Health-care reform would put one of the most productive sectors in the U.S. to work to shore up the nation’sitting economy

By Chris Farrell

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The economy is in a tailspin. The latest reservation of grim tidings came courtesy of the Labor Dept.’s Dec. 5 employment report: U.S. employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November (BusinessWeek.com, 12/05/08), the largest monthly decline in more than three decades. The unemployment charge now stands at 6.7% and the ranks of the jobless bring forth increased by 2.7 a thousand thousand since December. The broadest measure of unemployment (a figure that includes the unemployed, employees laboring part-time, and others barely working) stands at a dismaying 12.5%, or 19.3 a thousand thousand workers, up from 8.4% a year ago, or 12.9 million workers.

Considering the whole of the actions being taken by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve to shore up the economy, the risk that a disinflationary recession deepens into a deflationary depression remains distant. But it isn’t inconceivable.

To stave off an unwelcome reprise of the 1930s, the incoming Obama Administration and Congress are preparing a large fiscal stimulus package for the New Year. Economists guesstimate the size of the ultimate package at somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion. (That’s more than duplicate or about triple the tax rebate program from earlier this year.)

The desire of legislative initiatives is long. A big boost in public infrastructure spending, support for struggling homeowners, money to shore up the financial system, some form of a bailout for the Detroit auto industry, and manifold tax release measures are totally going into the legislative sausage-making apparatus for 2009.

Yet major health-care repair—specifically, universal health care—should cover on the top the list. Forget any hint that reform is too expensive or that it would take too longing to have any impact. Wrong, on the one and the other counts. A daring embrace of general health solicitude offers policymakers the chance at a fiscal triple-play: Universal coverage would stimulate the established order, it would boost the financial stake of ordinary Americans, and it would break the health-care reform log-jam.

To explanation and update a famous quote about General Motors (GM), what’s good in opposition to health-care form anew is good for the dispensation. (It would certainly have being good for General Motors, overmuch.)

The case for long-term reclaim is compelling. The problems associated end America’s badly frayed health-care system are well known. The country spends a world-beating 16% of gross domestic product on health, nevertheless in international comparisons it lags back a number of solution measures. For instance, the U.S. ranks 29th in infant mortality and 48th in life expectancy. The number of people on the outside of health insurance was 38 million in 2007, and that number is guaranteed to have risen in the meantime with the recession that began a year ago. With universal health care, everyone under age 65 would be covered by a qualified health insurance company or from one side a government-sponsored program. (Those over 65 already be the subject of a version of universal coverage through Medicare.)

Sam Zell, the real estate mogul who owns media conglomerate Tribune Co., has retained advisers to assist with a potential bankruptcy filing

By Jon Fine

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The Tribune Co., the media conglomerate bought by real estate mogul Sam Zell in an extremely leveraged deal in December 2007, has hired advisers to assist by a possible insolvency filing, according to multiple published reports. The crew continues to work feverishly to experience to restructure its debt agreements with lenders, as the company’s declining cash flow puts it in danger of conscious in default of its lend convenants.

It’session by means of no means certain which course of action Tribune will choose, although the Wall Street Journal , which broke the news that Tribune had hired investment bank Lazard Ltd. and legal sturdy Sidley Austin to assist its explorations, reported a bankruptcy filing could come as early as this week.

Should Tribune toothed for insolvency, it would have existence the first recent major media deal birthed in the assumptions and fault markets of a previous era—an series that flourished taken in the character of recently as 18 months ago—that has gone bankrupt in the current economic environment. Zell’s $8.2 billion deal for Tribune (BusinessWeek, 7/30/08) left the company with $13 billion in debt.

A Tribune spokesman did not return calls Sunday evening, no more than told Tribune’s Chicago Tribune that "we haven’t made any conclusion. We’re looking at all of our options."

While Zell’s divide, accomplished thanks to his use of an employee stock-ownership plan, had vocal critics from Day One, the degree to which events have turned against Tribune is astonishing. Its media businesses are dependent on advertising, what one. is severely affected by the benevolent of broad economic downturn the U.S. is now facing, and what might have been negotiated with its lenders in a more generous credit environment is now impossible.

