Jonathan P. Baird

Maybe some readers saw this story which appeared in the Washington Post on March 9. A Jacksonville Florida woman, who was a gun rights enthusiast, was accidentally shot in the back by her 4 year old son. Before it happened, the lady had bragged on Facebook that her boy “gets jazzed up to target shoot”.

Somehow the child managed to get hold of the mother’s .45-caliber handgun that he found on the floor of her pickup truck. The child shot his mother in the back through the seat while she was driving. Fortunately, the mother lived through it.

Then there was the February shooting deaths of two 15 year old girls at a Glendale Arizona high school. The police believe it was a murder-suicide. A suicide note was found. Apparently the shooter approached another 15 year old student on the day before the shooting and asked him to lend her the gun for protection. The male student gave her the gun which he obtained from his house without his parents’ knowledge or permission.

While it remains unclear, the two sophomore girls were in a romantic relationship. The girl who was the shooter had just been informed that the other girl did not love her romantically any more. The two girls both had single gunshot wounds and a weapon was found near the bodies.

I offer these stories because, unfortunately, they are not that unusual. Unintentional, accidental shootings and especially suicides comprise a significant chunk of gun deaths that happen in America every year. These deaths do not fit neatly into the narrative spun by the pro-gun lobby.

In that narrative, the good law-abiding citizens need guns to protect themselves from the bad criminals. Really the world is divided up into these two categories of people. This dichotomy leads the pro-gun lobby to argue for virtually no restrictions on the law-abiding citizens and for harsher penalties for the criminals.

The pro-gun lobby routinely argues that all gun control laws are futile because criminals are indifferent to the law. They are so sociopathic that denying access to guns will not matter because the criminals will find another way to kill if that is their goal.

In an era with mass shootings and terrorism so highlighted in the media, the narrative of the pro-gun lobby gets legs. Fear is the engine.

The problem as I see it though is that there are a huge number of shooting situations that are not fundamentally about good guys and bad guys. The world is so much more complex and multi-dimensional than a dualistic model.

The child who accidentally shoots his mother or the child who accidentally shoots another child is a scenario played out over and over. Is the child who accidentally shoots his mother a bad guy? I think not.

The public health researcher David Hemenway writes that between 1965 and 2000, more than 60,000 Americans died from unintentional firearm shootings. He writes that those 60,000 deaths are more Americans than were killed in our wars fought during the same time.

Hemenway estimates there are two to three accidental firearm deaths each day in the United States and he says that it is just the tip of the iceberg. He writes that more than 30 people are shot unintentionally everyday but do not die. Young people are the primary victims.

As for suicides, Hemenway writes that 50 people a day kill themselves with guns in the United States. In 2010 in the U.S. 19,392 people committed suicide with guns compared to 11,078 who were killed by others with guns. So gun suicides actually outnumber gun homicides almost two to one.

Hemenway says that more people kill themselves with guns than by all other methods combined including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping or cutting. For people who want to do themselves in, guns are the most lethal means. About 85% of suicide attempts with a firearm end in death. That is significantly higher than the rate with other suicide methods. Less than 3% of drug overdoses result in death.

Is the distraught lover or the despairing young person caught in a personally overwhelming crisis a bad person? Again I would say no. Life can deal unbearable adversities. I have always liked this Ernest Hemingway quote:

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

Contrary to the myth that suicides are typically long-planned deeds, much empirical evidence suggests that many people in crisis act impulsively. In a moment of heightened vulnerability, the psychologically wounded person can act irretrievably.

There was an interesting 2001 study in Houston of people ages 13 to 34 who had survived a near-lethal suicide attempt. The survey asked how much time had passed between when they decided to take their lives and when they made the attempt. 23% said less than 5 minutes; 48% said less than 20 minutes; 70% said less than one hour; and 86% said less than 8 hours.

A Harvard School of Public Health study says that 9 out of 10 people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide later. Interventions, awareness, and denying access to lethal weapons at key moments would likely save many lives.

I know now is the time when pro-gun folks would expect me to offer the usual anti-gun remedies. There is no doubt that the easy availability of guns contributes to both unintentional shootings and suicides. Still, I would like to go in a different direction.

Not every gun reform is about taking away precious guns which seem to be more loved than life itself. Many reforms do not implicate the Second Amendment. I would suggest that people on both sides of the polarized debate could come together in ways they have not in the past.

For example, states could adopt stronger laws to prevent children from accessing unsecured guns. On the positive, New Hampshire already has a chapter in its criminal code about negligent storage of firearms. Many states lack this. Congress could also increase funding for public health research on children injured and killed in unintentional shootings.

There is a sad lack of research on guns and suicide. Just like public health researchers studied cigarettes and lung cancer, we could at least try and obtain accurate data about guns and suicide.

