The Washington Post National Weekly - November 12, 2017

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

The election firsts BY

A MBER P HILLIPS

D

anica Roem received a lot of attention for becoming one of the nation’s first openly transgender elected officials on Tuesday night.

But her election — which ousted one of Virginia’s most socially conservative lawmakers — is far from the only first that happened on Election Day. Here’s a rundown of some of the notable firsts.

Color and gender firsts First mayor of Framingham, Mass.: Yvonne Spicer, a black woman, will become the first mayor in Framingham’s 317-year history. The town voted in the spring to become a city instead of a town government.

First black female mayor of Charlotte, Va.: Mayor-elect Vi Lyles’s father didn’t graduate from high school. She spent three decades as a city administrator.

First black mayor of Statesboro, Ga.: Jonathan McCollar First black mayor of Cairo, Ga.: Booker Gainor First black mayor of Milledgeville, Ga.: Mary Parham-Copelan First black mayor of Georgetown, S.C.: Brendon Barber First black mayor of Helena, Mont.: Wilmot Collins First black mayor of St. Paul, Minn.: Melvin Carter First Latinas elected to the Virginia House of Delegates: Democrats Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala.

First Asian American female to be elected to Virginia House of Delegates: Kathy Tran, a refugee from Vietnam who fled to the United States when she was just 2, unseated a Republican.

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LGBT firsts Roem wasn’t the only openly transgender candidate who won Tuesday. Andrea Jenkins became the first black transgender woman to be elected to public office when she won a Minneapolis City Council race.

In Pennsylvania, Tyler Titus became the first openly transgender person elected to the state, ever, by winning a seat in the Erie school board.

JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST

Danica Roem reacts after former vice president Joe Biden congratulated her.

Money-in-politics firsts One of the most expensive state legislative races ever culminated Tuesday. More than $10 million was spent between the two sides in a special election for an open Washington state Senate seat outside Seattle. This wasn’t just about one seat; control of the entire state government was on the line. Democrats needed to flip just one seat in special elections Tuesday to effectively take control of the state Senate, and they did. Democrat Manka Dhingra ended up winning the expensive race.

That makes Washington the eighth state to be entirely controlled by Democrats. (Compared with 26 controlled by Republicans).

Firsts for Democratic turnout In Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie by 8½ points,

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. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 4, No. 5

which is the biggest winning margin for a Democratic governor in Virginia in 32 years.

Northam also got the most votes ever for a Virginia candidate for governor (more than 1.4 million).

When you add in votes for Gillespie, Virginians cast 2.6 million votes, the most votes ever in their state’s governor’s race.

And Northam won with the highest turnout in a Virginia governor’s race in 20 years.

After Phil Murphy won the race to replace term-limited Gov. Chris Christie (R) in New Jersey, Democrats regained control of the state government for the first time since 2009.

New Jersey became the seventh state to be entirely controlled by Democrats.

Democrats in New Jersey kept control of both state legislative chambers, setting a record for longest control by one party of the state legislature (13 years and counting).

In local elections in Pennsylvania and Delaware, Democrats won two countywide seats on the Delaware County Council for the first time ever.

Democrats won their first-ever victories in county elections in Chester County, Pa. Firsts for ballot initiatives On Tuesday, Maine voters made their state the first to expand Medicaid by ballot initiative. Maine voters approved an initiative to expand government-paid health care to tens of thousands of mostly lower-income people, the exact opposite of what Republicans in Washington have spent the past year trying to do.

But Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), who has vetoed at least five Medicaid expansions sent to him by the bipartisan state legislature, said he will not expand Medicaid until state lawmakers figure out a way to pay for it without raising taxes. In other words, this expansion is on hold for the moment. n

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CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS FIVE MYTHS

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ON THE COVER Justine Elena, a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, said people would ask her “Oh, are you really in the Marine Corps?” Photography by BÉATRICE DE GÉA

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POLITICS

For GOP, a grim omen for midterms

CLIFF OWEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Republicans must seek a new path after failure of ‘Trumpism without Trump’

BY M ICHAEL S CHERER AND D AVID W EIGEL

T

he Republican Party thought it had a plan to win the governor’s mansion in Virginia: Run a mainstream candidate who could nonetheless employ the racially charged culture-war rhetoric of President Trump to turn out a white working-class base.

A onetime establishment stalwart, Ed Gillespie, declined to

campaign with Trump — but he executed the plan as well as he could. He defended Confederate memorials, vilified Central American gangs in ads that looked like horror movies and even denounced the kneeling protests of professional football players.

Then the voters voted, and Republicans went down in defeat across the state, from the top of the ticket to the bottom. A Democratic transgender candidate unseated a conservative in one county. The

Republican whip in the House of Delegates lost to a self-identified democratic socialist. And Republicans found themselves shut out of the top statewide offices, again.

The result is a bad omen for the Republican Party nationally, which will face head winds across the country in 2018, given continued frustration with political leaders in Washington and Trump’s low approval rating. Without faith that Trump’s base will match the enthusiasm of Democrats, many Repub-

Ralph Northam, Virginia’s governorelect, celebrates his victory with his wife, Pam, and daughter, Aubrey, right, and Dorothy McAuliffe, wife of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in Fairfax, Va., on Nov. 7.

lican candidates believe they will have to seek out a new political strategy to hold on to power.

“This is just an old-fashioned thumping,” former Virginia GOP congressman Tom Davis said as the results came in. Urban voters, he said, came out in droves to send the Republican Party a message.

“They have taken all of these guys out,” Davis said of the state’s denser districts. “The party is going to have to get right on immigration if they want to win in these areas.”

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POLITICS In a tweet after the election, Trump, who is traveling in Asia, tried to explain away Gillespie’s loss by claiming that it did not reflect poorly on his own political potency.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” Trump wrote, before referencing recent special elections in Republican-leaning districts. “Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!”

But it was not clear that a further embrace would have produced any better results. Virginia, which has been trending blue in recent years, was the only Southern state won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. She beat Trump by a margin of five points in 2016, compared with a nine-point margin for Democrat Ralph Northam over Gillespie.

Trump’s tweets also glossed over how the president had repeatedly praised Gillespie and his strategy while urging voters to turn out at the polls. “MS-13 and crime will be gone,” Trump had tweeted to his supporters Tuesday morning. “Vote today, ASAP!” In the short term, the defeat is likely to broaden a deepening divide between traditional Republicans, who have lost influence among grass-roots GOP voters, and the new populist conservatives who have embraced the polarizing approach of the president.

Before the election, Trump supporters were bullish on Gillespie’s strategy, arguing that it showed the only path forward for mainstream Republicans looking to turn out the GOP base. “Where there are establishment candidates, the lesson of Gillespie is Trumpism without Trump,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump aide and editor at Breitbart, who championed the strategy. “We now have forced the establishment to embrace our platform.”

In the aftermath of defeat, some Republicans called for staying the course. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) argued that the solution for the Virginia Republicans’ woes was running Corey Stewart, a former Trump campaign adviser who lost the primary to Gillespie, in the 2018 Senate campaign against Tim Kaine.

“Republicans need to say: ‘We support President Trump’s immi-

RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST

gration policy and what he was inaugurated to do,’ ” said King.

“Voters are not blaming the president for what’s wrong in Washington. They’re blaming these NeverTrumpers who form a coalition with Democrats.”

But others said the results in Virginia proved that strategy would ultimately shrink the party’s political power.

Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist who has vocally opposed Trump, claimed vindication after results across the country broke against Republicans. In Wilson’s own back yard of Florida, a popular former Republican mayor of St. Petersburg went down in a surprise defeat — a result Wilson blamed on his waffling about Trump.

“Burn Donald Trump to the ground if you ever want to win another vote from a woman, a black person or a Latino,” Wilson said. “Look at the exits and the

composition of the electorate.

We’re getting slaughtered with women. We’re getting slaughtered with minorities.”

Former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele said the result reminded him of the 2006 election, when Republicans lost control of the House in a wave election amid low approval for President George W. Bush. In that race, like this one, the president was a major factor, even if his name was not on the ballot.

“The lesson — and it’s a very important one — is you cannot wrap your policy, or your philosophy, in one person. You’ve got to stand for something,” Steele said.

That increases pressure on Republicans in Washington, Steele added, to deliver legislation, such as the proposed tax cuts.

“Republicans have to put something on the table. If it’s tax reform, do tax reform. If it’s infrastructure, do infrastructure,” Steele said.

Republican candidate for governor Ed Gillespie lost the election Tuesday in Virginia to Democrat Ralph Northam.

“Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for.”

President Trump in a tweet after the Virginia gubernatorial election

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“Let the president and his tweeting be the outlier.”

Exit polls found Northam doing what few Democrats had achieved without Barack Obama on the ballot — reshaping the electorate.

Just 67 percent of the electorate was white, according to exit polls, down from 70 percent in 2014.

Forty-two percent of white voters backed Northam over Gillespie, up from the 35 percent who had backed Clinton over Trump.

The cultural issues that came to dominate Gillespie’s ad campaign ended up breaking in Northam’s favor. By an 18-point margin, voters said they preferred Confederate monuments to stay in place.

But by a 16-point margin, voters said Northam would “handle race relations” better than Gillespie.

Voters most concerned with health care, an issue that has bedeviled Democrats since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, picked Northam by 55 points.

