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Trump Administration Wants To Fire 248 Forecasters At the National Weather Service (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters. The idea, which is part of the 2019 fiscal budget proposal and caught the agency by surprise, is being derided by the NWS's labor union, which says the cuts will impact the reliability of future weather forecasts and warnings. All totaled, the Weather Service faces cuts of $75 million in the initial proposal. Some or all of those cuts could be jettisoned before the bill is voted upon. "We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
Further reading: The Washington Post
Further reading: The Washington Post
After a bunch of so-called deficit hawks and fiscal conservatives were finished with their 1 trillion dollar giveaway to the rich, they had to do something they could point at in November to reclaim their conservative bona fides. So they're going to attempt gutting every non-military program in the federal budget.
#DeleteChrome
Donâ(TM)t need them.
Eliminate the NWs entirely, there are numerous private sources of weather forcasters so the government needs to step away from yet another unconstitutional government program.
He has the best ideas!
... that Trump wants to fire them in order to hold them responsible for the bad weather?
Can any history nerds supply any information about a world power transforming itself into a 3rd world country as quickly as the US is? I know that other countries have fallen due to war, but have any other countries/societies/cultures fallen so far, so quickly, due to their own stupidity, as suddenly as the US?
I don't respond to AC's.
This is really really terrible. However when all of these highly educated government job folks have to get jobs at warehouses and starbucks, it could be a powerful ingredient in the growing socialist political movement. In other words, Trump is pushing against the water for three years, but building up a massive tidal wave of resentment that will backlash ...
I can hear it already...
"There is no global warming! You people must be wrong. Fake weather news!!!!!!"
Over 5000 employees, and over a billion dollar annual budget.
248 jobs is a 5% reduction in staffing overall. $75 million is less that 7.5% of their budget. And these numbers were bandied about with the expectation that they'd be lowered after push back.
When most of the work in forecasting is increasingly automated and computerized, it makes sense to trim the fat.
But of course the labor union is going to get upset. That's what labor unions do when told the truth.
300 million is the hurricane damage to a single yacht.
Perhaps in the future, the parable of futility will be President Trump, holding back climate change.
human.
It's not like any big things like emergency preparedness will be effected. In case the previous sentence did not come across properly, it was intended to be incredibly sarcastic. Weather forecasters help emergency management agencies and accurate forecasts are critical for helping to save lives and avert disasters.
the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters
Geez, who rained on his parade?
Let's shave some off each government agency.
A government agency screaming disaster if they take any cuts is nothing you do not hear from every single agency.
Not only that, but massive amounts of technology have made their jobs much easier. There need to be less of them.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
It's so they can piss on us and say it's raining.
This actually makes sense. We don't really need someone to predict how many times Trump will help those devestated by natural disasters and when he will do it. Zero, and never. Climate change isn't real if nobody pays attention to the climate! It's the Trump-Schroedinger principle!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You obviously know absolutely nothing about how weather forecasting works.
Shouldn't they have seen it coming if they were any good at their jobs?
The Spanish Inquisition of Psychometrics; Burning all the heretics.
Somebody should create an app that shows you how fscking stupid your post is!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
...what the hell has happened to forecasting? It used to be that if you were told that it's pretty likely it's going to rain/snow/not do any of that stuff, it was going to happen. Now, it's a total crapshoot and has been this way for the past decade.
Let's not talk about the mockery known as The Weather Channel (unaffiliated with NWS of course), who decided to make up their own names for "Winter Storms" because calling something Winter Storm Nemo definitely conveys the message that it's a nasty storm capable of killing people, right?
Bring Back the weather Girls!
Blonde?
Big chested?
Short skirted?
Bimboness?
A perfect fit for King Trump?
You're hired!
a/ 725 5th Ave, New York, NY
b/ White House
c/ National Golf Club Mar a Lago
... their forecasts are FAKE NEWS. Sad. Listen, don't blame the hurricane only. Their were bad houses as well, ok? Bad things on both sides.
