Unanswered Questions About Kent State

May 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | 1 Comment 

On the 40th anniversary of the Kent State protests, Fox News’ James Rosen has a new article in the Washington Times in which he reveals declassified FBI files that suggest the National Guardsman were shot at first:

Now largely forgotten, the torching of the ROTC building was the true precursor to the killings at Kent State because it triggered the deployment of the National Guard to the fevered campus.

That deployment climaxed in bloodshed on the afternoon of May 4, 1970, with the guardsmen, clad in gas masks and confronted by angry, rock-throwing students, firing their M-1 rifles 67 times in 13 seconds, killing Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder.

A report submitted to Attorney General John Mitchell in June 1970 stated “there was no sniper” who could have fired at the guardsmen before the killings.

Numerous witnesses corroborated this.

A female freshman provided the FBI with a sworn statement that “there was no shot before [the guardsmen's] volley, and there were no warning shots fired.” The Justice Department’s internal review cited statements by six guardsmen who “pointedly” told the FBI that their lives were not in danger and that “it was not a shooting situation.”

Yet the declassified FBI files show the FBI already had developed credible evidence suggesting that there was indeed a sniper and that one or more shots may have been fired at the guardsmen first.

Rumors of a sniper had circulated for at least a day before the fatal confrontation, the documents show. And a memorandum sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on May 19, 1970, referred to bullet holes found in a tree and a statue — evidence, the report stated, that “indicated that at least two shots had been fired at the National Guard.”

Another interviewee told agents that a guardsman had spoken of “a confirmed report of a sniper.”

It also turned out that the FBI had its own informant and agent-provocateur roaming the crowd, a part-time Kent State student named Terry Norman, who had a camera. Mr. Norman also was armed with a snub-nosed revolver that FBI ballistics tests, first declassified in 1977, concluded had indeed been discharged on that day.

Then there was the testimony of an ROTC cadet whose identity remains unknown, one of the pervasive redactions concealing the names of all the FBI agents who conducted the interviews and of all those whom they interrogated. Although presumably angry over the demonstrators’ destruction of the campus ROTC building, the cadet’s calm, precise firsthand account nonetheless carries a credibility not easily dismissed.

Before the fatal volley, the ROTC cadet told the FBI, he “heard one round, a pause, two rounds, and then the M-1s opened up.”

The report continued that the cadet “stated that the first three rounds were definitely not M-1s. He said they could possibly have been a .45 caliber. … [He] further stated that he heard confirmed reports of sniper fire coming in over both the National Guard radio and the state police radio.”

The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices “used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths.”

Separately, a female student told the FBI she “recalled hearing what she thought was [the sound of] firecrackers and then a few seconds later [she] heard noise that to her sounded like a machine gun going off, but then later thought it may have been a volley of shots from the Guard.”

The cadet also told the FBI he observed demonstrators carrying baseball bats, golf clubs and improvised weapons, including pieces of steel wire cut into footlong sections, along with radios and other electronic devices “used to monitor the police and Guard wavelengths.”

Rosen goes on to explain that the declassified documents show that the Kent State protests weren’t spontaneous nor unplanned:

Separately, a female student told the FBI she “recalled hearing what she thought was [the sound of] firecrackers and then a few seconds later [she] heard noise that to her sounded like a machine gun going off, but then later thought it may have been a volley of shots from the Guard.”

Absent the declassification of the FBI’s entire investigative file, many questions remain unanswered — including why the documents quoted here were overlooked, or discounted, in the Justice Department’s official findings.

At a minimum, the FBI documents strongly challenge the received narrative that the rioting in downtown Kent was spontaneous and unplanned, that the burning of the ROTC headquarters was similarly impulsive and that the guardsmen’s fatal shootings were explicable only as unprovoked acts.

RN’s Environmental Record

April 22, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Domestic issues, Environmental issues, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In the Winter 1996 issue of the Presidential Studies Quarterly, Russell Train, the distinguished environmentalist and Chairman Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund, wrote a long and thoughtful summary of “The Environmental Record of the Nixon Administration.”

In 1968, Mr. Train, an attorney with a long record of public service and environmental pioneering, was asked by President-Elect Nixon to serve as Chairman of a Task Force on the Environment.  During the early years of the Nixon administration, Mr. Train was Undersecretary of the Interior (1969-70) and Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (1970-73).

In September 1973, RN appointed him second administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency (replacing William Ruckelshaus).  He served in that capacity under RN and Gerald Ford until January 1977, when he joined the World Wildlife Fund — first as President of WWF-US and then as the organization’s Chairman, until 1994.

Among his many worldwide honors are the US Medal of Freedom for his work in the field of conservation (1991) and the Heinz Awards Chairman’s Medal (2006).

Mr. Train opened his article with a general survey:

In his State of the Union Address of January 22, 1970, President Nixon declared: “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, our land and our water? …. Clean air, clean water, open spaces — these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now they can be.” Expansive rhetoric to be sure, but the rhetoric was matched by a remarkable record of achievement.

Environmental protection represented without doubt in my mind the single most significant area of domestic policy accomplishment of the Nixon administration. The extraordinary number of legislative, administrative, and institutional initiatives dealing with environmental matters far exceed those in any other area of domestic policy. Moreover, the initiatives in this one field were remarkable not only for their sheer quantity but also for their scope and innovativeness.

The Nixon environmental program dealt with both domestic and international policy, institutional reform, pollution control, tax policy, wildlife protection, land use policy, parks and open space (particularly urban open space), historic preservation, and many other facets of the environmental equation. It was truly a comprehensive effort that stretched from 1969 through 1973, probably peaking in 1972, and later giving way to energy concerns that arose from the several Arab oil embargoes. In large part, the results of the Nixon initiatives remain in place today and form the foundation for the country’s ongoing environmental programs.