Only 12 percent of voters said that immigration was their top issue. But among those voters, Gillespie was trusted by a 46-point margin to handle the issue better.

Among the 15 percent who cited taxes as their top issue, Gillespie won by a 33-point margin, after a long ad campaign in which he promised to cut the state’s income tax rate.

Democrats, meanwhile, expressed hope that Republicans will conclude that the divisive rhetoric employed by Gillespie would be unproductive in future races.

“We haven’t seen this kind of campaign since the 1960s,” said Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), who represents the coastal communities of Norfolk, Hampton and Newport News. “Hopefully people will take notice and run campaigns they can be proud of, and not the kind of campaign that Mr. Trump ran and Mr. Gillespie ran.”

One Republican strategist, Alex Castellanos, said after the results that he hoped the outcome would force the GOP to come up with a new approach to politics altogether, just as Democrats remade themselves in the early 1990s. “We are still the same hollowed-out party that Trump crushed,” he said. “What Bill Clinton did for Democrats — the new Democrats — someone has to do for Republicans.” n © The Washington Post

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POLITICS

A blue tide washes over Oklahoma R OBERT S AMUELS Norman, Okla.

BY

T

he newest state legislator in Oklahoma leaned over his bathroom sink, teasing his tousled hair to get that John F. Kennedy bouffant. The blue suit came from J.C. Penney and fit snugly; the tie was tied tight.

“My hair keeps standing up because I’m already sweating so much,” said Jacob Rosecrants, a 39-year-old single father. “When you go campaigning, no one expects you to look like this. But when you win, everyone expects you to look like this.”

A month before, he was a middle school geography teacher driving a Chrysler PT Cruiser with no air conditioning, knocking on doors at the end of a hot Oklahoma summer. Now, he is the poster boy for a national party desperate to rebuild its bench.

Rosecrants is a Democrat who won in a district that is 60 percent Republican. He is one of three Democrats who have won GOP legislative districts in Oklahoma special elections in the months since President Trump won 65 percent of the vote in one of the country’s most conservative states.

National Democratic Party leaders have rejoiced over these victories — along with five other recent wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida in districts that had voted for Trump — as evidence that the chaotic presidency may be creating opportunities for Democrats to capture more seats in next year’s state and congressional elections. “A beacon of hope,” said Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s strategy arm for legislative races.

Yet the path to victory still seems muddy. Internal party tensions have been on display in recent days because of an explosive tell-all book by former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile, and polls tightened ahead of Tuesday’s nationally watched gubernatorial election in Virginia, where the Democrat waged a largely anti-Trump campaign.

NICK OXFORD FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

In a deep-red state where Trump is popular, Democrats are copying parts of his playbook In Oklahoma, success didn’t come when candidates simply rejected Trump. These candidates won after embracing elements of his playbook, capitalizing on the widespread distrust of traditional politics to persuade voters to give newcomers a chance.

Rosecrants, like Trump, pitched himself as an anti-politician, an outsider who could shake up an old-boy institution filled with backslapping, privilege and corruption. As Oklahoma struggles to fund public services and records some of the worst education statistics in the country, Rosecrants used his career experience to illustrate how he could help solve the state’s biggest crisis.

“Elect a Teacher” was his slogan, and the blue signs he staked in people’s lawns in the Oklahoma City suburbs had a pencil in the logo. He knocked on doors and told of his overcrowded classroom of 42, so sweaty they called it the “rhino’s butt,” and how other teachers have cleared out closets to find space to educate special-

needs students.

It wasn’t until you read the fine print that you could tell Rosecrants was, in fact, a Democrat.

For some voters, backing Trump in 2016 and then supporting a Democratic state House candidate was perfectly logical. “I voted for Trump because he’s an outsider, and I voted for Jacob because he’s an outsider,” said Sean Keith, 34, a sales manager who lives in Rosecrants’s district.

“Maybe they’ll get the job done.”

During President Barack Obama’s term, conservatives successfully captured voter dissatisfaction, with Democrats losing more than 900 state legislative seats over those eight years.

Oklahoma typifies the GOP domination. Even after this year’s special elections, Republicans have 39 of 48 seats in the Senate and 71 of 101 in the House. The governor is a Republican, as well.

But the majority party is drawing scrutiny in the state as it navigates budget problems and political scandal.

Oklahoma state Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, a Democrat, won a special election in September, in a district that is 60 percent Republican, by presenting himself as a political outsider.

The chief concern among voters was education. Per-student funding in Oklahoma had decreased by 26 percent since 2008, faster than in any other state, and teacher pay ranked among the nation’s lowest.

So grave was the concern about education that close to two dozen teachers ran for the legislature in 2016, almost all of them Democrats. But Trump’s coattails proved too much for the Democrats to overcome, and only one of the teachers won that year.

Greg Treat (R), the state Senate majority leader, said those results are more indicative of the national mood than recent Democratic wins in special elections — particularly given the circumstances that led to those victories. Among them: One state senator was found in a hotel room with drugs and an underage sex worker; a state representative was accused of sexually harassing legislative aides.

Considering the scandals, local Democrats made a larger, more philosophical argument about the nature of man and power.

Rosecrants emphasized that he was just a little guy trying to make a difference. No Democrat had won a House seat in the district since 1995, so Rosecrants started a Facebook page and began fundraising. He was one of the teachers who ran in 2016 and lost to the incumbent, by 20 percentage points. When the incumbent quit the job, Rosecrants began going door to door again.

“I started believing in myself and started believing that we had a real chance,” he said.

One of those doors belonged to Keith, the 34-year-old from Noble.

In a community where many longtime residents know one another, he considered Rosecrants a friend.

“The government understands what’s happening, but I don’t think they’re working on it,” Keith said. “People here just hated Obama. I wasn’t a fan of him, either, but things were getting better when he left. There was so much division in the federal government, nothing could get done — and nothing can get done here, either.” n © The Washington Post

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POLITICS ANALYSIS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Supporters likely to stick with Moore BY

P HILIP B UMP

R

oy Moore won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat in Alabama this year on the strength of his long-standing advocacy for hard-right conservative and evangelical values.

Twice elected chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, he left that role both times on behalf of his religious beliefs. In 2003, he was removed from office for refusing to take a monument of the Ten Commandments out of a state building. In 2016, he was suspended for refusing to uphold the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriages.

When challenged by Luther Strange for the nomination to the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Moore never trailed.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published a story detailing allegations from four women who say they were pursued by Moore when they were teens and he was in his 30s. One, Leigh Corfman, described how Moore had initiated sexual contact with her when she was 14 and he 18 years older.

Republicans on Capitol Hill — many of whom supported Strange in the primary, it’s important to note — quickly called for Moore to drop out of the Senate race, a move that seems unlikely.

The question then becomes whether Moore can win the general election race against Democrat Doug Jones in light of the allegations — particularly given that nearly half the state identifies as evangelical, suggesting that a moral question might dampen his support.

Recent history, though, suggests that he might not lose substantial evangelical support.

That recent history is Donald Trump.

On Oct. 7, 2016, The Post had another scoop: Trump had been recorded casually talking about sexual assault while preparing for a segment on “Access Hollywood.”

When he denied having actually assaulted anyone during a presidential debate, a number of wom-

JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS

As with Trump case, conservative evangelicals may focus on message, not morality allegations en came forward to say that he’d done to them precisely what he described in those audio recordings.

The result for Trump? He won more support from evangelical voters than any Republican since the question of religious identification began being asked.

Nearly half of Trump’s support — 46 percent — identified as white evangelical Protestant.

In the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape, PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) released data showing that, for evangelical voters, moral rectitude had faded in importance.

More than any other religious group, evangelicals said that someone who acts immorally in their personal lives can still serve morally in office.

Part of this is certainly a response to what was known about Trump. Evangelical voters supported Trump, so they were will-

ing to say that any indiscretions were irrelevant.

But why did they support him so fervently? One factor is that Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, was fervently opposed by evangelical voters. Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Post wrote about that last October: “She symbolizes much that runs against their beliefs: abortion rights advocacy, feminism and, conversely, a rejection of biblical ideas of femininity and womanhood. Perhaps even more significantly, Hillary Clinton, as an outspoken and activist first lady, is inextricably tied in the minds of conservative Christians to their loss of the culture war battles beginning with Bill Clinton’s first term in 1993.”

That last point, about culture wars, is important. In June, Politico’s Tim Alberta explained why evangelicals stand by Trump: “Yet for Christians who feel they are

Alabama Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Roy Moore speaks with reporters as he visits the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published a story detailing allegations from four women who say they were pursued by Moore when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.

engaged in a great struggle for the identity of America — and fear tha t their side has been losing ground — the most important question is not whether Trump believes in their cause, but whether he can win their wars.

‘Jimmy Carter sat in the pew with us. But he never fought for us,’ Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told me after the president’s speech.

‘Donald Trump fights. And he fights for us.’ ” Ergo: Support for Trump. In August, Pew Research reported that half of those who approve of Trump approved of his performance in office not because of policies but because of his approach and personality: his leadership, willingness to “speak his mind,” that he wasn’t a typical politician.

Which brings us to Moore.

Moore’s political background is predicated on engaging in the sort of fights that evangelical voters would like to see fought.

Moore is aware of this. He tweeted this in early October: “But I’ve been on the frontlines of the fight against the liberals’ allout war on Conservative values for years.”

