Reply by 000

not in any negative way mike.
Your politics are decidedly left of center ERGO: one would think you’d be applauding any reduction in military spending. Granted it derives from a generalization, but generalizations are exceedingly useful and often enough founded on a kernel of fact.

So you think it’s doing me some good to say ”You sound like just another hypochristian crook, just ask forgiveness and all is forgiven and you are free to sin again.”???

At times people can be so strange. Take the left’s almost crazed hatred of Nixon. Probably the most left of the left presidents we’ve had. Yet the left hates his guts and hounded him from office for nothing more exciting than doing a little snooping.
Yet his record should be one that people on the left should have adored.
Here is his record:
Nixon was the first Republican in the White House since Franklin Delano Roosevelt some Thirty Years prior. He saw opportunity to engage in serious changes in how the US government did things. And he took it. That standing alone might have been the root cause of why he was being so closely scrutinized.

As a threshold matter it should be noted that Richard Millhouse Nixon was the nations most socially responsive and responsible president to date. He was also the most environmentally conscious president.

From the day he took office Nixon’s domestic social service spending budgets (1970 – 1975) were greater than those budgets for defense. Not since WWII had this been the case. Nixon boosted funding for social welfare services to $132-Billion in 1975. This was up from the $55-Million it was in 1970 when he took office. tinyurl.com/5t7y97 tinyurl.com/5lfo2n tinyurl.com/238xxf tinyurl.com/5a8hzx www.ssab.gov/documents/S…azearPDF.pdf

Nixon’s first term in office was marked by his aggressive pursuit of five aspects of Domestic Policy: (1) Civil rights (which has desegregation, voting rights & women’s rights as prime components); (2) welfare; (3) economic policy, (4) environmental policy; and (5) reorganization of the federal bureaucracy. (Leon Friedman and William F. Levantrosser, eds., Richard M. Nixon: Politician, President, Administrator, (New York: Greenwood, 1991)). His ideas were so different that his inner circle was flummoxed at how they were going to present them because they seemed more Democratic than Republican. Among his favorite accomplishments were those which he claimed had “political juice.” These included Labor Law, Drug Law Reform, as Cancer Research Funding, Criminal reforms, Taxes, Desegregation, and Welfare. He had the expression “Gut Issues” for Revenue Sharing, Housing, Hunger, Transportation, Consumer Protection, Environmental and Health policies. He called them “potent political medicine.” tinyurl.com/5gjb52 tinyurl.com/6qffry

His difficulties of communicating his ideas were so profound that the Congress was comparing him the FDR and not pleasantly. They were more willing to have dealt with FDR’s ideas as “Emergent” matters than Nixon’s “reforms” which he wanted to make permanent.

His opponents on the Environment he lumped into two camps. Those who wanted no corporations at all and those who did. He offended the one by favoring the development of jobs first, then, he offended the other by having so much interest in the environment. Nixon was the one who wanted the OMB to evaluate the EPA’s ( which he created) work and expenditures. He believed that like every other branch of government he had to justify itself . Today environmentalists still hate him for this.

It has never been enough for the environmental crowd that Nixon created the EPA and the Clean Air Act of 1970. Even the NYT was lauding him as an environmentalist saying that Nixon had fathered the “most controversial and far reaching effort to control air pollution.” (New York Times, July 13, 1971, p. 33, July 20, 1971, p. 12 “Nixon’s First Four Years”).

Other Nixonian environmental initiatives include: (1) oil spill clean uo and regulation; (2) pesticide regulations; (3) laws to eliminate dumping garbage in the oceans; (4) noise control regulations; and (5) regulation of state coastal zones. No other president has matched Nixon’s environmental successes. None combined have either. Yet it was his siding with the auto makers on Emissions Controls that the environmentalists remember him. To me these groups and persons seem like so many spoiled brats who are incapable of knowing when to say when. They were given royal treatment and gifts galore by Nixon ( more than all other presidents combined) and yet because they didn’t get every single thing they wanted when they wanted it, they now revile the man. It is a mystery of human fallibility. Nixon felt that his 01/1970 State of the Union address was him pandering to those environmentalists whom he described as Pro-Capitalist and his description of his comments were – in his words – “moderate” he wanted to go further than he did. (William Safire “Before the Fall” Doubleday, (1975)).

Nixon’s domestic policy initiatives were no less grand:
He appointed Louis R. Bruce ( Mohawk with a strong “self determination” stance) as commissioner of Indian affairs. Then he set about changing Indian policy on July 8, 1970 before Congress that the fed would help all Indian efforts at “self-determination […] without the threat of eventual termination. [ he said that ] the Indian [could] assume control over his own life without being separated involuntarily from the tribal group.” (White House Fact Sheet,” August 18, 1972, Finch Papers; Bruce Willkie, quoted in U.S. News and World Report, September 14, 1970, p. 700). Nixon demanded that Congress to repeal the “1953 House Concurrent Resolution.” This was a rule that favored integration and disfavored self-determination.

Nixon ended the policy of forced termination of tribal status. He converted to Indian control more Indian policy decisions than any administration before or since.

In 1970 Nixon returned the sacred Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo tribes.
In 1971 Nixon brokered a deal between the Fed and the FL Miccosukee tribe which gave it independent internal control over it’s own matters and self determination. Nixon restored the Menominee Tribe to the status of Federally protected – a status it has lost by bringing about the Menominee Restoration Act of December 22, 1973.
Nixon listened when the Indians became militant and increased the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget by 214%. In his first term in office Nixon doubled the funds dedicated to American Indian health issues during his first term in office.

