john locher/associated press · 2017. 10. 29. · gone horribly wrong. others face radi-cally...

1
A gardener and grandmother with an interest in local history became intrigued by her schoolgirl memories of a forbidding building in her Irish hometown: the St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home, a place for “fallen” women and their “illegitimate” children. But every question she posed seemed to lead to a darker place. The dead, she learned, don’t always stay buried. By Dan Barry. SPECIAL REPORT, SECTION D THE LOST CHILDREN OF TUAM When the benefits adviser Ted Benna first thought up a new type of employee savings plan in 1980, the client he created it for rejected the idea as too risky. After all, no one had previously used the unre- markable section of the tax code called 401(k) to defer paying taxes on money that rank-and-file work- ers set aside for retirement. So Mr. Benna decided to try it out at his own workplace, Johnson Companies, a small consulting firm outside Philadelphia. Without intending to, Mr. Benna set off a revolution. Nearly 40 years later, 401(k) accounts are the most common employer-spon- sored retirement plans and a raft on which millions of Americans hope to float through retirement. Suddenly, though, they are also at the center of a battle around the tax overhaul promised by Presi- dent Trump and Republican lead- ers in Congress. A proposal to slash the amount of money work- ers can put in tax-deferred retire- ment accounts set off alarms among savers and members of the financial services industry, who contend that limiting the tax break would discourage contribu- tions to 401(k) plans. Many workers once could de- pend on defined-benefit pensions, but those plans — expensive for employers — have mostly gone the way of the Walkman. Instead, workers were left with the respon- sibility of saving for retirement themselves, with individual re- tirement accounts or 401(k)’s. The switch has meant less security. Three out of four Americans worry that they will not have enough money to get through their retirements, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security. About 45 percent have not saved a cent toward it. Mr. Trump, sensitive to the fire- storm that could be provoked by limits on 401(k) contributions, tweeted that there would “be NO change” to this “great and popular middle class tax break” — before conceding it might be a part of leg- islative horse-trading. Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the principal Republican architect of the tax plan in the House, also scrambled to reassure critics that a rewrite would not un- dermine retirement savings. “All the focus is on, can we help people save more,” he said. Yet for all the alarming rhetoric about crushed nest eggs, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, the debate on Capitol Hill is not really about retirement; it’s about lawmakers’ feverish hunt for revenue to finance tax cuts. Second, no matter what happens, Plan by G.O.P. Pits Retirement Against Taxes Looking at a Reduction in Limits on 401(k)’s By PATRICIA COHEN Continued on Page 20 As North Korea races to build a weapon that for the first time could threaten American cities, its neighbors are debating whether they need their own nuclear ar- senals. The North’s rapidly advancing capabilities have scrambled mili- tary calculations across the re- gion, and doubts are growing the United States will be able to keep the atomic genie in the bottle. For the first time in recent memory, there is a daily argument raging in both South Korea and Ja- pan — sometimes in public, more often in private — about the nucle- ar option, driven by worry that the United States might hesitate to defend the countries if doing so might provoke a missile launched from the North at Los Angeles or Washington. In South Korea, polls show 60 percent of the population favors building nuclear weapons. And nearly 70 percent want the United States to reintroduce tactical nu- clear weapons for battlefield use, which were withdrawn a quarter- century ago. There is very little public sup- port for nuclear arms in Japan, the only nation ever to suffer a nucle- ar attack, but many experts be- lieve that could reverse quickly if North and South Korea both had arsenals. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has campaigned for a military buildup against the threat from the North, and Japan sits on a stockpile of nu- clear material that could power an arsenal of 6,000 weapons. Last Sunday, he won a commanding majority in parliamentary elec- tions, fueling his hopes of revising the nation’s pacifist Constitution. This brutal calculus over how to respond to North Korea is taking place in a region where several nations have the material, the technology, the expertise and the money to produce nuclear weap- ons. Beyond South Korea and Japan, there is already talk in Australia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnam about whether it makes sense to remain nuclear-free if others arm themselves — heightening fears that North Korea could set off a chain reaction in which one nation after another feels threatened and builds the bomb. In a recent interview, Henry A. Kissinger, one of the few nuclear ALLIES RATTLED BY NORTH KOREA RETHINK OPTIONS FEAR ABOUT U.S. RESOLVE Rising Insecurity Across Asia Spurs Debate on Nuclear Weapons This article is by David E. Sanger, Choe Sang-Hun and Motoko Rich. Continued on Page 13 LOMA LINDA, Calif. — “This is your life,” the doctor said. “You’re a quadriple- gic.” When she heard the news, Kim Gervais broke down. The tears rolled out, and her daughter clasped her mother’s head, over- come by her own inability to help. Then came Ms. Gervais’s trip home to Southern California. And here she was, three weeks after the shooting, strapped into a wheelchair at a rehabilitation clinic, toughing it out with a physical therapist and straining to drink from a sippy cup