss America almost eaten by a horse.
Ok, so she wasn’t a Miss America, but she was one of the 10 finalists.
We were on this band trip (she played French Horn, was the practice Piano player for Choir, and sang- rather badly as I recall which is why she got stuck playing Piano) and we went to this ski resort in Pennsylvania where I and my room mates mostly amused ourselves by doing a lot of superficial “damage” like draping our underwear over the lamps and taking the mattresses off the beds (they wouldn’t let us on the bus for the trip home until we “fixed” it which took like a whole 5 minutes).
For me it was notable for this big scar I got while skiing (I’m quite good by the way) when this football player plowed into me at full tilt and opened up a remarkably large wound on my shin with his edge through a teeny tiny little hole in my jeans. Hardly even noticed it until my boot started filling up with blood.
So one of the other things you could do was horse riding which was a big thrill for me since I went to the boy’s camp with the lake and not the girl’s camp with the horses and the only other time I’d been on the back of one was this sad nag at the fair who was chained to a not very Merry-go-round and even though we didn’t get much past a stately amble at least we were going somewhere.
Future Miss America was two horses in front so I saw it all. It had started to snow a little, the path was getting slippery and her horse’s hoof went out and kicked the horse behind.
Who got a little ticked, climbed up on the back of her horse and started biting her.
Well, she went the emergency room, I got the aid station at the slope where the patrol person took a look and said- “That’s nothing, just a scratch. Are you sure you want a band aid?”
I dunno, does it have Spongebob on it?
Some Peakness coverage from The New York Times.
Witnesses to Horse Racing’s Two Sides
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN, The New York Times
Published: May 17, 2013
Joe Miller and Jimmy McCue work in different environments at the same racetrack. McCue, 66, has been a staff photographer at Pimlico Race Course since 1970. Miller, 50, has been the track’s equine ambulance driver since 1997, though he has worked there since 1981.
They represent the intriguing, underexposed dichotomy of a troubled industry. McCue records the light with his camera; Miller, more often than he would like, hauls away the darkness in his ambulance.
…
Miller does not see happy faces. He sees injured animals, distraught owners and shattered dreams.He watches each race from the superintendent’s office, a shack a quarter-mile from the winner’s circle between the one-quarter and the three-sixteenths poles.
The cumulative effect of transporting injured horses has made Miller distance himself emotionally from the thoroughbreds for whom he once cared.
“It might be a horse I’ve hauled off for whatever reason,” he said. “A couple months later, or six months later, he comes back and runs and wins. I don’t pay attention to them. If he’s going to take the last ride, I don’t want to know who he is.”
At Preakness, Orb’s Challengers Include Childhood Friend
By JOE DRAPE, The New York Times
Published: May 17, 2013
BALTIMORE – They shared the same paddock and gamboled in the same Kentucky bluegrass as weanlings and yearlings. Orb hit the ground first at Claiborne Farm, with Departing tumbling out of his mother a month later. Now 3 years old, the two horses will be reunited Saturday in the 138th running of the Preakness Stakes.
Preakness Champion, and Mother, Toughs It Out
By MELISSA HOPPERT, The New York Times
Published: May 18, 2013
LEXINGTON, Ky. – On a sun-drenched May morning on the 460-acre Stonestreet Farm, Rachel Alexandra, a member of racing royalty, emerged from a 16-by-16 oak-paneled stall in a barn named Cabernet.
She showed no signs of distress as she did the day after giving birth to a 140-pound filly by Bernardini in February. Rachel Alexandra, who in 2009 became the first filly to win the Preakness Stakes in 85 years, was nearly back to her old self as her hooves clip-clopped on the asphalt on the way to her paddock.
May 18 2013
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on image to enlarge
May 18 is the 138th day of the year (139th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 227 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1917, U.S. Congress passes Selective Service Act.
Some six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passes the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, giving the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers.
When he went before Congress on April 2, 1917, to deliver his war message, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged all of his nation’s considerable material resources to help the Allies-France, Britain, Russia and Italy-defeat the Central Powers. What the Allies desperately needed, however, were fresh troops to relieve their exhausted men on the battlefields of the Western Front, and these the U.S. was not immediately able to provide. Despite Wilson’s effort to improve military preparedness over the course of 1916, at the time of Congress’s war declaration the U.S. had only a small army of volunteers-some 100,000 men-that was in no way trained or equipped for the kind of fighting that was going on in Europe.
To remedy this situation, Wilson pushed the government to adopt military conscription, which he argued was the most democratic form of enlistment. To that end, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which Wilson signed into law on May 18, 1917. The act required all men in the U.S. between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Within a few months, some 10 million men across the country had registered in response to the military draft.
During World War I there were three registrations.
The first, on June 5, 1917, was for all men between the ages of 21 and 31.
The second, on June 5, 1918, registered those who attained age 21 after June 5, 1917. A supplemental registration, included in the second registration, was held on August 24, 1918, for those becoming 21 years old after June 5, 1918.
The third registration was held on September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.
After the signing of the armistice of November 11, 1918, the activities of the Selective Service System were rapidly curtailed. On March 31, 1919, all local, district, and medical advisory boards were closed, and on May 21, 1919, the last state headquarters closed operations. The Provost Marshal General was relieved from duty on July 15, 1919, thereby finally terminating the activities of the Selective Service System of World War I.
May 18 2013
Next to last, there is one more season of Connections and a season of The Day The Universe Changed.
I’m also open to suggestions.
