Bad Moon Rising
Oliver Babbish, the new White House counsel, grills the President on whether anyone ever lied under oath about his medical condition, while Charlie discovers the one time that the First Lady once signed a family medical history form which did not disclose Bartlet's MS (1). Josh tries to convince Congress to back a bailout of Mexico (2) and tries to convince Donna that doing so is actually a good idea. Sam, who once as a lawyer once designed a liability shield for an oil company, considers violating attorney-client privilege once an oil tanker spills off the New England coast, releasing at least 720,000 gallons of oil (3). CJ tries to find the leak who said that Bartlet was reconsidering his position on school vouchers (4), while Toby worries about what's going to happen when Bartlet's health gets out.
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No duty to disclose (last updated: May 6, 2001) (back to top)
Is it a crime for a president or presidential candidate not to disclose everything about his health?
No.
President and presidential candidates do not have to disclose their medical records for public review and are not subjected to any official, independent medical review of their ability to serve in office. This has been a sticking point for many, including a committee of medical experts and former White House doctors that recommended in 1996 formal procedures for independent review of a president's ability to serve.
Even without these formal mechanisms, politics and modern media have led to the disclosure of many candidates' health problems. Concerns over his age led Ronald Reagan to say in 1980 that he would have his doctors check him for mental impairment and that he would resign if he became senile. Presidential candidate Bob Dole took that vow a step further in 1996 when he said he would submit to an independent medical review of his health and ability to serve, a move that the much younger Bill Clinton did not match.
Still, many have not released their medical records and have not subjected themselves to independent review. Bill Clinton did not in 1992, and George W. Bush apparently did not either in 2000. Both allowed at least one of their doctors to be interviewed.
Even worse, some candidates have obfuscated, if not covered up, their health condition. Paul Tsongas did not disclose the recurrence of his cancer in the 1992 presidential primaries. President John F. Kennedy covered up his Addison's disease even when asked specifically about it.
But even though there is no legal duty to disclose one's medical condition, the failure to do so could constitute a crime if a president or presidential candidate was ever specifically obligated to reveal it, such as if he was ever asked under oath if he knew of any medical condition that could affect his ability to serve.
And, as a review of impeachment procedures indicates, there is nothing in the Constitution or precedent to prevent Congress from impeaching and removing a president for such a non-disclosure.
Sources: "Committee offers rules for the transfer of presidential power," Associated Press, December 3, 1996. "Dole backs idea of independent health check," by Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, July 22, 1996.
Mexico bail-outs (last updated: May 6, 2001) (back to top)
The shakedown in the global economy that spread throughout the developing world in the late 1990s began in Mexico in late 1994 and led to direct United States intervention in early 1995.
As part of an economic stabilization program begun in 1987, Mexico began to limit the peso's movements against the United States dollar. Mexico fixed the peso's exchange rate in 1987, allowed to float in a limited range in 1989, and expanded the range in 1991 and slightly more each year afterwards. To hold an exchange rate constant, a country's central bank must be willing to buy and sell currencies at the fixed rate with private actors in the foreign exchange market; this financing of private capital outflow takes dollar reserves.
In early 1994, with a slowing economy and the assassination of a presidential candidate, foreign investors started having doubts about Mexico's ability to maintain the exchange rate and began fleeing the peso to invest in other countries. Mexico raised interest rates, allowed some currency movement, and substituted short-term debts in foreign currency for debt in local currency, but still had to tap into dollar reserves. The reserves fell from around $25 billion to about $17 billion from February to April, and then fell even more in November and December with another political assassination and the inauguration of a new president. Another factor explaining the foreign-reserve leakage was the government's continued extension of credit to unregulated banks already experiencing loan losses.
Finally, Mexico devalued the peso and allowed it to float against the US dollar on December 20, 1994. The peso began to fall in value even faster and within weeks, it had dropped 35 percent in value.
Concerned about the effect on United States jobs and on national security, President Bill Clinton moved on January 11 to increase its aid package for Mexico, increasing the already $9 billion line of credit and giving it longer to repay the money. Modeled after a Bush administration plan to offer $10 billion in credit for Israel to fund refugee housing, the initial plan called for Mexico to pay a fee similar to an insurance premium in return for the United States taking the risk of guaranteeing Mexico's debts. This $40 billion plan faced problems because it was seen as helping Wall Street investors rather than saving United States jobs dependent on trade with Mexico and was seen widely as dead.