as her toddler grandchildren looked on. This is the road after Las Vegas, after a high-stakes gambler named Stephen Pad- dock hauled powerful weapons into a gilded resort and opened fire on a country music festival below. The journey — as the survivors of so many other American mass shootings will say — is one full of chronic pain, fights with insurance, ruined marriages, lost jobs, anguished parents and children, and the injustice of being forced into a new identity: victim. And this time, with 58 people dead, at least 161 pierced by bullets, and more than 20,000 concertgoers from around the country left to soak in the memories of that night, the web of trauma spans from coast to coast, linking the casualties of this attack with those of all the others. San Bernardino. Aurora. Orlando. Newtown. And on and on. Some people left Las Vegas with a few trample wounds and the vision of a night gone horribly wrong. Others face radi- cally altered lives. Ms. Gervais went to the concert with two friends, Dana Smith and Pati Mestas. For years they had attended country Kim Gervais, far right, at a country music club with Dana Smith, center, and Pati Mestas, who had attended shows togeth- er for years. Ms. Gervais was left a quadriplegic after the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, and Ms. Mestas was killed. Ms. Smith was uninjured. Paralyzed in Las Vegas, and Joining The Ranks of the Forgotten Victims A memorial to the victims. After mass shootings, much attention goes to those killed, but survivors face a special burden. JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS By JULIE TURKEWITZ Continued on Page 21 In late September, just as multi- ple women were days away from going on the record with reports of sexual misconduct by the Holly- wood producer Harvey Weinstein, one of his accusers, Rose McGow- an, considered an offer that sug- gested just how desperate he had become. Ms. McGowan, who was work- ing on a memoir called “Brave,” had spoken privately over the years about a 1997 hotel room en- counter with Mr. Weinstein and hinted at it publicly. Through her lawyer, she said, someone close to Mr. Weinstein offered her hush money: $1 million, in ex- change for sign- ing a nondisclo- sure agree- ment. In 1997, Ms. McGowan had reached a $100,000 settlement with Mr. Weinstein, but that agreement, she learned this summer, had never included a confidentiality clause. Ms. McGowan, who was most widely known for her role as a witch on the WB show “Charmed,” had recently devel- oped a massive following as a fiery feminist on Twitter, but she was now, at 44, a multimedia art- ist, no longer acting, her funds de- pleted by health care costs for her father, who died eight years ago. “I had all these people I’m pay- ing telling me to take it so that I could fund my art,” Ms. McGowan said in an interview. She re- sponded by asking for $6 million, part counteroffer, part slow tor- ture of her former tormentor, she said. “I figured I could probably have gotten him up to three,” she said. “But I was like — ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me Refusing Hush Money, and Calling Out Hollywood By SUSAN DOMINUS Rose McGowan Continued on Page 22 OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Gam Aung, a Burmese refugee, had never heard of sushi before arriv- ing in the United States three years ago. Today, he makes six fig- ures a year hawking creations like the Dazzling Dragon roll and the Mango Tango. Over two years, Mr. Aung, who never finished high school and is still working on his English, went from running one grocery-store sushi counter to three. Along the way, he saved enough for a $700,000 house and trained 10 fel- low Burmese to follow in his foot- steps. “I came true with my American dream,” said Mr. Aung, 38, stand- ing behind his sushi display inside a supermarket in this Southern California town. There is a long American tradi- tion of immigrant communities dominating certain business sec- tors, recruiting their compatriots and building their way to the mid- dle class. Many examples are fa- miliar. Greek diners. Chinese laundries. Vietnamese nail salons. You may not have heard of Burmese sushi counters. But the workers assembling California rolls behind the coun- ters in most grocery stores are al- most certainly not Japanese. Many are refugees from Myan- mar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma, where civil conflicts have over the years displaced hundreds of thousands of people of various ethnic minor- ities, like the Chin, the Kachin, the Karen and most recently the Ro- hingya. Tens of thousands of Burmese, like Mr. Aung, who is Kachin, have in recent years been resettled in the United States. And sushi, Sushi (Japanese) + Immigrants (Burmese) = Dream (American) By MIRIAM JORDAN Continued on Page 4 The country created an armed unit to defend its elephants, which were being threatened not only by poachers but also by terrorists and bandits. PAGE 8 INTERNATIONAL 6-16 An Elephant Brigade in Mali White supremacist rallies are often fueled by travelers from afar, challeng- ing local police officers who must deal with unfamiliar faces. PAGE 21 NATIONAL 17-23 When Racism Hits the Road Los Angeles rallied for a 6-2 victory over the Houston Astros, who were undone by a shaky bullpen. The World Series is tied at two games apiece. PAGE 1 SPORTSSUNDAY Dodgers Take Game 4 Adam Bryant, in his final Corner Office column, writes about lessons from a decade of interviewing chief executives about how they lead. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS How to Be the Big Boss U(D5E71D)x+&!&!_!#!_ Maureen Dowd PAGE 2 SUNDAY REVIEW Late Edition VOL. CLXVII . . No. 57,765 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2017 Today, heavy rain, areas of flooding, breezy, high 68. Tonight, rain, heavy early, areas of flooding, windy, low 54. Tomorrow, rain early, windy, high 57. Weather map, Page A24. $6.00

