Twice a day for years, meteorologists in Kotzebue, Alaska, have launched weather balloons far into the sky to measure data like wind speed, humidity and temperature, and translated the information the balloons sent back into weather forecasts and models. It’s a ritual repeated at dozens of weather stations around the United States.
On Thursday morning, the National Weather Service, which for years has struggled with worker shortages around the country, announced that it had “indefinitely suspended” the launches from Kotzebue because of a lack of staffing.
Hours later, word of mass layoffs began to spread at the Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More than 800 people were expected to lose their jobs, the latest cuts in the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reshape the federal work force. As they have elsewhere, the cuts appeared to have been focused on probationary employees who are easier to dismiss.
Though not entirely unexpected, the terminations were shocking to employees of the Weather Service, the government agency responsible for issuing […]
I wonder if we will charge an oligarchic for the weather service or will they make us pay them to take it?
After all it must be in bad shape and “losing” money or we wouldn’t have to get rid of it.
If it was a separate company like the Post Office they could use its vastly over-funded pension (mandated by bipartisan congresses) to buy it.
I was in Mexico when their country started selling all their assets for austerity reasons. They didn’t want to tax the rich either so their Harvard educated President sold the airlines, telephone, train, ferries and much more. He went into exile in NYC (now in Ireland) after he left office.
When the sales start they will be fast and furious, both Dems and Repubs will take cuts. We have to organize now or lose it all