And you are why we have these problems. Where do you think the apps and commercial weather services get their information? The computers and forecasters that create the base datasets are extremely costly and very necessary. Weather forecasting is a national security issue and private industry could never afford to do it on their own.
I bet this guy believes in perpetual motion machines too.
if they don't exist! #MAGA!
Forecasting has become so computer generated its not like old days when maps were drawn out and its unfortunate to lose people at the NWS but like so many jobs they are being eliminated because of technology. I think its wrong to think shedding these jobs will negatively affect our safety. The NWS like a lot of agencies has bloated and needs to be leaned out, which might actually make it more effective.
I don't need 248 to tell me what a single app can do in real time with better accuracy.
Lol, right.
You don't need weather forecasters.
You don't need weather satellites.
You don't need weather stations.
You don't need weather-forecasting models.
You don't need supercomputers to run the models.
You don't need a communication infrastructure to deliver the results.
You just need an app. Wow, the savings.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Not for any silly reasons regarding hypothetical global warming, just that it seems a bit short-sighted given the need to, you know, watch and predict weather and issue warnings and forecasts and stuff. I think this idea is kinda dumb, definitely.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Further, the union president is the last credible source. His primary job is to extract money from the treasury to line pockets.
Why not eliminate 247 white house staffing positions? The country saves money, the public doesn't notice anything different, we're good, right?
Oops, I forgot the #1 rule of cutting government spending. You don't cut the waste where it's painless, you cut the meat where it hurts like hell. Then the politicians say "See! they don't like it when we cut spending!".
It comes down to this: if you suck at your job, don't expect to be employed. Ergo, the forecasters who get it wrong much more than they get it right should be fired.
It sounds like you're blaming hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, on weather forecasters. Maybe you think the millions of dollars in damages wouldn't have happened if they didn't suck at their job. You tried to sound smart by using the word "ergo", but you actually kinda suck at logic.
I've never witnessed a hurricane.
A few tropical cyclones maybe, but never a hurricane.
Trump isn't firing the satellites and computers.
Obviously these cuts were selected by who is expected to fight back the least, not how critical the work done there is. A sure way into disaster and one prepared by utter incompetents.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If it came down to such a simpleton equation Trump would have been collecting unemployment you years before he didn't write "The Art of the Douche^^^^^eal"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
When it fucking sinks in a storm.
Yea, the app downloads the reports from NWS and delivers them to your phone combined with ads and market research trackers. It's almost pure profit and they'll have to raise the price to $10 if we eliminate free NWS access for parasitic app businesses.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Because it would take every single adult in USA paying $5 a year to make up the billion dollars it costs to run NWS
I suppose they could add a levy on everything that depends on it
Like flying, fishing, farming, construction, anything involving satellites...
Satellites and computers don’t work without someone to run them.
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
;)
To government bureaucrats a decrease in their next years budget increase is a hideous cut that will kill millions.
I say we compromise with a 10% across the board real cut to all non-defense, discretionary federal spending right now. If this actually happens. Lets hit defense, let some pentagon desk generals, staffs, drivers, house maids, yada, yada go, close most over seas bases, let most countries worry about their own defense, and cut the size of our military.
Then once that is done we will need to deal with discretionary spending (yes the so called entitlements) since that is where all the real money goes.
America went bankrupt a decade or so ago, along with several states. The government bureaucrats and politicians have been successful hiding this fact from most American people. But the (you know what) will hit the fan in the next 5 - 10 years and this whole house of cards is coming down.
Wonder what the spenders and takers will say then.
Just my 2 cents
*Using publicly funded satellite and sensor data. But we'll just 'add some value' and sell it back to you.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's a nice, and in this case, very accurate addition to the "under the bus" analogy.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters...
Well, with a track record like that, they clearly had it coming, didn’t they?
Those firings ought to teach the remaining staff a lesson!
Make the weather great again!
I came for the flame war, stayed for chuckles for nerds
This widget fell apart because there's not enough screws holding it together! I know, let's punish it by pulling out more screws! That'll teach it for falling apart.
Who the simple fuck do you think FEEDS the goddam apps?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Can this also apply to economists?
..
