Stirred
The staff considers dropping Vice-President Hoynes on the ticket (1) in favor of Admiral Fitzwallace, a move that the staff believes would improve African-American voter turnout (2). At the same time, Sam and Hoynes make a compromise to promote Internet access among rural and minority communities (3). Bartlet responds to a possible act of terrorism involving a truck carrying radioactive waste (4). Charlie does his taxes (5), Toby keeps a Cabinet-level secretary in line, and Donna tries to get a presidential proclamation on behalf of a favorite teacher.
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Switching Running Mates (last updated March 30, 2002) (back to top)
Had Bartlet actually decided to drop his current vice-president in favor of a new running mate, that decision would have had some historical precedent. There have been four presidents who successfully returned to office with a different running mate after some kind of falling-out with their first vice-presidents, two who switched running mates but did not win re-election, and three who ran with different running mates after his vice-president died in office.
In addition, two vice-presidents have resigned from office. The first was John C. Calhoun, who resigned in 1832 after he failed to be re-nominated with Andrew Jackson, and the second was Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned in 1973 amidst controversy. Calhoun's office was left vacant for the duration of his term, and President Richard Nixon replaced Agnew with Gerald Ford.
The four presidents who successfully returned to office with a different running mate after some kind of falling-out with their first vice-presidents are:
- Thomas Jefferson (president from 1801 to 1809). Jefferson was first elected to office with Aaron Burr, though the electoral system at the time (electors got two votes, and the candidate with the most votes became president and the one with the second-highest number of votes would become vice-president) meant that the two candidates initially tied for president. Burr did not get along with Jefferson and declared his candidacy for New York governor before his term expired (he later went on to kill Alexander Hamilton in the famous 1804 duel and was tried for treason in 1807). Jefferson then was re-elected as president with George Clinton, a former New York governor.
- Andrew Jackson (president from 1829 to 1837). Jackson won the most electoral votes in the 1824 presidential election but not a majority, and he ultimately lost the election to John Quincy Adams when it went to the House of Representatives. John C. Calhoun, on the other hand, was clearly elected as vice-president since he was supported by both Jackson and Adams. Calhoun served as vice-president under Adams but then switched to run with Jackson in 1828, when Jackson did win the presidency. Calhoun thus served his second term as vice-president but resigned the office in 1832, after growing differences over slavery and due to Jackson's growing support for Martin Van Buren. Calhoun went on to become a senator, and Jackson served his second term as president with Van Buren as vice-president.
- Abraham Lincoln (president from 1861 to April 1865). Lincoln's first vice-president was Hannibal Hamlin, a strong antislavery politician from Maine. However, Lincoln felt that he needed a new running mate from a larger or border state to bolster the ticket in the 1864 election, and thus ran with Andrew Johnson, a pro-abolition former senator who stayed with the Union after pro-slavery Tennessee seceded. Johnson, who was a Democrat and not a Republican like Lincoln, took office after Lincoln was assassinated, was impeached over Reconstruction policies but not removed from office, and failed to be re-nominated as his party's presidential candidate.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (president from 1933 to April 1945). FDR served four terms in office and had three different vice-presidents. His first was John N. Garner, from Texas, who grew to oppose FDR's New Deal and even ran for his party's presidential nomination against FDR when FDR decided to run for a third term. Henry A. Wallace was FDR's second vice-president, having served previously as his secretary of agriculture. However, concerns about Wallace grew by the 1944 campaign, especially among a small group that believed FDR's ill health would mean that the vice-president would surely become president. FDR did not commit his support to Wallace, thus leaving the vice-presidential nomination to be decided at the Democratic National Convention, where it went to Missouri Senator Harry S Truman.
The two presidents who chose to run for a second term without the vice-president who served them in the first term, but who failed to win again, are:
- Martin Van Buren (president from 1837 to 1841). Van Buren's vice-president was Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky. However, Johnson became such a political liability (he even continued to run a tavern while vice-president), that when Van Buren ran for a second term, he ran without any running mate.
- Gerald Ford (president from 1974 to 1977). Ford's vice-president was Nelson A. Rockefeller, but ran for a second term with Bob Dole. Rockefeller was seen
The three presidents who ran with a different running mate after their vice-president died were James Madison (both his vice-presidents, George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry, died during his two terms from 1809 to 1817), Grover Cleveland (his first vice-president, Thomas A. Henricks, died during Cleveland's first term from 1885 to 1889; Cleveland then lost the presidency but regained it in the 1892 election), and William McKinley (his vice-president Garret A. Hobart died, and was replaced by Theodore Roosevelt).
