The Washington Post National Weekly - January 24, 2016

Worst Week Hillary Clinton 3

Politics Grand Old (debate) Party 4

Culture His star still shines bright 16

Q&A Reflecting on angry times 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

A big-shot venture capitalist says we need inequality. What do economists say?

PAGE 12

SILICON VALLEY’S CASTLE IN THE AIR

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HERE’S TO A HEALTHIER YOU! We’re just a few weeks into a new year, and it’s likely there are already some sworn resolutions that have come and gone.

But we’re offering up some inspiration if you’re planning to improve your fitness, lose some weight, eat healthier or generally improve your lifestyle in the coming year.

In the next three consecutive Wednesday editions of The Wenatchee World, look for our Healthier You page, with articles and advertisements on everything healthy. Fitness, healthy eating, wellness, exercise activities, how to make the most of your gym visit, dieting, exercise plans and so much more.

Look for the second Healthy You page in the January 27th edition of The Wenatchee World, and for the next two Wednesdays following.

Advertisers: your ad will reach readers in print and online through our digital editon. Contact our advertising department and inquire about the healthy discount we’re offering for these pages.

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WORST WEEK IN WASHINGTON

Hillary Clinton

by Chris Cillizza

F

or Hillary Clinton, it’s starting to look like deja vu all over again.

Start a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination as giant front­runner? Check. Raise tens of millions of dollars and look unbeatable for large swaths of the year before the primaries start? Check. An insurgent challenger running to her ideological left? Check.

Collapsing poll numbers on the eve of actual votes? Check.

Over the past week or so, Clinton has watched as her national polling lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), a self­ avowed socialist, has shrunk. And, far more important, Clinton’s standing vis a vis Sanders in the key early­voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire has eroded as well.

In Iowa, after holding a high­single­digit lead (at worst) for months, Clinton now finds herself in a dead heat with the caucuses just over a week away. The Real Clear Politics polling average gives Clinton an edge of less than five points.

Sanders has always run stronger in New Hampshire than in Iowa, but of late several polls suggest that he is widening his steady lead over the former secretary of state.

In the Real Clear Politics polling average, Sanders is up by almost 13 points.

Lose both of those states early next month, and Clinton’s inevitability bubble bursts. Period.

Clinton, to her credit, is doing everything she can to avoid a repeat of 2008. She’s savaging Sanders as both too conservative (on guns) and too pie­in­the­sky liberal (on

KLMNO WEEKLY

PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Signs for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton cover a lawn in Charleston, S.C.

health care).

Complicating those efforts is the news that broke midweek: The intelligence community’s inspector general confirmed that dozens of emails on the private server Clinton used while she was at the State Department contained extremely highly classified information.

Clinton continues to stick by her original line on the email controversy — that she never sent or received anything that was classified at the time — but the latest news is proof that the story and its reverberations are likely to dog her all the way through November.

Hillary Clinton, for watching history repeat itself, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something. n

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2016 The Washington Post / Year 2, No. 15

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY HEALTH BOOKS OPINION Q&A

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER San Francisco has levels of income inequality typically seen in developing nations. And the problem is worsening across the United States. Illustration by Matthew Billington for The Washington Post

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POLITICS

GOP debates become hot tickets

MIC SMITH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Top donors say the events are ‘the same thing as going to a football game’ M ATEA G OLD Charleston, S.C. BY

A

t about 1 a.m., long after the GOP presidential contenders had finally filed off the stage of the North Charleston Coliseum, the Republican National Committee’s post-debate party was still going strong.

Top party donors jammed into the ballroom of an upscale hotel in the city’s historic downtown, milling around a long buffet table

piled with pulled pork sandwiches, baby shrimp, macaroni and cheese, and ice cream sundaes.

They buzzed about the sharp jousting between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, caught up on campaign gossip and made plans to see one another at one of the upcoming forums in Iowa, New Hampshire or Florida.

The outsize spectacle of this primary season’s Republican debates has made the events hotticket items for wealthy donors,

who are flocking to them as if they were political bowl games.

“It’s like Old Home Week,” said Ray Washburne, the national finance chair for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign, who has been to all six GOP primary debates held so far. “Even though we’re all on different sides, it’s fun to meet up.”

Major fundraisers and top contributors fly in on private jets and gather in hotel suites before start time, marveling over the latest

Leora Levy, a Jeb Bush supporter who has attended four of the Republican debates, says they are “more revealing” to watch in person.

twists in the race. Once inside the venue, they snap selfies in front of the stage. They anxiously root for their favored candidates, swapping text messages with friends as the jabs fly back and forth.

“It’s the same thing as going to a football game,” said Foster Friess, the Wyoming-based financial investor who was among the heavy hitters in the audience for Thursday night’s Charleston debate. “If you’re in the crowd, you can hear the cheers, unfiltered by micro-

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POLITICS phones. The chemistry is so much more exciting.”

The crowded field of candidates — each with their own constellation of rich backers — has meant a heavier donor presence at the GOP forums than at the smaller Democratic ones, where Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) repeatedly declares his independence from millionaires and billionaires.

The regular attendance by wealthy contributors is also due in part to the control that the Republican National Committee exerted over the primary debates this cycle. The national party now doles out the tickets, unlike in past years when admittance was in the hands of the television networks and local parties hosting the forums.

The RNC allocates blocks of tickets to individual campaigns, volunteers and activists. But a chunk is also set aside for top money players such as Team 100 contributors, who have given the annual maximum of $33,400 to the party, according to people familiar with the arrangements.

“Because of the historic number of talented and diverse Republican candidates running this cycle, our voters, activists and donors are excited to be part of the process that will elect the next Republican president,” said RNC communications director Sean Spicer.

The campaigns also set aside debate seats for some of their biggest financial backers, arranging receptions and briefings for them on debate days.

“I heard people here saying, ‘I’ve been to three, how many have you been to?’ ” said Washington lobbyist and GOP fundraiser Richard Hohlt. “There are people who are almost debate groupies.”

Aside from the social aspect, the debates serve a practical purpose for donors seeking to be deeply immersed in the mechanics of the campaigns they’re helping finance. Attending the forums gives them a chance to make an inperson assessment of the field — and gauge how others are reacting.

“On TV, you don’t feel the audience around you,” said Virginia developer Bob Pence, a fundraiser for Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) who traveled to Cleveland; Simi Valley, Calif.; and Las Vegas for debates this season. “When you’re there with two or three thousand people, you hear what people are say-

RAINIER EHRHARDT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“I heard people here saying, ‘I’ve been to three, how many have you been to?’

There are people who are almost debate groupies.” — Richard Hohlt, fundraiser ing. It’s a learning moment, to glean what other people are thinking.”

For New York venture capitalist Ken Abramowitz, who has made contributions to multiple candidates, the appeal is less the main event and more the private gatherings afterward, where he tries to offer some feedback to the White House hopefuls.

“I like to give them a word of advice if they said something during the debate I thought was wrong,” said Abramowitz, who said he managed to buttonhole former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee at receptions after the first debate in August in Cleveland.

“I will point that out to them — not in a critical manner, but a friendly manner, to help them.”

The donor scrutiny was partic-

ularly intense at last month’s forum at Las Vegas’ Venetian resort.

Sitting up front and center in the audience were billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who have not publicly declared their support for a candidate. Seated nearby were Oklahoma oil-and-gas entrepreneur Harold Hamm and two major Rubio backers, New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer and North Carolina retail executive Art Pope.

Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts was also on hand, attending his third debate of the election season, as was Dallas investor Doug Deason, a Cruz supporter who flew in for his first.

Not all were sold on the experience.

“I thought it was boring,” said Deason, noting that the guests had to sit through the “undercard” fo-

The crowded field of Republican presidential candidates has meant a heavier donor presence at the GOP debates, such as the Fox Business Network debate Jan. 14 in Charleston, S.C.

KLMNO WEEKLY

rum of lower-tier candidates in order to have a seat for the main debate. “They didn’t serve alcohol, which wasn’t much fun. And you can’t really understand what they’re saying. Watching at home, on television, I can rewind it. Or if I get frustrated, I can pause it and go outside.”

Veteran debate-goers know it helps to come prepared.

The Charleston event was the fourth of the season for Leora Levy, a fundraiser for Bush’s campaign who lives in Greenwich, Conn. She was ready with protein bars and a stash of emergency chocolate to make it through the two hours between the undercard debate and the main event.

The long wait is worth it, she said. “When you’re there in person, you can see how the person is acting, even when they’re not on camera,” Levy said. “I just find it more revealing.”

While they waited, guests munched on popcorn and cookies in snacks bags provided by the RNC. “Showtime!” tweeted Bush fundraiser Anthony Scaramucci, sharing a photo of himself with New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, Bush’s co-finance chairman.

Seated on the floor in Row K was Andrew Sabin, a Bush backer who owns a New York-based precious-metals refining business and had flown his private jet up from Key Largo for the night.

“It’s just an hour and a half away, so I figured, ‘Why not?’ ” said Sabin, who went up to the stage to say hello to Bush during a commercial break.

He was pleased with the former governor’s performance. Bush “was the only one who knows what he’s talking about,” Sabin said.

Plus, the zingers flying on stage made for an entertaining night.

“It’s like a reality TV show,” Sabin exclaimed at the end of the night.

The event was not as gratifying for Friess, a backer of former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), who has been relegated to the early undercard forums. The sparring in the main event did not impress him.

“It turns into a media ratings game to see who said what,” Friess said. “I was pretty disappointed in the tenor.”

But he enjoyed the RNC’s afterparty, where he stayed until 3 a.m., catching up with friends.

“We closed it down,” Friess said.

“In my older years, I’ve become kind of a party boy.” n

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POLITICS

Voters aren’t loving idea of Bush 3 BY

E D O ’ K EEFE

J

anet DeHart of Emlenton, Pa., loves the Bush family and the two men from the clan who have served as president. But this year, she has no plans to support Jeb Bush for the office.

“I just feel sometimes that I have more zip at 81 than he does,” DeHart said.

“What did Donald say? He’s ‘low-energy.’ It’s exactly right,” she added, referring to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s criticism of Bush. “It looks like he needs someone to walk up from behind him and give him a little nudge.”

Bush would seem to have many of the key ingredients of a successful presidential campaign: money, experience and a formidable political name. But he has struggled for a number of reasons, including the most basic of all for a politician: Many people just don’t like him.

Nearly 6 in 10 Americans held an unfavorable view of Bush in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Bush was the only Republican with a negative favorability rating: 44 percent said they have a favorable impression of the former governor while 50 percent rated him negatively — a marked shift from November, when 56 percent of Republicans saw him in a favorable light.