Zell bought Tribune candid as newspapers’ businesses collapsed, and that collapse has been particularly pronounced against the big-city dailies found in Tribune’session portfolio. And the business of newspapers continues to worsen: Tribune newspapers’ ad revenues dropped 19% in the third fourth part of this year.

In the past week, E W Scripps announced it was seeking a buyer for its Denver newspaper The Rocky Mountain News, and The New York Times reported that McClatchy had approached potential buyers for its Miami Herald. That major companies would consider selling in so a tremendous environment speaks volumes similar to to how impaired an asset a big-city newspaper is.

Elsewhere in Tribune’s portfolio, its TV station occupation hit headwinds so severe that even an election season eminent through unprecedented political ad spending and a closely watched Summer Olympics failed to lift that business into positive domain. In the third be stationed, Tribune’sitting TV revenue barbarous 8%.

A cornerstone of Tribune strategy was to sell the company’s Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball team, yet that hasn’t happened yet, and the monetary downturn has hit asset valuations in sports teams along with everything else. Tribune had counted upon selling the Cubs to give it breathing room with its interest payments, around $1 billion is proper this year and $512 million is to be ascribed next June.

But every executive familiar with media deals and bankruptcy pointed out that having a vender potentially nearing bankruptcy may well delay any possible transaction until such a situation resolves itself.

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WASHINGTON — Of all the promises Barack Obama made during his campaign, none received more cheers and applause than his vow to make college more affordable and accessible with respect to America’s not old people.

This was obviously appealing to youths themselves, many of whom now find themselves, such as Barack and Michelle Obama did, burdened with debt when they finish their educations. But equally, it was attractive to parents and grandparents who worry about how the next generations in their families can afford the education that is necessary to their events to come well-being.

A report last week from a commission headed through Jim Hunt, the former governor of North Carolina, underlines how important Obama’s pledge is — and how hard to manage it may be to attain his goals.

Its bottom line: College has become increasingly unaffordable to millions of middle-class and working-class Americans, and the rising barriers to campuses are costing the United States in the international competition for a fitted work coerce.

Here are a couple of the key findings from “Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education,” published by The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education:

Between 1982 and 2007, college schooling and fees rose three seasons in the manner that fast as median family income, after adjusting for inflation. In the past decade, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of undergraduate borrowers and a doubling in the inflation-adjusted complete of students’ debts.

The affordability barrier to college is eroding America’s standing in the world. Among Americans over 35 and under 64, the United States is second merely to Canada in the percentage holding at minutest two-year degrees. But among those between 25 and 34, we lag not only behind Canada, but Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium, Norway, France and Denmark. When it comes to community completion rates, we are 15th of 29 rated nations, barely above Mexico and Turkey.

In each interview, Hunt warned that the trend threatens the U.S. household future. It results in part from the stagnation of wages and family incomes in the past decade, and also from the severe inflation of college costs — worse plane than the run-up in medical care.

With Obama and a Democratic Congress, it is likely that help for students and their families will be on the way — to the extent that governmental estimate limitations and the need for big housekeeping goad packages allow.

But Hunt’s message to those now sitting in the governors’ chairs, of the same kind with he did for with equal reason long, is that higher ed must become their precedence as well.

“We’ve gone through three stages,” he told me. “First, states focused on K-12 and developed a standards-based approach to improving the performance of elementary and secondary schools. Then we turned to early-childhood education and worked on universal kindergarten and pre-K programs. The nearest point of convergence has to be on the colleges.”

With state budgets already under duress because of slumping revenues and resurrection Medicaid costs, Hunt said he realizes that it disposition be difficult this year to protect higher education’s funding, let alone increase spending.

But he said the report makes a powerful matter that the worst deed to do is to continue to raise tuition and fees, putting college beyond the reach of greater amount of and more families.

“We have to look at productivity measures adhering the side of college faculties,” he reported. “The course drag weight may have to increase on this account that some professors.”

That will not be comprehensible end some of my friends at the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia. But when autoworkers are giving up — at minutest temporarily — some of their unemployment and health-care benefits, academics may consider to sacrifice as well.

As Obama clearly recognizes, the education of the next collection of those of nearly the same age is not something that can be squandered, if this state is to have a decent future.

David S. Broder’session round pillar appears Sunday in succession editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com

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Local government finances are so dire, it is leisure to consider — and enact — an annual fee on bicyclists.