While environmental initiatives by President Nixon on the international front tended to be obscured by other more dramatic foreign policy accomplishments, during his administration the United States provided the principal leadership for both bilateral and multilateral international efforts in the field of environmental cooperation.

He concluded by noting that:

Whatever the president’s personal predilections in the area, the Nixon administration not only recognized and responded to the ground swell of public concern over the environment, but it was out front on the issue, the essence of political leadership. Indeed, in some aspects of its environmental initiatives, such as land use policy, the administration was well ahead of its time. In the international arena, the United States under the Nixon administration cajoled and prodded the nations of the world to cooperate in addressing critical environmental It has been a hard act to follow.

The entire article may be obtained here.

The Rise Of The Environment

April 19, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Domestic issues, Environmental issues | 1 Comment 

EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus with Julie Nixon Eisenhower and assistant Richard Fairbanks. Ruckelshaus will participate in a panel at the Nixon Library on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.

Although Richard Nixon’s pre-presidential speeches and writings sometimes had passages referring to his love of the varied landscape of his native state of California, it still came as a surprise to many when, in his State of the Union address on January 22, 1970, he outlined the first steps in the series of programs that made his presidency the most significant in the history of environmental affairs since Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1965, a Gallup poll found 25 percent of Americans citing pollution and other environmental matters as constituting as an important national issue. By the end of 1969, this figure had increased by 75 percent. There were a number of reasons for the rise. Concern over the indiscriminate use of pesticides had loomed large in the national consciousness since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Environmentally minded writers and champions of “small is beautiful” such as Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold formed part of the curriculum of the “counterculture.” The nation’s embrace of suburban development and new technology in the 1950s had been replaced by apprehension about the effects of untrammeled growth on wildlife, the waterways, and the atmosphere.

As these concerns came to the fore, a movement arose which sought to address them. In the early days of 1970, plans were fully underway to celebrate the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. This event was intended by its organizers to be a moment calling for new laws to guarantee clean air and water and to safeguard the integrity of natural landscapes, like forests, seas, and lakes.

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

President Nixon, in his First State of the Union Address, January 22, 1970.

The first mainstream politicians to embrace the Earth Day message were mostly Democratic, such as Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Senator who took the initiative among his colleagues in helping to organize events connected with the day. Soon Sen. Edmund Muskie from Maine, the 1968 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, was calling for quick legislative action in the field of the environment. Liberal columnists and commentators, at the time, seemed to take it for granted that the Nixon White House would drag its feet on the matter.

But in his first annual address to Congress, RN took note of the nation’s worry over the future of its resources, and called for the passing of laws to protect the environment, pledging to use $10 billion to ensure clean air and water for Americans.

Six months later, in July 1970, RN set up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This was a Cabinet-level agency; its head reported directly to the President. $1.4 billion was redirected from other Cabinet departments for its budget (primarily the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education and Welfare), and it started operations with 5,650 employees. Within a short time the EPA, under its first director William Ruckelshaus, launched a series of important initiatives. In the same year, the passage of the Clean Air Act, with the support of the White House, marked the most comprehensive antipollution legislation to date.

The President followed this with another far-sighted idea. Having grown up in a family of modest means, he was aware that visiting major national parks such as Yellowstone or Yosemite was beyond the financial reach of many Americans. He therefore promoted the idea of creating new national parks from Federal land unused for other purposes, and during his Administration 642 such parks were created. He also made it a point to confer on a regular basis about the environment with two of his staffers with strong interests in the subject, chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman and aide John C. Whitaker.

In April 1971, the President marked the first anniversary of Earth Day with a proclamation establishing Earth Week, an event which helped further education and awareness of environmental issues, especially among schoolchildren.

From 1970 until the end of his Presidency, Nixon made 36 different environmental proposals, including ones addressing such issues as noise pollution and oil spills. One matter to which he devoted considerable attention, and which was close to his heart as a Californian, was the cooperation of federal and state agencies in maintaining the integrity of coastlines.

Two events marked a divergence between the President’s views and those of many environmentalists. In 1971, the EPA recommended standards for the Big Four automakers (at that time General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and AMC/Jeep) to decrease fuel emissions. Nixon felt that the requirements were too stringent, and agreed with automakers who feared that manufacturing cars to conform to these standards would raise car prices and considerably decrease sales.

And, in 1972, Nixon vetoed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments. Again, this action was motivated by concern that to enforce the legislation as written would put American manufacturers at a disadvantage compared to their overseas counterparts.

But while keeping American business competitive, the Nixon White House was also able to lay the groundwork for the effective environmental infrastructure Americans rely on today to ensure clean air, clean water, preservation of wildlife and plant life for future generations, and a safer, healthier environment.

Below is an interview with John Whitaker, conducted by former RN Special Assistant Frank Gannon, on the environmental initiatives of the Nixon years:

Ruckelshaus Remembers The First Earth Day

April 17, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Environmental issues | Leave a Comment 

Hon. William Ruckelshaus is sworn in as the first Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, April 22 at 1:30, Ruckelshaus will be a apart of a special panel that will examine President Nixon’s environmental record.

In the Wall Street Journal, William Ruckelshaus — the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency and a panelist in the Nixon Library’s upcoming forum on RN’s environmental record — writes that the Nixon Administration did much to tackle the environmental challenges addressed during the first Earth Day demonstrations:

We humans with our big cars and our big factories and our big cities were discharging terrible stuff into the air and water, and it had to be stopped or we would soon make our nest uninhabitable. The public was growing increasingly outraged. Every night on color television, we saw yellow sludge flowing into blue rivers; every day as we drove to work, we saw black smudges against the barely visible blue sky. We knew that our indiscriminate use of pesticides and toxic substances was threatening wildlife and public health.

