FootnoteTV® : The West Wing : The Portland Trip

By Stephen Lee
"Elevate[s] TV from mere boob tube to a source of thoughtful discussion" - Yahoo!
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West Wing : Season 2

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The Portland Trip

Issues: hiring more teachers, Iraqi oil embargo, Log Cabin Republicans, same-sex marriages

Sam and Toby try to strengthen an education speech Bartlet is giving the next day and consider Charlie's proposal to hire more teachers (1). Bartlet and Leo deal with an oil tanker that may be carrying Iraqi oil in violation of the embargo (2). Josh talks with a gay Republican congressman (3) about a bill that would ban the recognition of same-sex marriages (4).

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Teachers and Classroom Size (last updated January 1, 2002)

There were about 2.9 million public-school teachers and other adults in the United States in 1999, or about one adult per 16.2 students. This number includes all adults in a school, such as administrators and counselors, so is not always reflective of actual classroom size. The number of public-school teachers in the United States has steadily increased, while the number of students has decreased, so the ratio of students per teacher has decreased steadily over the past few decades.

Classroom size has arisen as another measure of school effectiveness. In 1999, President Clinton proposed hiring 100,000 new teachers to help reduce classroom sizes at the kindergarten through grade 3 levels to 18 students per classroom. Such reduction would arguably ensure the development of stronger reading skills through more individualized attention to students and less teacher time spent on managing large classrooms.

A study in 1993-94 found that nationally there were about 24.1 students per class in public elementary schools, and about 23.6 students per class in public secondary schools. That year, California had the highest number of students per classroom at both the elementary and secondary levels: 29.3 and 29.7, respectively. South Dakota had the lowest number of elementary students per classroom (19.2) and Maine had the lowest number of secondary students per classroom (18.5).

In 1998, about 20 percent of the country's kindergarteners were in classes with 15 or fewer students. The average class size was 20 in public schools, and 18 in private schools.

In FY 1999, as part of Clinton's Class-Size Reduction Program, Congress provided $1.2 billion to hire more teachers. The Department of Education estimated that local school districts were able to hire more than 29,000 new teachers, with most placed in first grade. Congress provided another $1.4 billion in FY 2000. Initial estimates for the program were that it would cost $7.3 billion over five years, or $12 billion over seven.

As part of President George W. Bush's education policy, "No Child Left Behind," the Class-Size Reduction Program will be discontinued and funds instead made available in development grants which schools and state districts can use at their own discretion.

Sources: Data on number of teachers from 1955 to 1999 and on classroom size in 1993-94 taken from tables 65 and 69 of Digest of Education Statistics 2000, available via the Department of Education's page here. U.S. Department of Education Class-Size Reduction Program, available on-line here. President George W. Bush, No Child Left Behind, available via the Department of Education's page here.

Iraq oil exports, legal and otherwise (Last updated: 7/4/01)

Since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq has been under some kind of international sanctions preventing it from freely exporting oil. Iraq has more than 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest supply in the world behind Saudi Arabia.

Under the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to sell specified dollar amounts of crude oil, with the revenue allocated to purchasing humanitarian supplies for distribution in Iraq; some money also goes to compensate Gulf War victims, cover pipeline transit fees, and fund the UN's efforts to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The oil-for-food program was implemented in 1995 and has been renewed about every six months. As of October 1999, Iraq was allowed to sell $8.3 billion of oil within a six-month period.

Still, because the distribution of this revenue is controlled by the United Nations, and not by Iraq itself, and with higher oil prices creating more incentives for sidestepping the overall embargo, smuggling has been increasing. Illicit oil exports averaged about 50,000 barrels a day in 1998 and was about 100,000 barrels a day by February 2000. This amount brings in millions of dollars a month, but still accounts for less than five percent of overall Iraqi oil exports.

The US-led Maritime Interdiction Force, created in 1990, monitors ships in the Persian Gulf to prevent oil smuggling. As of a State Department briefing in February 2000, the MIF has queried more than 28,000 vessels by radio, boarded more than 12,000, and diverted 700 for violating UN sanctions during its ten-year existence. Still, Vice Admiral Charles Moore, commander of the international force and commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet, said in April 2000 that the MIF stops only three to five percent of smugglers.

Under United Nations Security Council Resolution 665, ships smuggling Iraqi oil can be diverted to a Gulf port to have its oil unloaded and sold, with the proceeds going to the United Nations. Crews are usually repatriated home with no penalties. Because the main penalty is confiscation of the vessels, vessels are not of high quality and are at high risk for oil spills.

Sources: State Department reports, such as James Foley's February 3, 2000 briefing, available on-line here. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration December 1999 report on Iraq, available on-line here. Statement of General Tommy R. Franks, commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, before Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19, 2000.

Log Cabin Republicans (last updated August 2001)

Founded in the late 1970s to battle the nation's first anti-gay ballot measure, the Log Cabin Republicans are a group of gay conservatives that has grown in numbers and prominence in recent years. Believing in core Republican ideologies such as free markets and national defense, Log Cabin tries to change the Republican party's position on homosexuality from within and also aims to move gay politics away from the Democratic Party, which some feel has taken gay votes for granted.