The lack of such public health data is not an accident. Since 1996, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been prohibited from doing firearm research. Firearms are the last consumer product manufactured in the United States that is not subject to federal health and safety regulation.

Getting good data on gun-related topics should not be that controversial. It is hard to imagine that anyone would oppose learning more about what mental health treatment would be most effective against suicide as well as what practical steps could reduce the incidence of suicide by gun. It should be clear that what we have done to date has not resulted in decline in unintentional shootings or suicides. We need strong and effective fact-based public health policies that significantly reduce gun death and injury.

It is not anti-gun to want to talk about public health problems related to guns. Public health is about living with guns – not dying from them.

Once again, the detention facility at Guantanamo has reemerged as a partisan issue. President Obama wants to fulfill his 2008 campaign pledge and close Guantanamo. Republicans remain opposed and desire a continuation of the prison camp. They do not want those held at Guantanamo transferred to maximum security prisons in the United States.

The opponents of Guantanamo closure raise the spectre of Isis or Al Qaeda attacks on supermax prisons in the United States where the terrorist prisoners might be held.

The problem with this narrative is how much is left out. Focusing on Guantanamo as a Democratic versus Republican debate misses the historical context of the place as well as deeper related issues.

A deeper perspective needs to look at how the United States gained possession of territory that is part of another country. The story of how Guantanamo became an American possession deserves attention.

It is a story that is a throwback to an earlier era of great power colonialism and gunboat diplomacy. In that era, great powers competed to carve up the Third World and its resources, including the Caribbean and Latin America. Going back to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States, like all the other major colonial empires, had an interest in promoting and protecting its business interests overseas. Part of the effort was the establishment of military bases to advance the American empire.

Guantanamo, the oldest existing American naval base outside the United States, is an expression of our own imperialism. While I expect it would be politically unpopular to say so, a just result would be returning Guantanamo to Cuba. Guantanamo is, quite obviously, part of Cuba. As relations warm between Cuba and the United States, I fully expect some future American administration will return the base. Guantanamo is an unneeded imperialist relic.

The United States gained control of Guantanamo in 1898 when Cubans rose up against the Spanish who then controlled Cuba. Siding with the Cubans, the United States, after vanquishing the Spanish, forced Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment into its constitution. The Platt Amendment granted the United States the right to intervene freely in Cuban affairs, including access to naval bases. The marines would land in Cuba in 1906, 1912, 1917 and 1920 to exercise those rights.

The Cubans were adamantly opposed to the Platt Amendment. For those looking to understand some of the historical reasons for the Cuban revolution, I would look at how the Platt Amendment humiliated Cuba. The Cubans rightly feared the amendment would turn them into a vassal people.

The United States essentially delivered an ultimatum to the Cubans: incorporate the Platt Amendment into your constitution or we will not withdraw our troops on the island. In spite of this affront to their sovereignty, the Cubans reluctantly bowed to the greater power in 1901.

In 1903, the United States made a further agreement with Cuba which gave the U.S. 45 square miles of land and water for the naval base that was to become Guantanamo. Under the deal, the United States was to pay Cuba rent of $2000 a year. There was no time limit specified.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt made the lease permanent. Guantanamo was leased for both coaling and naval purposes. The United States later upped the amount it paid for the lease to $4085 a month.

To protest the base, the Cuban government has refused to cash these less-than-munificent lease checks sent by the United States government as payment for Guantanamo.

Before the War on Terror, Guantanamo was not exactly a center of attention. In the early 1990’s, President George H.W. Bush decided to use Guantanamo Bay as a place to shelter Haitian refugees but really Guantanamo did not serve much purpose. It does have a deep water port and a decent airstrip but it is less important in a world of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and drones.

The War on Terror did, however, give Guantanamo a new purpose. After the prison was built in 2002, it became what Amnesty International has called “the gulag of our time”. It became a sort of behavioral science lab to test out psychological torture techniques on the international detainees imprisoned there.

Guantanamo transformed into a legal black hole. Being outside the sovereign territory of the U.S., the George W. Bush Administration believed that fact of geography would remove all legal protections of both American and international law. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team played out some dark fantasy of omnipotence. For many detainees, the terms “innocent” and “guilty” became passe. They reside in a Kafkaesque hell. Those who think I am exaggerating might want to check out Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

I do not see the current debate as fundamentally about where to place the terrorist prisoners: Guantanamo or the U.S.. That may be an immediate practical problem but for lawyers and civil libertarians, the deeper question is how we end indefinite detention without trial. As the international lawyer Philippe Sands has written, such practices violate the most fundamental principle of the English common law and all civilized legal systems. The right to habeas corpus is the cornerstone of the rule of law. Those who are held deserve, at minimum, a trial and due process.

