101 years ago today. Let us remember, and never forget.
Wikipedia photo and caption: Austro-Hungarian troops executing captured Serbians, 1917. Serbia lost about 850,000 people during the war, a quarter of its pre-war population.
According to the Associated Press, today is the anniversary of the declaration of war that really got World War I started: Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914.
SerbianSouth slav nationalists assassinated Austrian Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofie in Sarajevo, the traditional a Serbian capital then held by Austria, the previous June. After a summer of demands on Serbia by Austria, which Serbia could not or would not meet, Austria declared war.
As more nations declared war on each other through August and the rest of 1914, most people expected it to be a “short” war.
Peace is difficult. It must be worked on every day. But war is disaster.
Commemoration in 2013: President Barack Obama delivers remarks to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended the Korean War, at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Saturday, July 27, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)
President Obama issued a proclamation for National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day in 2015, though the law Congress passed specified it should run only until 2003. There was no proclamation to urge flag flying, however.
Presidential Proclamation — National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, 2015
NATIONAL KOREAN WAR VETERANS ARMISTICE DAY, 2015
– – – – – – –
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION
Throughout history, the United States has stood as a powerful force for freedom and democracy around the world. In the face of tyranny and oppression, generations of patriots have fought to secure peace and prosperity far from home. And in 1950, as Communist armies crossed the 38th parallel just 5 years after the end of World War II, courageous Americans deployed overseas once again to stand with a people they had never met in defense of a cause in which they both believed. On National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, we honor all those who sacrificed for freedom’s cause throughout 3 long years of war, and we reaffirm our commitment to the security of the Republic of Korea and the values that unite our nations.
Often outnumbered and outgunned, nearly 1.8 million Americans fought through searing heat and piercing cold to roll back the tide of Communism. The members of our Armed Forces endured some of the most brutal combat in modern history; many experienced unimaginable torment in POW camps, and nearly 37,000 gave their last full measure of devotion. Their sacrifice pushed invading armies back across the line they had dared to cross and secured a hard-earned victory.
The Korean War reminds us that when we send our troops into battle, they deserve the support and gratitude of the American people — especially once they come home. We must make it our mission to serve all our veterans as well as they have served us, always giving them the respect, care, and opportunities they have earned. And we will never stop working to fulfill our obligations to our fallen heroes and their families. To this day, more than 7,800 Americans are still missing from the Korean War, and the United States will not rest until we give these families a full accounting of their loved ones.
Today, the Republic of Korea enjoys a thriving democracy and a bustling economy, and the legacy of our Korean War veterans continues on in the 50 million South Koreans who live with liberty and opportunity. The United States is proud to stand with our partner in Asian security and stability, and our commitment to our friend and ally will never waver — a promise embodied by our servicemen and women who fought from the Chosin Reservoir to Heartbreak Ridge and Pork Chop Hill, and by every American since who has stood sentinel on freedom’s frontier.
No war should ever be forgotten, and no veteran should ever be overlooked. Today, on the anniversary of the Military Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War, let us remember how liberty held its ground in the face of tyranny and how free peoples refused to yield. And most of all, let us give thanks to all those whose service and sacrifice helped to secure the blessings of freedom.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim July 27, 2015, as National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities that honor our distinguished Korean War veterans.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand fifteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth.
BARACK OBAMA
At this blog, we urge you to remember what is often called “the forgotten war,” and the veterans of the war, and the sacrifices of those veterans and those who did not return. You may fly your flag if you wish.
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Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
There’s a lot of encore material here — I think about this in the middle of the summer, and July 24 is a good day to commemorate arrivals: It’s Arrival Day. It’s Touchdown Day.
July 24 – almost the end of the month, but not quite.
July 24, 1847: A larger contingent of Mormons, refugees from a literal religious war in Illinois and Missouri, entered into the Salt Lake Valley under the leadership of Brigham Young, who famously said from his wagon sick-bed, “This is the place; drive on!”
In Utah, July 24 is a state holiday, to celebrate the date in 1847 that the Mormon refugees arrived in Salt Lake Valley and began to set up their agriculture and schools. In Salt Lake City, bands from across the state and floats from many entities form the Days of ’47 Parade. When I marched with the Pleasant Grove High School Viking Band, the route was 5 miles. We had only one band uniform, for winter — I lost nearly 10 pounds carrying a Sousaphone.
When the Mormons got to Salt Lake, after a couple of months’ trekking across the plains (then known as “The Great American Desert,” the Great Basin and the Mojave being little known), and after being on the run for well over a year, they got right down to priorities. Summer was nearly gone, and crops had to be planted quick. Within a couple of weeks, the Mormons dammed local streams to create irrigation systems to grow what they could before fall (this is, popularly, the first major crop irrigation set up in America); they’d started to lay out plans for settlements, with straight streets based on Cartesian-plane grids: The first serious community planning? And they began construction of schools, knowing education to be one of the most important attributes in the foundation of free societies, a position Mormons have reneged on recently in Utah. Water, communities, schools.
Heck, that’s a good campaign platform today. It’s with sadness I note few people run on such a platform, instead begging voters to be afraid of others who are different in some fashion. Fear quenches no thirst, makes no place for families, nor educates any curious child. Utah’s Mormon pioneers were on the right track. We’ve run out of the ruts, and we are not there yet.
Utahns will be flying their U.S. flags today. (Remember, President Obama proclaimed this a period of mourning, through July 25; flags should fly half-staff where possible.)
Maybe spending a few weeks struggling across a prairie and risking your life focuses you on the important stuff. How would it improve America if we put more people on a bus to Omaha, put them out there, and said, “Hike to Salt Lake City from here.”
They’d focus. Can we start with Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell? Ted Cruz couldn’t make the journey. Donald Trump would die of sunburn. Wisconsin Gov. Ahab Walker would find no one to swindle, and talking down teachers and community builders wouldn’t be popular among fellow trekkers.
Ah, the good old days!
July 24 features a number 0f other arrivals, too.
From various “Today in History” features, AP, New York Times, and others, not in chronological order:
Buzz Aldrin walks on the moon, July 20, 1969 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
July 24, 1969: Apollo 11 returned to the Earth, and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong — Aldrin and Armstrong having landed on the Moon. In our celebrations of Apollo 11, and in our remembrances of President Kennedy, we may forget, though young kids rarely miss it, that Kennedy didn’t just say ‘Let’s put a guy on the Moon by 1970.’ Getting back safely was a key part of the challenge.