Aren't there meteorologists all over the country working for private news agencies whose whole job it is to do a barely passable job of predicting the weather just like NWS?
Well somebody had to hold them accountable. The National Weather Service has done nothing NOTHING to prevent the hurricanes and storms. Why should we spend so much money on a Service that provides a failed service?
Next up, the Interior Department, which still hasn't sent a single decorator to my home despite all my tax dollars.
They want to part out the vital functions of a modern government, and let their donor class pocket as much of money as they can get on the back end. Don't be fooled into thinking that there is a genuine ideology motivating this, only a few of these guys are true believers, and quite a few of those are genuine radicals.
Deficits are a good thing for them, if it helps them loot and destroy the government sooner. It's hard to effectively eliminate the necessary government operations and programs with a wide base of popular support unless you create a crisis first.
Satellites aren't run by forecasters.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
When Meteorologists understand what's going on, it's a lot harder to convince everyone that grandpa volcano says you should be getting those teen girls and bigger tithes.
Sure it'll take a generation or two to really settle, but they're playing the long-game here.
I actually agree there should be cuts. Humans add little value here. I think they should be cutting forecasters and increasing the engineer count. Improvements in machine learning and compute technology over the years need to be taken advantage of for this service, and it really isnâ(TM)t. The old models are crap, the implementations are beyond laughable - no joke there is production shit running in spreadsheets!
Fire most of them and hire a smaller, higher skilled team and modernise this dept!
If "Trump" is proposing eliminating 248 NWS Forecasters, exactly how many are there currently?
Apparently there are 122 NWS forecasting offices
So "Trump" is proposing the elimination of, on average, 2 forecasters per office - that doesn't seem so bad - but how many are there in those 122 forecasting offices?
It seems the NWS may already have over 248 "vacancies" currently in it's organization, so this may be nothing more than "Trump" adopting current staffing levels, rather than actually cutting people from eliminating positions.
For what it's worth, it seems the NWS has nearly five thousand employees, cutting 248 forecasters represents a 5% cut in staffing.
You may have noticed I put the name Trump in quotes - that's because only a fool would imagine that a sitting President has anything to do with actual staffing levels in an organization, but in today's hyper-political environment, many tend to refer to any action undertaken by anyone in an administration to be the responsibility of the sitting President - oddly, just a few years ago no one said things like "Obama illegally blocked tax-exempt applications by conservative groups" or "Obama illegally encouraged/facilitated running guns into Mexico in a program called "Fast n' Furious"" and so on - I wonder why that is?
Ken
The NWS and DNC can bring killing to Republican Districts in MASSIVE NUMBERS to swing the next elections.
The Stallinists of the DNC are In NWS ... DNA.
Best to round up NWS employees and give them a "Send Off WII Style" with a backyard firing line execution!
Quick, Clean, Economical!
Ha ha
Which is why my personal taxes are $4.8k less this year, and my small business is saving over $30k... You fucking imbecile.
After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters.
Is the administration (not Trump, Trump has nothing to do with staffing levels at NWS, get over your Trump Delusion Syndrome) eliminating unfilled positions or eliminating actual employees currently in those positions?
So we've had $300 MILLION in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, etc.? If that's the case, then why are spending BILLIONS to repair cities like Houston and the island territory of Puerto Rico to the tune of $125-150 Billion and $94 Billion respectively?
I'm curious, is the argument that there would be greater damages without our current number of forecasters, or is the argument that we'd have more hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, etc. if not for the current staffing levels at NWS?
Ken
mlocate trumpd ; mv trumpd trumpd.stopped ; killall -KILL trumpd
Because it would take every single adult in USA paying $5 a year to make up the billion dollars it costs to run NWS
I think you're a bit off on the number of "adults" in America, but let's put that aside - that actual NWS budget stands at just over $1 Billion dollars, exactly who do you think is currently covering that $1 Billion dollar budget each year? Every working American, that's who.
Ken
It's not like it is going to be doom and gloom for weather prediction. Most of those cuts should be in management, even though they have a $1B budget and the meteorologists are coming in at $28k/year salary, they're not exactly attracting talent.