Those numbers put him near the bottom of the GOP pack in net favorability ratings, with only Trump — who nonetheless leads the field — faring worse.

The reasons for such disapproval vary, from problems with the candidate himself to weariness over the Bush dynasty. With just about a week to go until the Iowa caucuses, Bush has failed to overcome the central weaknesses he faced as a presidential candidate from the beginning.

Jay Stonewall, a 54-year-old water department inspector in Billings, Mont., voted for the candidate’s father, George H.W. Bush, and his brother, George W. Bush.

This year he favors Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

“The whole Bush family in my opinion is one the first families of

AARON P. BERNSTEIN/REUTERS

Dynasty fatigue and perception problems are proving hard to beat for the struggling candidate America. There’s so much honor and respect for his family, for his dad from World War II on down, and they conduct themselves as men should these days,” Stonewall said.“ButwhenIfirstheardthatJeb Bush was running, I thought, that’s too much; that’s too many Bushes.”

Stonewall, DeHart and others participated in the recent PostABC poll and said they do not support Bush for the primary.

They agreed to answer follow-up questions to explain why.

“To be perfectly frank, I’m not fond of a family dynasty idea. One was enough. I wasn’t a big fan of George W., because I thought he was not conservative enough,” said Jeff Lemmond, a businessman in Warren, Mich.

“He’s a part of the machine and wants to work inside of the machine instead of dismantling the machine and actually representing a substantial part of the country,” he added.

Bush strongly disputes such notions on the campaign trail.

“Look, if being the brother of a president and a son of a president means I’m part of the establishment, so be it. I cannot tell you how proud I am of my dad and my brother,” he told a voter at a stop this month in Coralville, Iowa. “But if being part of the establishment means you have to be in Washington, then I’m not. Because I’ve never lived there, I’ve never worked there.”

And what if voters don’t like him? “Hell if I know. I don’t really care,” he said when Newsmax TV asked him recently.

“I’m focused on these early states where my numbers are much better, and I’m going to earn this nomination in a way that will draw people towards our cause,” he said. “And I do sense that people are taking it seriously now. Both in Iowa and New Hampshire, people make decisions really late.”

Bush’s high single-digit support in New Hampshire outpaces his appeal in Iowa or nationally. But even in the Granite State, a Mon-

Signs are seen on chairs before Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush speaks at Brownells in Grinnell, Iowa, on Jan. 12. Brownells is one of America's largest distributors of firearm parts and accessories.

mouth University poll this month found more Republican likely voters have negative than positive views of his candidacy.

Voters who show up for Bush’s town-hall meetings in the early states usually leave impressed, if not completely won over. Campaign aides hope that the more direct contact he makes in the coming weeks, the better he’ll fare in the early contests.

In a conference call with top donors recently, senior strategist David Kochel said an influx of staffers from campaign headquarters in Miami is helping to build out ground operations in New Hampshire and Iowa that should help Bush beat expectations, according to two people who listened to the call. Bush is aiming to place second in New Hampshire, behind Trump, Kochel added.

The campaign released two new television ads in New Hampshire that they hope can change perceptions. The first recounts how the candidate’s daughter struggled with drug addiction — a message poised to resonate in a state jarred by a record number of drugrelated deaths. A second ad shows Bush explaining why he has called Trump a “jerk.”

But Ron Bonjean, a Republican consultant not working for any presidential candidate, said Bush may now be fighting against irreversible perceptions.

“At this point, the attitudes towards the candidate and the polls have been pretty consistent,” he said. “What will make the difference is if the Bush campaign can motivate their supporters to turn out and vote so that he can stay in the game.”

Ultimately, Republican thirst for someone new may be too much to overcome.

Yoran Dreyer, 55, a software company project manager from Staten Island, N.Y., initially considered supporting Bush but chose Cruz instead.

“I don’t have anything against him as a person, or against George W. Bush,” he said. “But from my perspective . . . I’ve had enough, and I think the country has had enough of them.” n

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POLITICS

Sanders prepares for the long haul ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY J OHN W AGNER AND A BBY P HILLIP

D

emocratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is preparing for a protracted battle with Hillary Clinton by hiring staffs and laying groundwork in more than a dozen contests that follow Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states.

Sanders has deployed about 50 paid campaign aides apiece to Nevada and South Carolina, the next two states on the calendar, according to advisers. Paid staffs are now on the ground in all of the 11 “Super Tuesday” states that have contests on March 1, a presence that appears to at least match that of the Clinton camp.

The Vermont senator is also airing TV ads and Spanish-language radio spots in Nevada. He is about to go on TV in South Carolina. And his team is mapping out a plan to spend a fresh wave of small-dollar donations that are expected to arrive if he upsets Clinton in Iowa or New Hampshire, as recent polls show is possible. That money, aides say, would allow Sanders to compete with the former secretary of state and Democratic front- runner in the crush of nominating contests that quickly

follow on the calendar, as the playing field rapidly broadens and the election becomes more dependent on expensive television ads.

The preparations are part of an effort to buck what has emerged as the latest conventional wisdom surrounding the Democratic contest: that even if Clinton loses the first two contests, her superior campaign infrastructure and other advantages — including the demographics of the electorate — will allow her to overpower Sanders in subsequent states.

“There will absolutely be a very active contest after the first two states,” said Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, who disputed the oft-repeated notion that Clinton has a “firewall” in states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire. “A lot of time and effort have gone into developing our plans for the states beyond the first four.”

Clinton’s advisers say they also have paid staffs in all March 1 states, but they declined to share numbers. Aides also noted that Clinton has made at least one campaign stop in each of the Super Tuesday states, with the exception of Vermont, Sanders’s home.

“Knowing this race would always tighten, our campaign has been building a strong grass-roots organization since day one to earn

the nomination in the early primarystatesandthroughouttheprimary and caucus calendar,” said ClintonspokesmanJesseFerguson.

Despite the fresh preparations, Sanders,whorepresentsastatethat is 95 percent white, continues to lag Clinton among Latino and African American voters, who make up large shares of the Democratic electorate in Nevada, South Carolina and many of the March 1 states.

Clinton has led in the few polls that have come out of Nevada, and she has held a commanding average margin of about 40 percentage points in South Carolina, largely on the strength of African American voters, who are expected to make up more than half of the Democratic electorate in the first primary in the South.

Several other Southern states would seem to favor Clinton because of the sizable African American populations, including Arkansas, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

Sanders faces the obstacle of simply not being known by many black voters.

Aware of such challenges, Sanders has been, and plans to continue, making appearances in several March 1 states, even prior to the first votes being cast in Iowa. On Monday, he drew a crowd of more than 7,000 in Birmingham, Ala.

Gaining strength in Iowa and N.H., candidate seeks to also conquer Super Tuesday Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) arrives for a campaign stop in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Jan. 19.

KLMNO WEEKLY

And while Clinton has buttoned down the support of far more black elected officials, Sanders has his own eclectic set of African American validators showing up at events around the country, including in South Carolina. They include the flamboyant academic Cornel West, who has praised Sanders for being someone “vanilla” who understands the plight of the “chocolate” community; the Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike, who has compared Sanders’s agenda to that of Jesus Christ; and Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator with a national Democratic profile who was a former Clinton supporter.

More broadly, Sanders’s advisers are counting on a shift in momentum that will alter the dynamics in subsequent states if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire. Others agree that this is possible.

“If Sanders beats Clinton in the first two states, there will be a very, very strong narrative about his momentum, and then who knows what happens,” said Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University and a former spokesman for Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

Elleithee, who is not working for a candidate in this year’s race, said Clinton is in a better position to rebound than she was during her 2008 presidential bid, after finishing third in the Iowa caucuses.

“Having said that, I don’t believe there’s a single person in Brooklyn who wants to test that theory,” Elleithee said, referring to Clinton’s national campaign headquarters.

Lesscleariswhethermomentum can offset Sanders’s structural disadvantages — notably in a couple of caucus states where complicated rules demand early organization.

The Sanders team often points to South Carolina, where Obama was trailing Clinton in 2008 polls until after Obama beat her in Iowa.

In this cycle, the vote in South Carolina will be influenced in part by the states ahead of it, said Jamie Harrison, chairman of South Carolina Democratic Party.

“What happens in Iowa influences New Hampshire, what happens in New Hampshire influences Nevada and what happens in Nevada influences South Carolina,” he said. “It’s all about momentum and building it.” n

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NATION

In K-12 schools, sex assaults on rise BY

E MMA B ROWN

H

er eighth-grade classmate kept asking her to have sex in the bathroom. Tired of the badgering, she asked a teacher’s aide for help, and the aide outlined a plan: Lure the boy. Meet him in the bathroom.

Catch him in the act.

The 14-year-old girl agreed, but the impromptu sting operation went horribly wrong. Inside a bathroom stall at their Alabama middle school, the boy forced himself on her before anyone showed up to stop him. When nurses treated her, they found the kind of injuries caused by rape.

The attack was an extreme example of sexual violence in the nation’s K-12 schools and the alleged failure of educators to protect a girl in their care, something that activists and federal officials say is happening too often across the country.

Sexual assault has become a dominant topic on the nation’s college campuses in recent years, as student activists have spoken out and the Obama administration has pushed for institutional change. But it has largely remained a hidden issue in elementary, middle and high schools, where parents assume their children are supervised and safe.

Now there are signs that the problem is receiving more attention, including a sharp rise in the number of federal civil rights complaints alleging that K-12 schools have mishandled reports of sexual violence.

Young people have alleged rape by their classmates not only in school bathrooms, as in the Alabama case, but also in hallways and stairwells and cars parked on school property. Children have reported being assaulted during overnight field trips and at school dances and athletic events.

“We should not have blinders on about how early sexual violence can take place,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Education Department. The problem in K-12 schools is similar in many ways to the problem on college campuses,

SALWAN GEORGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

It has become a dominant topic at colleges, but remains largely hidden in earlier education she said, but there are also important differences, including the inexperience of young children and the power dynamics between adults and students.

“It has its own tinge of ugliness that is its own beast that we need to address,” she said.

Twenty-one percent of middle school students reported that they experienced unwanted physical touching on school grounds, according to a 2014 study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Among high school students, 4 percent of boys and 10 percent of girls say they have been forced to have sexual intercourse against their will, according to a 2013 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Obama administration has taken an aggressive approach to enforcing the anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, which requires K-12 schools and colleges to guard against sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Besides promptly investigating reports of sexual misconduct, schools also must take steps to prevent sexual violence and to remedy the damage done when sexual violence occurs. The law is based on the idea that children should be protected from hostile environments that make it impossible for them to fully participate in school.

