Bishop: Much Ado About Something – Nike & North Smithfield
Brian Bishop, GoLocalProv Guest MINDSETTER™
Bishop: Much Ado About Something – Nike & North Smithfield
Indeed, the devil’s advocate argument is right there in the same numbers thrown around by Black Lives Matters. Yes, about 1 in a million whites are killed by police annually compared to approximately 2 in a million blacks. But about 80 in a million cops are killed each year. Folks quickly start explaining that cops sign up for a dangerous job, that cops are different. Really, so cops aren’t people? Well,l they are people, but we can figure out the reasons why they are killed violently at a different rate given their exposure to violent circumstances. God forbid you try that argument for any other group.
Grinding his own axe?
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBut that is no excuse for the rate of cops killing civilians, nor is the disregard for cops the central message I take from Colin Kaepernick, in spite of his poor taste in socks.
Well, many suggest, it is not a question for the Town Council anyway; that Beauregard is just grinding his own axe. Really, it seems far more pertinent to municipal administration than the consistent parade of left leaning ordinances, oft advanced by the enlightened councilors of Cambridge Mass, to boycott doing business with any concern that doesn’t adopt their political outlook. The recent example was a failed effort to boycott Hewlett Packard because the company provided services and equipment to the Israeli Government and Military that facilitated “the occupation”. There was no protest that the ordinance violated Hewlett Packard’s first amendment rights; rather Cambridge Councilors were apparently swayed by the case that the proponents of the boycott had anti-semites in their ranks.
ACLU takes sides, what else is new?
But this practice is no longer limited to Cambridge having a foreign policy, it has spread far and wide. One need look only so far as Providence where last year Seth Yurdin introduced a resolution to boycott Citizens Bank unless they stopped providing financing to the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline. Yet one will search in vane for the ACLU jumping to its feet to protest that the first amendment right of Citzens to do business with whom they wished was under assault. But somehow, little ole North Smithfield that proposed a politically incorrect boycott starts getting threatening letters. Gone are the days when the ACLU spent its efforts defending civil rights principles without regard to the character of their exercise. Their effort has become a kind of quasi-legal progressive threat tank.
It’s not to say that they have no point, but its fairly evident where they put their oar in that they have a slippery scale of what is protected speech and unprotected conduct. So they have raised nary a peep about the successful Providence resolution in 2013 that lead to the divestment of the pension fund from some 15 stocks that are ‘dirty coal companies’. The supposed distinction is they are punishing those companies for their conduct and not their speech – although the quintessential speech of a company is its product.
So how is it that they ACLU sees Nike’s associating itself with Kaepernick as different than Citizen’s doing business with Dakota Access? Why would the one be conduct and the other speech? And what really is the constitutional rule on free speech for government contractors and employees and how it is impinged by North Smithfield’s action? The ACLU has not published their ‘brief’ on this, choosing rather to just speak ominously of the liability North Smithfield would face if the resolution had any effect.
Is Nike’s Free Speech Threatened?
It is likely the ACLU relies on the case of Umbehr which applies the standard of pickering, a protection of the speech rights of public workers, to those engaged in government contracting. But what really is the standard of Pickering? Justice Marshall saw the problem was: “. . . to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” And Marshall’s resolution in that case held: “the fact of employment is only tangentially and insubstantially involved in the subject matter of the public communication made by a teacher, we conclude that it is necessary to regard the teacher as the member of the general public he seeks to be”.
So there exists substantial local interest in the very questions Beauregard sees at issue in offering the resolution. It is not self-evident how such a case would be decided given that Nike remains free to speak as it wishes about Colin Kaepernick, but is faulted for makeing him part and parcel of their business plan. By it’s deliberate commercialization of this message, Nike opens itself up to an examination of this as business conduct and not as speech.
Conduct or Speech?
The distinction is echoed in Rumsfeld v FAIR which found that “the Solomon amendment”, that required colleges receiving federal funds to allow military recruiters on campus, did not violate speech rights of these academies which “remain free under the statute to express whatever views they may have on the military's congressionally mandated employment policy, all the while retaining eligibility for federal funds.”