How about we start with the union reps, they are collecting $50/pay period and couldn't even negotiate a deal to prevent this or keep the service from becoming top-heavy. Then remove every manager that is not directly managing 15 or more employees.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The chart shows that they did the right thing in the 1930s. Did not matter how deep the depression got, they always balanced the books. Worked real good.
Then that evil Rosevelt ran up a huge deficit just because there was a war on. Crippled the country. The depression was over, no more dirt cheap labor.
Moving on, we see the deficit from Obama during the Global Financial Crisis. Weak. He should have been tough like Hover in the depression. When the economy shrinks you tighten your belt. Stands to reason. Then we could have had another result like the 1930s.
Reaganomics, on the other hand, is clear and purposeful. Cut taxes, increase military spending so you can create a crisis and then cut those socialist services that rot the morality of the working man.
There already was an 8% across the board cut five years ago.
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
I'll support the NWS when they begin delivering accurate and reliable forecasts. Now, whenever precip of any type is involved (especially frozen precip), forecasts are typically pretty stinking inaccurate.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
You do realize that if the Trump administration gets everything it wants at NWS, they will STILL have a $1BN+ annual budget. He's not shuttering the agency, he's taking funding from $1.114BN to $1.024BN - oh, the horror!
Ken
But the computers are (or rather the computer models are).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I'm a professional pilot and this is a very bad idea for the safety of air travel. We rely on weather forecasting to make decisions about how much fuel to carry, what diverts to plan, and to make decisions if the flight can be safely conducted or not. The public benefits in many not so obvious ways from weather forecasting. Getting on an airplane with a good expectation that you will safely reach your destination, or not run out of fuel going to a weather divert is just one of them. The President should think of that next time he gets on Air Force One, or in his private 757. Making weather information freely and publicly available increases the safety for everyone in the air and on the ground.
My political rant for today: I suspect there's a lobbying bonanza going on in the background and all of these privatization initiatives coming out of this administration and this congress have more to do with cronyism than the common good. When a Republic stops representing the common good, it is no longer a Republic, but a Plutocracy or an oligarchy. This is the bigger issue of our time, not collusion, not Trump, and not any of the other issues being touted in the media. Having an NWS is in the public's best interest.
Or close to it. Estimates for Harvey alone are $180 billion. Of course 300 billion is larger than 300 million, but 300 million is not a useful lower bound to offer.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
the other half of the story?
- Say Mr.Union Boss, do you think we can lay off 300 of you union?
- Don't you think it is absurd and disingenuous to ask me that?
The point is not by how much the Trump administration is cutting the budget, it's where.
Links in TFA indicate that an RIF in the forecaster staff was contemplated before Trump's residency. Fine. No union can expect to get a no-layoffs clause in its contract.
The point here is that it's the Trump administration, not the NWS, that is indicating where the cuts need to be applied. That's micromanaging.
And per TFA, the cuts "caught the agency by surprise" as well, not just the union.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Accurate forecasts are critical for helping to . . . avert disasters.
Clearly that didn't work else we wouldn't have this fucking joke running the country.
As someone pointed out above, this is less than 5% of their workforce. You've fallen for the union propaganda, which is to instill fear that any cuts will lead to the direst possible consequences.
Annnnd wait for the cuts...
Don't worry. If you crash because of problems with weather forecasting, Trump will blame Obama. Fox News will make sure of it. It won't solve any of the problems, and it'll sure suck for you, but at least we'll have blamed the proper people.
I'm a principled libertarian and while I do want to essentially end government to whatever degree is reasonably manageable (ie return funds to the people so we're not reliant on government schools, hospitals, police, and so on, if your income more than doubles then nearly everybody including the poor wouldn't be poor any more, and what remains could easily be covered by charity and migration of people from places like California to less expensive to live low unemployment areas like New Hampshire, and elsewhere its even cheaper, though unemployment might be higher in some places) I have to say I'd rather have this service than Trump's expensive wall and military.