But we didn’t do much about it. Until 1970, most regulation of industry was done by the states, which competed so strongly for plants and jobs that regulating companies to protect public health was beyond them.

Environmentally, it was a race to the bottom.

Until, that is, the public had enough and demanded action. A seminal moment: the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, when cars were buried and action was demanded from the Nixon administration and Congress.

And they both acted. President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, and Congress, starting with the Council on Environmental Quality, passed a cascade of laws designed to clean up our act.

One of my first public actions as the first head of the EPA was to bring major enforcement actions against three large cities for violations of the Clean Water Act. We followed that with additional action against the steel industry and other industrial polluters. I knew that the job of the EPA would be far more contentious in the future if we didn’t establish its credibility and its willingness to take forceful—and symbolic—action right from the start. The American people had to know we were serious about meeting their demands.

Ruckelshaus continues by outlining a new strategy for new challenges. Continue reading here.

RN: The Unlikely Champion of Advancing Equality for Women

March 30, 2010 by Barbara Hackman Franklin | Filed Under Domestic issues | 4 Comments 

When I first came to Washington, D.C. to work in the White House of President Richard Nixon almost 40 years ago, you could count the number of women in the House and Senate on your two hands plus one toe. And, you wouldn’t have needed any additional digits for the women sitting on the Supreme Court or in the President’s Cabinet – because there weren’t any.

Then, in the early 1970s, thanks to the pioneering efforts of “A Few Good Women…” and the leadership of the President, it all began to change.

In January 1969, Richard Nixon took the oath of office as President. At one of President Nixon’s early press conferences, Ms. Vera Glaser stood amid a forest of male colleagues, raised her strong, clear voice, and asked:

“Mr. President, since you’ve been inaugurated, you have made approximately 200 presidential appointments, and only three of them have gone to women. Can we expect some more equitable recognition of women’s abilities, or are we going to remain the lost sex?”

The President seemed surprised, but he agreed: “We’ll have to do something about that.” It was a promise he kept.

President Nixon’s pledge to Ms. Glaser triggered a chain of events that led to the appointment of a White House Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities. Virginia Allan, a well-known Republican businesswoman, chaired it, and Vera Glaser was among its members.

By the end of the year, the Task Force delivered a report entitled, “A Matter of Simple Justice.” It contained five forward-thinking recommendations. One key recommendation was this: “The President should appoint more women to positions of top responsibility in all branches of the Federal Government, to achieve a more equitable ratio of men and women. Cabinet and agency heads should be directed to issue firm instructions that qualified women receive equal consideration in hiring and promotion.” It also recommended creation of a White House office dedicated to advancing women in appointive positions.

And, it didn’t happen overnight. It was more than a year before that first promise to Ms. Glaser moved into the implementation phase.

President Nixon Acts

In December 1970, the President approved an action memo that ordered the implementation of many of the Task Force’s key recommendations.

In April of 1971, the President publicly announced a three-pronged initiative:

o First, he asked each Cabinet Secretary and agency head to submit an action plan for hiring, promoting, and advancing women in each department. He told them he wanted the plan by the middle of the following month.

o Second, I was hired away from Citibank in New York City to join the White House staff and recruit women for high-level jobs in government. I was also directed to build a talent bank of women and monitor progress by the departments and agencies on their action plans.

o Third, Jayne Baker Spain, who had been the CEO of a company in Ohio, was appointed Vice Chairman of the Civil Service Commission with responsibility for watching over the advancement of women in the career civil service.

And, President Nixon asked two Counselors to the President – Bob Finch and Don Rumsfeld – to oversee progress. Bob Finch, had previously served in President Nixon’s Cabinet and was an early convert to our cause. Rumsfeld, later served as Secretary of Defense.

We set out to double the number of women in top jobs – GS-16 and above – during the first year. We did better. Within nine months, we had met our full first-year goal. In April 1972, a year after we began, the number of women in policy-making jobs had tripled from 36 to 105.

Even more importantly perhaps was the nature of the jobs themselves. There were many “breakthroughs” – jobs women had never held before. In other words, we were blasting through glass ceilings. Every “first” makes it easier to fill that job with a woman the second time around. Eventually gender would not even be a consideration.

Thanks to the President’s support, more than 1,000 women were hired or promoted into the middle management ranks of the career civil service, at a time when the Federal Government was reducing employment by 5%. For the first time, women were serving as generals, admirals, forest rangers, FBI agents, and even tugboat captains.

By March 1973, just two years after the effort began, the number of women in top jobs had quadrupled, and Anne Armstrong had become Counselor to the President with Cabinet rank.

President Nixon’s efforts to lift up women in the Federal Government spilled over into the rest of American society as he challenged the private sector, as well as, state and local governments “to follow our lead and guarantee women equal opportunity for employment and advancement…” Business leaders, state officials and sometimes governors themselves – came to my office to find out more about how we had achieved success.

The Nixon Administration effort is a powerful example of Presidential leadership that shows what can be accomplished with genuine commitment. It also shows how the stories that grab the headlines are not the only places where lasting change may be taking place.

Looking back now, we know that President Nixon’s actions brought gender equality into the mainstream of American life. He made equality “legitimate.” This legitimacy rippled through our society and helped create new opportunities for women in business, education, the professions, the arts and athletics.

But President Nixon threw himself unmistakably behind the cause of change, telling the nation in his 1972 State of the Union address, “While every woman may not want a career outside the home, every woman should have the freedom to choose whatever career she wishes, and an equal chance to pursue it.” That was a bold statement by a man of that time and that generation.