And in one other recent legal context, Government discrimination about the quality of speech is actually ensconced in the very nature of the Government action. When conservatives pushed back against National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) after it helped fund exhibit of the explicit photography of Robert Mapplethorpe and the controversial Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, Congress passed an amendment providing that “artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which [grant] applications are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”
To the NEA itself and to some artists, e.g. Karen Finley, aka the Chocolate Smeared Young Woman, who didn’t receive a grant in the wake of this change, vague “standards of decency” sounded a lot like censorship and essentially like refusing to contract based on their viewpoint. The lower courts agreed, but Clinton’s acting Solicitor General, Walter Dellinger saw it differently: “The one thing I knew was that we could not say, ‘It is okay to prefer Karen Finley to Norman Rockwell, but not vice versa . . .’ ”.
Judge O’Connor’s decision in NEA v Finley didn’t create a bright line, seeing these standards as only part of the selection process. This suggests that a local contracting process, cognizant of the values Councilor Beauregard seeks to advance, might indeed take note in purchasing decisions of marketing connected integrally with the product that they conceive of as violating community standards. And the more one tries to look at the advertising as commercial art and akin to speech, the more one invites such scrutiny – as opposed to taking into account a corporate press release regretting that the NFL has not found space for the expressions of the players on whom it depends, which probably would violate Umbehr.
Well, its no secret that widespread criticism caused Beauregard to engineer the withdrawal of his resolution. And although I did not consider Nike’s conduct as disrespectful of the public institution of law enforcement and would not have supported the resolution, it was not apparently revoked because its author had a change of heart, but simply because of the extent of public controversy. To the extent that this was more than a noisy minority, this is giving way politically if not on principle and that is how politics works. But it is a disappointment to see what was not some purely illegitimate exercise itself shouted down by the heckler’s veto.
GoLocal Statewide Poll - Conducted by Harvard's Della Volpe - June, 2018
Registered Voters
Q1: Are you registered to vote in Rhode Island?
Total 501 100%
Yes: 501 100%
No: 0 0%
Don't know: 0 0%
Gender
Q2: Are you ...
Total
Total: 100%
Male: 44%
Female: 56%
Age
Q3: In which age group are you?
18-24: 7%
25-34: 16%
35-44: 15%
45-54: 20%
55-64: 17%
65+ 25%
Political Party
Q4: When it comes to voting, do you consider yourself to be affiliated with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, Moderate, or Unaffiliated with a major party?
Democrat: 38%
Republican:14%
Moderate: 6%
Unaffiliated: 39%
Don't know/Refused: 3%
Likely Voters
Q5: Next year, in November of 2018, there will be a statewide general election for Governor and many other state offices. How likely is it that you will vote in this election? Will you definitely be voting, will you probably be voting, are you 50-50...
Definitely be voting.............................. 81%
Probably be voting............................... 19%
All others............................................. 0%
Top Issue
Q6: What would you say is the number one problem facing Rhode Island that you would like the Governor to address?
Taxes.................................................. .18%
Jobs and economy.............................. 16%
State budget.........................................11%
Roads...................................................10%
Education............................................ 8%
Healthcare........................................... 5%
Corruption/Public integrity.................... 4%
Immigration.......................................... 4%
Housing.............................................. ..2%
Governor............................................. ..2%
Homelessness.......................................1%
Other.. ............................................... 14%
Don’t know.......................................... 6%
Direction
Q7: In general, would you say things in Rhode Island are headed in the right direction or are they off on the wrong track?
Right track........................................... 19%
Wrong track......................................... 36%
Mixed.................................................. 45%
Optimism
Q8: Thinking ahead several years, is your outlook about Rhode Island more optimistic or more pessimistic?
Optimistic............................................ 52%
Pessimistic...........................................48%
Finances
Q9: Over the last three years or so, has your family's financial situation improved, gotten worse, or not changed at all?
