What’s interesting is that Nixon, compared to today’s standards, is actually left in terms of many of his enacted policies on the environmnet and workers’ rights than the Democratic Party today.

Since signing the Geneva Accord and the UN Charter all of the US warring, across the two Parties and administrations are illegal, and most certainly immoral. These are all high crimes. We’ve not declared a war since WWII, and yet POTUS are allowed total impunity in spite of the Federal as well as international law breaking including crimes against humanity.

Our impeachment proceedings in the early 70s seem an anomoly given what presdents of both Parties have been allowed to get away with.

Dick Cheney was on Nixon’s staff at the time. That’s where he learned his dirty tricks. Watergate and the impeachment of Nixon was the result of a still functioning democracy in America saying no to all of this. The change in the country over 30 years is noticeable in the failure to impeach Bush for similar crimes.

This allowed coverage of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and of reporting of Nixon’s crimes that is not allowed today. In those days, the ‘news’ organizations had more freedom to decide what would be important ‘news’ to the citizens and report it.

It was also a time whe Congress still had some power relative to the President. In today’s money-driven politics, the people who have the power to back a Presidential candidate with $600 million in ‘contributions’ also have the power to support or destroy any congressperson. Money now rules, where that wasn’t true in the 60′s. Its much harder today for a congressperson with principles to stand by them and then count on the voters in the district to support them for that. Especially when you factor in the above point that the media is no longer an independent source of news but instead a corporate mouthpiece. A congressperson that tries to stand up to power the way Congress did to Nixon would not only face a set of well-financed primary and general election challenges, but also a media that would distort their views and make it very hard for such a congress person to get their own views about why they did this out to the voting public.

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by: Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian UK

A surface mining operation in a Colorado portion of the Green River Formation. (Photo: Ray Ng / Time Life Pictures / Getty Images)
Oil shale mining in Rocky Mountains gets go-ahead. “Midnight regulations” to dismantle safeguards.

Washington – George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America’s wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January.

With barely 60 days to go until Bush hands over to Barack Obama, his White House is working methodically to weaken or reverse an array of regulations that protect America’s wilderness from logging or mining operations, and compel factory farms to clean up dangerous waste.

In the latest such move this week, Bush opened up some 800,000 hectares (2m acres) of land in Rocky Mountain states for the development of oil shale, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The law goes into effect on January 17, three days before Obama takes office.

Think Frank

WASHINGTON, Nov 24, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Chevron has hired a “scientist” affiliated with a think tank dedicated to denying the threat of global warming while it spends tens of millions of dollars on a national advertising campaign to promote a “green” image.
The Chevron consultant, Douglas Southgate, is actually an “environmental economist” affiliated with a think tank called the Heartland Institute. Based in Chicago, Heartland promotes the idea that there is a “debate” about global warming despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for it. The Institute also creates research that downplays the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Contributions to the Heartland Institute have flowed from the likes of Exxon, Phillip Morris, and the ultraconservative Scaife Foundation. The Institute stopped disclosing its funders in 2006 after it came under attack for producing tailor-made research in support of its industry supporters.
The disclosure of Southgate’s affiliation is bound to raise even more questions about Chevron’s commitment to green policies, which observers say has fallen significantly behind its industry rivals. Unlike industry peers Shell and BP, Chevron has no significant human rights policy for countries where it operates and currently faces numerous environmental problems around the globe — including a potential $16.3 billion liability for toxic dumping in Ecuador’s Amazon.
Southgate recently was quoted in news reports defending Chevron’s practices in Ecuador, which included the dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into Amazon waterways and the abandonment of more than 900 waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor. The indigenous groups in Chevron’s former concession area have seen their populations decimated and ancestral lands plagued by the toxic contamination.
Amazonian communities have long charged that Chevron has fabricated “junk science” to cover up the fact thousands of soil samples produced in the Ecuador trial demonstrate life-threatening levels of contamination. An independent, court-appointed expert who reviewed 54,000 chemical sampling results recently found that 100% of Chevron’s former well sites are contaminated with illegal levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons.
Chevron has tried to paper over its problems by spending millions to tout the company’s new “human energy” slogan.
“Chevron’s so-called ‘green’ advertising campaign is a fraud when compared to the company’s environmental record in the Amazon,” said Pablo Fajardo, an Ecuadorian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner who leads the Ecuador case.
“Chevron is paying academics to distort research to hide a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe in Ecuador,” said Fajardo. “Their advertising budget would be better spent on solving real problems.”
Southgate is just one of the discredited experts employed by Chevron. Other questionable Chevron “scientists” on the Ecuador case include Ralph Marquez, a former chief lobbyist for the chemical industry in Texas, and Sara McMillen, a Chevron scientist who speaks to the media about toxicological issues without having a degree in the subject.
About the Amazon Defense Coalition
The Amazon Defense Coalition represents dozens of rainforest communities and five indigenous groups that inhabit Ecuador’s Northern Amazon region. The mission of the Coalition is to protect the environment and secure social justice through grass roots organizing, political advocacy, and litigation.
SOURCE: Amazon Defense Coalition

He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother and that money as the indigenous groups in Chevron’s former concession area have seen their populations decimated and ancestral lands plagued by the toxic contamination and of course Chevron and Exxon and on and on have decided to sell all the fossil fuels they can and good luck kids have a nice life.

This “green-washing” is the coopting of progressive initiatives, and undermining them through heavy doses of marketing (kinda like the way Obama became president) so that the world’s major polluters claim the thrown of ECO-friendly Capitalism. Like the uber-neoliberal Tommy Friedman who grabs onto eco-sustainability to turn it into the NEXT BIG Globalized THING.

It is the ultimate cynicism. Orwellian in the truest sense, it turn all the evil into a pleasant field of lillies. It is Amerikan imperial capitalism unbound.

Or a Disney film about “saving the environment”.

Frank who is Frank? That would be us. I sure hope that some of you out there are trying to get a few million people in front of the halls of power as so far from this new guy doesn’t look good. We could all change are name to Frank, think Frank. Yes a few million yell Frank at the same time. Do you think we could get an echo down those halls? “Think Frank”. $300 billion to Citigroup, “Hallelujah”

Now color me crazy but “Think Frank” could just work as a start. Frank communication with the public is essential and as we all know that doesn’t happen because the Frank communication needs to be about the very people who are in control of the communication. Yes it has come to this. We all used to read that this could happen well it has. “Think Frank”.