Demagogues will scream and push the fear factor. They will assert we would possibly be releasing people they have characterized as “the worst of the worst”. They will point to examples of released terrorists who returned to the battlefield. There are such cases. But the truth is so much more nuanced.

I am reminded of the famous quote from John Adams:

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crime are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection, and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

While there once were as many as 700 people held at Guantanamo, there are now 91. A military task force of 2000 troops now watches this relatively small group. Considering just the numbers, closing Guantanamo hardly seems like it should be a big deal. We already hold a number of convicted terrorists in the United States. Our judicial and prison system is more than competent to address the small number of remaining Guantanamo prisoners, whatever the result of judicial process.

It is estimated that 40 to 50 of the remaining prisoners are hardened Al Qaeda members. Some cannot be charged because there is insufficient evidence against them or what there is has been tainted by their treatment in custody. These are the most problematic prisoners.

In the case of 34 detainees, mostly from Yemen, it has already been determined that they can be released without a security risk. However, it has been determined they cannot be returned to Yemen. A place must be found for these detainees.

One wild card that needs to be mentioned: according to a study by Seton Hall Law School, 86% of the detainees were arrested by non-American forces who were, essentially, bounty hunters. These detainees were arrested by Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries eager for the $5000 bounty on each capture. Leaflets dropped across Afghanistan had invited people to inform intelligence services to get the big prize. It is impossible to know whether some of the detainees are simply innocent victims of greedy bounty hunters.

A rational look at the Guantanamo detainees presents a vastly different view than the hysterical fantasies spun by those opposed to Guantanamo closure. In saying that, I do not minimize the threat posed by isis or Al Qaeda. It is just that a close look at Guantanamo defies what might be expected.

I would suggest that the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere has tremendously hurt America’s cause in the War on Terror. It is contrary to the rule of law and America’s best values. Somehow the cost of that abuse has not registered with the American public. The abuse endangers American service members and it is a useful recruiting tool for our adversaries.

The wise and late historian Chalmers Johnson once wrote a book entitled The Sorrows of Empire. Guantanamo is one of those sorrows.

One of the surprising and lesser-remarked upon aspects of this campaign season has been the endorsement of waterboarding by the leading Republican presidential candidates. To quote candidate Trump: “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a helluva lot worse than waterboarding.”

Not wanting to be left behind, contenders Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have concurred with Trump. Neither wants to take so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” off the table. Cruz has argued waterboarding is not torture. Rubio thinks we should not be talking about what tactics we might use.

A number of current and former Republican candidates including Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina also have embraced the euphemistically described enhanced interrogation techniques.

While I suppose these positions can, in part, be attributed to trying to look tough, they reflect a medieval mentality and a profound ignorance of the law. Torture, which includes waterboarding, is both illegal and immoral. Also, as has been widely recognized in the intelligence community, it does not work.

Life is not an episode of 24 but there seems to be some confusion about that.

Waterboarding is a very well-established, brutal form of torture, dating back to the 16th century. Many tyrants of all stripes have used it. It was used during the trial portion of the Spanish Inquisition. Church interrogators used torture both to obtain confessions and to punish. After beating the body , arms and legs, the Spanish introduced cloth into the mouth of the victim and poured quantities of water over the mouth and nose to create the impression of drowning.

The U.S. Army used waterboarding in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Then it was called the water cure.

During World War II, the Japanese used waterboarding to torture. The United States executed Japanese soldiers for multiple forms of mistreatment including water torture. The Japanese secret police, the Kenpeitai, used two methods of water torture. Waterboarding was one method and the other method involved tying prisoners to a ladder and sliding them down into a tub of water until the prisoner almost drowned. These methods were discussed in the Tokyo War Crimes trial held by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

In the 1950’s, during the Algerian War, the French used the practice against the Algerians and against perceived enemies. A French journalist, Henri Alleq, who was tortured by French paratroopers, wrote about the experience of being strapped to a plank, having his head wrapped in cloth and being positioned beneath a running tap:

‘The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I could’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a horrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.”

On January 21, 1968, the Washington Post published a front page photograph of two American soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as “fairly common”. Torture was an integral part of U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Tiger Cages on Con Son Island come to mind first but American advisors taught the South Vietnamese better methods for how to torture, including waterboarding.

The Khmer Rouge, the British Army in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s, and the apartheid regime in South Africa all waterboarded.

In recent years, documents released by our own government show a sickening degree of sadism in our treatment of terror suspects from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In an article that appeared in Salon.com in 2010, Marc Benjamin wrote:

“Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed’ to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.”

Torture and cruel acts like waterboarding have been internationally outlawed since the end of World War II. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated, ” No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.” There are no exceptions.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Convention III and the 1984 Convention Against Torture all would clearly prohibit waterboarding. The 1984 Convention Against Torture, promoted by President Reagan, criminalized torture and sought to end immunity for any torturer.