The Education Department in fiscal 2015 received 65 civil rights complaints related to K-12 school districts’ handling of sexual violence — triple the number the agency had received the year before.

The agency is investigating 74 cases in 68 school districts, more than double the number of open investigations it reported 14 months ago.

“Colleges are now really starting to feel enough pressure that they know they have obligations,” said Cari Simon, a lawyer who has represented sexual assault victims across the nation. “In the K-12

Dea Goodman, 36, hugs her 15-year-old daughter in Sterling Heights, Mich.

Goodman says the teen was wrongly expelled after reporting that she was sexually assaulted in a car in her high school parking lot in May 2015.

cases, I have seen a lot of complete incompetence, a complete lack of even knowing they have responsibilities.”

Francisco Negron, general counsel for the National School Boards Association, challenged that characterization. “Most schools do know what Title IX is and have internal complaint procedures to address Title IX harassment complaints,” he said.

But K-12 schools often face the difficult job of trying to address complaints that pit the word of one student against another, Negron said. And districts say that the Obama administration has overreached in its interpretation of Title IX, significantly expanding situations in which schools are required to take action.

“I think school districts are struggling as they understand the law to make sure kids are safe and respond appropriately,” Negron said.

To many activists, the botched sting operation in Alabama in 2010, and the alleged rape that resulted, seemed to be a case study in a violation of Title IX: Sparkman Middle School had not only failed to protect the girl from sexual violence, but it had allegedly set her up for assault. The ramifications continue six years later.

In the 18 months before the alleged rape, the boy had been disciplined five times for sexual misconduct and four times for violent or threatening behavior, according to court documents. On the day of the alleged rape, he was cleaning a hallway without adult supervision as part of his in-school suspension for inappropriately touching another girl.

The Washington Post is not identifying the boy because he was a minor at the time and was never charged with a crime. The Post generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.

The victim sued the Madison County School District and several of its employees, but the case never went to trial. Even assuming the allegations were true, a U.S. District judge ruled, the girl’s federal civil rights claims were without merit. Although she had been sub-

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NATION jected to “tragic and horrific harm,” U.S. Magistrate Judge T. Michael Putnam wrote, the school district and its employees had not been “deliberately indifferent” to her plight.

The school board had never adopted “catch in the act” as its official policy, Putnam wrote. And the sting operation, he said, was at its heart a wrongheaded attempt to help the girl.

Putnam’s 2013 decision to side with the school board was an unwelcome shock to activists who did not want to see his legal analysis stand. The National Women’s Law Center, which has brought several landmark Title IX cases, agreed to help represent the girl on appeal.

The girl declined to be interviewed through her representatives at the NWLC. Efforts to reach the boy and his mother were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Madison County School District declined to comment on the case.

The Alabama case drew the notice of the federal government, which submitted a brief urging the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the lower court. “We had to step in,” said Lhamon, who heads the Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm. “We can do better than that, as a country. Period.”

Lhamon said that while the Alabama case is extreme in some respects, it is unremarkable in others. For example, Madison County was keeping vague, miscoded and often incomplete records of sexual harassment reports, according to court documents, making it impossible to see patterns in student behavior that might suggest a need for attention or help. Federal investigations have repeatedly found problems with recordkeeping at other school districts, Lhamon said.

When an investigation turns up shortcomings in a school district, school officials usually sign a resolution agreement detailing what they will do to improve. The Education Department could withhold federal funds from districts that refuse to come into compliance, but the agency has never taken that step.

Esther Warkov and Joel Levin, whose daughter was allegedly raped in 2012 during an overnight field trip with her Seattle high school, believe that addressing the problem will take a massive move-

ment of students and families who know what their Title IX rights are and demand that schools meet them.

Warkov and her husband are raising funds to create online materials and trainings that reach thousands of families and schools through the nonprofit organization they founded last year, Stop Sexual Assault in Schools.

At the moment, they’re serving as a sort of information clearinghouse for parents of children who have been sexually assaulted at school.

Among the parents whom Warkov and Levin have helped is Dea Goodman of Sterling Heights, Mich. She’s the mother of a 15year-old girl who was suspended and ultimately expelled from school after reporting in May 2015 that a 17-year-old senior had assaulted her in a car in the school parking lot. The boy, who claimed that the encounter was consensual, also was suspended, but he was allowed to graduate.

Joseph Konal, the district’s chief academic officer, said that both students were treated fairly and according to the district’s discipline policy. Goodman filed a Title IX complaint against the district, Warren Consolidated Schools, and in October, the Education Department announced that it had opened an investigation.

Meanwhile, Goodman’s daughter is being home-schooled.

“I feel like I’m in a prison,” she said by telephone. “I just want this all to be over with. I just want to be a normal kid doing normal things.”

Six years after the alleged rape that started it, the Alabama case is dragging on. The 14-year-old girl is now 20.

Sparkman Middle School never offered counseling after she was assaulted, and she soon withdrew and moved to North Carolina, where she received mental health counseling and was treated for depression, according to court records. She quit playing basketball and her grades ranged from As and Bs, sometimes, to Fs. After the alleged rape, the boy was suspended for five days for “inappropriate touching.” Then he was sent to an alternative school, according to court records, and three weeks later, he was suspended for watching pornography on a school computer. n

KLMNO WEEKLY

No big winners in lottery revenue Share of revenue from lotteries Share of revenue from lotteries

How much each state relied on lotteries for revenue in the 2014 fiscal year.

How much each state relied on lotteries for revenue in the 2014 fiscal year.

Up to 1%

1% to 2%

2%-3%

3% or more

No data

0.8 0.5

3.2 1.3 0.8

0.1 0.5

5.3 1.3

1

6.6

1.1

1.3

3.2

0.9

0.8 1

2 1 0.7

0.7

2.9

3

2.5

1.5

2.8 1.2

2

2.8

2 3.3 1.4 2.8

3.7 2

2.2

2.9 0.9

3.7 5.1

2.2

1.8 4.2

Source: Rockefeller Institute review of state lotteryLOTTERY agencies’ reports.REPORTS SOURCE: ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE REVIEW OF STATE AGENCIES’ THE WASHINGTON POST

BY

N IRAJ C HOKSHI

T

his month’s $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot may have you thinking that lotteries print money for the states that run them, but the role they play in state budgets varies widely.

On average, lotteries accounted for 2 percent of overall state revenue in fiscal 2014, according to an analysis of census data from researchers at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a State University of New York policy think tank.

But that number doesn’t tell the whole story. Some states rely heavily on lotteries for revenue, the researchers, Lucy Dadayan and Donald J. Boyd, note. In South Dakota, Oregon and Georgia, such games accounted for more than 5 percent of state revenue in the 2014 fiscal year. Other states could more easily take a pass: Lotteries account for less than 1 percent of revenue in 11 states and less than 2 percent of revenue in another dozen states.

Lotteries are a big business. In 2014, they generated slightly more than $70 billion in annual sales, according to the North American

THE WASHINGTON POST

Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. But most of that never makes it back to the states that run them. Filter out prize payments, administrative costs and all the other associated expenses, and states are left with just about $18 billion, or about a fourth of total sales, according to Dadayan and Boyd.

How that money is spent varies, too. Many states earmark the funds for specific uses — education, for example, is quite common. Indiana puts money toward pensions for police officers and firefighters. Iowa and Maryland support their veterans. Kansas uses it for juvenile detention centers and help for gamblers. Nebraska supports its state fair. Colorado and West Virginia use the funds for tourism and state parks.

However, officials often game their own promises. “When lottery revenue is higher than expected, states may be able to reduce nonlottery support for the dedicated program, freeing up funds for any purpose in the budget rather than increasing spending on the dedicated program,” Dadayan and Boyd write. n

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WORLD

‘State of disbelief’ on exit from Iran

BY A NDREW R OTH AND B RIAN M URPHY

Landstuhl, Germany

C

hampagne flowed and chocolates were passed around moments after a group of former Iranian American prisoners left Iranian airspace aboard a special Swiss jet that carried them to freedom.

“Everybody was sort of in a state of disbelief, and we still are,” former Marine Amir Hekmati said Tuesday as he described the scene on the flight with two other former detainees: a Washington Post reporter and a Christian pastor.

The group was among four Iranian Americans, including Post reporter Jason Rezaian, released recently as part of a two-country deal under which the United States also pardoned or dropped charges against 21 Iranians in sanctions-related cases.

In addition, Iran released a fifth American, 30-year-old student Matthew Trevithick, in what U.S. officials described as a separate “humanitarian gesture” that coincided with the lifting of international sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear pact with world powers.

Commenting on the nuclear deal Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, welcomed the removal of international sanctions but trampled hopes of further rapprochement with the United States after the agreements.

Hekmati, 32, who spent more than four years in an Iranian prison, said he felt “alive for the first time, like being born again,” as he recounted the dizzying events of the past days: A prison guard telling him to pack, a “nerve-racking” delay in leaving Iran and the trip that ended at a U.S. military hospital in Germany for medical tests.

Before his release, he was “at the point where I had just accepted that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison,” said Hekmati of Flint, Mich., who was arrested by Iranian security forces in 2011 and faced espionage-related charges.

Hekmati, appearing calm and healthy, wore a heavy black sweater and jeans as he met journalists near the entrance to the Landstuhl

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Marine veteran and others released from prison recount elation as they flew toward freedom Regional Medical Center with his brother-in-law and Rep. Daniel Kildee, the Democratic congressman from his district in Michigan.

Hekmati’s two sisters are also staying at the base with him.

“We were speechless for a while,” he said. “But I’ve said a lot, and we still have a lot to talk about.”

Hekmati also expressed deep gratitude for the support from loved ones abroad, as well as the media, and even from elected officials, including U.S. congressmen and President Obama.

“Even the Iranian officials, our captors essentially, were amazed,” he said. “They asked us why are they working so hard for you? And I just said that it’s America and they love their citizens. Even the other Iranian prisoners were moved.”

When the plane finally took off, and then cleared Iranian airspace, the celebration began.

“Champagne bottles were popped” aboard the Swiss govern-

ment jet, he said. “The Swiss are amazing. The hospitality. Chocolates. Veal was served.” Switzerland handles U.S. diplomatic affairs with Iran in the absence of diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran.

Hekmati, like the other prisoners who have been released, declined to talk in detail about his time in prison, but he did credit his experience in the U.S. Marines for being able to “withstand all the pressures that were put upon me, some of which were very inhumane and unjust.”

“Hearing about some of my fellow Marines supporting me really gave me the strength to put up with over four years of some very difficult times that I and my family went through,” he said.

It still is not clear when Hekmati will leave Germany, but he said he “hoped to go home soon,” adding that he had not seen his whole family yet.

