On a previous post I suggested that Democrats focus on a theme - "It's the corruption, stupid". This is a take off on James Carville's famous "It's the economy, Stupid" which was the focus that helped elect Clinton. Here is a second idea - "It's the incompetence and neglect, stupid".
We now have a crisis with Saudi Arabia where there seems to be evidence that the Saudi leader tortured and killed and dismembered a critical journalist. But, guess what, America does not have an ambassador to Saudi Arabia. This is one example of the unbelievable level of incompetence and neglect of this administration.
Michael Lewis is a writer who is a national treasure. His book "The Big Short" was the best written book on the financial collapse of 2008. I just finished his newest - "The Fifth Risk". What is the fifth risk? it's the one that nobody is thinking about. He reveals some terrible facts.
The first is that there was no transition to the Trump administration from the Obama administration, because Trump did not have a transition team. He started out with the experienced Chris Christie running the transition team, but fired Christie because Trump didn't understand that a transition team was needed, and demanded by the law. He didn't care. And nobody really replaced Christie.
Horrifying example - the Department of Energy. The day after Trump's election the leaders of the DOE showed up with extensive briefing books they had taken about a year to put together to teach the incoming administration what the DOE did, the ongoing programs, issues, problems, etc. Nobody showed up from the Trump administration. What?? After a few days some guy eventually showed up, spent an hour, took no notes, left, and never came back. The only thing that guy eventually did was purge the DOE of people who had anything to do with studying climate change.
About half of the DOE $30bn budget is on our nuclear arsenal - testing, guarding plutonium and uranium, cleaning up nuclear waste. The most knowledgeable people in DOE left or were pushed out.
The DOE runs the nation's 17 national labs, including Fermi, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, etc.
"The office of science for the DOE is not the office of science for the DOE, it's the office of science for all science in America."
They work to prevent huge risks - accidental explosion of a nuke, North Korea nuclear threat, Iranian nuke capability, containment and reducing nuclear waste, safety of the electrical grid.
Hanford Washington was where most of the plutonium for America's nukes were made.. It is close to the giant Columbia river that cuts across between Oregon and Washington. It is now in the dangerous business of cleaning up over 40 years of deadly toxins. That is 10% of the DOE budget. Things like Strontium is already in Hanford's ground water.
"Beneath Hanford, a massive underground glacier of radioactive sludge is moving slowly but relentlessly toward the Columbia river."
There are 177 giant tanks buried on Hanford's tank farms. Most are single shell steel containers and they leak. In the '40s and early '50s they piled waste, contaminated liquid and uranium into open pits near the Columbia river.
It is not just Trump, it is also right wing ideologues who can only think one thought - that the free market solves all problems. But there are many problems that only the government can solve - problems that take extensive scientific research and massive amounts of government money to solve. Trump knows nothing of this, and the ideological storm troopers capitalizing on his ignorance are gutting essential protections.
Trump's budget laid off 6000 people from the national labs and eliminated all research on climate change.
Same across the federal government. Nobody showed up from the Trump administration for the transition. Or if they did, they were too few and too ignorant and confused and unprepared to be worth anything.
At the State Department those who showed up didn't have security clearances and couldn't be briefed.
There are many places where the U.S. government is what stands between us and what can kill us. Those places are places where civil servants do their jobs, and we get to live and prosper. The civil service is the foundation of civilization. Of the top 6000 career civil servants, 20% were fired or pushed out or left in disgust in the first year.
The right wing ideologues who so trust the free market don't realize that without the government there is no internet, no iPhone, no GPS. Reagan's famous catchy campaign phrase that government is not the solution but is the problem used to be believed by me. No longer. Government is vital to America, especially our safety, from the military and police and Justice Department to the DOE and State Department and the Department of Agriculture. Indeed, all of the governmental departments.
It's the incompetence and neglect, stupid.
