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

Comments

Real reason Republicans want to fire NWS employees

[JoeyRox]

It's so they can piss on us and say it's raining.

Re:What did you expect?

[Ferretman]

Weird...nobody gave anything "away to the rich". People did get their government to stop taking a little bit less of their money....you probably meant that, right?

Ferret

Re:Fastest transition to 3rd world nation?

[PopeRatzo]

Just so we're clear, the actual budget for forecasting proposed calls for a 4% reduction in forecasting services

I mean, it's not like there have been any weather events that caused Americans any problems last year.

And if there were once-in-a-century hurricanes, etc that caused problems last year, then we probably won't need those forecasters because what are the odds we're going to get two years in a row of weather disasters, amirite? I say we should drain the National Weather Service, because they're all libs anyway. #MAGA

Re:What did you expect?

[ScentCone]

And you have just resorted to lazy ad hominem instead of refuting his point. Because you can't.

Re:Fastest transition to 3rd world nation?

[TheGratefulNet]

voters are idiots and the framers of the const. knew that.

problem is, they also trusted the electoral college and that proved to be fatal, in this case. they were the last check/balance and they 100% failed us. we should get rid of it since it failed and will fail again. (do we really think this was a one-time event?)

we really need revolution 2.0. we don't want it, but we need it.

so much is broken and needs to be scrapped and re-done.