ATTACK OF THE E, SCINTILLATING ROOFLI GOP CLONES , Y THE END OF PARKING E My Right to Die e January + February 2016 HEADLINE T ASSISTED SUICIDE, MY FAMILY, AND ME BY KEVIN DRUM It’s not just tuna It’s a choice to stand for human rights and the preservation of our oceans Take action at tuna.greenpeace.org January February 2016 volume 41, number FEATURES 16 No Parking Here FIORINA: MARK HAMMERMEISTER; SINGH: SEAN MCCABE (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION), MANOJ VERMA/HINDUSTAN TIMES/GETTY IMAGES BY CLIVE THOMPSON How robocars and millennials are about to make your city cleaner, greener, and cheaper 26 My Life to Leave BY KEVIN DRUM Assisted suicide, my family, and me 32 Do Candidates Dream of Electric Sheep? BY TIM MURPHY Clone armies, super-PAC spawns, and Potemkin headquarters Welcome to the Age of the Uncampaign 36 Humanitarian Raid BY CLAIRE PROVOST AND MATT KENNARD The World Bank is supposed to help the poor So why so many of its investments underwrite oligarchs? 42 is Boy’s Life BY COREY JOHNSON AND KEN ARMSTRONG At 16, Taurus Buchanan threw one deadly punch—and was sent away for life Will the Supreme Court give him, and hundreds like him, a chance at freedom? 32 DEPARTMENTS V V V V V 49 Mixed Media Comedian Kumail Nanjiani on being the ultimate fanboy Political gaffes of yesteryear with John Dickerson Star-crossed love in Afghanistan Book, film, and music reviews V V V OutFront Can this lawyer put the brakes on Uber? Hanging chad, 2.0 Take a Valium, lose your baby The armchair detective who debunked Putin— from his couch How big donors fuel GOP denial V V V 62 Food + Health Hot takes on rooftop solar Sorry, you can’t exercise your junk calories away Join the million smart, fearless readers who make MotherJones.com a regular habit J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S Mother Jones Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1837-1930) orator, union organizer, and hellraiser Clara Jeffery editor-in-chief Ivylise Simones creative director Maria Streshinsky deputy editor Mark Follman national affairs editor Kiera Butler, Dave Gilson, Michael Mechanic senior editors Clint Hendler managing editor Jahna Berry web editor Ian Gordon story editor Maddie Oatman senior research editor Samantha Michaels copy editor Kevin Drum political blogger Tom Philpott food and ag correspondent Shane Bauer, Josh Harkinson senior reporters Jaeah Lee, Julia Lurie reporters Nina Liss-Schultz assistant editor Edwin Rios, Bryan 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the foundation for national progress The nonprofit fnp publishes Mother Jones magazine and its website and directs the Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program Mother Jones produces revelatory journalism that, in its power and reach, seeks to inform and inspire a more just and democratic world board of directors Phil Straus chair Monika Bauerlein president Clara Jeffery, Steven Katz vice presidents Sara Frankel secretary Jon Pageler treasurer Harriett Balkind, Arran Bardige, Harriet Barlow, Jane Butcher, Andre Carothers, Diane Filippi, David Glassco, Mitchell Grummon, Erik Hanisch, Adam Hochschild, Kim Keller, Hannah Levintova, Rick Melcher, Carolyn Mugar, Ken Pelletier, Kevin Simmons, Judy Wise members CONTRIBUTORS When running late for her interview with a lawyer suing Uber, Hannah Levintova decided her best option was to take the subway (“Road Warrior,” page 5) Clive Thompson lives in a Brooklyn neighborhood where a parking spot converted to livable space could fetch nearly $200,000 (“No Parking Here,” page 16); Eevolver, whose staff has worked on Hollywood projects like Life of Pi and Clifford the Big Red Dog, made the story’s computer-generated illustrations The portraits of Kevin Drum and his wife, Marian, are by Kendrick Brinson, who has photographed for the New York Times Magazine and Wired (“My Life to Leave,” page 26) Tim Murphy (“Do Candidates Dream of Electric Sheep?” page 32) wishes he had a super-PAC to write his stories for him Claire Provost and Matt Kennard are fellows at London’s Centre for Investigative Journalism, and travel for their article (“Humanitarian Raid,” page 36) was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; the piece’s art is by Manhattan-based but Hong Kong-raised illustrator Victo Ngai, who has drawn for NBC and The New Yorker Ken Armstrong (“This Boy’s Life,” page 42) has won or shared in three Pulitzer Prizes, and coauthor Corey Johnson has been a Pulitzer finalist; they are both reporters for The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering criminal justice MOTHER JONES | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y 6 OUTFRONT DISRUPTION, DISRUPTED ROAD WARRIOR MIRIAM MIGLIAZZI AND MART KLEIN Is Uber ripping off its drivers? The woman who beat Starbucks and FedEx in court says yes I n early 2012, on a visit to San Francisco, Shannon LissRiordan went to a restaurant with some friends Over dinner, one of her companions began to describe a new car-hailing app that had taken Silicon Valley by storm “Have you seen this?” he asked, tapping Uber on his phone “It’s changed my life.” Liss-Riordan glanced at the little black cars snaking around on his screen “He looked up at me and he knew what I was thinking,” she remembers After all, four years earlier she had been christened “an avenging angel for workers” by the Boston Globe “He said, ‘Don’t you dare Do not put them out of business.’” But Liss-Riordan, a labor lawyer who has spent her career successfully fighting behemoths such as FedEx, American Airlines, and Starbucks on behalf of their workers, was way ahead of him When she saw cars, she thought of drivers And a lawsuit waiting to happen Four years later, Liss-Riordan is spearheading classaction lawsuits against Uber, Lyft, and nine other apps J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S that provide on-demand services, shaking the pillars of Silicon Valley’s much-hyped sharing economy In particular, she is challenging how these companies classify their workers If she can convince judges that these so-called micro-entrepreneurs are in fact employees and not independent contractors, she could serious damage to a business model that relies on cheap labor and a creative reading of labor laws Uber alone was recently valued at $51 billion “These companies save massively by shifting many costs of running a business to the workers, profiting off the backs of their workers,” Liss-Riordan says with calm intensity as she sits in her Boston office, which is peppered with framed posters of Massachusetts Sen Elizabeth Warren The bustling block below is home to two coffee chains that Liss-Riordan has sued If the Uber case succeeds, she tells me, “maybe that will make companies think twice about steamrolling over laws.” After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1996, Liss-Riordan was working at a boutique labor law firm when she got a call from a waiter at a fancy Boston restaurant He complained that his manager was keeping a portion of his tips and wondered if that was legal Armed with a decades-old Massachusetts labor statute she had unearthed, Liss-Riordan helped him take his employer to court—and won “This whole industry was ignoring this law,” Liss-Riordan recalls Pretty quickly, she became the go-to expert for employees seeking to recover skimmed tips And before she knew it, her “whole practice was representing waitstaff.” In November 2012, she won a $14.1 million judgment for Starbucks baristas in Massachusetts After a federal jury ordered American Airlines to pay $325,000 in lost tips to skycaps at Boston’s airport, one of the plaintiffs dubbed her “Sledgehammer Shannon.” When one of her suits caused a local pizzeria to go bankrupt, she bought it, raised wages, and renamed it The Just Crust Liss-Riordan estimates that she’s won or settled several hundred labor cases for bartenders, cashiers, truck drivers, and other workers in the rapidly expanding service economy Lawyers around the country have sought her input in their labor lawsuits, including one that resulted in a $100 million payout to more than 120,000 Starbucks baristas in California (The ruling MOTHER JONES | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y CONTRACTS WITH AMERICA 21 MILLION Americans work as independent contractors 29% of the jobs added between 2010 and 2014 were for independent contractors Ride-app drivers working more than 40 hours a week report earning a yearly average of $36,580 before expenses like gas Uber has spent more than $1 MILLION lobbying against regulations in California since 2013 It is said to have set aside at least $1 billion for future regulatory fights as it expands abroad The company has been valued at $51 BILLION was later overturned on appeal.) In a series of cases that began in 2005, she has won multimillion-dollar settlements for FedEx drivers who had been improperly treated as contractors and were expected to buy or lease their delivery trucks, as well as pay for their own gas Her Uber offensive began in late 2012, when several Boston drivers approached her, alleging that the company was keeping as much as half of their tips, which is illegal under Massachusetts law Liss-Riordan sued and won a settlement in their favor But while looking more closely at Uber, she confirmed the suspicion that had popped up at that dinner in San Francisco: The company’s