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Trans Mountain pipeline capacity would be for naught. And Canadian citi- zens will be left holding the bag, wondering how they ever got snookered into wasting billions on such an economic dinosaur. Janet Alderton is president of the Friends of the San Juans, a nonprofit organization working to protect the San Juan Islands for people and nature, including oil spill prevention throughout the Salish Sea. She is serving her second term on the Citizens’ Committee for Pipeline Safety, a group that the Governor convened after two boys were killed in the 1999 Bellingham pipeline explosion. Michael Riordan is a physicist and author of “The Hunting of the Quark” and co-author of “Crystal Fire, the Birth of the Information Age” and “Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider.” hope that Asianmarkets for its heavy crudes will materi- alize is a pipe dream. Accord- ing to a recent Greenpeace analysis, 92 percent of the current shipments from Burnaby go to U.S. refineries, mostly those in California andWashington that can handle heavy, sulfur-laden crude oil. That number is unlikely to change much if and when the expansion goes through. Asian refiner- ies have been reluctant to invest the billions required to refine high-sulfur crude oil. And this figure ignores the more than 150,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil that cur- rently enter our state daily via Puget Sound pipelines, headed for Whatcom and Skagit County refineries. In all likelihood, the added line is based on deeply flawed economic analysis. The demand for high-sulfur, tar-sands crude is projected to drop when the Interna- tional Maritime Organiza- tion’s global pollution stan- dards become more stringent less than a year fromnow. All large commercial vessels must significantly reduce their sulfur-dioxide emis- sions by Jan. 1. Most will do that by switching to low-sul- fur fuels rather than the high-sulfur bunker fuels that have been commonly used on oceangoing vessels. And because Alberta tar-sands crudes have among the high- est sulfur content in the world, whichmakes refining them costly, the market for them is likely to plummet. In addition, Canada’s fond government want to push forward with this ill-consid- ered project in the face of such overwhelming opposi- tion and evidence? It’s be- cause the Trans Mountain pipeline is the only option left to get added Alberta tar-sands crude oil to tidewa- ters, where it could be shipped overseas and pur- portedly earn higher profits. Two other such pipelines have been canceled, and the federal government bought up the existing Trans Moun- tain pipeline for 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.4 bil- lion U.S.) to keep the third option alive. And it will cost Canada at least CA$7.4 bil- lionmore to nearly triple its capacity. The likely government decision to expand this pipe- more underwater noise. If a major oil spill occurs in the Salish Sea fromone of these tankers, the impact on the orcas would be devastat- ing, possibly wiping out the entire species. The “clean up” of conventional, floating oils is a widespreadmyth, as the recovery level is 20 percent at best. Not only could such a large spill in Haro Strait coat nearby shores and tidelands with sticky ooze, if the tanker carried diluted bitumen from tar-sands deposits in Alberta, a sizable portion of it could also separate and sink to the sea floor under conditions of high winds and waves — smothering benthic species there, including the Pacific sand lance that are a princi- pal prey of Chinook salmon. So why does the Canadian nal. That would result in a sevenfold increase in tanker traffic tomore than 800 transits a year through the orcas’ critical habitat in Haro Strait, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and adjacent Salish Sea waters. The additional underwater noise fromhundreds more tankers annually will be difficult if not impossible to mitigate. The inevitably increased racket will further obscure orcas’ Chinook salm- on prey, which they track and find using echolocation. And the tugboats necessarily accompanying these tankers for safety reasons would ironically generate even < Pipeline FROM D1 It’s not by chance that the great majority of those exploited in U.S. massage parlors are impoverished women fromAsia. I long ago lost count of the number of ads I’ve seen promising “hot young Asians” on Backpage (before federal authori- ties shut it down last year) and other sites. In January, the Chicago Sun Times obtained court records that alleged a political consultant ar- ranged for Alderman Danny Solis to have sex at massage parlors in exchange for his help on the Chica- go City Council. Authorities recorded this phone conversation between Solis and the consultant, Roberto Caldero: “I want to get a goodmassage, with a nice ending. Do you know any good places?” Solis asked. Caldero suggested a place. “What kind of women do they got there?” Solis said. “Asian,” Caldero said. “Oh good. Good, good, good. I like Asian,” the alderman said. Men who buy sex may be billion- aires or big city politicians, or the guy driving your