Nixon created the “Special Office of Indian Water Rights and instructed the Secretary of Agriculture to make Federally Insured Loans to Indian tribes VIA the Farmer’s Home Administration. Nixon encouraged commercial development projects by Indian tribal authorities creating the Indian Financing Act of 1974. He also created a mechanism where by any “natural Resources” dispute Tribal Counsel raised had a streamlined path to federal court and he protected Indian land and resource rights in Pyramid Lake. (New York Times, April 14, 1970, p. 18, July 12, 1970, sec. 4, p.3; Washington Post, August 23, 1973, p. G7; U.S. News and World Report, September 14, 1970, p. 68).

Bruce Willkie’s praise of Nixon was not in vain who as the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), who said in the fall of 1970 that Nixon was “the first U.S. President since George Washington to pledge that the government will honor obligations to the Indian tribes.” (Id.)(and see tinyurl.com/5l98d2 ) . Peter MacDonald ( Navaho Tribal leader) said d that Nixon ought to be “be viewed as the Abraham Lincoln of the Indian people.” tinyurl.com/5fn276

Nixon had a grand idea about modernizing Federalism by re-structuring the way government operated. He came up with what he called the “Negative Income Tax.” This was a welfare program that was a guaranteed income for life. This was somewhat remarkable considering how the left seems to had created the myth that they and they alone have any interest in those less fortunate.

He wanted to pay for his ideas using what he termed “revenue sharing.” This would cause various elements of government to share income streams with each other so where one necessary program was failing (because it was not income generation oriented) others would fill in the gaps. Nixon was also deeply concerned about environmental matters and was looking to boost expenditures in that area also.

He had a “Grand Design” (his label) for US diplomatic efforts which drew on the Nixon Doctrine. This would include things such as deliberately devaluing the US dollar to meet many foreign currencies and finding parity with major world trading partners.
Nixon also wanted to establish a productive relationship with China and détente with the USSR. Remember détente`~?

When he took office he was no more or less troubling to the left than any one else from the right would have been. However, he was doing something which infuriated the left. He was co-opting things that they had claimed as their turf such as social policy reform. The general mood on the left was that this would reduce them to a nullity because the republicans were positioning themselves as a one stop store which would meet all the nation’s needs and interests.
He was opposed mostly by people who never even bothered to get their facts straight” (Paul J. Halpern, “Personality, Politics and the Presidency—The Strange Case of Richard Nixon,” August 1, 1973, in the Fawn M. Brodie Papers, Marriott Library, Special Collections Department, University of Utah, Salt Lake, Utah. ) (tinyurl.com/5n3dwe ). Even to Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that most if Nixon’s opponents were in conflict with themselves and their constituencies. (tinyurl.com/5n3dwe).

Early in ’69 He was having confrontations with his own staff about putting his policy initiatives forward. This resulted in the “Five O’Clock Group” which met in Haldeman’s office every day. The purpose was to brain storm publicity and presentation of the Nixon Doctrine and his reforms. The members included Haldeman, Ray Price, Dwight Chapin, and others including the media

Nixon’s results on social policy have been long lasting and interestingly abandoned abrogated or altered to the point of being unrecognizable by both parties. But it was Richard Millhouse Nixon who gave us SSI and tried to get the FAP through. It was Nixon who’s long term goal for all supplemental income programs was that they be federalized completely.

Both SSI ( Supplemental Security Income) and FAP ( Family Assistance Program) were Nixon’s brain children. Nixon wanted to federalize Welfare. Congress stood resolute against FAP. Congress saw FAP as entitlements for Welfare mothers while SSI was more geared toward the handicapped. SSI survived Congressional scrutiny while FAP died stillborn. (James T. Patterson, The Welfare State, Section 4. BAAS Pamphlet No. 7 (First Published 1981) (tinyurl.com/5fpgch )).

Three years after Nixon introduced the SSI bill in 1972 Nixon’s dream of the FAP lay in ruins. But, later that same year he managed to get Congress to come to the table on SSI which he had been hammering away at since August 8, 1969 in his state of the union address in which he addressed social issues extensively. (tinyurl.com/5rww6k ). By the time SSI was put in effect in 1974 Congress had tinkered with it extensively. Congress had prior shown that it was not wholly with Nixon when in 1972 it passed a law requiting AFDIC mothers to register for work or risk loss of benefits.

Nixon undaunted by the death of the FAP took up a new torch in the form of Food Stamps. In 1973 Nixon boosted Food Stamp funding to $2.5 Billion. This was up from the $610 million previously. For Nixon this was a second best solution because his FAP specified cash payments and not food stamps. ( tinyurl.com/6fjet7 oregonstate.edu/cla/polisc…uminsas.pdf tinyurl.com/5mrlxf tinyurl.com/5uq7uo tinyurl.com/6bggzn tinyurl.com/5axz8h )
Nixon’s consolation prize of Food Stamps wasn’t enough for him, he went on pursuing more and better health insurance programs for the poor and he raised COLA (cost of living adjustments for students from poor households) (tinyurl.com/5dhbmm ) tying adjustments to inflation. Years later Clinton tinkering with the federal numbers reporting inflation made inflation a nullity.

All in all from his social welfare policy reforms and advances to his sweeping environmental legacy to his unprecedented treatment I of the American Indian Nixon was quite possibly the single most visionary president this nation has known and all we remember him for was the Watergate fiasco.

-- When the moderator chooses sides, his site sucks.