A $25 annual fee for owning a bike is a idiot result of the enormous amounts of trails, lanes and accommodations the space has made to cyclists. Those funds would be useful for local cities and King County. It would also make cyclists true members of the world of transportation, in preference than free riders on the tax rolls.

Special licenses are not newly come. We warrant dogs, our cars, our boats, our motorcycles, our pleasures in hunting and fishing, since well as many other outdoor activities. Cyclists, known for their community sprite and exalted senses of self, should welcome this suitable to help government support their activities.

A unmixed inquisition of current and future bike trails shows a remarkable generosity on the part of Puget Sound taxpayers. Whenever new transportation projects are studied, bike lanes are as automatic like white striping.

In 2012, for example, cyclists and pedestrians will have trails 14-feet wide in SoDo niggardly the stadiums. Any Highway 520 floating bridge schematic includes a lane for cyclists. How about if they help pay their apportioned lot? If Interstate 90 and Highway 520 bridges are tolled, it’s only logical to expect cyclists to pay a modest toll, too, by reason of access to a great path across the water and spectacular views.

Seattle went through a lengthy continued movement of enhancing the Burke-Gilman Trail through industrial Ballard. Among the pretzel routes, all were made to make cycling as easy as possible. Those costs, born through the industries of Ballard and the incorporated town, could be offset by a modest be a good investment.

Asked Friday if Seattle has at all tax on cyclists, Mayor Greg Nickels admitted no, but said he thought there was a bicycle license fee in the 1940s, clearly a precedent.

On the Eastside, cyclist organizations were heavily involved in the creation of the Lake Sammamish Trail, a wonderful course betwixt Redmond and Issaquah. But an annual fee would render the encumbrance on the body politic and direct fees toward the user group. That’session the way bureaucrats talk when they propose things like another nickel on the elastic fluid tax.

Cyclists, the most flourishing of our inhabitants, would embrace the annual fee schedule as a way of ensuring more proactive cycling mode of action before our various the stage and commissions. I am sure the King County Council, beset by weighty tax shortfalls, would welcome this occasion to bring cyclists to the fee-based premise of future county funding. Same inanimate object for City Hall, where cyclists enjoy a strong representation, which has prompted the city to earmark millions of dollars for more bike lanes and paths. Twenty-five bucks a year for each cyclist is a bargain in trade.

In the same sense, Critical Mass, the foretaste congregation of cyclists who sometimes take over our streets, would be beneficial to jurisprudence and order. A Critical Mass accumulation of cyclists would allow Seattle police to quick spot those who have a bike permit and those who do not, with appropriate fees and penalties.

King County before that time imposes a user fee put on cyclists. It’s illegal to ride a bike out of a armor because of the head — something dads and their children should remember as they take to the sidewalks on those elementary trips by Christmas bikes. Yet the contributions to the cycling common by the locality greatly outweigh the return from those healthy bikers. Cycling organizations should exist the first to recognize their members’ application of urban and suburban pathways is also the pathway to street credentials with other members of the public.

Those organizations are powerful. Bicyclers thwart the region are known as accommodating and uncomplaining — in the manner that long as they get their track. Now is the time for them to show it by contributing to the public trough.

Will any of this happen? No, because from my perch, I don’t know of a single, elected public official with the guts to propose a bike tax.

James F. Vesely’s array of less front than depth appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, avail to Opinion at www.seattletimes.com/edcetera

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Economists rarely agree on anything, yet this time is deviating: 2009 will offer little, if at all, relief from a recession that is already officially a year fertile. This downturn will be longer and deeper than some seen since 1981, and it well may be the worst contraction since the Great Depression.

The of forbidding look tidings seemed barely better for Seattle when I talked last week with economist Mark McMullen, a director at Economy.com. “Washington and Seattle are fairly well-positioned for the current downturn,” he said.

So far, so well qualified. Then, he added: “That said, we expect it to be a severe one in all places, including Seattle. This will be one of the more severe downturns that the space has experienced.” Ouch.

Still, great fortunes and innovative breakthroughs are made during tough times. Well-run and lucky companies survive, just viewed like Boeing and Washington Mutual came through the Depression (alas, in the modern’s case, this time it was not to be). Painful at the same time that it can have existence, life goes on.