Uber. But one thingmany have in common is an indifference to the suffering they subsidize. While visiting a court-ordered program for sex buyers in Seattle, I asked the all-male participants if they ever thought about the lives of the fellow human beings they’d purchased. “I don’t want to know how the sausage is made,” one man answered. One of my final interviews for the EXPLOITED project, published in 2018 by the USA Today Network, was with a 17-year-old survivor from a small town in Indiana. Her story illustrates buyers’ callousness even when the victim is a wounded child. My heart ached when I first saw her, sitting in a Starbucks with her therapist. Even then, two years after the commercial sexual abuse had ended, she looked so young and vulnerable. When she was a 15-year-old high school freshman, the girl had run away from a foster home. She sur- vived by stealing food andmoving from sofa to sofa for a night or two in homes of people she barely knew. At a gas station one day, she shared a cigarette with a man who said he made music videos. He offered her a job, and with seem- ingly nothing to lose, she agreed to leave with him. At first, he bought her clothes and food and gave her pot to smoke. He also rented a motel room. She told herself it was all she could expect from life. Thenmen started to knock on the motel roomdoor. Five men a day. Day after day. Until in a month, 150men had paid for sex with a child too young for a driver’s license. I wondered how somany men could live with themselves after paying to abuse this child. The answer is that they didn’t know— because they didn’t want to know — the age or background of the person whose body they paid to use. The sex trade is a don’t ask- don’t tell operation, where buyers’ biggest concern is to protect their S A U L MA R T I N E Z / T H E N EW Y O R K T I ME S The day spa in Jupiter, Florida, where authorities say New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was caught on video paying for sex acts during a yearlong sex trafficking investigation own anonymity. At the Orchids of Asia spa, ac- cording to the probable cause affi- davit, Robert Kraft arrived a minute before 11 a.m. on Jan. 20. Police say a video shows that he paid at the front desk, then undressed in a roomwhere an Asian woman then performed a sex act on him. He dressed, handed the woman a tip and left out the front door for his waiting Bentley. Police say the encounter between the billionaire and an exploited woman fromChina lasted less than 15minutes. Later that day in Kansas City, Kraft cradled the Lamar Hunt Tro- phy after his Patriots claimed an- other AFC championship. One of the richest men in the world cele- brated another memorable day as TV cameras captured his excite- ment and joy. At the Orchids of Asia that eve- ning, the women settled in for the night after the front door was locked at 9 p.m. Police say they slept on the same massage tables where men had sprawled during the day. The women, far from home and even farther from their dreams, had a few hours to them- selves before a new parade of men arrived in the morning. One long day of serving the sexu- al demands of strangers was done. Another day of life in America would soon begin. Tim Swarens is an Indianapolis-based writer. Contact him at tswarens1@gmail.com By TIM SWARENS Special to The Times B efore she left her home in Thailand, the young woman believed that America was a “mira- cle country.” She soon learned that the miracle wasn’t real. The woman, testifying last year in federal court in St. Paul, Minne- sota, described how a recruiter approached her in Thailand with the promise of a job in the United States. She accepted, hoping it would help her family escape the debt they carried after a devastat- ing flood. But the leaders of a sex traffick- ing ring that brought her and hun- dreds of other women fromAsia to the United States had different plans. After they arrived, the women were told that each of themhad to pay off up to $60,000 in debt by providing sex in spas, mas- sage parlors and apartment brothels across the country. The woman, identified only as Amy in court re- cords, said under oath that she was forced to have sex with as many as 10men a day. “I had to treat them as if they were my personal god,” she said. Her testimony helped convince jurors to convict five defendants on charges of organized sex trafficking andmoney laundering. Thirty-one other people pleaded guilty in what prosecutors described as one of the largest trafficking cases in U.S. history. But the convictions did little to slow a lucrative industry built upon the sexual exploitation of tens of thousands of women and children each year in the United States. Sex trafficking is like any other business. It flourishes only because there’s enormous demand from buyers. One of those buyers, police say, was New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who was charged on Feb. 22 with two counts of solicita- tion. Authorities say Kraft was twice caught on video paying for sex acts after arriving in chauffeur- driven Bentleys at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. Kraft, reported to be worthmore than $6 