How Trump stumbled onto the right message for evangelicals isn’t clear, but it probably stems in part from tracking conservative media. Moore, on the other hand, was steeped in it.

The allegations against Moore are decades old and, for those interested in dismissing them, dismissible as pitting his word against the women’s. It seems unlikely, then, that evangelical voters would, at this point, reject his candidacy, especially with Moore denying the charges.

If Trump — a one-time New York Democrat on his third wife with little connection to religious faith before his political run — can keep the support of the evangelical community, it seems unlikely that a conservative Alabama judge who lost his job in defense of the Ten Commandments is at much risk of seeing that support evaporate. n © The Washington Post

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NATION

Native Hawaiians seek sovereignty B RITTANY L YTE Wailua, Hawaii BY

C

olonization of these Pacific islands — and eventual statehood nearly 60 years ago — has always been a bitter subject for Native Hawaiians, the only indigenous group in the United States that does not have political sovereignty.

Decimated in number after the Western world first occupied the archipelago and later feeling marginalized within the federal bureaucracy, Native Hawaiians are now pushing hard to create their own nation, seeking the type of self-governance Native American tribes across the country established long ago.

A group that includes politicians, police officers, fast-food workers and farmers has drafted a new constitution and plans for a ratification vote. Support has come from residents on every island here, as well as from members of the Hawaiian diaspora in such places as Washington, Vietnam and Sweden.

Leaders are working to raise $2.5 million and have joined with a consortium of advocacy groups to spur the nation-building effort.

Over potluck suppers in Honolulu and at an assembly of more than 300 people in Anchorage, Native Hawaiians have come together to study what could become the touchstone of their self-determination: an eight-chapter constitution that lays the foundation for a democracy with executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Their hope is that this time, a Hawaiian nation has a real shot.

“I’ve been involved in the sovereignty movement my whole life, and when Hawaiians get together to talk about sovereignty, it usually involves a lot of fighting and yelling, and nothing gets done,” says Brendon Kalei‘aina Lee, 47, who served as chairman at last year’s constitutional convention. “Never before have I seen people with so many different viewpoints willing to sit down and work together.”

In an overly warm conference room at a Hilton hotel on Kauai earlier this year, Robin Danner, an

BONNIE JO MOUNT/WASHINGTON POST

Indigenous residents are working on constitution to gain autonomy Native Americans have advocate for Native Hawaiian sovereignty, plunged down a list of perks indigenous Hawaiians could get by standing up their own government.

Free health care. Reacquisition of stolen lands. Greater influence in Hawaii state politics. New programming designed to tackle the socioeconomic ills disproportionately faced by Hawaii’s indigenous people — homelessness, substance abuse, incarceration, obesity and low high school graduation rates.

“Sovereignty is improving the lives of people in our community,” explained Danner, who co-founded the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.

This is not the first time a group of Native Hawaiians has sought support for a governing document to improve their circumstances.

Mahealani Wendt, 70, the former executive director of the Native

Hawaiian Legal Corporation, participated in three earlier efforts to compose a constitution. All were doomed by a lack of funding and support among Native Hawaiian voters, she said.

“There is fatigue,” Wendt said. “I was hoping my mother would still be alive when we finally got a government, but my mom has passed away, and now I’m thinking I’m going to be dead and it’s still not going to happen. I see opposition from within our community, and I see opposition from outside of it — these are strange bedfellows. But ultimately I think there comes a time when you just have to fish or cut bait. Take the vote. If the vote is not successful, you start again.”

But adding to the momentum now is a new opportunity for Hawaiians to grow their political independence by seeking an official nation-to-nation relationship

Seniors perform during their graduation at Kanuikapono Charter School in Anahola, Hawaii, in May. The school emphasizes Hawaiian culture in an area of the archipelago where the population is largely native.

Indigenous Hawaiians, frustrated with the limits and bureaucracy of statehood, have several times sought sovereignty.

with the United States. The rulemaking that allows it, announced last year by the U.S. Interior Department, does not attempt to reorganize a native government or dictate its structure. The Interior Department started accepting requests for federal recognition from Native American groups in 1978, but that pathway to self-determination was previously off limits to Native Hawaiians.

Federal recognition is harshly criticized by some Hawaiians who aspire to strip themselves completely of U.S. law and influence instead of operating within the U.S. system. Advocates for total independence hope to win an international court order that would call on the U.S. to forfeit its political and military presence in the Hawaiian islands.

As evidence, they point to a 1993 joint resolution known as the Apology Bill, in which Congress demonstrated a “deep regret to the Native Hawaiian people” for the overthrow of the kingdom there.

The legislation recognized the illegality of the United States’ role in forcing Queen Lili‘uokalani out.

Yet until Hawaiians erect their own government, how it would interact with the United States and others is all fantasy, said Michelle Kauhane, a writer of the constitution who has been traveling to present it to Native Hawaiian communities.

“Before you go about establishing a relationship with another government, you want to establish sovereignty for yourself,” Kauhane said. “Whether anybody recognizes us or not, there’s nothing that prevents us from standing up our government, enforcing our laws and exercising our sovereignty muscles.”

Small sovereignty groups already exist in the islands, but their legitimacy is often called into question because of low membership and a lack of recognition.

“Being unrecognized is weak,” Danner said. “If I form a government and no other government recognizes it, then we’re really no more than a club hiding out in the bushes.” n © The Washington Post

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

Target in anthem debate: Black wealth BY

V ANESSA W ILLIAMS

W

hen A. Scott Bolden appeared on Fox News to defend National Football League players who protest racism by kneeling during the national anthem, he instead found himself under attack.

“You’re wearing thousand-dollar cuff links; don’t give me the victim card!” host Tucker Carlson told Bolden, who is black and a partner in an international law firm. “Those cufflinks cost more than my first car!”

After the September appearance, Bolden said racist messages flooded his voice mail and email. “ ‘You n-word, S.O.B.,’ ” Bolden recounted from one voice mail, censoring the caller’s language. “ ‘You’re making millions as a lawyer while I’m making $10 an hour, and you have the audacity to complain about racism in this country.’ ” President Trump has said his fight with NFL players is about respecting the flag and honoring veterans — not race. But the president and some conservative commentators have made wealth a part of the debate, inflaming racial resentment among Trump’s white working-class supporters who express no tolerance for black athletes raising concerns about institutional racism while making millions of dollars a year.

Players should be “respectful of the national anthem and flag on behalf of the many Americans who have died defending your right to become a millionaire,” said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and Trump supporter, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” in September.

Tensions over the protests flared anew after ESPN reported in September that Houston Texans owner Bob McNair, who donated $1 million to Trump’s presidential inauguration, said, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.”

McNair apologized, and most Texans players knelt during the national anthem before their game that Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks.

The argument that professional

ELAINE THOMPSON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Criticism of kneeling athletes reflects resentment over their success, experts say athletes or high-end lawyers like Bolden are ingrates suggests they didn’t work for their wealth and reflects a sentiment that people of color receive preferential treatment over whites, said Khalil Muhammad, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

A poll conducted earlier this year by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found 28 percent of the general public believes whites losing out because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics is a bigger national problem than the reverse. That rose to 46 percent among those who strongly approve of Trump’s performance.

“The resistance to black advancement is an old problem and repeated pattern in the country, and what whites are reasserting is the privilege of their identity, which translates for many of them into various forms of patriotism and white nationalism,” Muhammad said. “The symbolism of black athletes, a representation of black success, kneeling threatens to take

that from them.”

Trump’s attack on the NFL players is a reflection of that belief, some observers say. He first targeted the athletes in late September, when he said during a Huntsville, Ala., rally, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out. He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ” The next day, Trump tweeted if “a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues” they should be made to stand for the national anthem. The White House declined to comment for this story.

A recent study found higher-income African Americans report more personal experience with racism. Among African Americans earning more than $75,000 a year, 65 percent said someone had used racial slurs to refer to them or other black people, compared to 40 percent of African Americans earning less than $25,000 a year.

And 55 percent of high-earning black people said people had acted

Houston Texans players kneel and stand during the national anthem before a game against the Seattle Seahawks. The president and some conservative commentators have made wealth a part of the debate over athletes kneeling.

Attorney A. Scott Bolden said racist messages flooded his voice mail and email after he appeared on Fox News to defend NFL players’ protest.

afraid of them versus 33 percent of lower income African Americans.

The survey, which NPR conducted with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that 92 percent of all African Americans say black people are discriminated against, while 55 percent of white Americans say white people are discriminated against.

Trump has struggled to connect with black Americans. He received 8 percent of the black vote in the 2016 November general election — the same proportion of blacks who approved of his performance in a Gallup poll in October. He withdrew a White House invitation for the National Basketball Association champion Golden State Warriors after star player Stephen Curry said he didn’t want to make the customary congratulatory visit.

Trump has tried to reframe the focus on the protests, started last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a statement about racial injustice, in particular the disproportionate killings of African Americans by law enforcement officers.

In a dramatic response to the player protests, Vice President Pence, at Trump’s instruction, walked out of an Indianapolis Colts game Oct. 8 after several players with the visiting San Francisco 49ers knelt during the anthem. Eric Reid, a safety with the 49ers who has been a vocal supporter of the protests, told reporters afterward Pence’s action smacked of “a PR stunt.”

Muhammad said the athletes under attack are displaying patriotism by protesting what they see as oppression at the hands of the state, including against some white Americans.