I’m setting down some unscientific markers to watch in 2009, what one. may give us a view of the health of the Puget Sound economy, potential dangers and opportunities. You can’t tell the players without a program, in the same manner get your recession program in the present state:

• Biotech. Every state and city wants a piece of this 21st-century sector, but Seattle is consistently rated one of the top biotech/biomedical hubs in the country. This will come under pressure as the perpetually volatile sector faces venture-capital shortages, the credit squeeze and worldwide competition. Severe cuts at the University of Washington would besides hobble a key associate.

Silver lining: Seattle before that time has a substantial set of biotech assets, along with being a major software nave. This sector could also account from the new administration’s friendlier attitude respecting funding inquiry and science.

• Boeing. The aircraft giant isn’t as central to the region’s economy as it was 30 years ago, bound it still employs 77,000 in Washington state and anchors a Tiffany economic asset: the aerospace sector. Boeing has been a major jobs engine here in recent years but is warning of potential layoffs in 2009 as the recession causes airlines to cancel or procrastination ecclesiastical office.

Silver lining: Boeing appears to have achieved issueétente with its major unions, and the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner should be in demand (and ready to deliver?) as airlines start to recover.

• Downtown Seattle. No major metropolitan sunken space adjoining the basement is successful without a real downtown, and Seattle has created an to be envied center city. Now it will be hammered by the loss of Washington Mutual’s headquarters emptying 700,000 square feet, perhaps more, of primordial office space. Lost, too, will have being thousands of well-paid employees spending currency at downtown retailers. The worst of this will play out next year, as many jobs are cut and offices shut, and retailers see if they made enough in the holidays to keep going.

Silver lining: Seattle is a worldwide magnet for creative talent that feeds on, and can help reinvent, a vibrating center city. It has the Vulcan-driven transformation of South Lake Union, which volition include new Amazon.com headquarters. Nearby faculty of volition be the new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation structure.

• Government. With the state highly at the disposal of on sales taxes, it could semblance a shortfall of considered in the state of plenteous for example $6 billion. If this translates into 20 percent cutbacks at universities and a $1 billion funding loss for schools, it’s hemlock in a world that rewards education. The shortfall furthermore raises questions touching infrastructure that is similarly requisite for competitiveness.

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After closely 100 years in the dark, Seattle’session best-known tribute to Chief Seattle glows in soft unsubstantial.

Nearly three years in the doing, the $16,000 contrive to taper the image of Chief Seattle at Tilikum Place Park, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, Denny Way and Cedar Street, was a labor of love.

The lights were turned on for the first time about two weeks ago. The statue shines in the hibernate night, onward with golden leaves still clinging to sycamores rimming the park. The trees are bedecked with new sparkling lights laced through their branches as part of the lighting design.

“I loved every minute of it,” said Jim Sultan, senior designer and vice president of Studio Lux in Ballard, who wound up donating more than $3,000 in time to getting the lighting just right.

“This came up, and we decided to vouchsafe it pro bono,” Sultan reported of his firm. “We thought it would be a slam dunk and we are out of there, we didn’confidentially think it would be two and half years. But it was our contribution to the city of Seattle; we felt the statue desperately needed to be lit.”

The lighting was paid for with private donations. The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department was a full partner, doing completely the installation and maintenance.

The statue has lights in a fountain at its basis. But for years they had not worked, and they not did lighten the statue profitable. For decades, as the lights of buildings and streetlamps came on at night, Chief Seattle disappeared in the dark.

Not anymore. Now the statue beckons viewers closer at twilight. Granite benches cut into the image’session reflecting pool invite a quite repose, to think about all that has happened while the image, dedicated in 1912, has stood here, with the chief’s right arm raised to welcome settlers at Alki Point.

Reminder of history

The monorail swishes overhead. Elevators buoy up up the Space Needle, and back down. Passengers work their BlackBerrys on the relating to electricity buses over by, and dependant dishes at the nearby TV station loom over it every one of. What would Chief Seattle have thought?

Leonard Forsman, chairman of the Suquamish tribe, said the statue is an of high standing reminder of the city’s narrative, as so much changes all on all sides it.

“This is the most well-known and visible monument to Chief Seattle, other than his gravesite hither at Suquamish,” Forsman said. “It brings us back, and reminds us, it has a lot of symbolic presence.”

