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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
Someone needs to mod the parent as funny. I assume it has to be a joke unless there are really people out there who think that, say weather.com, the weather channel, etc. are actually forecasting. They almost all use the NWS forecast, they may add a little to it, but the heavy lifting is done by that government agency.
lol,when has a Republican administration ever been "deficit hawks"? If there's one pattern in politics it's that deficits shrink under the Dems and blow out under the GOP.
Poe's Law is a harsh mistress.
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Here is an interesting take and it puts the budget into constant dollars. Might be a bit instructive...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And I seem to recall W standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier declaring “Mission accomplished!”. Years later the head of the Iraqi government Bush had installed refused to sign an agreement with the U.S. to allow our continued occupation. Obama was unable to get that agreement signed either. That’s the extent of the blame you can lay at his feet.
The NWS currently has 500 unfilled positions - eliminating 248 of those unfilled positions would be "painless" for most Americans.
Ken
I found the top marginal tax rate to be interesting. I knew that it had spiked during the war, but I hadn't known that it was so high for so long. Really more from the New Deal than from the war, and that's basically the whole period where we had a growing middle class.
Getting rid of forecasters is fucking moronic.
Couple questions:
How many forecasters does the NWS have currently working?
How many forecasters are needed to properly serve the public?
How many vacant forecaster positions are there at NWS right now?
With nearly five thousand staff positions and nearly 500 currently vacant positions, eliminating half the vacant positions isn't really so fucking moronic , is it?
Interesting to note your fiercely-held opinion is likely based on a complete lack of any facts on the subject.
Ken
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.
"no one" you claim. I seem to remember right-wingers blaming Obama for every little thing. In fact, they're still doing it to this day.
Where do you think the "Thanks, Obama" meme came from?
It's always Obama's or Clinton's fault, no matter who's in charge or who's in Congress.
Here's federal government spending per capita in constant dollars. You'll notice it only levels out or decreases when there is a Republican Congress and a Democratic President.
Congress controls the budget. When there is a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, Congress spends more, but they work with the President to fund some of his priorities.
When there is a match between Congress and the President's party, they spend more.
So a more accurate statement would be that Democrats always spend more. Republicans also spend more, except when there is a Democratic Party President.
Oh, and it's completely a spending problem. Revenue (i.e. taxes) per capita in constant dollars has also increased 3x over the last 60 years and is at record highs, despite the occasional dip based primarily on how the economy is doing and tax law changes. It's just that as much as the federal government has increased tax revenue over the years, Congress has managed to spend even more. So let's work on cutting the spending, or at least slowing down the growth!
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
You would lose that bet. Even if they have additional sources of data, and use their own people (more likely, their own computers) making predictions, both the military and most news organizations use NWS data.
What? Are you talking about the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008? That's the only recent bank bailout of which I'm aware and it was signed into law by George W. Bush.
Enigma
This is by design. The Constitution even limits the military budget process to no more than two years, with no similar limit on any other cabinet department. Back in 1789 when the Constitution was drafted, military coups were more common than they are today. Even outside of coups, military leaders were far more influential in governments. Our founders wanted to prevent that and put the military firmly under the control of civilians, to mitigate the risk of a powerful military controlling or even taking over the government.
After WW2, with the Cold War in full swing, the military became a favorite vehicle for delivering pork, as well. That, to me, is the real problem here. Our military is no longer about defense (sorry, "invading Iraq" which is 7,000 miles away is not "defending our country"). It is designed to evoke patriotism and support in the people so the wealthy can funnel lucrative contracts to favored military-industrial complex contractors. Essentially, stealing from the poor (taxpayers) to give to the rich (CEOs of companies like Boeing). Yes, those companies provide some value. However, they do so with gross inefficiency and well beyond the level required to defend U.S. soil. That is the problem that needs solving.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!