How a lack of curiosity can kill a country.
TL;DR - just read this link: WHY THE SCARIEST NUCLEAR THREAT MAY BE COMING FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE
I have been morbidly curious about what the Trump administration is doing to the executive departments that support the United States. The State Department, the Department of Education, the Dept of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior and so on. For long time Republicans have been saying that all government is bad in their greed for tax cuts - despite the fact that the dollars they profoundly lust after are of course a US government product printed by the US treasury (give back to Cesar etc). In previous elections Republicans have competed to be the most anti government, saying which departments they would close, with a previous Texas governor Rick Perry's forgetting the name of the department of Energy only being the most comic example.
So now republicans hold the presidency, the house, the senate and the supreme court, as well as many state governors and state houses around the United States. What are they doing when it comes to the actual nuts an bolts of government? The answer seems to be everything they can against it - despite and perhaps a profound lack of curiosity as to what these departments do. I now more and more believe that the reason for the attack on education, and the reason for not wanting to know what government does in the US, is so they can attack and close it down without a reasoned argument. If they really knew the efforts and goals of these departments, and the people who have devoted their lives to service of the United States, it would be so much harder, but the cynicism and lack of knowing is essential to enable the greed and destruction whilst feeling less guilt.
So I looked for news articles about how the Trump administration is approaching the job of fulfilling its tasks as the executive branch of the United States. It is not look good at all. In all of the cases, the right wing just doesn't care, has no idea why these things might be important, or even curiosity as to why.
For the Department of Energy, this article from Vanity Fair gets us started:
WHY THE SCARIEST NUCLEAR THREAT MAY BE COMING FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE
One of many scary paragraphs:
“In the run-up to the Trump inauguration the man inside the D.O.E. in charge of the nuclear-weapons program was required to submit his resignation, as were the department’s 137 other political appointees. Frank Klotz was his name, and he was a retired three-star air-force lieutenant general with a Ph.D. in politics from Oxford. The keeper of the nation’s nuclear secrets had boxed up most of his books and memorabilia just like everyone else and was on his way out before anyone had apparently given the first thought to who might replace him. It was only after Secretary Moniz called a few senators to alert them to the disturbing vacancy, and the senators phoned Trump Tower sounding alarmed, that the Trump people called General Klotz, on the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, and asked him to bring back the stuff he had taken home and move back into his office. Aside from him, the people with the most intimate knowledge of the problems and the possibilities of the D.O.E. walked out the door.”
For the State Department: HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BROKE THE STATE DEPARTMENT from Foreign Policy magazine, not mincing any words in the headline. Again one of many scary paragraphs:
“One example officials pointed to was Tillerson’s front office sitting on memos that would unlock $79 million for the department’s Global Engagement Center to counter Islamic State messaging and narrative. Bureaucratic rules required that Tillerson simply write and sign two memos — one for $19 million from Congress and one for $60 million through the Defense Department — saying State needed the funds. But he hasn’t, leaving some career officials at a loss.
“The memos have been written and rewritten ad nauseum, sometimes with conflicting guidance from the seventh floor,” one official briefed on the program vented to FP, referring to the department floor Tillerson and his staff occupy. “And it just sits there.”
And that is just one example, officials say.
“You describe a normal review process for budget and financial resources in government,” Hammond, Tillerson’s spokesman, told FP when presented with this issue. “The Center’s leadership is identifying spending priorities for current and future year funds.”
But other key decisions remain stalled. “Last I checked, there are over 150 action memos stuck in the secretary’s office,” a mid-level official told FP. Decisions that otherwise would take hours to process are “just languishing,” said the official.”
For the USDA it is just plain hostility: Trump targets USDA with some of the deepest proposed budget cuts (note that I have previously got a grant from the USDA to study the genomics of a significant wheat pest - the hessian fly - still the idea that a conservative radio show talk host is highly qualified to lead the United States Agricultural Science programs seems to be taking the message from Maos cultural revolution where anyone educated would be considered the enemy)
“Cuts to USDA research programs would hardly be the first time the Trump administration showed science to be a low priority for the agency. Trump is expected to name Sam Clovis, a conservative talk-show host that denies the scientific consensus on climate change, to be the USDA’s undersecretary of research, education and economics. That would put Clovis in charge of the USDA’s entire scientific mission, including research programs aimed at helping farmers respond to climate change. ”
And a second quote from the first Vanity Fair article - commenting on the lack of curiosity and knowledge about what the US departments do:
“Across the federal government the Trump people weren’t anywhere to be found. Allegedly, between the election and the inauguration not a single Trump representative set foot inside the Department of Agriculture, for example. The Department of Agriculture has employees or contractors in every county in the United States, and the Trump people seemed simply to be ignoring the place. Where they did turn up inside the federal government, they appeared confused and unprepared. A small group attended a briefing at the State Department, for instance, only to learn that the briefings they needed to hear were classified. None of the Trump people had security clearance—or, for that matter, any experience in foreign policy—and so they weren’t allowed to receive an education.”
The EPA is under direct attack - A clear republican priority for many years is to put oil, gas and coal profits ahead of breathable air and clean water - Thus the attack on EPA regulations and enforcement of clean air and water regulations. EPA remains top target with Trump administration proposing 31 percent budget cut. And a quote:
“Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, echoed the exasperation of many in the environmental community. “This isn’t a budget — it’s a road map for the President, EPA Administrator Pruitt and polluters to see that millions of Americans drink dirtier water, breathe more polluted air and don’t have enough nutritious food to lead healthy lives,” he said in a statement. “With each cut in EPA funding, each regulatory rollback, each special favor for polluters, it becomes more clear that for President Trump, public health protection is not a priority, but a target.””