There was no “official” U.A. Department of Education until 1979. So how did kids bet “educated”?
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PBS had this to say; "Moskowitz said, “Project 2025 wants to get rid of NOAA” and the National Weather Service.
Project 2025 has a few pages about NOAA and the National Weather Service and some of its phrasing is vague.
But it does call for major changes. It described NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”
It doesn’t explicitly call for getting rid of the National Weather Service, but it says it should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”
We rate this statement Half True."
Correct and since the DoEdu was established the testing scores of American kids has dropped.
The Federal DoEdu serves as a middleman that takes in taxes and then doles them back out and they do this with a workforce of bureaucrats. Wouldn’t it make sense for the states to tend to their own students?
Moreover, as posted above, education is not one of the Constitutionally provided for powers of the federal govt, which makes it a state power under the 10th amendment.
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I vaguely remember some years ago there was an article that explained the portion of federal programs that was consumed by administration, and the portion that was actually spent onto try to accomplish the goals of the programs.
As I recall it was fairly common for administration to consume about half of a program’s budget.
My town spends most of its budget and my high local property taxes to educate the town’s children. There is just enough state funding to enable the state to shove various mandates down our throats. There is no federal funding, except for the occasional grant to promote gender dysphoria, pronouns, or some such nonsense.
Personally, I am in favor of standardized testing to measure educational success rates and assure that kids advance with required knowledge and skills. However, that has fallen out of favor because a bad test score or holding a lazy or dull kid back a grade might hurt someone’s feelings.
I don’t really see much of a need for a federal role in pre-k through 12 education.
We have too few high school grads going to trade school to learn skills that our society needs.
We have far too many kids going to college (most of them are not college material) to study useless subjects paid for by federal student loans that do not prepare them for productive employment. This has devalued college degrees.
Yes, I am willing to eliminate the federal Department of Education. It’s even worse than NMC at much greater expense with much worse consequences.
But, I want to the NWS improved and continued, not outsourced. It actually does a damn good job.
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Yeah, I mean what could go wrong? It’s not a ship could get outdated/poor info and sail into the eye of a hurricane
NOAA also does A LOT more than just weather forecasts or climate science.
NOAA supports nautical charting soup to nuts, setting the standards for US charts, acquiring the data, processing the data, and producing the final chart for mariners.
NOAA does tidal and current predictions for all US waters, as well as the tsunami observing network throughout the Pacific.
NOAA also manages fisheries under federal purview, manages marine sanctuaries, and enforces both the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act in US waters.
NOAA is significantly involved in any maritime spill response in US waters.
NOAA even does space weather, and the satellites that support location by EPIRB are NOAA satellites.
The list goes on, but to think of just the National Weather Service when thinking of NOAA is to miss out on all the other missions that fall into its portfolio. Amazingly, once vetted all of NOAA’s data is available for free to anyone in the world. Electronic charts are available for free online, as are tide and current predictions and a bevy of weather observations and forecasts. All of these missions are critical to maintain in a public not-for-profit capacity to make the best data and science freely available to all Americans, and especially for those who spend significant time operating in US waters.
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It’s not amazing that the information is available to anyone else in the world, we help collect it.
On voyages between Australasian and New Zealand ports and West Coast USA ports we used to collect the data for NOAA. Six hourly weather reports and bathythermagraph reports and continuous air sampling. Occasionally I carried NOAA observers.
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What’s amazing is all these products and the source data are available to anyone in the world FOR FREE! As in ZERO cost to everyone!
That’s the unique level of government service and transparency that you would never get with privatizing the services or using some sort of commercial intermediary to distribute the information.
I know Canada charges to download electronic charts and I imagine many other countries do as well. NOAA provides all US charts online FOR FREE to both US and non-US users. All the forecasting tools, weather imagery, tide and current tools, are freely available free of charge to anyone. All the climate data, chart source data, and fisheries stock assessment data and any other data or publications are all available free from online databases. NOAA maintains these databases and makes this data freely available to any user in the world for free.
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While there may be good and bad parts of NOAA, President Trusk’s administration is working with a sledge hammer, not a scapel. What bits they deem essential will be privatized so you can pay dearly to find out where the next hurricane in the Gulf of MEXICO is headed.
