The Fifth Risk is Here

Aram Zucker-Scharff quotes Lissa Harris on the need of local civic information remains necessary:

One thing that has become crystal clear to me is that even without robust, functioning local news, my community still needs basic civic information. So here's one thing I'm doing: Setting up a new site for my town that will hold a library of existing resources like maps, local flood analyses, comprehensive planning, local history, resources for local households and families, etc. If I can get enough local interest in it, the site will also host a calendar of local upcoming public meetings, announcements, arts and community events, things of that nature.

I'd be interested in the site L. Harris sets up. I recall in the first Trump administration, the attempt to purge public government data. If it wasn't for online communities archiving said data, that information would have been totally lost. His second administration will certainly attempt another go at the government. Schedule F would of crippled the government by firing 50,000 career civil servants, was never implemented but Trump has a second chance at it. I was one of those civil servants early in my career, and what people don't know, and what politicians won't tell you is that these civil servants are the engine that keeps civilization's data going. They produce objective data about crime, unemployment, weather forecasts, and so on. Archiving will be an important means to preserve public data, especially for local communities.

"The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis explores how the government's civil servants function as a complex risk management system, striving to minimize harm when things go awry, ensure stakeholder interests, and prevent catastrophic failures from occurring. Importantly, civil servants collect, analyze, and publish data to the public such as the job numbers every quarter. Cooking those numbers would undermine faith and trust in such institutions, further eroding confidence and belief in democracy. And I want to highlight, thats the goal of modern conservative Republicanism: point to the dysfunction of government as a justification for gutting Social Security and Medicare, food stamps, and social aid while giving away tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires.

Victor Orbán of Hungary took one of the post-Communist world's greatest success stories and hallowed it out. A once-thriving democracy had rotted and twisted into the European Union's only autocracy. Orbán did some obvious hijacking of government functions, but also much more subtly in other areas. "like its tax administration and the offices regulating higher education" were replaced by loyalists.

We saw an example in President Trump's first term. President Trump replaced the director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who are responsible for the National Weather Service, with Barry Myers, an executive vice president of AccuWeather. Mr. Myers attempted to shut out all other weather forecast competitors and favor AccWeather.

Setting up a site with boring stuff like local flood analysis may not sound like a big deal if a crony loyalist for the Trump administration decides to shut off access and sell it to insurance companies. But it may be very important to a person buying their first home in an increasingly riskier flood zone. A free market can't function well when information pertaining to risk is not publicly available.

You can fight against this form of corruption be setting up sites at a local level in the event Trump installs sycophants in data-collecting roles.