Friday, April 4, 2014 THE NEW MEXICAN
OPINIONS
The West’s oldest newspaper, founded 1849 Robin M. Martin Owner
COMMENTARY: DAHLIA LITHWICK
When money talks, people are silenced WASHINGTON ive years ago, when the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, polls showed that the American public — or at least a mere 80 percent of them — disapproved. Now of course public approval hardly matters when it comes to interpreting the First Amendment, but given that one of the important issues in the case was the empirical question of whether corporate free speech rights increased the chance of corruption or the appearance of corruption in electoral politics, the court might care at least a bit about what the public thinks constitutes corruption. Or why the public believed Citizens United opened the floodgates to future corruption. Or why it is that campaign finance reform once seemed to be a good idea with respect to fighting corruption in the first instance. Now, in a kind of ever-worsening judicial Groundhog Day of election reform, the Supreme Court has, with its decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, swept away concerns over “aggregate” campaign finance limits to candidates and party committees in federal elections, finding in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts — who wrote the plurality opinion for the court’s five conservatives — that the “aggregate limits do not further the permissible governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.” In other words, since bajillionaires should be able to give capped amounts to several candidates, they should be allowed to give capped amounts to many, many, many candidates, without raising the specter of corruption. Without even acknowledging that it is doing so, the Roberts Five has overturned 40 years of policy and case law, under an earnest plea about the rights of the beleaguered donors who simply want to spend $3.6 million on every election cycle. But the opinion also offers up such a supremely cramped notion of “corruption” as to rely almost exclusively on the quid pro quo bribery favored in the Gilded Age, wherein robber barons casually left fat sacks of cash around in exchange for political influence. Roberts honestly seems to
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Robert M. McKinney Owner, 1949-2001 Inez Russell Gomez Editorial Page Editor
Ray Rivera Editor
OUR VIEW
Dropout decrease reason to celebrate
R inhabit a world in which what really worries the average Joe about the current electoral regime is not that his voice is drowned out by that of Las Vegas, Nev., magnate Sheldon Adelson, but that he might be forced to spend his millions “at lower levels than others because he wants to support more candidates” or that he is too busy making billions of dollars at work to volunteer for a campaign, or that he has Jay Z and Beyoncé on standby to perform at a house party in the event that his billions are tied up elsewhere this week. Really, it’s weird. The man takes the Metro to work, and yet he handily dismisses what every human American knows to be true: That if dollars are speech, and billions are more speech, then billionaires who spend money don’t do so for the mere joy of making themselves heard, but because it offers them a return on their investment. We. All. Know. This. So how can the chief justice blithely assume the following: Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner “influence over or access to” elected officials or political parties. And since the chief can find
no evidence of silky burlap sacks lying around with the Koch brothers’ monogram on them, it must follow that there is no corruption — or appearance of corruption — afoot. Roberts spends a tremendous amount of time in his plurality opinion boxing with Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote a lengthy dissent in the case decrying the narrow view of corruption advanced by the majority in its efforts to end-run the aggregate limits. As Breyer puts it: The anti-corruption interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader, more important interest than the plurality acknowledges. It is an interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions. And it is an interest rooted in the Constitution and in the First Amendment itself. As though he is dealing with an idealistic child, Roberts picks apart Breyer’s analysis of “the public’s interest” in “collective speech.” He dismisses Breyer’s concern about the necessity to protect “collective speech” by suggesting that such a view will privilege “the will of the majority, and plainly can include laws that restrict free speech,” as though the primary interest in drowning out the 99 percent is about protecting unpopular speakers. He suggests that the system was already too easy to game in the first place, ignoring the Roberts court’s role in
creating that mess. That leaves three possibilities for the chief justice’s divorced-from-reality decision about the relationship between corruption, huge money and politics today: Either he thinks Americans really don’t see any connection. Or he doesn’t care what we see or believe. Or he really doesn’t think that candidates dialing for big dollars constitutes corruption. None of these alternatives is pretty. But I worry that the court has located itself so outside the orbit of the 99 percent that it simply doesn’t matter to the five conservatives in the majority that the American public knows perfectly well what bought government looks like and that Breyer is describing a level of cynicism that has already arrived. Worse still, I worry that it matters very little to them that we will stop voting, donating, participating, or caring about elections at all in light of this decision to silence us yet further. In which case McCutcheon is a self-fulfilling prophecy in exactly the way Breyer predicts: Money doesn’t just talk. It also eventually forces the public to understand that we don’t much matter. It silences. It already has. Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, where a longer version of this column appeared.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Newspaper support of local businesses needed