Sources: Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency (Crown Publishers, 1992). David McCullough, Truman (Simon & Schuster, 1992).
Voter turnout (last updated December 13, 2001) (back to top)
Who votes? About 60 percent of men and women voted in the 1996 presidential elections. About 55 percent of whites, 50 percent of blacks, and 30 percent of Hispanics voted. About 30 percent of those aged 18-24 voted, while about 70 percent of those 65 or older did.
For more on elections, go here.
Sources: Data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, available here.
Internet Access (last updated April 3, 2002) (back to top)
Computer and Internet use by Americans have grown substantially in the past few years, with computer use increasing overall at 5.3 percent per year since 1997 and Internet use overall by about 20 percent since 1998, according to a report based on census data.
By September 2001, more than half the American population and more than half of all households were using the Internet from some location, and this increase was seen in all groups. That still leaves a large but shrinking segment of the population that was "unconnected," people who are generally of lower income, have low levels of overall education, and are of certain minority groups. There were about 122.4 million "unconnected" Americans as of September 2001, about 46.1 percent of the total population, down from 198.9 million in October 1997.
While about 60 percent of white and Asian-American people used the Internet as of September 2001, only 40 percent of blacks and 32 percent of Hispanics did, though all groups have shown increased use since 1997. Internet use also varies by education and family income level.
The following charts show how Internet use from any location has increased by race, income, and educational attainment. As for other common classifications, Internet use is about the same between men and women (53.9 and 53.8 percent, respectively, in September 2001), and between urban and rural households (54.2 and 52.9 percent, respectively, in September 2001).
Cost is a commonly cited factor for households that have never had the Internet at home or that have disconnected Internet access. According to a September 2001 survey, the largest specific reason that people gave for why they don't have the Internet at home was that it was too expensive. For the 3.3 percent of American households that had disconnected Internet access as of September 2001, the most common reasons for doing so were the cost (22 percent of households), not wanting the Internet (20 percent), and access elsewhere (11 percent). Other reasons included not having a computer (14 percent) and computer capabilities (11 percent).
Sources: A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, a February 2002 report by the National Telecommunication and Information Administration and the Economic and Statistics Administration, on-line here.
Transportation of Radioactive Waste (last updated April 3, 2002) (back to top)
For a 30-year period beginning around 1970, the government and industry groups have transported more than 10,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies in more than 2,700 shipments over more than 1.6 million miles. There have been a handful of accidents involving transport vehicles, but none has ever resulted in the release of any harmful amount of radioactive material.
Spent nuclear fuel is the byproduct of producing electricity from nuclear power. Nuclear fuel generally consists of small pellets of enriched uranium, which are packed into tubes that are then bundled together to form nuclear fuel assemblies. These assemblies are then placed inside a nuclear reactor where the nuclear fission process takes placed, which produces heat that is used to generate electricity.
Fuel assemblies are used for about 18 months before they no longer produce enough heat energy to sustain a nuclear reaction. But because they still emit radiation, such spent fuel assemblies must be isolated for thousands of years until the radiation decreases to acceptable levels found in nature.
Spent fuel assemblies are initially stored at the reactor site in specially treated water pools lined with concrete and steel; the water cools the spent fuel and shields workers from radiation. Assemblies are then sometimes stored in dry storage systems, such as casks made of heavy concrete or steel.
Around the United States, high-level radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel as well as waste from the production of nuclear weapons is currently stored in 131 temporary storage facilities in 39 states. In all, more than 161 million Americans reside within 75 miles of locations where waste is stored. If a proposed permanent facility is built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, waste would be transported there (for more on Yucca Mountain, go here).
Transportation of nuclear waste is strictly regulated, both as to how spent fuel is packed and how it is taken from one point to another.
As for packaging, spent nuclear fuel is shipped in containers or casks that shield and contain radioactivity and dissipate the heat. These casks are extremely durable; they must be able to withstand a free drop equivalent to hitting a hard surface at 120 miles per hour, a sharp puncture impact, a fire at 1475 degrees Fahrenheit, and immersion in deep water without a breach. A cask is pictured below:
As for transportation itself, the Department of Energy provides formal notification of the shipment of high-level radioactive materials to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation, and to the governors of all states through which the material is transported. All routes are surveyed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and are limited to specific interstate highways, and all shipments are tracked by the satellite-based automated system TRANSCOM and involve check-ins every two hours.
