Arizona’s Boon to Free Speech
In two consolidated cases on Monday, the Supreme Court will hear argument about an Arizona law that levels the playing field in state elections, by a public financing mechanism called triggered matching funds. These funds support, expand and promote political speech, carrying out a central purpose of the First Amendment.
The mechanism has the bipartisan support of business leaders as “a welcome increase in speech, not a limitation of speech.” It has the support of respected former state judges who know that this and similar public financing mechanisms are the best way to eliminate corruption from state judicial elections. It deserves the Supreme Court’s strong endorsement.
Arizona provides a set amount of money in initial public support for a campaign to candidates who opt into its financing system, depending on the type of election. If such a candidate faces a rival who has opted out, the state will match what the opponent raises in private donations, up to triple the initial amount. The amount raised in private donations triggers the matching funds.
Three years ago, the court struck down the “millionaires’ amendment” to the McCain-Feingold federal election law, which leveled the field in federal elections in a different way, by raising limits on contributions for candidates outspent by self-financed opponents. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. called it “an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises” free-speech rights. Translation: rich enough to spend his own money on a campaign.
This page found that wholly unpersuasive. The amendment added to the total amount of speech by making it easier for less-wealthy candidates to be heard. But with that precedent on the books, it is important to understand why it shouldn’t be applied in the Arizona cases. There is a fundamental difference between the millionaires’ amendment and the Arizona mechanism.
Because the amendment dealt with raising contribution limits, in theory it involved a prospect of more money from donors and more, not less, risk of political wrongdoing, like bribery; the amendment displeased the court in part because it didn’t combat corruption. The Arizona mechanism, by contrast, was designed to reduce both the risk and the appearance of corruption, which makes public financing appealing generally to the court and should make it appealing in these cases.
In addition, the court considers limits on contributions like those of the amendment as restrictions on speech. Rather than involving contribution limits, the Arizona mechanism involves public financing by the state. This difference is crucial. To the extent Justice Alito and others focus on the mechanism’s First Amendment implications, they should reach the heartening conclusion that more public financing means more political speech in a calibrated way that combats corruption.
Striking down the mechanism would reduce speech and undermine Arizona’s effort to rid itself of political corruption. It would provide new proof that the court is hostile to campaign finance laws without good reason.
A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin
The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state’s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors.
The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.
In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)
The party refuses to say why it wants the messages; Mr. Cronon believes it is hoping to find that he is supporting the recall of Republican state senators, which would be against university policy and which he denies. This is a clear attempt to punish a critic and make other academics think twice before using the freedom of the American university to conduct legitimate research.
Professors are not just ordinary state employees. As J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, noted in a similar case, state university faculty members are “employed professionally to test ideas and propose solutions, to deepen knowledge and refresh perspectives.” A political fishing expedition through a professor’s files would make it substantially harder to conduct research and communicate openly with colleagues. And it makes the Republican Party appear both vengeful and ridiculous.
The Shame of New York’s Group Homes
Nearly four decades ago, amid repeated scandals, New York State closed the huge state hospitals that essentially warehoused the developmentally disabled. Now, an investigation by The Times has shown that New York’s group homes for the disabled — thousands of widely dispersed, state-licensed residences that were intended to replace and mitigate the cruelty of the warehouses — have themselves gone to rot.
The system, as Danny Hakim reported, operates with little oversight and tolerates shocking abuses. Employees who sexually attack, beat, berate or neglect patients can do so with little risk of punishment. Crimes are not reported, accusations are ignored by senior officials, repeat abusers are shuffled from home to home. A web of union rules shields problem employees.
There were 13,000 allegations of abuse in group homes in 2009 alone, though fewer than 5 percent were referred to law enforcement. The state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities prefers to investigate such matters internally, even though, as The Times reported, it does not use standard evidence-gathering techniques and its investigators generally lack training.
The results speak for themselves. The Times reviewed 399 disciplinary cases involving 233 state workers accused since 2008 of serious offenses like physical abuse and neglect. Each case involved substantiated charges against a worker who had already been disciplined at least once. In one-quarter of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the workers were transferred to other homes. The state tried to fire 129. Against stiff resistance from the Civil Service Employees Association, it fired only 30.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already dismissed Max Chmura, who led the agency, and Jane Lynch, chief operating officer of the state’s Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities. There may be more dismissals and hearings. But the cleanup also has to be bottom-up, bringing not just better oversight but better employees.
Group homes cannot be havens for repeat offenders, and worker education and training must be improved. Caring for the disabled with autism and cerebral palsy is challenging work, requiring gentleness, strength and imagination. These are decent union jobs, but the state must ensure that qualified people fill them.
The answer is not a return to centralized control, to the disgraceful era of Willowbrook State School. The disabled deserve to live in surroundings as close as possible to those of normal family life. The answer lies in the state’s urgent obligation to protect those who cannot defend themselves.
Change in Yemen
There may have been a time when Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, could have maneuvered a more graceful departure from the office he has held for three decades. But he has lost his legitimacy and should go as quickly as possible. Continued instability is not good for Yemen or for the United States-led fight against Al Qaeda.
For nearly two months, Mr. Saleh weathered increasing pressure from youth-led demonstrations demanding his resignation and a more accountable and democratic system. The tide turned on March 18. At least 50 protesters were killed, apparently by snipers loyal to the regime.
Since then, a surprising number of high-level government officials, including military commanders and ambassadors, as well as tribal leaders, have joined the opposition. The most significant: Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, who this week directed his troops to protect the antigovernment demonstrators.
Protesters, so far, have rejected Mr. Saleh’s attempted concessions. They have little reason to trust him: He has long promised reforms and never delivered. Even now, he is sending mixed messages. On Thursday, he vowed to defend himself by “all possible means.” On Friday, he said he was ready to yield power but only if he could hand it over to what he termed “safe hands.”
Still, there is talk of a deal. In Yemen’s complex tribal culture, President Saleh, a survivor, may survive again. The Obama administration, using quiet diplomacy, at first tried to persuade him to respond peacefully and credibly to popular demands. Now with Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s patron, it should press him even harder to accept a quick and peaceful transfer of power to a caretaker government that broadly reflects Yemeni society. It would lay the ground for elections.
Yemen is a shaky state. It is running out of water and oil, and 43 percent of its people are impoverished. It is battling separatists in the south, insurgents in the north and — with Washington’s frequent participation — one of Al Qaeda’s strongest affiliates. A brutal civil war or a prolonged power vacuum will only make a bad situation even worse.
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