drivers are classified as independent contractors rather than official employees, meaning that Uber can forgo paying for benefits like workers’ compensation, unemployment, and Social Security Uber can also avoid taking responsibility for drivers’ business expenses such as fuel, vehicle costs, car insurance, and maintenance In August 2013, Liss-Riordan filed a class-action lawsuit in a federal court in San Francisco, where Uber is based Her argument hinged on California law, which classifies workers as employees if their tasks are central to a business and are substantially controlled by their employer Under that principle, the lawsuit says, Uber drivers are clearly employees, not contractors “Uber is in the business of providing car service to customers,” notes the complaint “Without the drivers, Uber’s business would not exist.” The suit also alleges that Uber manipulates the prices of rides by telling customers that tips are included—but then keeps a chunk of the built-in tips rather than remitting them fully to drivers The case calls for Uber to pay back its drivers for their lost tips and expenses, plus interest Uber jumped into gear, bringing on lawyer Ted Boutrous, who had successfully represented Walmart before the Supreme Court in the largest employment class action in US history Uber tried to get the case thrown out, arguing that its business is technology, not transportation The drivers, the company contended, were independent businesses, and the Uber app was simply a “lead generation platform” for connecting them with customers Techspeak aside, Liss-Riordan has heard all this before When she litigated similar cases on behalf of cleaning workers, the cleaning companies claimed they were simply connecting broom-pushing “independent franchises” with customers When she won several landmark cases brought by exotic dancers who had been misclassified as contractors, the strip clubs argued that they were “bars where you happen to have naked women dancing,” Liss-Riordan recounts with a wry smile “The court said, ‘No People come to your bar because of that entertainment Adult entertainment That’s your business.’” OUTFRONT CRASHING THE ELECTION THE ELECTORAL NIGHTMARE of hanging chads, butterfly ballots, and Bush v Gore in 2000 spurred states and counties around the country to ditch their old voting machines for shiny new digital ones Fifteen years later, those machines, which were designed well before the first iPod, are quickly becoming obsolete—just in time for another presidential election As the vice chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission told the Brennan Center for Justice, which has documented these glitches, “We’re getting by with Band-Aids, but I worry about a crisis with some of the older machines.” —Dave Gilson America’s aging voting machines 43 states have machines that are 10 or more years old Almost all of those machines are no longer manufactured Almost all of California’s voting machines run on Windows XP (released in 2001) or earlier operating systems Some old voting machines’ memory cards can hold only 512 kilobytes (That’s 0.07 percent of a typical cd-rom.) Machines in one Ohio county require Zip disks, which became outdated in the early 2000s *Insufficient data for Idaho Uber’s argument is pretty similar to that of the strip clubs “Uber is obviously a car service,” she says, and to insist otherwise is “to deny the obvious.” An Uber spokesperson wouldn’t address that characterization, but said that drivers “love being their own boss” and “use Uber on their own terms: they control their use of the app, choosing when, how and where they drive.” Some observers have suggested creating a new job category between employee and contractor But Liss-Riordan is tired of hearing that labor laws should adapt to accommodate upstart tech companies, not the other way around: “Why should we tear apart laws that have been put in place over decades to help a $50 billion company like Uber at the expense of workers who are trying to pay their rent and feed their families?” Q All voting machines bought in 2006 or earlier QMajority of jurisdictions bought machines in 2006 or before QMinority of jurisdictions bought machines in 2006 or before QAll voting machines bought since 2006 For the most part, courts have sided with her Last March, a federal court in San Francisco denied Uber’s attempt to quash the lawsuit, calling the company’s reasoning “fatally flawed” (and even citing French philosopher Michel Foucault to make its point) In September, the same court handed Liss-Riordan and her clients a major victory by allowing the case to go forward as a class action The judge in the Lyft case has called the company’s argument—nearly identical to Uber’s— “obviously wrong.” Last July, the cleaning startup HomeJoy shut down, implying that a worker classification lawsuit filed by Liss-Riordan was a key reason Meanwhile, other sharing-economy startups are changing the way they business The grocery app Instacart and the shipping The estimated cost of replacing outdated voting machines is more than $1 billion Election officials in 22 states say they don’t know where they’ll find the money app Shyp—Liss-Riordan has cases pending against both—have announced they will start converting contractors to full employees Liss-Riordan says that’s her ultimate goal: to protect workers in the new economy, not to kill the innovation behind their jobs “This is not going to put the Ubers of the world out of business,” she says One of her opponents has played a more creative offense Last fall, the laundry-delivery app Washio convinced a judge that Liss-Riordan had no right to practice law in California Liss-Riordan easily could have relied on a local lawyer to head the case, but instead she signed up to take the California bar exam in February “Their plan kind of backfired,” she says “I expect they’ll be seeing more of me, rather than less.” —Hannah Levintova J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S OUTFRONT NANNY STATE THE WAR ON WOMBS Here’s what happened when politicians started treating women’s bodies like meth labs Literally THOMAS KIEFER/INSTITUTE Casey Shehi’s son James was born in August 2014, remarkably robust even though he was four weeks premature But as the maternity nurse took the baby from his exhausted mother’s arms, Shehi felt a prick of dread “She said they were going to have to take him back to the nursery to produce some urine, because I had a positive drug screen for benzodiazepines,” recalls Shehi, a 37-year-old nursing-home employee from Gadsden, a small Alabama city about 60 miles northeast of Birmingham “I said, ‘That can’t be true Can you please check it again? Run the screen again.’” The nurse asked if she had a prescription for any form of benzo—Xanax or Klonopin or Ativan? No, Shehi insisted, there must be a mistake Then she remembered: the Valium One night a few weeks earlier, Shehi and her ex-husband had gotten into a huge argument on the phone and she had swallowed half of one of her boyfriend’s Valiums to calm herself down She popped the other half during a sleepless night on a family vacation Occasional, small doses of diazepam (the generic name for Valium) are considered safe for treating anxiety and hypertension during pregnancy According to the lab report, James had nothing in his system Shehi said the pediatrician reassured her, “Everything’s cool.” But a few weeks after Shehi returned home, investigators from the Etowah County Sheriff ’s Office showed up at her workplace with an arrest warrant She had been charged with “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally” causing James to be exposed to controlled substances in the womb—a felony punishable, in her case, by up to 10 years in prison The investigators led her to an unmarked car, handcuffed her, and took her to jail Her booking photo—her eyes puffy from crying, her mouth a thin grimace of disbelief—appeared in local MOTHER JONES | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y EXPOSURE Found and Lost P H OTO G R A P H S BY THOMAS KIEFER While working part time as a janitor and landscaper at a Border Patrol facility in Arizona, Tom Kiefer arranged and photographed the belongings seized from migrants who had been caught while crossing into the United States To see more of these collected objects, from water bottles to headphones, visit motherjones.com/border NE W ly e et th h h G on or t wit m f es 00 K 40 nut of TAL i m ice EM pr W “My friends all hate their cell phones… I love mine!” FREE o N Car t Charger Contrac Here’s why Say good-bye to everything you hate about cell phones Say hello to Jitterbug Monthly Plan “Cell phones have gotten so small, I can barely dial mine.” Not Jitterbug®, it features a larger keypad for easier dialing It even has an oversized display so you can actually see it $14.99 Monthly Minutes 911 Access “I had to get my son to program it.” Your Jitterbug set-up process is simple We’ll even pre-program it with your favorite numbers Voice Dial 24/7 24/7 FREE FREE No add’l charge No add’l charge FREE FREE YES YES 30 days 30 days Nationwide Coverage Friendly Return Policy1 NOW 400 50 Operator Assistance Long Distance Calls $19.99 More minute plans available Ask your Jitterbug expert for details “I tried my sister’s cell phone… I couldn’t hear it.” Jitterbug is designed with an improved speaker There’s an adjustable volume control, and Jitterbug is hearing-aid compatible “My cell phone company wants to lock me in on a two-year contract!” Not Jitterbug, there’s no contract to sign and no penalty if you discontinue your service “I don’t need stock quotes, Internet sites or games on my phone, I just want to talk with my family and friends.” Life is complicated enough… Jitterbug is simple “I’ll be paying for minutes I’ll never use!” Not with Jitterbug, unused minutes carry over to the next month, there’s no roaming fee and no additional charge for long distance “What if I don’t remember a number?” Friendly, helpful Jitterbug operators are available 24 hours a day and will even greet you by name when you call “My phone’s battery only lasts a couple of days.” The Jitterbug’s battery lasts for up to 25 days on standby “I’d like a cell phone to use in an emergency, but I don’t want a high monthly bill.” Jitterbug has a plan to fit your needs… and your budget Available in Blue and Red Order now and receive a FREE Car Charger for your Jitterbug – a $25 value Call now! 