They are “living up to the highest ideals that America claims to stand for, which is to take their power, privilege and prestige and use it on behalf of people who are marginalized, some of whom are white and some of whom also get shot down in cold blood, unarmed in the middle of the street.” n © The Washington Post

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Modi has India on sanitation mission V IDHI D OSHI Beed, India BY

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he patrols started at dawn, and the villagers scattered, abandoning their pails of water to avoid humiliation and fines.

Every morning in this district in rural India, teams of government employees and volunteer “motivators” roam villages to publicly shame those who relieve themselves in the open. The “good-morning squads” are part of what one official called “the largest behavioral-change program anywhere in the world.”

This is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Clean India initiative in mission mode. By October 2019, Modi has vowed, every Indian will have access to a toilet, and the country will be free of the scourge of open defecation.

Since Modi came to power, more than 52 million toilets have been installed. But the trick, sanitation experts say, is getting people to use them.

To win favor with the ruling party’s top brass, government officials have set to work, trying to outpace one another with toiletbuilding races and eye-catching information campaigns. Many are resorting to controversial public shaming tactics.

“This is harassment,” said one villager, Ranjit Gonjare. “The person becomes the laughingstock of the village.”

India’s sanitation crisis is an urgent priority: 53 percent of Indian households had no toilet in 2011, the latest census figures show. Human feces litters public spaces, spreading diseases that contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. People wait all day to defecate in darkness, which has health and safety implications. Children, especially menstruating girls, skip school because of a lack of toilets. One report pegged the economic cost of India’s sanitation problem at $106.5 billion in 2015, 5.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Santram Gonjare felt the sting of humiliation one recent morn-

VIDHI DOSHI/THE WASHINGTON POST

Officials are trying everything — including public shaming — to get more villagers to use toilets ing, when a squad flagged him down as he was walking along a highway.

They knew what the 55-yearold was about to do because he was holding a pail of water that he would use to wash himself after defecating. They knocked the pail out of his hand and crushed it under their feet. Then they offered him a flower, a sign of goodwill, and told him to use a toilet in the future.

Gonjare hung his head as he walked home. He went out to defecate, he said, because his nine-person household has only one toilet, and he couldn’t bear to wait his turn. “How can that feel okay?” he said of his experience with the squad. “I felt worthless.

It’s not the right way to treat old people.”

Such encounters are routine in Beed, where people without toilets risk having their welfare benefits taken away and can be barred from running for public office. Elsewhere, officials use methods that verge on coercion —

or worse. In one recent case, a man was publicly lynched after he tried to stop authorities from photographing women who were defecating in the open. A news channel urged viewers to send in images and names of those who defecate in the open so they could be shamed on national television.

“This work has to be done,” said Dhanraj Nila, chief executive of Beed district, who regularly goes out on morning patrols. He said the squads’ shaming methods were necessary to “motivate” people to use toilets. “People keep saying Beed is a backward district.”

Modi’s Clean India mission has drawn international support. After a recent visit to India, Bill Gates extolled the mission’s “impressive” speed. USAID pledged $2 million annually and introduced ranking systems to trigger “competition between cities.” The World Bank offered a $1.5 billion loan to help speed the sanitation programs. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, is providing train-

Santram Gonjare was caught carrying a pail of water by a “good-morning squad,” which knew he was planning to defecate outdoors.

They knocked the pail out of his hand and crushed it. Then they offered him a flower, a sign of goodwill, and told him to use a toilet next time.

ing and education tools, although a spokesman distanced the organization from the Indian government’s “name and shame” programs.

Some argue that Modi is overly optimistic about the pace of change. “No country anywhere in the world has come anywhere close to eliminating open defecation that fast,” said economist Dean Spears, a sanitation expert, referring to the 2019 target.

India is vast and difficult to govern; in outlying regions such as Beed, where central control is weak and corruption levels high, shame and honor are the mechanisms through which communities police themselves. Many villagers in Beed praised the government’s methods, showing off areas that once were open-air toilets and now are children’s playgrounds.

Satish Umrikar, who oversees sanitation activities in the state of Maharashtra, where Beed is located, said the mission’s ambitious targets are crucial to its success.

An estimated 91 percent of people in rural areas in Maharashtra now have access to toilets, double the percentage in 2014, with 1.9 million installed in the past fiscal year.

Beed’s geography makes it a particularly difficult region in which to change habits. In the summers, particularly in years of drought, the land becomes parched, and lines to collect water from communal pumps stretch for hours. Villagers buy water from local authorities for drinking and bathing. To them, clean toilets are a luxury. Many villagers who have toilets at home said they go outdoors to save water.

Squad members described their work as “gandhigiri,” referring to Gandhi’s nonviolent method of tackling problems. Maharashtra official Umrikar said the public shaming tactics are only one part of a wider government effort to change habits. “This is required in initial phases,” he said of the squads. “Once there is understanding, we will phase it out.” n ©The Washington Post

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At new Louvre, the art of geopolitics J AMES M C A ULEY Abu Dhabi, UAE BY

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elcome to the “Island of Happiness.”

Here, on a literal desert island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a young, oil-rich nation-state is seeking to rise above its neighbors and catapult itself into history. At the same time, the world’s most famous museum is looking to expand its empire and to line its coffers for decades to come. This is the story of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the long-awaited centerpiece of a multibillion dollar complex slated to showcase some of the most powerful names in the western cultural universe: the Guggenheim Museum, New York University and the Sorbonne, among others.

The Louvre project — which French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated Wednesday and which opened to the public Saturday — represents the first overseas expansion of what is perhaps Europe’s most venerable art institution. The opening brings to an end a decade of delays and bitter controversy.

In France, scores of industry professionals still decry what they see as a beloved museum selling out to the highest bidder, accepting $464 million from the Emirati government for the use of its vaunted name. Globally, human rights watchdogs still accuse the Louvre and other institutions on the island of having exploited and abused migrant labor.

The French and Emirati governments quickly christened the new Louvre as a universal museum “that will broadcast tolerance and acceptance.” But the real purpose of this gleaming ziggurat on the waterfront remains a matter of intense debate. It will feature works, loaned from a network of French museums, by masters like Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Mondrian. But is the Louvre Abu Dhabi really about the art? Or is it a pawn in a larger game of statecraft and geopolitics?

Inside the Emirates, the new

MOHAMED SOMJI/LOUVRE ABU DHABI

Lucrative Abu Dhabi venture decried in France as selling out, but seen as a status enhancer in UAE museum is seen primarily as a means of recasting the nation’s public image from a “playground in the desert” to a cultural powerhouse.

“This is a major statement,” said Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, an Emirati royal and prominent art collector, in an interview. “This is saying that we’re not playing in the little leagues — we’re playing in the major leagues. It’s probably the greatest museum in the world, and it will have not just a small branch but a massive presence.”

The project also figures into internal competition among the UAE’s seven constituent kingdoms, each of which is seeking its own distinctive niche, said Kristian Ulrichsen, an expert on the history of the Gulf states at Rice University. Dubai, he said, embraced business and infrastructure nearly 20 years before Abu Dhabi, the capital, which ultimately controls the lion’s share of the country’s oil reserves. Flush with cash, the ambitions of the latter continue to rise.

In France, the Louvre Abu Dhabi has long figured in discussions

that have far transcended the realm of art for art’s sake.

“The objective was never aesthetic — it was political,” said Didier Rykner, a French art historian who is among the project’s most outspoken critics.

Authorized by a 2007 act of the French parliament, the new museum is often considered a soft power component of a broader strategic expansion into the Gulf region, which included the installation of permanent military bases in Abu Dhabi in 2009, the French military’s first overseas expansion since decolonization began in the mid-1960s.

As Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s then-president, said when he inaugurated those bases, they would “show the responsibility that France, as a global power, agrees to assume with its closest partners, in a region that is a fault line for the whole world.” This is a stance that the current president, Emmanuel Macron, has only maintained since his election in May, attempting to position France as a chief interlocutor on the world stage and especially in

The view overlooking the sea from the new Louvre Abu Dhabi, situated on what’s called the “Island of Happiness.” The famed Paris museum’s first overseas expansion opened Saturday.

the Middle East on the question of Iran.

While notably more liberal than its neighbors in the region, the UAE still has repressive tendencies that severely limit freedom of expression, jails dissidents and allows certain offenses to be punished according to sharia law.

There is also the lingering issue of how — and by whom — the glistening new landmarks on the Island of Happiness were built.

In recent years, the Emirati government has begun reforming the “kafala system” of migrant labor, which exists in many Gulf states and makes migrant laborers dependent on their employers for their visas. But the charges remain, much to the chagrin of Louvre officials.

“We have visited the workers and seen their conditions here, we have verified their conditions,” said Jean Nouvel, the building’s architect. “And I can assure you — I’m not sure it exists. It does not exist like that in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.”

But the Island of Happiness is only a literal island. It is not exempt from the law of the land, a reality that has led many to question whether prominent Western universities and museums are compromising their values by establishing satellites in Abu Dhabi.

Similar critiques have been levied against the Louvre, mostly over the museum appearing to selfcensor potentially sensitive artworks of a political or sexual nature in Abu Dhabi.