First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
On July 24, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 returned, safely.
Would there be a Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and organ, had the Mormons settled somewhere other than Utah? Wikipedia photo
July 24, 1866: Tennessee became the first of the Confederate States, the former “state in rebellion,” to be readmitted fully to the Union, following the end of the American Civil War. (Does Tennessee celebrate this anniversary in any way?)
July 24, 1911: On July 24, 1911, American archeologist Hiram Bingham arrived at Machu Picchu in Peru. We still don’t know all the reaons the Incas built that city on the top of very high mountains. Cell service was not a factor.
July 24, 2005: Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France bicycle race. Little did we know then, the journey wasn’t over. (Lance Armstrong is no relation to Neil Armstrong. Did I need to point that out?)
Nixon advance man William Safire claimed later than he’d set up the famous “debate” between Eisenhower’s Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party Premier Nikita Khrushchev, at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959. Nixon argued that the technology on display made better the lives of average Americans, not just the wealthiest. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
July 24, 1959: Visiting Moscow, USSR, to support an exhibit of U.S. technology and know-how, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged Soviet Communist Party Secretary and Premier Nikita Khrushchev in a volley of points about which nation was doing better, at a display of the “typical” American kitchen, featuring an electric stove, a refrigerator, and a dishwasher. Khrushchev said the Soviet Union produced similar products; Nixon barbed back that even Communist Party leaders didn’t have such things in their homes, typically, but such appliances were within the reach of every American family. It was the “Kitchen Debate.”Try explaining this to high school U.S. history students. The textbooks tend to avoid this story, because it stops the class. That’s a sign it should be used more, I think. Does the Common Core even touch it?Nixon’s arrival as a major political force in the Cold War grew clear from this event. The pragmatic stakes of the Cold War were drawn in stark contrast, too. It’s interesting to ponder that microwave ovens were not part of the exhibit.
Cover of Time Magazine, July 22, 1974, explaining the showdown between President Richard Nixon and the Special Prosecutor, playing out in the U.S. Supreme Court. Image copyright by Time Magazine.
July 24, 1974:In U.S. vs. Nixon, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that President Richard Nixon had to turn over previously-secret recordings made of conversations in the White House between Nixon and his aides, to the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate affair and cover-up. Nixon would resign the presidency within two weeks, the only president to leave office by resignation.
July 24, 1975: An Apollo spacecraft splashed down after a mission that included the first link-up of American and Soviet spacecraft. (The Apollo mission was not officially numbered, but is sometimes called “Apollo 18″ — after Apollo 17, the last trip to the Moon.)
Library of Congress image caption: Mormon Temple Grounds, Salt Lake City, Utah, L. Hollard, photographer, 1912. Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991 [The building on the far right? That’s the old Hotel Utah, where Kathryn and I had a great wedding reception with plenty of champagne considering our many Mormon family and friends — some of whom may have sampled a little to see what they usually missed. It was such a great reception that the owners of the hotel, the LDS Church, stopped holding wedding receptions there and shortly closed it as a hotel; now it’s an office building with a fantastic lobby that makes any sensible person wistful for what used to be.]
Bareback rider Jerad Schlegel of Burns, Colorado, clings to his horse as it falls to the dirt during a re-ride at the Ogden Pioneer Days Rodeo Friday, July 19, 2013. Photo by Brian Nicholson (go see his blog)
Regulation of DDT in 1972 by the Environmental Protection Agency was either a great victory for science and environmental protection, or a gross miscarriage of justice that led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions of people, depending on which sources one cites from the internet.
Much history from 1950 to 2000 is simply lost to the internet. Partisans often make reference to things “everybody knows,” but which turn out not to be true, if one digs for the real history.
Alas, some of the best digging places have fallen victim to unpaid website hosting bills, lack of interest in an agency’s maintenance of legacy history sites, or sometimes just changes in indexing by a group.
With such gaps in history, hoaxsters can have a field day.
The history of DDT and its regulation is an area filled with false histories promulgated by partisans hoping students and researchers, and policy makers, will never find the accurate sources on the internet, nor anywhere else.
EPA composed a history for a committee of Congress in 1975. Included in that history were details about the steps taken by government and others leading up to EPA’s 1972 ban on the use of DDT in agriculture. That history is particularly delicious to hoaxtsers, because it is so badly recorded online.
DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), for many years one of the most widely used pesticidal chemicals in the United States, was first synthesized in 1874. Its effectiveness as an insecticide, however, was only discovered in 1939. Shortly thereafter, particularly during World War II, the U.S. began producing large quantities of DDT for control of vector-borne diseases such as typhus and malaria abroad.
After 1945, agricultural and commercial usage of DDT became widespread in the U.S. The early popularity of DDT, a member of the chlorinated hydrocarbon group, was due to its reasonable cost, effectiveness, persistence, and versatility. During the 30 years prior to its cancellation, a total of approximately 1,350,000,000 pounds of DDT was used domestically.
Caption from WFIWC: Stearman spraying DDT over the western edge of Blacktail Plateau near Lava Creek in Yellowstone N.P. during one of the last spruce budworm control projects in the Park, July 1955. The ensuing controversy over environmental damage done by this insecticide hastened the adoption of a more passive management policy in the 1960’s regarding forest insects in the Park (Furniss & Renkin 2003, Figure 17B). Coeur d’Alene FIL photo from Wester Forest Insect Work Conference (WFIWC) archives. – See more at: http://www.wfiwc.org/history/photos/yellowstone#sthash.hPfPuWGI.dpuf
After 1959, DDT usage in the U.S. declined greatly, dropping from a peak of approximately 80 million pounds in that year to just under 12 million pounds in the early 1970s. Of the quantity of the pesticide used in 1970-72, over 80 percent was applied to cotton crops, with the remainder being used predominantly on peanut and soybean crops. The decline in DDT usage was the result of (1) increased insect resistance; (2) the development of more effective alternative pesticides; (3) growing public concern over adverse environmental side effects; and (4) increasing government restrictions on DDT use.
In addition to domestic consumption, large quantities of DDT have been purchased by the Agency for International Development and the United Nations and exported for malaria control. DDT exports increased from 12 percent of the total production in 1950 to 67 percent in 1969. However, exports have shown a marked decrease in recent years dropping from approximately 70 million pounds in 1970 to 35 million in 1972.
