If You Were a Corporation, We'd Treat You Better

I hadn't seen some of the discussion comparing the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in the "three strikes" cases (Ewing and Andrade) with the punitive damages case (State Farm) in actual newsprint. In State Farm, the Court refused to let a state court consider what a corporation did in other situations. Of course, "three strikes" laws are explicitly designed to consider what a person did in other situations (and for which they presumably have been punished already).

It's the Sandra Day O'Connor view of the world, I guess: If people incorporated themselves, they'd have more constitutional rights.


Judicial Class Warfare
HIGH COURT'S HARD HAND NOT EQUALLY APPLIED
East Valley Tribune, Apr. 13, 2003

There’s a difference when liberals and conservatives engage in class warfare: Conservatives play for keeps.

The U.S. Supreme Court just signed with this “it’s money that matters” philosophy. First, in March, the court ruled twice that the constitution lets states impose throw-away-the-key sentences, even for minor crimes, on repeat offenders.

In Ewing v. California, a felon with two prior non-violent convictions committed a third felony, stealing golf clubs valued at $1,200. As Ewing’s “third strike,” he got 25 years to life in prison. In Lockyer v. Andrade, another crook with two prior convictions stole videotapes worth $153, and got 50 years without parole.

The Supreme Court decided these sentences weren’t too harsh or disproportionate for repeat criminals, even non-violent ones. Apparently, the constitution says 50 years in prison, without the possibility of parole, is just fine for a $153 crime.

After Ewing and Andrade, you’d think that if a state wants to have really long prison sentences, it also could have really big civil penalties, too. Wrong. Last week, in State Farm v. Campbell, the court overturned a punitive damages award as so excessive, so disproportionate, that it violated the 14th Amendment.

The State Farm award was huge -- $145 million in punitive damages compared to actual damages of only $1 million. The court declared that the 145:1 ratio violated due process, implying that anything greater than 10:1 was unconstitutional. In Ewing and Andrade, the constitution said nothing about a 50-year sentence for a $153 theft. But apparently money gets more constitutional protections than liberty.

By the State Farm standard, either the Supreme Court valued a year of Andrade’s life at about three bucks, or else corporations just get that much more judicial solicitude than people.

Sure, Ewing and Andrade are petty thieves, in every sense. They got caught, convicted, and should pay for each crime. But if a third theft may mean a 50-year sentence, why do corporations deserve searching judicial concern about fundamental fairness?

As Justice Kennedy wrote, when reviewing a judgment against a corporation, “courts must ensure that the measure of punishment is both reasonable and proportionate to the amount of harm.” But when it’s about people (yes, even criminals are people), neither standard applies.

Both Sam Heldman and Nathan Newman wrote about these decisions, and neither could detect a principled basis to give corporations greater constitutional rights than individuals. If anything, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” provides a strong textual basis for deciding Ewing and Andrade the opposite way. There’s nothing in the text of the 14th Amendment to justify federal constitutional review of excessive state court punitive damages awards on the grounds of fundamental fairness.

But you won’t hear from those conservatives who demand that courts stop legislating and stick to the words of the constitution, because in State Farm, they got the result they wanted.

This corporations-matter-more-than-people philosophy has swept the country. We’re cutting taxes on capital but raising them on labor. Businesses have our blessing to lobby for tax breaks and contracts, but if parents with disabled kids want to fight for their programs, they’re just some special interest.

The Goldwater Institute can raise more than half its money from nine contributors, each giving more than $100,000 in tax-deductible dollars and who undoubtedly get back far more than that in tax breaks and pet legislation, and it’s a respected think tank. Scottsdale firefighters can decide they need to organize to protect their lives, pensions, and community, and they’re a grubby union.

Sure, I believe corporations deserve due process and fundamental fairness. My problems is that I think actual people do, too. Just a dreamer, I guess.

Here's More of What Liberals Are Doing, Oh Mr. Instapundit

Marla Smith-Nilson is from a small town in southern Arizona, and a Flinn Foundation Scholar. (The Flinn Foundation runs a program which selects outstanding students from around the state and pays for their education at one of the three state universities, plus provides support, international travel, and other assistance to these students. The hope is that outstanding high school students will stay in Arizona, rather than having our best human capital leave the state.) Smith-Nilson is now Director of International Programs for WaterPartners International (Motto: We envision the day when everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water), which has kicked off a campaign to help provide emergency water supplies and sanitation for Iraq.