* I didn't vote for Hillary nor Garry Johnson... Notice the words principled and Garry Johnson wasn't a libertarian anyway... just a fake who took advantage of republican infiltrating the national party- which is also not really libertarian any more... you want a libertarian party you got to move to NH. The rest of this country's libertarian parties are mostly republicans in sheep clothing cause all the real libertarians moved to NH cause of the Free State Project, Shire Society, and similar migration movements.
$5 a year is a small price to pay really...
Did you even see the hurricane chart the last time? There are like 80 models, of which 5 are right. So cut the ones that were most wrong.
The headline is a lie. The Trump Administration hasn't proposed firing anyone. If you look at the story this story is based on, it says "248 forecasting positions". Reading further, the agency currently has more open forecasting positions than that. So basically, if this 5% cut to their budget was fully implemented, they simply wouldn't get to hire as many new people. Oh, the drama!!!
You're worried about where the cuts will happen? Let's read the underlying WP article some more and see if we can figure out how they decided that:
Oh, you mean they did a study back when Obama was President and looked at where stuff could get streamlined and realigned and are basing this budget proposal on that? How sinister!!!
This is much ado about nothing. The only travesty here is that they aren't proposing to cut more. Why, this proposal will take the NWS almost back down to the budget level they had in 2015, when they couldn't get anything at all done!!!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Doppler is publicly displayed on tv.
stay classy, Anchorman.
Wrong banana breath. By keeping close to 500 positions vacant for almost a decade the NWS management has been saying they don't need the bodies.
You don't need supercomputers to run the models.
You might want to read the article there numbnuts. They just passed an additional 100 million for supercomputers and related infrastructure for the NWS last week above and beyond their normal budget. The fact of the matter is with proper computer support the NWS no longer needs more than 2 people on the clock in a region at any given time.
no one said things like "Obama [**inser crazy thing**]"
Sure they did, they said that quite a lot actually, there was a complete news network dedicated to come up with new crazy things to insert there. Sometimes it's correct that the administration of the current president is the instigator of some crazy things, but motsly it's as you say just things that comes with governing. In this case, I don't know, but budget cuts of $75 million is nothing to scoff at.
I agree that we need to get away from this black and white kind of reporting it doesn't help either side in the long run. I do not know if you are a Trump supporter, but if you are then you better concentrate on the reporting in your own camp, it's better to discuss these things with people that trust your intentions. If you are not a Trump supporter then yey for you.
I classified adults as everyone older than the 80odd million people under 20.
Yeah, they're already paying for it.
But most Americans aren't paying $5 a year for it. 45% don't pay any federal income tax.
Actually, in general, yes, they are.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
... predicting bad weather for trump gets you fired.
Bach says it all.
Time to check what weather-related websites or services in Canada or Mexico don't rely on the US NWS that might happen to have, so we'll still be able to know what the weather's doing on a day-to-day basis while "president" Dipshit J. Turdface is busy dismantling the actually useful parts of the US government, defunding stuff we actually needed, and trying to do everything in his power to pretend that global climate change isn't happening because his owners demand he and the Gas & Oil Party do so for the myopic sake of their greedy fucking bottom line.
The question is though, will there be any, and will navigating the sites in question obligate us to learn some French or Spanish?
This might be a good time to start looking into these things.
"We can't take any more cuts and still do the job" is the dependable whine and moan of every labor union that ever came into existence. Then the cuts happen anyway and somehow the job still gets done.
This isn't about the USA falling into the weather forecasting dark ages; it's about union dues and union membership, both of which have been dropping like flies for a while now.
Seriously, there's a labor union for weather forecasters??? Why? At what point have they been exploited as laborers for crying out loud? It's not like they're in a sweatshop somewhere. Sheesh.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Trump and the alt right are well on their way to turning the USA into a third world country. I guess that's one way to sort out immigration -- see to it that no one wants to immigrate here.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
An independent report from the Government Accountability Office showed staff vacancies increased 57 percent from 2014 to 2016. The overall vacancy rate reached 11 percent or 455 positions at the end of 2016 up from just 5 percent (211 positions) at the end of 2010, the report said.
The union believes the number of vacancies is even higher, closer to 700.