billion, has denied the allegations. Massage parlors are the most visible outposts of the nation’s burgeoning underground sex trade. Orchids of Asia set up shop in a strip mall near a Taco Bell, a nail salon and a grocery store. The Polaris Project, one of the nation’s leading anti-trafficking organizations, estimates that more than 9,000 illicit massage businesses operate in the United States. Authorities say most of the wom- en who worked at Orchids of Asia and seven other Florida massage parlors raided as part of a yearlong sex trafficking investiga- tion came to the United States fromChina. They were promised decent jobs and the chance for better lives but instead were co- erced into performing sex acts onmen they didn’t know andmight never see again. It’s a story I saw repeated over and over again as I spent much of 2016 and 2017 investigating sex trafficking in the United States and seven other countries through a grant from the Society of Profes- sional Journalists. My research included interviews withmore than 60 trafficking survi- vors, ages 6 to 64, who still bore the emotional and sometimes physical scars of exploitation. The United Nations estimates that 4.8million people, mostly women and girls, become victims of sex trafficking each year around the world. Traffickers prey on vulnerabili- ties, including poverty and gender bias. They also use racial, ethnic and religious prejudices and stereotypes to target and evenmarket victims. Hidden in plain sight, sex trafficking thrives on casual callousness of buyers New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft COMMENTARY in America they pretend that they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. For example, large numbers of Americans apparently believe that Donald Trump is a self-mademan. In any case, America’s exception- ally low social mobility is distinct from its exceptionally high income inequality, although these are al- most surely related. Among ad- vanced countries, there is a strong negative correlation between in- equality andmobility, sometimes referred to as the “Great Gatsby curve.” This makes sense. After all, huge disparities in parents’ income tend to translate into large dispari- ties in children’s opportunities. And people do, by the way, seem to understand this point. Many Americans don’t realize howun- equal our society really is; when given facts about income inequali- ty, they becomemore likely to believe that coming froma wealthy family plays a big role in personal success. Back to the “potential for upward mobility”: Where do people from poor or modest backgrounds have the best chance of getting ahead? The answer is that Scandinavia leads the rankings, although Cana- da also does well. And here’s the thing: The Nordic countries don’t just have low inequality, they also havemuch bigger governments, muchmore extensive social safety nets, thanwe do. In other words, they have what Republicans de- nounce as “socialism” (it really isn’t, but never mind). And the association between “socialism” and social mobility isn’t an accident. On the contrary, it’s exactly what youwould expect. Paul Krugman is a regular columnist for The New York Times. PAUL KRUGMAN Syndicated columnist If you’re like me, you could use at least a brief break from talking about President Donald Trump. So why don’t we talk about Ivanka Trump instead? You see, recently she said something that would have been remarkable coming fromany Republican but was truly awesome coming from the Daughter-in- Chief. The subject under discussionwas the proposal, part of the Green New Deal, that the government offer a jobs guarantee. Ivanka Trump trashed the notion, claiming that Americans “want to work for what they get,” that they want to live in a country “where there is the poten- tial for upwardmobility.” OK, this was world-class lack of self-awareness: It doesn’t get much better than being lectured on self- reliance by an heiress whose busi- ness strategy involves trading on her father’s name. But let’s go be- yond the personal here. We know a lot about upwardmobility in differ- ent countries, and the facts are not what Republicans want to hear. The key observation, based on a growing body of research, is that when it comes to upward social mobility, the U.S. is truly exception- al — that is, it performs exceptional- ly badly. Americans whose parents have low incomes aremore likely to have low incomes themselves, and less likely tomake it into themiddle or upper class, than their counter- parts in other advanced countries. And those who are born affluent are, correspondingly, more likely to keep their status. Now, this isn’t the way we like to see ourselves. In fact, there’s a curious disconnect between reality and perception: Americans are muchmore likely than Europeans to imagine that their society is marked by high social mobility when the reality is that we have considerably less of it than they do. Much of this appears to reflect systematic misinformation. In some places hereditarymembers of the elite boast about their lineage, but Myth of the self-made American | SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2019 2 R D4 OPINION |