A government worker’s message for Elon Musk

Coal mining has always been dangerous, one of the deadliest professions in the nation. In the 20th century, more than 100,000 workers died in the U.S. mining industry.

Christopher Mark experienced that risk first-hand. “I started the mines in 1976; it was almost 50 years ago,” he said. “And I worked underground altogether for about two years. And I can tell you, I was almost killed a couple times.”

Mine safety has been Mark’s life’s work. In his 20s, he left the coalfields to earn a Ph.D., then returned as an engineer for the federal government. His efforts have helped save countless lives underground. “It was still maybe a coal miner every week that was being killed in a rock fall,” he said. “In 2016, we had our first year with zero, a really tremendous accomplishment.”

I asked, “At the end of the day, you work essentially for the worker, not for the corporations?”

“That’s exactly right,” said Mark. “And we were asked to do this by the public. It was the public’s demand that was reflected in the laws that were passed by Congress. And that’s all we’ve been doing ever since.”

“So for you, this isn’t just about a government budget; this is life and death.”

“Absolutely, absolutely,” he replied.

We met Mark in the historic coal country of Western Pennsylvania. He agreed to speak with us as a private citizen – not as a representative of his employer, the Department of Labor. His reason? He is deeply concerned about the Trump administration’s sweeping criticism of federal workers.

He said, “I still have the most precious American right, which is the right to free speech, so long as I’m speaking to my own personal capacity, and so that’s what I’m doing today.”

“So, you’re not afraid?” I asked.

“I’d be foolish if I wasn’t afraid,” he replied.

Since taking office, President Trump has enlisted billionaire industrialist Elon Musk as a special government employee, and they have launched a crusade to winnow the ranks of federal workers — encouraging more than two million of them to consider quitting — and moving to shutter entire agencies.

“I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt, and it is very corrupt,” Mr. Trump said last week. “It’s very, very, uh, it’s also foolish.”

Meanwhile, there are reports that hundreds of thousands of recently-hired federal employees could soon be terminated.

Last Tuesday, Musk, speaking in the Oval Office, claimed that the American people wanted such firings. “You couldn’t ask for a stronger mandate from the public,” Musk said. “The public voted, uh, the majority of the public voted for President Trump.”

Trump and Musk’s campaign has sparked anger. At a February 7 protest outside the offices of USAID, one protester said, “We are out here trying, but we need every American to care, because this will impact every American.”

It has also forced a reckoning over what Americans want from their government. According to bestselling author Michael Lewis, “I think, as we speak, our country is getting an education of what its government does, because it feels it has to. Who knew what USAID was three weeks ago?”

In an upcoming book, Lewis poses the question: “Who Is Government?” (to be published March 18 by Riverhead Books). “Virtually every existential risk we face, we don’t turn to the private sector to respond to it; we turn to the government,” Lewis said. “The federal government’s mission is to keep us safe. And you don’t really know that that insurance policy’s not there until it isn’t.”

The book is based on a Washington Post series Lewis edited last year, with little-known stories of federal workers. “Just look at Christopher Mark’s life work,” he said. “If we had just removed Christopher Mark from the history of the federal government, thousands of coal miners are dead. It’s one person.”

Profiling military cemetery managers, and mission specialists for space exploration, Lewis and his co-authors make the case that claims of an impersonal so-called “deep state” are off-base; and that while there may be places for trims and updated systems, they argue the federal workforce is largely individuals dedicated to the public good. Lewis said, “It’s people who have been attracted to a problem. The government is there to solve lots of problems, usually problems that the market doesn’t want to solve.”

I asked, “Some people say government should run like a business. Are they right?”

“No, they’re wrong!” Lewis replied. “I don’t see how you would run the government as a business, because the kind of problems the government is addressing, they’re addressing it because you can’t make money addressing it!”

The modern federal government took shape almost a century ago in response to the Great Depression. FDR’s New Deal, followed by World War II, expanded government’s reach into most every aspect of life. 

And since then, many conservatives have been pushing back. President Ronald Reagan infamously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

In the 1980s, Reagan laid the foundation for what President Trump and Musk are doing today.

I asked Lewis, “There is an ethos in Silicon Valley: Move fast, break things, disrupt. You’ve covered leaders in that sector for decades. Does that approach work when it comes to the federal government, and the stakes are different?”

“It doesn’t work very well,” he replied. “If you take the kind of Elon Musk approach to the federal government – walking in (as he did at Twitter) and say, ‘All you people are useless, we’re going to get rid of half of you,’ operating with kind of fear and chaos – I don’t think any big institution is going to respond well to the, like, ‘move fast and break things’ approach.”

When asked for comment, a White House spokesman said the president is confident in Musk and his ability to “shake things up,” and said criticism of his method is “fear-mongering.”

Costa asked mine safety engineer Christopher Mark, “When you walk in this restaurant, people don’t necessarily say, ‘There’s a federal worker.'”

“No. That’s right,” he replied.

“They say, ‘That’s a coal miner. That’s my friend. That’s someone who works on mine safety.’ But they’re not thinking about you necessarily as part of the federal government – and that doesn’t help the federal government.”

“Another thing is that the federal government doesn’t have money to advertise itself,” said Mark. “You know, people can say whatever they want about us, and we, you know, really can’t respond.”

For Mark, there is little he can do to stave off the wave of changes from Washington. But he says he’ll carry on, his head up, as long as he can.

I asked, “If you could bring Elon Musk down to the mines, what would you say to him?”

“Well, I would say, ‘You know, there’s a lot of people that have to work in these mines and they deserve to be able to come home at the end of the shift to their family safely,'” Mark replied. “‘And we’re a part of making that happen. You can’t take us out of the equation, and be sure that they’re going to return home safely to their families.'”

      
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Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Chad Cardin.