Buchanan asserts the union is exaggerating the number of vacancies, which she said is closer to 226 or 5 percent. “The 700 vacancy figure cited by the union was based on an old organization table that does not reflect the agency’s current staffing profile,” she said.
- In other words - if you go by the unions numbers , 1/3 of the unfilled positions are being cut.
Except we've been relying on automated forecasts for at last a decade. United laid off all their forecasters a decade ago when the models got good enough, and it takes about a minute every six hours to sanity check a TAF. Hell, NWS already got rid of the area forecasts and it didn't matter to you.
So, no, this isn't a big deal, and its probably cutting unfilled positions anyway.
They seem to have plenty of time to promote "Climate Change" while ignoring the past geological weather data.
Maybe if they put an equal amount of energy into all sides of it and getting real data on all sides they would still have a job.
How can fortunate manage to misquote itself so badly? TFA still says '300 million', while clicking on that link shows another article with the real number.
Colour me surprised. How well are you doing outside the top 1%? Somalia are looking to be competitors for the usa.
I also doubt the validity of the site. I can think of more than four non-USA schools that are in the top 20.
At 6am in the morning. Of course, some other place at 6am had an incorrect one, but you never demanded a date with no failed forecasts, did you? Fucking moron.
And what do the owners want? Zero pay for the workers and no competition except in jail.
Unless you get government to do the work of the universal welfare irrespective of any one person's wealth or power, then you need union reps to be just as bloody minded and venal as the bosses, otherwise the workers will get fucked badly.
YOU are just pissed off that someone else is getting on and getting a pay rise when you are too weak and powerless to get one for yourself, and you make out that the unions are at fault for it somehow.
If you've been watching politics long enough, you already know that no government job can be cut without "endangering the American people". And you also know that when budgets are cut, agencies always cut essential jobs first--immediately followed by going on the news and screaming that essential jobs were cut by that Hitler in the White House (or wherever). Government agencies could cut waste first, but that would be doing the right thing, so don't expect that anytime soon.
The storms will happen where God wants to punish gay people and Democrats. Look at all the money we saved.
-Dave
The Republican "tax cut" is just borrowing another $1T to buy votes in the mid-term elections.
It is not going to grow the economy enough to increase overall tax revenue.
Applying stimulus to a slowly-but-steadily growing economy with low unemployment is going to cause inflation, and thus interest rates, to rise, the stock market to fall, and then a recession.
Did we really need 248 people to do the job?
I'm asking... I have no idea. Despite this having to do with Trump, it might actually be a reasonable thing.
Here's a fun /. article from 2000: https://features.slashdot.org/story/00/09/19/035231/the-last-days-of-politics
It said the last days of politics are upon us.
Judging from the fact that /. has turned into a "politics passing as news, stuff that gets lots of ignorant replies" political commentary site, I would say that politics still has many days yet to go, and continues to be paid attention to by people other than the "Journalists, boomers, CEOs and the elderly" the article believes are all that were left doing so.
It is a shame we cannot continue to post replies to the 18 year-old article mentioned above.
$214 Billion will always be more than $300 Million. The error was pretty obvious when the quoted story was posted in January and 5 weeks later it's still dumb.
But still... it's not as dumb as the kind of cuts the administration is making in areas the leadership wants to repress.
Why is the federal gov't responsible for weather monitoring? The military doesn't need them and the rest can be privatized. We finally have someone in the White House with the gonads to direct spending at the right things. MAGA.
If Congress cuts their funding then the NWS should only do forecasting for states that Congress critters didn't vote against funding. So if the NJ senators vote against funding...no weather forecasts for NJ. That way we cut down on the cost and the NWS cuts down on their workload.
Thatâ(TM)s not necessarily true. Many large and small agencies have vacancies on the books for various reasons. The recent hiring freezes played havoc, and many agencies simply cannot afford to make enough new hires to fill their vacancies. This is particularly true if the job vacancy requires promotion of an existing, trained, skilled employee, who would then require replacement with an outside hire.
So there is no need for all of these weather people.
