The Washington Post National Weekly - August 12, 2018

SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 2018

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY

A modern ‘Underground Railroad’

Immigrants are fleeing America to Canada, aided by a network of activists

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OPINIONS

BY WASSERMAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Belgium’s child euthanization CHARLES LANE is a Washington Post opinion columnist.

Deliberately taking a small child’s life is unlawful everywhere in the world, even when the child is terminally ill and asks a doctor to end his or her suffering once and for all.

There is an exception to this rule: Belgium. In 2014, that country amended its law on euthanasia, already one of the most permissive in the world, authorizing doctors to terminate the life of a child, at any age, who makes the request.

Between Jan. 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2017, Belgian physicians gave lethal injections to three children under 18, according to a July 17 report from the commission that regulates euthanasia in Belgium.

The oldest of the three was 17; in that respect, Belgium was not unique, since the Netherlands permits euthanasia for children over 12.

Belgian doctors, however, also ended the lives of a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old. These were the first under-12 cases anywhere, Luc Proot, a member of the Belgian commission, told me in an interview.

Everywhere else in the world, the law reflects powerful human intuitions, moral and practical: that it is wrong to abandon hope for a person so early in life; that it is absurd to grant ultimate medical autonomy to someone so young; and that even the bestintentioned fallible human beings

should not be entrusted with such life-or-death power.

In Belgium, a kind of libertarian technocracy has conquered these qualms.

Euthanasia advocates insist that some children may possess the same decisional capacity as some adults, and it’s therefore discriminatory to deny them the freedom to choose euthanasia.

Meanwhile, Belgian law trusts experts to prevent mistakes or abuses. Doctors must verify that a child is “in a hopeless medical situation of constant and unbearable suffering that cannot be eased and which will cause death in the short term.” After a child makes a wish for euthanasia known, in writing, child psychiatrists conduct exams, including, Proot told me,

BY STANTIS FOR THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

intelligence tests, to determine that the youngster is capable and “not influenced by a third party.”

Parents can, however, prevent the request from being carried out.

Once any euthanasia — for a child or an adult — has occurred, a six-member commission examines the case file to make sure everything was done properly.

Medical privacy, however, limits what the commission can review. Names of patients and doctors are redacted. If concerns about the lawfulness of a procedure arise, the commission can vote to look at identifying information, but this rarely happens.

We do know the 11-year-old euthanized last year had cystic fibrosis. This congenital respiratory disease is incurable and fatal, but modern treatments enable many patients to enjoy high quality of life well into their 30s or even beyond. Median life expectancy for new CF cases in the United States is now 43 years, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Proot assured me that everything was in order, not only with the 11-year-old’s case but also with the other two: a 17-year-old with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a 9-year-old with a brain tumor. “I saw mental and

physical suffering so overwhelming that I thought we did a good thing,” he told me.

Proot was, of course, relying on reports by the anonymous physicians who participated in the euthanasias, and we, in turn, must take Proot at his word: What, exactly, convinced doctors that these children’s cases were hopeless, that their deaths were imminent — and that the kids fully understood not only euthanasia but also the treatment options that might have alleviated their condition?

Last year, a member of the euthanasia commission resigned in protest because it refused to recommend prosecution when a woman with dementia who had not requested euthanasia was nevertheless put to death at her family’s request.

Since then, 360 Belgian doctors, academics and others have signed a petition calling for tighter controls on euthanasia for psychiatric patients.

For now, however, the policy remains the same, and the Belgian public’s support for euthanasia remains undiminished. The precedent for euthanizing children has been established, and more will almost certainly receive lethal injections this year, next year and the year after that. n

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WORLD

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Saudi Arabia spurns foreign criticism

BY K AREEM F AHIM AND A MANDA C OLETTA

T

he storm started with a tweet earlier this month

by Canada’s foreign minister expressing alarm at the recent arrest of a women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia who had relatives living in Canada, and calling for her release.

This week, the Saudi government responded, with fury.

On Monday, the Canadian ambassador was ordered to leave within 24 hours, and the Saudi government halted trade and investment deals between the two countries. Saudi media reported that educational exchange programs would be suspended — affecting 12,000 Saudi students studying on state-sponsored scholarships in Canada. And Saudi Arabia’s national airline said it was suspending flights to Canada, beginning this coming week.

It was hardly the first time the kingdom, an absolute monarchy, had been chided for human rights abuses, or even the first time Canada had criticized the Saudi government since it started arresting the female activists in May. But under Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, a kingdom once known for its go-slow approach to foreign affairs has frequently reacted to perceived challenges from abroad with haste, spit and fire, analysts said.

Canada’s criticism had highlighted Saudi Arabia’s ongoing crackdown on perceived dissidents, including a group of prominent female activists who campaigned for the lifting of a driving ban on women and other rights.

Prosecutors have accused some of the women of suspicious contact with unnamed foreign parties but kept silent on the reasons for other arrests. Human rights groups have speculated that the sweep is intended to send a message that the Saudi leadership will not tolerate any hint of political activism.

In a statement Monday, the Saudi Foreign Ministry described Canada’s criticism of the arrests

YURI KADOBNOV/ASSOCIATED PRESS

After Canada calls for release of activists, Riyadh orders envoy out, halts deals, suspends flights as “blatant interference in the Kingdom’s domestic affairs, against basic international norms and all international protocols,” and an “unacceptable affront to the Kingdom’s laws and judicial process.”

The statement expressed particular anger at Canada’s call for the release of the activists, calling it “reprehensible.”

Beyond the feud, the lightning escalation highlighted Saudi Arabia’s increasingly assertive foreign policy under Crown Prince Mohammed. While he has won praise for shaking up the hidebound kingdom, trying to diversify its economy and easing some social restrictions, he has also helped entangle Saudi Arabia in foreign conflicts — including a civil war in Yemen and a feud with neighboring Qatar — that the kingdom has struggled to exit.

Saudi Arabia has said its intervention in Yemen was necessary after a rebel group allied with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, ousted the Yemeni government.

“It’s becoming a pattern. Over the last three years, the leadership is becoming more unpredictable, more volatile,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

But the Saudi decision to confront Canada was not without its logic, Ulrichsen added. “It sends a message to others who would think of criticizing Saudi policy, as several European countries have been doing over Yemen,” he said. And it was “cost-free, in their analysis — less costly in terms of their political, strategic and economic relationships than taking a stand against the U.S. or the U.K., for example.”

Two more activists were arrested earlier this month, according to Human Rights Watch. One woman, Nassima al-Sadah, had run for local elections and campaigned for abolishing so-called guardianship laws, which require women to seek approval from a male relative to travel or to marry.

The other, Samar Badawi, received the U.S. secretary of state’s

With Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, effectively directing the government, Saudi Arabia has become more aggressive in foreign affairs — and more testy about criticism.