Changed for the better......................... 24%
Changed for the worse......................... 33%
Not changed at all................................ 43%
Governor
Q10: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Gina Raimondo, a Democrat
I am sure to vote for her: 9%
There is a good chance I will vote for her: 19%
It is possible that I vote for her: 24%
It is unlikely that I will vote for her: 18%
I will never vote for her: 31%
Governor
Q11: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Matt Brown, a Democrat
I am sure to vote for him: 4%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 8%
It is possible that I vote for him: 40%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 30%
I will never vote for him: 17%
Governor
Q12: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Spencer Dickinson, a Democrat
I am sure to vote for him: 3%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 7%
It is possible that I vote for him: 37%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 35%
I will never vote for him: 18%
Governor
Q13: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Paul Roselli, a Democrat
I am sure to vote for him: 2%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 7%
It is possible that I vote for him: 35%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 37%
I will never vote for him: 19%
Governor
Q14: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Allan Fung, a Republican
I am sure to vote for him: 7%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 18%
It is possible that I vote for him: 28%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 25%
I will never vote for him: 21%
Governor
Q15: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Patricia Morgan, a Republican
I am sure to vote for her: 3%
There is a good chance I will vote for her.: 9%
It is possible that I vote for her: 32%
It is unlikely that I will vote for her: 35%
I will never vote for her: 21%
Governor
Q16: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Giovanni Feroce, a Republican
I am sure to vote for him: 2%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 5%
It is possible that I vote for him: 24%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 35%
I will never vote for him: 34%
Governor
Q17: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Luis-Daniel Muñoz, an Independent
I am sure to vote for him: 3%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 6%
It is possible that I vote for him: 33%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 38%
I will never vote for him: 21%
Governor
Q18: Which of the following comes closest to your view regarding each of the following potential candidates for governor of Rhode Island?
Joe Trillo, an Independent
I am sure to vote for him: 1%
There is a good chance I will vote for him: 8%
It is possible that I vote for him: 37%
It is unlikely that I will vote for him: 34%
I will never vote for him: 19%
Governor
Q20: If the election for Governor were held today and the candidates were: Democrat Gina Raimondo, Republican Allan Fung and Independent Joe Trillo - for whom would you vote?
Allan Fung, a Republican..................... 33%
Gina Raimondo, a Democrat................ 33%
Joe Trillo, and Independent.................. 16%
Don't know 18%
Governor
Q20: If the election for Governor were held today and the candidates were: Democrat Gina Raimondo, Republican Patricia Morgan and Independent Joe Trillo - for whom would you vote?
Gina Raimondo, a Democrat................ 39%
Patricia Morgan, a Republican............. 20%
Joe Trillo, an Independent................... 19%
Don't know ......................................... 22%
Governor
Q21: If the election for Governor were held today and the candidates were: Democrat Matt Brown, Republican Allan Fung and Independent Joe Trillo - for whom would you vote?
Allan Fung, a Republican..................... 35%
Matt Brown, a Democrat...................... 25%
Joe Trillo, an Independent.................... 14%
Don't know .......................................... 27%
Governor
Q22: If the election for Governor were held today and the candidates were: Democrat Matt Brown, Republican Patricia Morgan and Independent Joe Trillo - for whom would you vote?
Matt Brown, a Democrat...................... 30%
Patricia Morgan, a Republican............. 20%
Joe Trillo, an Independent.................... 18%
Don't know .......................................... 33%
U.S. Senate
Q23: If the election for the U.S. Senate were held today and the candidates were: [ROTATE] Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican Robert Nardolillo - for whom would you vote?
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat........... 53%
Robert 'Bobby' Nardolillo, a Republican.. 31%
Don't know............................................... 16%
U.S. Senate
Q24: If the election for the U.S. Senate were held today and the candidates were: [ROTATE] Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican Robert Flanders - for whom would you vote?
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat........ 54%
Robert Flanders, a Republican............. 32%
Don't know.......................................... 14%
Schools
Q25: If there was an election today, would you vote to approve or reject issuing $250 million in financing supported general obligation bonds to repair Rhode Island's deteriorating school buildings and bring them up to minimum standards called "warm, safe and dry"?
