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Bernstein and Woodward have a very good retrospective of Nixon and Watergate in the Washington Post. For most here – those much younger than I – the whole era is but a small chapter in history. However I believe it is good to reflect on how close the country came to not only a constitutional crisis but a total break down in our democratic form of government.
The piece outlines quite well the atrocities committed by and proposed by Nixon himself in order to remain in power. We have not had anyone with the pure insanity and megalomania in the Whitehouse before and thank heaven since. Not even Reagan or Bush could compare and certainly no republican – despite the hubris spewed by some – can come close.
Totally bent on destroying all and any who apposed him and his actions by what ever means available, legal or not.
From kidnapping of protestors to break ins and burglary to even targeted killings. Some so insane that they were rejected not only by his own justice department but by his own supreme court appointed justices as well.
Wishing to destroy the Democratic party and even the media. Enraged by the pentagon papers and Daniel Ellsberg. Furious when Dick Cavett had John Kerry on debating Vietnam with John O’Neill. And Kerry completely ripping the war to pieces. Conspiring with Ohio Governor Rhodes to put down the Kent State protests which eventually ended with the shooting deaths four of students and the wounding of nine others.
Finally rejected by a large part of his own party in the Senate and The House.
So when we focus on the abuses of power by Bush and Obama and Romney lets us bar in mind that they are not the aberration of the system but rather the very epitome of it. They are what our social/economic/political system produce.
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Richard Nixon proposal for healthcare:
“Upon adoption of appropriate Federal and State legislation, the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan would offer to every American the same broad and balanced health protection through one of three major programs:
–Employee Health Insurance, covering most Americans and offered at their place of employment, with the cost to be shared by the employer and employee on a basis which would prevent excessive burdens on either;
–Assisted Health Insurance, covering low-income persons, and persons who would be ineligible for the other two programs, with Federal and State government paying those costs beyond the means of the individual who is insured; and,
–An improved Medicare Plan, covering those 65 and over and offered through a Medicare system that is modified to include additional, needed benefits.
One of these three plans would be available to every American, but for everyone, participation in the program would be voluntary.
The benefits offered by the three plans would be identical for all Americans, regardless of age or income. Benefits would be provided for:
–hospital care;
–physicians’ care in and out of the hospital;
–prescription and life-saving drugs;
–laboratory tests and X-rays;
–medical devices;
–ambulance services; and,
–other ancillary health care.
There would be no exclusions of coverage based on the nature of the illness. For example, a person with heart disease would qualify for benefits as would a person with kidney disease.
In addition, CHIP would cover treatment for mental illness, alcoholism and drug addiction, whether that treatment were provided in hospitals and physicians’ offices or in community based settings. ”
Looks pretty good these days doesn’t it?
(I am not a fan of Nixon at all.)
I totally remember my visceral hatred of Nixon back in the day. However, now he doesn’t look that bad. He stood up for the middle incomed class of people. He even instituted a price freeze and price rollback during 1972.
The EPA came about under Nixon’s watch. During the next several decades, it was a given that the American people deserved to have their water cleaned up, their air cleaned up. No we have fracking everywhere, with destruction of the water table imminent. Even the reservoirs that supply New York City could become incredibly polluted by fracking.
Yet our Democratic President and Democratic Senators do nothing, other than meet with the Big Shots of the Big Energy companies at his fund raisers.
Like every politician before or since, he had some good ideas and some very, very bad ones.
My first vote was cast in the 1968 election. (Hadda be 21 then.) I saw all the horrors of the Nixon regime and put him down firmly as the worst, most despicable Prez ever.
Until Zero. President Pinocchio is the most evil person to ever occupy the Oval Office, and has done far worse than Nixon dared dream.
I think it all depends on your point of view. Obama is certainly the most cold, detached and disinterested president we have had so far.
Nixon the most outwardly vengeful and power hungry one tho.
You been suckered again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmHTte8jRLk
http://www.stripersonline.com/t/535664/erlichman-nixon-and-the-hmos
Obama does sound somewhat like Nixon doesn’t he?