International Women of Courage Award and is the sister of dissident blogger Raif Badawi. Raif Badawi had been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail in Saudi Arabia for “insulting Islam through electronic channels.” His wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children became Canadian citizens on Canada Day this past month and live in Quebec.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, said in a tweet Aug. 2 that she was “very alarmed” to learn of Samar’s arrest and that the government would “continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi.” Three days later, the Canadian Embassy in Saudi Arabia posted the Foreign Ministry’s statement calling for the release of the women’s rights advocates on its Twitter account, in Arabic, ensuring it would be more widely read by Saudis.

Saudi Arabia is Canada’s second-largest export market in the Persian Gulf region; Canadian exports to the kingdom exceeded $1.4 billion Canadian in 2017, according to Statistics Canada data.

The overwhelming majority of the exports to Saudi Arabia are vehicles and equipment, which included a $11.5 billion deal to sell more than 900 light-armored vehicles to the Saudis.

That agreement, struck in 2014 by the Conservative government of then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was heavily criticized by civil rights groups, who said it was opaque and raised concerns that the weapons would be used to carry out human rights abuses.

Justin Trudeau, Harper’s successor, approved the deal in the spring of 2016 when his government began issuing export permits, arguing that he had little choice but to respect contracts signed by the previous government.

Freeland said in February that an investigation into reports that Saudi Arabia was using Canadian-made arms to perpetrate human rights violations turned up “no conclusive evidence” to support those claims. n ©The Washington Post

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Trade rift grows between U.S., China

BY D AVID J . L YNCH, D AMIAN P ALETTA AND A MANDA E RICKSON

N

early five months after President Trump first confronted China with tariffs over its trade practices, the two countries are further than ever from resolving their differences and appear to be digging in for what is likely to be a long and bruising conflict.

China, which announced this past week that it would impose tariffs on an additional $16 billion in U.S. autos and energy products, signaled that it might target prominent American companies such as Apple if the trade dispute escalates. The iPhone maker relies upon China for one-fifth of its $229 billion in annual revenue, “leaving it exposed if Chinese people make it a target of anger and nationalist sentiment,” warned a commentary in the state-owned China Daily.

The president on Tuesday promised a dinner gathering of chief executives that the United States and China would soon have a “fantastic trading relationship.”

But within the administration, there is growing unease over where the U.S.-China tussle is headed. Initial diplomatic talks, which failed to reach agreement, have left both sides irritated and confused about the path to a deal.

Two senior administration officials, frustrated by what they say is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s refusal to negotiate, have become increasingly certain that the standoff is only going to worsen.

The administration’s hard-line stance is stirring doubts among congressional Republicans and business leaders, who fear it may rupture profitable commercial relations. With no formal talks taking place between Chinese and American officials, some analysts say the tariffs may be designed to reverse a quarter-century of growing economic ties between the two countries, rather than to spur diplomatic bargaining.

“Their plan may not be to get China to cry uncle. It may be pulling up the drawbridge,” said Scott

JOHANNES EISELE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Countries continue tariff back-and-forth, with Beijing announcing $16 billion in additional levies Kennedy of the project on Chinese business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The latest tariff salvos stem from Trump’s complaint that China is unfairly acquiring American technology via coercive joint ventures with U.S. companies, cybertheft and other violations of intellectual property rights.

After months of skirmishing between the two powers, U.S. customs officers began collecting the first tariffs from importers of Chinese products on July 6. China immediately retaliated with similar tariffs on U.S. goods, including soybeans, pork and poultry, which were designed to hurt Trump voters in rural America.

When the new tariffs go into effect Aug. 23, both countries will have taxes on about $50 billion worth of imports from the other.

Trump also is proceeding with plans to tax a further $200 billion in Chinese products as soon as September and has threatened to

eventually impose tariffs on all Chinese imports, which totaled $505 billion last year, unless China capitulates.

The president remains confident that his “America First” overhaul of U.S. trade policy is paying dividends. At Tuesday’s CEO dinner, Trump said his “powerful trade policies” had contributed to the economy’s 4.1 percent growth rate in the second quarter.

As additional trade deals are signed, the president predicted that economic growth would “go much, much higher,” a view at odds with his own administration’s forecasts.

Trump has claimed in recent tweets that “tariffs are working far better than anyone ever anticipated,” linking them to a downturn that has shaved nearly a quarter from the value of Chinese stocks since late January. Along with the trade spat, Chinese stocks have suffered from slowing growth in the debt-laden economy.

Workers unload chemicals in Zhangjiagang, China.

The country said this past week it would impose tariffs on $16 billion of U.S. products in retaliation for the Trump administration’s levies on Chinese goods.

But China has notched a pair of concrete victories in the trade showdown, according to Jeff Moon, a former U.S. trade negotiator in the Obama administration.

After complaints by Chinese leaders, Trump agreed to reverse a U.S. enforcement action that would have caused ZTE, a prominent state-owned telecommunications company, to go out of business. And last month, Chinese regulators barred Qualcomm, an American telecom leader, from completing its $44 billion acquisition of Netherlands-based NXP, which would have made it a more formidable competitor for Chinese companies.

“There are only two hard outcomes so far, and China’s winning 2-0,” Moon said.

Though months of verbal exchanges make it feel as if the countries have been locked in protracted commercial combat, the first tariffs have been in effect for only about a month. The financial pain so far has been felt by individual companies or industries — and workers — rather than by the overall U.S. or Chinese economy.

In a statement Wednesday, the Chinese Commerce Ministry charged that the United States has “once again put domestic law above international law by imposing ‘very unreasonable’ new tariffs on Chinese goods.”

China’s announcement is a direct response to new duties on Chinese goods imported into the United States, announced Tuesday in Washington. Those new tariffs, totaling $16 billion, will be levied against 279 products, including motorcycles, steam turbines and railway cars.

After months of escalation, business executives in both countries are wondering when and how the trade confrontation will end.

“Trump has given China little wiggle room to save face and come to the bargaining table,” said James Zimmerman, a partner in the Beijing office of Perkins Coie.

“By continuing to up the ante, Trump is, in effect, publicly demanding an unconditional surrender from Beijing.” n ©The Washington Post

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FIVE MYTHS

Trump’s income tax returns BY

G EORGE K . Y IN

President Trump’s solicitous posture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki and elsewhere, is helping to keep alive interest in his income tax returns: Does he have some hidden finan­ cial connection to the Kremlin? Unlike his waffling on policy posi­ tions and factual matters, he has consistently refused to release his returns, contrary to the practice of every president since Jimmy Cart­ er. Still, this is a poorly understood area of the law. Here are five common misconceptions about the president’s tax returns and the public’s ability to review them.

MYTH NO. 1 Without legislation, we’ll never see Trump’s returns.

Following Trump’s widely panned performance in Helsinki, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Congress to force the sitting president to release his tax returns.

But new legislation, which would probably require a supermajority to overcome a Senate filibuster and a presidential veto, is not needed.

Existing law — specifically, 26 USC §6103(f )(1) and (4)(A) — already authorizes the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation to obtain any of the president’s returns from the IRS without his consent, carry out an investigation and release the information to Congress for potential disclosure to the public, as long as there is a legitimate purpose.

MYTH NO. 2 The president’s returns would reveal any Russia connections.