I would be remiss if I did not mention our own federal Constitution’s 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. There are also prohibitions in the United States Code which criminalize torture.

So how did we get to a place where candidates can unashamedly and without any seeming awareness endorse practices that are criminal? Also, how is it that the public response has been utterly muted?

I think the historian Alfred McCoy has best explained it. Professor McCoy says there is a pattern of expose of torture, momentary public awareness, no sustained investigation, no prosecution and no penalty. As a society, we do not punish the torturers. Professor McCoy says this pattern has repeated six times over the last 45 years, starting with Vietnam.

Professor McCoy calls it impunity: the failure to punish a wrongful act. Both political parties are implicated. The problem he sees is that without binding and serious prosecution, torture will continually recur. Without a consequence, torture is legitimated.

Contrary to the minimizing assertions of former Vice President Dick Cheney, our Darth Vader, there is no debate in the international community about whether waterboarding is torture. It is widely recognized in the civilized world as reprehensible.

Wanting to do worse than waterboarding reflects moral and legal cluelessness. It is know-nothing anger run amok. Torture leaves an indelible stain. For our country it can only guarantee ugly blowback.

Today would have been my sister Lisa’s birthday. I wanted to offer three short Langston Hughes poems that evoked Lisa to me in different ways.

Luck

Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.

To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.

Shame on You

If you’re great enough
and clever enough
the government might honor you.
But the people will forget —
Except on holidays

A movie house in Harlem named after Lincoln,
Nothing at all named after John Brown.

Black people don’t remember
any better than white.

If you are not alive and kicking,
shame on you!

Lonely Nocturne

When dawn lights the sky
And day and night meet,
I climb my stairs high
Above the grey street.
I lift my window
To look at the sky
Where moon kisses star
Goodbye.

When dawn lights the sky
I seek my lonely room.
The halls as I go by
Echo like a tomb.
And I wonder why
As I take out my key,
There is nobody there
But me —
When dawn lights the sky.

This piece appeared in the Concord Monitor on 1/24/2016 under the title “No games on state Medicaid expansion”.

As New Hampshire’s Legislature kicks off, there is probably no issue of greater significance for the state than the future of its Medicaid expansion. More than 46,000 people are now enrolled in the New Hampshire Health Protection Program, our Medicaid expansion.

It is estimated that by the end of the year, 58,000 New Hampshire residents will have coverage. That is a major chunk of low income residents who were previously uninsured. It is not an overstatement to say that before the Medicaid expansion, these folks often could not get inside any doctor’s office.

The Legislature now has to decide whether to continue the Medicaid expansion. The program sunsets on December 31, 2016. Without reauthorization, it dies and all those who became medically insured would become uninsured again. The state would also lose an enormous amount of federal money: hundreds of millions of dollars per year moving forward.

So far, New Hampshire has taken quite an independent path in crafting a Medicaid expansion that fits our state. The state has used federal funds to offer private sector health coverage to lower income, uninsured residents. This New Hampshire-specific approach is not the conventional way and it required a federal waiver.

Medicaid is a joint federal-state partnership and all states with a Medicaid program must abide by federal guidelines administered by the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services known as CMS. At the same time, federal rules allow some freedom for states to tinker as long as the federal government ultimately approves the plan.

I think it is fair to say that early reports have found our Medicaid expansion highly successful. Besides the thousands who were previously uninsured and became insured, there has been a noticeable decrease in uncompensated care for health care providers. A study by the New Hampshire Hospital Association has shown a marked reduction in uninsured inpatient, outpatient and emergency room visits.

Less uncompensated care also reduces pressure for health insurance premium increases – not just for families and individuals but for businesses. This is an under-appreciated fringe benefit, and one significant reason that New Hampshire’s business community supports extending Medicaid expansion.

Simply put, the Medicaid expansion is a win-win. Providers get paid and consumers get coverage. Considering the mental health and opioid crisis in our state, this coverage could not be more timely. Medicaid coverage is an essential tool in these fights. It provides access to care so desperately needed for many facing addiction and mental health traumas.

Up until now, the Medicaid expansion has been paid for 100% by federal dollars. New Hampshire has not had to pony up any financial contribution which has been a phenomenal deal for the state.

Looking to the future, where things start getting sticky is the funding formula that includes a state contribution in dollars. After the first three years of the expansion, the state is obligated to kick in a small percentage of the cost. In 2017, the federal government will pay 95% of the cost; in 2018 94%; in 2019 93%; and in 2020 and beyond 90%. The feds never pay less than 90% of the total cost. So next year the state would have to pay 5% of the cost and it would gradually go up to 10% by 2020.