"Weather is Fake News says Big Giant Orange Head, from the failing Mainstream Media!
"Stop covering it and the weather will go away!"
The most valid historical parallel, I believe, would be the Roman Empire.
It still takes quite a while. Rome (the city) was sacked several times before the old Roman Empire gave up the ghost. Constantine moved the seat of the empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul). This served well enough as Roman Empire Part II, until Europe (including Rome) managed to drag itself out of the Dark Ages.
The schism was obvious and unsupportable. The Byzantines claimed to be Romans, but so did actual Romans living in Rome! They even had dueling Popes for a while there.
Now that Oregon Scientific fans have close to 6 times the number of amateur automated weather stations, compared to the National Weather Service, I find free to be far more accurate when compared at an atomic level for local forecasting.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That is a good start.
Meteorologist can't tell me what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.
But they try to tell us what the weather is going to be like in 100 years.
You're an idiot. Government schools exist because people couldn't afford them on their own, the only easy to make it affordable is to have EVERYONE pay.
I went to private schools as a child and the cost was outrageous. People can't afford that. People can't afford any of the things you think are good ideas just because you want to pretend that a society of greedy jerks would be better off on the honor system
People never paying taxes doesn't double their money, not in a single case
But it would give them unusable hospitals, barely confining schools, unusable roads, and turn the country into Somalia overnight.
Fucking think about your ideas for more than 10 seconds
Hey, don't try to pass off your shitty trump vote as a result of "the establishment". You are conservative, have always been conservative, and will vote conservative no matter who gets put on the ticket. You will then try to defend the moron no matter the issue and deflect blame whenever you can-- like you just did.
Fuck off, trumptard.
If a CEO is a hardass and lays off 15% of his workforce even though his company is profitable: "It's great! The CEO's only job is to maximize investor value. He or she has a fiduciary duty..."
If a President gives the wealthy a tax cut that 'incidentally' benefits himself: "It's great! Trickle-down economics! Job creators! Yay private sector..."
If a Labour Union leader speaks or acts in the interests of his members: "Unions suck! Employees need to get with the program and negotiate individually with their employer, even though the employer has 1000x the resources the employee will ever have! Employee groups are Communist!"
So how many are remaining? 248 cut and 3,000 remaining would be practicle. What are the real facts not the sugar coated bs spouted by ready shoot aim crowd.
I have to laugh, because the hurricanes don't care. They're coming anyway. They're not interested in whether or not anyone at the weather service is reporting on them. They're going to happen. The most accurate weather prediction service for the 2017 season is predicting that 2018 will be even worse. (How do we know that GWO really was that accurate? Here's a link to their 2017 predictions posted on Feb 7, 2017, over a year ago-- and that season, they were proven right. That's how we know for a fact that this was not hindsight. http://notrickszone.com/2017/02/07/expert-hurricane-forecaster-says-upcoming-2017-season-likely-to-be-worstcostliest-in-12-years/#sthash.dermbCZK.dpbs) Here's their prediction for 2018. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2018/01/prweb15095592.htm
The weather simply does not care if anyone is facing reality or not. It IS reality.
The point here is that it's the Trump administration, not the NWS, that is indicating where the cuts need to be applied. That's micromanaging.
The National Weather Service IS part of the Trump Administration. ALL of the Executive departments are.
Perhaps he wants weather forecasters that will publish trumpist fake weather news like..it is sunny and will be sunny forever according to the lunatics from the Whitehouse and entourage until until you are dead from tornadoes, floods and hurricanes brought on in part by global warming. My goodness..the US is being governed by a moron.
No, but he tried: http://www.parabolicarc.com/20...
You shifted the discussion from a 'typical taxpayer' pays twice as much. Into 'the fed now collects twice the revenue per capita adjusted for inflation'
Just admit it.
It's not like we all don't know you're a full of shit liar already.
The National Weather Service has been predicting all this disastrous weather and done NOTHING to stop it.
(for the sarcasm/humor impaired and Republicans, that was a joke)
So, the antichrist is gearing up for the end of the world assault. Cut out everything and spend it all on bombs. Oh how nice !