Public Concern
Certain characteristics of DDT which contributed to the early popularity of the chemical, particularly its persistence, later became the basis for public concern over possible hazards involved in the pesticide’s use. Although warnings against such hazards were voiced by scientists as early as the mid-1940s, it was the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962 that stimulated widespread public concern over use of the chemical. After Carson’s alert to the public concerning the dangers of improper pesticide use and the need for better pesticide controls, it was only natural that DDT, as one of the most widely used pesticides of the time, should come under intensive investigation.
Throughout the last decade, proponents and opponents of DDT have faced one another in a growing series of confrontations. Proponents argue that DDT has a good human health record and that alternatives to DDT are more hazardous to the user and more costly. Opponents to DDT, admitting that there may be little evidence of direct harm to man, emphasize other hazards connected with its use. They argue that DDT is a persistent, toxic chemical which easily collects in the food chain posing a proven hazard to non-target organisms such as fish and wildlife and otherwise upsetting the natural ecological balance.
Both the pros and cons of DDT use were considered by four Government committees who issued the following reports: (1) may 1963, “Use of Pesticides,” A Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC); (2) November 1965, “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” A Report of the Environmental Protection Panel, PSAC; (3) May 1969, Report of the Committee on Persistent Pesticides, Division of Biology and Agriculture, National Research Council, to the Agriculture Department; (4) December 1969, Mrak Commission Report. All four reports recommended an orderly phasing out of the pesticide over a limited period of time.
Public concern further manifested itself through the activities of various environmental organizations. Beginning in 1967, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Izaak Walton League and other environmental groups became increasingly active in initiating court proceedings leading to the restriction of DDT use at both local and Federal levels.
State Regulatory Actions
Varying restrictions were placed on DDT in different States.
DDT use was outlawed except under emergency conditions in Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, and Washington have all placed some limitation on the use of DDT.
Although the remaining States have provisions for the “restricted use” classification of pesticides, no specific mention is made of DDT.
Initial Federal Regulatory Actions
The Federal Government has not been oblivious to the hazards of DDT use as is indicated by various Government studies and actions undertaken since the late 50s.
In 1957, as a matter of policy, the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), prohibited the spraying of DDT in specified protective strips around aquatic areas on lands under its jurisdiction.
In 1958, after having applied approximately 9-1/2 million pounds of the chemical in its Federal-State control programs since 1945, USDA began to phase out its use of DDT. They reduced spraying of DDT from 4.9 million acres in 1957 to just over 100,000 acres in 1967 and used persistent pesticides thereafter only in the absence of effective alternatives. The major uses of DDT by the Forest Service have been against the gypsy moth and the spruce budworm. The development of alternative pesticides such as Zectran, which was in operation in 1966, contributed to further reduction in DDT use by the Department.
In 1964, the Secretary of the Interior issued a directive stating that the use of chlorinated hydrocarbons on Interior lands should be avoided unless no other substitutes were available. This regulatory measure, as well as others which followed, was reaffirmed and extended in June 1970, when the Secretary issued an order banning use of 16 types of pesticides, including DDT, on any lands or in any programs managed by the Department’s bureaus and agencies.
Between November 1967 and April 1969, USDA canceled DDT registrations for use against house flies and roaches, on foliage of more than 17 crops, in milk rooms, and on cabbage and lettuce.
In August 1969, DDT usage was sharply reduced in certain areas of USDA’s cooperative Federal-State pest control programs following a review of these programs in relation to environmental contamination.
In November 1969, USDA initiated action to cancel all DDT registrations for use against pests of shade trees, aquatic areas, the house and garden and tobacco. USDA further announced its intention to discontinue all uses nonessential to human health and for which there were safe and effective substitutes.
In August 1970, in another major action, USDA canceled Federal registrations of DDT products used as follows: (1) on 50 food crops, beef cattle, goats, sheep, swine, seasoned lumber, finished wood products and buildings; (2) around commercial, institutional, and industrial establishments including all nonfood areas in food processing plants and restaurants, and (3) on flowers and ornamental turf areas.
EPA Regulatory Actions
On December 2, 1970, major responsibility for Federal regulation of pesticides was transferred to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In January 1971, under a court order following a suit by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), EPA issued notices of intent to cancel all remaining Federal registrations of products containing DDT. The principal crops affected by this action were cotton, citrus, and certain vegetables.
In March 1971, EPA issued cancellation notices for all registrations of products containing TDE, a DDT metabolite. The EPA Administrator further announced that no suspension of the registration of DDT products was warranted because evidence of imminent hazard to the public welfare was lacking. (Suspension, in contrast to cancellation, is the more severe action taken against pesticide products under the law.) Because of the decision not to suspend, companies were able to continue marketing their products in interstate commerce pending the final resolution of the administrative cancellation process. After reconsideration of the March order, in light of a scientific advisory committee report, the Administrator later reaffirmed his refusal to suspend the DDT registrations. The report was requested by Montrose Chemical Corporation, sole remaining manufacturer of the basic DDT chemical.
In August 1971, upon the request of 31 DDT formulators, a hearing began on the cancellation of all remaining Federally registered uses of products containing DDT. When the hearing ended in March 1972, the transcripts of 9,312 pages contained testimony from 125 expert witnesses and over 300 documents. The principal parties to the hearings were various formulators of DDT products, USDA, the EDF, and EPA.
On June 14, 1972, the EPA Administrator announced the final cancellation of all remaining crop uses of DDT in the U.S. effective December 31, 1972. The order did not affect public health and quarantine uses, or exports of DDT. The Administrator based his decision on findings of persistence, transport, biomagnification, toxicological effects and on the absence of benefits of DDT in relation to the availability of effective and less environmentally harmful substitutes. The effective date of the prohibition was delayed for six months in order to permit an orderly transition to substitute pesticides. In conjunction with this transition, EPA and USDA jointly developed “Project Safeguard,” a program of education in the use of highly toxic organophosphate substitutes for DDT.
Immediately following the DDT prohibition by EPA, the pesticides industry and EDF filed appeals contesting the June order with several U.S. courts. Industry filed suit to nullify the EPA ruling while EDF sought to extend the prohibition to those few uses not covered by the order. The appeals were consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.On December 13, 1973, the Court ruled that there was “substantial evidence” in the record to support the EPA Administrator’s ban on DDT.
Actions Taken Under the New Pesticide Law
On October 21, 1972, the Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act, a far-reaching amendment to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) was enacted. These amendments provide EPA with more effective pesticide regulation mechanisms than were previously available under the FIFRA.