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Call now, Jitterbug product experts are standing by NEW Jitterbug5 Cell Phone Call toll free today to get your own Jitterbug5 Please mention promotional code 101662 1-888-810-0844 www.jitterbugdirect.com 47637 We proudly accept the following credit cards IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: WEMTALK offer valid on 400 minute plan and applies to new GreatCall customers only Offer valid until plan is changed or cancelled Jitterbug is owned by GreatCall, Inc Your invoices will come from GreatCall All rate plans and services require the purchase of a Jitterbug phone and a one-time set up fee of $35 Coverage and service is not available everywhere Other charges and restrictions may apply Screen images simulated There are no additional fees to call GreatCall’s U.S Based Customer Service However, for calls to an Operator in which a service is completed, minutes will be deducted from your monthly balance equal to the length of the call and any call connected by the Operator, plus an additional minutes Monthly minutes carry over and are available for 60 days If you exceed the minute balance on your account, you will be billed at 35¢ for each minute used over the balance Monthly rate plans not include government taxes or assessment surcharges Prices and fees subject to change We will refund the full price of the GreatCall phone and the activation fee (or set-up fee) if it is returned within 30 days of purchase in like-new condition We will also refund your first monthly service charge if you have less than 30 minutes of usage If you have more than 30 minutes of usage, a per minute charge of 35 cents will be deducted from your refund for each minute over 30 minutes.You will be charged a $10 restocking fee The shipping charges are not refundable Jitterbug and GreatCall are registered trademarks of GreatCall, Inc Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd ©2015 Samsung Electronics America, LLC ©2015 GreatCall, Inc ©2015 firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc M E D I A + C U LTU R E books The Road Taken By Henry Petroski bloomsbury You may not know that traffic lights were inspired by lighthouses, or that our highway system was born of President Eisenhower’s bumpy transcontinental voyage with an Army convoy But every median, bridge bolt, and sidewalk curb has a backstory, and in The Road Taken author Henry Petroski painstakingly documents most of them Too painstakingly, in fact The book can feel like a cluttered encyclopedia—there’s only so much we need to know about the fonts on highway exit signs But its takeaway bears repeating: We’re at a low point for investment in our aging roads, bridges, and tunnels, which we tend to take for granted—until something collapses and kills someone —Luke Whelan The InvitationOnly Zone By Robert S Boynton farrar, straus and giroux In 2002, writer Robert Boynton launched a decadelong investigation into the widespread abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and ’80s, part The Winding Stream beth harrington productions How big a deal was Virginia’s Carter Family? You've heard their staples, like “Keep on the Sunny Side” and “Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?”—the “Cups” song from Pitch Perfect And every folk and country music fan owes a debt to patriarch A.P Carter, who saved hundreds of regional songs from obscurity—even if the writers weren’t credited If you’ve ever enjoyed a guitar melody, you can thank “Mother” Maybelle Carter (at left in this photo of second-generation act, the Carter Sisters) She was the first musician to pick out leads as she strummed—the widely emulated “Carter scratch.” Then there are all the notables the family’s music inspired—from Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson to Elvis Presley and Emmylou Harris—not to mention Johnny Cash, who was saved from his addictions by his marriage to Maybelle’s daughter June (the one lifting her leg in the photo) The Carters’ hardscrabble story of Kim Jong Il’s bizarre quest to further the North Korean empire The Invitation-Only Zone chronicles the complex power struggle around the disappearances, but it’s Boynton’s narratives—of Kaoru, a whip-smart Tokyo student; Yukiko, his girlfriend; Megumi, a 13-yearold who vanished after her badminton practice; and Keiko, a young woman who fell for an employment scam—that will remain with you long after closing this book —Becca Andrews and enduring legacy are the subject of The Winding Stream, a new film from director Beth Harrington, who uses archival materials and interviews with surviving Carters and assorted musicians (including Cash, in one of his final on-camera appearances) to follow the family threads from the original trio’s formation in 1927 up through the present day Despite its flaws, such as the jarring Terry Gilliamesque animations, the film is a gift to anyone who cares where American music comes from —Michael Mechanic While the City Slept By Eli Sanders viking One night in 2009, a disturbed young man named Isaiah Kalebu entered a Seattle home through an open window and raped two women at knifepoint, killing one He was sentenced to life in prison, but journalist Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a feature story about the case, kept digging While the City Slept, Sanders’ compassionate dissection of the lives that collided on that night, relates how a bright but abused boy grew into a violent criminal and, as one psychiatrist put it, “became his illness.” The book plays double-duty as a tribute to those whose lives were upended and a meticulous indictment of the way America reckons with mental illness —Madison Pauly film Radical Grace CO U RT E SY A R G OT P I C TU R E S interchange productions The leg of a goat roasted over a blackened oil drum sliced in half, filling the air with smoke Men and the occasional woman tip-toed heavily on breeze blocks to traverse the lake that had sprung up between the TV hall and the bar Then tottered back again carrying bottles of the Kenyan national drink: Tusker lager In baseball caps with round bellies spilling over belts, they sat on wobbly wooden benches and watched the news from Nairobi while the rain drilled on the roof It was all about the invasion Burning graphics declared “Nation at War” and footage showed long lines of trucks rumbling past There was no hint of what it might mean for the future No intimation of the bombs planted in buses, in churches, in markets and in shopping malls Of the hundreds of dead When the TV reported the government claim that it had “sealed the porous border with Somalia” a laugh rippled through the crowd It was a ridiculous idea The anarchic bush pulsed in the dark, metres beyond the fence —From City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, by Ben Rawlence This film, co-produced by actress Susan Sarandon, follows a trio of Catholic nuns resisting the church patriarchy It begins amid debate over Obamacare, which the bishops oppose and the nuns stubbornly support Their insubordination begets a church investigation whose report criticizes their “feminist spirit” and ultimately results in a reprimand from Pope Benedict XVI Director J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S 53 M E D I A + C U LTU R E —Becca Andrews music track “San Diego” From Hinds’ Leave Me Alone mom + pop/lucky number Liner notes: Frayed beats, surf- tinged guitars, and lovably sloppy vocals equal garagepunk nirvana on the debut LP of this scruffy all-female band Behind the music: This rowdy Madrid quartet was formerly known as Deers, but changed its name after hearing from a lawyer who represented a band called the Dears Check it out if you like: Disrupters like Colleen Green, Black Lips, and Ty Segall track “Were We Once Lovers?” From Tindersticks’ The Waiting Room city slang Liner notes: Crooner Stuart Staples sighs, “Did we spend our lives together? I can’t recall,” as he grows increasingly agitated on this weirdly danceable lament Behind the music: This British band, which has created soundtracks for six films by French director Claire Denis, got its name from a matchbox Check it out if you like: Dramatists Scott Walker (the musician) and the Righteous Brothers —Jon Young 54 M O T H E R J O N E S | Wherefore Art Thou, Mohammad? How the fates of a reporter and a