National Weather Service being undermined again


John Oliver looks at how the Trump administration is trying to limit the services provided by this very important agency because the private sector cannot compete with it. It is doing so by trying to appoint the head of a private weather company AccuWeather to head the NWS. So much for the claims that the private sector can do things much better than the government can. This comes after the earlier failure in 2005 of another attempt to prohibit the NWS from giving its information away for free.

Comments

  1. Ridana says

    The fuckery just never ends, does it. He really won’t be happy until he’s destroyed everything he can get his tiny claws on.

  2. says

    At 14:30 John Oliver says, “Why not find another guy?” This phrase bothered me. It should be instead, “Why not find another person?” After all, why can’t a woman have this job? It’s wrong to use specifically male words when talking about candidates for some job.

  3. Mano Singham says

    Andreas,

    Yeah, that was a slip by him. Given his past, I am pretty certain that Oliver did not mean to exclude other genders.

    Part of the problem is that the word ‘guy’ has become ambiguous. While clearly masculine in its origins, I see many people using it, especially in the plural form ‘guys’, as gender neutral.

  4. says

    #5 Mano wrote:

    Part of the problem is that the word ‘guy’ has become ambiguous. While clearly masculine in its origins, I see many people using it, especially in the plural form ‘guys’, as gender neutral.

    As a German, I stumble about that increasingly on American TV shows especially when used by women addressing a group of other women. It sounds strange to me.

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