Chief Seattle was born around 1786 to a Suquamish father and Duwamish mother. He witnessed the comer of Capt. George Vancouver’s ship Discovery in Puget Sound in 1792, and lived to sign over his family’s lands in the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855.

He moved to the reservation created at Suquamish, and died there in his tribe’s longhouse, Old Man House, in 1866. The house was later burned by the U.S. government. Through it all, Seattle was known as a great orator, a legendary leader and a dear companion to the whites.

His statue has had a storied life, too. Created by James A. Wehn, it was the first piece of public art commissioned in Seattle.

But it had at least two brushes by the agency of disaster, the in the beginning when the artist, in a paroxysm of pique at what he believed to be the selection of a substandard firm to calculate the work, threw his mortar cast into Elliott Bay. He was cajoled into making another — eventually cast in bronze in New York, as he had originally stipulated.

Next came the cabbie in 1989 who took it immediately after himself to clean the statue with muriatic pricking, nearly ruining it. The city wearied thousands of dollars to clean and restore the work.

Effort organizer

Carole Jordan, who organized the effort to light the chief, has lived in the locality since 1960 and has always loved the image.

“He is so dignified,” she said, “and everyone contributed, it created a really great locality, we all apprehend each other now.”

Ernie Rhodes looks at the statue from the windows of his condo.

“It kind of magically glows,” Rhodes said. “And it’s like a grounding element, to recall whom Seattle is named after.

“While everything around it is glass and steel, it’s what the heart of the city is entirely about.”

Times news researcher Gene Balk contributed to this statement.

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

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Who hid the truth about the high cost of a major construction plan from Port of Seattle commissioners?

That’session a key question for Port CEO Tay Yoshitani, who will announce Tuesday disciplinary measures in countervail to Port employees involved in 10 cases of contracting fraud identified last week in a $1.4 million Port investigation.

To follow through adhering his “zero tolerance” policy for fraud, Yoshitani must decide who was liable for rewriting a memo that deliberately misled Port commissioners about a $125 million contract and concealed from them troubling facts about the proposed contract.

The memo was one of the utmost serious problems found in the Port scrutiny by former U.S. Attorney Mike McKay. Had the memo not been rewritten to hide guide knowledge of facts, McKay said, it likely would have triggered more scrutiny by commissioners. That could have led to rebidding the contract or another option that ability be in possession of saved taxpayers millions.

A state audit continue year said the Port misspent $32.8 million on the project because it paid that much more than the Port’s $93 million require to be paid estimate for the job, which entailed structure a huge plateau of dirt for the new third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Port Commission President John Creighton said he is “very much concerned” about the memo. Identifying those who rewrote the memo to make it deceptive “is something Mr. Yoshitani needs to be working on,” uttered Commissioner Bill Bryant, who oversaw McKay’s investigation.

In its at the head version, a Dec. 22, 2005, memo by means of Ray Rawe, the Port’sitting chief engineer, did which it should have: It clearly told commissioners the lone bid from TTI Constructors exceeded Rawe’s cost estimate through additional than 10 percent. The 10 percent threshold is a Port policy intended to alert commissioners to high bids and situations where jobs could be rebid or rough into pieces to possibly captivate more competitive bids.

But in subsequent versions, the memo was diluted and did not mention that the lone charge was 19 percent greater than the engineer’s estimate. “A join of flares were going up” in the elementary draft, McKay said, “and those flares were deleted in the process.”

The revisions also misled commissioners about purported reductions in TTI’s bid that supposedly would cut it from $125 very great number to $115 million.

In fact, some Port employees knew most of the reductions were not actual but cosmetic, McKay said in his report, and those were emphasized to “hush the errand into taking no action.” In the end, the reductions did not materialize, and TTI was paid $125 million for a job that cost the firm $96 million, according to McKay.

The memo failed to mention another of McKay’s findings: that a Port employee might wish colluded with TTI by providing the company a detailed spreadsheet of the Port’s estimated costs for the third-runway job before TTI submitted a bid. TTI was the sole bidder concerning the job.

The memo is an example of information the Port concealed from state auditors. David Cotton, the state’s lead auditor, spent considerable time examining the TTI contract and requested all records pertaining to it. Although he received later, diluted versions of the memo, he said he never got Rawe’s first letter version.

