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The government looks at that language and says the plain meaning covers more than just financial records. Indeed, for more than a decade, federal prosecutors have used the statute in obstruction cases involving everything from terrorism to environmental safety violations; the "tangible object" that defendants sought to alter or destroy has included human bodies, bloodstains, guns, drugs, cash and automobiles. Most recently, the statute was used to win the conviction of a Boston man for helping the accused Boston Marathon bomber conceal physical evidence of his crime.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Assistant Public Defender John Badalamenti, representing captain Yates, will tell the justices that the government's argument is a huge overreach.

"This statute does not cover the destruction of anything but records or documents," he says. Indeed, he notes, the title of this section of the law is "Destruction and Alteration of Records" and, he contends, the purpose of the law was to prevent and punish obstruction in the financial industry.

"I would not dispute that anything can be a tangible object under the broadest dictionary definition. But they have to be read in the context of all the words that Congress legislated," Badalamenti says.

Supporting the argument and opposing the government's position is a phalanx of business organizations, as well as defense and civil liberties lawyers. They contend that if the Court upholds the government's broad reading of the statute, it will give prosecutors the power to seek penalties of up to 20 years in prison if an individual destroys any object, no matter how trivial, with the intent of obstructing a federal investigation.

The government replies that the "records only" argument would make it a crime for a murderer to destroy his victim's diary, but not the murder weapon.

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Supreme Court

Tuesday's elections weren't just bad news for Democrats. Oil giant Chevron Corp. got clobbered in a hot local election in Richmond, Calif., that was widely seen as a referendum on the company itself.

The San Francisco Bay Area community of 107,000 people attracted national attention to its race for city council. Richmond is home to one of Chevron's two West Coast refineries. The city has long been known as a company town: Chevron is Richmond's largest employer and taxpayer.

But for the past six years, progressives and their allies have controlled the city council, often tangling with the Fortune 500 company over greenhouse gas emissions, especially after a spectacular refinery fire two years ago.

Chevron had hoped to reverse that dynamic by supporting a slate of candidates who are sympathetic to the company's plans for modernizing its refinery. It spent about $3 million to support them, issuing an avalanche of glossy mailers and buying virtually every billboard in town.

In contrast, the slate of under-funded progressive candidates led by City Councilman Tom Butt spent only a tiny fraction of that amount on its massive door-to-door campaign.

Early returns indicated the progressives' grass roots strategy would be successful. By the end of election night, Butt had captured the mayor's race with more than 51 percent of the votes cast, and the Chevron-backed candidate, City Councilman Nat Bates, garnered just over 35 percent.

As a distraught Bates told the Richmond Confidential, "It's a bloodbath, obviously. I think the citizens will suffer."

Butt, who had accused Chevron of trying to buy the Richmond Council election, was ecstatic over his David versus Goliath victory.

"To take on a campaign that's funded with $3 million and our modest campaign budget was about $50,000," he said, "but we had a lot of grassroots help and we pulled it off."

The progressives also won three full-term city council seats, with out-going Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, incumbent Jovanka Beckles, and challenger Eduardo Martinez beating a slate of Chevron-backed candidates. Another incumbent who often sides with the progressives, Jael Myrick, also won a two-year seat.

Chevron said it will try to find common ground with the newly-elected city council.

"This city, which we have proudly called home for more than a century, has far more opportunities than challenges," said a spokesman. "The council should remain focused on all those opportunities, and Chevron will remain focused on all those opportunities, and Chevron will continue to work to create economic opportunities for all residents."

The outcome will likely energize progressives in and around Richmond, a much-maligned city that recently has made strides in re-casting its former image as a poor and crime-ridden community. Relatively modest home prices have attracted a generation of younger residents who are demanding better schools, safer streets, and cleaner air.

University of San Francisco political scientist Corey Cook says the Richmond City Council race proves that money doesn't always win elections.

"You can throw big money on a 'no' campaign. Voters are inclined to vote no. But Richmonders knew who the candidates were and liked them. It appears the Chevron money itself became an issue in the race, " he said.

Bay Area

Politics

Elections

Why do people sometimes give generously to a cause — and other times give nothing at all?

That's a timely question, because humanitarian groups fighting the Ebola outbreak need donations from people in rich countries. But some groups say they're getting less money than they'd expect from donors despite all the news.

Psychologist Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon has some answers that may surprise you.

In one study, Slovic told volunteers about a young girl suffering from starvation and then measured how much the volunteers were willing to donate to help her. He presented another group of volunteers with the same story of the starving little girl — but this time, also told them about the millions of others suffering from starvation.

On a rational level, the volunteers in this second group should be just as likely to help the little girl, or even more likely because the statistics clearly established the seriousness of the problem.

