Envisaging Milton under Trump 2.0:
Source: NOAA.
Following:
Source:Time, Feb 1, 2020.
From Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise on page 664:
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
And on page 674:
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
Break Up NOAA. The single biggest Department of Commerce agency outside of decennial census years is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other components. NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures).NOAA consists of six main offices:
- The National Weather Service (NWS);
- The National Ocean Service (NOS);
- The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR);
- The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS);
- The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); and
- The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps.
Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.
NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather. Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.2
The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.
NOAA does not currently utilize commercial partnerships as some other agencies do. Commercialization of weather technologies should be prioritized to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high quality research and weather data. Investing in different sizes of commercial partners will increase competition while ensuring that the government solutions provided by each contract is personalized to the needs of NOAA’s weather programs. The NWS should be a candidate to become a Performance-Based Organization to better enforce organizational focus on core functions such as efficient delivery of accurate, timely, and unbiased data to the public and to the private sector.3Review the Work of the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service. The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally. Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.
…
Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. OAR provides theoretical science, as opposed to the applied science of the National Hurricane Center. OAR is, however, the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism. The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded. OAR is a large network of research laboratories, an undersea research center, and several joint research institutes with universities. These operations should be reviewed with an aim of consolidation and reduction of bloat.
…
Break Up the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and Reassign Its Assets to Other Agencies During This Process. The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which provides the ships and planes used by NOAA agencies, should be broken up and its assets reassigned to the General Services Administration or to other agencies.
…Ensure Appointees Agree with Administration Aims. Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.
…
u.s.w.
text in red
by blog author.
This chapter (on the Department of Commerce) was written by Thomas Gilman:
Thomas F. Gilman served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Trump Administration. Currently, he is a Director of ACLJ Action and Chairman of Torn-gat Metals. Tom is the former CEO of Chrysler Financial and has had a 40-plus year career as a senior executive and entrepreneur in the global automotive industry, including roles at Chrysler Corporation, Cerberus Capital Management, Asbury Automotive Group, TD Auto Finance, and Automotive Capital Services. He holds a BS in finance from Villanova University.
You knew this would be in Project 2025:
“Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Ah yes – climate change is a hoax. End the Green agenda, deregulate, and massive tax cuts for the rich. And the era of 6% growth per year will be set. So sayeth John Cochrane, EJ Antoni, Stephen Moore, and Lawrence Kudlow. MAGA!
Oh those two massive Hurricanes. Marjorie Taylor Greene has proof that they was created by some Democrat using a Giant Space Laser!
The bit about private firms doing a better job than the National Weather Service – I’m pretty sure the private firms use NWS data to make their forecasts. The private sector is nowhere near ready to take over NOAA’s role. I suspect Gilman knows that, given that he was at Commerce while Trump was in office.
NOAA mostly reports the facts, and scientific findings. What Gilman’s recommendation amounts to – like so much of the Republican agenda – is “Stop reporting facts”.
The private sector is saying that Florida is uninhabitable right about now. At least the insurance industry is saying that. Suppose the free markeers will notice?
The combination of condo associations being forced to put huge new assessments on owners to fix safety issues and huge increases in insurance premiums will make for a very tough decade ahead in Florida. The reverse migration is coming very soon.
Maybe Heritage’s Project 2025 is thinking about conservative darling Thomas Borcherding who argued that activities tend to be far less efficient when performed by public entities than by private enterprises. In his 1977 article “The Sources of Growth in Public Expenditures in the U.S., 1902-1970,” he formulated the “Bureaucratic Rule of Two,” which states that “Removal of an activity from the private sector to the public sector will double its unit costs of production.”
Has this been tested and where? Well there was a study of Canadian egg marketing but even Thomas would not apply his hokey rule to public goods and services. You know we had a history before FEMA and the like and the Heritage preferred approach fared very poorly.
I think there are some pretty good studies on the unit cost of private vs. public utilities. Turns out that when you hand over essential services to the private sector they milk it for all they can. There was a horror story from somewhere in Montana where a community sold their utilities to a private company and were ripped off.
Yes. Same with jails and juvenile detention facilities. Same with road maintenance.
Efficiency is NOT the special province of private interests. Profit is. There is some room for a corrupt feedback mechanism in purely public activity – read Buchanan – but there is more room for corrupt feedback when public money creates private profit.
Tax Avoidance Continues to Fuel School Privatization Efforts
https://itep.org/tax-avoidance-fuels-school-vouchers-privatization-efforts/
Just one of the many problems with the privatization of education.
Look at the financial markets for additional proof. Market friction (inefficiency) is how the finance industry profits. Any time a financial type person comes up with an “innovation,” you can assume it’s a way of injecting a bit of profitable inefficiency into the market.