“Of course, we can say, ‘Why should we be here, why should we be doing this?’” said Olivier Gabet, the current director of Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, who served for several years on the new museum’s planning committee and taught in the art history program at the Sorbonne’s Abu Dhabi campus, which trains local students to enter the museum profession. “But we could say the same in reverse. By the same token, why wouldn’t we want to be there, in the midst of a social, educational and cultural transformation like this?” n © The Washington Post

COVER STORY

As They Are Photographs by BÉATRICE DE GÉA Interviews by ELIZABETH CHANG

It’s never been easy to be a woman in the Marine Corps, which is the most physically demanding branch of the military and the one with the smallest percentage of female service members: 7.6 percent. Disturbing revelations in March made it even tougher: Male members of the 30,000-strong Marines United Facebook group had been soliciting and posting explicit photos of current and former female Marines without their permission, often accompanied by violent and obscene comments.

The Corps continues to grapple with the fallout. Thus far, it has disciplined 44 Marines,

strengthened its policies for addressing social media misconduct and established a task force to look at how it recruits, trains, assigns and mentors service members in an effort to eliminate gender bias. As it was taking these steps, we reached out to current and retired female Marines to find women interested in posing for photographs that would let them define how they were portrayed, as individuals and as service members. We also spoke with them about their experiences in and out of the Corps, and about what they hope the photographs convey. (The interviews have been edited and condensed.)

There were areas of commonality: All but one said they were inspired to join the Marines in part because they had relatives who were in the Corps or another service; some said they’d had this desire since they were tiny children. All spoke about becoming a Marine in terms of the challenge — of proving they had what it takes, and often, in the process, proving others wrong.

“It just always seemed like if you could do the Marine Corps you could do anything,” said Capt.

Lauren Finch Serrano.

To varying degrees, being a woman in the Marine Corps has tested all of them. Stephanie

WOMEN MARINES SHOW HOW THEY WANT TO BE DEPICTED

Schroeder said she was discharged after reporting a rape and spent years fighting for the Veterans Affairs disability benefits she now receives. Others have stories of enduring insults, being propositioned, being stared at, feeling like they couldn’t be themselves, having to prove themselves over and over. “As a young woman in that time, you were easy prey,” recalled retired gunnery sergeant Carrie Ann Lynch, who enlisted in 1990. “It would have been easier to be a Marine if I was just invisible,” said Justine Elena, a captain in the reserve who left the service a few years ago. Five have

combined their careers with parenthood. Four are married — all to current or former Marines, which comes with its own set of complications.

Even women with negative experiences said the Marine Corps gave them a lot: It made them tougher and more disciplined; it provided meaningful, rewarding work. Several cited supportive commanding officers. Many mentioned military benefits that have allowed them to further their educations. There were mixed feelings within the group about changes such as more-demanding fitness standards for female Marines, but also excitement about advances such as the first fe-

male graduate of the infantry officer school.

All of the women were outraged by the Marines United scandal, though some weren’t surprised. Elena started a “Female Marines United” campaign to raise money for Headstrong, which provides mental health support to military members. But many in the group also noted that most Marines don’t engage in that behavior. “I’m proud of my service,” Schroeder said. “I respect my service. I have honor. I respect the Corps values. And a lot of Marines do. Just some don’t.”

As we commemorate veterans this weekend, here are the stories of eight dedicated Marines.

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Lynch with daughter Victoria, 13.

CARRIE ANN LYNCH Age: 45 Military status: Retired as gunnery sergeant Years served: 21 Location and occupation: Fredericksburg, Va.; college student

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always wanted to be a Marine. My father was a Marine before I was born. I didn’t have the white-picket-fence childhood, so I knew I wanted to get out on my own, and the Marine Corps is how I did that. I got to boot camp with my Aqua Net hair spray and my big bangs and my painted toenails and my blue eyeliner, and I was in for a shock. A lot of people didn’t think I could do it, and that is what pushed me toward doing it.

The Marine Corps was the best thing that ever happened to me. It wasn’t always rainbows and unicorns, but it made me the person that I am today. I’m very thankful for the friends that I made and the experiences that I had.

When I think of myself, I think of a strong mother of a strong, independent child. I hope the photo of us shows that strength. I was a single mother as active duty, and I’m doing it now. I’m a full-time college student and single mother of a middle-schooler. It can be done.

BAMBI BULLARD Age: 64 Military status: Medically retired as staff noncommissioned officer Years served: 15 Location and occupation: Murrells Inlet, S.C.; semiretired business owner and former business professor

lot of people didn’t even know women existed in the Marines. After I got out of boot camp some woman in an airport asked me if I was in the Girl Scouts.

I volunteered to be an instructor at Parris Island. That was a little bit rough, but I made it through. In two tours, I probably had one or two recruits that I raised my voice to. I didn’t need to: I was 6 feet 2 inches tall. I found it more effective to walk up behind them while they were standing at attention and just whisper.

If I had not had that military background, I would have never been as successful in business as I was. The paintball industry was more open and less misogynistic — absolutely less — than what I experienced early in the Marine Corps. I went from a locker box of plastic pistols when I first bought into it to a nationally recognized operation. They just created the Paintball Hall of Fame. I was in the first class, and the first female, so that was pretty cool.

I hope the photos convey that Marines can be hardcore in one respect, but we know how to have fun and we’re humans and we enjoy activities just like everybody else does.

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TRACEY FETHERSON Age: 29 Military status: Active-duty captain Years served: 6 Duty station: Quantico

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he Marine Corps presented the best challenge for developing a leadership style, and both of my parents retired from the Marines [as sergeants major]. So I always knew I would join the Marine Corps. I knew that no matter what, I was able to succeed, because I have seen examples in my life.

The numbers are significantly slim when you’re talking about African American women officers; the last number I heard was about 108 from 2nd lieutenant to colonel. I feel even more that there will be nothing to stop me because there are so few of us in this position. I want to show other black women, Not only can you join the Marine Corps, you can be successful in the Marine Corps.

As a young professional, I haven’t reached that point in my career when I have completely separated my personal and professional life.

Being a Marine is very much 24/7; there is a sense of leadership that follows me even when I take the uniform off. So we tried to re-create the same face in uniform and in civilian attire.

I hope people see someone who is a powerful, beautiful leader when they look at me in my uniform. And I hope they see someone who is still powerful, strong yet approachable, still has a zest for life, still willing to live for the good moments when I’m in the dress. The word we kept utilizing throughout the photo shoot was “strong.”

STEPHANIE SCHROEDER Age: 36 Military status: Disabled veteran Years served:2 1/2 Location and occupation: Greensboro, N.C.; advocate for victims of military sexual assault

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ven after everything I’ve been through, I still love the Marine Corps. Who I am today is the direct result of the Marine Corps. It taught me a lot of bearing, it taught me a lot of discipline, it taught me the things that I needed, actually.

The rape was different; things changed then. If I would’ve been smart, I wouldn’t have said anything, and I would’ve just kept right

on going and I probably would still be active today. It was overwhelming. The photo of the drenching is exactly how I felt: When it rains it pours. How much more can I take?

The other photo, that’s more me like who I am today — the courage it takes to put that face on and put that business suit on and have that debate one leader at a time. It takes courage to talk about rape with people who don’t really think much wrong is going on. I’m not fighting on the ground, but it’s a battlefield nonetheless.

My best girlfriend, she looked at me and she said: “How can you go back and be around them?” And I said because change. Change is worth more to me. I know that I am broken. I won’t ever be the same again. But I can make the best of what I have. So that’s what I do.

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JULIET H. CALVIN Age: 43 Military status: Active-duty major Years served: 25 Duty station: Camp Pendleton, Calif.

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ost women in the Marine Corps don’t have large families. It’s even more rare for female officers to have large families.

But I don’t really feel like I have a lot of boundaries. My husband and I have a great partnership. We also have a very organized house, so everything has a specific time and a specific rhythm. When we have different activeduty stations, I generally take the family responsibilities with me. But I don’t think that people have looked at me differently. I’ve had really good leadership that has been supportive, but I also put a lot into my professional life.

I would hope my uniform photo conveys discipline or honor, and I hope my civilianattire photo can be a juxtaposition of being a woman as well. There are a lot of women out there that don’t talk about their life as a mom or a woman because they want to conform. So I think it’s a positive example to put out there. I think good leadership takes on a lot of different characteristics.

If I look at it from today as opposed to 25 years ago, I’m very happy with where the Marine Corps is at and where it’s going. There are a lot of really positive changes. Some people ask me if I’m going to retire anytime soon, and I tell them, no, I’m still having fun. Still having fun and in great shape and still competitive.

JACKIE HUBER Age: 52 Military status: Retired as chief warrant officer 2 Years served: 20 Location and occupation: Fredericksburg, Va.; photography studio owner

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n my eyes and from what I had heard, the most difficult thing a woman could do is to join the Marine Corps. I don’t know what made me want to try to do the hardest thing I could think of. It was emotionally taxing, and it was physically taxing, and more emotionally than I think I had bargained for. I built a wall

to protect myself and to push people away who might otherwise try to take advantage of me or to see that I was not as strong as maybe I projected.

When I got out, I had to do a lot of research and a lot of reading and a lot of educating myself on how to build a business. And a lot of things it required I didn’t want to do: I didn’t want to talk to people, I didn’t want to be around people, I didn’t want to be social, I didn’t want to network. The process has been trying to tear that wall down and be more approachable and outgoing and be myself. It’s okay to be myself now. It’s kind of like an emergence, a rebirth after having been just held down and kind of not encouraged to be yourself.

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Serrano with infant daughter Christine.