rebellious Afghan couple became one Before the New York Times stationed him in Afghanistan, Rod Nordland spent years reporting on the Soviet occupation and its aftermath for Newsweek But he couldn’t have anticipated the dilemma he would face covering America’s longest war In 2010, Nordland was poking around for a story about honor killings when he learned of Zakia and Mohammad Ali, a young Afghan couple who had defied their families, cultural conventions, sectarian loyalties, and Islamic law in order to marry His front-page Times story on Afghanistan’s “Romeo and Juliet” became an international sensation As everyday Afghans celebrated the daring couple and the authorities threatened Ali with kidnapping charges, Nordland found himself increasingly wrapped up in their fate His new book, The Lovers, comes out in January Mother Jones: How did you come across this story? Rod Nordland: In a random email in bad English from a women’s affairs ministry official in Bamiyan I get a lot of crank email, but it pays to read everything MJ: You call their story “exceptional and ordinary.” RN: Cases like theirs are commonplace That they managed to get together without getting killed, so far, is exceptional MJ: When did you know that you were in for the long haul? RN: I realized at some point [after the first story came out] that I had completely altered Zakia and Ali’s lives I started hearing from them how often people were recognizing them, and hearing from embassies that they weren’t going to anything to help them to safety MJ: What was your biggest ethical conundrum? RN: It was a series of decisions taken on the spot that inevitably, it seemed, dragged me into their situation The moment of decision was when I could have stood back as an observer and waited until the police arrived at their hiding place—a hiding place my very presence risked exposing This would have been, in a dramatic, purely journalistic sense, the better story Or I could put them in the only cars around, my own, and drive them to safety—not the better story, but the right thing to MJ: How did they deal with their sudden celebrity? RN: They were completely mystified by it They J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y can’t read, don’t watch TV, never had one in their homes They’d be stopped on the street by admirers and asked to pose for a selfie, which brought it home—but it was distressing MJ: And how did Afghan officials respond? RN: They just wanted this story to go away, but when Ali was arrested and Zakia put in a shelter, the firestorm among Afghan young people really frightened the regime, so they concluded the best thing was to make those criminal charges disappear That did not, however, remove the threat of death Ali and Zakia faced from her family MJ: The regime was angry with the Times, no? RN: The women’s affairs minister was particularly antagonistic Her accusation was, “You made this a Romeo and Juliet story.” The very idea of a love story threatens the patriarchal society, which fundamentally is based on fathers controlling their daughters’ lives MJ: Their romance did inspire modest changes RN: On the run, the couple—as well as Ali’s father, Anwar—realized illiteracy was a real handicap So, last spring, seven of Ali’s and Zakia’s nieces and nephews began school People also began using the law to press charges against their families when they were prevented from marrying—something that rarely if ever happened before Counselors cited Zakia and Ali as a precedent MJ: How were you able to get so close to this illiterate couple given the cultural taboos around men and women interacting? RN: I had a translator, Jawad Sukhanyar, who was remarkably sensitive He was even able to win Zakia’s trust With her, we did interviews either in person with her husband or father-in-law present, or using a speakerphone so it did not seem like a private conversation between a married woman and a married man [Sukhanyar] It would have been 100 times easier to this book if I were a woman MJ: The couple is now a trio, with a baby daughter Where are the young lovers now? RN: Back in Bamiyan, keeping a low profile and hoping for the best —Marianne Szegedy-Maszak A N D R E W Q U I LT Y/ O C U L I / E C C O Rebecca Parish busts stereotypes of nuns as severe or meek or uptight, and while Radical Grace would benefit from tighter editing and slicker production, it doesn’t lack for heart: “What they mean by feminist?” one of the sisters demands “The radical notion that women are equal? That women are people? If that’s a sin, guilty as charged!” candidates dream of electric sheep? [continued from page 35] support of fellow BERNARD F , LTD DUHON A Professional Law Corporation Services involving serious injury Personal care for every client www.BernardDuhon.com 337-893-5066 Vital Info for Survival -Know your Rights or Lose’em ~ Knowledge = Power Best educational Tool in 200 Years www.FreedomCalendar.com Phone: 651-771-5234 56 M O T H E R J O N E S | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y billionaires, including Adelson and the Kochs It was only after they turned him down that he sounded the alarm about their political giving Instead, Trump’s campaign is now fueled by grassroots conservatives, so attracted to a message of sticking it to the moneyed class that they are cutting hundred-dollar checks to a billionaire The end product, at least in New Hampshire, is an outfit that looks a lot like a traditional campaign but doesn’t quite act like one Trump has more paid staff in New Hampshire than any other Republican campaign, and he opened his office over the summer to much fanfare Trump’s New Hampshire HQ occupies part of the second floor of an office building on the Merrimack River, down the hall from a hospice But a bland Trump property is still a Trump property His staff painted TRUMP in big letters on each of the two parking spaces the campaign was allotted; inside, you’re greeted by a huge fish tank and a wall filled with a dozen black-and-white photos of Trump through the ages Just like the candidate himself, there was something slightly askew about the whole thing Considering their boss’ general bombast, Trump’s staffers have a surprisingly low bar for their own success Joshua Whitehouse told me the campaign wasn’t working hard to win over new voters at this point in the campaign, because “we’ve got 20 percent” of the vote locked up, according to recent polls He added: “I’m not saying we’re complacent, because we’ll never be complacent.” But 20 percent is not that much By comparison, in 2012, that would have only been good enough for third place in the state, nearly 20 points behind the winner, Romney And getting even that kind of showing will be tough without access to the party’s detailed voter file—something every campaign but Trump’s has purchased from the RNC Whitehouse assured me that volunteer activity is always slow on Sundays—the opposite of what I’d heard from another campaign—and that I should come back on a weeknight But when I showed up after work on a Monday, Trump’s campaign office was again empty Then again, he hadn’t trailed in an in-state poll for months Why bother with the conventional methods of campaign organizing when doing the opposite seemed to be working just fine? T he lights weren’t on at Ben Carson’s Manchester office either, although the hours posted in the window said they should have been both nights I stopped by (Sanders’ space above a Citizens Bank was packed with organizers, and even Jeb Bush’s storefront seemed to be buzzing with activity.) More than any other candidate, Trump included, Carson’s rise typifies the eccentricity of the Uncampaign era Coaxed into the race by a super-PAC launched by a pair of conservatives gadflies, Carson tapped Terry Giles, a longtime friend, celebrity lawyer, and former magic-club owner with zero political experience, to hire his campaign team Not that they stuck around long A top aide left to work on a farm; another went on safari Giles quit to help raise money for a superPAC Naturally, Carson soared in the polls The trick is that Carson, like Trump, feeds off the unrest while exploiting it too Voters who believe the party’s corrupt power brokers have left them behind view him as the antidote In the process, they have become unknowing participants in a different kind of racket Carson raised more money than any other Republican candidate in the summer of 2015, almost all of it through paid direct-mail programs Because only a small fraction of direct-mail recipients donate, it costs a lot of money to make a lot of money—in Carson’s case, he paid $11 million to raise $20 million during the third quarter of 2015 That leaves him with plenty of cash, but it also means that when you donate to Carson, you’re mostly donating to his consultants This isn’t a new tactic on the conservative fringe, where long-shot candidates or so-called “scam PACs” have used it to separate elderly right-wingers from their money Carson’s campaign, which did not respond to requests for comment, has just brought it to the fore Carson’s embrace of the Uncampaign even left him enough time to write a book, A More Perfect Union—his fifth in three years A few days after I left New Hampshire, he temporarily suspended his campaign to go on a monthlong promotional swing, for which his publisher provided a book-tour bus (This could be a potentially illegal cor- porate