For perspective, in 2017 and in return for a $25 million state contribution, New Hampshire’s Medicaid expansion is projected to bring $475 million in federal funds back home, to circulate in our economy in beneficial ways.

I would submit that this is still a wonderful deal for our state. We will be receiving a very great benefit at a small fraction of the cost in state dollars. There is a weird irony in those who profess personal responsibility also wanting the state to get a free ride from the federal government on a program that provides so much benefit to New Hampshire. Doesn’t personal responsibility imply that our state pay some cost? We have skin in the game.

Not surprisingly, Republicans and Democrats have some different ideas about what the future Medicaid expansion should look like. Two bills, HB 1696, a Republican bill, and HB 1690, a Democratic bill, have been introduced and assigned to the House Health and Human Services Committee.

I will touch on some of the bill differences. The Republicans favor a 4 year, time-limited Medicaid expansion with a new sunset date of December 31, 2020. The Democrats propose to make the Medicaid expansion permanent.

The Republicans are advocating for low-income enrollees to pay premiums. Enrollees with incomes from 100% to 138% of the federal poverty level (that is $11,000 to $16,000 a year for an individual, and from $24,000 to $33,000 a year for a family of 4) would pay $25 per month. Enrollees with incomes from 0% to 100% of the federal poverty level (up to $11,000 a year for an individual and up to $24,000 a year for a family of 4) would pay $10 per month. The suggested premiums are higher than any, to date, that have been allowed by the federal government.

The Republican bill also contains a termination and lockout provision for any enrollee who fails to make premium payments within 60 days of when it is due. Those unable to pay the premium would face a 6 month lockout where they could not re-enroll. As applied to all enrollees, the proposed penalty design is more severe than any that CMS has ever allowed.

The Republican bill also imposes work requirements on Medicaid recipients. While there is legitimate room for policy discussion about the merits of such a proposal for able-bodied persons not caring for children or ailing family members, the reality is that federal law does not allow such a requirement and CMS has never approved a state waiver proposal that includes it.

The Democratic bill contains none of these provisions.

It remains unclear if the federal government, through CMS, would grant a waiver with the type of provisions that appear in the Republican bill. They impose conditions that are more stringent than have been previously allowed by CMS.

A question that emerges: would the Republican leadership in the State House and Senate be willing to sacrifice the entire Medicaid expansion if what appears to be a pet ideological laundry list is not okayed by the federal government? It is not clear if the Republican leadership, in an election year, is simply throwing red meat at its right wing base or if it intends to use the additional preconditions as justification for scuttling the expansion.

It is significant that the Republicans have not pointed out what is wrong with the expansion as it currently functions.

One observation I would make about the Republican bill: it does not recognize the degree of poverty poor people face. The overriding brutal fact of life for people living at or close to the federal poverty level is lack of income which leads to choices about what bills get paid. Basic necessities like housing, utilities, and food can reduce available cash to zero. Other costs like child care or transportation are necessary for employment. If money is short, preventing homelessness or repairing one’s car to get to and from work is likely a higher value than paying medical premiums.

Experience has shown that low-income people are very sensitive to even nominal increases in medical out-of-pocket costs. There is a wealth of research supporting that conclusion. I would cite the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. In February 2013, they produced an overview of research findings relative to premiums and cost-sharing in Medicaid. The Kaiser Commission concluded that premiums act as a barrier to obtaining and maintaining coverage for low-income populations. It is common for premiums to result in coverage loss and the elimination of access to needed care, leading to adverse health consequences.

State savings from cost-sharing and premiums are due more to eligible people dropping or declining coverage than to increases in state revenue. Significantly, early results from states charging premiums to Medicaid expansion enrollees indicate that the administrative cost of collection exceeds any money actually realized from the premiums.

One would hope the Republican leadership would familiarize itself with the substantive research showing why premiums in Medicaid are generally seen as a failure. Their current bill appears to be more rooted in political posturing than evidence-based public policy.

No doubt party positions will evolve as the legislative session unfolds. Recognizing the paramount importance of maintaining the Medicaid expansion, I, for one, hope the parties can reach a fair compromise. The Medicaid expansion, which helps so many, deserves better than to be reduced to a political game.

In the last week, I got to visit my son Josh and his wife Nancy in Los Angeles where they live. We did get around. Here is my selection of best places we got to:

The Last Bookstore
Located in downtown L.A. in a space that used to be a bank, this bookstore, ironically named, has volume. The place is kind of dark, poorly lit, but there are many new and used books. I didn’t have enough time to look around that much but the literature and classic literature section were especially large. It looked like they put counterculture, aliens, and horror all in the same bank vault – an interesting commingling. I found a good book on Latino history by Juan Gonzalez titled Harvest of Empire. For book lovers, worth checking this place out.

