{"id":4604,"date":"2026-05-08T02:00:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4604"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:12:10","slug":"the-damage-keeps-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/05\/08\/the-damage-keeps-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Damage Keeps Growing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/i> recently reported<\/a> that the National Weather Service is understaffed just as storm season is heating up. And while the Times<\/i> doesn\u2019t go into the details, anyone who was paying attention last year when the DOGE (pronounced \u201cdodgy\u201d) minions were running rampant through the government knows the absurd cuts they made are why the agency is short-staffed.<\/p>\n

According to the article, the current director is saying that restructuring is good, but I don\u2019t think anyone would want to begin their restructuring with massive cuts and loss of both experienced personnel and the new people they were mentoring.<\/p>\n

Mind you, the Weather Service was one of our government\u2019s great successes. Forecasting is so much more accurate now than it used to be. That\u2019s in great part because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the Weather Service, put together world-class research.<\/p>\n

NOAA in general is under attack from the regime, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, set for closure.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s going to leave us with less than adequate weather forecasting for years to come.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that ongoing effect \u2013 one that\u2019s not limited to the Weather Service \u2013 that really bothers me.<\/p>\n

Paul Krugman had an excellent piece this week<\/a> on how the various cuts in social programs during the Reagan administration \u2013 a time that gets treated like history today though there are still quite a few of us who remember just how bad it was \u2013 have affected life expectancy in this country. <\/p>\n

In 1980, we had about the same life expectancy as other economically advanced countries; now we are at about the same level as poorer European countries. For example, in 1980, both the U.S. and France had life expectancies of 74 years; now France\u2019s is 83 years while the U.S. is at 79 years.<\/p>\n

As Krugman explains, this was caused by cuts to social programs that were never restored. It was probably also caused by the ongoing refusal to do any kind of national health care program.<\/p>\n

Now we have anti-vaxxers and other people opposed to health care running rampant through the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration. They\u2019re blocking studies that show the effectiveness of Covid vaccines and recommending against vaccinating children for childhood disease while measles outbreaks are occurring across the country.<\/p>\n

The FDA just approved the sale of sweet-flavored vapes \u2013 a form of smoking aimed at young people. Let that sink in. They object to vaccines but are encouraging smoking.<\/p>\n

Now with a lot of effort and a little luck, we\u2019ll throw out the members of Congress allowing this to happen in this fall\u2019s elections and the rest of this anti-human regime by the end of 2028. But until we get them all out of there, they\u2019re going to continue to do things like this.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re going to leave these policies in their wake. Our life expectancy didn\u2019t just fall behind because of Reagan\u2019s policies; it lost ground because none of the succeeding administrations did much to fix the damage they did. The Affordable Care Act put in place during the Obama years was the strongest change, and the opposition to having healthy people in our country has been chipping away at it ever since.<\/p>\n

Once we get these people out, we have to undo what they\u2019ve done. And it\u2019s not just at the Weather Service and the health agencies. You can see the same thing throughout the government. It\u2019s hard to even make a list of everything that will need fixing.<\/p>\n

But if we\u2019re going to have the country we should have, we\u2019re going to have to try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t go into the details, anyone who was paying attention last year when the DOGE (pronounced \u201cdodgy\u201d) minions were running rampant through the government knows the absurd cuts they made are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1122,851],"class_list":["post-4604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-health","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4605,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}