contribution, if the FEC decides that Carson was at any point campaigning on the company’s dime But considering the FEC chairwoman recently filed a complaint against her own agency for incompetence, the possibility of Carson receiving a reprimand seems slim.) At some events, there was a second bus in the parking lot, with Carson’s oversize smile plastered on the side Supporters lined up to take photos of the vehicle, then met with a crew of volunteers collecting voter information and handing out swag, paid for by a pro-Carson group called the 2016 Committee Carson might have stopped campaigning, but his super-PAC hadn’t The tour was a resounding success, politically and personally He even found a few days to take a vacation in Italy with his wife When a reporter asked Carson about his unusual approach to campaigning, he promised more details in due time “Maybe I’ll write another book,” he said D uring the town hall in Windham, CARLY volunteers and Carly staffers watched from opposite ends of the gymnasium, as if at a middle-school dance But after Fiorina had shaken a few hands, smiled for the opposition video trackers, and taken a question from Swedish television, the two sets of staffers converged on the emptying court to coordinate the cleanup CARLY staffers in red tore down their placards, and together the two groups folded chairs and tables A few feet from the entrance to the gym, one of the staffers took a break from stacking seats and huddled with a Fiorina aide “When you’re back in DC, let me know,” the aide said “We can drinks,” the staffer replied “It’s semi-kosher,” the aide said One of them joked about coordination, and they laughed and went their separate ways, never to see each other again—until the next afternoon, when they huddled again at a Rotary Club luncheon in Manchester The aide was Tom Szold, Fiorina’s national political director Prior to that, he had held the same job at CARLY—that is, he had built the grassroots organization that he was now not coordinating with When I asked the CARLY staffer what his role was, he picked up a folding chair and told me he was “just a volunteer.” Perhaps Bob Ellsworth, the super-PAC’s chief technology officer, was just being modest Q penn 1-800-326-9180 state www.psupress.org press “A deep, multidimensional, and nuanced understanding of our relationship to zoo elephants It [is] impossible to come away from Elephant House unmoved.” —Ben A Minteer, Arizona State University Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures 30% discount for Mother Jones readers, use code mjeh at psupress.org Uncommon Encounters undeniably adventurous Alaska by small ship! Come play outside Go eye-to-eye with whales and wildlife Kayak and paddle board Hike and skiff exploration 22-84 like-minded adventurers Seven to 21-night voyages ® 888-862-8881 Un-Cruise.com Unrushed Uncrowded Unbelievable SM J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S 57 [continued from page 47] Instead of discard- ing troubled kids, we should wrap our arms around them (DiIulio had also just become the first director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, under President George W Bush.) He came to embrace church programs, not prisons, as an aid for wayward teens During those same decades, neuroscientists had been researching the development of the adolescent brain, and numerous studies soon confirmed what most parents already knew: Compared to adults, the av- Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation Publication Title: Mother Jones Publication Number: 115-770 Filing Date: October 1, 2015 Issue Frequency: Bimonthly Number of Issues Published Annually: 6 Annual Subscription Price: $24.00 Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108-4457 Contact Person: Shelley L Shames (646) 762-0809 Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108-4457 Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Steven Katz, Publisher; Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief; Clint Hendler, Managing Editor, 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108-4457 10 Owner: Foundation for National Progress, 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108-4457 11 Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None 12 Tax Status Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months 13 Publication Title: Mother Jones 14 Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: September/October 2015 15 Extent and Nature of Circulation: a) Total No Copies: 220,519; 214,904 b) Paid Circulation: 1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 168,884; 165,004 2) Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: None; None 3) Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS: 12,625; 14,375 4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS: None; None c) Total Paid Distribution: 181,509; 179,379 d) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: 269; 487 2) Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: None; None 3) Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS: None; None 4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 716; 1,011 e) Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: erage teenager is more impulsive, volatile, and vulnerable to peer pressure—and less aware of long-term consequences This research also showed that the adolescent brain is plastic—it can, and does, change Eleven years after Buchanan was sentenced, the Supreme Court, citing the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” issued the first in a string of landmark decisions that recognized that juveniles were less responsible for their actions than adults In a 2005 ruling, the court banned use of the death penalty for crimes committed by juveniles Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted the link between adolescence and reckless behavior: “From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” Five years later, the Supreme Court prohibited sentencing kids to life without parole for cases that didn’t involve a homicide And in 2012, in Miller v Alabama, the court extended that ban to mandatory lifewithout-parole sentences for homicides One of the petitioners, Evan Miller, was 14 years old when he and a friend killed a neighbor by beating him with a baseball bat and setting his trailer on fire Growing up with an alcoholic mother and abusive stepfather, Miller had tried four times to kill himself, the first attempt coming when he was only six By the time of the Miller ruling, Buchanan had spent 18 years, 11 months, and 10 days behind bars But not all states treated the ruling as retroactive In Louisiana, the state Supreme Court refused to apply Miller to those sentenced in years past, saying the ruling, while new, did not constitute a watershed change “essential to fundamental fairness.” West of Louisiana, across the Sabine River, Texas went the other way, reopening its cases So, to the east, across the Pearl River, did Mississippi As Jacques Brown died on the wrong side of a highway, Taurus Buchanan serves life on the wrong side of a river 985; 1,498 f) Total Distribution: 182,494; 180,877 g) Copies Not Distributed: 38,025; 34,027 h) Total: 220,519; 214,904 i) Percent Paid: 99.46%; 99.2% 17 Publication of Statement of Ownership: January/February 2016 18 Peter B Sanderson, Associate Publisher, Consumer Marketing, October 1, 2015 58 M O T H E R J O N E S | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y ON A JUNE EVENING in 2005, Angola hosted a boxing tournament, with inmates from five prisons squaring off in front of an audience that included nine state lawmakers and three members of the state parole board Buchanan, now 28, was there as a server, bringing food and drinks to the special guests As he went table to table, he recognized one visitor: Tony Clayton Buchanan didn’t know what to “I didn’t want to cause alarm,” he says “I said, ‘Well, here goes everything.’ I walked over there and I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, Mr Clayton, would you like some water or a soda?’” Clayton looked up—and told Buchanan he looked familiar “Yes, sir, I’m Taurus Buchanan.” He then repeated, “Would you like a water or would you like a soda?” “Man, forget that,” Clayton said “I have something I want to tell you.” In the 11 years since he’d tried Buchanan, Clayton had been a successful prosecutor and civil litigator, and he’d served a brief stint as a district court judge For many years his attitude was, “You did the crime, you got the full time.” But Clayton also had travails; a doctor whom one of his clients was suing said Clayton threatened him with a criminal investigation in order to leverage a civil settlement Clayton was arrested and booked, charged with criminal extortion The case fell apart, but it gave Clayton a glimpse of what it was like to be targeted “It taught me that even I, as a prosecutor, can be subject to people wrongfully coming after you,” he says Then in 2004, he prosecuted a serial killer, Derrick Todd Lee, whose DNA was linked to the murders of seven Louisiana women Lee was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole— the same as Buchanan Clayton learned, he said, “what murder truly is,” and found himself believing that life without parole should be reserved for the Derrick Todd Lees, not the Taurus Buchanans That night at the tournament, Clayton told Buchanan that if anybody deserved a second