Madcapra Falafel at Grand Central Market
This place may have the best falafel ever. At least the best I have tasted. They had four falafel options. I tried the yellow which included falafel with feta, harissa, cucumbers, pickled sweet peppers and parsley stuffed in flatbread. The sandwich had heft, was very tasty, and was really more than one meal. The cost was very reasonable and the service was good. I would mention the cardoman coffee too. Any coffee lover would dig it.

Skylight Books
I have to say I love this bookstore and I always try to get to it whenever I get to L.A.. It is great to see a legit independent bookstore that survives. I would think Amazon would put all out of business. Invariably, I find books I have not seen elsewhere. It has a superior non-fiction, politics and social science section, including progressive politics. I always leave with a list of books I should check out. Most of the books I never heard of before I walked in.

Daikokuya Sawtelle
I admit I don’t know from ramen. I had never been to a ramen house before. I think of ramen in little packages where the choice is beef or shrimp. New Hampshire has no ramen houses. The ramen broth at this place was very rich and flavorful. Bowl portions were generous and the noodles had good texture. For dumpling fans, I also would recommend the gyoza. Place is not expensive. The interior was cooly designed to resemble an Asian street scene.

Hiking to Lizard Rock at Thousand Oaks
It was a cool morning and the air was very fresh as we headed out. The hike is pretty easy but the views were good. Not that much vertical. The landscape is so different from the east. Very arid, plenty of cactus. I did not see any rattlesnakes but Josh assured me they were around. You do not see anything like this in New England.

I have to admit that Alex Kershaw’s book, Avenue of Spies, grabbed me right from the start and it did not let go. It is a true story that reads like a fictional thriller. You could call it an adventure story, a love story, or a tale of remarkable bravery and heroism. It is all of those.

Set against World War II in Nazi-occupied Paris, Avenue of Spies tells the story of an American surgeon Sumner Jackson, his Swiss-born wife Toquette, and their son Philip. Much of the story comes from Kershaw’s extensive interviews with Philip Jackson.

The Jacksons lived on the same street in Paris as numerous Gestapo henchmen. Right down the street was the Gestapo headquarters inhabited by an assortment of fanatics, sadists and psychopaths. In the summer of 1943, Toquette joins the French Resistance, brings the whole family into the fight against the fascists, and operates right under the nose of the Nazi leaders in Paris. The fact that Sumner Jackson was a doctor provided cover for the various comings and goings of Resistance members into his house. As a doctor, he could explain the visits as patient medical appointments.

Avenue of Spies takes you into that world with an astonishing degree of realism. You could feel the danger. You also could appreciate the bravery. So many of the French collaborated with the Nazis. The Jackson family risked everything and they paid a big price. I am reminded of an Edward Abbey quote I have always liked:

“We live in the kind of world where courage is the most essential of virtues; without courage, the other virtues are useless.”

As I noted, a truly malevolent collection of Nazis moved into Avenue Foch, the fashionable street where the Jacksons resided. Many of the previous residents exited before the Nazi arrival in 1940. The Jacksons certainly had an opportunity to leave but they ultimately decided to stay.

Among the Nazis who moved into the neighborhood, there was Theo Dannecker, head of the Gestapo’s Jewish Affairs Office in Paris. Dannecker was a central figure in the effort to exterminate French Jews. Dannecker worked closely with SS colonel Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution.

And there was Helmut Knochen, known as Dr. Bones. Knochen, a proud member of the SS and Gestapo chief in Paris, worked tirelessly to destroy all opposition to German rule in France. He worked under Heinrich Himmler, the Supreme head of the SS, to eliminate all Resistance networks in France. In his role, Knochen recruited a private army of criminals to capture, torture and murder all perceived opponents. Knochen trawled the prisons to find the toughest career criminals and sociopaths who would do Nazi dirty work.

The story includes an interesting discussion of the disagreement among Nazi leaders about how to accomplish the extermination of French Jews.. Dannecker wanted the SS to round up the Jews. Knochen wanted the French themselves to do it. Knochen got his way. On the night of July 16, 1942, 13,152 Parisian Jews, including 4000 children, were rounded up by the French police.

The Nazis hid their true intentions. They created the fiction that those rounded up were headed to a new Jewish state being created in the East.

As Kershaw says, the Jacksons were living in the heart of a vast web of informers, spies and mass murderers.

While the Jackson family was appalled by the Nazis and the Milice, the French fascist paramilitary, they had no choice but to maintain composure. Their situation required immense sangfroid.

Dr. Jackson rose to the challenge and was quite the operator. I should add that Toquette and Philip were equally brave. Dr. Jackson maintained ties with General Rene de Chambrun, godson of Marshal Petain, the Vichy leader. General de Chambrun was influential and had connections with authorities. Dr. Jackson effectively used this relationship to protect his hospital, the American Hospital in Paris, and to keep the Germans at bay.