While tax returns require documentation to support some line items, they ordinarily do not contain anything close to the level of detail sometimes found in a complex business contract or a financial disclosure. Even if the president or any of his

enterprises previously engaged in business with Russian interests — say, borrowing large amounts of money from Russian creditors to build a golf resort — his returns may not clearly spell out the connection. (At any rate, Eric Trump has already reportedly said that Trump businesses “don’t rely on American banks.

We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”) In addition, President Trump’s interests are dispersed among many different business arrangements, and each of those returns may provide only a partial picture of presidential involvement.

so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.” So even if Trump’s personal and business returns were to reveal a very modest income and tax liability, he could still plausibly claim he is very rich because of his ownership stake in his companies.

disclosure. If a state investigation leads to a federal or state proceeding involving Trump’s tax liability, federal tax information may be disclosed, but only to the extent that it is relevant to the issues in the proceeding. special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s ability to disclose any federal tax information he obtained would be similarly restricted.

MYTH NO. 3 Trump’s returns will show that he isn’t as rich as he claims.

In 2016, then-Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza wrote: “Tax returns are tough to fudge; they nail down exactly how much you make in a year. . . . It would be hard for Trump to argue his way out of a yearly salary that doesn’t befit a billionaire.”

But Trump’s income is almost surely from his businesses — not from any salary received — and his businesses probably take advantage of tax provisions that reduce his taxable income to a mere fraction of his true earnings. The New York Times reported that Trump claimed a tax loss of almost $1 billion in 1995, giving him “a tax deduction

MYTH NO. 4 State action will help reveal Trump’s federal tax returns.

New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance has initiated an investigation of the Trump Foundation, and some see it as a way to disclose the president’s tax returns.

It’s true that the law — 26 USC §6103(d) — allows the IRS to disclose federal tax information to state tax officials to the extent necessary to aid in their administration of state tax laws.

But in general, state officials have no ability to release the federal information to the public. If permitted by state law, local officials may disclose state tax information, but that disclosure may not contain the same information as a federal tax

MYTH NO. 5 Returns can’t be disclosed until after an IRS audit is completed.

Trump has pointed to an audit over and over to explain why he has not released his returns.

His decision may be sound from the standpoint of his tax attorneys, but there’s no prohibition in the law that would bar his voluntary disclosure while an audit is pending. And an audit actually gives the congressional tax committees another reason to obtain and review the returns — to ensure that the IRS is treating him fairly and not preferentially. n

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

President Trump’s federal income tax returns would not necessarily reveal any financial ties to Russia or the size of his wealth.

Yin is the Edwin S. Cohen distinguished professor of law and taxation at the University of Virginia School of Law.

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NATION

For Calif., a future burdened by fires S COTT W ILSON in Redding, Calif.

BY

T

he wildfire here that has burned with speed and efficiency through neighborhoods, jumped the wide Sacramento River and killed a half-dozen residents and firefighters, has turned yet another place into a harbinger of what the future holds for this state.

The neighborhoods along the Trinity Highway were tucked among Douglas firs, oaks and eucalyptus, among the nearly 2 million homes statewide that — after years of permissive development in California — sit amid lovely and hazardous tinder.

Now some of them are ashes, only brick chimneys rising from charred foundations. The Carr Fire has burned more than 1,000 houses to the ground.

A summer heat wave, fanned by evening winds, helped light up the parched land. Despite the scope of the blaze, not nearly enough firefighters are on the scene, their ranks stretched thin by the 17 other wildfires burning throughout the state.

This month more than 13,000 firefighters are working to control blazes across the state, including the Carr Fire. A huge blaze southwest of here, known as the Mendocino Complex, has surpassed it as the biggest burning.

That inferno has charred more than 200,000 acres, larger than the land area of New York City.

Yosemite National Park has been closed “indefinitely” because of smoke from another fire.

Smoke from the Carr Fire hovers over Northern California, including the state capital, Sacramento, providing a dramatic backdrop for one of the most consequential policy debates in years — about who should pay for the growing number of increasingly destructive fires, now and in a hotter, drier future.

The election-year debate reflects a change in focus, from the long-term to the immediate, for a state that has been at the leading edge of environmental regulation. As wildfires become a year-

JOHN G MABANGLO/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

State debates who should pay for more frequent, costlier blazes round threat, California is moving to change long-standing laws to address the emergency of climate change, with the interests of those fighting, suffering from and paying for the fires in the balance.

The question before state lawmakers is whether public utilities should remain “strictly liable” for damage from fires that start because of their equipment, even if the utilities are not negligent. The largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, faces costs that could reach $12 billion for its role in last year’s deadly Northern California fires. Company officials say they cannot continue to afford the escalating payouts.

Insurance companies are fighting any change, given that costs

will be theirs alone if utilities escape future liability for fires caused by their equipment. The Carr Fire, which was sparked by a malfunctioning vehicle, is a case in point. The insurance companies will pay for that damage.

Only Alabama applies the same strict standard, and state utility officials here say the frequency and scale of fire damage in a changing climate make the law obsolete. Six of the 20 most destructive fires in California history have occurred in the past year, including ones caused by utility company equipment.

Speaking earlier this month in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said “there is concern that we could lose our utilities” to bank-

A melted swing set on Aug. 7 in front of a home damaged from the Ranch Fire near Clearlake Oaks, Calif. The blaze is part of the Mendocino Complex.

ruptcy unless the law changes.

Utilities here are owned by shareholders, and liability for fire damage has, in the past, been passed on to customers.

If utilities suffer financially because of the strict-liability law, “our whole program of trying to deal with renewable energy and mitigate climate change would be adversely affected,” Brown said.

Brown, who leaves office at the end of the year, has made climate change the centerpiece of his legacy. His point now is that if California’s big utilities cannot afford to pay the exorbitant liability costs each year, the state will have no partner in vehicle electrification, solar and wind power proposals, and other measures

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NATION that need utility money and support. Brown has named a special legislative committee to develop a measure before Aug. 31. He offered his own proposal, which would be a step toward lifting the “strict liability” standard. Utility companies have spent nearly $2 million this year lobbying for such a change.

The utility with the most at stake immediately is PG&E, whose power lines, according to California investigators, started 16 fires last fall in the most catastrophic season on record.

PG&E has already written off $2.5 billion of earnings to cover potential costs, a figure that the company’s senior vice president for strategy and policy, Steven E. Malnight, called “a low-end to our possible liability.”

Some estimates place the potential damage from last fall’s North Bay fires as high as $12 billion, although investigations into some of the most damaging fires have not been concluded.

The strict-liability standard is in place because, in California, utilities have the right to seize private land to accommodate their power lines, transformers and other equipment. This is the power of eminent domain usually reserved for government agencies.

The principle in question is called “inverse condemnation,” which holds the utilities liable for damage. It is the flip side of eminent domain.

Malnight argues that “inverse condemnation is not a policy aligned with the future we face.”

He is seeking a “reasonableness” standard — that is, if a utility is found to have a state-approved security plan and has executed the plan correctly, it should not be automatically held liable for damage.