She also has a toddler son, Alexander.

LAUREN FINCH SERRANO Age: 31 Military status: Active-duty captain Years served: 8 Duty station: San Diego

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hen you walk into a Marine Corps recruiters’ office they’re like, “All right, this is the most bada--. It’s going to be the hardest, you’re going to get dirty, you’re going to cry, you’re going to scream, but if you’re willing to challenge yourself, you can do this, you can do anything.” I’m a sucker for that kind of recruiting.

As an intel officer, my gender was actually an advantage, because they needed women to do certain missions and fulfill certain roles that men were incapable of doing. But when it comes to family, I think the traditional gender roles still are very prevalent in the military. There’s still that expectation that I’m taking care of most of the kid stuff and my husband is not.

In the civilian photo, I wore my pearls and some jewelry that I think is very professional, and that’s who I want to be outside of uniform. But having my kids in one or both of the photos is important to me because it shows that I do have balance in my life. I can be a bada-- Marine during the day and be here directing things going on in my shop in my uniform, and then I go home and I’ve got a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old pulling my hair out and my husband is acting silly — and we can kick back and be silly and goofy and fun and happy.

JUSTINE ELENA Age: 32 Military status: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Years served: Active duty, 4; reserve, 5 Location and occupation: New York City; audience supervisor for “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah”

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y parents were born and brought up in the Philippines, and my dad joined the U.S. Air Force. My uncles joined all the different services of the U.S. military. I ended up being the only American in my family and the only woman to join a military service and the only U.S. Marine and the only officer.

When people met me, even if I was in uniform,

they would ask, “Oh, are you really in the Marine Corps?” I don’t know if it was because I’m a minority, I’m a woman or I have a very feminine look.

I have so many interests. One of those was, Do I have what it takes to be a Marine? But I’m more than just a Marine. I’m a comedian, I’m a musician, I’m an artist. With the civilian photo being so much about expressing the different sides of me, the uniform photo was kind of like no side: This is what you are, and there isn’t a whole lot of room for the rest of your personality.

But I am going to express myself in different ways because that’s what life is about. Someone out there may be wondering if they have what it takes. If I don’t hold to my authenticity, it can be a deterrent to someone else. n © The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Beautiful views, burned-out lightbulbs N ONFICTION

F ENDURANCE A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery

By Scott Kelly Knopf. 387 pp. $29.95

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REVIEWED BY

M ARCIA B ARTUSIAK

or many of us, the childhood fantasy never went away. We grew up glued to our grainy black-andwhite TVs, watching with awe as Alan Shepard and John Glenn rocketed into space in blazing glory. It was easy to imagine that, someday in the future, we’d have the same chance to be free from the confines of gravity. Few have gotten that opportunity, but “Endurance,” astronaut Scott Kelly’s memoir (written with Margaret Lazarus Dean) of his record-setting year on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, offers Earthlings an informative and gripping look at both the adventures and day-byday experiences of living in a metal container that is orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph.

Yet at the same time, Kelly brings our dreams crashing down to Earth, vividly reminding us of the many challenges — some mundane, others quite scary — of that cosmic frontier. It’s not all beautiful views of our planet and restful floats in zero-g. There’s the burned-out lightbulbs, the mold and dust, the never-ending hum of equipment, the occasional flashes in your vision when a cosmic ray passes through your eyes, the lost bone mass, and the build-up of carbon dioxide when the scrubbers sporadically malfunction. “If we are going to get to Mars,” Kelly writes, “we are going to need a much better way to deal with CO2.

Using our current finicky system, a Mars crew would be in significant danger,” and if “the toilet broke and we couldn’t fix it, we would be dead.” He and his colleague, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, were human guinea pigs, hoping to learn the long-term effects of space isolation on mind and body.

Given Kelly’s history growing up, the book’s biggest surprise is that he even made it into space. A terrible student, he was more interested in partying and hurtling down a hill on a bike than sitting quietly in a classroom. Graduating from a New Jersey high school in

BILL INGALLS/NASA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Astronaut Scott Kelly trains inside a Soyuz simulator at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, in 2015.

the bottom half of his class, he was about to flunk out of college — until he came upon Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” in the campus bookstore. He was immediately drawn to the book’s “young hotshots catapulting off aircraft carriers, testing unstable airplanes, drinking hard, and generally moving through the world like badasses.” Almost overnight, he knew he wanted to join them. Inspired, he gradually learned how to focus on his courses, changed to a military-oriented school and told his new roommate that he was going to be an astronaut. His friend replied, “Well, I’m going to be an Indian chief.”

But Kelly proved all such doubters wrong. Within years, he was flying off aircraft carriers as a naval aviator (some of the most exhilarating sections of the book) and then became a test pilot. He at last filled out his NASA application in 1995 and was accepted into the largest astronaut class in NASA’s

history: 44 in all, including his twin brother, Mark. Within four years, Kelly was in space, aboard the space shuttle Discovery sent out to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

“Endurance” is filled with minutiae on the ISS’s modules and equipment, which space aficionados will probably lap up, yet it remains a fascinating read. Upon opening the Soyuz hatch to enter the ISS, for example, Kelly senses something familiar: “A strong burned metal smell, like the smell of sparklers on the Fourth of July.

Objects that have been exposed to the vacuum of space have this unique smell on them, like the smell of welding — the smell of space.”

His language is earnest and straightforward, just the style one expects from an astronaut. At the same time he frankly reflects on how his career upended his family and marriage. And then there is the boisterous camaraderie with

his colleagues and stationmates, not to mention the astronaut rituals. Because the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey into space, in 1961, peed on the right rear tire of his launchpad bus before entering his capsule, every astronaut and cosmonaut launching from Russia has done the same for good luck ever since (women bring a bottle of urine to splash on the tire).

The year does not go quickly for Kelly. Thirteen other astronauts and cosmonauts would come and go as he and Kornienko stayed put.

Kelly took a stab at playing botanist Mark Watney in the movie “The Martian.” In this endeavor, he learned that there is also an emotional need for such spaceborne farming, confessing that he had “been missing the beauty and fragility of living things” over his sequestered year.

What no one misses are the inherent dangers. During his year in space, three non-manned supply ships exploded after launch, forcing the station inhabitants to ration for a while. More horrific is the space junk, the myriad debris and old satellites that buzz around the Earth at thousands of miles per hour. Most are tracked, and the ISS’s engines are fired up routinely to move the station out of the way.

But sometimes a new bit of junk is sighted with too little time for such a maneuver, which happened during Kelly’s year on the ISS. But every astronaut and cosmonaut willingly accepts such challenges for a reason: to secure the future of spaceflight. “It will be very, very difficult, it will cost a great deal of money, and it may cost human lives,” stresses Kelly.

“But I know now that if we decide to do it, we can.” n Bartusiak is a professor in the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing.

She is the author of six books on the frontiers of astrophysics and its history, including “Black Hole” and “Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony.” This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

19

BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

An intoxicating, breezy ‘Vineyard’

Scalia on turkeys, originalism, living

F ICTION

N ONFICTION

D

l

REVIEWED BY

M ANUEL R OIG- F RANZIA

espite her international success, the name María Dueñas once might not have triggered even a flicker of recognition among many U.S. readers.

But “The Time in Between,” an adaptation of her mega-bestselling 2009 novel, has turned into a streaming hit on Netflix, introducing a wider audience to the substantial storytelling gifts of this Spanish author and university professor. Fans of that series, as well as the novel it’s drawn from, will surely enjoy the latest offering from Dueñas, “The Vineyard,” which has been translated into English and is now being released in the United States. In “The Vineyard” (“La Templanza” in the original Spanish edition), Dueñas demonstrates the same breezy and entertaining style she wields to such great effect in her previous works. She is an author who seems to put story first, more interested in delivering a good old-fashioned yarn than in trying to impress you with literary pyrotechnics.

The central figure in “The Vineyard” is Mauro Larrea, a wealthy and ruggedly handsome silvermining mogul whose Mexican business empire is teetering on the brink of disaster in the early 1860s after he spends a fortune to import new equipment that is never delivered. Larrea, a Spaniard who traveled to the New World to seek riches, spends the first third of the novel, set in and around Mexico City, desperately trying to salvage his business and to maintain appearances as one of the country’s great entrepreneurial successes.

The 47-year-old Larrea is no dandy. He worked humbly in the mines before striking out on his own, and the mangled fingers on one of his hands attest to the dangers and rigors that first awaited him in Mexico. He lives in a grand mansion in Mexico City with a “magnificent enameled bathtub imported from Belgium.”

Desperate and lacking options, Larrea borrows a large sum from a sepulchral and menacing moneylender and sets off for Havana to scout for a new business that will allow him to not only repay his debt, but also revive his plans to develop the mine of his dreams.

Havana turns out to be just a stopping point for Larrea, and for the galloping narrative laid out by Dueñas. Without giving away too much, our hero gets drawn into an all-night billiards match in a brothel with a wealthy Spaniard.

Larrea’s opponent lives in Havana and believes Larrea is fooling around with his wife.

For all the testosterone on display, one might think the narrative would be veering into heman, chest-thumping territory.

But Dueñas is better than that. In fact, two of the most compelling characters in “The Vineyard” are women. The first is Carola Gorostiza, a shrewd and formidable daughter of Mexican privilege. The second is Soledad Claydon, an Andalusian whose family once presided over properties that fall into Larrea’s hands.

