May 2026 – Treehouse Writers

The New York Times recently reported that the National Weather Service is understaffed just as storm season is heating up. And while the Times doesn’t go into the details, anyone who was paying attention last year when the DOGE (pronounced “dodgy”) minions were running rampant through the government knows the absurd cuts they made are why the agency is short-staffed.

According to the article, the current director is saying that restructuring is good, but I don’t think anyone would want to begin their restructuring with massive cuts and loss of both experienced personnel and the new people they were mentoring.

Mind you, the Weather Service was one of our government’s great successes. Forecasting is so much more accurate now than it used to be. That’s in great part because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the Weather Service, put together world-class research.

NOAA in general is under attack from the regime, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, set for closure.

While this damage is already showing up in the forecasts for tornadoes and other storms and makes us all wonder what happens if this year turns out to be a big one for hurricanes, the odds are it’s going to leave us with less than adequate weather forecasting for years to come.

And it’s that ongoing effect – one that’s not limited to the Weather Service – that really bothers me.

Paul Krugman had an excellent piece this week on how the various cuts in social programs during the Reagan administration – a time that gets treated like history today though there are still quite a few of us who remember just how bad it was – have affected life expectancy in this country. Continue reading “The Damage Keeps Growing”…

I’ve seen some news lately about people who are deciding to leave the United States. Apparently there is a long waiting list of people living in Europe who want to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

There are always articles on how to move to other countries, assuming you have enough money, focusing on which countries will welcome you and what the bureaucracy is, but while these used to be aimed at people looking to retire someplace where their money goes farther, it now seems more politically based.

After the Supreme Court’s horrible ruling this week gutting the Voting Rights Act, I saw some discussion by Black people on social media suggesting it was time for African Americans to go elsewhere. I can sympathize with that, though I doubt it’s a practical option for most.

As for me, though, I’m not going anywhere.

For one thing, the horrible things being done by the grifter and his minions to the United States are, unfortunately, not confined to the United States. I doubt there’s much of any place in the world you can be truly safe from the ravages of these people.

Also, I don’t want to live somewhere where I don’t have the right to participate in public life — to vote, to advocate, to march in the streets – and ties to other people as neighbors and friends. I’d want to be able to speak the language well enough to fit in and complain to local officials.

I don’t have any right to citizenship in another country except what they might allow through immigration, and I doubt I have enough years left to get that done, get really comfortable in the language, and actually become a full citizen before I’m too old for it to matter.

As I have written before, I am not a person with a deep connection to place. Whenever I visit somewhere else, I always think about what it would be like to live there. I’ve visited some lovely places.

Which is to say, I could probably live somewhere else. It just doesn’t seem like a reasonable course of action at this point in my life. And I don’t think running away would solve anything.

Recently it has been pointed out that anyone with a Canadian great-great grandparent can acquire Canadian citizenship. I don’t fall into that category, but I know others who do. And I know of people whose parents and grandparents came here from other countries who have recently acquired passports for those places.

If I did have the right to citizenship in another country, I would go after it, not for escaping the current regime but for the value of having ties to more than one place. Continue reading “Leaving and Staying”…