The Log Cabin Republicans were founded in 1978 in opposition to a California state referendum that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools and allowed schools to fire any employee for "advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting" homosexuality. Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, who would begin running for president soon after, declared his opposition to the proposition, and California state voters ultimately rejected the proposition with a 58 percent vote. The Log Cabin Republicans then formed chapters around the country and, motivated and threatened by Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention about a coming cultural war, moved to the national level by opening an office in Washington DC in 1993.

Still, Log Cabin gained its first widespread attention during the 1995 presidential primary campaign when a Bob Dole's campaign publicly returned a $1,000 donation by the LCR. When asked about the check by reporters, Dole campaign manager Scott Reed publicly stated in August 1995 that the Dole campaign would return the donation and that the campaign was in "100 percent disagreement with the agenda of Log Cabin Republicans."

Where did the check come from and why did it become such a big deal?

In his 1999 autobiography, Log Cabin Republicans national chairman Richard Tafel says that the check was a donation in connection to Tafel's attendance at a Dole fundraiser two months earlier, that Dole's campaign had sought out the LCR's support and fundraising, and that Dole had earned the LCR's support through his defense of a bill reauthorizing AIDS funding through the Ryan White CARE Act from Jesse Helms' efforts to stop it.

As Bob Woodward reported in his 1996 book The Choice, however, Dole campaign manager Scott Reed felt that the Log Cabin Republicans had deliberately set up Dole's campaign for self-promotion. With Dole already facing tough competition in the Republican primary, Reed feared that Dole's more conservative opponents would use the Log Cabin Republicans' support against him and thus decided to pre-empt attacks by giving the $1,000 check back.

However the check was returned, Dole was criticized for seeming to pander too to the right and for an inconsistent policy as to whose money he would accept. Two months later, Dole himself said that he had not been consulted about the decision, did not approve of it, and would not have approved it had he known. According to Woodward's account, Dole also privately told people that he supported gay people's fight against discrimination.

And finally, the big question. As for the question how a gay person can be part of the Republican party, Richard Tafel, who was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1988, offers in his book an explanation to what he calls "the question I'm almost always asked."

"I didn't get involved in politics to be liked," Tafel writes. "I got involved because I believe in certain principles of individual rights, less government, and free markets - all traditionally Republican positions. I also hold certain values, and politics is the arena where our society battles for or against those values. I don't like the status quo within my party on gay issues, but I do have a vision of what can be, and I'm working for those changes." (Party Crasher, page 95)

Sources: Richard Tafel, Party Crasher: A gay republican challenges politics as usual (1999). Log Cabin Republicans website. Bob Woodward, The Choice (1996).

Same-sex marriages (last updated August 25, 2001)

The debate over same-sex marriages continues despite the federal Defense of Marriage Act that became law in 1996. The debate has moved from Hawaii to Vermont, where the state legislature passed a law approving same-sex civil unions - equivalent legally to marriages though under a different name - in April 2000, and same-sex couples started getting licenses on July 1, 2000. Whether these unions will be accepted by other states will probably be fought out in courts.

Vermont, however, is very much the exception to the nation as a whole. Since 1995, 36 states have passed laws or constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriages, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The same-sex marriage debate first caught the nation's attention in Hawaii in December 1990, when three same-sex couples were denied marriage licenses from the state's department of health because Hawaii's marriage statute referred specifically to a man and a woman. The couples then sued on equal-protection grounds. In 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the state's equal-protection clause was "more elaborate" than the U.S. Constitution's, and it ordered a trial as to whether the state could justify limiting marriage to male-female couples.

This decision sparked a backlash wave of legislation around the country long before the ordered trial took place. In 1996, the federal Defense of Marriage Act prohibiting federal recognition of same-sex marriages was signed by President Clinton and became law. States enacted similar legislation; 15 states did so in 1996 alone, and 36 states have done so as of 2000.

The Hawaii trial took place in September 1996 and Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ruled in December 1996 that the state did not meet its burden of proof and that the Hawaii marriage statute was unconstitutional. However, the judge stayed the ruling until the issue was definitively resolved on appeal by the Hawaii Supreme Court once again. The issue subsequently was made moot by a state-constitution amendment in 1998; Hawaii no longer recognizes same-sex marriages at all.

The battleground shifted to Vermont in 1999, when the state Supreme Court held that its state constitution entitled same-sex couples to the same benefits and protections as male-female marriages and that the state legislature had to enact some kind of legislation authorizing such treatment.

"Whether this ultimately takes the form of inclusion within the marriage laws themselves or a parallel 'domestic partnership' system or some equivalent statutory alternative, rests with the Legislature. Whatever system is chosen, however, must conform with the constitutional imperative to afford all Vermonters the common benefit, protection, and security of the law," Chief Judge Amestory wrote.

The state legislature complied with a law authorizing "civil unions" in April 2000, effective July 1, 2000. In the law's first year, the state has recorded 2,479 civil unions, with about 80 percent of them between out-of-state residents or foreigners. Lesbian couples have outnumbered men by about two to one.