Amir Hekmati, a U.S. Marine veteran who spent more than four years imprisoned in Iran, speaks with reporters Tuesday near an entrance to the U.S. military medical center at Landstuhl, Germany.

“I really want to see my family and be back in the land of the free back home,” he said.

Rezaian, the Post reporter, also was undergoing medical tests at the U.S. military hospital after almost 18 months in an Iranian prison.

Rezaian, 39, stood trial behind closed doors in a Revolutionary Court on charges including espionage — allegations he strongly denied. He was found guilty last year and sentenced to a prison term, but the secretive court disclosed neither the specific charges on which he was convicted nor the length of the term.

“I want people to know that physically, I’m feeling good,” Rezaian said during meetings Monday with the Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, and foreign editor, Douglas Jehl. “I know people are eager to hear from me, but I want to process this for some time.’’

Also released in the deal were Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, 35, of Boise, Idaho, and another Iranian American, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, who opted to remain in Iran. The student, Trevithick, flew out Saturday on his own.

Accompanying Rezaian on the flight were his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian journalist, and his mother, Mary Rezaian.

Abedini had been imprisoned since July 2012 for organizing home churches. Hekmati spent more than four years behind bars on spying charges following his arrest in August 2011 during a visit to see his grandmother.

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) met with Abedini for 90 minutes Tuesday at the Landstuhl hospital, the congressman’s office announced.

“I think he’s doing very well — physically, emotionally and mentally,” Pittenger said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday evening. “He’s come out of an honest trauma, 31/2 years, much of that in isolation. He said that in the last six months, they fed him well and treated him well, knowing that they would soon be releasing him.

I think that they saw in their mind that they would be releasing him at the point of this deal being consummated.” n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Baby formula’s underground market A . O DYSSEUS P ATRICK Sydney BY

A

fter Mandy Santos’s teething 8-month-old son woke her every two hours one night demanding to be fed, she walked into a Sydney supermarket looking for a can of baby formula.

As the 31-year-old professional violinist stood in the baby-food aisle trying to choose a product, her 2-year-old daughter hung on to her leg, chewing on a cookie.

The little boy was with a relative.

“He’s very clingy and I’m too tired,” Santos said, referring to the baby. “I’m going to wean him slowly.”

But there was a catch: Despite fully stocked shelves of formula made by Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Danone and others, this supermarket in the Coles chain sells only two cans to a customer at a time. The rule is aimed at countering a thriving underground market that ships Australian formula to China, where only 16 percent of new mothers breast-feed their children exclusively, according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Private profiteers can resell a two-pound can of formula in China for as much as three times the Australian price, said Michael Harvey, a dairy-industry analyst at Rabobank, a large agricultural financier. “There is clearly money in it,” he said in an interview.

Several milk-contamination scandals, including one that involved the hospitalization of 54,000 children in 2008, have made many in China suspicious of their food supply. The one-child policy, which is now being abandoned, also made many of the 16 million babies born every year in China even more precious to their parents.

Experts say Chinese food rules are as tough as Australia’s — they are both based on international standards known as the Codex Alimentarius, overseen by the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But many Chinese parents do not trust their government to enforce the rules.

CHRISTOPHER PEARCE/GETTY IMAGES

A hunger for the product in China has created scarcities and sales limits in places like Australia “The Chinese consumer wants the formula with the English writing on it,” said Jan Carey, the chief executive of Australia’s Infant Nutrition Council, a lobby group for baby-food makers.

Australia is not the only place where sales limits have been imposed. Britain, Hong Kong and New Zealand also have them, but the problem is more acute in Australia. The country’s clean environment and reputation for safe food appeals to Chinese parents, said Simon Hansford, a formula consultant who has been to China more than 80 times and once owned a milk-powder factory.

“They love their Louis Vuitton and BMWs,” he said in an interview. “They think if the formula is sold in the big supermarkets and pharmacies, it’s a famous brand.”

While well-intentioned, the Australian supermarkets’ policy means the country’s exhausted mothers have to stock up every couple of weeks or seek out stores with more generous limits. At the Coles visited

by Santos, the violinist, a notice in

English and Chinese said: “While this is regrettable we are trying to helpmakethisproductavailablefor our customers who require it.”

The rule is not always enforced.

Two months ago, a woman from the southern city of Melbourne posted a photo on Facebook of four people filling two shopping carts with baby formula. “The group of four adults cleared a pallet of more than 50 tins despite the store’s fourtins-per-person limit,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. “It felt like a smooth operation, like they did this all the time.”

Chinese buyers send the formula home by regular mail, a process that does not require special paperwork if the shipment weighs less than 22 pounds. Reports that temporary shops are opening in busy areas to sell and ship formula suggest that the trade is becoming more sophisticated.

A spokeswoman for Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Water Resources said the agency is investigating allegations that formula is being sent overseas in

Shelves are almost empty of baby formula with signs warning customers that they are limited to eight cans per customer at a large Sydney supermarket in November.

breach of shipping rules.

Ironically, most of the formula sold in Australia comes from elsewhere. The most popular brand, Aptamil, is made by French dairy giant Danone in New Zealand, a country that has so many cows it is sometimes referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of the global milk trade.”

In China, Danone sells formula under the Karicare brand, which it promotes as a 100 percent New Zealand product.

Breast-feeding advocates are aghast at the trade, which they say preys on vulnerable women in China. Nina Berry, a researcher at the Sydney School of Public Health and a spokeswoman for the Australian Breastfeeding Association, described the prices being paid for foreign formula in China as “extortionate” and questioned the ethics of food companies that market the products. Some experts want China to ban the advertising of baby formula.

Women with infants are “doing very undervalued work, with very little support, often in isolation and unable to access the personal support, professional advice or industrial protections they need,” Berry said in an email.

The baby-formula industry is acutely aware of the criticism and says children should be breast-fed for their first six months. Privately, industry advocates say many Chinese mothers choose formula so they can return to work quickly and save money to fund their children’s education.

Seeing the opportunity, Australian manufacturers are scrambling to meet demand. But the adjustment is not happening quickly. It takes some six months to increase production, because ingredients such as vegetable fat and vitamins have to be ordered well in advance.

Nonetheless, investors sense big profits. Baby-food makers more generally were among the most successful companies on the Australian stock exchange last year. A $5,000 investment in one company, Bellamy’s Organic, on Jan. 1 last year was worth $49,000

by New Year’s Eve, according to CommSec, a stockbroker. n

THE INCOME

BY JIM TANKERSLEY in San Francisco

14 percent of the increase in the share of income going to the top 1 percent of Americans between 1975 and 2012 “may be explained by an increase in innovation,” economists estimated. ..

There is an apartment for rent in a renovated former warehouse here, across the street from the Caltrain commuter rail station. It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms and nearly 700 square feet of space. It comes furnished. It is, the online advertisement proclaims, a “perfect place” for someone, like so many young start­up employees today, who works in Silicon Valley but lives in the city. It could be yours for $8,525 a month. ¶ Rents get more bearable in farther flung parts of the city and in bedroom communities down the Peninsula, but only slightly. A deluge of cash has soaked the engineers and executives of the Bay Area, pushing up home prices and leaving San Francisco with levels of income inequality typically seen in develop­ ing nations. ¶ Paul Graham, a venture capitalist and one of the founders of the start­up incubator Y Combinator, would have you believe this rising inequality is a good thing. Or, at very worst, the inevitable consequence of a good thing. “You can’t prevent great variations in wealth without preventing people from getting rich,” he wrote in an essay that went viral online last week, “and you can’t do that without preventing them from starting start­ups.”

For decades, the gap between what the best-paid Americans earn and what everyone else in the country earns has been widening.

Some argue this is actually a good thing. But a series of recent papers indicate that notion may be a misreading of the U.S. economy.

GAP Graham’s piece happened to light up the Internet just as thousands of economists descended on San Francisco for the annual conference of the American Economic Association. The drizzly three days of the gathering featured what appears to have been the largest focus on inequality in the organization’s history. The 70 inequality-themed papers presented here wove a nest of new research demonstrating how and why inequality has increased, and what side effects appear to have accompanied it.

Taken together, they make a convincing case that Graham — and others who wave off inequality as inconsequential — has misread what has happened in the American economy.

They suggest that everyone should worry about the drivers and consequences of inequality — even venture capitalists.

Since the middle of the 1980s, a gap has been widening between what the best-paid Americans earn and what everyone else in the country earns. There has also been a gap between how much money those two groups spend, but for a long time that gap did not grow as much, because “everyone else” borrowed heavily to try to keep up with the folks at the top.

The Great Recession cut off that borrowing.

It also reduced real incomes for the bottom 90 percent of American income-earners.

Smaller paychecks and less access to credit left those Americans with only one choice: Spend less than they had been. The top earners didn’t increase their own spending by nearly enough to make up the difference. That is a big reason the U.S. economy has recovered so sluggishly

from the recession, economists Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari declared in a paper presented at the conference.

“Rising income inequality,” the wrote in their research paper, “is now a significant barrier to economic growth and full employment.”

There was already some irony in that paper, and so many others on inequality, landing in the northern outpost of Silicon Valley. Graham’s essay cranked that irony to foghorn decibels.

Inequality, Graham argues in the piece, is not bad “per se.” It can stem from rich people exploiting tax loopholes or poor people being locked in prison at high rates, which are both bad things. Or, it can result from more tech entrepreneurs getting rich, which is a good thing, because those entrepreneurs are making valuable things for the economy.

The argument takes several turns, but it boils down to two points. First, whether inequality comes from good or bad sources, it does not, by itself, hurt anyone; just because the rich get richer does not mean the poor and middle class can’t get richer, too. He concedes that some rich people got that way by taking money from the poor, but not most of them.

That’s his second point: We shouldn’t try to reduce inequality, because doing so would necessarily mean killing off the innovators and entrepreneurs who get rich for socially good reasons. He writes: “Eliminating great variations in wealth would mean eliminating start-ups. Are you sure, hunters, that you want to shoot this particular animal? It would only mean you eliminated start-ups in your own country. Ambitious people already move halfway around

the world to further their careers, and start-ups can operate from anywhere nowadays. So if you made it impossible to get rich by creating wealth in your country, the ambitious people in your country would just leave and do it somewhere else.”

Research suggests that Graham is both overestimating the importance of start-ups to inequality and underestimating the damage that high inequality can inflict.

There is evidence to support his contention that returns to entrepreneurship are making inequality worse. The problem for his argument is that the effect doesn’t appear to be large, comparatively.

At the conference, a group of five economists, including Philippe Aghion of College de France and David Hemous of the University of Zurich, unveiled a study that speaks directly to the Silicon Valley effect on inequality. They looked at levels of innovation (as measured by a particular kind of patent production) across individual states over time. They found a significant relationship between increased innovation in a state and the increased income share of the top 1 percent of earners in the state.