TNN Exclusive: RN’s Health Care Plan More Comprehensive Than Obama’s

March 25, 2010 by Ben Stein | Filed Under Domestic issues | 11 Comments 

All eyes have been on Washington in the past year as the parties debated President Barack Obama’s shifting versions of national health care. On Tuesday, after a highly questionable series of parliamentary maneuvers, President Obama signed into “law” his health care plan.

With some considerable reason, he noted that health care for all is an idea whose time has come. (His plan still leaves more than 20 million not insured, but let that be.) And, with some justification, most of the media rejoiced that national health care had arrived for people with low incomes, with pre-existing conditions, without jobs, with impoverished employers.

To call Barack Obama’s response to the passage (however questionably executed ) of this bill “triumphalist” is like calling Mount Everest “tall.”

But among the glorying, there was little or no mention of my former boss, Richard M. Nixon, and this was a monstrous wrong, one of an innumerable number of wrongs directed at Mr. Nixon.

The flat truth is that in February 1974, with the hounds of hell baying at him about Watergate, with a national trial by shortage under way after the Arab Oil Embargo, with the economy in extremely rocky shape, and with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Republican Richard M. Nixon submitted to Congress a national health care bill in many ways more comprehensive than what Mr. Obama achieved.

Mr. Nixon’s health care plan would have covered all employed people by giving combined state and federal subsidies to employers. It would have covered the poor and the unemployed by much larger subsidies. It would have encouraged health maintenance organizations. It would have banned exclusions for pre-existing conditions and not allowed limits on spending for each insured.

I know a bit about this because I, your humble servant, as a 29-year-old speech writer, wrote the message to Congress sending up the bill.

In many ways, the bill was far more “socialist” than what Mr. Obama has proposed. It certainly involved a far larger swath of state and federal government power over health care. Please remember that this was 36 years ago, when middle-class Americans still had some slight faith that government was on their side.

My point is not whether or not Mr. Nixon’s plan was better than Mr. Obama’s. In fact, they have many points in common.

My only point is that if you want to call someone a visionary, if you want to call someone compassionate, if you want to note that someone was a foe of inequality and a friend to mercy, think of Richard Nixon, with a host of problems of his own the likes of which Mr. Obama cannot imagine, reaching out to the poor and the uninsured to help.

The plan, of course, was killed dead by the Democrats, led by Edward Kennedy, who later regretted what he had done. Still, attention must be paid to a prophet without honor in his own land.

3.24.70

March 24, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Civil rights, Domestic issues, Nixon Administration, Richard Nixon, Supreme Court, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Forty years ago today, RN issued a Statement About Desegregation of Elementary and Secondary Schools.

The almost 17,000-word document surveyed the the issue beginning with the first Brown decision in 1954.  Clearly, and in very plain language, the President surveyed the history and set out his Administration’s position:

This issue is not partisan. It is not sectional. It is an American issue, of direct and immediate concern to every citizen.

I hope that this statement will reduce the prevailing confusion and will help place public discussion of the issue on a more rational and realistic level in all parts of the Nation. It is time to strip away the hypocrisy, the prejudice, and the ignorance that too long have characterized discussion of this issue.’

He described his underlying approach:

We are dealing fundamentally with inalienable human rights, some of them constitutionally protected. The final arbiter of constitutional questions is the United States Supreme Court.

And he set out his specific objectives:

–To reaffirm my personal belief that the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education was right in both constitutional and human terms.

–To assess our progress in the 16 years since Brown and to point the way to
continuing progress.

–To clarify the present state of the law, as developed by the courts and the Congress, and the administration policies guided by it.

–To discuss some of the difficulties encountered by courts and communities as desegregation has accelerated in recent years, and to suggest approaches that can mitigate such problems as we complete the process of compliance with Brown.

–To place the question of school desegregation in its larger context, as part of America’s historic commitment to the achievement of a free and open society.

RN was obviously aware of the widespread criticism regarding what conventional wisdom had decided was his “Southern strategy” regarding race relations.  He addressed this with some home truths:

We should bear very carefully in mind, therefore, the distinction between educational difficulty as a result of race, and educational difficulty as a result of social or economic levels, of family background, of cultural patterns, or simply of bad schools. Providing better education for the disadvantaged requires a more sophisticated approach than mere racial mathematics.

In this same connection, we should recognize that a smug paternalism has characterized the attitudes of many white Americans toward school questions. There has been an implicit assumption that blacks or others of minority races would be improved by association with whites. The notion that an all-black or predominantly-black school is automatically inferior to one which is all- or predominantly-white—even though not a product of a dual system inescapably carries racist overtones. And, of course, we know of hypocrisy: not a few of those in the North most stridently demanding racial integration of public schools in the South at the same time send their children to private schools to avoid the assumed inferiority of mixed public schools.

It is unquestionably true that most black schools–though by no means all–are in fact inferior to most white schools. This is due in part to past neglect or shortchanging of the black schools; and in part to long-term patterns of racial discrimination which caused a greater proportion of Negroes to be left behind educationally, left out culturally, and trapped in low paying jobs. It is not really because they serve black children that most of these schools are inferior, but rather because they serve poor children who often lack the home environment that encourages learning.

This comprehensive, thoughtful, and vital document deserves attention.  It can be read in full here.  The Nixon administration’s pivotal role in the desegregation of America’s schools will be the subject of the Nixon Legacy Forum in September.

Nickels, Noses, And The Nation

March 19, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Politics, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

After several anxious days of waiting—watching out my office window for the faithful U. S. Postal truck—I finally received mine. Have you gotten yours? I sure hope so, because there isn’t much time—We The People—134 million households of us—have a deadline.

