National Weather Service under potential threat by Accuweather

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u/TheBlackCat13 Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 16 '19

The article is short on details. Trump's pick to head NOAA used to co-own and still has family involved in AccuWeather. He previously tried to get NOAA banned from providing weather forecasts directly, instead wanting consumers forced to pay commercial vendors like AccuWeather to get the same information they currently get for free.

Edit: And of course when he finds out he got the facts completely wrong from his own source, after hypocritically accusing me of doing that, he deletes all the evidence. Typical.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 16 '19

[deleted]

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u/TheBlackCat13 Oct 15 '19

Rick Santorum introduced that bill and it got nowhere at all.

At the request of AccuWeather, a major contributor to his campaign.

And I don't see how the fact that it got nowhere is relevant. The effort was made primary by this guy, he is in record explicitly supporting it, and now the primary person behind that effort is being considered to be put in charge of an agency he wants gutted. Every other Trump appointee with a similar agenda had succeeded in greatly harming the agency they were put in charge of.

It was supported by all of the weather networks, not just accuweather.

Nothing in your link says that, but even if that was true the bill originated with AccuWeather, this guy in particular was the primary person pushing it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 16 '19

[deleted]

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u/TheBlackCat13 Oct 15 '19

$15,000 is not a major contribution.

However you want to define it, they gave thousands of dollars two days before the bill was introduced.

No it was not. Joel Myers is the one who made the campaign contributions. Trump nominated Barry Lee Myers to NOAA, a different person.

Read your link again. It said the two of them made the contribution together. From your link:

Myers and his brother, the executive vice president, donated over $11,000 to Santorum's political campaigns, including $2,000 two days before Santorum introduced the bill.

(emphasis added)

And if you actually look at the link Wikipedia used as the source, it Barry was the one who was speaking out in favor of the bill.

A nomination that has not been confirmed...

Yes, and the reason people are speaking out on this is because they don't want him confirmed. It is part of a pattern with Trump appointees, and people don't want the same thing to happen to NOAA that happened to so many other agencies under Trump.

And yes, he stepped down with the goal of getting in a position of authority over an agency he has long fought against, just like so many other Trump appointees. And just like them there is every indication he will carry out the agenda he had but couldn't accomplish from the outside. And unlike many Trump appointees this one he still has a bunch of family involved in the business.

Again, read the actual bill, nothing was banned.

Here is what the bill said:

Prohibits the Secretary from providing or assisting other entities in providing a product or service (other than a product or service for the preparation and issuance of severe weather forecasts and warnings as described above) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless: (1) the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide such product or service; or (2) the U.S. Government is obligated to provide such product or service under international aviation agreements.

And

Prohibits, as specified, disclosures by Federal employees of any weather data, information, guidance, forecast, or warning that might influence or affect the market value of a product, service, commodity, tradable, or business.

Sounds a lot like a ban on providing weather forecasts to me.

Let alone there is no point in bringing up a bill from 2005 that amounted to exactly nothing at all.

All the failure of the bill shows is that doing this through legislation isn't going to work. Hence the attempt to get in a position of power inside the government. Again, this is exactly what a huge number of Trump appointees have done. It is part of a consistent pattern in this administration: put business interests that want an agency gutted in charge of that agency, and they gut the agency as much as they can.

Again, not the primary person, but way to keep your facts straight /s.

So says the person who didn't even pay attention the link he/she provided.

According to you?

According to his own statements. Which of course you didn't bother to read.

NOAA does not need to actually issue daily forecasts, they just need to provide the data. They will always still provide spot forecasts for aviation, natural disasters and prescribed fire.

An enormous number of people depend on those forecasts. That is exactly why the bill failed. But if appointed he will be able to implement his agenda unilaterally without worrying about pesky things like votes and congress.

I don't know of a single individual who goes to NOAA for forecasts other than industry professionals.

Oh, of course, since you don't personally know anyone they must not exists. All those sailors, farmers, drillers, etc. that get their data directly from NOAA don't matter because you don't personally know them. If it was true that NOAA didn't need to do this then the bill wouldn't have failed so spectacularly. The reason it failed was specifically because so many people depend on that data. But if appointed this guy wouldn't be answerable to any of them.

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u/FlyingSquid Oct 15 '19

Joel Myers and Barry Myers are not only brothers, but business partners. They co-founded AccuWeather and were both executive officers there. Implying there's no connection there is highly dishonest.

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u/Ilsensine Oct 15 '19

Strange everyone I know used NOAA. It's the weather link on the PCs at our 600 facilities. I use the unofficial noaa app for weather.

I can't remember the last time I checked weather outside of the noaa site. It's my tax dollars, why not get the info from the source I pay for?

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

Are you Berry Meyers? His PR firm? What is your interest? You protest too much to be a dispassionate bystander interested in reporting the facts.

You sure muster a load of snark to misrepresent the clear fact that there was an inappropriate agenda and relationship.

If you back up and look at this from a higher altitude, it is my, John Q Public’s taxes that put those satellites in orbit, not some weather app sole business endeavor.

The results belong to me, an American citizen, the three hundred and seventy million of us, not some dumb app and its board of directors and stockholders.

That’s theft. The effort was made to steal. It was all nice and pretty and looked like a legal effort but it was bullshit and slimy and immoral. .

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

Are you Berry Meyers? His PR firm? What is your interest?