Brown’s proposal took a step in that direction. But Malnight said it is not enough to make sure the utility can pay for future damage.

The utilities are also seeking legislative approval to issue low-interest bonds to help defray liability costs, something that has been allowed in the past.

“This does not mean we will not be held liable if we are found to have done something wrong,” Malnight said. “We will be and we will pay. But we are taking this opportunity to remind the public that the status quo is unsustain-

able.”

On the other side of the argument are the insurance companies, which would face a huge increase in costs if liability for fire damage is shifted away from utilities.

This is an election year, and the debate between two big political players in Sacramento is a perilous one for lawmakers so close to November. There is a chance no legislation emerges this year.

In a statement a few weeks ago, the group Stop the Utility Bailout said that the “threats of bankruptcy are merely scare tactics designed to distract from the real issue, which is PG&E’s abject failure to invest in safety upgrades that could have prevented the wildfires,” an assertion the company rejects.

PG&E executives say the utility has spent $15 billion over the past five years on measures to better safeguard their equipment and plan to spend a total of $1 billion this year and next for the same purpose. But the insurance companies say such an investment should not change the liability principle at stake.

“We still strongly support inverse condemnation,” said Mark Sektnan, a vice president of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, which has nearly 1,000 insurance company members. “This is a basic standard and does not need to be changed.”

Sektnan said his members “are out there on Day One in these fires” and have paid out $10 billion to cover customer losses from the North Bay fires, which killed 45 people and destroyed nearly 9,000 homes and other buildings as it swept through Wine Country in October.

“The focus of any change should be on how we can be much more careful in what we do,” he said. “If there is no spark, there is no fire.”

The debate is beginning as lawmakers return from a summer hiatus.

Already, though, a consensus is emerging that, regardless of any liability change, much more needs to be done to clear decades of highly flammable dead trees and windfall, examine planning policies that have allowed suburbs to spread into forests and better fund firefighting efforts. n ©The Washington Post

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Grizzly hunt foes disrupt lottery BY

K ARIN B RULLIARD

The largest grizzly hunt in the Lower 48 in more than 40 years is set to open next month in Wyoming, and more than 7,000 people applied for a chance to kill one of up to 22 bears. Among the tiny number of people who won the draw for permits is a wildlife photographer who has produced some of the most famous images of the area’s grizzlies.

JIM URQUHART/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A grizzly bear roams near Beaver Lake in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Thomas D. Mangelsen, who has lived near Grand Teton National Park for four decades, will use the permit to shoot bears as he has always done — with a camera.

Mangelsen’s luck in the lottery followed a campaign spearheaded by local hunt opponents to encourage like-minded people to apply for permits in the hope of preventing the death of at least one member of the Yellowstone area’s grizzly population, which was removed from the endangered species list in 2017.

Amid a hugely contentious debate over the hunt, their tactic is being hailed by some as a heroic protest and scorned by others as starry-eyed thievery of an opportunity that hunters deserve.

Their approach was possible because of regulations in the six hunting areas closest to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, prime grizzly habitat where federal biologists track the spe-

cies’ population. There, as many as 10 hunters will be allowed into the field, one at a time, for 10 days each. The hunt in those areas will end when the first female is killed or after 10 males are killed.

In two other areas that are farther from parks and more populated by humans, as many as 12 bears, male or female, can be killed. Hunting is not allowed in the parks, on the road that connects them or in a no-hunt buffer zone east of Grand Teton.

Mangelsen is No. 8 on the permit list for the closer areas, which means his turn will come up only if none of the first seven hunters has killed a female bear. But he and organizers of the campaign said another supporter, a woman who lives in the Jackson Hole, Wyo., area, drew the No. 2 spot and also planned to pay the $600 resident fee for a permit.

“That will be 10 days that another hunter will not be in the field,” Mangelsen said. “We might be able to save a couple bears.”

Yellowstone grizzlies were placed on the endangered species list in 1975, when the federal government estimated that 136 remained. The population has since rebounded to about 700, and the bears are now spreading far beyond the parks. Federal and state biologists say limited hunting will not imperil the population. Idaho also approved a hunt of a single male grizzly; Montana, the third state that abuts Yellowstone, considered but rejected a grizzly hunt Wyoming officials said that the non-hunter attempts to win permits violated no rules. But they weren’t delighted about the idea.

“We think we should all be grateful that over the last four decades hunters and anglers spent nearly $50 million to recover grizzly bears to ensure there is an opportunity for people to see and photograph grizzly bears in northwest Wyoming,” Renny MacKay, a spokesman for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said before the permit draw. n ©The Washington Post

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TOM TOLES

TSA’s talk of security cuts is good BRUCE SCHNEIER is a security technologist and a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The Transportation Security Administration is considering eliminating security at U.S. airports that fly only smaller planes — 60 seats or fewer, according to a recent CNN report. Passengers connecting to larger planes would clear security at their destinations.

To be clear, the TSA has put forth no concrete proposal. The internal agency working group’s report contains no recommendations. It’s nothing more than 20 people examining the potential security risks of the policy change. It’s not even new: The TSA considered this back in 2011, and the agency reviews its security policies every year. But commentary around the news has been strongly negative.

Regardless of the idea’s merit, it will almost certainly not happen.

That’s the result of politics, not security: Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already penned a letter to the agency saying that “TSA documents proposing to scrap critical passenger security screenings, without so much as a metal detector in place in some airports, would effectively clear the runway for potential terrorist attacks.”

We don’t know enough to conclude whether this is a good idea, but it shouldn’t be dismissed

out of hand. We need to evaluate airport security based on concrete costs and benefits, and not continue to implement security theater based on fear. We should applaud the agency’s willingness to explore changes in the screening process.

There is already a tiered system for airport security. Many people are enrolled in TSA PreCheck, allowing them to go through checkpoints faster and with less screening. Smaller airports don’t have modern screening equipment such as full-body scanners or CT baggage screeners, making it impossible for them to detect some plastic explosives. Any would-be terrorist is already able to pick and choose his flight conditions to suit his plot.

Over the years, I have written many essays critical of the TSA and airport security, in general.

Most of it is security theater — measures that make us feel safer without improving security. For

example, the liquids ban makes no sense as implemented, because there’s no penalty for repeatedly trying to evade the scanners. The full-body scanners are terrible at detecting the explosive material PETN if it is well concealed.

I’ve repeatedly said that the two things that have made flying safer since 9/11 are reinforcing the cockpit doors and persuading passengers that they need to fight back. Everything beyond that isn’t worth it.

It’s always possible to increase security by adding more onerous — and expensive — procedures. If that were the only concern, we would all be strip-searched and prohibited from traveling with luggage. Realistically, we need to analyze whether the increased security of any measure is worth the cost, in money, time and convenience. We spend $8 billion a year on the TSA, and we would like to get the most security possible for that money.

This is exactly what that TSA working group was doing. CNN reported that the group specifically evaluated the costs and benefits of eliminating security at minor airports, saving $115 million a year with a “small (nonzero) undesirable increase in risk related to additional adversary opportunity.” That

money could be used to bolster security at larger airports or to reduce threats totally removed from airports.