In addition, the Price-Anderson Act provides up to $9.43 billion to cover claims arising from accidents in which radioactive materials were released. The Department of Transportation also requires motor carriers to have at least $5 million in private insurance coverage that would be made available in the event of other accidents.
Spent nuclear fuel would be of little use to any terrorists who sought to build an explosive device since, by definition, the fissile activity in the fuel has depleted enough that it cannot provide the basis for a fissile explosion.
Even if the fuel assemblies were not spent, commercial reactors use low-enriched uranium, which is composed of only 3 to 5 percent uranium-235, the fissionable isotope used in nuclear reactors or weapons; the uranium from fuel assemblies would have to concentrated to more than 90 percent uranium-235 to be weapons-grade material. Any terrorist seeking to build a nuclear device thus would be better off targeting Russian stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, which US-Russian cooperative efforts are trying to reduce (for more, go here).
Nonetheless, terrorists could still accomplish other goals with an incident involving spent nuclear fuel, such as causing a radiological incident or embarrassing a government.
For information on South Carolina's June 2002 fight over the transportation of nuclear material, go here.
Sources: Information on the transportation of spent nuclear fuel is available through the Department of Energy here and through the Department of Energy's National Transportation Program here. Preventing Nuclear Terrorism (Lexington Books, 1987), particularly essays on the physical security of nuclear facilities by Herbert Dixon and nuclear violence by Robert K. Mullen.
Tax Rebate (last updated April 8, 2002) (back to top)
As part of the Bush tax cut enacted in June 2001, the federal government paid out $36 billion that summer and fall to about 85 million people as an advance refund on their 2001 income taxes. Such downpayments -- which were popularly referred to as "rebates" and which went up to $600 for couples, $500 for single parents, and $300 for other taxpayers -- were designed to help inspire consumer spending and thus help the U.S. economy out of recession.
Advance payments went to people who had paid sufficient income taxes in 2000, with the expectation that such persons would again pay enough income taxes in 2001 and thus be entitled to the rate reduction credit by year's end. For those people who did not already receive the credit for 2001, they could claim the credit on their individual income tax returns and thus get the benefit of it in their regular taxes (see line 47 on Form 1040).
Some economists have given some credit for the improving economy to the tax rebates, saying that it helped put money back into people's hands to do with as they would. The President's Council of Economic Advisers said in its February 2002 report that the tax rebates helped add "significant economic stimulus by boosting consumers' purchasing power during a period of sluggish economic activity." The Council also credited the tax rebates (which it referred to as a "downpayment" on the President's tax cut) with helping to increase real disposable income as well as the personal savings rate.
According to statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, gross domestic product, gross domestic purchases, and personal consumption expenditures (consumer spending on goods and services) all grew at increasingly slower rates over the three quarters of 2001, even though growth rates usually start slow but then increase over the course of the year. In the third quarter of 2001, GDP and gross domestic purchases even fell from the prior quarter. By the fourth quarter of 2001, however, GDP, gross domestic purchases and personal consumption expenditures all showed increasing growth rates again.
The Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the economy would still be rebounding without the Bush tax cut and the $300-600 advance repayment, but that it would be at slower rates than is now being seen. The following graph combines historical data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the Council's estimates of the economy had the Bush tax not been enacted, and the next graph shows the growth rate of personal consumption expenditures.
The federal government previously gave a tax rebate in 1975. Unlike the 2001 tax rebate, the 1975 rebate was inversely tied to income, so that lower-income households would receive $200 and higher-income households would receive $100. People receiving Social Security also received a $50 check as well. With a high inflation rate at the time, the timing of the rebates did mean that the rebate was worth more than it would be had it come months later. Critics differ on the effectiveness of the 1975 rebate. According to a New York Times account, studies show that Americans spent between one-quarter and one-third of their 1975 rebates.
For more on taxes, go here.
Sources: The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 is on-line via Congress's Thomas website, on-line here. The Economic Report of the President, published by the Council of Economic Advisers' Report, (February 15, 2002) is on-line here. Citizens for Tax Justice, 51 million taxpayers won't get full rebates from 2001 tax bill (June 1, 2001), on-line here. David Leonhardt, Rebate history doesn't repeat itself, New York Times, June 24, 2001. David Leonhardt, Putting a tax rebate to use; many are expected to save the money or pay their debts, New York Times, New York Times, June 5, 2001.
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