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No, no no. “GULF of the Americas”, or “Golf de Americas” if you want.
Mexico has NO RIGHT to just name a body of water after their own country!!!
Before you know it they would rename large parts of USA “Old Mexico”
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Not necessarily disagreeing but the days of an “undiscovered hurricane” hopefully are long over. I doubt we would ever see another Labor Day Storm of 1935 with today’s satellite technology. If there is a hurricane “lurking around” and you don’t know it, it is most likely because you aren’t paying attention.
Who was the last ship you can think of using “commercialized” weather routing that sailed into a hurricane and sank?
Why not use the Air Force instead of creating another branch of the military in the Space Force? We all know who was in office when that unnecessary inefficiency was created.
Why doesn’t DOGE look at whether the Space Force is necessary? I’ve got to believe it would be cheaper and more efficient to roll the Space Force service members and mission back into the Air Force where it always was prior. Plus the Space Force dress uniforms are just ridiculous.
And if privatizing government public services is so efficient, and if private enterprise is innately better at everything, why does Amazon contract to use the USPS to deliver 7 days a week including Sunday? Surely a brilliant billionaire shouldn’t have to rely on the work of federal employees just to maximize his business model.
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Great suggestions!
And if anything a “space force” should be a dept of the navy.
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Honestly that would make more sense given the potential to use ship/nautical terminology. Plus there’s plenty of pilots in the Navy so it isn’t like the Navy doesn’t already have a significant air craft component. At this point there have been almost as many Naval Astronauts as Air Force Astronauts. Apparently the Naval Academy has produced more astronauts than any other school.
Bonus points would be the ability to use Navy Service Dress Blues, which in my opinion is the best dress uniform of any service, and since the Marines are under the Dept. of the Navy we could also eventually have “Space Marines”!
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There may not be undiscovered hurricanes but there are definitely undiscovered rocks and shoals. NOAA works diligently to set hydrographic survey priorities on the intrinsic value to marine traffic and the risk posed by potential hazards and the needs of vessel traffic, NOT what produces the most profit. NOAA has to weigh the value of surveying the Port of Long Beach versus working in the Arctic, and they are the first boots on the ground to survey post disaster with their mobile Navigation Response Teams. NOAA does this based on the needs of the Nation and maritime traffic, NOT based on what will make the most money.
Surveying the Arctic is a herculean task and will be incredibly expensive but given the trends in climate and shipping this task is critical to focus on. I have significant doubt that a private company could or would provide this similarly. Imagine having to pay more for charts of the Arctic versus Long Island Sound simply because it costs more to survey in remote areas. After all who is going to survey all those new “US waters” around Greenland?
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Man I feel like there was one. Didn’t seem like it was that long ago…names right on the tip of my tongue…
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It would not bother me one whit to abolish NOAA Corps. All their duties could be taken over by civilians. But the thing that bothers me is the emphasis on cutting out the small parts of the budget. NOAA, USAID etc but the Dept of Defense which is the largest cost at about a trillion a year is hands off. No waste there ? Notice also no mention has been made about raising the minimum wage from $7.25/hr.
But this is what the majority wanted so let Trump, Musk and his Musketeers alone for a few years. People get the government they deserve. See Hungary for a recent example as the current government in the USA seems to be on that path.
We’ll see in a few years how this all works out but for now there is nothing the average citizen can do but tell their representatives how they think things are going, but you might need to give them a few million dollars for them to take you serious. 
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The slashing of USAID is particularly disheartening to me. People are literally going to die. Certain children, God’s children on this earth, who relied on this program are going to grow up malnourished or even die based on the whims of the richest man in the world.
I do not feel that this is making us great and we are certainly not behaving as a “Christian” nation. Instead I feel like an “ugly American”.
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This USA was not founded as a Christian nation. The men that wrote the edicts establishing the USA recognized that there should be no official religion. The last thing the country needs is a Christian Taliban or any official religion. Hasn’t worked out in the middle east has it? As Mahatma Gandi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians"
“Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.”
So patience and humor
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