We need more of this kind of thinking, not less. In 2017, political scientists Mark Stewart and John Mueller published a detailed evaluation of airport security measures based on the cost to implement and the benefit in terms of lives saved. They concluded that most of what our government does either isn’t effective at preventing terrorism or is simply too expensive to justify the security it does provide.

The more we politicize security, the worse we are. People are generally terrible judges of risk.

We overestimate rare and spectacular risks, and underestimate commonplace ones. That’s why we fear flying over driving, even though the latter kills about 35,000 people each year — about a 9/11’s worth of deaths each month.

Very little today is immune to politics, including the TSA. It drove most of the agency’s decisions in the early years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That the TSA is willing to consider politically unpopular ideas is a credit to the organization. Let’s let them perform their analyses in peace. n

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Helpers ease the way for asylum seekers T IM C RAIG in Champlain, N.Y. BY

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mer Malik knew he had to slip into Canada to avoid President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

But the 19-year-old native of Afghanistan needed a friend to help guide him. He found that friend in a 66-year-old former French teacher, one of a number of people here in the Adirondack region who believe it’s their duty to comfort and support those fleeing Trump’s vision for America.

As Malik dragged his suitcase toward the Canadian border, Janet McFetridge gave him two bags of potato chips, a knit hat and — what she considers her most important gift — a hug.

Then she yelled across the thicket of cattails and flowering grasses that separated them from Quebec.

“Hello,” she called, alerting a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer that Malik was about to illegally cross the border to claim asylum. “We got someone here.”

McFetridge is part of a loosely assembled network of progressive activists, faith leaders and taxi drivers who have mobilized to help

Refugee advocate Janet McFetridge, 66, tells a family of Palestinian asylum seekers what will happen when they illegally cross the border at the end of Roxham Road in Champlain, N.Y.

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undocumented immigrants cross the northern border. To some, they’re selfless do-gooders ushering people to better lives. To others, they’re perpetuating a problem that has debilitated Canada’s immigration system.

For centuries, residents note, towns in the Champlain Valley have been a path to security, serving as an escape route for people fleeing slavery, the Vietnam War draft and Central American wars.

Now, when it comes to immigration, this GOP-friendly part of New York has become a hub of the resistance.

“We view this as our Underground Railroad,” said Carole Slatkin, an advocate who has helped immigrants traveling through Essex, N.Y., a town that was part of a major route for enslaved people. “While no one is being flogged, and no one is being sold, there is this sort of modernday equivalent of feeling like people are in danger.”

Advocates say they try not to give direct advice to the immigrants, instead helping them find a place to rest or supplies to ease their journey. But the image of U.S. citizens supporting immigrants who make the trip is controversial in Canada, threatening long-standing, cross-border camaraderie.

“To me, it’s just being abusive,” said Paul Viau, mayor of the township of Hemmingford, a Canadian farming community along the border. “There are people who sympathize with [the immigrants] and people who have a harder time with it. But no one appreciates that someone would pack them up and bring them to the border at an illegal crossing.”

Last year, as the Trump administration began enacting stricter policies against undocumented immigrants, Canada processed more than 50,000 asylum claims.

That is more than double the claims made in 2016, according to Canadian government statistics.

Many of those immigrants have been crossing at unauthorized locations, such as here on Roxham Road.

Although the flow of asylum seekers into many Canadian provinces has slowed this year, there has been no letup into Quebec.

From January through June, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police apprehended 10,261 people crossing the border illegally there. Last

A shelter on the Canadian side of Roxham Road, which starts near Champlain, N.Y. It was built to help process Canada’s wave of refugees and asylum seekers.

year, the police apprehended 18,836 people.

The arrivals have sparked a backlash from segments of Canada’s political system. In late June, Toronto Mayor John Tory warned that the influx of asylum seekers had overwhelmed that city’s ability to care for them.

“We have a problem, and we need help,” Tory told Canadian reporters in a plea for more emergency housing.

In Quebec, the leader of its nationalist party, Jean-François Lisée, has suggested constructing a wall along the southern border of the province.

R

oxham Road, a narrow paved road lined by horse farms and marshes, has served as a path recently for Palestinians, Colombians, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Haitians, Zimbabweans and Pakistanis, among others.

After one taxi pulled up here, Fiyori Mesfin struggled to carry a car seat, stroller and two backpacks as she crossed the border

with her two children, ages 1 and 3.

Mesfin, 32, is a single mother from Eritrea who had been living for the past four years in Las Vegas. Her children are U.S. citizens.

After she was recently denied asylum in the United States, Mesfin began to fear she could be deported or even separated from her children. So she flew to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and then boarded a Greyhound bus for Plattsburgh, N.Y. “So now I am here just hoping it gets better,” Mesfin said as she pushed the stroller, while trying to manage her toddler, toward Canada.

Saman Modarage also had taken the bus.

Modarage is a Sri Lankan native who fled his country in 2005 during a civil war. He had settled in suburban Washington and worked at a liquor store in Prince George’s County.

But Modarage, 51, decided to try to flee Maryland for Canada after he heard that U.S. Immigra-

tion and Customs Enforcement was raiding and auditing Maryland convenience stores searching for undocumented employees.

In a recent statement, ICE noted that it has opened nearly 6,100 worksite investigations and made more than 1,500 arrests from October through July — more than five times the number of arrests made in the previous fiscal year.

“Donald Trump’s administration has pushed me here,” said Modarage, who arrived in Plattsburgh with two sets of clothing and $300. “All immigrants are under threat. . . . If I got deported, it would kill me.”

The flow of people illegally crossing into Canada from the United States has continued despite an agreement in 2002 between the countries that is designed to manage refugee movements.

The Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement requires migrants to make an asylum claim in the first safe country they reach, unless they are minors or have family ties at their next destina-

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tion. The agreement means many of those who try to cross from the United States into Canada at an official border station are turned away.

But a loophole permits asylum claims to be made by individuals who enter Canada covertly, such as here on Roxham Road, about five miles west of the interstate.

Crossing illegally at out-of-theway sites has become the preferred method for undocumented immigrants in the United States as well as those in the country legally who see their chance of getting asylum or permanent residency dimming.

Many take a bus from New York City to Plattsburgh, where waiting taxis transport them about 30 miles to the end of Roxham Road, a 100-yard dirt path into Canada.

Federal officers stationed on the other side of the border immediately arrest those who cross illegally. But if the crossers have proper identification, no criminal history and are not otherwise considered a security threat, most are released within 72 hours, said Sylvain Thibault, a coordinator at Project Refugee, a Montrealbased humanitarian group.

They then stay in a shelter, or with family or friends, while they await their hearing. They are also eligible for public assistance, health care and an opportunity to apply for a Canadian work permit.

Canadian law dictates asylum

Items tossed by asylum seekers and collected by McFetridge include bus and plane tickets, credit cards, and phones.

hearings should be held within 60 days.

But Paul Clarke, executive director of the Action Refugees Montreal, an advocacy group, said the government is so overwhelmed, it’s now taking up to two years for cases to be heard.