Dueñas gives some depth to her characters by exploring the notion of national identity, a worthy topic in this era. The Spaniards whom Larrea encounters in his travels dub him the “Indiano,” a derogatory term meant to lump him with the native Mexicans encountered

by Spanish colonialists. On their way to a fancy party, Claydon assures Larrea that the guests are “quite accustomed to putting up with the eccentric behavior of foreigners. And, despite our origins, at this stage in our lives that is what both you and I mainly are.”

At times, the book can be a bit corny, with some slapstick story lines, but it all amounts to good fun. And these days, who couldn’t use a little fun to distract us from the world? n Roig-Franzia is a Washington Post features writer and the newspaper’s former Mexico City bureau chief.

W

THE VINEYARD

By María Dueñas Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza García Atria. 544 pp. $26

SCALIA SPEAKS Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived

By Antonin Scalia, edited by Christopher J. Scalia and Edward Whelan Crown Forum. 420 pp. $30

l

REVIEWED BY

S TEVEN G . C ALABRESI

ith “Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived,” Christopher J. Scalia and Edward Whelan have given us a treasure that captures Justice Antonin Scalia’s brilliance, wit, faith, humility and wide range of knowledge. When I read this collection of his speeches, edited by the justice’s son and one of his law clerks, I feel like Scalia is in the room with me.

The speeches are organized into six primary sections: “On the American People and Ethnicity,” “On Living and Learning,” “On Faith,” “On Law,” “On Virtue and the Public Good” and “On Heroes and Friends.” You’ll find discussions of games and sports, being different, church and state, freedom of speech, George Washington, and many other subjects.

Addressing the difference between American and European values, Scalia notes that “the United States was settled primarily by people seeking, in one way or another, refuge from the ways of Europe. The men who founded our Republic did not aspire to emulating Europeans at all — to the contrary, the project of drafting the American Constitution was largely about ensuring that the American people would never languish under the yoke of a European-style government.” Few people choose to move from the United States to other countries, but millions of people want to live here. Scalia appreciated that the reason for this is that the U.S. Constitution is an engine of power and economic growth that sustains “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

As an excellent writer, Scalia offers advice on the craft. “Time and sweat,” he says, are the keys to good writing, and a well-written document emerges only after many drafts. “I think there is writing genius,”he says, just as there is musical genius, “which consists primarily, I think, of the ability to place oneself in the shoes of one’s

audience; to assume only what they assume; to anticipate what they anticipate, to explain what they need explained, to think what they must be thinking; to feel what they must be feeling.”

The justice was both a man of action and ideas and an experienced hunter. But he had his mishaps. In a chapter titled “Turkey Hunting,” he explains that “one of my most humbling moments came while turkey hunting. I took a shot at a gobbler and he went right down — flapped a little and went right down. I was so excited, I jumped out of the box stand and hurried to him. I got about five feet away and he lifted his head, looked at me, and ran away. And I had left my gun back in the box stand.”

In a chapter on “Original Meaning,” Scalia reveals that at a conference, he challenged Attorney General Edwin Meese III on how to assess the Constitution’s original intent. Meese argued in favor of a judicial philosophy that searched for the original intentions of the framers. Scalia said he favored searching for the original meaning of the words of the Constitution instead. In his speech at the conference, he strongly set out the case for original public meaning, persuading Meese’s chief of staff, Ken Cribb, by the force of his argument. After Scalia finished speaking, Cribb scrawled the word “Stipulated” on a piece of paper and taped it to the podium.

Two days later, President Ronald Reagan informed Scalia that he was going to be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Scalia speaks in his own words in this magnificent volume that should be on the bookshelf of every educated American. n Calabresi is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber professor of law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, a visiting professor of law at Yale University and chairman of the board of directors of the Federalist Society. This was written for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Both sides on gun rights need a change of heart DAVID VON DREHLE writes a twice-weekly column for The Washington Post.

mountain home, ark.

The crumpled hills that cup this city in the southern Ozarks are dressed in russet, and the hollows are steaming in the chilly dawn. Deer season is here. That’s no incidental fact in a place where the forest exerts a primal pull; where men, women and children alike dress in camo at school, Hobby Lobby and the public library; where a scan of the FM radio band finds tips on field­dressing a trophy buck to ensure that the taxidermist has enough skin to work with.

The annual youth hunt was this past weekend, when children 15 and under had shooting privileges. This weekend, the adults take over.

Even after a massacre in a Texas church — on the heels of a bloodbath in Las Vegas not long after an attack on members of Congress in Virginia while memories were still fresh of a slaughter in Orlando and so on, so horribly on — you won’t find much support for new guncontrol laws around here. The cultural foundations beneath that sentiment trace through generations. But one essential element is a sense of simple justice: People don’t like the idea that they should pay for the offenses of others.

What we have here is a failure to communicate, fueling mistrust and feeding on misunderstanding. Many millions of safety-conscious and law-abiding gun owners don’t accept that their rights are to blame for mass murder. They see themselves as living, harmless proof that the gun is not the problem; it’s the person holding the gun. “This isn’t a guns situation,” President Trump said for them after the Texas massacre. “. . . This is a mental-health problem at the highest level.”

Think of drunken driving, which kills some 10,000 Americans per year. Is the problem in the driver or the car?

The answer seems every bit as obvious to people in places like Mountain Home as the need for more gun laws seems to editorial writers in America’s newsrooms.

So obvious, in fact, that a lot of them are convinced that guncontrol advocates must have some larger, more ominous, agenda in mind.

But suspicion runs both ways, as it so often does. The reflexive shift to mental health has come to feel more like a dodge than a diagnosis. Trump and his supporters would be more credible if they delivered a plan of action worthy of a “problem at the highest level.” Instead, from Trump on down, the United States falls short in this department — as any family that has tried to access treatment for a suffering loved one can tell you.

More than half of American adults with mental illness do not receive care, according to Mental Health America’s 2017 annual report. This is due in part to widespread shortages of mentalhealth professionals, who are — because of skewed priorities — among the lowest-paid specialists in the health-care sector.

The problem runs deeper, though. While advocates rightly

DAVID HENDEE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A hunter holds a gun near Oconto, Neb., in 2011.

stress that the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, the insidious nature of mental illness dictates that many of the sickest individuals are among the least likely to seek help; the Texas killer, it turns out, escaped from a mental-health facility in 2012. Deficiencies and delusions that make a person dangerous can also blind him to his own madness.

And what if the trouble is even deeper still? The mental malfunctions that can metastasize in mass murder are varied and complicated — killers have shown signs of schizophrenia, sociopathy, depression, bipolar disorder and so on. But almost by definition they betray the self-pity, selfabsorption, grandiosity and lack of empathy that define narcissistic personality disorder.

As the late Christopher Lasch argued, narcissism may be the defining pathology of the modern age. Our atomized, individualized society, focused on self-fulfillment and drunk on celebrity, brews narcissism as lavishly as $5 coffee and pours it out freely from Rodeo Drive to Pennsylvania Avenue.

In Texas, local law enforcement and the FBI took a

small but important step by deciding, after initial briefings, not to speak the name of the Sutherland Springs church killer.

Media outlets should join this nascent movement to limit the amount of celebrity conferred on mass murderers. Perhaps fewer narcissists would be motivated to turn their personal pain and failure into deadly spectacles.

But dimming the spotlight won’t by itself solve the epidemic of mass shootings. A problem of such an American nature needs a response that brings Americans together, rather than drive us apart. And that will require a change of heart on both sides of the gun-rights divide.

From gun owners, we need a real commitment to safety and responsibility: closing loopholes, respecting background checks, beefing up databases and supporting adequate mentalhealth funding. With rights come responsibilities, gun rights included.

And from gun controllers, we need a new spirit of genuine respect for the fact that Americans who own firearms are not doing anything wrong. Until they trust you on that fundamental score, you’ll get nowhere. n

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

For the love of Earth, stop traveling JACK MILES a Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur “genius” award-winning author, was a contributor to the University of California’s “Bending the Curve” report on climate stability.

His forthcoming book is “God in the Koran” (Alfred A. Knopf 2018). This was written for The Washington Post.

According to former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, we have only three years left in which to “bend the emissions curve downward” and forestall a terrifying cascade of climate-related catastrophes, much worse than what we’re already experiencing. Realistically, is there anything that you or I can do as individuals to make a significant difference in the short time remaining?

The answer is yes, and the good news is it won’t cost us a penny. It will actually save us money, and we won’t have to leave home to do it. Staying home, in fact, is the essence of making a big difference in a big hurry. That’s because nothing that we do pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than air travel. Cancel a couple long flights, and you can halve your carbon footprint.

Schedule a couple, and you can double or triple it.

Atmosfair is a German public interest group that recommends limiting your air travel to about 3,100 miles per year — if you live in Los Angeles, that’s one roundtrip flight to Mexico City. If you must exceed that limit, Atmosfair invites you to compensate by sending conscience money on a prorated basis to support climate stabilization efforts around the world. Last fall, having accepted an invitation to speak in Morocco,

I used this online calculator to determine the carbon cost of my trip. My seats alone on the roundtrip flights from Los Angeles to Casablanca (with a layover in Paris) helped emit about 8,400 pounds of carbon dioxide, prorated, into the atmosphere.

Double that because my wife accompanied me.

