(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Project 2025 Meets Michael Lewis [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-08-31 Michael Lewis appeared last night on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” to announce his contribution to the 2024 campaign. The bestselling author of Moneyball, The Big Short, Boomerang, The Blind Side, and The Fifth Risk, to name a few, has handpicked six writers to carry on the work he began in The Fifth Risk in 2018. Their assignment: find a great story in the current federal civil service, like the ones Lewis found, and write about it. Each writer will produce an article to appear in WaPo starting on Tuesday, Sept. 3, and continuing Tuesdays to the November election. Be sure to keep an eye out for these! They will be a civics lesson not to be missed and will shine a spotlight on one of Project 2025’s most dastardly features: the elimination of professional civil servants in favor of political toadies and outside (private) contractors. Our republic would be in better shape if everyone read The Fifth Risk. I fantasize about it being required reading in high schools. Granted, its premise is rather political. Lewis approached various government agencies and asked them to “brief” him as if he were the incoming Trump administration. In the book, he provides a tragi-comic description of all the work that the Obama-led agencies did to prepare for an excellent transition to the most inexperienced White House in history. That work went for naught when the new folks mostly never appeared or, if they did, only grudgingly. (Note: Let us never forget that Biden was sabotaged in his transition in every way possible — in the midst of a pandemic; an urgent and imminent national rollout of a vaccine; and a fait accompli withdrawal from a 20-year war, the conditions of which had been pre-determined --something he has rarely mentioned let alone griped about.) What Lewis discovers is WHAT THESE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ACTUALLY DO, and, thereby, how government actually works. He meets the people that make it work. Lewis doesn’t seek out the better-known, more glamorous agencies — the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, Justice. He goes to, for example, the Department of Commerce, where, lo and behold, he finds the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Their job? According to their website: NOAA is an agency [within the Department of Commerce] that enriches life through science. Our reach goes from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor as we work to keep the public informed of the changing environment around them. From daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, and climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce, NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need, when they need it. and Our agency holds key leadership roles in shaping international ocean, fisheries, climate, space and weather policies. NOAA’s many assets — including research programs, vessels, satellites, science centers, laboratories and a vast pool of distinguished scientists and experts — are essential, internationally recognized resources. . . Do you think the then 80-year-old Wilbur Ross had a clue when he became Sec. of Commerce in 2017? Maybe that didn’t matter since Trump had other plans for NOAA. His nominee to head the agency, Barry Myers, was the CEO of AccuWeather. Mother Jones explains: AccuWeather has consistently peddled climate denialism since at least the mid-1990s, when it worked with the fossil fuel–backed Global Climate Coalition. While CEO, Myers heavily lobbied to privatize NOAA’s data, largely to ensure his own venture could remain competitive in the face of NOAA’s free and easily accessible data. [emphasis added] Luckily, the Senate never confirmed Myers, who withdrew from consideration after two years’ trying. The agency went without a confirmed head for the entirety of Trump’s term. Trump 2.0 would be, as they say, much worse. Who populates the career civil service and who sits on top matters! Project 2025 calls for NOAA to be broken up and “streamlined” (shrunk). Lewis meets people from other agencies, as well. Take the Department of Energy, the agency under Trump that came to be headed by Rick Perry: former governor of the oil-rich state of Texas who said during the presidential primary that he wanted to eliminate that department (even though he couldn’t call its name to mind); Rick Perry, who, along with some other amigos, attended the May 2019 inauguration of a new president of Ukraine, ready to carry out the U.S. president’s political agenda and score some lucrative oil deals for himself and his cronies. So we can see why Perry was interested in sitting atop the Dept. of Energy (although making oil deals is not typically part of its portfolio.) But what does the Dept. of Energy really do? Well, it maintains our nuclear stockpile, for one thing. And it’s in charge of monitoring and mitigating the toxic nuclear sludge that’s making its way underground from the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state to the Columbia River. (It's an Energy Department official who gives Lewis the title of his book. When asked what keeps him up at night, the official replies that his department plans for contingencies, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th possible risk. What keeps him up at night is . . . the 5th risk: unseen and unplanned for. Think Perry was worried about that? By contrast, Obama’s Sec. of Energy was a nuclear physicist who helped negotiate the Iran deal that Trump walked away from. When Ernest Moniz said that “we” would know if Iran was enriching uranium in violation of the deal, we could trust that he, indeed, would.) And Lewis talks with a retired official from the Department of Agriculture who spent years working out how to improve the rate at which those eligible for SNAP food assistance actually receive it. That was his singular mission and proudest accomplishment. Oh, because it’s the Dept. of Agriculture that administers SNAP, and because our civil servants are mission-driven. Without understanding how our government works, without knowing what these agencies do, it may be difficult for people to understand how damaging Project 2025 would be. Our federal workforce over decades has become professionalized, with advancement based on merit, not patronage, and consequently less susceptible to corruption and abuse. It’s a far cry from the “spoils” system of the 1800s, a system that drove Lincoln to distraction to such an extent that he found it a relief to visit Grant and his Union army outside of Richmond and be away from the hounding job-seekers in D.C. It took decades and many presidential administrations to pass the Civil Service Act of 1883 that ushered us towards the civil service in place today. Grant got the ball rolling with a Civil Service Commission in 1871, but that ended when Congress eliminated funding a few years later. (Turns out, Senators and Congressmen got some benefit from “spoils.”) Ultimately, it took the assassination of James Garfield in 1881 by a failed federal-worker-wannabe: the public outcry to reform the system grew so loud that Congress was compelled to act. (Side note, of interest: Lincoln’s only surviving child, Robert Lincoln, was with Garfield when he was shot.) Let’s not go back! We’re not going back! Michael Lewis has returned to the theme of federal agencies and the civil servants who staff them several times now. After The Fifth Risk was first published, he wrote a new chapter for the paperback edition, a version of which appeared as an opinion piece in Bloomberg. It’s about a Coast Guard oceanographer who devoted his life to improving search and rescue. He studied the concept of “drift” and how critical it was to account for drift for search operations to be successful. I saw Lewis interviewed about this story, and it was clear to me that what fascinated him the most, what drew him back to this topic, was the people who do this work. As the subtitle in the Bloomberg presentation states it, “ Glory isn’t part of the deal when you go to work for the federal government.” Lewis is intrigued by people who aren’t going to get rich, who likely will never be known, but who work with single-minded dedication to improve the lives of other Americans. Think Dr. Fauci. Col. Alexander Vindman. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Shay Moss (No, she’s not federal, but same idea.) Dr. Robert Kadlec, who set Operation Warp Speed in motion. (Seriously. Listen to his story on NPR.) These are people we must keep. We’ll learn about others starting Tuesday in the Washington Post. Thank you, Michael Lewis. 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