If we have won the war, we now need to deliver on our promise of humanitarian aid. She send my wife Beth an email that people interested in helping can give to WaterPartners, but beyond the immediate crisis in Iraq, the organization also wants to educate people about the global water crisis in general:

You have probably seen the images on the news -- looting and lack of security in Iraq is preventing international relief organizations from entering the country with emergency supplies. Even the Red Cross, the only organization that has been operating in the country throughout the war, has suspended its Iraqi relief program until the situation is more secure for its workers. Other organizations are stockpiling their supplies in neighboring countries but are not sure when they will be able to get into the country. Some are providing limited relief efforts to areas outside of Baghdad and Basra. In the meantime, I am reading reports about children begging westerners for water, lining the streets trying to stop their vehicles.

The rebuilding of the water infrastructure in Iraq will take years. It has been in decline for the past two decades following a civil war with the Kurds, the war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait, the first Gulf war, UN sanctions, and now this war. Iraq's water situation was in a crisis state even before the war: since 1989, the number of people with access to safe water supplies has dropped from 92% to a staggering 11%. In this same time period, infant mortality rates have risen over 150%, and 70% of the deaths of children in Iraq are caused by water-related diseases. Given the war and resulting chaos, the situation can only be described as grim.

To help WaterPartners with their Iraq initiative, click here. You also can mail a donation payable to WaterPartners International to P.O. Box 654, Columbia, MO 65205-0654. Please note that the donation is for Iraq.

A Muffler Shop Is Sacred, But Kids Are Disposable

I enjoyed the bit in the Diamondbacks' announcement of their gift, that it was the largest in team history. That stretches back, what, five years? But despite the headline chosen by my editor at The Tribune, this has nothing to do with generosity and everything to do with the proper role of government.

Unkindest Cuts
TOO BAD LAWMAKERS LACK D-BACKS' GENEROSITY
East Valley Tribune, Apr. 6, 2003

The Arizona Diamondbacks organization did a wonderful thing this past week, announcing the largest charitable donation in team history -- $100,000 -- for research into autism. The team also committed to give another $100,000 in the future.

It’s not clear if the gift is an immediate payment or a multi-year pledge, but assume that the D’Backs will give $200,000 to help cure autism this year and next. It’s a tremendous gift, and everybody involved deserves our praise and acknowledgment.

But the team’s generosity is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the Arizona Legislature plans for autistic kids -- in the other direction.

The GOP leadership budget proposes to cut $51 million from programs for children with developmental disabilities. About 1,600 kids would lose their services. And if you think that the Legislature will restore those cuts next year or the year after -- well, that’s not just gullible, that’s so out of touch with reality that you probably need therapy, too.

The Diamondbacks’ total gift represents less than 0.2 percent of what the GOP plans to slash from therapy for these kids in just one year. Every politician who says that charitable giving will replace government programs is either being deceitful or hoping that you stay ignorant of the numbers involved. The largest single gift in state history to autism research is some three orders of magnitude less than the GOP leadership’s proposed cuts.

Also, like many other charitable donors, the Diamondbacks committed their money to research. The funds won’t provide services to autistic kids who need help now. That’s only sensible; there’s no way to treat 1,600 kids with these severe disabilities for only $100,000 a year. That’s why it costs $51 million.

No private donation would make a difference in meeting that vast need. No donor wants to give money to solve 0.2 percent of a problem. Only state government has the financial power to make a difference in the vast and relentless task of helping children with developmental disabilities reach their fullest individual capacities.

Let’s hope and pray that the Diamondbacks’ gift helps find a cure for autism in the future. Meanwhile, what happens to children with developmental disabilities until that cure gets discovered? Are the kids just supposed to wait and hope that cure is somehow retroactive?

What kind of legislative leadership believes that years of a child’s life -- heck, crucial years of some 1,600 children’s lives -- just don’t count? Will autistic kids magically get two or three years of their lives back when the economy improves and the GOP perhaps acknowledges other priorities than cutting taxes? Yeah, right.

These numbers-matter-more-than-people Republicans probably want to tell kids with developmental disabilities that they should stop looking for government handouts and pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Too bad that these are kids we’re talking about, kids with problems that prevent them from communicating or understanding such concepts, much less acting on them. But that’s what’s driving the GOP budget proposals, an ideology that ignores real-world results affecting real people.

The GOP legislature also is trying to limit local governments’ use of condemnation, where a city can acquire property through legal action. Of course, the city must pay just compensation, but “Fast Eddie” Farnsworth and his buddies argue that each piece of property is unique, and people shouldn’t be forced to sell even if they receive full value.