In fact, there is a very special day coming up. It’s called Census Day 2010. And, are you ready for this—it’s scheduled for April 1ST. That’s right, the moment we honor fools and play tricks on everybody is the official day to recognize, if not return, our Census forms. Census Day started out in 1790 as the first Monday in August. It was moved to June in 1830, then to April 15 in 1910, and by 1940 to the first day of April.

Obviously, most Americans are well aware of this decennial process of counting everyone. After all, we’ve been seeing all those very cool commercials. I saw one the other day, having made the mistake of watching a show that hadn’t been dvr’d, that mentioned how important it was to fill out the form and send it back. The spokesperson warned: “You won’t get your fair share, if you don’t send it back.”

Fair share? Fair share of what?

If I read my history correctly—and I do—the whole idea of a census from the beginning had to do with having our fair say. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified and became the ever-since law of the land, it specified in Article 1, Section 2, that a census, or “enumeration” should be scheduled within three years of the first meeting of the Congress, and then every ten years, thereafter. The first such census was conducted in 1790 and it has been repeated every decade since.

Even in its early days the idea of a national head count was not without controversy. There was something at least a little disconcerting about individuals ceding personal information to government, no matter how small or general that data might have been. The purpose of all of this had purely to do with the apportionment of representation in Congress, the various districts being determined by population.

That remains one purpose of the every-decade-nose-count in America, and it is a vitally important one. If an area has lost population, districts are redrawn and Congressional representation adjusted accordingly—and vice versa for growing areas. So the political stakes are real—and high.

But as government has grown over the course of our nation’s history, both in its size and scope, the Census has morphed into the basis for many other things having to do with government programs and federal dollars. And this is where that mention of “fair share” comes in. There are these days various federal initiatives funding programs in states and communities for education, infrastructure, and even health care. Of course, all the money comes from us in the first place. Around the time our nation was in the middle of its fourth census, Alexis De Tocqueville suggested, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” Indeed.

Beyond this, Census data is used by the government in a variety of ways for “policy purposes”—economic and otherwise. This brings to mind another Census 2010 campaign mantra—in fact, it’s the official slogan this time around: “We can’t move forward until you mail it back?”

Forward to where? Forward to what?

I will fill mine out and send it in. I will answer every question truthfully and I won’t waste my time being clever or creative in my responses. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder what all the fuss is about this year. After all, we get a package from the federal government around the first of January each year reminding us of incoming taxes. I never saw a funny commercial about that, largely because most Americans can figure out that this means we have to send something back or be in trouble.

Why then the song and dance about the Census?

Is it because those in charge these days have cool ideas (cool to them) about what they can make of America with new demographic tea leaves to examine? I don’t think one has to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder. Last year, a few eyebrows were raised when the administration announced that it wanted to, in effect, take the Census away from the to-do-list of the Commerce Department, signaling that they wanted command-central for the big count to be in the West Wing. Then there was the issue with ACORN being contracted to work on the big detail-dig. We all know how good they are with numbers, muscle, and the truth.

Questions were raised last year—reasonable ones, in my opinion—about the fact that nowhere on the Census form does it ask about the citizenship of residents. This suggests the possibility that some areas—with large blocs of non-U.S. citizens (legal or otherwise) would have their population and therefore congressional representation impacted by some who have do not have the full rights of American citizenship.

Personally, I am not concerned about getting my fair share based on the Census this year. I am solely concerned with continuing to have my fair say and that the voices heard in our country are those described by “We the People”—in other words, actual citizens.

Furthermore, I’d just as soon keep more of my fair share in the first place, thank you. And “move forward” by myself.

RN: The Law And Order Candidate

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal:

After the Supreme Court’s restrictive police-search decisions in the 1960s, Richard Nixon rode “law and order” into the White House in 1968. Liberals got into trouble during the law and order years because their views on crime seemed an abstraction, elegantly argued but oblivious to the lives of innocent people on the street.

How Could Biden Fix The Senate? Think VP Nixon

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

As the Democrats in Congress struggle to path health care reform, the American Prospect’s Bruce Ackerman writes that Vice President Biden should heed wisdom from Vice President Nixon, who used his constitutional power to make the U.S. Senate a more active governing body:

If Biden is willing to exercise the power granted him in the constitution, he could do more than pass health care. He could establish a precedent that would later help him limit the filibuster rules that threaten to deadlock our system of government. He would not be the first vice president to use his power for good in this way.

Consider the history: It now takes 60 Senators (three-fifths) to end a filibuster, but for most of the 20th century, a full two-thirds majority was necessary. Worse yet, unanimous consent was required by Senate rules to change this. The two-thirds provision seemed cemented into the system beyond repair.

Until Richard Nixon came along. When the Senate opened for business in 1957, he took the chair as vice president and urged the chamber to rethink the very foundations of its rules. The Senate traditionally considered itself a continuing body, which automatically inherited its old rules without any formal action.

This was a mistake, Nixon said. Since one-third of its membership is renewed every two years, the Senate should explicitly vote on its rules when it organized itself at the beginning the session. If a simple majority wanted to reduce the two-thirds rule, it was free to do so.

Nixon’s ruling was a bombshell. If his view were accepted by the Senate, 51 Senators could impose a strong civil-rights bill on the South.

This put Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in a tough spot. He was willing to join a broad effort for a weak civil-rights measure, but he was unprepared to sacrifice his Southern colleagues by campaigning against the filibuster. He refused to support Nixon’s pronouncement. Instead, he asked the Senate to table any vote on its rules and follow its traditional practice of simply inheriting the existing rule book in a passive fashion. When Johnson’s motion won the day, he frustrated Nixon’s effort to use the Senate presidency as an engine for filibuster reform.