Then, on January 31, Clinton abandoned his efforts to get Congress to approve $40 billion in loan guarantees. Instead, he would use his own emergency authority to offer a combination of loans and loan guarantees effectively providing $20 billion over three to five years to help restructure Mexico's debt. He also secured more loans from the International Monetary Fund ($17.8 billion), the Bank for International Settlements ($10 billion), and commercial banks ($3 billion) so that altogether Mexico would have a total of $50 billion in standby credit available. As collateral to the United States, Mexico agreed to put up $7 billion in annual oil earnings. The move was praised by both Democrats and Republicans.
In response, Mexico agreed on March 9, 1995 to institute a rescue plan that changed fiscal policy, strengthened the banking system, and effectively gave the Untied States veto power over Mexico's economy policy for years to come. These reforms have helped Mexico expand its economy and increase its reserves once again.
By October 1995, nine months after the peso crisis reached its lowest point, Mexico announced that it had recovered enough to repay ahead of schedule $700 million of the $12.5 billion borrowed from the United States. By 2000, Mexico had fully reimbursed the United States and the IMF for its loans.
Mexico's was just the first of several devaluation crises in the late 1990s. Thailand devalued its baht on July 2, 1997, sparking a financial crisis that quickly spread to other Asian countries such as South Korea and Indonesia. Investors then became more skeptical of other emerging markets, causing problems for Russia and Brazil.
During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush was critical of the Clinton administration for bailing out countries facing such economic crises. Now in power, the Bush administration has supported the International Monetary Fund's efforts to extend billions of dollars more in stand-by credit to Turkey and Argentina in early 2001, though it rejected offering direct aid as Clinton had done with Mexico.
Sources: Paul R. Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory and Policy (Fifth Edition) (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. The International Monetary Fund is on-line here.
Oil spills (last updated May 6, 2001) (back to top)
There are thousands of oil spill incidents a year in the United States, and many more in the rest of the world. Most spills are small and involve the release of less than 7 tonnes of oil.
There were about 7.3 large oil spills a year for the 1990s, according to the International Tankers Owners Pollution Federation (which defines large as more than 700 tonnes). By comparison, there were 8.8 large spills annually in the 1980s and 24.1 large spills a year in the 1970s. The number of medium-sized spills (between 7 and 700 tonnes) has also declined since the 1970s.
The Exxon Valdez incident, which was the largest and most notable spill in US history, occurred on March 28, 1989. The Valdez released more than 11 million gallons of oil (it held a total of 54 million gallons at the time), causing massive damage to the Prince William Sound. In 1991, Exxon agreed to pay $900 million to the United States and Alaska governments in 10 annual payments. In 1994, a jury ordered Exxon to pay $5 billion in punitive damages, but the company has tied that award up in appeals and has paid none so far.
The Valdez incident, along with a 1988 inland incident by the Ashland Oil Company that contaminated the water supply around western Pennsylvania, led to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The OPA 90 expanded liability for responsible parties so they must pay not only federal cleanup costs, but costs and damages incurred by local governments and private parties, and it set fines for oil discharges. The act also expanded spill prevention and preparation measures, and funded research.
As bad as the Valdez incident was, the ITOPF notes that it was only the 34th largest oil spill of all time. Six of the worst 20 oil spills of all time have occurred since the Exxon Valdez off the coasts of European and African countries; the second-worst spill of all time occurred in 1991 off the coast of Angola and involved the release of seven times as much oil as was released by the Valdez.
Sources: International Tankers Owners Pollution Foundation (www.itopf.com/stats.html). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Oil Spill Program Update, Volume 3 Number 5 (OPA 90 tenth anniversary special edition). EPA Office of Emergency and Remedial Response.
School vouchers (last updated: January 5, 2002) (back to top)
In general, under school voucher programs, students who are either low-income or at low-performing schools are given state funds to subsidize their transfer to private schools or to supplement their public education. Proponents say that vouchers give poor students the same choices and opportunities that wealthier students have always had, and that the resulting competition will force moribund schools to improve.
Currently, vouchers are available only on a limited basis. President George Bush's educational plan would make vouchers available nationwide, making Title I funds available as vouchers for students at schools that fail to improve disadvantaged students' scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) tests for three consecutive years.
Critics, on the other hand, say that vouchers take money and the brightest students away from underfunded public schools, thus dooming those students left behind. Critics also say that vouchers effectively fund religious institutions, since the vast majority of private schools that are prepared to accept students with vouchers are religious schools, primarily Roman Catholic; this argument is generally what critics have argued in court and why some voucher programs have been declared unconstitutional.