Meanwhile, if Fast Eddie gets his way, some 1,600 kids -- whom you might think are unique, too -- will lose all their services and their hopes for fuller, more productive lives for at least a couple of years.

That’s the Arizona Legislature for you: A muffler shop is sacred; kids are disposable.

Lori Sturdevant Gets It

Check out this column, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (March 30, 2003), about whether Minnesota should try to duplicate Arizona's cut-taxes-at-all-costs (and we mean at all costs) strategy that has made us worst in crime, second-worst in high school drop outs, third-worst in teen pregnancy, fifth-worst in child poverty, and fourth-worst in voter turnout.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "success."

Test posting.

We Have to Pay for a War? Who Knew?

You know how conservatives always say that liberals must hate America? I think it's far more true that conservatives must hate Americans--at least if their Arizona budget plan is any guide. It's all these autistic kids' fault--they should be told that they should lift themselves up by their bootstraps and not rely on government handouts. They won't understand, of course, but forget about therapy; maybe ideology can cure them!

Fiscal Folly
GOP WIELDS A BUDGETING BLUDGEON ON ARIZONANS
East Valley Tribune, Mar. 30, 2003

How about these so-called conservatives? Based on their budget, they love humanity. It’s people they can’t stand.

Why else would they want to eliminate services for some 1,200 abused and neglected children? Too bad about the abuse, kids, but the GOP legislative leadership wants to neglect you, too.

And we apparently need more tolerance for domestic violence during a recession. The GOP budget cuts 20,000 emergency shelter beds for women and children escaping from battering and abuse. That’s the Republican plan -- get smacked around by your boyfriend, then again by the Legislature.

The leadership’s budget increases spending on highways, but kicks 50,000 kids off health insurance. By eliminating funding to community health centers, some 47,800 people lose access to primary care. Really, who needs their health when they should be driving SUVs instead?

This is what the GOP legislative leadership wants to do. This is their plan. This is their “vision” for Arizona.

Victims of child abuse, domestic violence, and autism just don’t matter. It’s not about raising taxes, either. Gov. Napolitano’s budget doesn’t make these cuts, and doesn’t raise taxes. But the GOP can’t support her because they claim there’s “too much borrowing.” So childhood immunizations, day care, and treatment programs get slashed and trashed.

It’s an embarrassingly flimsy justification for kids, the elderly, and the ill bearing all the burdens of GOP ideology. First, these borrowing mechanisms are time-tested techniques applied by legions of GOP governors, here and elsewhere. Revenue bonding, rollovers, jiggering the fiscal year calendar; the GOP has done them all with the aid and comfort of these same so-called “fiscal conservatives.”

In 2000, when governor of Texas -- during the height of the economic boom -- George W. Bush used an 11-month fiscal year to create bogus expenditure numbers justifying a tax cut. These same numbers-matter-more-than-people Republicans considered that just peachy.

But more flagrantly, we now have a $330 billion federal deficit under Bush’s watch that’s headed north of $400 billion. (We have to pay for a war? Who knew?) We’re supposed to kick autistic kids out of treatment because of fear of -- gasp! -- revenue bonding when the federal government is spending money it doesn’t have with previously-unimaginable abandon?

Suddenly, whether a deficit is bad depends solely on which level of government is involved? And if what the president does has no bearing on what we do in Arizona, then what was all that hot air about Clinton’s flawed moral example?

The latest insult to kids and domestic violence victims and the mentally ill comes from Tom Patterson of the Goldwater Institute, who urges a “temporary” or “short term” cutback in such programs until -- well, it’s not really clear until what. But that’s how those conservatives think, as if these kids will take a year or two off from Princeton, then pick up where they left off. If your kid is autistic at age 7, he’ll probably still be autistic at age 9 when the recession ends, right?

If you think these conservatives will urge resuming treatment and health insurance programs when the economy recovers, then I guess you’ll believe anything.

Face it -- it’s a test. If the GOP can get away with leaving domestic violence victims out in the street, they’ll start going after the big bucks. Public health. State universities. Education. Honestly, how vital are second and tenth grade, anyway? Once accounting principles become more important than people, there’s no telling what they’ll “accomplish.”

So legislators, which is more important: Two or three years of an autistic child’s life, or the Goldwater Institute’s dislike of spending rollovers?

Here’s the frightening part: To “Fast Eddie” Farnsworth and his pals, that’s a really tough question.