In April 1973, EPA, in accordance with authority granted by the amended law, required that all products containing DDT be registered with the Agency by June 10, 1973.
On April 27, 1973, EPA granted a request by the States of Washington and Idaho for a temporary registration of DDT for use against the pea leaf weevil. A similar application was approved on February 22, 1974, for use of DDT during the 1974 growing season. The chemical was registered for 90 days following a determination by EPA that control of the pea leaf weevil was an economic necessity and that DDT was the only practical and effective control agent available. The EPA order designated spray restrictions, monitoring guidelines, and research requirements for the control program. The order provided for further testing of three chemicals–methoxychlor, Imidan, and malathion ULV–which have shown some promise as alternatives to DDT. Other possible long-range alternatives to DDT were tested in 1974, as well.
On February 26, 1974, EPA granted a request by the Forest Service for use of DDT to combat the Douglas-fir tussock moth epidemic in the Northwest. Previous requests by the Forest Service had been denied on the grounds that the risks of DDT use were not outweighed by the benefits. A week long investigation in September 1973, a technical seminar on November 16, 1973, and a series of hearings in January 1974, aided EPA is reassessing the need for DDT. On the basis of information acquired during these sessions, the Administrator concluded that the potential for an economic emergency existed in 1974 and that no effective alternative to DDT was available. The control program was carried out under strict spraying restrictions and with a requirement that research programs evaluate alternatives to DDT, and monitoring activities be conducted by the Forest Service.Use of a canceled pesticide is made possible by the recent amendments to FIFRA which permit EPA to exempt any Federal or State agency from any of the provisions of the Act if emergency conditions exist. All such requests are considered on a case-by-case basis.
On March 14, 1975, the Administrator denied the State of Louisiana a request for emergency use of 2.25 million pounds of DDT on 450,000 acres of cotton to control the tobacco budworm in 1975. This decision was affirmed by the Administrator on April 1, 1975, after reconsideration on the grounds of “no substantial new evidence which may materially affect the 1972 order with respect to the human cancer risk posed by DDT, the environmental hazards of DDT and the need to use DDT on cotton.” (Federal Register, April 8, 1974, p. 15, 962).
Excerpt from DDT, A Review of Scientific and Economic Aspects of the Decision To Ban Its Use as a Pesticide, prepared for the Committee on Appropriations of the U.S. House of Representatives by EPA, July 1975, EPA-540/1-75-022
This page was taken down from EPA’s site at the start of the Trump administration. It is archived here.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
We see it almost daily — probably because we’ve got searches set to find comments on malaria and DDT.
British robin, or robin redbreast. Image found on Pinterest, and also ironically used to illustrate Pointman’s screed for DDT. Ironic, because Britain didn’t use as much DDT, and European robins were not so badly affected as U.S. robins. Not sure if Pointman knew that and used the photo to intentionally mislead, or if he’s just really bad at identifying species.
Some well-meaning guy (or woman) writes a long piece about conscience, and then claims to have lost respect for science, or medicine professionals, or the World Health Organization (WHO), or Rachel Carson or environmentalists, or all of them at once, because Rachel Carson’s ban on DDT meant malaria infections and deaths exploded, and libruls just won’t allow anyone to fix it.
If you’re a regular reader, you know that story is impossible, because:
Rachel Carson wanted to cut back on non-disease-fighting uses of DDT, in order to prevent disease vectors like malaria-carrying mosquitoes from developing resistance. She wanted to save DDT to fight malaria, not ban it.
When EPA regulated DDT, the regulations applied only to the U.S.; the only nations that also banned DDT use on crops were nations where there was no active malaria problem. DDT was never banned in Africa, nor Asia, nor is it banned today under the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty (POPs, or Stockholm Convention), for any nation who wishes to use DDT.
When Fred Soper ended WHO’s ambitious malaria eradication campaign in 1963, malaria was nowhere near eradication. WHO estimates 4 million people died each year from malaria around the world, and a half-billion, or 500 million people suffered malaria infections in a year.
Despite WHO’s getting out of the malaria eradication business, people still fought malaria. Better medical care, better housing, decreasing poverty and sheer will power cut the malaria death toll to between 2 million and 3 million per year, by 1972, the year the U.S. banned DDT on crops.
Malaria deaths and malaria infections fell steadily until the 1980s, when malaria parasites developed resistance to the pharmaceuticals used to cure the disease in humans (most DDT advocates appear to forget that curing humans is the most important part of any malaria-fighting program). Then malaria deaths stayed mostly steady, with slight increases, until 1999, when WHO and a variety of other organizations took advantage of new pharmaceuticals and newly-developed drug administration programs, and the availability of cheap, insecticide-impregnated bednets, to make major assaults on malaria again.
Malaria collapsed, not exploded. From 1963’s ~4 million annual deaths to malaria, annual death toll in 2014 was less than 600,000. Deaths were cut by more than 80%. From 1963’s 500 million people infected, totals fell to fewer than 220 million in 2014. Infections were cut by more than 55%.
The standard rant against Rachel Carson in favor of DDT is impossible in three ways:
EPA’s regulation cannot travel back in time to cause an end to WHO’s malaria eradication campaign (1963) nine years before the rule was made (1972); nor can history and international law be changed to make EPA’s campaign stop the use of DDT outside the U.S.
Mosquitoes do not migrate thousands of miles, across oceans. EPA’s ban on spraying U.S. crops with DDT, chiefly cotton, did not cause mosquitoes to migrate from Arkansas to Africa to spread malaria. Had they done so, DDT in Africa had a pretty good chance to getting them, anyway.
A reduction of malaria deaths from 4 million to 584,000, is not an increase in deaths.
These impossibilities do not even act as speed bumps to people in a hurry to condemn science, Rachel Carson, malaria fighters and environmentalists, in a mad rush to praise DDT, a deadly poison that doesn’t do what we hoped it would, any more.
Those undeterred from slandering Rachel Carson and environmentalists often don’t want to be informed of any errors in their rant. And so, Pointman, with a nasty false indictment of science, law and environmentalists, refuses to allow my posts to correct his errors.
His screed here. It contains at least 6 gross errors, repeating all the impossibilities listed above, and slandering both Rachel Carson and William Ruckelshaus as “mass murderers,” with the false claim that EPA stopped DDT use against malaria.
EPA’s order banning DDT use in the U.S., on crops, specifically lifted the court-imposed ban on DDT manufacture, and specifically allowed use of DDT in the U.S. or anywhere else on Earth to fight vector-borne diseases — that is, malaria.
