Latest News Clips 2018.09.10

1.      I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The New York Times   Sept. 5, 2018

 

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

2.      Typhoon Jebi, most powerful to hit Japan in 25 years, leaves trail of destruction in Kansai region

The Japan Times     SEP 4, 2018

Typhoon Jebi — the most powerful typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years — slammed into the western part of the country on Tuesday, killing at least seven and injuring more than 200, disrupting transportation, heavily damaging the bridge that leads to Kansai International Airport and leading authorities to call for evacuations of areas in its path.

The Meteorological Agency warned of heavy rains, strong winds and mudslides across the western and northeastern regions of the country as the typhoon first made landfall in the southern part of Tokushima Prefecture around noon. The storm made landfall again around 2 p.m. near Kobe.

As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, Jebi was traveling north-northeast over the Sea of Japan north of Niigata Prefecture at a speed of 70 kilometers per hour and with an atmospheric pressure of 975 hectopascals at its center.

In Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, one man was killed when a company storage facility collapsed amid strong winds. Powerful gusts in the prefecture also tipped over several trucks on the Meishin Expressway.

Another man died after falling from the second floor of his home in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture.

Near Kansai International Airport, strong winds swept away a tanker berthed in Osaka Bay, slamming it into the sole bridge that connects the airport to the mainland and taking a large chunk out of the bridge.

None of the 11 crew members were injured, the regional coast guard headquarters said. Heavy flooding prompted the Transport Ministry to close down the entire airport, which is built on reclaimed land.

According to the airport operators, 5,000 were stranded at the facility as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. Flight operations may resume Wednesday evening at the earliest, the operator said.

All Nippon Airways canceled more than 320 domestic and international flights, and Japan Airlines more than 270 flights on Tuesday, affecting around 57,000 passengers in total.

Power was out at 1.61 million houses in Fukui, Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara and Wakayama Prefectures on Tuesday, in addition to 95,000 houses in the Shikoku region.

In Kyoto, some people were injured after the ceiling at Kyoto Station partially collapsed, according to local police.

Dramatic footage taken by a bystander also showed parts of the roof of the newly remodeled Hotel Hewitt Koshien — near Koshien Station in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture — blowing off and into an electricity poll amid strong winds from the typhoon. The hotel is adjacent to the iconic Koshien Stadium.

In the city of Osaka, Tatsuki Okada, a desk manager at the Hyatt Regency Osaka, said he was urging visitors to take precautions amid the storm.

“The winds are quite strong and we’re advising our customers and guests not to get too close to glass windows and walls,” he said.

Meanwhile, more than 330,000 homes in the Kinki and Shikoku regions suffered power outages.

Evacuation orders were earlier issued in some areas of Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Hyogo, Kagawa, Ehime and Wakayama prefectures. In Japan, evacuation orders are not mandatory and people often stay at home, only to be trapped by rapidly rising water or sudden landslides.

Top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga had encouraged the public to “evacuate early” and said at a news conference Tuesday morning that the government will “take all possible means” to prepare for a possible crisis.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been traveling across the country in an attempt to secure support for his bid for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election later this month, canceled his trip to the Kyushu region to deal with the typhoon.

Abe had faced criticism over his initial response to heavy rain that pounded western Japan in July, given that he and some other ministers were found to have been drinking at a gathering of LDP lawmakers in Tokyo as the situation became increasingly grim.

Japan has been hit by a succession of typhoons and disasters related to heavy rain, including massive flooding and landslides that left more than 220 people dead in July.

The Meteorological Agency had projected that Typhoon Jebi would move northward along the Tohoku region’s Sea of Japan coast, weakening to an extratropical cyclone by Wednesday morning.

3.      China’s Biggest Movie Stars Get a Pay Cut (From the Government)

The Chinese authorities issued rules on actors’ pay after Fan Bingbing, one of China’s biggest stars, was accused of trying to dodge taxes.CreditCreditClemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock

       

The New York Times     June 29, 2018

HONG KONG — Movie stars in China can make as much as or more than their Hollywood counterparts. The Chinese government is not happy about that.

So officials moved this week to cap how much A-listers can make, citing potential damage to a fast-growing movie industry.

Movie star pay may seem like an issue for producers and trade magazines rather than for the Chinese Communist Party. But the government hopes to nurture the industry into an economic and cultural force to rival the soft power that Hollywood has long enjoyed around the world. Extravagant paychecks and waste could hinder that effort.

China’s movie industry has blossomed in recent years, as economic growth and a rising middle class have put more people in theater seats. Ticket sales in China totaled about $8 billion last year, Chinese media reported, compared with $11 billion for the North American market. The Chinese box office even exceeded North America’s in the first few months of this year, according to one report.

With those numbers have come some Hollywood-style paychecks — many of them going to actors who are not well known outside China. The Chinese actress Fan Binbing, for example, earned $17 million in 2016, according to a Forbes magazine ranking of the world’s best-paid actresses— more than familiar Hollywood faces like Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts. (She did not appear on the 2017 list.)

Ms. Fan, 36, has had largely superfluous parts in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and a version of “Iron Man 3” meant for audiences outside the United States, as Hollywood finds supporting roles for Chinese actors in hopes of selling more tickets in a hot new market. She is set to appear in the all-female espionage thriller “355,” which also stars Jessica Chastain and Lupita Nyong’o.

In China, however, Ms. Fan is one of the country’s most familiar faces. She shot to fame after appearing in the popular imperial palace drama “My Fair Princess” in the late 1990s. She has appeared in numerous films, such as “Chongqing Blues,” which competed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. One woman has even had plastic surgery to look like Ms. Fan, according to local news outlets.

Ms. Fan drew less welcome headlines in May, when a popular television presenter accused her of trying to dodge taxes. As evidence, the presenter, Cui Yongyuan, posted on social media what he said were two versions of a contract for the same film. According to one, she was paid about $1.6 million for four days’ work; in the other, she was paid an extra $7.8 million.

It is not clear whether the contracts are real, and Ms. Fan accused Mr. Cui of slandering her. But soon after Mr. Cui made his accusations, the Chinese tax authorities began investigating whether the movie industry was giving big-time actors two contracts, a public one to be reported to the tax authorities and a covert one promising a large bonus. In China, the practice has come to be known as “yin and yang contracts.”

In an announcement on Wednesday, the Chinese tax authorities said such practices made China’s film industry too focused on money. It said that leading actors would not be permitted to earn more than 70 percent of the full cast, or to be paid more than 40 percent of production costs. Ms. Fan was not mentioned.

The announcement also criticized the film industry as “distorting social values” and “fostering money worship tendencies” among young people who are “blindly chasing celebrities.”

The Chinese government has long been both cheerleader and disciplinarian when it comes to the movie business. It restricts how many foreign-made movies can be shown in China, in part to leave room for domestic productions. But it also limits the kinds of stories that directors, writers and actors can tell — for example, forbidding themes like spirituality, or showing crime in anything other than a negative light. Increasingly, Hollywood filmmakers have bowed to Chinese box-office pressures and removed material that could offend officials.

While the Chinese market has grown, Chinese movies still trail far behind Hollywood in terms of global viewership. “Wolf Warrior 2,” a Rambo-style film about Chinese action heroes, was one of the biggest movies in the world last year, according to Box Office Mojo, which tracks ticket sales. But it still trailed American blockbusters like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and the latest installments of “The Fast and the Furious” and the “Spider-Man” franchises, among others.