Fox News: What Would Nixon Do On Health Care?

March 17, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | 3 Comments 

Fox News contributor Ellen Ratner at the Fox Forum:

No one thought that President Nixon was a liberal in fact I spent much of my youthful years demonizing him and remember exactly where I was the day he resigned. I was cheering.

However, like most of us humans, Nixon was a mixed bag. A crook perhaps but a brilliant one who had some very good legislation and visions for America.

One of these visions was his health care plan and if he were alive today he would be run out of the Republican party for being too liberal. Spoken like a liberal, President Richard Nixon said in February 1974, “Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.”

His Comprehensive Health Insurance plan was designed around several basic tenants:

1. Balanced, comprehensive range of health insurance benefits for every American.

2. The cost would be no more than an American could afford to pay.

3. Catastrophic Illness Would Be Addressed. He proposed a card with information available at the time such as blood type.

Even Ronald Reagan — not a fan of social programs — suggested in February 1987 that Medicare be expanded to offer catastrophic health insurance to people over 65 in hospitals. His administration also looked into requiring employers to offer catastrophic insurance with health insurance policies. He was roundly criticized by Congressman Claude Pepper for not offering catastrophic coverage more broadly and to cover those in nursing homes.

The numbers do not lie and anyone occupying the Oval Office understands that tackling health care is important to the well being of citizens and the overall health of the economy. It is amazing that the Republicans are fighting President Obama’s plan tooth and nail when so many of their party’s icons tried to get health coverage on the national agenda.

Given this history of Republicans wanting true reform of health care, this week when the heath care vote comes up in the House, I would recommend that the GOP, the party of NO, take a look at some of their previous Yes men — Nixon, and even Reagan, and vote YES.

New Report: Nixon Cancer Initiative Caused Decline In Mortality Rates

March 15, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

According to a report recent released from the American Cancer Society, there has been a precipitous decline since RN made cancer a national priority in 1971:

Cancer mortality has declined since initiation of the “war on cancer,” in 1971, an American Cancer Society study found.

American Cancer Society epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal and colleagues used nationwide cancer mortality data for 1970-2006. They found for all cancers combined, death rates per 100,000 in men increased from 249.3 in 1970 to 279.8 in 1990, and then decreased to 221.1 in 2006, yielding a relative decline of 21 percent from 1990 — peak year — and a drop of 11 percent since 1970 — baseline year.

Similarly, the death rate from all cancers combined in women increased from 163.0 in 1970 to 175.3 in 1991, and then decreased to 153.7 in 2006, a relative decline of 12 percent and 6 percent from the 1991 and 1970 rates, respectively.

Some reports have cited limited improvement in death rates as evidence that the war on cancer, which was initiated in 1971, has failed. However, many of these analyses fail to account for the dominant and dramatic increase in cancer death rates due to tobacco-related cancers in the latter part of the 20th century, the study said.

“Contrary to the pessimistic news from the popular media, overall cancer death rates have decreased substantially in both men and women whether measured against baseline rates in 1970/71 when the National Cancer Act was signed by President Richard Nixon or when measured against the peak rates in 1990/91,” the researchers said.

Richard Nixon On Health Care in ‘74, ‘94, And Today

February 22, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Domestic issues, Healthcare, New Media, Richard Nixon | 24 Comments 

Looking to secure a veneer of bipartisanship for their health care plans, Democrats have reached into the grave, exhuming the alleged endorsement of Richard Nixon. They claim that the health care legislation he proposed in 1971 and 1974 is a model for their own proposals today.

For instance, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote last month that President Obama’s plan “remains more moderate than those once proposed by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.” A St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial at the end of January makes the same point, saying that the Obama plan relies more on free market mechanisms than Nixon’s proposal.

“Missing Richard Nixon” blared the headline atop an August 2009 Paul Krugman column in the New York Times. His pen pines for the good old days under Nixon: “As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. . . . So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?” In fact, positive comparisons between the Democrats’ plans and those of Nixon were made even before Obama took office!

Thus far, no one has made reference to President Nixon’s staunch opposition to President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal in the early 1990s. In his tenth and final book Beyond Peace, which may have reflected a stronger commitment to limited government than at other points in his public life, Nixon issued a stinging critique of the Clinton plan. He began, “The 1994 debate over health care will be a crucial testing ground for our faith in freedom, which, if it means anything, must mean free markets and free choice.” Certainly, we face the same test today.

He continued, “The Clinton plan, all 1,342 impenetrable pages of it, is less a prescription for better health care than a blueprint for the takeover by the federal government of one seventh of our nation’s economy. If enacted, it would represent the ultimate revenge of the 1960s generation. The plan epitomizes the discredited notion that taking action against a problem requires introducing a massive network of new compulsions, bureaucracies, and government controls.” Elsewhere in the essay, he wrote, “For a thousand years, whenever price controls have been tried, they have failed.” Particularly when we speak of the public option and the House bill, we could say all the same things, only today it would mean nationalizing one sixth, not one seventh, of our nation’s economy.

President Nixon not only argued against the bureaucratic statism inherent in the Clinton plan – he also articulated a patient-centered vision similar to the one delivered by Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. Paul Ryan in recent days. “Any sensible reform of the nation’s health care system must start with the patient, not with the government. The most powerful force inflating health care costs has been a system of insurance that removes the patient’s own incentive to shop for value.” In other words, Nixon today would be much more likely to support health savings accounts than a public option. He also called for tort reform, a great emphasis on wellness and preventative care, and greater competition among insurance providers, all key elements of Republican alternatives.