Last year, Canadian courts granted asylum in about 60 percent of cases, Clarke said. Canadian authorities have warned that far fewer of the most recent arrivals are expected to qualify.

M

cFetridge, the teacher turned activist, has lived in Champlain about five miles from the border for three decades. But she never paid much attention to it until after Trump’s election, when she was looking for ways to convert her agony over his win into meaningful action.

In March 2017, when she began hearing about an influx of immigrants into Canada, she decided to drive up to Roxham Road. The sight of people dragging luggage — and children — down “an isolated, lonely, country road” shook her.

“I was just horrified that people were leaving the United States, where we have this idea of being a beacon of hope, for another country,” she recalled. “At that point, I said, we can do something here, and I can at least give them a kind word, and recognize them as peo-

ple by saying, ‘I am sorry you feel you have to do this.’ ” McFetridge began showing up almost daily.

Last winter, after realizing many asylum seekers were arriving without warm clothes, she began handing out coats and gloves.

As the weather warmed, she transitioned her efforts to handing out snacks and toys to the children. McFetridge said she tries to avoid giving direct advice or material support to the refugees to avoid conflict with Canadian immigration authorities.

But, she said, it’s important for her to be there so people know they are not alone and can cross with a sense of safety.

“I can tell them they are not going to be shot,” she said.

“They’ve asked me: ‘Do I have to run? Are the police going to shoot me?’ ” McFetridge, who said she encounters dozens of asylum seekers on some days, keeps a log of those she encounters. “. . . Woman arrived by plane.

25 years in the US. Leaving son behind, degree in finance . . . Father stayed in taxi, sobbing as family left . . . Young adult — said she was bisexual & would be killed if returned to home country . . .”

Although McFetridge is the most visible advocate, a broad array of community and faith organizations have also mobilized throughout the Champlain Valley to assist people who pass through.

One organization that was formed to support refugees, Plattsburgh Cares, prints informational pamphlets about how to safely reach Roxham Road. Amid complaints from Canadian officials, the group stopped distributing the pamphlets this spring. It now relies on “word of mouth” to get information out, said Slatkin, 73, the woman in Essex.

As they continue their efforts, the advocates draw comparisons to the stealth network of abolitionists used to help guide people who escaped to Canada in the 19th century.

Of the estimated 100,000 enslaved people who fled the American South between 1810 and 1850, about 40,000 made it to Canada after being hidden in houses and churches along the way, said Don Papson, president of the North Country Underground Railroad Museum in Keeseville, N.Y.

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One of the major routes there ran through Champlain, about two blocks from McFetridge’s house, he noted. Today, before asylum seekers arrive on Roxham Road, they must travel down North Star Road, believed to be named after the star that people who escaped slavery used to guide them toward freedom.

Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives, a humanitarian group based in Westport, N.Y., and named after the 19thcentury abolitionist, said the region’s “inspiring history” is what is causing more people to “summon the courage” to support refugees. She said interest in helping the refugees has grown considerably this summer because of outrage over Trump administration’s policy of separating detained undocumented immigrants from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“You don’t have to do anything extraordinary, necessarily, but you do have to bear witness and help where you can,” said Swann, who recently helped a Nigerian woman make the trip from Los Angeles to the northern border.

At the First Presbyterian Church in Plattsburgh, the congregation decided to convert a Sunday school room into a temporary shelter for use by asylum seekers who may become stranded.

Stuart Voss, chairman of the church’s refugee committee, said the church is reviving a role it played in the late 1980s when thousands of migrants from Central America traveled through Upstate New York to reach Canada.

Many spent an extended period of time in Plattsburgh — where they were fed, counseled and housed by local churches — while they waited for Canada to consider their asylum requests.

But Voss, 75, said church members now believe they must be far more discreet in their efforts than they were 30 years ago.

“We decided it wasn’t the same situation as in 1986 to 1987 because there was no ICE back then, and it was just Border Patrol,” said Voss, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which was created in 2003 in wake of 9/11. “Customs used to tell us, ‘Okay, as long as they are staying with you, you can help them out.’ ” n ©The Washington Post

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HEALTH CARE

Desperate veterans, tender voices J ESSICA C ONTRERA in Shepherdstown, W.Va. BY

T

he phones rang early in the morning and late in the evening. They rang, always, in the middle of the night. They were ringing now, as Mary Hendricks sank into a swivel chair and settled in beside her co-workers for another day of answering them.

The calls came from veterans who were about to be evicted.

Veterans who couldn’t get hold of their doctors. Veterans who needed to talk about what they saw in Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam.

Mary pressed a button. Her headset clicked on.

“This is the White House VA hotline,” she said. “How can I help you?”

Here in a small West Virginia town, 74 miles from the White House, a Donald Trump campaign promise is being fulfilled.

He told the country’s 20 million veterans that if they had an issue with the Department of Veterans Affairs, there would be a number they could call 24 hours a day to talk to a real person.

On this day in late July, as Mary was beginning a conversation with one of those veterans, Trump was standing before a crowd of them at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Missouri, introducing a new VA secretary, Robert Wilkie.

The department Wilkie was about to take over had endured months of turmoil. Trump had fired his predecessor via tweet.

Longtime employees had been dismissed and demoted. The bipartisanship that once existed inside the halls of the federal government’s second-largest agency had been replaced by political infighting over how veterans should be cared for.

All the while, the veterans who were supposed to receive that care kept calling this room to report what was going wrong with it.

“We’re going to try to get you some help,” Mary said to the man on her line now, an Air Force veteran who had erroneously re-

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

At Trump’s VA hotline, workers take calls about pain, red tape, sex ceived a bill for $350.18. He did not have $350.18.

“I will instruct my staff that if a valid complaint is not addressed, that the issue be brought directly to me,” Trump said in 2016. “I will pick up the phone and fix it myself if I have to.”

But for now, the only person trying to fix it was Mary, a 44year-old widow with blond hair, a cross around her neck and long lavender nails that clacked on her keyboard. She had learned so much about VA that she wished she had known when her husband, an Army veteran, had been alive. But still, she could not make the $350.18 bill go away.

She could not see why it was

sent. She could not access benefits or medical records, even with the man’s permission. She wasn’t allowed to call his provider. All she could do was type his problem and send it to a different team in a different place that would respond in approximately 60 business days, if it responded on time.

Listen. Type. Send. This was what the 60 customer service agents could do for the 107,000 calls that had come in since June 2017. On this day, there would be 584 more.

Some veterans believed it was helping. Some said it was just another layer of bureaucracy.

Mary said only, “You’re very welcome, sir. Have a wonderful day,”

Mary Hendricks, left, talks to a caller at the White House VA hotline center in West Virginia last month. The hotline had taken 107,000 calls since June 2017.

and waited for the phone to ring.

‘I just want to yell’ The history of the Department of Veterans Affairs is entwined with scandal, from its first leader — an embezzler — under President Warren Harding to the revelation under President Barack Obama that VA hospitals were lying about how long veterans were waiting for care. Obama brought in a new VA secretary, Robert McDonald, to fix it.