When the math cleared from their analyses, the economists estimated that 14 percent of the increase in the share of income going to the top 1 percent of Americans between 1975 and 2012 “may be explained by an increase in innovation.”

The economists say that those increases are temporary, they generate economic growth and they’re associated with stronger upward mobility. Those are all good things. Point, Graham.

If you take that as a proxy for the Silicon continues on next page

...If you take that as a proxy for the Silicon Valley effect, though, you’re left with a problem: 86 percent of the recent inequality increase cannot be explained by innovation. You are also stuck with the fact that startup formation for tech companies has been falling for more than a decade even as inequality has been widening, and not rising, as Graham implies.

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COVER STORY from previous page

Valley effect, though, you’re left with a problem: 86 percent of the recent inequality increase cannot be explained by innovation.

You are also stuck with the fact that start-up formation for tech companies has been falling for more than a decade even as inequality has been widening, and not rising, as Graham implies. Total venture capital funding remains well below late-1990s levels, even before you adjust for inflation, according to data from the National Venture Capital Association.

In light of that, it is difficult to conclude that start-ups are mostly driving the income gap.

Economists have suggested all sorts of other things that might be contributing to the gap.

There is the “superstar effect,” which says that the opening of global markets is delivering big payouts to the very top players in a variety of industries now rolling in cash from around the globe. There is a broader theory that advancing technology is delivering higher payouts to the most skilled workers, and leaving lower-skilled workers to compete with robots and less-expensive foreign labor, pushing down their wages.

There is also mounting evidence that some, or even a lot, of inequality has nothing to do with superstars or skills — at least not in the way that we tend to think about them. The culprit in this theory is what economists call rent-seeking. Really simply put, that is people making extra money not because they deliver a good or a service that the market values, but because they’ve bent the rules of some system to shuttle more compensation their way.

Examples of this would include chief executives who pad their profits by lobbying for government favors and reap big bonuses as a result. Or financial pros who score huge fees helping clients game the tax code to pay less to the Internal Revenue Service. There are all sorts of other examples, but a basic rule is: If you’re earning more money without doing anything to add additional value to the economy, you’re rent-seeking.

Several papers presented in San Francisco hinted at, or directly identified, rent-seeking as a prime cause of growing inequality. Most forceful was the liberal economist Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who argued in a paper that rent-seeking in copyright protections and the financial sector, along with excess pay for CEOs and other highly educated professionals, explains “the bulk” of the growth in top incomes.

If his argument is correct, Baker writes, “it means that there is nothing intrinsic to capitalism that led to this rapid rise in inequality.”

It would mean that you could not reduce inequality simply by raises taxes on the rich — you would need policies to straighten kinks in the market by shrinking the financial sector or reducing copyright windfalls. It would also mean that reducing inequality should not dampen entrepreneurship.

Other recent studies also suggest that high levels of rent-seeking are driving inequality.

Brian Bell and John Van Reenen, a pair of economists in Britain (which resembles the

TONY DEJAK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

TOP: A line winds through the Cleveland Convention Center as people wait in line to enter a job fair in 2009 in Cleveland.

ABOVE: People protest the federal government’s bailout of Bank of America in front of its headquarters in New York City in 2009.

The Great Recession cut off borrowing and reduced real incomes for the bottom 90 percent of American incomeearners.

United States in many ways when it comes to inequality), reported in 2014 that increased bonuses for bankers accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the top 1 percent of incomes in Britain after 1999. There are all sorts of reasons to believe that premium financial sector pay is almost entirely rent-seeking. The British paper would suggest that at least two-thirds of inequality could be linked back to “bad” sources, in other words.

Oliver Denk, an economist for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development expanded on that work in two papers for the conference. He dove into statistics for every country in Europe and pieced together a composite of the men — they’re almost all men — who make up the top 1 percent of earners on the continent. His findings give us a window on America, where inequality is even more pronounced than in Europe.

“Workers in the top 1 percent,” Denk found, “tend to be 40 to 60 years old, be men, have

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COVER STORY

MARY ALTAFFER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AGENCE-FRANCE PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

tertiary education, work in finance or manufacturing and be senior managers.” At worst, that’s a group ripe for rent-seeking. At best, it doesn’t sound much like the innovators Graham is so worried about discouraging. The liberal Economic Policy Institute has done similar work on America’s top 1 percent, and found that at least a quarter of its increased income share since 1979 can be attributed to finance.

Taken together, that evidence suggests that Graham is overly worried about inequality “hunters” discouraging today’s crop of startup founders; they just aren’t that prevalent in the ranks of the super rich who are pulling away from everyone else.

Other evidence suggests that he is wrong on his second point, too: Inequality appears to have consequences for the economy, no matter what is driving it.

At one point in his essay, Graham suggests replacing concern about inequality with concern about poverty and social mobility. He

TOP: Occupy Wall Street activists march during a tour of foreclosed homes in Brooklyn in 2011.

ABOVE: Thousands of workers and union members gather for a 2010 rally on Wall Street to protest lost jobs and the taxpayer-funded bailout of banks.

Some economists say that excess pay for CEOs is one of the drivers of income inequality.

suggests that those are distinct from the growth of incomes for the very rich. Americans, he writes, fall prey to “the pie fallacy: that the rich get rich by taking money from the poor.” He says it is possible, but not always true, that the pie can grow such that everyone gets more, even if the rich get a lot more.

It is indeed possible for that to happen. It just does not appear to have been happening in America in recent years. Instead, it appears that the very rich have been enriching themselves further at the expense of workers. That is what researchers from the International Monetary Fund at the conference presented in a paper, which argues that the rise in top-level earnings is correlated with a decline in union membership; essentially, when workers get less, their bosses and shareholders get more.

A similar argument lies at the heart of the paper by Cynamon and Fazzari, who are economists at the St. Louis Fed and Washington University in St. Louis. Their contention is that the lack of pie growth, if you will, for most Americans created a shortage of consumer spending that has kept the recovery from recession at historically weak levels. The stagnation of most incomes below the very rich “has opened a large gap in demand generation that has not been filled,” they write.

Perhaps most resonant to Graham is the idea that inequality might be discouraging smart workers from working at all — in start-ups or elsewhere. A paper from economists at the New York Fed and the University of Southern California finds a link between growing inequality and declining labor-force participation among highly educated women, whose exit from the workforce hurts the economy. The economists find that as some highly educated men’s wages rose quickly, their highly educated wives earned and worked less.

If there is middle ground between Graham and this body of research, it is the idea that policymakers should not go after inequality with blunt instruments, such as big tax hikes, just for the sake of soaking the rich. Perhaps, instead, they should target rent-seeking, which economists agree is bad for everyone who isn’t a rent seeker.

That could mean taxing financial transactions to discourage excessive Wall Street trading, or taxing income from investments at the same rate as income earned on the job, in order to discourage expensive financial engineering. It could mean simplifying tax and regulatory codes to reduce companies’ gains from lobbying.

If you curbed rent-seeking — or what conservatives like to call cronyism, in a solely government-focused form — you would almost certainly improve growth and help more people share in its returns. Graham’s worry is that you would not actually reduce inequality in that case. All the former rent-seekers, he writes, would flow into entrepreneurship: “If the only way left to get rich is to start start-ups, they’ll start start-ups.”

In economic terms, that would be a great problem to have. n

KLMNO WEEKLY

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CULTURE

For artists, gone can be golden The period after death can determine a singer’s legacy Post-mortem

174,000 “Blackstar” albums sold the week after Bowie’s death, according to Nielsen Music.

$1,900 Cost of a matinee ticket to “Lazarus” (the New York musical Bowie helped write) on StubHub after his death.

$1B Earned by the Michael Jackson estate since his death in 2009, according to Forbes.

$21M Earned by the Bob Marley estate in 2015, mostly through sales of products including headphones and tea, according to Forbes.

600,000 Visitors per year to Graceland, the estate of Elvis Presley.

BY

J ESSICA C ONTRERA

T

here is no better time to be an artist than when you’ve just died.

Showbiz sages have watched it happen again and again: As soon as death silences a popular entertainer, and suddenly all the work he has created becomes all the work he will ever create, his popularity and financial worth soar. The other week, it happened for David Bowie.

The album he released just two days before he died became his first to top the Billboard charts. Tickets to the musical he co-wrote, which opened in New York last month to middling reviews, sold on StubHub for $1,900. His videos broke a streaming record on Vevo, and SiriusXM radio brought back an entire channel devoted to his music.

While fans are wistfully humming “Space Oddity,” a cluster of his associates — heirs, estate planners, lawyers, managers and creative directors — will begin scrambling for ways to make this Bowie boom last long after the Twitter tributes disappear.

Should there be a Bowie documentary? A coffee-table book? A “Ziggy Stardust” restaurant?

And how can they be created tastefully, in a way that doesn’t exploit a beloved dead icon?

“Everyone I see trying to do this looks at an artist’s body of work like vultures over a dead animal, looking for pink flesh to pluck off and feed the machine,” said Jeff Jampol, whose company manages the legacies of Jim Morrison, the Ramones, Otis Redding and the Doors. “What we try to do is reanimate the body, lift it up, and revenue streams will come with it.”

He’s speaking figuratively, but that’s sometimes the problem: Without the artist there to govern the work, the decisions are left to heirs, who usually hire lawyers and creative managers to run the estate.

“Music is very subjective and creative. Business is business,” said Gary Gilbert, whose law firm manages the estates of Rick James and Miles Davis. “Marrying those two concepts is kind of weird

As the legacy of David Bowie, top right, is decided, Whitney Houston is a cautionary tale, while Elvis Presley’s and Bob Marley’s work lives on.

sometimes.”

It’s not as simple as dividing up assets based on a will. Imagine if all the furniture your grandpa left behind is worth millions of dollars. And it could make many more millions for years to come, if it is shared and promoted in just the right way.

Keeping an artist’s work alive takes more than hoping their music still gets played on the radio.

The key seems to be giving fans experiences that connect them with not only the artist’s music, but also the artist’s persona.

The Elvis Presley estate has Graceland, the mansion in Memphis that was the singer’s former home. It opened as a museum five years after his death and today attracts more than 600,000 visitors each year.

Branded products are big moneymakers, too. Nearly 35 years after Bob Marley’s death, you can drink Marley Coffee or the relax-

ation tea “Marley’s Mellow Mood” while listening to “One Love” on your House of Marley headphones.

Then there’s the artist’s story, ripe for books and documentaries.

