“The 5th Risk,” by Michael Lewis, 2020
Lewis is an
experienced journalist who looks at how the Trump market ideologues handled the
2016 transition to control parts of the U.S. administrative state –
specifically the departments of Energy, Agriculture and Commerce. In the process he highlights various unsung
government heroes whose contributions are massive. It’s a tragicomedy that shows how U.S. imperial
capital is faltering, creating risk and danger for the whole population. Nuclear waste, food inspections, weather
forecasting, science research, electric grid maintenance, health pandemics, sinking
boats, sick veterans, starving children, wildfires, animal abuse, seed money
for key research projects like batteries – all things that must get done or dealt
with. The bumbling and anti-scientific
incompetents sent over by the Trump administration had only one focus – how can
their private donor corporations be served?
Bad management is what Lewis calls ‘the 5th Risk.”
Essentially
the Republicans had no interest in the transition, as they didn’t know what the
departments did, nor cared. Most
agencies had zero or 1 hour briefings for Trump appointees. Remember, these are massive organizations! When inexperienced young white male
Republican neo-cons finally showed up, they carried out a purge that went
deeply into the administrative state, far deeper than previous
administrations. Mentions of climate
change were scrubbed from any government websites. They cut thousands of jobs
in research. They halved funding that
protects the electrical grid and works against natural disasters. They laid-off
experienced and long-serving government experts. In other words the anti-science slant of the
Republican Party –
climate denialism, disbelief in evolution, hostility to vaccines, belief in
chastity as a solution to pregnancy, hostility to marijuana, thinking a zygote is a human being, belief in multiple human races – carries over into
how it controls the administrative state. Even the present coronavirus shows up the unscientific idiocies coming from Trump and the Republican right.
The push
for privatization by the Republican Party is one of the book’s themes. In one astounding example, Lewis shows how
NOAA and the National Weather Service’s huge network of satellites, weather
stations, planes, buoys, observers, software and data is being privatized and
profited off by outfits like AccuWeather©
and the Weather Channel©. The Republicans even appointed the CEO of AccuWeather©, Barry Myers, to a position
of control within the Commerce Department (where the NOAA and NWS are located) so
that he could prevent them from interfering with his business - things like
putting tornado data on a website for free to warn civilians. Instead AccuWeather©
sells the information to private parties so THEY can survive. This is another blatant form of regulatory capture.
Lewis looks
into the Hanford, Washington
nuclear waste cleanup, which costs the Department of Energy (DOE) billions each
year. Rick Perry thought the DOE, which
he once said should be eliminated, only dealt with oil and gas per his Texas donors. Trump had said that Perry “should have been
forced to take an IQ test” during the campaign, but that is the guy Trump sent
over to run the DOE. Lewis explains how the
Department of Commerce is not about commerce, which billionaire banker Wilbur
Ross thought when he was appointed. It really should be called the 'Department of Science and Data.' They put an old fart Wall Street banking billionaire
in charge of that. In the Agriculture
Department they got rid of the Office of Rural Development, an office that helped their so-called 'base.' The Republicans changed the school lunch
program to allow diabetic and unhealthy shit food like hot dogs to
again be provided to school children in place of healthy food, which made their
food industry donors happy. They
tightened access to food stamps. They
increased line speeds in slaughter houses.
And so on…
Government
programs that provide funds for schools, fire stations, food, housing, health care and town
revitalization are invisible, especially in the South where politicians don’t
want government officials at events to even mention where the money is
really coming from. Tesla© itself started with seed money from the Commerce department's loan program,
but don’t tell Elon Musk that. However, Lewis does not mention government programs that benefit corporate greed, privatization, environmental degradation, war and increases in inequality. After all, this is not a neutral state, it is a capitalist state which has several aspects, not just one benign one. But he's a Democrat of sorts, so he doesn't have a holistic view and still wears blinders.
Lewis makes
you appreciate the scientific and thoughtful non-profit approach these
engineers and scientists take to the myriad technological problems of a complex
society, while hiding in the background living modest lives. It is somewhat similar to Lenin’s call for
scientific and technical competence after the Russian revolution. At least Marxists and some liberals can agree
on something. Science!
Other prior
reviews on this subject or by this author, use blog search box, upper left: “The
Big Short,” “Liar’s Poker,” “The New New Thing,” “Flash Boys,” (All by
Lewis) or use the word ‘science’ or 'religion.'
And I bought
it at May Day Books with the standard 15% discount!
Red Frog
March 5,
2020
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