One of McDonald’s solutions: A hotline.

At first, the line was his cellphone number, which he gave out at news conferences, saying, “Call me Bob.” Then he created

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HEALTH CARE MyVA311, another line for an agency that has staffed hotlines for everything from quitting smoking to learning about the flu to coping after seeing “Saving Private Ryan.”

The new hotline, 855-948-2311, joins nearly 20 phone numbers VA has listed on its website as national hotlines, help lines or call centers.

The allure of a hotline is that problems cannot be remedied unless they are first reported. But just because problems are reported doesn’t mean they will be fixed, said Joe Plenzler, spokesman for the American Legion. That’s why organizations like his are skeptical of Trump’s version of the idea, which has an annual budget of $7.4 million.

“We are asking: Is it action? Or is it just the appearance of action?” Plenzler said.

On the day after Trump’s speech with Wilkie, the action for Mary began with Diet Pepsi and Sheetz coffee, both of which she needed to get through eight hours of calls. (To protect the privacy of veterans, VA officials permitted The Washington Post to listen only to the call takers’ side of the conversations.)

“I am so sorry,” Mary told the first veteran routed to her phone.

Her computer showed he had called many times. “Veteran with brain damage” was how the last call taker described the first of his problems.

Mary was quiet as his voice grew louder in her ear. This job wasn’t all that different from the bartending she had done for years.

“I still listen,” she said. “I just don’t get them drunk.”

She had been working at a restaurant when she met her husband, Rod, who was in the Army during Desert Storm. In their 10 years together, every time she asked about his deployment, he changed the subject. She stopped asking. It stopped mattering to her once he was sick.

Headaches. Kidney problems.

Dialysis three times a week, four hours a day. VA doctors and private doctors, bills and paperwork, a system she didn’t know how to help him navigate. She tried to be there for him in other ways, to pray for him, to be the wife he needed. The last question she asked him, in the moments before the heart attack that would take

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private Facebook groups where veterans gather to swap tips on navigating VA. The agency said 609 people have called to compliment the hotline’s performance.

The Facebook groups are also filled with people venting about the hotline’s performance. Veterans report never hearing back about claims, retaliation from local VA employees for filing complaints against them and frustration that the hotline is run by VA itself, rather than an outside entity trying to keep it accountable.

When Trump promised the line, he described it as a “private White House hotline.”

Now so many veterans called thinking they were reaching 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that Mary had the White House switchboard number memorized. The callers wanted to tell “my boy Donald” he was doing a great job.

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

his life in 2015, was: “What do you want for dinner?”

She didn’t know it was Trump’s hotline when she saw the ad for a call center representative on Indeed.com for a job that paid $12.50 per hour and required someone “compassionate to veterans’ concerns.” She immediately submitted her résumé. The contractor doing the hiring said she was the first to apply.

Now she was 10 months in, trying to show she was compassionate to this veteran’s concerns.

“Want me to try to get through to the benefits administration?”

The Army reservist said he had already tried that.

“I just want to yell,” he said, so Mary let him, because that was what she was trained to do.

For three weeks, the agents had been schooled on VA, its “I-CARE values” (Integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect, excellence) and “Three E’s” (Effectiveness, ease, emotion), lessons that could never fully prepare them for the calls to come.

They were instructed not to disconnect unless they were being screamed at with profanity, which happened daily.

So she had listened for over an hour when a veteran called to relive every detail of her sexual assault. She had listened to a man go on and on about a bill until she realized he was asking whether his wife would have to pay the bill

Hendricks adorned her desk at the VA hotline with positive feeback, quotes and doodles.

when he died because he was about to kill himself. Suddenly he said, “Thank you so much, sweetie, I got to go,” and hung up. Mary called the crisis line to send the police to check on him. She doesn’t know what they found.

To Mary, so many of the problems felt fixable, if only they had the powers, or permission, to fix them.

“There was this man,” she said as she waited for the phone to ring again. “And he just wanted a seat for his wheelchair . . .

“And he had been trying for seven months, and he couldn’t get it. I hate that. Those are the ones you want to say, ‘All right, give me your address, and I’ll send you a seat.’ ” ‘My boy Donald’ What Mary could do was enter the veteran’s information in the hotline software, creating what the agents call a case. Each is sent to VA’s Office of Client Relations, which looks into resolving it or forwards it to a VA regional office or medical center.

A VA spokesman said 21 fulltime employees are responsible for the hotline’s cases. Since Oct. 15, when the hotline became 24 hours a day, 89 percent of the cases marked for further action have been resolved, the spokesman said.

Some veterans have become hotline evangelists, spreading the good news about Trump’s idea in

‘I can tell it’s a struggle’ The phone was ringing. A Vietnam veteran.

Decorated for valor. Three years waiting for knee surgery.

“Oh my gracious,” Mary said.

“Our veterans should be receiving the absolute best care that’s available.”

“I can put a case in for you,” she said.

Another call came. “I can tell it’s a struggle to talk to me just with your breathing.”

Another. “I can hear in your voice how much she means to you,” Mary said, this time to a veteran who had spent 35 minutes telling Mary about his wife.

He had been in a hospital that would not give him water in the evening because he kept wetting his bed. His wife slept in a sleeping bag on the floor so he could go to the bathroom during the night.

Mary touched the cross around her neck. She hasn’t been to church since her husband died, but she still prays for the veterans who call and for herself, so she can find the right words to say.

“You’re very fortunate to have each other,” she said now, and then the man was finishing his story and thanking her.

“You’re absolutely welcome, sir.

It is my privilege,” she said.

He kept talking. “God bless you, too, sir,” she said.

“Just one more thing,” the veteran said, and she stayed on the phone to keep listening. n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Six ordinary people who turned to firearms N ONFICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

M ARIANNE S ZEGEDY- M ASZAK

“I THE TRIGGER Narratives of the American Shooter

By Daniel J. Patinkin Arcade. 304 pp. $24.99

n America, we shoot each other.”

Thus ends “The Trigger: Narratives of the American Shooter” by author and businessman Daniel J. Patinkin — a provocative, sometimes maddening, occasionally riveting examination of the lives of six ordinary Americans who share the experience of having shot someone. Patinkin writes that he had “four guiding principles” in selecting the people he profiles: geographical diversity, dissimilar personal narratives, minimal overlap in the circumstance of the shootings and a desire for “the stories to be as compelling, as eye-opening, and as robust as possible.” With a former crack dealer, a Navy veteran, a police officer, an abused young woman, a hardworking Hispanic man and a high school football star, he may have succeeded.

These are not the Adam Lanzas or the Dylann Roofs — mass shooters who opened fire on crowds of innocents, claimed scores of lives and commanded overwhelming attention.

In terms of horror and headlines, mass shooters may own the narrative, but in terms of sheer numbers, they don’t. Only 346 of the 15,629 people who were killed by guns in 2017 — and these numbers do not include death by suicide — were victims of mass shooters. Instead, the roughly 43 victims of gun violence every day were killed by the kind of people profiled by Patinkin. Young, sometimes traumatized or mentally ill, in many cases inebriated or stoned, mostly male, living in places where access to guns does not require much effort. Each story is self-contained but also illuminates broader issues surrounding gun violence.