To put this into perspective, my wife’s and my annual carbon footprint in Orange County, Calif., — counting gas, electricity, transportation and waste disposal — is about 33,000 pounds, according to the carbon footprint calculator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. By taking one optional international trip that helped emit about 16,800 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, my wife and I increased our 2016 carbon footprint by more than a third.

The harm we did with one

international trip surely neutralized any good that we did all year as recyclers, ecoconsumers and financial contributors to environmental organizations.

To put our flights’ 16,800 pounds of carbon dioxide further into perspective, the average American generates about 1,300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year through beef consumption.

Minute by minute, mile by mile, nothing that we do causes greater or more easily avoidable harm to the environment than flying, which more often than not is optional or merely recreational.

The delegates who have been meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the U.N. climate conference recognize this. “The lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions” from the COP23 conference, the organizers note, “is from longdistance air travel.” After the conference, a COP23 sustainability task force will tally up the overall carbon footprint and seek to offset as much as possible by buying certified emission reduction credits, many of which will go to green development projects in small island states in recognition of Fiji holding the presidency of this conference.

There are 7 billion people on our planet, but the billion with

the largest carbon footprint includes the most frequent fliers.

So for the love of the Earth, our common home, our only home, start conducting more remote work meetings and training sessions virtually. Inform those jet-setting friends that you won’t attend their destination wedding in the tropics — you’ll send a gift in the mail. Tell that conference organizer that while you’re honored to be invited, you would prefer to participate in live online sessions instead.

The 17th-century poet Andrew Marvell warned his “coy mistress” and himself that life was brief and youth briefer. They could wish it otherwise, but: “. . . at my back I always hear / Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; / And yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity.”

In our day, the winged chariot that is hurrying near is species extinction. The deserts of vast eternity that lie before us are the wastelands of the planet itself as we send it to its death. But there is something you can do about all that — something big, something easily within reach, something that won’t cost you time or money.

You are needed at home, my friend, urgently needed. For the love of the Earth and of those who will inherit it when you are gone, stay right where you are. n

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

22

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

Americans aren’t taxed enough ROBERT J. SAMUELSON Samuelson writes a weekly Washington Post column on economics.

We Americans are having the wrong debate. Almost all the arguing over the Trump administration’s proposed tax cut centers on two issues: Will the tax reduction stimulate faster economic growth? And is the proposal too generous toward the wealthy and too stingy toward the middle class and poor?

Interesting questions, to be sure — but mostly irrelevant to the nation’s long-term well-being.

The truth is that we can’t afford any tax reduction. We need higher, not lower, taxes. What we should be debating is the nature of new taxes (my choice: a carbon tax), how quickly (or slowly) they should be introduced and how much prudent spending cuts could shrink the magnitude of tax increases.

To put this slightly differently: Americans are under-taxed. For half a century, we haven’t covered our spending with revenue from taxes.

Of course, there are times when borrowing (that is, budget deficits) is unavoidable and desirable. Wars. Economic downturns. National emergencies. But our addiction to debt extends well beyond these exceptions. We have run deficits with strong economies and weak, with low inflation and high, and with favorable and unfavorable

productivity gains.

Since 1961, federal budgets have been in surplus in only five years. And these surpluses have invariably coincided with long economic booms that swelled government tax revenue: 1969, following the long boom of the 1960s; and 1998 through 2001, reflecting the “tech boom” of the 1990s.

Otherwise, deficits have dominated. From 1990 to 2016, borrowing represented nearly 14 percent of annual federal spending, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Based on present policies, it’s doubtful that things will get much better. Aging baby boomers are inflating Social Security and Medicare spending. Pressures for more defense spending have probably been underestimated.

The same may be true for many

BY CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS

domestic discretionary programs. Even with these optimistic assumptions, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the budget deficit ($666 billion in 2017) will grow as a share of the economy.

We resist the discipline of balancing the budget, which is inherently unpopular.

Borrowing is easier. It’s largely invisible to most Americans, creating the illusion of “something for nothing.” This liberates Republicans to peddle more tax cuts. Their tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years. A more realistic figure is $2.1 trillion, claims the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Democrats are little better.

They advocate more entitlement spending, despite CBO’s estimate of $10 trillion in deficits under existing policies over the next decade.

The unspoken assumption that justifies big and continuous deficits is that — rhetoric to the contrary — they pose no serious danger to the economy. We can run deficits forever without suffering ill effects.

Can we?

Excessive federal borrowing poses three theoretical dangers.

First, it could raise interest rates and “crowd out” the private

investment essential for higher living standards. Second, it could trigger a financial panic, if private investors would no longer buy Treasury securities except at exceptionally high interest rates.

And finally, a large national debt could make it harder for the government to borrow heavily during a true crisis.

But none of these imagined calamities has yet occurred.

Perhaps they never will. There is a theory that suggests just that.

Global investors want “safe financial assets,” it’s said, and U.S. Treasury securities are deemed “safe.” This global demand for Treasurys could sustain budget deficits (which produce more Treasurys) for years.

But this is a very dangerous gamble to make, because if it’s lost, the consequences could be catastrophic. At some point, the demand for safe assets may weaken. Or too many large deficits may make safe assets seem less safe. A responsible society would not test the limits of what’s doable and what isn’t.

But that’s not us. By now, it must be obvious: We are no longer responsible. The urgent need is to plug the huge gap between government spending and tax revenue. Naturally, we aren’t doing that. n

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2017

23

KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

White-collar crime BY

N ICOLAS B OURTIN

Bankers and government officials continue to feature prominently on our newspapers’ front pages — and not in a good way. Since the Great Recession, a string of political and corporate scandals has played out in our political and financial centers, and recent investi­ gations of people close to President Trump, including Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, have produced indictments for money laundering and tax fraud. Corporate malfeasance, corruption and tax fraud are shrouded in misconceptions. Here are five enduring myths about white­collar crime.

MYTH NO. 1 Prosecutors fear prosecuting powerful defendants.

If prosecutors are afraid of going after white-collar defendants, they have a funny way of showing it: Their tactics are the same ones they use in many investigations involving narcotics and violent crime, and being extremely rich and influential is no protection. As Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, “Today . . . privileged Wall Street insiders who are considering breaking the law will have to ask themselves one important question: Is law enforcement listening?”

Federal prosecutors used months of wiretap evidence to build a suffocating case in 2009 against Raj Rajaratnam, who ran one of the largest hedge funds in the world. When the dust settled, the DOJ had secured the convictions of more than 50 people.

MYTH NO. 2 White-collar defendants never serve real time.

Judicial discretion in sentencing was greatly limited by the adoption of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1987, whose penalties for fraud were further enhanced after the Enron scandal broke in 2001. And although the Supreme Court held in 2005 that the guidelines were

advisory and no longer mandatory for judges, sentences for whitecollar defendants have been getting harsher, not more lenient.

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2013 Report on Sentencing Trends, nearly 70 percent of all offenders sentenced under the guidelines for fraud received some prison time for their crimes in 2012. In 1985, that rate was about 40 percent. For crimes that caused a loss of at least $2.5 million, the same report revealed that offenders were sentenced under the guidelines to an average of nearly five to 17 years in prison in 2012. In 1985, by comparison, the average sentence for white-collar crimes was just 29 months.

MYTH NO. 3 Trump’s administration won’t enforce anti-corruption laws.

In September, the Trump administration oversaw one of the largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) settlements in history when Telia, a Swedish telecommunications provider, and its Uzbek subsidiary paid $965 million in combined penalties to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve bribery charges in connection with business in Uzbekistan. In August of 2017, the DOJ also brought FCPA charges against a former U.S.

ISTOCK

Army colonel for his alleged role in a bribery and moneylaundering scheme in Haiti, and the owner of several Floridabased energy companies for his role in a scheme to corruptly secure contracts from Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company.

MYTH NO. 4 No one went to prison as a result of the Great Recession.

According to the Special Inspector General’s Office for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the federal law enforcement agency charged with investigating misconduct related to the financial crisis and the subsequent bailout, 56 bankers and Wall Street traders employed by institutions that received TARP funding — including 13 chief executives — have been sentenced to prison for crimes committed in the lead-up to, during and in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

This goes far beyond Kareem Serageldin, the Credit Suisse trader who many publications claim to be “only” top banker to go to prison for activities related to the financial crisis. Edward Woodard, former chief executiveof the Bank of the Commonwealth in Norfolk, for instance, was sentenced to more than two decades in prison for charges of massive fraud related

to the mortgage crisis.

MYTH NO. 5 Financial crime is the same as robbery or theft.

Although it’s true that losing a chunk of one’s life savings may be as traumatic for the victim as a home burglary, from the perspective of the perpetrator, the psychology is quite different.

Robbery or outright theft requires a criminal to confront the victim, but white-collar crime rarely puts the perpetrators in proximity to the victims. Indeed, insider trading, price-fixing and bribery may seem victimless to the perpetrators — the only harm is to the “integrity of the market,” or, if any concrete harm can be identified, it is so diffuse as to be imperceptible to those who suffer it. Without the same psychological stop signs that signal that one is about to break the law, many white-collar criminals cannot identify in hindsight the moment they crossed the line. Instead, as researcher Eugene Soltes has pointed out, they find that they simply slid gradually and inexorably over it. n Bourtin is a former federal prosecutor, a litigation partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and managing partner of the firm’s criminal defense and investigations group. This was written for The Washington Post.

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