This idea that Nixon was responsible for the EPA is a bit of misdirection by the PTB’s:
“In December of the same year, Nixon received the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) from Congress, a bill that Congress stated was intended to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony” and to “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, esthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.”[6] The NEPA required any federal agency planning a project that would affect the environment to submit a report on the likely consequences of its plan.[6] President Nixon signed the NEPA on New Year’s Day 1970, declaring “that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment.”[6]
Above from here
The LAW about the environment and Federal agencies being required to evaluate cam about from Congress in response to the citizenry. All Nixon did was to ‘streamline government’(as the saying goes nowadays; remember that phrase?) by the Re-org plan that established the Agency. BUT NOT the law.
Nearly forgot about the HMOs and turning the affordable mutual insurance companies into for profit unaffordable ones.
You’re not going far enough back in history re ‘most evil’.
yeah, your right……
thanks for the info.
sorry about that.
wish I could delete my post.
Your comment is a bit of misdirection. If I remember correctly from Schoolhouse Rock, before a bill becomes a LAW, its signed by the President. So to restate the original comment, the EPA came about on Nixon’s watch because he was the President who signed NEPA into law.
One of the worst things he did was to get rid of the military draft. He knew what he was doing. (Except for elitists and intellectuals, and the bleats and blathers at university, haven’t heard much from the left since.)
I hate the idea of conscription, but it’s democratically raw-dog, and it does does help concentrate the attention of privileged, rich bastards so effectively.
So there.
Me too, you understated how awesome Nixon was.
)
Into this “mess” stepped President Richard Nixon. What he proposed was a striking departure from the status quo. The federal government would now assist poor families that were intact as well as those that had split apart. It would assist the working poor as well as the nonworking poor… The income of poor people living in the South would be tripled, and the welfare rolls themselves would double in size. According to not a few economists, 60 percent of all indigent people would be brought above the poverty line immediately were this proposal to be enacted into law. Lyndon Johnson never dared go so far. Both architects of the programs– dubbed the Family Assistance Plan (FAP)– and correspondents, not to mention historians, have recognized the boldness of Nixon’s proposal.
http://books.google.com/books?id=J9oZ2yTlR_kC&lpg=PA287&pg=PA287
It would have passed… until Senate conservatives realized that Nixon’s plan was going to be helping poor black families and that wouldn’t do.
Wanna end the wars? Reinstate the draft. It’s that simple. (If not morally invigorating).
Ok, your right except the common perception is that Nixon was responsible for the formation of environmental protection laws and I don’t see the act of signing legislation produced by the Congress in response to citizen’s activism as being responsible for environmental protections which is how the creation of the EPA is ,again, commonly viewed as.
And as towards the book cited: “Particular attention is paid to Nixon’s misuse of government power for political ends, his administration’s obsession with secrecy and the control of information, and the impeachment proceedings in Congress.”
Nixon WAS a scoundrel, who, in prolonging the Vietnam War for political purposes, caused death and disabilities for thousands. Of course, Clinton went him several times better but it wasn’t U.S. citizens so the outcry was seldom heard.
Nixon rose to power on the post-war Red Scare. He was forced on Eisenhower by an open convention. He was a climber who never ever felt he had made it, even when he was President. And the conservative campaign group that brought him to power in 1968 included most of the architects of the abuse of power since Nixon. Liddy, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Buchanan, Rove…all got their start with the Nixon campaign in 1968. The tone he set in his campaigns and in the White House set the tone of US politics we now endure. The imperial presidency he spooked Truman into beginning and then established in the White House is that inherited by Barack Obama; it never has been rolled back. The ghosts that haunt contemporary DC are J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon.
Well said TarheelDem. Well said indeed.
comment highly recd’
I remember it well, I was a pre-teen. “I am not a crook” comes to mind.
That does look really good. Amazing how skewed everything is now.
Great post cmauk, great comments all. Recommended, tweeted, liked.