In 2015, there was “Montage of Heck,” a second Kurt Cobain documentary; “Amy,” the Amy Winehouse documentary; “The Amazing Nina Simone”; and “Janis: Little Girl Blue,” about Janis Joplin.

The Joplin documentary, while capturing the highlights, is explicit about the scabs on her career.

Jampol, who runs her estate, said they would never dare to gloss over her drug use.

“That’s the hardest conversation with the heirs or beneficiaries,” Jampol said. “Because you never know if what you think you’re protecting is the part that is the key, the secret ingredient.”

The worst you can do by an artist, experts say, is nothing. If Bowie’s music and image are not promoted, they will inevitably be-

gin to fade. Whitney Houston, for example, was beloved and revered in life. But after her 2012 death, the remembrances that received the most publicity were a Lifetime movie denounced by her estate and a memoir by her mother called “disrespectful” by her daughter, Bobbi Kristina. The conversation surrounding her name today is most often about the death of Bobbi Kristina and related family drama.

Compare that with the story of Michael Jackson. In the 2000s, his finances were known to be dismal, child molestation accusations exploded and he was most often seen on the cover of tabloids. Then he died, and suddenly the King of Pop reigned again. There was “This Is It,” the Michael Jackson movie; “Bad 25” the Michael Jackson documentary; “One,” the Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas; and “Immortal,” the Vegas show’s 157-city world tour.

A key component to the Jackson estate’s success is the wealth of unreleased material he left behind. There are plans to release 10 new Michael Jackson CDs, each a chance to spark renewed interest.

It’s unclear how much music Bowie left behind. Producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone that Bowie did write and demo at least five songs that were meant to be released after his album.

John Branca, who co-runs the Michael Jackson estate, said there will inevitably be a “greatest hits” album of some kind. Beyond that, you can’t compare Bowie to other artists to find the answer.

“What you do for Jim Morrison is not the same as what you do for Michael Jackson. You have to stay true to the artist,” Branca said.

For now, fans are keeping the Bowie boom going, with memorials taking place across the world.

The discussions on how to carry on his legacy will likely start soon, but Bowie ensured there was plenty of nearly new material for his fans to devour the moment they heard he was gone: his best-selling album yet and a musical, “Lazarus” — the name of the man in the Bible who died and, soon after, was raised back to life. n

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

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HEALTH

KLMNO WEEKLY

10 food myths

that are hurting your kids BY

C ASEY S EIDENBERG

A

fellow mom recently asked me whether cucumbers and celery really count as green vegetables. She had heard they don’t offer much nutri­ tional value because they are mostly water, so she figured she shouldn’t worry about encouraging her children to eat them. ¶ Although these vegetables might not be the MVPs of the nutrition game (we’ll leave that to the dark leafy greens), they all have a place on the team. ¶ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says children, depending on age and activity, should eat one to three cups of vegetables every day (and nine out of 10 American kids don’t get enough). This is a significant amount, so perhaps we shouldn’t so hastily dis­ miss those cucumbers. ¶ The truth is, all vegetables count toward the CDC rec­ ommendation, as they all provide health benefits — just in different concentra­ tions. ¶ Here are 10 common myths that mischaracterize vegetables — followed by facts about why these vegetables are worth a place on your child’s plate.

Cabbage: Just a cheap meal filler 1Cabbage may be inexpensive,

stripped from the syrup. Corn is a high-carbohydrate vegetable, so it shouldn’t be the only one your child eats. But it provides thiamine that helps convert carbohydrates into energy, heart-healthy folate, and antioxidants to help fight disease. Much of the conventional corn in the United States grows from genetically modified seeds, so buying organic — always a good idea in the vegetable world — is especially recommended.

water, helping our bodies stay hydrated in hot temperatures, but they also provide antioxidants such as vitamin C and betacarotene that help us fight cellular damage, B vitamins that support nerve health, potassium for heart health, and fiber.

5

2

Garlic: Flavor but no nutrition 6Known in ancient times (and in

3

Onions: Ditto Never say no to an onion, 7 especially during allergy season.

Carrots: Too much sugar Yes, my daughter likes to pretend she is a bunny when she eats her carrots, but this vegetable isn’t just for pets or kids. Carrots contain high amounts of vitamin A for eyesight and immunity, vitamin C for that strong immune system, and fiber. As for its natural sugar, the fiber in a carrot slows down the absorption, so there is a much smaller effect on one’s blood sugar.

Corn: Source of highfructose syrup High-fructose corn syrup has certainly damaged corn’s reputation, but the vegetable and the sweetener have little in common.

All of the nutrition and healthy fiber in the corn plant has been

horror movies) as a tool to ward off witches and vampires, in modern times garlic is equally as powerful at keeping us healthy. This vegetable has been shown to lower blood pressure, protect the heart, fight cancer and regulate blood sugar levels and is antibacterial and antiviral, which means it is helpful during cold and flu season.

Carrots, onions and parsley all provide some type of health benefit, despite rumors to the contrary.

cheese dressing, iceberg lettuce can provide a significant portion of the daily requirement of vitamin K to keep our blood and bones strong and vitamin A for our eyesight and immunity. Yes, darker varieties of lettuces and greens provide more nutrition per serving, but if iceberg will get your kid to eat a salad, embrace it.

Nothing but Parsley: Just a garnish water What a waste that this herb 4Yes,Cucumbers: 9 cucumbers are 95 percent is most often used as a disposable

Celery: Ditto Celery is not just a tool to stir a bloody mary or an accompaniment for chicken wings. The vegetable provides vitamin K for blood health, folate for red blood cell production, vitamin A, fiber and yes, lots of water. Celery has been shown to lower blood pressure and the risk of cancer.

but it is not ineffective. Part of the cruciferous family of vegetables that includes kale, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, cabbage is high in fiber for healthy digestion and satiety, vitamin C for the immune system and the absorption of iron, vitamin K for healthy blood and circulation, and cancer-fighting compounds.

Iceberg lettuce: No flavor or nutrition 8More than a vehicle for blue

Onions are high in quercetin, an antioxidant known for being a natural antihistamine. Onions have also been shown to support heart health, and they provide vitamin C, calcium, iron, folate and fiber.

garnish, because ounce per ounce, parsley has 33 times the amount of vitamin C, 16 times the amount of vitamin K, six times the amount of iron and four times the amount of calcium as lettuce. Oh, and don’t forget the folate, fiber and water.

Potatoes: Fattening Potatoes have a bad rep10 utation as either a french fry or a nutritionless white carb, when in fact they provide twice as much potassium as a banana, vitamin B6 for nerves and mood, vitamin C and fiber. Potatoes have a high glycemic index, which means they can affect blood sugar, but that alone shouldn’t convict the vegetable. A person with blood sugar issues, diabetes or weight problems might want to limit their potato intake, but the rest of us should enjoy them in moderation to reap their vitamin and mineral benefits.

Getting kids to eat vegetables is all about positive reinforcement.

If they have good experiences with one vegetable, especially a green one, then they are more likely to open their minds to another. So if your kid will eat the minor-league vegetables like iceberg lettuce, then serve away: That salad might just be the warm-up to champion vegetableeating behavior later. n Seidenberg is co-founder of Nourish Schools, a D.C.-based nutrition education company, and co-author of “Super Food Cards.”

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

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KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

A cranky American’s look at Britain N ON-FICTION

A

THE ROAD TO LITTLE DRIBBLING Adventures of an American in Britain

By Bill Bryson Doublday.

380 pp. $28.95

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REVIEWED BY

G RIFF W ITTE

little more than 20 years ago, Bill Bryson wandered the green and pleasant lands of his adopted home, Britain, and found amusingly cantankerous things to say at nearly every turn. The weather, the public transit systems, the architecture, the food and especially the people — everything about Britain came in for good-natured grumbling, and all of it ended up in his book “Notes From a Small Island.”

The British responded to their ungracious American guest by turning him into a national celebrity, buying his book by the million and bestowing upon him every honor this side of a knighthood.

The reception said much about the British character, which in its post-empire incarnation forbids taking oneself too seriously. Bryson clearly loved Britain — professing in the book’s final pages his affection for everything from drizzly Sundays to Marmite, that salty spread the Brits gobble up by the jar-full. But he dressed his adoration in a garb of gentle mockery.

That’s exactly how the Brits like it. And it’s exactly what made the book so compulsively entertaining for the rest of us.

Bryson’s new book, “The Road to Little Dribbling,” follows much the same formula — and to similar effect. He ambles up and down picture-perfect country roads, gazes out from windswept coastal cliffs, drops in on old stone villages and generally pursues a path apparent only to him, recounting local anecdotes as he goes.

His travels take him to worldfamous sites such as Stonehenge but also to places no right-minded tourists would visit — especially if they’ve read this book.

The first place he visits, a grim post-industrial town called Eastleigh, “is directing all its economic energiesintothemakinganddrinking of coffee. There were essentially two types of shop in the town: empty shops and coffee shops.”

At a fading beach resort — Brit-

ISTOCK

The Derwent dam is among the hidden wonders that Bill Bryson encounters in Britain.

ain is full of them — Bryson recalls his first time diving into an English sea, an experience he likens to “running into liquid nitrogen.”

“Since that day, I have never assumed that anything is fun just because it looks like the English are enjoying themselves doing it, and mostly I have been right,” he observes dryly — and accurately.

Bryson is 64, and occasionally he can go too far in playing the curmudgeon. But he makes up for it in two ways that make him not only a palatable travel companion but a very nearly ideal one.

The first is that, like the British, he’s well-versed in the fine art of self-deprecation. Many, if not most, of the book’s innumerable gags are at his own expense, including the very first, when an automatic parking barrier comes crashing down on his head. It is, he writes, “something I don’t think I could have managed in my younger, more alert years.”

The second is that Bryson’s capacity for wonder at the beauty of his adopted homeland seems to

have grown with time. Bryson grew up in Iowa and came to live in Britain accidentally: At the tail end of a college-break visit in 1973, he impulsively applied for a job at a sanitorium outside London and fell in love with one of the nurses.

Britain is still his home four decadeslater,aperiodinwhichhewent from lowly scribe at small-town British papers to best-selling travel writer. But he retains an outsider’s appreciation for a country that first struck him as “wholly strange . . . and yet somehow marvelous.”

He marvels still, but he’s at his best when writing about places you’ve probably never heard of.

In northern England’s Peak District, he stumbles upon “an enormous stone dam and reservoir, which stood in a silent landscape of wooded hills and heath.”

And he has the site to himself.

“It is a permanent astonishment to me how casually streaked with glory Britain is,” he writes. “If the Derwent dam were in Iowa, it would be on the state’s license plates. There would be camp-

grounds, an RV park, probably a large outlet center. Here it is anonymous and forgotten, a momentary diversion on a countryside amble.”