Politically, vouchers are very much in the air. President Bush supports them in some form (Gore opposed them in any form), and polls do show growing support especially among minorities. On the other hand, Michigan and California voters rejected referenda allowing for vouchers 3-1 in November 2000.
Legally, states and the federal government generally can direct education funds as vouchers (though some courts have ruled that individual state constitutions require the direct funding of public education). The only legal argument that can prevent voucher programs is one based on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Religious schools, at least for now, comprise most of the institutions ready and willing to accept students with vouchers, which means that state money for vouchers goes and would go predominantly to religious institutions. Too much intermingling of church and state violates the Constitution's Establishment Clause; proponents and critics differ on what too much means.
There are currently four major voucher programs, three public ones (Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida) and one conducted by the Children's Scholarship Fund, a private group. Many states are considering others.
Milwaukee, Cleveland, and the CSF are geared towards low-income families, while Florida targets students in low-performing schools. Milwaukee, Cleveland and the CSF cap the number of participants (Milwaukee to 15% of the student population, Cleveland and the CSF by funding limits) and use lotteries to decide who gets vouchers; Florida would take everyone who qualified.
- Milwaukee: The oldest voucher program, Milwaukee's began in 1990 and has survived several constitutional challenges thus far. The program started small in the 1990-91 school year, with about 300 students at six private schools receiving $2,446 each, for a total funding of $733,800. By 1999-2000, there were about 7,600 students participating at about 90 schools, receiving $5,106 each, for a total funding of $38.9 million. For the 2000-01 school year, the program provided vouchers (maximum $5,326) to 9,600 students at about 100 schools. It is geared towards low-income families, caps the number of participants, and uses lotteries to decide who gets vouchers.
- Cleveland: In 1995, the state legislature enacted a pilot scholarship program that was then struck down by the Ohio Supreme Court because the legislation violated a procedural rule in the state's constitution, not the Establishment Clause. In 1999, the program was reenacted in all pertinent respects and 3,671 students enrolled in the program for the 1999-2000 school year. Cleveland provided vouchers (maximum $2,500) to these students, but Federal District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. ruled in December 1999 that the program violated the Establishment Clause because so few secular schools were participating in the program that parents "cannot make a genuine, independent choice of what school to attend" and are effectively forced to participate in a religious institution. In the 1999-2000 school year, 46 of the 56 private schools participating were church-affiliated. This ruling was upheld 2-1 at the appellate level on December 11, 2000, but the United States Supreme Court agreed on September 25, 2001 to hear the case. It will hear oral arguments on February 20, 2002.
Florida: In 1999, Florida instituted the Opportunity Scholarship Program (the nation's first statewide educational voucher program) as part of its A+ Plan for Education. Under the program, the state will grade public schools each year. If a school receives a "F" for two consecutive years, students there will receive vouchers - what the plan calls "opportunity scholarships" - to transfer to a better public school or a private school. The state's program started off small in 1999-2000, with 53 students receiving about $3,400 each. A state judge then ruled in March 2000 that the program violated the state constitution because Florida was required under its own constitution to provide a public education directly, and not through intermediaries such as vouchers; this ruling was reversed by an appellate court in October 2000. In any case, no additional vouchers have been made necessary for the 2000-01 or 2001-02 school years since none of the 78 schools failing in 1999 received a consecutive second F grade.
Children's Scholarship Fund: Funded largely by a Wall Street investor, Theodore J. Forstmann, the CSF provides smaller sums of about $1,000 per student to about 40,00 students around the country. It has clearly tapped into something: 1.25 million children applied for those slots, or more than 30 times the number of open spots.
Since 1970, about 10 to 12 percent of elementary and secondary students are in private schools, with 11.3 percent in 1999. As of 1994, most students in private schools attended religious schools, predominantly Roman Catholic (55 percent) or Lutheran (31 percent). Private-school students at non-affiliated schools accounted for only 14 percent of such students. Roman Catholic schools accounted for 35 percent of all private schools, and other religious schools another 47 percent; non-affiliated schools accounted for 18 percent of all such schools.
Sources: The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is available on-line here. Florida's Opportunity Scholarship Program is on-line here. Regarding Cleveland, the district court's December 20, 1999 ruling is published at 72 F.Supp.2d 834, and the appellate court's December 11, 2000 ruling is available via Findlaw.com. The Children's Scholarship Fund is available on-line here. Jodi Wilgoren, School Vouchers: a rose by other name?, New York Times, December 20, 2000. The Black Alliance for Educational Options runs a school-choice information clearinghouse, available here. General information about private schools is taken from the Department of Education's "Progress of Education in the United States of America - 1990 through 1994" report, available here.
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