I tried to find anything of substance written by Antoni via Google scholar and all it turned up was his 2020 dissertation:
Fiscal Triumvirate: Analyses of Crowding Out from Deficit Spending, of Domestic Migration from State Taxes, and of the Irrelevance of Credit Ratings on Municipal Debt Yields
https://www.proquest.com/openview/6fb8406be5a007131cab7fe6e2683e17/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
You may choose to read this for yourself but it does seem Antoni has written nothing on monetary policy, labor economics, or health economics. But he does get invited on Faux News to lie with statistics!
pgl: If I’m not mistaken, that is his dissertation.
Trump went to Detroit and a few of the attendees had shirts that said “Auto Workers for Trump”. Turns out none of these fakers worked in the automobile sector.
The time line for Trump’s Sharpiegate is important. As the hurricane Dorian bore down on the east coast, Trump decided on Thursday to take a three-day weekend golfing at his private club Trump National in northern Virginia — Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Despite criticism for going on vacation as disaster threatened America, Trump claimed that he would be getting hourly updates on the golf course — apparently from his caddie.
On Sunday Trump tweeted that Alabama was threatened. The Birmingham NOAA office tweeted that this was incorrect, trying to avoid unnecessary panic.
The uproar over the contradictions continued until Trump had his infamous press conference on Wednesday in which he showed his Sharpie enhanced map.
But you can look at the the map yourself here: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/06/politics/donald-trump-hurricane-dorian-sharpie-week-in-review/index.html
Note the date is Thursday morning, before Trump’s vacation holiday.
Trump on Wednesday is showing a NOAA map from the previous Thursday — from a full week before.
So the whole idea of Trump being on top of it is a lie. The last NOAA map he looked at was on Thursday before he went his golfing vacation. When he tweeted about Alabama on Sunday the map was already three days old. NOAA typically updates its maps every 12 hours , but Trump hadn’t looked at the new map for the last three days — while playing golf. Meanwhile the path had shifted dramatically from Trump’s last day on the job, Thursday. If Trump has simply looked at the latest NOAA map on Sunday, he would have seen that the path was nowhere near Alabama.
And it gets worse. Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce, and the head of NOAA, threatened to fire all of the personnel in the Birmingham office if they didn’t issue an apology for contradicting Trump. It’s literally a case of pissing on your leg and telling you it is raining.
Pissing in your leg and telling you it’s Dorian.
You may remember back in 2019 when Trump falsely accused John Kerry of violating the Logan Act. Why do I bring this up? Well Trump has been talking to Putin which is a violation of the Logan Act. But when Trump’s little Minnie Me JD Vance was asked about what Woodward wrote – the little twit said Trump did nothing wrong. Violating the Logan Act is OK with little JD?
Fact checking Trump’s claim John Kerry is in violation of the Logan Act
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/09/politics/donald-trump-john-kerry-logan-act-iran-facts-first/index.html
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOPGSTB
Trade Balance: Goods and Services
Our trade deficit has been declining. Good news – right? Not according to fake economist EJ Antoni as he sees this as “consumers hitting the wall” buying fewer luxury cars. What happened EJ? Did you crash your BMW into a wall?
Hey – all the farmers out there – prepare to pay a lot more (and I mean a lot more) for your private weather reports under Trump – back when I worked for a agronomic/crop science society – 15 years ago and I would take a climate scientist/subject-matter expert to the Natl. Farm Broadcaster annual meeting to do ‘canned broadcasts” – on climate change – we would hear the same thing I hear from trump now – “climate change – didn’t that used to be called global warming” – (climate change denial is still thriving under GOP political leaders) and also farmers – “I have to plant in that wetland area so I can make money! if I lose my crop – I have federally subsidized crop insurance!” (although – I would note that Project 2025 eliminates crop insurance/most of the USDA programs).
Hey – with all these extreme weather events can the voters in these red states put some pressure on Johnson/GOP House to increase FEMA funding? Although good luck with that – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) is telling her constituents that the weather is just a Deep State plot. (https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-doubles-down-weather-comments-after-backlash-1964508 )
Also – although lost in other Trump scandal news – Trump sent his dictator idol – Putin – COVID tests while telling U.S. citizens – tough luck – try injecting some bleach “by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-secretly-shared-covid-19-tests-with-putin-and-stayed-in-touch-after-presidency-bob-woodward-claims/ar-AA1rUznP
It seems the lies from Trump and his minnie me JD Vance are too much even for House Republicans and Fox News. Anyone have a copy of this fact sheet?
Fox obtains fact sheet from GOP-led House committee debunking Trump’s FEMA claims
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-obtains-fact-sheet-from-gop-led-house-committee-debunking-trump-s-fema-claims/ar-AA1rXq9f?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=808fb01d03cb457194f50f56b7d85767&ei=10