DDT manufacture continued in the U.S. until late 1984, when a new law made DDT manufacturers responsible for not poisoning their neighbors and neighborhoods. Most DDT manufacturing arms of larger chemical companies were spun off as separate enterprises, and they declared bankruptcy rather than assume any liability for the poisons they made for huge profits.
I waited several days, and send two notices asking to spring the comment from moderation. I don’t think “Pointman” is interested in discussion.
[Update] Further reflection, a further thought — “Pointman” probably is not interested in discussion, not because he fears it — he’s probably armed, what does he have to fear? — but because he no longer cares. He’s seen the effects of good intentions gone wrong, and if it ever occurs to him it’s not his intentions, nor his going, that might be wrong, he’ll never let on.
Austin (Texas) American-Statesman blog, 2011: Left to right, Flo Gonzalez, 17, Sarah Lewis, 17, Tyler Soberanes, 15, and Jessica Knowles, 16, of the Georgetown [Texas] High School ROTC Honor Guard, march down Main Street at the Fourth of July Parade. – See more at: http://photoblog.statesman.com/waving-the-flag-on-the-fourth-of-july#sthash.6a5xZKIo.dpuf – Photo surely is copyrighted by photographer Jay Janner and the American-Statesman
July 4. Surely everyone knows to fly the flag on Independence Day, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.*
In the month of the grand patriotic celebration, what other dates do we fly the U.S. flag? July 4 is the only date designated in the Flag Code for all Americans to fly the flag. Three states joined the union in July, days on which citizens of those states should show the colors, New York, Idaho and Wyoming.
Plus, there is one date many veterans think we should still fly the flag, Korean War Veterans Armistice Day on July 27. Oddly, the law designating that date urges flying the flag only until 2003, the 50th anniversary of the still-standing truce in that war. But the law still exists. What’s a patriot to do?
Patriots may watch to see whether the president issues a proclamation for the date.
Generally we don’t note state holidays or state-designated flag-flying events, such as Utah’s Pioneer Day, July 24, which marks the day in 1847 that the Mormon pioneers in the party of Brigham Young exited what is now Emigration Canyon into the Salt Lake Valley. But it’s a big day in Utah, where I spent a number of years and still have family. And I still have memories, not all pleasant, of that five-mile march for the Days of ’47 Parade, in that wool, long-sleeved uniform and hat, carrying the Sousaphone. Pardon my partisan exception. Utahns will fly their flags on July 24.
Idaho statehood, July 3 (1890, 43rd state)
Independence Day, July 4
Wyoming statehood, July 10 (1890, 44th state)
New York statehood, July 26 (1788, 11th state)
National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, July 27 (flags fly at half-staff, if you are continuing the commemoration which was designated in law only until 2003)
* July 4? But didn’t John Adams say it should be July 2? And, yes, the staff at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub sadly noted that, at the Georgetown, Texas, July 4 parade in 2011 pictured at top, it appears no one saluted the U.S. flag as it passed, as the Flag Code recommends. MFB’s been fighting flag etiquette ignorance since 2006. It’s taking much, much longer than we wished.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Bust of Millard Fillmore as Vice President, by Robert Cushing. Fillmore served 17 months as Vice President and President of the Senate. Photo from the U.S. Senate
Whig Party? Does anyone know what a Whig stood for any more?
Millard Fillmore was elected vice president riding the ticket with the very popular Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War. Fillmore was a capable, yeoman politicians from a northern state; with only one president’s death in the preceding 59 years, parties had not yet figured out that the vice presidential candidate probably ought to be able to serve as president. Regional balance of the ticket was enough.
About 15 months into his presidency, President Taylor took ill after presiding over July 4 festivities in blazing heat. He died on July 9, 1850; Vice President Millard Fillmore took the oath as president the next day, and served out the term. 165 years ago today, Millard Fillmore served his first day as President, July 10, 1850.
Fillmore became the second person to take the presidency of the U.S. without having been elected. John Tyler was William Henry Harrison’s vice president when Harrison died of pneumonia a mere 31 days after being sworn in as president.
Millard Fillmore in an 1850 lithograph by Francis D’Avignon after a photograph by Matthew Brady (unclear if this was before or after his ascending to the presidency) – Library of Congress image
As president, Zachary Taylor encouraged New Mexico and California to draw up state constitutions, which would have disallowed slavery in those states. To southern leaders who threatened secession, Taylor promised to personally lead the army that would hold the union together by force, and personally hang those who had proposed rebellion. Fillmore succeeded Taylor at a crucial time in the union’s history, on the knife-edge of states’ seceding over the issues of slavery.
Fillmore had presided over the Senate during months of furious debate on issues that always seemed to come down to slavery. Because he didn’t hold to the views of the Whig Party which had elected the Taylor-Fillmore ticket, even more than Taylor had strayed, the cabinet resigned. Fillmore appointed Daniel Webster as Secretary of State, and proceeded to push for compromise on issues to avoid war. His machinations helped get California admitted as a free state, but left New Mexico as a territory. Fillmore’s support of the Fugitive Slave Act alienated even more Whigs, and by 1852 the Whigs refused to nominate Fillmore for a term of his own. He left office in 1853, succeeded by Franklin Pierce.
Fillmore’s greatest accomplishment as president, perhaps, was his sending a fleet of ships to Japan to force that nation to open up to trade from the U.S. The political furor over the Fugitive Slave Act, the Missouri Compromise, and other issues around slavery, tend to eclipse the memory of the good that Fillmore did.
Nota bene: Controversy surrounded the death of Taylor. Because he had threatened southern secessionists and incurred anger from several other groups, from the time of his death there were rumors he had been poisoned with arsenic. Officially, the cause of death was gastroenteritis; popular accounts note that he had, in the heat of July, drunk milk and eaten cherries and cucumbers. Certainly strep, staph or other bacteria in the milk could have created a problem. In 1991 a team led by George Washington University Law Professor James Starrs exhumed Taylor’s body from his Louisville, Kentucky burial plot, and tested his remains for arsenic at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Analysis presented to the Kentucky medical examiner indicated arsenic levels way too low for a poisoning victim.
“An Available Candidate: The One Qualification for a Whig President”. Political cartoon about the 1848 presidential election which refers to Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott, the two leading contenders for the Whig Party nomination in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Published by Nathaniel Currier in 1848, digitally restored. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Despite the cynicism of many , Zachary Taylor won the Whig Party nomination, and the presidency. Taylor died just over a year after his inauguration.