chance, he did He said that if Buchanan should ever get any kind of hearing, he would speak in his favor Clayton says that when he ran into Buchanan that evening, the sight of a mature, respectful, measured young man reinforced the doubts he had been harboring for a long time: “He’s a different man than the kid that I saw.” If he had it to over, Clayton says, he would present a plea deal for manslaughter “I would offer him 21 years—and let him 7,” he says “I should not have prosecuted Taurus for murder I think I went too far If the state of Louisiana lets him out, I would fall on my knees and thank God.” Buchanan’s life sentence also rests uneasy with at least two of the jurors who voted to convict Leigh Gilly was a 22-year-old college student when he served on the jury Now in his 40s, he has four kids—one the same age as Buchanan when he threw that punch “I’ve thought more and more that he shouldn’t be in prison for life probably because he was so young,” Gilly says “At 16, we just aren’t who we’re going to be.” Briley Reed was also 22 when Buchanan stood trial He was one of the jury’s two African Americans, both of whom voted to convict “After the decision was made, I still thought about it all the time It took me a while to get it out of my system, because it was still haunting me,” Reed says He, too, wishes Buchanan had a chance at parole “Because he served his time,” Reed says The most recent of the cases before the Supreme Court may, in fact, force Louisiana to reconsider Buchanan’s sentence In 2015, the Supreme Court heard a case— out of Louisiana—on whether states can be compelled to apply the Miller ruling, which declared mandatory life-withoutparole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional, retroactively During oral argument in October, Michael Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general appearing on behalf of the Justice Department, told the court that not only have some states—the majority, he added—reopened their cases, but so has the federal government And in the federal cases, he said, “those defendants have almost uniformly received sentences that are terms of years significantly shorter than [life].” The justices’ decision will likely come down in 2016 Henry Montgomery, the case’s petitioner, was convicted and sentenced in East Baton Rouge Parish when he was 17 He is now 69 JACQUES BROWN’S aunt, Joann Phil- lips, has Taurus Buchanan frozen in her mind as a 16-year-old “How old is he now?” she asks us Told the answer—Buchanan is 39—she says, “He’s that old now? Oh my God…My heart goes out to him, because even though my nephew is gone forever, forever, forever.” Her voice trails off Then, moments later, she says: “I forgive him I forgive him I just say, let him go.” After Jacques was killed, his mother, Janice, would sit in the house and stare at the front door for hours, waiting for him to come home Not long after, she turned to drugs But she is sober now, and has been for years In October, she said of Buchanan: “I don’t know how they can see that that child should be out of jail when he took somebody else’s life.” But a few days later, on a balmy Saturday afternoon, she went to the cemetery where Jacques is buried For about an hour, she walked the grounds When she returned home, something had shifted She acknowledged that her sister was right “Holding on to tragedy for a long, long time is not good,” she said So she changed her mind She forgave Taurus Q Corey G Johnson and Ken Armstrong are staff writers at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering criminal justice J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S 59 my life to leave humanitarian raid [continued from page 31] choice has always [continued from page 41] matters where it been clear: I don’t want to die in pain—or drugged into a stupor by pain meds—all while connected to tubes and respirators in a hospital room When the end is near, I want to take my own life Until this year, that would have left me with only two options The first is to wait until my wife is out of the house and lug out a helium tank Assuming I everything right, I’ll die quickly and painlessly—but I’ll also die alone I would have no chance to say goodbye to friends and family, nor they to me My wife would have the horror of discovering my corpse when she came home, and that would be her final memory of me The second option is that I’d wait too long and land in a hospital I’d end up with all those tubes and pain meds I never wanted, and I’d never get out Maybe I’d be there for a week, maybe a few months Who knows? It’s pretty much my worst nightmare But now I have a third option When I’m within six months of death, I can ask my doctor for a prescription sedative that will kill me on my own terms—when I want and where I want Will I ever use it? I don’t know I suspect that taking your own life requires a certain amount of courage, and I don’t know if I have it Probably none of us until we’re faced with it head-on But either way, I won’t have to die before I want to out of fear that I’ll lose the capacity to control my own destiny if I wait too long Nor will I have to die alone out of fear that anyone present runs the risk of being hauled in by an overzealous sheriff’s deputy I’ll be able to tell my wife I love her one last time I can take her hand and we can lie down together on our bed And then, slowly and peacefully, I’ll draw my last breaths I don’t want to die But if I have to, this is how I want it to happen I don’t want a “suicide party,” but neither I want to suffer needlessly for months Nor I want to cause other people any more pain than I have to I want to go out quietly, with my loved ones at my side When he signed California’s right-to-die bill, Gov Brown attached a signing statement “I not know what I would if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain,” he wrote “I am certain, however, that it would be a comfort to be able to consider the options afforded by this bill And I wouldn’t deny that right to others.” Nor would I.Q has a direct financial stake in the outcome, particularly in low-income countries that may not have the resources to procure advice from other sources, or in countries where weak democratic processes not provide adequate checks and balances relative to external donors.” In its 2014 annual report, the IFC acknowledged that “actual or perceived conflicts of interest can arise” from wearing multiple hats, but it claimed it had “implemented processes to manage these conflicts.” But serving as both adviser and investor can create perverse incentives Take the IFC’s role in the privatization of water services in Manila, the capital of the Philippines In the 1990s, the organization advised the Philippine government on privatization efforts It also conducted the bidding for contracts to take over these services Then it took an equity stake in a joint venture called Manila Water, which won the contract to supply water to the eastern half of the city In total, the IFC loaned the joint venture $160 million and acquired a $15 million equity share in the project “Fifteen years later, residents of Manila have suffered under declining water quality and access,” Corporate Accountability International, a Boston-based watchdog group, reported in 2012 “Hundreds of communities remain without safe water, and the cost of a connection, even where available, is unaffordable for many of the city’s residents.” This case, it said, demonstrates how “profitability, not human access to water, is the primary incentive when the World Bank becomes a corporate shareholder.” Frederick Jones, an IFC spokesman, contested this claim He said in an email that access to water had increased from “just 58% of the population…in the 1990s to 99% today,” and that “water quality improved greatly.” The “IFC has different departments handling advisory and investment services and we maintain strict divisions between them,” he added “When governments seek our services as advisors, we help them run a competitive and transparent process to find the best partner.” But NGOs are not the only ones concerned about possible conflicts of interest In 2011, former World Bank economist Guillermo Perry argued that “there is no doubt that dealing with both governments and private firms may create incentives or even [the] oc- 60 M O T H E R J O N E S | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y casion for advising on a policy or regulation that is self-serving to [the] equity or debt interests in particular firms or sectors.” The IFC’s efforts in the health care sector have been particularly controversial While pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into private hospitals and clinics, the organization has simultaneously advised governments to privatize aspects of their health care systems or to forge private-public partnerships Oxfam, the international aid group, revealed last year that one IFC-facilitated partnership in Lesotho—a project the IFC claimed would “transform health care” in the country—was in fact consuming 51 percent of the nation’s health care budget, while the private company involved in the deal was reaping 25 percent returns (After the group published its findings, the IFC challenged its figures The project, the IFC said, actually ate up just 35 percent of the country’s health budget.) In 2009, the IFC launched a separate $1 billion effort to