"What we found was just the opposite," Slovic says. "People who were shown the statistics along with the information about the little girl gave about half as much money as those who just saw the little girl."

Slovic initially thought it was just the difference between heart and head. A story about an individual victim affects us emotionally. But a million people in need speaks to our head, not our heart. "As the numbers grow," he explains, "we sort of lose the emotional connection to the people who are in need."

But if the dry statistics aren't as powerful as the emotional message about the little girl, why do the numbers reduce people's emotional response to the child in need?

Slovic has done further research that suggests it might not be a case of heart vs. head after all, but of one set of feelings competing against another.

The volunteers in his study wanted to help the little girl because it would make them feel good and give them a warm glow. But when you mix in the statistics, volunteers might think that there are so many millions starving, "nothing I can do will make a big difference."

Now if the human brain were a computer, the two conflicting feels wouldn't cancel each other out. We would still help the little girl even if we couldn't help everyone. But the brain is a master at unconsciously integrating different feelings. So the bad feeling diminishes the warm glow — and reduces the impulse to give generously to help the child.

In other words, people decline to do what they can do because they feel bad about what they can't do.

That theory might explain why there hasn't been an outpouring of donations from Americans to the Ebola epidemic. The current outbreak triggers feelings of hopelessness: there's no cure, lots of people are sick, and lots of people will die.

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"It's really about the sense of efficacy," Slovic says. "If our brain ... creates an illusion of non-efficacy, people could be demotivated by thinking, 'Well, this is such a big problem. Is my donation going to be effective in any way?'"

Slovic's research suggests that the way to combat this hopelessness is to give people a sense that their intervention can, in fact, make a difference.

That's a challenge for charitable groups — and for journalists. A reporter's job is to tell the truth and paint a picture of everything that's happening. But when you paint the bigger picture, it could undermine people's ability to do what they can to help.

donations

ebola

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

If you're an older resident of a low-income area outside Cape Town, it might be Gloria Gxebeka. She's a 63-year-old grandmother and retired cook who used to spend her days at home alone and glued to the TV, especially the American soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. But now she's got a new job. She goes door-to-door, checking on the health of other older folks in her neighborhood.

Gxebeka works for the program AgeWell Global, directed by Dr. Mitch Besser, an American physician. Besser also founded mothers2mothers, an organization that trains HIV-positive women to mentor other HIV-positive women when they're pregnant.

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Thami Mlotaywa (left) and Gloria Gxebeka go door to door, checking on the health of aging neighbors. Anders Kelto/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Anders Kelto/NPR

Thami Mlotaywa (left) and Gloria Gxebeka go door to door, checking on the health of aging neighbors.

Anders Kelto/NPR

That idea — moms helping other moms — turned out to be very effective at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Africa. So Besser wondered how else this peer-to-peer model of health care might be applied.

He started thinking about his parents and some of their aging friends. "Their children have moved away, they can't drive anymore, and in many respects they become prisoners of their households," Besser says.

Then he thought: Why not have other older people check up on them?

One morning, Gxebeka and a co-worker, Thami Mlotaywa, stop in to see 86-year-old Ann-Marie Fisher, a fellow grandmother who has a raspy voice and walks with a cane. They sit with Fisher on a saggy couch and read a list of 20 questions from a customized cell phone. Has Fisher felt confused or dizzy in the last seven days? Has she had trouble breathing? Did she skip any meals?

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Gxebeka and Mlotaywa then look around Fisher's home and make 20 observations: Are there any tripping hazards? Has Fisher been well enough to keep the place tidy?

Gxebeka enters all of this information into the phone, which has a special app that does a calculation. A message appears: Based on the information, Fisher does not need to see a doctor or social worker.

Then comes the best part of the visit: the gossiping. The women recall stories from their younger years, including a time when Gxebeka saw her husband walking down the street with another woman.

"I was so cross!" she says, laughing.

AgeWell Global employs roughly 30 workers who go door-to-door and serve a client base of more than 100 people. For some workers, it's the first job they've ever held. They work 20 hours per week and are paid above minimum wage.

Directors of AgeWell Global say it's too early to know if the program has medical benefits, such as diagnosing diseases earlier or reducing hospitalizations. But preliminary data collected by the organization suggests an emotional benefit: a reduction in depression among people who receive the visits, according to a commonly used test.

The people who do the visiting seem to benefit, too. Gloria Gxebeka used to complain about her health: "My blood pressure was always up, my sugar was always up." But she claims that working regularly, and spending time with her neighbors, has made her feel better. "I'm really feeling excellent, fantastic, number one," she says.

And she can still watch The Bold and the Beautiful after she gets home.

South Africa

Aging