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Page 1: JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS · 2017. 10. 29. · gone horribly wrong. Others face radi-cally altered lives. Ms. Gervais went to the concert with two friends, Dana Smith and Pati

C M Y K Nxxx,2017-10-29,A,001,Bs-4C,E3

A gardener and grandmother with aninterest in local history became intriguedby her schoolgirl memories of aforbidding building in her Irishhometown: the St. Mary’s Mother andBaby Home, a place for “fallen” womenand their “illegitimate” children. Butevery question she posed seemed to leadto a darker place. The dead, she learned,don’t always stay buried. By Dan Barry.

SPECIAL REPORT, SECTION D

THE LOST CHILDREN OF TUAM

When the benefits adviser TedBenna first thought up a new typeof employee savings plan in 1980,the client he created it for rejectedthe idea as too risky. After all, noone had previously used the unre-markable section of the tax codecalled 401(k) to defer paying taxeson money that rank-and-file work-ers set aside for retirement.

So Mr. Benna decided to try itout at his own workplace, JohnsonCompanies, a small consultingfirm outside Philadelphia.

Without intending to, Mr. Bennaset off a revolution. Nearly 40years later, 401(k) accounts arethe most common employer-spon-sored retirement plans and a rafton which millions of Americanshope to float through retirement.

Suddenly, though, they are alsoat the center of a battle around thetax overhaul promised by Presi-dent Trump and Republican lead-ers in Congress. A proposal toslash the amount of money work-ers can put in tax-deferred retire-ment accounts set off alarmsamong savers and members of thefinancial services industry, whocontend that limiting the taxbreak would discourage contribu-tions to 401(k) plans.

Many workers once could de-pend on defined-benefit pensions,but those plans — expensive foremployers — have mostly gonethe way of the Walkman. Instead,workers were left with the respon-sibility of saving for retirementthemselves, with individual re-tirement accounts or 401(k)’s. Theswitch has meant less security.

Three out of four Americansworry that they will not haveenough money to get throughtheir retirements, according to theNational Institute on RetirementSecurity. About 45 percent havenot saved a cent toward it.

Mr. Trump, sensitive to the fire-storm that could be provoked bylimits on 401(k) contributions,tweeted that there would “be NOchange” to this “great and popularmiddle class tax break” — beforeconceding it might be a part of leg-islative horse-trading.

Representative Kevin Brady ofTexas, the principal Republicanarchitect of the tax plan in theHouse, also scrambled to reassurecritics that a rewrite would not un-dermine retirement savings.

“All the focus is on, can we helppeople save more,” he said.

Yet for all the alarming rhetoricabout crushed nest eggs, there area couple of things to keep in mind.