Dr. Jackson was able to do this for a good part of the war years and he saved many lives. He secretly helped Americans who were escaping the Germans. He falsified records to list recovered prisoners as deceased. He helped patients disappear. He hid French-Jewish officers and made sure there was no record of their stay in his hospital.

The Jacksons certainly knew the risks they were taking in joining the Resistance. Neighbors on Avenue Foch kept their windows closed so they did not have to hear the screams of the torture victims.

Without saying too much about the ending, I will say that the Jacksons’ luck ran out in May 1944. The last third of the book is devoted to the experiences of the family in the Nazi concentration camps. Toquette lands in Ravensbruck camp for women. Kershaw captures the depravity of the Nazis and the extraordinarily awful conditions endured by the prisoners. The brutality, the hunger, the cold, the complete lack of humanity, pity or kindness demonstrated by the Nazis: it is still hard to read about, even now.

There is a quote toward the end from Jacques Delarue, the author of a book on the Gestapo.

“It was a world where people exterminated for pleasure and where the murderers were treated as heroes. It already seemed far away, like a nightmare one would prefer to forget. And yet the poisoned yeast is still ready to rise. Men have not the right to forget so quickly. They have not the right. Never…”

Philip Jackson lived to testify in war crimes trials in 1946. He testified in a trial of fourteen SS officers who had been in charge of Neuengamme labor camp where he and his father had been held. Jackson pointed out the Nazis he personally saw commit crimes. The defense attorney for the Nazis argued that his clients were “tools” and not responsible. The Nazis in this trial were sentenced to death. Kershaw wrote that the Nazis showed not even a shred of regret or remorse.

Helmut Knochen, the Gestapo chief in Paris, was sentenced to death in 1947. Incredibly, he escaped hanging. This was a person who played a major role in sending almost 80,000 Jews to their deaths. Knochen had argued: “Neither I, nor one of my subordinates could have acted otherwise, without being condemned to death immediately.”

Knochen was sentenced to death a second time during the Cold War. Knochen’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Then, in 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle inexplicably pardoned Knochen. Knochen returned to Germany and lived to be 93 years old before he died peacefully. He said that the extermination of the Jews by Hitler was the greatest crime in history but he claimed that he did not know the Jews of France who were deported East were being murdered.

The escape of so many Nazis from the fate that they so richly deserved never ceases to amaze. It is hard to understand how the fatuous and transparently false arguments made by Knochen and other Nazis were given any credence.

One other story I would mention: Kershaw tells how Hitler wanted Paris completely destroyed at the end of the war. Even though it was clear the Nazi cause was lost, Hitler madly ordered they fight to the last man. He wanted all the great monuments and bridges blown up. Hitler wanted Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, left a vast ruin. As insane as the Nazis were, it turned out that some of their generals did not want to go down in history as the destroyer of Paris.

Kershaw quotes the French Resistance leader, Jean-Pierre Levy:

“We lived in the shadows as soldiers of the night, but our lives were not dark and martial…There were arrests, torture and death for so many of our friends and comrades, and tragedy awaited all of us just around the corner. But we did not live in or with tragedy. We were exhilarated by the challenges and rightness of our cause.”

It was inspiring to read about and feel the atmosphere of that humane heroism.

This campaign season the issues of terrorism and national security have pushed domestic matters into the background. That is too bad because we are starved for discussion of new policy ideas on the home front.

This is the first presidential election where paid family and medical leave has been discussed by the candidates as a real possibility. You have to ask: what took so long?

The Family and Medical Leave Act, also known as the FMLA, mandated 12 weeks of unpaid leave for employees in companies of 50 workers or more. The FMLA passed in 1993. Advocates at the time of bill passage thought the FMLA was only a first step in addressing family friendly employment leave policies.

Here we are 22 years later and we are still waiting for step two. This in spite of the fact that the FMLA has been widely recognized as a very successful and popular program.

In an earlier life when I worked as a lobbyist in the New Hampshire Legislature, I tried to assist bills in multiple legislative sessions that were designed to create paid family and medical leave in our state. In those efforts, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Rep. Mary Stuart Gile of Concord.

Rep. Gile is the unsung heroine of paid family leave in New Hampshire. For years, Rep. Gile has brought forward bills to advance that issue. She deserves credit for consistently trying a variety of ways to promote paid family leave and for making compelling policy arguments for why it would be good for our state.

In her advocacy, Rep. Gile has been a genuine educator. As those around the Legislature know, it can often take a very long time to translate a new idea, even a very good idea, into law.

I believe the bills Rep. Gile has introduced in the past have typically stalled because of opposition from business lobbyists and also from very conservative elements in the Republican party. The lobbyists always raised questions about the funding mechanism. While the questions were valid, it often seemed like fear of something new and any possible cost immediately trumped recognition of perceived benefits.