Bryson turns uncharacteristically serious when he frets that much of what makes Britain so extraordinary could just as easily disappear. He rails against the impact of austerity policies that have uprooted the flower beds from village roundabouts and delayed the repair of crumbling national treasures. He despairs that his beloved countryside will be chewed up in the relentless race for development. Hedgerows, country churches and “sheep roaming over windswept fells,” he notes, can rarely justify their existence on economic grounds alone.

The book ends with a plea: As custodians of such a fine island, the British need to look after it.

Britons may not take themselves too seriously. But I hope they take Bryson’s message to heart. n Witte is The Post’s London bureau chief.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

19

BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

A breezy caper from ‘NCIS’ actor

Finding the humor in a bloody job

F ICTION

N ON-FICTION

I

l

REVIEWED BY

N EELY T UCKER

t’s pretty easy to hate David McCallum.

Devastatingly handsome Scottish actor. Broke out in the 1962 film “Billy Budd,” stardom in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Television, film and stage career for 63 years, the last 13 in “NCIS,” as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard.

First married to no less than the actress Jill Ireland. She left him for Charles Bronson. Married to Katherine Carpenter, a former model, for 48 years. Eight grandchildren; seems happy as a clam.

And now, at 82, he has published his first novel, a lark of a crime story involving a New York actor out of his depth. Worse, it’s pretty danged good. (Have I said I don’t like this guy?)

“Once a Crooked Man” is mostly the story of Harry Murphy, a 30-something actor in New York, getting by on commercials (“his voice had the essential ingredients of sounding authoritative and at the same time friendly”) and small parts in film and television.

One afternoon, just after auditions for a voice-over bit in a mayonnaise commercial and a part in an off-Broadway play, he needs a quick bathroom break.

He pops into a none-too-fancy Chinese place, the Fiery Dragon.

There’s only one table with customers. Before Harry can reach the facilities, the men at the table tell him to get out. Desperate, Harry steps into the restaurant alley to take care of the business at hand . . . and overhears, through an open window, those lone customers planning an execution.

First, this situation is a good reminder to go before you leave home.

Second, it’s a reminder that, should you overhear mobsters discussing a hit, stay out of it.

These low-level, low-brow gangsters are the aging Bruschetti brothers, Salvatore, Enzo and Max. The problem is Max. He has

free run of the young prostitutes in one of their establishments for his still-surging sexual appetite, but he nearly dropped dead of a heart attack a month ago.

As the novel opens, he’s persuading his brothers to cash out of the drug trade, with only a couple of executions needed to secure their safe retirement package.

Cue Harry. Or, more particularly, Harry’s conscience.

Flush with that big mayo contract money (he got the gig!) and pinged by guilt about knowing some poor sap is gonna get whacked, he jets off to London to give the elderly target a heads-up.

Good deed done, he’ll pop around London and then bounce back to Gotham and his busy, if fledgling, career.

“Once a Crooked Man” tracks how this all goes delightfully wrong, from the hit men and prostitutes in the Bruschettis’ stable, to their overlords in South American drug compounds, to the sexual concerns of money launderers in the U.K. It’s all cheerfully implausible in the manner that, say, “NCIS” is implausible but still fun to watch.

The only thing that stopped me was a rape-and-bondage scene in which the female victim decides that she likes it so much that she might just drop everything and take up with her assailant. That seemed sort of heavy for a crime caper told in such an otherwise breezy, engaging manner.

After all, McCallum isn’t writing a noirish tale of deceit, vengeance and the hard hustle. This is crime as light comedy, with a broad cast of characters, and you’re not supposed to take any of it seriously. There are guns, a fetching detective and bags of money. It’s a three-card monte as to who winds up where with what and whom. n Tucker is a National reporter for The Washington Post and the author, most recently, of “Murder, DC.”

I ONCE A CROOKED MAN

By David McCallum Minotaur. 337 pp. $25.99

A THOUSAND NAKED STRANGERS A Paramedic’s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back

By Kevin Hazzard Scribner.

261 pp. $25

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REVIEWED BY

D ANIELLE P AQUETTE

n the summer of 1997, Kevin Hazzard was leading a Jet Ski tour when he heard two riders collide. Thud. He zipped toward the wreckage, unsure of what to expect, and found the riders floating in red water. One looked surprised. The other was missing his mouth.

Hazzard, then a teenager, had never witnessed such gore. He didn’t stay calm. He didn’t swiftly summon help. He did, instead, what bystanders are asked not to do in an emergency: He panicked.

“A Thousand Naked Strangers,” his memoir of 10 years as a paramedic in accident-prone Atlanta, is a wild, winding ride toward redemption. The author makes up for his inaction that day. He faces eyeball-eating maggots; an elbow nailed to a plaster wall; skull fragments beneath his tennis shoes; the jagged, crimson smile of a man whose face just met a chain saw; and a drugged-out patient with wandering hands: “Dude has grabbed my nuts.”

If these images make you queasy, don’t climb into his ambulance.

Hazzard, a former reporter with a penchantforexpletives,writestrauma how he sees it: up close, unvarnished, at warp speed. Think gonzo journalism meets emergency-room noir. He’s a reluctant voyeur of someone’s worst day, every day.

This coming-of-age story, equal partsearnestandirreverent,begins shortlyafterSept.11,2001.Hazzard, a graduate of the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, watches his college buddies deploy to Iraq.

They’re off risking their lives, testing their manhood. He chose to follow his writing passion and became a journalist, often stuck in snoozy city council meetings, still haunted by the Jet Ski crash.

Hazzard complains to his wife, Sabrina, the book’s enduring voice of reason, who tells him to quit moping and go back to school. So, on a whim, he enrolls in emergency medical technician training, where he encounters the job’s first horror: the people who sign up to save your

life. His classmates aren’t exactly answering a higher calling. They get off — perhaps literally — on Googling “dead bodies.”

“Disturbing as it may be,” Hazzard writes, “the raw truth is that often enough, the people showing up to your medical emergency do so because this was the only respectable job they could get with a GED and a clean driving record.”

What follows is a play-by-play of grisly calls, of prostitutes asking for his leftover plastic gloves, of cruising through stretches of a city that hasn’t yet experienced a young-urbanite takeover. Hazzard rides for Grady Memorial Hospital, the state’s largest medical center.

His shift wasn’t always packed with high drama. He had serious stretches of down time in his ambulance — and found creative ways to fill it: He once dared his partner to chug a whole bottle of mustard in one sitting. And here’s a question for contemplation, posed by an increasingly jaded Hazzard to his wife:Whichcarwouldyouleastlike to be killed by? His answer: A Volkswagen Beetle, of course. One with a plastic daisy in the driver’s-side vase. How terrible to be mowed down by something so . . . cute.

These details seem trivial but offer powerful insight: Through tragedy, we must stay human. We must find reasons to laugh in the darkness.

Hazzard eventually mastered the art of remaining calm through disaster — but not without misadventure. His transformation from a fear-paralyzed teenager to an adult in control is as gripping as it is violent.

And there’s the lesson for anyone who’s itching to prove themselves.

Do what scares you. Then keep doing it. “Salvation through repetition,” Hazzard writes. “This I can do because I have done it before — it’s half-prayer, half truth, a whisper in a hurricane of self doubt.” n Paquette is a reporter for The Washington Post covering the intersection of people and policy.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Poisoning of Flint caused by lack of accountability KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL Editor and publisher of the Nation magazine, vanden Heuvel writes a weekly column for The Post.

In early 2015, shortly after his victory in a heated reelection contest, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) began exploring a run for president. With his business experience and electoral success in a blue state, Snyder was considered a viable potential candidate, so he embarked on a national speaking tour and set up a fundraising organization. Its name: “Making Government Accountable.”

As Snyder was testing the presidential waters, however, his government was being shamefully unaccountable to constituents who were concerned about their water supply. The city of Flint switched its primary water source from Lake Huron, through Detroit’s system, to the Flint River in April 2014. Approved by an emergency manager appointed by the governor, the move was supposed to save the beleaguered city millions of dollars. But residents soon began reporting tap water that appeared discolored, smelled rotten and caused kids to break out in rashes.

Today, Flint has become a nightmarish example of how misguided austerity policies can literally poison the public.

We now know that Flint’s water supply was contaminated by lead that it collected from deteriorating pipes. In recent weeks, Snyder has issued a public apology to the city, declared a state of emergency, activated the National Guard and requested assistance from President Obama, who declared the situation a federal emergency. The state health department is also looking into whether an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease that has killed 10 people in the area is connected to the water crisis.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is investigating the state and local governments’ actions, while it could cost up to $1.5 billion to fix the city’s water distribution system.

All of this is the result of the Snyder administration’s stunning lack of accountability,

beginning with the fateful decision to put Flint under the control of a political appointee who was unelected and unaccountable to the public.

When the city’s residents initially reported their concerns in 2014, officials responded by pumping hazardous levels of chlorine into the water. When complaints persisted, officials assured citizens that the water was safe to drink, repeatedly disregarding clear evidence that it wasn’t. But when elevated levels of lead showed up in children’s blood this past fall, the government was forced to admit there was a problem. Snyder appointed a task force to investigate the crisis, which found, among other things, that legitimate fears were met with “aggressive dismissal, belittlement, and attempts to discredit” the individuals speaking out.

JAKE MAY/FLINT JOURNAL-MLIVE.COM VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Rev. David Bullock holds up a bottle of Flint water during a protest this month in Lansing, Mich., seeking the governor’s resignation.

“They cut every corner,” said Flint resident Melissa Mays.

“They did more to cover up than actually fix it. That’s criminal.”

Snyder’s then-chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, acknowledged the administration’s deplorable response in a July 2015 email, writing: “These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight).”

But the water crisis in Flint represents more than a catastrophic political failure. It is also a direct consequence of decades of policies based on the premise that government spending is always a problem and never a solution. Long before Flint tried to reduce spending by moving to a cheaper water source, the pipes that ultimately poisoned the water were neglected. Across the country, crumbling infrastructure is a pervasive threat that is creating serious issues in other cities and could produce similar crises. As Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone explained, “Flint is an extreme case, but nationally, there’s been a lack of investment in water infrastructure. This is a common

problem nationally — infrastructure maintenance has not kept up.”

Unfortunately, the biggest obstacles to desperately needed public investments are politicians like Snyder who conflate “accountability” with austerity. For Republican technocrats in particular, more accountability almost always means less spending on government programs that help ensure the public good.