Net: Approve...................................... 74%
Definitely approve............................... 36%
Probably approve................................ 38%
Net: Reject......................................... 17%
Probably reject.................................... 9%
Definitely reject.................................... 7%
Don't know.......................................... 9%
PawSox
Q26: The Rhode Island General Assembly is in the process of negotiating a $40 million public financing deal with the Pawtucket Red Sox for a new stadium, hoping to bring a vote before the House and Senate this summer.
In general, do you favor or oppose the use of public funds to help finance a new stadium for the Pawtucket Red Sox?
Net: Favor.......................................... 33%
Strongly favor...................................... 13%
Somewhat favor.................................. 21%
Net: Oppose....................................... 59%
Somewhat oppose.............................. 21%
Strongly oppose.................................. 38%
Don't know.......................................... 8%
Fane Tower
Q27: The City of Providence and the state of Rhode Island are considering a proposal by New York developer Jason Fane to build a 46-story luxury residence tower in Providence, next to a public riverfront park. The developer will invest $250 to $300 million of his own funds. The project is called the Hope Point Tower, it would be 170-feet taller than the Superman building and would require waiving height restrictions and the use of state tax credits.
In general, do you favor or oppose development of the Hope Point Tower?
Net: Favor.......................................... 39%
Strongly favor...................................... 13%
Somewhat favor.................................. 27%
Net: Oppose....................................... 50%
Somewhat oppose.............................. 23%
Strongly oppose.................................. 27%
Don't know.......................................... 11%
Elorza/Traffic Cameras
Q28: How would you rate the job that Mayor Jorge Elorza has done managing issues related to speed cameras in Providence?
Net: Excellent/Good.......................... 26%
Excellent............................................. 6%
Good................................................... 20%
Net: Fair/Poor.................................... 74%
Fair...................................................... 29%
Poor.................................................... 45%
Q29: Since it was launched in 2016, UHIP -- the Rhode Island program designed to improve customer service for those who receive federal benefits -- has run into significant problems, including long lines, cost overruns, lost applications, over- and under-charging of patients and families.
Based on what you know at this time, what percent of blame for this do you assign to:
Deloitte, the consulting company who
produced the system........................... 53.3%
Governor Gina Raimondo, who has
been governor since the system
launch in September 2016................... 47.1%
NIMBYism
Q30: Presently, there are local groups opposing the development of a natural gas facility in Burrillville, solar projects in Exeter, a LNG facility in Providence and wind projects in North Kingstown.
Some people say that it is important for local groups to play a role in opposition of projects like these that could be dangerous or harmful to citizens;
Others say that local groups have gone too far to the detriment of the state’s long-term energy needs.
Which statement comes closer to your own view?
Local groups play an important role...... 46%
Local groups have gone too far............. 31%
Not sure................................................. 24%
Corruption
Q31: Compared to other states, do you think there is:
More political corruption in RI................. 63%
Less political corruption in RI................ 7%
About the same level as other states..... 30%
Income
Q32: The next question is about the total income of YOUR HOUSEHOLD for the PAST 12 MONTHS. Please include your income PLUS the income of all members living in your household (including cohabiting partners and armed forces members living at home).
$50,000 or less.................................... 33%
More $50,000 but less than $75,000..... 18%
More $75,000 but less than $100,000... 16%
More $100,000 but less than $150,000. 13%
$150,000 or more................................ 10%
Don't know/refused.............................. 10%
Ethnicity
Q33: What particular ethnic group or nationality - such as English, French, Italian, Irish, Latino, Jewish, African American, and so forth - do you consider yourself a part of or feel closest to?
Net: White, Non-Hispanic..................... 82%
Black or African American.................... 6%
Latino/Hispanic.................................... 5%
Other.................................................... 7%
Geography
Q34: City/Town Into Region.
West Bay............................................ 28%
Metro-Providence................................ 28%
Blackstone Valley................................ 21%
South County...................................... 10%
East Bay............................................. 13%
