"you seem to think that investing in green industries is a bad thing. Why would that be? Don't try to tell me you think making money is unethical!!!"

It is not but when the people promoting GW policy stand to benefit monetarily, it is known as a conflict of interest.

Standard #1: Bush the oil man=bad Cheney the oil man=bad

Standard #2: Gore the oil man=good

Gore Family's Ties to Oil Company Magnate Reap Big Rewards, and a Few Problems New York Times

CARTHAGE, Tenn.â€" On the third page of Vice President Al Gore's most recent financial disclosure report, after routine listings for his salary and the value of his house in Washington and his small farm here, is an unlikely entry -- $20,000 for leasing land for zinc mining.

Behind the yearly lease payment, which has earned Mr. Gore about $450,000 since 1974, is the story of a sweetheart land deal from long ago, and the ties between the vice president and his family and Armand Hammer and his oil company, Occidental Petroleum.

While the origins of that relationship lie in these rolling hills of middle Tennessee and date back half a century, it has continued to bring both benefits and scrutiny for Mr. Gore as he has moved through Congress to the White House and finally toward his party's presidential nomination.

For instance, Occidental gave $50,000 to the Democratic Party for the 1996 campaign after a telephone solicitation by Mr. Gore from his White House office and another $100,000 after its chief executive, Ray Irani, spent two nights in the Lincoln Bedroom in 1996.

More recently, Occidental stock in the estate of Mr. Gore's father has made the vice president a target for environmental groups. They have demonstrated at about 30 Gore rallies, opposing the oil company's plans to drill on land in Colombia that Indians contend is theirs.

The broad outlines of the Gore-Hammer-Occidental connection have been reported at various points in the vice president's career, with bits and pieces of it published in books and articles over the years. Mr. Gore's father, Albert Gore Sr., even described the ties in a memorandum for the Clinton campaign when aides were checking his son's background before picking him as the running mate in 1992.

Now, as the pasts and legacies of both Mr. Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas come under scrutiny in a new presidential campaign, the relationship of the Gore family with Mr. Hammer is once again drawing attention.

Essentially, Mr. Hammer sold the farmland to the elder Mr. Gore, then Mr. Gore turned around and sold it to his son, who was then a newspaper reporter in Nashville.

On Tuesday, Mr. Gore said in Nashville that there had been nothing improper about his family's relationship with Occidental and that the company's mineral lease on the farmland had been the result of a free market negotiation.

Officials with Mr. Gore's campaign and his White House office do not dispute the basic elements of the land deal. They also said that there had been nothing wrong with the transaction or with Mr. Gore's subsequent dealings with Occidental and Mr. Hammer, who died in 1990. The aides said the roots of the deal and the relationship were in the friendship between Mr. Gore's father, who died in 1998, and Mr. Hammer.

The elder Mr. Gore was a member of the House and Mr. Hammer was a wealthy businessman when they met in the 1940's at a livestock auction near the Gore family farm here, about 50 miles east of Nashville. Eventually the two men entered into a partnership raising and selling cattle, but that was only the start of a connection that lasted until Mr. Hammer's death.

Over the years, Mr. Hammer would become a legendary tycoon, courting politicians and leaders worldwide and operating many businesses. His close ties with the Soviet Union, where he had run a family company for nine years as a young man, and his freewheeling ethics brought him brushes with the law. In 1976, he was convicted of illegally contributing $54,000 to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign, though he was later pardoned. Along the way, Mr. Hammer helped make the elder Mr. Gore a wealthy man, and the politician became one of the oilman's most valued allies in Washington.

When J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., wanted to prosecute Mr. Hammer on suspicion of being an agent of the Soviet Union in the early 1960's, Mr. Gore Sr. defended him on the Senate floor. Mr. Hammer was not charged.

Letters in the elder Mr. Gore's papers, which are in an archive at Middle Tennessee State University, show that he provided many other favors to Mr. Hammer. For instance, he intervened with the Defense Department when Mr. Hammer's son, Julian, was having trouble getting a security clearance because of legal problems, and he persuaded the F.B.I. to let an agent testify on behalf of Mr. Hammer's company in a civil trial, according to the letters.....

Occidental entered the chemical business with the acquisition of Hooker Chemicals in 1968, 26 years after the contamination at Love Canal