President Zachary Taylor’s death on July 9, 1850 shocked a nation that was in a heated debate about issues that eventually led to the Civil War. But his sudden passing also sidestepped two constitutional crises.
The details about how and why President Taylor died are still in dispute today. The president attended a ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument on July 4th on a reportedly hot summer day.
He fell ill soon after with a stomach ailment. His doctors gave him relief medication that included opium and later bled the president. Taylor died five days later at the age of 65.
Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington.
There are other theories, including one where Taylor was poisoned by people who supported the South’s pro-slavery position. (In recent years, Taylor’s body was exhumed and a small, non-lethal amount of arsenic was found in samples taken from his corpse.)
It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.
Taylor ran as a Whig candidate in 1848 and he wasn’t a professional politician. Taylor was a career military man and a hero in the war with Mexico.
Once he took office in March 1849, it became clear that Taylor, the military man, was more interested in preserving the Union than the art of politics.
Taylor decided to press for statehood for the newly acquired territories of California and New Mexico, and to let the regions hold their own constitutional conventions. This guaranteed that California and New Mexico would join the Union as anti-slavery states, tipping the balance in the Senate to the North.
Photos of Frank and Virginia Hewlett, and Frank’s reporting colleague William McDougall, in post-war life. Images found at The Downhold Project.
Frank Hewlett told me all about Washington, D.C. In my youth, in the potato fields of southern Idaho, and on the slopes of the towering Wasatch Front in Utah, Frank Hewlett came on the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune nearly every day, telling what happened in Washington and how that might affect us in the west.
Two doors north of our home on Conant Avenue in Burley was the home of Henry C. Dworshak. Though we rarely saw him at home, Dworshak’s work in Washington as U.S. Senator was detailed by Hewlett. (Irony never far away, when my older brother Wes won a competitive appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy from Dworshak, the first they met was to pose for a picture for the local newspaper.)
Frank Hewlett told me, and a half-million other people, about the ins and outs of getting authorization and funding to build massive dams on the Colorado River, at Flaming Gorge, Utah, and at Glen Canyon.
In 1979 I moved to Washington, D.C., doing press work for a Utah senator. First full day on the job, who strides into the office but Frank Hewlett.
I got there late in Frank’s career. He was nearing retirement, and he was battling cancer. His wife, Virginia, still suffered from the effects of imprisonment in the Philippines by Japanese forces in the World War II. Editors at the Tribune seemed to want to push him out of the job. That didn’t seem to phase him much. He’d seen much worse.
Hewlett reported for UPI during World War II — UPI’s glory days, the same agency from which Edward R. Murrow hired some of his best reporters in London (including Walter Cronkite). Frank had been a personal friend of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, close enough that when the U.S. got back to Manila and pushed the Japanese out, MacArthur loaned Frank his personal jeep, so Frank could drive around to the Japanese prison camps to try to find his wife, who’d been captured because she stayed behind to burn the U.S. flag from the embassy, when the Japanese invaded. Hewlett found Virginia, weighing way under 100 pounds and needing years of loving care to get back to a semblance of the beautiful young bride the war stole from Frank.
As with every other veteran of World War II I ever knew, Frank Hewlett didn’t talk about the war much. Once over lunch, he told me I could go look up his reports, but he wasn’t going to rehash them.
You might wonder why I fondly recall a guy who could be so curt and acerbic, who wouldn’t tell me the stories I wanted to hear from him about the war. There were other tales he was happy to talk about — from where comes the old political saw, “You can’t go back to Pocatello,” how Republicans and Democrats combined to make National Parks and great Bureau of Reclamation dams, how Dwight Eisenhower was so concerned about snow and cold messing up John Kennedy’s inauguration that he ordered troops with flamethrowers out in the early morning to melt the ice and dry the streets of Washington. Great history, great stories.
Didn’t hurt when he learned I had lived in Burley, Idaho. Two refugees from the spud fields, together in D.C.
When I made a goof in a press release, when our legislation ran into problems, Frank wouldn’t barge into the office and head to the coffee pot. He’d poke his head through door, say, “Can I buy you a coffee?” Then in one of the Senate eateries he’d quietly tell me how he’d fix whatever problem I was having. Most often he had good advice, but always he had great concern that the youngest press guy in the Senate get through the trouble.
Once I mentioned how “fighting the bastards” reminded me of war, and he corrected me: Organizational conflict is nothing like war, and the bastards, well, often they are the good guys. He said he’d written a poem about that. He was sure he had a copy, and he’d get it to me. He couldn’t remember all the lines, he said — but he gave me a recitation of what he said he could remember: “The Battling Bastards of Bataan . . . No one gives a damn.” He explained that soldiers at Bataan despaired that no one knew their faite
Virginia grew ill. Cancer eventually took her. Kathryn and I visited Frank at his Virginia home, intending to take him out to dinner. His own cancer and other ills bothered him, he didn’t want to go out — we ended up eating hot dogs he had in the refrigerator. Frank reminded me he’d get me a copy of his poem.
Didn’t happen. At his funeral at that little Catholic Church in Alexandria, the eulogist told about Frank’s love for Virginia and how it survived the war, and said he’d been a correspondent in a lot of tight places.
We’re the battling bastards of Bataan;
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces
And nobody gives a damn
Nobody gives a damn.
by Frank Hewlett 1942
Now I have a copy of Frank’s poem.
From Army.mil, the U.S. Army’s home page: Photo Credit: Rachael Tolliver/ The names and units of those U.S. military personal who died at, or in route to the Capas Concentration Camp during the Bataan Death March, are etched on marble and titled “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” The memorial is located at the Capas National Shrine, in Capas, Tarlac, Philippines. “Battling Bastards of Bataan” was a limerick poem penned by Frank Hewlett, Manila bureau chief for UP and the last reporter to leave Corregidor before it fell to the Japanese. “We’re the battling bastards of Bataan/No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam/No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces/No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces/And nobody gives a damn.”
“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” — John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
Surely John Adams knew that July 4 would be Independence Day, didn’t he?
In writing to his wife Abigail on July 3, John Adams committed one of those grand errors even he would laugh at afterward. We’ll forgive him when the fireworks start firing.