First, the debate on Capitol Hillis not really about retirement; it’sabout lawmakers’ feverish huntfor revenue to finance tax cuts.Second, no matter what happens,

Plan by G.O.P.Pits Retirement

Against Taxes

Looking at a Reductionin Limits on 401(k)’s

By PATRICIA COHEN

Continued on Page 20

As North Korea races to build aweapon that for the first timecould threaten American cities, itsneighbors are debating whetherthey need their own nuclear ar-senals.

The North’s rapidly advancingcapabilities have scrambled mili-tary calculations across the re-gion, and doubts are growing theUnited States will be able to keepthe atomic genie in the bottle.

For the first time in recentmemory, there is a daily argumentraging in both South Korea and Ja-pan — sometimes in public, moreoften in private — about the nucle-ar option, driven by worry that theUnited States might hesitate todefend the countries if doing somight provoke a missile launchedfrom the North at Los Angeles orWashington.

In South Korea, polls show 60percent of the population favorsbuilding nuclear weapons. Andnearly 70 percent want the UnitedStates to reintroduce tactical nu-clear weapons for battlefield use,which were withdrawn a quarter-century ago.

There is very little public sup-port for nuclear arms in Japan, theonly nation ever to suffer a nucle-ar attack, but many experts be-lieve that could reverse quickly ifNorth and South Korea both hadarsenals.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hascampaigned for a military buildupagainst the threat from the North,and Japan sits on a stockpile of nu-clear material that could power anarsenal of 6,000 weapons. LastSunday, he won a commandingmajority in parliamentary elec-tions, fueling his hopes of revisingthe nation’s pacifist Constitution.

This brutal calculus over how torespond to North Korea is takingplace in a region where severalnations have the material, thetechnology, the expertise and themoney to produce nuclear weap-ons.

Beyond South Korea and Japan,there is already talk in Australia,Myanmar, Taiwan and Vietnamabout whether it makes sense toremain nuclear-free if others armthemselves — heightening fearsthat North Korea could set off achain reaction in which one nationafter another feels threatened andbuilds the bomb.

In a recent interview, Henry A.Kissinger, one of the few nuclear

ALLIES RATTLEDBY NORTH KOREARETHINK OPTIONS

FEAR ABOUT U.S. RESOLVE

Rising Insecurity AcrossAsia Spurs Debate on

Nuclear Weapons

This article is by David E. Sanger,Choe Sang-Hun and Motoko Rich.

Continued on Page 13

LOMA LINDA, Calif. — “This is yourlife,” the doctor said. “You’re a quadriple-gic.”

When she heard the news, Kim Gervaisbroke down. The tears rolled out, and herdaughter clasped her mother’s head, over-come by her own inability to help.

Then came Ms. Gervais’s trip home toSouthern California. And here she was,three weeks after the shooting, strappedinto a wheelchair at a rehabilitation clinic,toughing it out with a physical therapistand straining to drink from a sippy cup as

her toddler grandchildren looked on.This is the road after Las Vegas, after a

high-stakes gambler named Stephen Pad-dock hauled powerful weapons into agilded resort and opened fire on a countrymusic festival below. The journey — as thesurvivors of so many other Americanmass shootings will say — is one full ofchronic pain, fights with insurance, ruinedmarriages, lost jobs, anguished parentsand children, and the injustice of beingforced into a new identity: victim.

And this time, with 58 people dead, atleast 161 pierced by bullets, and more than20,000 concertgoers from around the

country left to soak in the memories ofthat night, the web of trauma spans fromcoast to coast, linking the casualties of thisattack with those of all the others. SanBernardino. Aurora. Orlando. Newtown.And on and on.

Some people left Las Vegas with a fewtrample wounds and the vision of a nightgone horribly wrong. Others face radi-cally altered lives.

Ms. Gervais went to the concert withtwo friends, Dana Smith and Pati Mestas.For years they had attended country

Kim Gervais, far right, at acountry music club with Dana

Smith, center, and Pati Mestas,who had attended shows togeth-er for years. Ms. Gervais was left

a quadriplegic after the Oct. 1mass shooting in Las Vegas,

and Ms. Mestas was killed. Ms. Smith was uninjured.