support the expansion of forprofit health care in Africa The stated aim of the initiative, dubbed Health in Africa, was to “catalyze sustained improvements in access to quality health,” with an “emphasis on the underserved.” But it, too, has been criticized for doing little to improve the lives of the poor Some of the IFC’s Health in Africa funding, for instance, went to a Nigerian fertility clinic where a single round of in vitro fertilization costs more than $4,600 This is more than a minimum-wage Nigerian worker could hope to earn in four years Jones, the IFC spokesman, declined to answer questions about the clinic, but said in a statement, “The Health in Africa Fund invests in a broad range of health activities to increase access to quality care for low- and middle-income populations.” In another health-related initiative, the IFC, starting in 2002, has advised Romania to “reshape the country’s healthcare system in order to encourage greater private-sector participation.” Three years later, the IFC began advising a Romanian private health care company called MedLife on “the design and business strategy” for a new private hospital The following year, the IFC made a $5 million equity investment in the company, which it described as “the first private hospital chain in Romania.” Founded by the Marcu family, a clan of prominent doctors and bankers, MedLife today dominates Romania’s private health care market It is also popular with international medical tourists who travel to the country for treatment at cheaper rates than they would find in other European nations The company’s services include “the full range of surgical and non-surgical beauty procedures.” MedLife’s president is Mihai Marcu, a stocky former investment banker with close-cropped hair When we met him in his seventh-floor office overlooking central Bucharest, he told us that it was a “very special and unique thing…for the World Bank through their IFC division to become shareholders along with a family.” The IFC is not supposed to be competing with banks; its mandate is to invest only where private capital cannot otherwise be obtained But Marcu boasted that he could have easily secured funding to expand MedLife from private equity firms or commercial banks “Don’t forget, my background is in banking and risk, so always I have an open door to the bankers in Bucharest,” he said However, he said MedLife has benefited from the “huge expertise” of the IFC, which took company representatives to visit hospitals in London and Washington, DC The IFC’s backing also was a boon, he said, “with the [company’s] image,” helping it to attract clients and staff Marcu said more than million Romanians have visited MedLife—or in of the country’s 20 million residents He also admitted, though, that many patients not have the money to complete their treatments: “Kidney [and] heart patients, many cannot afford MedLife.” He estimated that only 20 to 30 percent of these patients stay with the company for their treatment Those who can’t afford MedLife’s fees, Marcu said, “are referred to the state hospitals.” Romania, Marcu explained, is a “twospeed” society: The poor are poor because they “do not want so much to work.” Those are the people, he said, who can’t afford MedLife: “They don’t want to develop and things.” In 1974, when Robert McNamara headed the World Bank following his controversial stint as US defense secretary, he spoke at an internal seminar on the organization’s policies and practices In his closing remarks, he warned that “the closer the IFC moves to being a commercial enterprise, the less capable it will be to perform development functions.” More than 40 years later, the tension between the IFC’s mandate to help end global poverty and turn a profit has grown only more pronounced In April, a group of farmers and fishermen from the state of Gujarat in western India filed a historic lawsuit against the IFC in a US federal court They alleged the organization had wrecked their livelihoods by financing the construction of an “ultra mega” power plant that had polluted the land and water The case marks the first time a community has challenged the IFC over one of its projects, and it spotlights the institution’s conflicting mission Salim Umar Vager, a 47-year-old fisherman and father of six who works downstream from the plant, says his daily catch has declined from more than 100 pounds to about 20 “I believe after five years there will be no fishing left here,” he says, pointing out that 400 people work at the newly constructed plant, while nearly 2,000 families are directly affected by it “For 400 people’s livelihoods, they have destroyed thousands of others.” The IFC’s priorities are unlikely to change under the leadership of its new CEO, Philippe Le Houérou, a longtime World Bank official If anything, the pressure on IFC investment officers to secure multimillion-dollar deals and turn profits, regardless of the costs, may only increase The World Bank has pledged to more in what it calls “fragile and conflict-affected states,” where risks are higher and prospects for returns, development or financial, are less assured And, thanks to the economic rise of countries such as India and China, the IFC now has competitors: In 2014, the presidents of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formally unveiled their version of the World Bank, which is called the New Development Bank—also known as the “BRICS Bank.” China has established an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, whose 50 members include more than a dozen nations from the Asia-Pacific region, as well as Egypt, Germany, and the United Kingdom (The United States has so far declined to join.) As the IFC contends with regional rivals, McNamara’s prescient admonition has all but faded from memory “There’s a sense from the [IFC’s] board to ‘let the IFC alone,’” says the former IFC official, “and let the money just flow.” Q THE FUTURE OF FEMININE PROTECTION No fibers No bleach or dioxins REusable No strings attached www.lunette.com This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S 61 Offspring of Plato’s Republic and Bellamy’s Looking Backward, a Utopian novel for our age, Frequencies of Life “Quite possibly the wisest book I have ever read and without a doubt the most far-reaching and high-minded A soul-beckoner.” Food Health + – Peter Rendall Master Carpenter, Gifford School econundrums Hot Takes A couple of years ago, Steven Weissman, an energy lawyer at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, started to shop around for solar panels for his house It seemed like an environmental no-brainer For zero down, leading residential provider SolarCity would install panels on his roof The company would own the equipment, and he’d buy the power it produces for less than he had been paying his electric utility Save money, fight climate change Sounds like a deal But while reading the contract, Weissman discovered the fine print that helps make that deal possible: SolarCity would also retain ownership of his system’s renewable energy credits It’s the kind of detail your average solar customer wouldn’t notice or maybe care about But to Weiss62 M O T H E R J O N E S | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y man, it was an unexpected letdown To understand his hang-up, you need a bit of Electricity 101 If you have solar panels on your roof, the electrons they produce flow across the electric grid like water, following a path of least resistance As they whiz around, electrons are impossible to track and look identical whether they’re coming from solar panels, a coal plant, or whatever But there is value in keeping tabs on the renewable ones, so energy wonks came up with renewable energy credits (RECs), a tradable financial instrument that corresponds to a certain amount of energy produced by a certain renewable source like solar or wind Because RECs have value—ranging from under a penny to a buck or two for each hour’s worth of electricity your roof produces, depending on the state, companies JOHN W TOMAC Where does the green energy from your rooftop solar panels really go? by tim mcdonnell like SolarCity can sell them and thus help who adopt solar panels, the more the price justify giving you the solar panels for little drops, as panel manufacturers and installers to nothing The biggest buyers of RECs are get more efficient This is already happenpower companies looking to satisfy state- ing, as the cost of solar has plummeted 73 mandated clean-energy requirements, percent since 2006 and could soon be equal known as renewable portfolio standards to or less than the cost of other electricity in In effect, the power company pays for the many states Industry insiders have a rule of right to claim the climate benefits of the thumb that every time production of panpanels on your roof els doubles, solar prices drop 20 percent It sounds like an esoteric distinction, but Then there’s the powerful “Prius efit matters: By selling the RECs instead of fect,” wherein the conspicuous use of a keeping them for yourself, you could just green product like an electric vehicle or be helping the utility meet a goal it was al- solar panels prompts neighbors to follow ready mandated to meet—thus helping ex- suit That growing customer base can be cuse it from building more solar capacity a source of pressure on governors and itself In other