Scene of the crime — Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Second Continental congress approved the resolution to declare the colonies independent from Britain – (Photo credit: diablodale)
Two days later, that same Congress approved the wording of the document Thomas Jefferson had drafted to announce Lee’s resolution to the world.
Today, we celebrate the date of the document Jefferson wrote, and Richard Henry Lee is often a reduced to a footnote, if not erased from history altogether.
Who can predict the future?
(You know, of course, that Adams and Jefferson both died 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1826. In the 50 intervening years, Adams and Jefferson were comrades in arms and diplomacy in Europe, officers of the new government in America, opposing candidates for the presidency, President and Vice President, ex-President and President, bitter enemies, then long-distance friends writing almost daily about how to make a great new nation. Read David McCullough‘s version of the story, if you can find it.)
The Lee Resolution, passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776 – Wikipedia image (Wait a minute: Are those numbers added correctly? What are they?)
Three great historical figures passed on June 29 — and I’ll wager there are others, but I stumbled on these three in the past day.
James Madison, Father of the Constitution, and our fourth president
Henry Clay, who many including himself thought should have been president
Thomas Huxley, the scientist perhaps best known for his spirited defense of evolution theory and Charles Darwin against an ungrateful Bishop Samuel Wilberforce
Historian Michael Beschloss noted Madison’s passing:
Henry Clay falls into that history between the founding and the Civil War, when he won the name “the Great Compromiser” for his ability to put together agreements and laws that patched things up for a while — holding the south in the union, but not giving in to expansions of slavery, for example. Clay wanted to preserve the union, but he wanted full support from citizens in all corners of the nation. He wrote words perhaps relevant to political contretemps of today:
I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me upon earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.
“On the Compromise Resolutions,”
speech before the U.S. Senate,
February 5 and 6, 1850, The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay (Littleton, Colorado: Fred B. Rothman, 1987), 2: 664.
Henry Clay died June 29, 1852, perhaps within weeks of this photo:
Henry Clay, photo by Mathew B. Brady between 1850 and 1852; Library of Congress archives.
Republican Senator from Kentucky, 1806-1807, 1810-1811; Congressman, 1811-1814, 1815-1821, 1823-1825; U.S. Secretary of State, 1825-1829; Whig Senator, 1831-1842, 1849-1852; Democratic Republican candidate for President, 1824; National Republican candidate for President, 1832; Whig candidate for President, 1844.
Clay was born in 1777.
Thomas Huxley’s passing, on June 29, 1895, earns a spot on the calendar of events at Smithsonian.com
Thomas Henry Huxley, a British biologist and firm believer in evolution, dies at age 70. The greatest defender of Darwinism in Britain, he once said,
“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.”
Thomas Henry Huxley, in an 1871 drawing by Carlo Pellegrini for Vanity Fair.
Huxley’s quote is one more indictment of people affected by the Dunning Kruger effect, something I just became aware of yesterday. Yes, I need to source it better.
I finished your book yesterday. . . Since I read Von Baer’s Essays nine years ago no work on Natural History Science I have met with has made so great an impression on me & I do most heartily thank you for the great store of new views you have given me. . .
As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite. . .
I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you. . . And as to the curs which will bark and yelp — you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead —
I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness
Letter of T. H. Huxley to Charles Darwin, November 23, 1859, regarding the Origin of Species
Huxley, born in 1825, lived 70 great years in science.
Who else died on June 29 whom we should remember?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
U.S. Supreme Court hearing oral arguments in King v. Burwell. The decision issued on June 25, 2015. Image from Newsworks. [Continued search for credit information on this image turned up this caption; artist is Dana Verkouteren of Associated Press] “This courtroom artist rendering shows Michael Carvin, lead attorney for the petitioners, right, speaking before the Supreme Court in March. King v. Burwell, a major test of the Affordable Care Act, could halt health care premium subsidies in all the states where the federal government runs the insurance marketplaces. (AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren)
In all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth about the Supreme Court’s decision in the Burwell case today, you’d be lucky to learn what the Court actually said.
Here are the key paragraphs of the majority’s decision (links added here), as written by Chief Justice John Roberts:
Reliance on context and structure in statutory interpretation is a “subtle business, calling for great wariness lest what professes to be mere rendering becomes creation and attempted interpretation of legislation becomes legislation itself.” Palmer v. Massachusetts, 308 U. S. 79, 83 (1939). For the reasons we have given, however, such reliance is appropriate in this case, and leads us to conclude that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid.
* * *
In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people. Our role is more confined—“to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). That is easier in some cases than in others. But in every case we must respect the role of the Legislature, and take care not to undo what it has done. A fair reading of legislation demands a fair understanding of the legislative plan.
Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress’s plan, and that is the reading we adopt.
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is
Virginia is counted as the 10th state, by virtue of the Virginia ratifying convention’s having voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution on June 25, 1788 — over the strong objections of Gov. Patrick Henry, and with the skilled legislative work of James Madison.
The Constitution became effective upon the ninth state’s ratification, but Virginia, being the largest state in the union at the time, was considered a make-or-break vote.
So, Virginians: Fly your U.S. flags on June 25, as Col. Van T. Barfoot did every day until his death.
From the Washington Post: “Retired Col. Van T. Barfoot, a Medal of Honor recipient, and his daughter Margaret Nicholls lower the flag outside Barfoot’s home in the Sussex Square subdivision in Henrico County, Va., in 2009. Barfoot died March 2 [2012] at a hospital in Richmond. He was 92. (Photo by Eva Russo/AP)”
You may remember the story of Col. Barfoot. As a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, he flew Old Glory every day. In 2009 his Henrico County, Virginia homeowners association complained, ordered him to stop flying the U.S. flag and take down his flag pole, erected in violation of HOA “curb appeal” rules.
Col. Barfoot refused. Eventually the public outcry, including pressure from President Barack Obama, got the HOA to back down. Obama said Barfoot was a good example, and had earned the right to fly Old Glory.
Barfoot had a particularly compelling case to fly the flag. Barfoot was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Italy, against German troops, in 1944. The Washington Post explained:
Early in the war, he participated in the Army’s invasion of Italy. As his unit moved inland, the soldiers took up defensive positions near Carano.
On May 23, 1944, Col. Barfoot was ordered to lead an assault on German positions. He went out alone and crawled to within feet of a German bunker.
According to his Medal of Honor citation, he tossed a grenade inside, killing two Germans and wounding three others. He then moved to another bunker nearby and killed two more German soldiers with his submachine gun while taking three others prisoner. A third machine gun crew, watching Col. Barfoot’s methodical assault, surrendered to him. In all, 17 Germans gave themselves up to Col. Barfoot.