But Yoshitani may not be expert to pinpoint culprits. “The problem is that so numerous company people looked at it and made changes, we were not practical to identify with complete accuracy who made what changes,” McKay said.

The memo was addressed and copied to a dozen summit Port managers, including preceding Port CEO Mic Dinsmore and the airport’s director, Mark Reis.

A high-ranking Port official, who requested anonymity, reported he expects only pair Port employees to be fired in the wake of McKay’session inquiry, with neither result connected to the memo.

McKay maintains that Port managers share a “collective responsibility to travel over sure what ends up before the commission is accurate” and that there’s reason to believe a group was involved “in diluting the memo.”

McKay will immediate his investigative narration to the Port give a commission to Tuesday. Yoshitani, the Port CEO, will present his response to the report afterward.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com

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She says the only Jew she knew was Jesus.

There were not at all Jews around her in Bad Toetz, the West German village where she was born. No one talked hind part before them. No individual spoke about where they had gone or the war in which they disappeared, the war in which, she was told, her father died.

She grew up incurious here and there him — she was a year old at the time of his end of life — but that changed the day her hateful mother told her, “You are like your engender and you will die like him.”

It turned out her father was a monster named Amon Goethe and he commanded Plaszow, a forced labor camp in Poland. After the war, he was hanged. Once she knew these things, Monika Hertwig’session uninterest became her obsession. “I wanted to perceive the kind of happened to the Jews and I wanted to know how my father was involved.”

This is a column about the monster’s daughter and one of the monster’sitting many victims. And almost what happened the day they met.

That day is chronicled in a devastating documentary called “Inheritance,” which assumed manner. Wednesday on the PBS program “P.O.V.” Hertwig, the monster’s daughter, reached out to Helen Jonas, who, because a teenage young woman, was a slave in the monster’s house.

After some hesitation — did she indeed want to meet the child of the man who hit her, who cursed her, who pushed her down stairs, who projectile her boyfriend to death, who had on his hands the blood of untold thousands of Jews? — Helen Jonas, remarkably, reached back.

If you saw “Schindler’s List,” you remember Ralph Fiennes’ portrait of Goethe as a preening, sadistic bully who amused himself through gunning etc. Jews for jest. That film, says Hertwig, made her “sick with the truth.” When she saw Jonas on a German documentary, it became her mission to light upon her. Eventually, Hertwig sent a letter. I know you are suffering, she wrote. But I am suffering, overmuch.

They meet at Plaszow. It is a tense, fascinating encounter. Hertwig turns away, shuddering with tears. You can papal court in Jonas’ very body language that she finds it painful to be with the wonder’s daughter.

They tour the house in which place Jonas was a slave to Hertwig’s engender. They enter the scope where Jonas served refreshments to high-ranking Nazis. Hertwig tries to explain how her native told her Jews were solely killed to stop the spread of disease in the camp.

Jonas becomes impatient with her, equable out of humor, for repeating these excuses and denials. They were killed, she says, because they were Jews, termination. And those who survive them, whether the children of victims or of perpetrators, have a responsibility to know this truth and to speak it.

“We accurate can’cheek by jowl exist silent. We can’t push things let us go..”

Hertwig agrees. “I will learn to live by the truth,” she says.

They assume the truth will set you free. But the truth does more. It indicts, it convicts, it rends and shreds excuses, denials and the simple ability to have being at stillness with the exceeding. The truth is hard. Which is why people often choose instead the soft comfort of lies.

You see this sometimes then talk turns to America’s tortured history of race. People rationalize, justify, rush gone by the rawness of it while spouting banal platitudes. Because sometimes it’s not easy living with truth.

So you marvel at the moral courage of Hertwig in trying to make one’s self master of. And of Jonas in helping her. They are not friends, probably never will or could be, but they are linked, tied by an awful past and a determination to bear witness. The monster’s daughter makes it her life’s office to speak to German children about the crimes her father committed. And the monster’s victim does the same in the United States.

It is not just an turn. of courage. It is also one act of redemption. And of faith.

As Hertwig puts it, “If you can’familiarily change the past, maybe you can carry into effect something for the future.”

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.’session column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail consign is: lpitts@miamiherald.com