words, your direct net contri- state legislators to ramp up their climate bution to reducing greenambitions Politicians house gas pollution is nil who see solar on their POLITICIANS WHO SolarCity CEO Lyndon constituents’ rooftops SEE SOL AR ON THEIR Rive argues that his RECare “going to be encourless customers are still aged to dream big,” CONSTITUENTS’ part of the climate solusaid Nathanael Greene, ROOFTOPS ARE tion by creating the RECs director of renewable“GOING TO BE in the first place “By you energy policy at the Natinstalling solar, whether ural Resources Defense ENCOURAGED TO you own the REC or not, Council California, the DREAM BIG,” SAYS every kilowatt-hour [of country’s leading solar electricity] you produce state, recently boosted ONE EXPERT ON is clean,” he said But the its renewable portfolio RENEWABLES half-dozen energy econostandards to one of the mists and lawyers I spoke most ambitious in the to—from universities, think tanks, REC bro- country, requiring utilities to get half of kers, and the federal government—said that their power from renewables by 2030 By solar leasing companies’ marketing can 2045, Hawaiian utilities will get 100 perbe misleading “A lot of individuals buy cent of their energy from renewables, in green power because they want to know accordance with a law passed last summer that the power they’re buying wouldn’t be Those factors were enough to tip Weissthere unless they bought it,” says Jennifer man in favor of installing panels While he Martin, executive director of the Center still thinks it’s misleading to market solar for Resource Solutions, a nonprofit firm leases as providing green energy if they that certifies RECs’ authenticity But if don’t include RECs, he ultimately decided that’s what you think, and you don’t hold to sign on the dotted line onto the RECs, “you’re not getting what “I think if you have the ability to so, you’re paying for.” you should be part of the conversation,” So does that mean you should skip the he said, “part of the effort to move us away panels altogether? Hardly There are still from fossil fuels.” Q many good reasons to go solar, includGet fresh Econundrums delivered to your ing the possibility to save money on your inbox Sign up at motherjones.com/newsletters electric bill Meanwhile, the more people 41, NUMBER Address editorial, business, and production correspondence to Mother Jones, 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108 Subscriptions: $24/yr in the US, $34 (US) in Canada, or $36 (US) elsewhere POSTMASTER: Send changes of address to Mother Jones, PO Box 3029, Langhorne, PA 19047 Customer service: subscribe@motherjones.com or (800) 438-6656 or (267) 557-3568 (Mon to Fri., a.m.-10 p.m., Sat to Sun., 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m ET) We sometimes share our mailing list with reputable firms If you prefer that we not include your name, contact customer service Subscribers are members of the Foundation for National Progress Printed in the USA Mother Jones (ISSN 0362-884), 222 Sutter Street, Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94108, is published bimonthly by the Foundation for National Progress Periodicals Postage paid at San Francisco, CA, and additional mailing offices Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608 Canada returns to be sent to Pitney Bowes, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2 VOLUME THIS LOGO GIVES BACK Brands whose products feature the 1% for the Planet logo give 1% of sales to nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting the environment By supporting these brands, you are giving back too Find more than 1000 companies that give back to our planet at onepercentfortheplanet.org J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S 63 food for thought Metabolize This If you believe recent claims that you can exercise away junk food, think again by julia lurie A wide variety of organizations, including the Girl Scouts and the National Head Start Association And Energy Balance 101 isn’t the only exercise campaign supported by junk-food companies Earlier this year, CocaCola came under scrutiny after the New York Times revealed that the company had provided another $1.5 mil- liver is forced to metabolize lots of fructose lion in seed funding to start the Global at once, much of it is converted to fat, leavEnergy Balance Network, a think tank de- ing us hungry “It’s like what the IRS does voted to promoting research dedicated to to your paycheck: gone before you had the chance to burn it,” says Robert the concept that all calories are Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocreated equal McDonald’s has BY FOCUSING crinologist at the University marketed energy balance for ON CALORIES, of California-San Francisco years; in 2005, with the rollCOMPANIES Plus, sugar doesn’t trigger the out of a new jingle (“It’s what I eat and what I do…I’m lovin’ ARE BASICALLY hormone that tells us we’re full, so we tend to overeat it”), then-CEO Jim SAYING, “IT' S Skinner said, “One when we have sweet foods and Minutes of Jogging Needed to Work Off of the best things drinks Over time, Lustig says, YOUR FAULT.” Starbucks grande hot chocolate we can is comthat process of overwhelming Q Child (60 lbs.) 95 municate the importance of en- the liver drives illnesses from diabetes to Q Adult (180 lbs.) 32 ergy balance in an engaging and heart disease A 2013 study by Lustig and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (1 cup) simple way.” The most recent his colleagues examined data on food avail95 corporate social responsibility re- ability and diabetes prevalence across the 32 port of Yum! Brands, the parent world, and found that while eating an extra DiGiorno Pizza (1/4 pie) 114 of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC, 150 calories per day wasn’t associated with 38 reads, “We believe that all of our an increase in diabetes, eating an extra 150 Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked (1 cup) food can be part of a balanced calories of sugar per day was correlated with 129 lifestyle if eaten in moderation an elevenfold increase in diabetes rates A 43 and balanced with exercise.” similar concept applies to fats Unsaturated kfc chicken tenders Yet study after study shows fats—the kind present in olive oil, fish, and 150 50 that not all calories are created avocados—reduce the risk of heart disease, Pizza Hut Pepperoni Lovers Pizza (2 slices) equal, because our bodies me- while saturated fats—like those in burgers 181 tabolize them differently Take and fries—do the opposite 60 sugar Virtually every cell in the Of course, that fact is exactly what junkTaco Bell Fiesta Taco Salad body contains enzymes that can food companies gloss over in programs 183 turn glucose—the sugar in starch- like Energy Balance 101 “By focusing on 61 McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets Value Meal es like bread and potatoes—into calories,” Lustig says, “they’re basically say240 energy But only the liver has the ing…it’s your fault It’s a great way to ab80 proteins necessary to the same solve themselves of culpability.” Q for fructose—the stuff that makes 250 50 100 150 200 For weekly bites, sign up for Food for Thought table sugar and high-fructose Source: usda at motherjones.com/newsletters corn syrup so sweet When the 64 M O T H E R J O N E S | J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y BEN VOLDMAN t elementary schools nationwide, a health curriculum called Energy Balance 101 has taught 28 million kids a seemingly simple concept: In order to stay fit, all we need to is balance the food we eat with exercise Calories in, calories out Sensible enough, right? But there’s something odd about the curriculum: Not once does it suggest ditching junk food—in fact, the lesson plan explicitly says, “There are no good foods or bad foods!” Energy Balance 101’s approach isn’t surprising when you consider the source The group behind it is the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a coalition co-founded and bankrolled by food corporations like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Hershey’s In addition to schools, the group, which claims its funders not influence its curricula, has also developed similar programs for a MIRACLES DON’T HAPPEN KOMMAH SURVIVED AGGRESSIVE BREAST CANCER City of Hope creates scientific miracles that make lives whole again We are a world leader in cancer research and treatment The results are some of the most important biomedical innovations of the last 100 years and, with your help, surely of the next 100 Help us cure diseases that affect millions worldwide Help us make a miracle happen in someone’s life Give today at CityofHope.org/MyHopeGift ©2015 CITY OF HOPE WITHOUT HELP ... million smart, fearless readers who make MotherJones.com a regular habit J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y | M O T H E R J O N E S Mother Jones Mary Harris Mother Jones (1837-1930) orator, union organizer,... journalism by including Mother Jones in your estate plan You’ll help Mother Jones shine a light on the urgent issues of the day now and in the future Join the Mother Jones Legacy Society: it’s... for national progress The nonprofit fnp publishes Mother Jones magazine and its website and directs the Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program Mother Jones produces revelatory journalism that, in its