Nixon sought to repudiate the suggestion, floating then as well, that his plans from the 1970s inspired the Democrats plan at present. Rebutting those who implied his support for the Clinton scheme from his time in office, Nixon wrote, “I most emphatically did not, and would not, endorse a wholesale federal takeover of the nation’s health care system.” Those equating the Obama plan with the Nixon plan are missing the fundamental difference between the two, something Nixon himself noted in his opposition to the 1994 plan: “Employers would have been required to help pay only for their own employees, not for all the indigent in the entire community.” He concluded that the Clinton plan “focuses less on improving health care delivery than it does on centralizing health care control. Our program was about health. The Clinton program gives every indication of being about power.” Could we not deliver the same indictment today against the Obama plan?

President Nixon spent his entire life fighting against the central planning and nationalized industries of the Soviets. Though not all his domestic policies reflected the same distrust of centralized bureaucracies, Republicans should not allow liberals to claim Nixon’s imprimatur on their health care scheme.

Daniel R. Suhr is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a Washington Fellow of the National Review Institute.

The Great Conservationists

February 2, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Environmental issues, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A Time Magazine story dated the first week of February 1969 illustrates how RN set the tone for his administration’s environmental agenda very early on:

After his embroilment in the Nixon Administration’s only serious appointment hassle, Walter Hickel was doubly confirmed: both in his new job as Secretary of the Interior and in his new respect for the power of disgruntled conservationists. Last week, in his first important action, Hickel named as his undersecretary a man who may well set the tone for his department. He is Russell E. Train, chairman of Nixon’s pre-inaugural task force on resources and environment, and an internationally esteemed conservationist. The appointment drew praise from nearly every quarter, including the old Administration. Said Stewart Udall, Hickel’s predecessor: “I don’t think there’s anyone in the conservation movement with greater dedication or insight. He’s supported all the right causes.”

For Udall, the most important right cause is Train’s commitment to “the environmental impact of what we’re doing.” Train believes that the Federal Government must assign top priority to preserving open space and protecting wildlife—two of Interior’s traditional functions. He insists that the Government also study the wise use of all of the nation’s vulnerable natural resources, and specifically a campaign against such blights as pollution, overcrowding and planned uglification. Train, 48, an Eisenhower appointee to a tax court judgeship, first became interested in conservation as a big-game hunter. In 1961, he founded the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation to help assure that Africa’s new governments would do a better job of preserving game than their colonial predecessors had. For the past four years he has headed the nonprofit Conservation Foundation, which, under his leadership, addressed its educational and research programs to increasingly broader fields (waste disposal, the danger of pesticides, hunger).

Train’s impending appointment became open knowledge in Washington early last month after Nixon aides leaked the news in hope of offsetting Hickel’s extremely maladroit comments on utilizing natural resources rather than preserving them. In discussing Train’s Senate hearing for confirmation this week, Hickel said wryly: “I don’t think the hearings will last as long for him as they did for me.”

The Domestic Council On Demand

January 31, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The first of the Richard Nixon Legacy Forums, Domestic Policy Initiatives of the Nixon Years: Bringing Innovation and Progress to the American People is now available for viewers — free –  on demand:

Watch The Domestic Council Live On C-SPAN 3

January 24, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Update 11/26/2010, 9:11 pm PST: A permanent video of the Domestic Policy forum is now available at C-SPAN.org.

The first of a year-long series of Richard Nixon Legacy forums, The Domestic Policy Initiatives of the Nixon Years  is now on C-SPAN 3 and streaming live online at C-SPAN.org. It will air again at 4:35 pm and 10:35 pm PST, and tomorrow at 4:35 am PST.

President Nixon, Doctor Letton And The War On Cancer

January 21, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

The former President of the American Cancer Society, Dr. Alva Hamblin Letton died last week at the age of 93. He was present and gave remarks at President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act on December 23, 1971.

Dr. James Cavanaugh spoke about RN’s early efforts at health care reform at the Nixon Library earlier this month. His presentation was part of a panel of key White House officials who helped spearhead the President’s domestic policy initiatives, the first topic in a year long series of Richard Nixon Legacy Forums.

“I think for people who follow health issues, who follow health policy, who follow the history of healthcare programs in this country,” RN’s legacy “will be fairly good.” Cavanaugh said. “People who realistically look at what his program had look at it favorably.”

One of those people was Dr. Alva Hamblin Letton, who passed away last week at 93.

As President of the American Cancer Society, he was present at the White House on December 23, 1971 when RN signed the National Cancer Act.

Dr. Letton called the legislation “the greatest thing ever done by the United States,” and expressed his deepest appreciation that the President made the fight against cancer a national priority.

“That was an important piece of legislation because it established regional cancer centers,” current ACS CEO Dr. John Seffrin says, “In 1971, there were none; now there are more than 40, and Emory will have the first one in the state of Georgia.”

Here is the video of the signing followed by Dr. Letton’s remarks:

RN’s Domestic Council Stops By Yorba Linda

January 13, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Pictured left to right: The program featured Geoff Shepard on government re-organization, James Cavanaugh on health care reform, John Whitaker on environmental protection and Ambassador Richard Fairbanks on energy conservation.

In the first of year long series of Richard Nixon Legacy Forums, four distinguished members of RN’s Domestic Council were at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Friday, January 8th to discuss the President’s innovations on far reaching issues including health care reform, environmental protection, energy conservation and government organization.

Moderating the panel was Domestic Council Associate Geoff Shepard who spoke about government organization and the origins of the Domestic Council.

Shepard explained that the Domestic Council started in the Nixon White House as a counterpart to the National Security Council to provide the President with information and analysis before he implemented policy.

“The staff was housed in the Executive Office of the President and became professional assurors of a fair and balanced memo,” Shepard explained. Their “job was to review and prepare for the President the context of the issue.”