In retaliation, the Germans organized a counterattack on Col. Barfoot’s position, sending three tanks toward him.
Col. Barfoot grabbed a bazooka grenade launcher and stood 75 yards in front of the leading tank. His first shot stopped it in its tracks. He then killed three of the German tank crew members who had attempted to escape.
The other two tanks, witnessing the destruction, abruptly changed directions, moving away from Col. Barfoot. Returning to his platoon, he helped carry two wounded U.S. soldiers almost a mile to safety.
Commending his “Herculean efforts,” Col. Barfoot’s citation praised his “magnificent valor and aggressive determination in the face of pointblank fire.”
Col. Barfoot served in the Korean War and later in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. His other military decorations included the Silver Star; two awards of the Legion of Merit; the Bronze Star; three awards of the Purple Heart; and 11 awards of the Air Medal.
So, Virginians, would it inconvenience you much to fly your U.S. flags today — in honor of Col. Van T. Barfoot, as well as in honor of your state’s entry into the Union?
What do we do to deserve the loyalty and service of such men?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
This is an excerpt from EPA’s official shorthand history, online since the 1990s. I include this part here, dealing with the EPA’s famous regulation of the pesticide DDT, because I refer to it and link to it in several posts — and because over three different administrations, the URL has changed several times. I fear it will one day go dark. Here it is for history’s sake, found on June 24, 2015 at http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/guardian-epas-formative-years-1970-1973#pest.
Opening to the entire piece; links to subsections go to EPA’s site:
The Guardian: EPA’s Formative Years, 1970-1973
EPA 202-K-93-002
September 1993
by Dennis C. Williams
Unlike the air controversy, which erupted after the agency’s establishment, EPA’s creation coincided with the culmination of the public debate over DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane). A chlorinated hydrocarbon, DDT proved to be a highly effective, but extremely persistent organic pesticide. Since the 1940s, farmers, foresters, and public health officials sprayed it across the country to control pests such as Mexican boll weevils, gypsy moths, and pesky suburban mosquitoes. Widespread public opposition to DDT began with the publication of Rachel Carson’s influential Silent Spring. Reporting the effects of DDT on wildlife, Carson demonstrated that DDT not only infiltrated all areas of the ecological system, but was exponentially concentrated as it moved to higher levels in the food web. Through Carson, many citizens learned that humans faced DDT-induced risks. By 1968 several states had banned DDT use. The Environmental Defense Fund, which began as a group of concerned scientists, spearheaded a campaign to force federal suspension of DDT registration–banning its use in the United States. Inheriting Department of Agriculture (USDA) pesticide registration functions, under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) of 1964, EPA was born in the midst of the DDT storm.
In January 1971, a tribunal of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia ordered Ruckelshaus to begin the process of suspending DDT’s registration, and to consider suspending its registration immediately. At the end of a sixty-day review process, the administrator reported that he had found no good reason to suspend DDT registration immediateIy. It and several other pesticides–including 2, 4, 5-T (Agent Orange), Dieldrin, Aldrin, and Mirex–did not appear to constitute imminent health threats. This action infuriated many environmentalists.
By 1971, the Environmental Defense Fund had mobilized effective public opposition to DDT. The furor created by Ruckelshaus’s refusal to stop DDT use prompted many to look for sinister political motivations. Some suggested that Mississippi Congressman Jamie Whitten had used his position as chairman of the agricultural appropriations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to make Ruckelshaus conform to the interests of the agrichemical lobby. While actually, Ruckelshaus took his cautious stance for less menacing reasons.
At its creation, EPA not only inherited the function of pesticide registration from USDA, but also the staff that served that function. The USDA economic entomologists who designed the pesticide registration process in the first place preached the advantages of effective pesticides and minimized discussion of debatable health risks. The same staff that had backed USDA Secretary Clifford Hardin’s earlier claim that DDT was not “an imminent hazard to human health or to fish and wildlife” 8 provided Ruckelshaus with the same counsel.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led to banning DDT and other pesticides.
Between March 1971 and June 1972, American newspapers reported both sides of the pesticide debate. Some articles recalled the glory days when pesticides saved thousands of lives in World War II; how they had increased agricultural productivity and allowed relatively few farmers to feed the world’s growing population; and how the most besieged insecticides, such as DDT and Mirex, had little human toxicity. Other journalists praised alternative approaches to pest management such as biological controls (predator introduction, sterile males, and pheromone traps), integrated controls (crop rotation and carefully delimited pesticide use), and refinement of other, less persistent chemicals. Some reported the near panic of Northwestern fruit growers facing beeless, and therefore fruitless, seasons. They attributed the lack of pollinating insects to pesticide use.
Throughout the spring of 1972, Ruckelshaus reviewed the evidence EPA had collected during the agency’s hearings on DDT cancellation and the reports prepared by two DDT study groups, the Hilton and Mrak Commissions. Both studies suggested that DDT be phased out due to the chemical’s persistent presence in ecosystems and noted studies suggesting that DDT posed a carcinogenic risk to humans. In June, he followed the route already taken by several states he banned DDT application in the United States. Though unpopular among certain segments of EPA’s constituency, his decision did serve to enhance the activist image he sought to create for the agency, and without prohibitive political cost.
The DDT decision was important to EPA for several reasons. While it did not stop the debate over what constituted appropriate pesticide use, DDT demonstrated the effect public pressure could have on EPA policy decisions. It also made very visible the tightrope act a regulatory agency performs when it attempts to balance the demands for protection of human and environmental health against legitimate economic demands. Furthermore, EPA’s decision set a precedent for regulatory decision-making. As an advocate of the environment, Ruckelshaus and the agency chose to risk erring on the side of protecting human health at the expense of economic considerations–a course that would bring the agency under heavy criticism before the end of its first decade.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
![From the Washington Post: Retired Col. Van T. Barfoot, a Medal of Honor recipient, and his daughter Margaret Nicholls lower the flag outside Barfoot's home in the Sussex Square subdivision in Henrico County, Va., in 2009. Barfoot died March 2 [2012] at a hospital in Richmond. He was 92. (Photo by Eva Russo/AP)](https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/03/05/Obituaries/Images/Obit_Barfoot_0602d.jpg?uuid=ahZhsGcUEeGuSsipxQRmKQ)
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 