Paralyzed in Las Vegas, and Joining The Ranks of the Forgotten Victims

A memorial to the victims. After mass shootings, much attention goes to those killed, but survivors face a special burden.JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By JULIE TURKEWITZ

Continued on Page 21

In late September, just as multi-ple women were days away fromgoing on the record with reports ofsexual misconduct by the Holly-wood producer Harvey Weinstein,one of his accusers, Rose McGow-an, considered an offer that sug-gested just how desperate he hadbecome.

Ms. McGowan, who was work-ing on a memoir called “Brave,”had spoken privately over theyears about a 1997 hotel room en-counter with Mr. Weinstein andhinted at it publicly. Through herlawyer, she said, someone close to

Mr. Weinsteinoffered herhush money:$1 million, in ex-change for sign-ing a nondisclo-sure agree-ment.

In 1997, Ms.McGowan hadreached a

$100,000 settlement with Mr.Weinstein, but that agreement,she learned this summer, hadnever included a confidentialityclause. Ms. McGowan, who wasmost widely known for her role asa witch on the WB show“Charmed,” had recently devel-

oped a massive following as afiery feminist on Twitter, but shewas now, at 44, a multimedia art-ist, no longer acting, her funds de-pleted by health care costs for herfather, who died eight years ago.

“I had all these people I’m pay-ing telling me to take it so that Icould fund my art,” Ms. McGowansaid in an interview. She re-sponded by asking for $6 million,part counteroffer, part slow tor-ture of her former tormentor, shesaid. “I figured I could probablyhave gotten him up to three,” shesaid. “But I was like — ew, gross,you’re disgusting, I don’t wantyour money, that would make me

Refusing Hush Money, and Calling Out Hollywood

By SUSAN DOMINUS

Rose McGowan

Continued on Page 22

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — GamAung, a Burmese refugee, hadnever heard of sushi before arriv-ing in the United States threeyears ago. Today, he makes six fig-ures a year hawking creations likethe Dazzling Dragon roll and theMango Tango.

Over two years, Mr. Aung, whonever finished high school and isstill working on his English, went

from running one grocery-storesushi counter to three. Along theway, he saved enough for a$700,000 house and trained 10 fel-low Burmese to follow in his foot-steps.

“I came true with my Americandream,” said Mr. Aung, 38, stand-ing behind his sushi display insidea supermarket in this SouthernCalifornia town.

There is a long American tradi-tion of immigrant communities

dominating certain business sec-tors, recruiting their compatriotsand building their way to the mid-dle class. Many examples are fa-miliar. Greek diners. Chineselaundries. Vietnamese nail salons.

You may not have heard ofBurmese sushi counters.

But the workers assemblingCalifornia rolls behind the coun-ters in most grocery stores are al-most certainly not Japanese.Many are refugees from Myan-

mar, the Southeast Asian countryformerly known as Burma, wherecivil conflicts have over the yearsdisplaced hundreds of thousandsof people of various ethnic minor-ities, like the Chin, the Kachin, theKaren and most recently the Ro-hingya.

Tens of thousands of Burmese,like Mr. Aung, who is Kachin, havein recent years been resettled inthe United States. And sushi,

Sushi (Japanese) + Immigrants (Burmese) = Dream (American)By MIRIAM JORDAN

Continued on Page 4

The country created an armed unit todefend its elephants, which were beingthreatened not only by poachers butalso by terrorists and bandits. PAGE 8

INTERNATIONAL 6-16

An Elephant Brigade in MaliWhite supremacist rallies are oftenfueled by travelers from afar, challeng-ing local police officers who must dealwith unfamiliar faces. PAGE 21

NATIONAL 17-23

When Racism Hits the RoadLos Angeles rallied for a 6-2 victory overthe Houston Astros, who were undoneby a shaky bullpen. The World Series istied at two games apiece. PAGE 1

SPORTSSUNDAY

Dodgers Take Game 4Adam Bryant, in his final Corner Officecolumn, writes about lessons from adecade of interviewing chief executivesabout how they lead. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

How to Be the Big Boss

U(D5E71D)x+&!&!_!#!_

Maureen Dowd PAGE 2

SUNDAY REVIEW

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVII . . No. 57,765 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2017

Today, heavy rain, areas of flooding,breezy, high 68. Tonight, rain, heavyearly, areas of flooding, windy, low54. Tomorrow, rain early, windy,high 57. Weather map, Page A24.

$6.00