It would be one thing if the idea had never been tried or if it had been tried and it failed. Three states have successfully instituted paid family and medical leave – New Jersey, California, and Rhode Island. In these states, predictions of adverse consequences never materialized. Where it has been tried, paid family and medical leave has helped thousands of workers.

Two-thirds of children in the United States live in homes where both parents work. That is up from 40% in 1970. Only 12% of workers in the United States have access to paid family leave. These workers are typically higher earners, often located in the high tech industry. Under the current FMLA, only about 60% of all workers are even covered by unpaid family leave. Some significant percentage of the covered cannot afford to take unpaid leave.

These demographics dictate the increased importance of paid family leave. Millions of workers juggle caregiving responsibilities for young children or aging parents with work responsibilities. The timing of the birth of a new born or an unexpected illness of a family member can throw a monkey wrench into complicated work and family schedules. The challenges of juggling work and family can be particularly acute in single parent households.

Here in the United States, we have been remarkably slow in recognizing the importance of paid family leave. While Americans like to brag we are number one in various international contests, when it comes to paid family leave we are number last. We are the outlier country. With the exception of very small Papua New Guinea, every other nation in the world now requires paid maternity leave.

Just to gain perspective, I think it is important to see what other countries are doing with paid family leave. Among the most generous, Sweden offers 16 months of paid parental leave. Finland offers 9 months of paid leave. The parents in Finland can take or split additional paid “child care leave” until the child’s third birthday.

The United Kingdom offers 40 weeks of paid maternity leave, Vietnam and Ireland offer 26 weeks, Canada offers 15 weeks, China offers 14 weeks, Congo offers 14 weeks and Mexico offers 12 weeks. Obviously, there are many countries I am not listing but what is important is that all offer some benefit.

70 countries offer paid paternity leave. To give a sampling, Iceland offers fathers 3 months paid paternity leave, Finland offers 54 days, Portugal offers 20 days, Spain offers 15 days and the United Kingdom and Australia offer 14 days.

Investigative journalist Sharon Lerner writes that many other cultures treat the immediate post-natal period as a sacred time when both the new mother and baby receive help and special attention. Too often, in the United States, the lack of time off can turn new motherhood into what Lerner calls a distressing ordeal.

No federal agency collects statistics on how much post-childbirth time off, paid or unpaid, women are actually taking. Data analyzed for the periodical, In These Times, by Abt Associates, a research and evaluation company, showed that 23% of the women interviewed were back at work within two weeks of having a baby. If true, that is a cold and brutal fact.

The data showed 80% of women who were college graduates took at least 6 weeks off to care for a new baby while only 54% of women without college degrees did so.

I believe the lack of paid family leave hits low-income workers harder. Workers in lower paid jobs with less benefits have no choice but to return to work soon after giving birth. If they don’t return, they probably lose the job. Such workers generally have no leverage with employers.

Paid family leave results in better outcomes for parents, children and businesses. It increases worker retention and it reduces turnover. More women will be able to stay in the workforce after giving birth. At the same time, businesses save dollars associated with replacing employees.

Worker stress is bad for business. It is likely that a more progressive family leave policy would result in increased productivity, improved employee morale, and greater company loyalty.

On the health side, paid family leave positively affects the health of children and mothers. I don’t think it is rocket science to recognize that more parental time at home confers health benefits to young children. It allows for better family bonding and a longer duration of breastfeeding.

There is quite a bit of research showing that the experience of interacting with familiar, responsive and stimulating primary caregivers during the first two years of life is critically important to a child’s later social, emotional and intellectual development.

The Republican presidential candidates have had little to say about paid family leave. Marco Rubio is the only Republican candidate to have any kind of plan for providing paid family leave to workers but his plan is hardly a guarantee. He would offer tax incentives to business to encourage having it. Rubio doesn’t think paid leave should be federally legislated. All the other Republican candidates oppose the idea totally.

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have all endorsed mandatory paid family leave. Sanders described our lack of paid family leave as “an international embarrasment”, which it is.

Democrats are pushing a proposal, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (the FAMILY Act) which would provide 12 weeks of paid leave, during which workers would receive 66% of their monthly wages. The program would be paid for through small payroll contributions made by employees and employers. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct) are the prime bill sponsors.

It is important to say that the paid leave proposal is not an entitlement. It would be an earned benefit. Workers have to be employed and must have paid into the system in order to collect benefits.

There is some polling data which shows that the idea of paid family leave is extremely popular with voters. An early 2015 poll from Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling form, found that a large majority agreed with paid time off to care for family members. This cut across voters of all persuasions.

America should not be the worst country in the world on paid family leave. Surely we can do better than that.