Discussing healthcare policy was Dr. James Cavanaugh, who served as the chief principal on RN’s proposal for healthcare overhaul in the early Seventies.

“That program if enacted would have fixed the problem.” Cavanaugh said. “The President was quite serious in his instruction he gave to Cap (Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Caspar Weinberger) and to me. What he wanted was a program that would meet the test – be public and private – cover the people that needed coverage, yes provide a mandate,” “but he wanted to do it in such a way that would pass the Congress.”

After meeting with union leaders, Senator Kennedy later stopped the plan in its tracks believing that he could attain a better deal for the Democratic Party, a decision he would later come to regret.

For Cavanaugh, the centerpiece of RN’s legacy in healthcare was the National Cancer Act of 1971, which the President of the National Cancer Society called a “wonderful Christmas present for the 52 million people who will develop cancer” and “probably the greatest thing ever been done by the United States.”

“I think for people who follow health issues, who follow health policy, who follow the history of healthcare programs in this country,” RN’s legacy “will be fairly good.” Cavanaugh said. “People who realistically look at what his program had look at it favorably.”

Discussing environmental protection was longtime RN associate and trained geologist Dr.  John Whitaker. In addition to serving on RN’s Domestic Council, Whitaker went on to become Undersecretary of the Interior in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations.

While Whitaker had the environmental portfolio on the Domestic Council, the environmental movement proclaimed the first observance of Earth Day. “He (RN) and Theodore Roosevelt were the two most famous presidents to deal with the environment. I would put him strictly in Roosevelt’s class if not ahead of him.” Whitaker said. “Nixon “institutionalized the environment,” if the “government comes out with a program that’s not pro environment it spikes right away again.”

Whitaker also helped spearhead RN’s Legacy of Parks program, an initiative that lead to the conversion of over 80,000 acres of government property to parks open to all Americans.

“He used to talk about how the poor kids in his neighborhood couldn’t get in the family car and drive to Yosemite or up to Yellowstone and how parks ‘needed to be near a people,’ Whitaker said, “the final result of what we did was to make many of the government agencies shed a lot of the land that they owned and make it into parks. “He created 600 and some parks that way including the Gateway to the East and West in New York City and San Francisco, two of the largest parks in the country.”

The final speaker in the panel was Ambassador Richard Fairbanks, who served in the Nixon White House as the Associate Director for energy, environmental and natural resources policy on the Domestic Council.

According to Fairbanks, before RN the words “energy policy” had never been spoken by a United States President, also marking the first time the issue had been talked about in a “cohesive manner” in terms of both its ‘domestic and international implications.”

Fairbanks – who went on to serve as the lead negotiator for Middle East peace during the Reagan Administration — also contends that RN’s policy as articulated in 1973 was groundbreaking in terms of its environmental understanding and its cost effectiveness, early thinking that lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Energy Policy which later became the Department of Energy.

“We put the bedrock in,” Fairbanks said. “The bedrock has stayed and people haven’t even thought of changing those bedrock ideas.”

The Great Compromiser

January 6, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Economic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

RN’s work mediating a steel workers strike was reported in the Los Angeles Times 50 years ago this week.

The quintessential Whig, legendary statesman, and long reigning House Speaker from Kentucky Henry Clay earned the title of “Great Compromiser” for his decades of bringing sparring parties to the table, but it can be said that RN achieved similar feats during his decades of public service, most notably his peace journey to China and the reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union in 1972.

But this Great Compromiser got started early on. As Larry Harnisch points out in the Los Angeles Times, while President Eisenhower was on a trip to South America in January 1960, Vice President Nixon was solving a nationwide steel strike,  a “Herculean chore” which the Times also called “the biggest domestic headache at that very moment.” Ever the pragmatist, RN was able to get big labor to assuage their work rule stand in return for a larger pay package from their employers:

RN’s Domestic Council Is Coming To Yorba Linda

December 30, 2009 by Geoff Shepard | Filed Under Domestic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The creation of the Domestic Council in 1970, roughly patterned after the National Security Council NSC), consolidated policy making on domestic issues into the Executive Office of the President.  Coupled with the transformation of the former Bureau of the Budget into the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), this formed the basis for the modern presidency.   Henceforth, policy making on all major issues would be done within the White House itself, with Cabinet Departments—while still having input—would be cast largely in the role of policy implementation.

The role of the Domestic Council staff, like that of the NSC, would be to assure the President himself was provided with appropriate background and analysis of major issues before being called upon to make any actual policy decisions—and before any implementation steps were taken.

How and why this came about during the Nixon Administration is the subject of the introductory panel on President Nixon’s Domestic Policy Initiatives, being held at the Nixon Library on Friday, January 8th from 1:30-3:30pm.  The program is a part of the oral history project undertaken by the Nixon Library and funded by the Nixon Foundation.

The program features four former Associate Directors of the Domestic Council (Jim Cavanaugh, Richard Fairbanks, myself and John Whitaker).  They will discuss the early organization of President Nixon’s Cabinet and White House staff, origins of OMB and the Domestic Council—along with early examples of policy making in the areas of Healthcare, Energy and the Environment.

These are excellent examples of the significance of the work of the Domestic Council and OMB, since the nation’s first energy crisis occurred in that era, as well as its awakening to a whole series of environmental challenges.  It also is generally conceded today that President Nixon’s proposals on healthcare, if implemented, would have resulted in far more timely and appropriate reform.

Subsequent panels will explore a range of President Nixon’s domestic initiatives in far greater detail.  These programs are designed as overviews for future researchers coming to the Nixon Library to take advantage of the forty-two million pages of Nixon Administration’s Presidential Papers that will be housed there this June.

Next Page »