With about a week until the Iowa caucus, the conventional wisdom is that voters are fed up and that their anger is reflected in the polls. That frustration and distrust of government is understandable when politicians like Snyder and their cronies are so blatantly unaccountable to the public. Indeed, when government is polluted by officials who put corporate interests above their constituents and cost-cutting above the common good, it too often fails to fulfill even its most basic functions, such as protecting access to safe drinking water. But instead of giving in to anger and austerity, in this election, we should be having a vigorous debate about how government can be truly accountable to the people it serves. n

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

How I was trolled on the Internet FAREED ZAKARIA writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for the Atlantic.

Thomas Jefferson often argued that an educated public was crucial for the survival of self-government. We now live in an age in which that education takes place mostly through relatively new platforms. Social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. — are the main mechanisms by which people receive and share facts, ideas and opinions. But what if they encourage misinformation, rumors and lies?

In a comprehensive new study of Facebook that analyzed posts made between 2010 and 2014, a group of scholars found that people mainly shared information that confirmed their prejudices, paying little attention to facts and veracity. (Hat tip to Cass Sunstein, the leading expert on this topic.) The result, the report says, is the “proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust and paranoia.” The authors specifically studied trolling — the creation of highly provocative, often false information, with the hope of spreading it widely. The report says that “many mechanisms cause false information to gain acceptance, which in turn generate false beliefs that, once adopted by an individual, are highly resistant to correction.”

As it happens, in recent weeks I was the target of a trolling

campaign and saw exactly how it works. It started when an obscure website published a post titled “CNN host Fareed Zakaria calls for jihad rape of white women.”

The story claimed that in my “private blog” I had urged the use of American women as “sex slaves” to depopulate the white race. The post further claimed that on my Twitter account, I had written the following line: “Every death of a white person brings tears of joy to my eyes.”

Disgusting. So much so that the item would collapse from its own weightlessness, right?

Wrong. Here is what happened next: Hundreds of people began linking to it, tweeting and retweeting it, and adding their comments, which are too vulgar or racist to repeat. A few ultraright-wing websites reprinted the story as fact. With each new cycle, the levels of hysteria rose, and people started demanding that I

be fired, deported or killed. For a few days, the digital intimidation veered out into the real world.

Some people called my house late one night and woke up and threatened my daughters, who are 7 and 12.

It would have taken a minute to click on the link and see that the original post was on a fake news site, one that claims to be satirical (though not very prominently). It would have taken simple common sense to realize the absurdity of the charge. But none of this mattered. The people spreading this story were not interested in the facts; they were interested in feeding prejudice. The original story was cleverly written to provide conspiracy theorists with enough ammunition to ignore evidence. It claimed that I had taken down the post after a few hours when I realized it “receive[d] negative attention.”

So, when the occasional debunker would point out that there was no evidence of the post anywhere, it made little difference. When confronted with evidence that the story was utterly false, it only convinced many that there was a conspiracy and coverup.

In my own experience, conversations on Facebook are somewhat more civil, because

people generally have to reveal their identities. But on Twitter and in other places — the online comments section of The Post, for example — people can be anonymous or have pseudonyms.

And that is where bile and venom flow freely.

Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the New Yorker, recalled an experiment performed by two psychologists in 1970. They divided students into two groups based on their answers to a questionnaire: high prejudice and low prejudice. Each group was told to discuss controversial issues such as school busing and integrated housing. Then the questions were asked again. “The surveys revealed a striking pattern,” Kolbert noted. “Simply by talking to one another, the bigoted students had become more bigoted and the tolerant more tolerant.” This “group polarization” is now taking place at hyper speed, around the world.

It is how radicalization happens and extremism spreads.

I love social media. But somehow we have to help create better mechanisms in it to distinguish between fact and falsehood. No matter how passionate people are, no matter how cleverly they can blog or tweet or troll, no matter how viral things get, lies are still lies. n

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

22

OPINIONS

BY R. MCKEE FOR THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE

Money isn’t only obstacle to college KAVITHA CARDOZA covers education and poverty and is the host of Breaking Ground, a public radio documentary series.

Christopher Feaster lived in a homeless shelter for most of high school. Laundry was a once-a-month luxury. “I would have to re-wear socks,” he says. “They were white socks, but they were so dirty that they were brown and sometimes they were starting to go black. I had to rewear underwear because I didn’t have clean underwear.”

Homeless students face terrible odds of graduating high school, but Christopher excelled at school. A young man with an easy smile and bubbly personality, he maintained close relationships with his teachers and took part in a long list of extracurricular activities. He was the poster child for grit and determination. And it finally paid off: During his senior year, Christopher won $200,000 in college scholarships. His mother, teachers and classmates cheered, and in the fall, he headed off to Michigan State University, planning on a career in hospitality.

A year later, he dropped out.

Everyone loves the story of a disadvantaged kid getting a full ride to college, maybe because people see money as the greatest barrier to higher education. But often that’s not true. Even when students manage to cobble together scholarships, loans or gifts from relatives or churches,

once they actually get into college, they typically find they have a whole new set of unanticipated barriers: academic, social and cultural, as well as their own internal self-doubt.

These challenges are magnified when a student is the first in their family to go to college.

Nearly one-third of students entering two- or four-year colleges in the United States each year are first-generation. These students are also more likely to be minorities, and they are far less likely to graduate: In six years, 40 percent of first-generation students will have earned a bachelor’s or associate’s degree or a certificate versus 55 percent of their peers whose parents attended college.

When students do drop out, they often leave with debt and a sense of failure — that they’re not “college material.” That feeling can alter the narrative about college for an entire community,

KLMNO WEEKLY

BY MORIN FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

says Monica Gray of D.C. College Success Foundation.

College for Christopher was, as he put it, “an insanely big change.”

He struggled academically and needed to take remedial math, which made him question his abilities — even though it’s extremely common for college students to require remediation.

He constantly worried about his mother’s electricity being cut off and being able to make rent. He felt guilty he wasn’t working and helping her financially.

Christopher spent more and more time in his room, depressed, failed his finals and never went back.

Students whose parents didn’t go to college face several unique challenges. They’re less likely to have had access to the type of challenging high school classes that increase the chance of success in college and less likely to have confidence in their academic abilities.

Colleges are not powerless to address the many challenges facing their first-generation enrollees. Vassar College, for example, matches low-income students with mentors and helps them financially so they can afford summer internships.

Several colleges, including Virginia Commonwealth University, use data to identify students at risk of dropping out

and reach out to them individually. The school has closed the graduation gap between white and African American students and white and Hispanic students.

Christopher Feaster would have graduated college in 2016, but instead he’s now working as a host at a local D.C. restaurant. He has struggled with homelessness and finds it hard to get full-time work. He desperately wants to go back to college, but without a scholarship, he’d have to take out loans. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says. “Not for me right now.” He’s also afraid of “failing again.” Like many young people without a college degree, he feels trapped, with no obvious path out of poverty, despite his talents and abilities.

There are so many ways firstgeneration students struggle when they get to college. Any serious plan to help these smart, thoughtful young people who have already overcome so many obstacles to get to college must include strategies to address the social, emotional and cultural aspects of their lives. As Christopher and so many others like him have discovered, those challenges persist long after the hopeful speeches, cheering parents and “Congrats, Grad!” cards are sold out. n

SUNDAY, JANUARY 24, 2016

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Q&A

Reflecting on angry times BY

KK O TTESEN

body else?

The candidate that I enjoy watching most right now is actually Bernie Sanders — and I don’t agree with anything he says.

But he is touching part of my brain that normally doesn’t get touched. He is speaking a language that I’m not used to. People walk away from his sessions so energized and so enthused, and I like that. I so disagree with them, but I love their passion.

Frank I. Luntz, 53, is a political and com­ munications consultant, pollster and pundit. He is founder and president of Luntz Global and has homes in Virginia and Las Vegas.

How do you describe your work: public opinion guru, pollster . . . ?

I say I’m a word guy. And that always leads to, “Well, what does that mean?” I find the right words at the right time for the right reasons.

If you agreed on everything — would you throw your talents behind someone like that, rather than remaining dispassionate?

I did. In 1994. That was Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. I was working 18-hour days, traveling seven days a week to attempt to get a Republican majority, which everybody said was impossible. I was 32 at the time. And that was everything in my life.

What are some examples you’re most proud of ?

Moving “the estate tax” to “the death tax” had the biggest impact of any of them. But so much of what I do isn’t about a specific issue, it’s just how you communicate. It’s “opportunity scholarships” rather than “vouchers” in education. A voucher is a piece of paper; an opportunity scholarship is the future.

You are credited as key to that win, yet you’ve moved in a different direction these days.

And thank God I did. I never would have survived. I can’t process anger. I’m criticized and condemned by the left on the blogs, for negativity. That’s not what I do. I do words and causes for people that are right of center, but it’s to promote them rather than to bash the left. I would not have been able to function; I would have been dragged down. I wanted to be doing things around happy people, not angry, divided people.

You’ve worked a lot with the GOP, and the Dems are courting you now.

They’re not courting me; it’s a conversation.

Okay, a conversation. So how do you choose whom you work with?

People think of me as political, but the truth is that 95 percent of my work has nothing to do with politics. I work for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, a ton of trade associations. I do a lot of sports work — and I enjoy that a lot more than politics because at the end of the sessions, if there’s a bar downstairs, people go out for a drink. At the end of my political sessions, people want to kill each other.

Has that changed over time?

Yes. I did my first focus group in 1988, and it’s become much uglier, much less tolerant of opposing points of view. We take things personally, and we assume that the other person isn’t just wrong, they’re evil. It’s been a struggle for me. If people are upset in my sessions, I get upset. I take on the persona of the people I’m asking questions of. The challenge for me now in these televised focus groups is to stop people from yelling at each other.

They’ve heard it on talk radio, they’ve seen it on cable news. After my Fox ses-

KK OTTESEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

sions, if I don’t go out with colleagues or friends and decompress, I won’t sleep. I want to be doing things around happy people, not angry, divided people.

In some way, I’m as angry as the people I interview. But I can’t stand this intolerance. I can’t stand people who don’t want to hear the other point of view. Are we so right in our beliefs that we have nothing to learn from any-

What is your favorite part of the job now?

Attending a football game in the owner’s box. Actually knowing the game from the perspective of everyone from the commissioner to the fan — and everybody in between. I do an entire walk around the stadium. I watch people and I listen to the conversations.

It’s hard to tell, but I am extremely shy.

If this were a social setting, I would retreat into the corner. But that’s what’s great about my job: I can ask anyone anything. I’ve gotten to know a number of well-known Hollywood personalities, a number of high-level sports people. I can’t ask them about the weather, I can’t engage them in small talk, but I can ask them, “Why on fourth and one did you kick instead of going for it?” That’s easy for me — because I am doing my job. n

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