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am writing to express my deep disappointment in The New Mexican for, once again, failing to support the dedication of businesses in Santa Fe, the entities that generate the gross receipts taxes that fuel the Santa Fe economy. A wonderful testimony appeared in this paper, supporting the creativity of Deborah Madison. Indeed, we are so fortunate to have Madison as a leading light in our community. At the end of the article, however, readers were encouraged to order a copy of Madison’s most recent book from Amazon.com (“Fresh take on veggies,” April 2). Hello? Does anyone at the paper stop to think of how Madison’s local star gets burnished? Dorothy Massey and Mary Wolf of Collected Works Bookstore have showcased Madison and her books no
fewer than five times in recent memory. They keep a stock of the books of local authors at the ready, and are quick to reorder or handle special orders. In addition, I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen Collected Works’ ads in The New Mexican on a regular basis. It would be a great service to this community if the local paper gave support to the engine of the Santa Fe economy, the businesses that enrich our quality of life. Jill Heppenheimer
Santa Fe
Public access? I took the dog for a walk around Capshaw Middle School’s football field and was met by a security guard locking the parking lot gate. He informed me, nicely,
MAllArd FillMore
Section editor: Inez Russell Gomez, 986-3053, igomez@sfnewmexican.com, Twitter @inezrussell
that the grounds were “private property” and now closed because there had been “a dog incident.” Apparently someone had allegedly sicced a dog on a woman who was subsequently injured. Let me get this straight. Someone may have used a dog for an assault so grounds of a public school, supported with my tax dollars, are now off-limits? I have often thought the school should put up signs at the football field noting all dogs must be on leash (county regulation) and please pick up after dogs. Was this incident an excuse to close a public area to the dog-walking public? And since when is a public school after hours and activities, private property? This is wrong. J. Taub
Santa Fe
eforming a culture that accepts failure is seldom easy. But at Santa Fe Public Schools, we now can point to measurable success in keeping students in high school. Here’s what just happened. In the school year 2012-13, the dropout rate for Santa Fe’s schools decreased from 6 percent to 2.8 percent, according to district figures. That’s the lowest percentage in the past decade. The dropout rate — not to be confused with graduation rate, which counts students who graduate in four years with a regular diploma — measures the percentage of students in grades 7-12 who leave school each year. It doesn’t include students who transfer to a private school or other district. (Statewide, the dropout rate for 2012-13 was 4.7 percent; this year, at least, Santa Fe did better than the state average.) A decrease from 6 percent to 2.8 percent is a significant achievement. Of course, we need to see whether the decline is a blip or sustained movement in the right direction. What is certain, though, is that Superintendent Joel Boyd, his administrative team and especially principals and teachers are not allowing students just to walk out. Instead, they are intervening and sitting with students to find out how to help them graduate. Families are stepping up, too, with parents encouraging their children to stay in school. That is easier, of course, when schools make it clear that each child is wanted, and that no one can leave without an explanation. What makes us think this is a trend, rather than a statistical blip, is the attitude of school district leaders. The 146 dropouts in 2012-13, although an improvement, remains “too high,” Superintendent Boyd believes. Capital High Principal Channell Wilson-Segura told reporter Robert Nott that she is meeting with potential dropouts to “make sure we are exhausting our efforts and resources before students make that determination [to drop out]. Some don’t realize how flexible we can be or what support we can provide for them so they don’t drop out.” Students are being intercepted before they can walk out without their diploma. That’s essential. Flexibility. Support. Intervention. Three ingredients, all adding up to a cultural shift, taking place right now in our schools.
The past 100 years From The Santa Fe New Mexican: April 4, 1914: Juan José Luján, acquitted in the District Court a couple of weeks ago of the murder of Francisco García in a fiesta at the village of Pojoaque, has decided, since the lynching of Adolfo Padilla and numerous threats against his life in anonymous letters, that the climate and altitude of Santa Fe are deleterious to his health and has accordingly left for Arizona. Francisco Urioste, whose wife charged him with killing one or more of his children and who some of his superstitious neighbors say bears a charmed life, has kept out of the limelight and is said will also leave the city. April 4, 1989: With only four days remaining until an automatic deadline, Gov. Garrey Carruthers Monday signed 27 bills, leaving 269 measures from the 1989 legislative session that must be acted upon if they are to survive. The number that must be acted on by midnight Friday includes 66 the governor’s office hasn’t received yet.
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