One recurring theme is how often important signals are ignored by counselors, police departments, schools, social welfare officials and military authorities.

Brittany Aden, the only woman in the collection, was abused by her

ISTOCK

In “The Trigger,” Daniel J. Patinkin examines the lives of six Americans who each shot someone.

father and at the age of 15 was forced to answer the question of kill or be killed. Constantly begging for some intervention, she was just as constantly returned to the home of her abuser until she felt she had no other choice.

In every case, the easy access to lethal weapons was often the difference between a murder and a bad encounter. For Lester Young Jr. from Hilton Head, S.C., the often-profitable crack epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s demanded the presence of a small arsenal. The only son of a working-class black family, his already rebellious life completely fell apart after his mother died. Unable to recover from the shock, Young opted to earn risky money as a drug dealer, a life that led to extreme violence, culminating in the murder of a customer on Christmas Eve. Then there was Brandon Clancy, a star athlete and stellar student, who had just completed his freshman year at San Bernardino Valley College, which he attended with plans to be drafted after a

year or two to play football for a top NCAA team. Guns were a part of the Clancy family life, and Brandon returned to school after winter break with a vintage sawed-off shotgun from his grandfather. San Bernadino was not the idyllic college campus of his dreams, and he had been unnerved by a few encounters with local tough guys. “He wanted to be able to brandish an intimidating weapon if it came down to it.” It “came down to it” after a night of drinking with some buddies at a club, a stupid encounter on the road and a gun that went off unexpectedly.

Everyone — except Alphonsus “Al” O’Connor, a Chicago police officer who killed a suspect in the line of duty — goes to trial and to prison.

Aside from providing a window into the lives of these ordinary people, Patinkin also paints a vivid picture of the unrelenting violence, dysfunction and sociology of our penal system. Frequently, religious faith and prac-

tice becomes the only means to survive.

Patinkin writes about these lives with bracing empathy, and he clearly engaged the trust of his subjects, whose perspective on their crimes is filled with horror and regret. But often the familiar good-kid-gone-bad trope skirts away from more rigorous questioning. Why would the otherwise great Brandon want a sawed-off shotgun at all?

To his credit, Patinkin has told us six stories that no one else would. He acknowledges that he is in no way trying to overlook the central tragedy of the victims and their families, but he tries his best to force readers to realize that these shootings aren’t just random events, but a result of real troubles within the shooters and the society that produces, and generally ignores, them. n Szegedy-Maszak is a senior editor in the Washington bureau of Mother Jones. This was written for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

The work ideal that occupies our vacations BRIAN O’CONNOR is a professor of philosophy at University College in Dublin.

Among the happiest of prospects for most workers is the annual vacation. It offers, at least in theory, our best op­ portunity to pass time on our own terms. It’s freedom from the clock, from stressful demands. Yet vacation’s ap­ peal is at odds with what we generally think we should be doing with our hours: working to provide for ourselves and perhaps others.

Only by working, after all, can we make something of ourselves.

The virtue of work is that it brings security and reputation, the essential rewards. In that context, a vacation might look like a deviation from virtuous activity.

We can justify leisure when we see it as a noble reward for time spent at the core business: work.

But time off isn’t really permitted, or even encouraged, to support the pursuit of freedom.

Vacation actually supports the world of work. Although annual leave is a right in many workplaces, it is of significant value to employers, too. Studies consistently urge employers to embrace a culture of paid leave.

Labor laws would probably look quite different if workers returned from vacation or long weekends in rebellious or feckless moods.

Furthermore, a planned absence within a company allows whoever is temporarily taking up the absentee’s duties to gain experience. This allows a company to develop a pool of workers with more diverse skills.

Is it just a coincidence that the sense of freedom that attracts us to time off coincides so neatly with the needs of well-run businesses?

Here, we might expect philosophers to come to our aid, defending some truer form of freedom as an essential human value. The ancient Greeks spoke of leisure as the opportunity for

contemplation dedicated to improving one’s life and community. Romans similarly saw leisure as “otium,” the negation of which, “negotium,” is the tawdry world of business.

Instead, we find that philosophers in the modern age too often criticize the excesses of leisure. John Dewey, for instance, defends “a worthy leisure” as a just reward for admirable labor.

Rest without toil, however, forms no part of a good life. William Morris, the Victorian English artist and social critic, held similar views. In the essay “Signs of Change,” he welcomed the arrival of mechanization, recognizing that it might provide opportunities for increased leisure. But he warned that an ever-lurking danger of aimless degeneracy accompanied this possibility. Informed by his socialist commitments, Morris worried that leisure could be selfishly misused. He proposed: “I should probably use my leisure for doing a good deal of what is now called work.”

Philosophers of quite diverse ideologies have shared Morris’s skepticism that true release from work is a fundamental good, among them Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx. Despite their different perspectives, they all believed that human beings are especially impressive when they are “useful.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that such thinkers would justify work.

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Is time off really a form of freedom? Or have our vacations become experiences that mainly reestablish the value of labor?

It’s not uncommon, after all, to hear people report their delight at getting back to work at the end of their vacation. The structure of the workday is easier to handle than time finding fresh activities to stave off boredom. Sometimes, too, a vacation goes wrong.

Perhaps the travel or the weather was an unexpected misery, or maybe time on the road with family brought up longsimmering frustrations.

As Immanuel Kant, to name one example, suggests in “Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View,” we have “a highly contrary feeling” in which we long for ease, yet quickly become bored when we have all the ease we want. Well-trained workers fear unemployment not only because of its financial implications. It is also because of the daunting prospect of tedium.

If that’s true, then filling our time within a structured workplace may be more pleasing than the freedom our leisure gives us, even if the work is not especially fulfilling. But the problem may be a matter of collective culture rather than human nature. We spend most of our formative years learning how to work. Our schooling trains us to complete tasks. It escalates the challenges of those tasks as our abilities grow, and we receive rewards for accomplishments. At home, our families train us to

help out, keeping things in order.

There are few schools for idlers or households for the lazy.

While we all grumble that too little of our time is really our own, we still unconsciously see vacation as an experience that reaffirms the value of labor.

If that idea troubles, it also hints at a more agreeable possibility. Perhaps it’s time we started thinking of work as an intrusion, even if it’s a necessary one, on the time we call our own.

To embrace such a premise would be to reverse our current arrangement, in which the annual vacation is cherished as a special treat. There is much to be learned from a range of innovative thinkers who say considerably fewer working hours need not lead to a collapse in our capacity to provide for ourselves. Bertrand Russell, for example, hoped that mechanization and a greater appreciation of our true needs could lead us away from intensive labor. A flourishing civilization where leisure was intelligently used would follow.

We should not, though, rely too much on wishful thinking.

Ridding ourselves of naivete about the supposed freedom of licensed vacation is but a small step toward understanding, and perhaps revising, the allpervasive influence of the institution of work. n

16

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