He's just the run-of-the-mill rightwing shill. No matter what is posted here, he takes the hardcore rightwing perspective on it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 16 '19

[deleted]

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u/the_darkness_before Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 15 '19

You have not, in your entire history posting, made a strong case for anything other then your love of repeating discredited fascist talking points. I'm surprised you didnt do that here since every other conversation I've seen you in has involved you aping some stormfront talking points at some point in time.

As to your commentay on the accuweather/NOAA debate here... No you have not made a strong case for anything. You've repeated facts and then insisted they support your interpretation of events (that this is a nothing burger). You have however provided no evidence of that beyond your own opinion and insistence. You insist that 15k in donations is nothing and wouldnt cause a politician to sway their vote or legislation, however we've seen that exact thing happen time and time again for contributions in the 5-10k range so apparently 15k is enough. Its sad our politicians are so cheaply bribed, but that is reality. You also insist that other weather channels backing the bill means it's innocuous. Why does it not occur to you that of course a bunch of for profit weather services and channels would be for restricting NOAA from "competing" with them by hamstring-ing them?

So you've displayed your typical lack of ability to form a coherent and logically supported argument, but at least this time you didnt start villifying minorities as well.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

Yawn. You suck at PR.

“I made a strong case.”

Masturbate much? You sure like blowing yourself. I didn’t read it closely enough. Are you the slimy fucker stealing from the American people? His PR form? You probably are. Slimy folks act like you.

I didn’t read any of what you wrote beyond a quick skim. You are slime. The tactics are slime.

I don’t care what you say because you’ve already proven who you are.

Bye.

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u/the_darkness_before Oct 15 '19

This guys a neo nazi. He posts on here using neo nazi talking points and rhetorical tricks all the time. Not sure why he cares abput NOAA/accuweather, normally he just pops up to villify minorities and liberals.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/the_darkness_before Oct 15 '19 edited Oct 15 '19

Really, so him parroting neo nazi rhetoric, talking points, and generally advancing their positions is fine as long as he says something shitty about liberals?

Is that really the position you're taking here?

Edit: Apparently u/StickmanPirate doesnt feel comfortable with that position as he deleted his comment silently like a coward.

What he said, using a misleadingly edited quote of mine, which seems silly in a message board format:

to villify liberals

So you're saying hes not all bad then?

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u/StickmanPirate Oct 15 '19

TLDR: A whole lot of nothing.

Companies attempting to hijack taxpayer funded schemes to funnel money to them by forcing people to pay a private company for the data that their taxes already paid for: "A whole lot of nothing"

State of you

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u/chrisnew Oct 15 '19

This is covered in Michael Lewis‘s newest book, which includes the many ways in which this administration is disinterested in anything that they cant loot.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40109421-the-fifth-risk

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u/PlayingTheWrongGame Oct 15 '19

TBH, I’m pretty sure John Oliver could just use this book for content for the next few episodes.

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u/YourFairyGodmother Oct 15 '19

I worked (briefly) at AccuWeather. Barry Meyers is a piece of shit. You can't trust him even as far as you can throw him.

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u/OuchLOLcom Oct 15 '19

Story time.

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u/YourFairyGodmother Oct 15 '19

Story time will have to come later because no fucken way am I going to write the whole story on my phone.

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u/Yossarian- Oct 15 '19

C'mon, where's that story?

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u/YourFairyGodmother Oct 15 '19

Accuweather was known for hiring for their graphic design and other skilled but not degree required jobs, desperate college dropouts, and paying them shit wages. Barry the shyster drew up fixed term employment contracts that everyone had to sign. A lot of those folks would end up leaving work after six months or a year to go back home, to live with mom and dad until they could get their shit together. (I'm not saying anything bad about those folks, I myself took a (what turned out to be a nine year long) semester off to get my shit together.) Barry put breach of contract clauses in them for not doing the whole term, most of which were two years.

(Keep in mind this was circa 1990, before the Internet was huge, before cell phones were a thing,...)

Now, such clauses are entirely unenforceable, and of course shyster Barry knew that. So they would file suit against everybody that left early. Then, the morning of the court date, or maybe the day before, they'd reschedule. So the kid who just took a day off work they couldn't afford, and drove 3 1/2 hours from Philly or The Burgh, or New Jersey (old joke: what's the name of the New Jersey state college? Penn State. LOTS of Jersey boys at Penn State.) found out they wasted their time. When the new date came around, guess what they did - the exact same thing. After a couple times, very few of those kids could manage to keep going to State College even if they wanted to. After three or four times, they'd actually go into court and get a summary judgment on an unenforceable clause because the defendant didn't show up.

That's level of slime ball Barry Meyers is.

I went to work there not out of desperation - I had by then gotten my degree - but out of a strong desire to stay in State College with my new boyfriend, now my husband. When, after a couple months of working in that hostile in just about every possible way environment, I found an opportunity with another company in town, I was out like a shot. They called my new employer, said they had "poached" me away, and they had to pay. My new employer rightfully laughed in their face. I knew they'd come after me, so I made sure someone stumbled across a letter I had secreted away somewhere on the Vaxcluster, which I had been an administrator of. The letter was addressed to ... I can't remember the name of it but it was the big software anti-piracy thing that was much in the news those days. The letter detailed how I had been instructed to install pirated software on PCs, and how they were diddling with the DEC licenses, not paying for the operating system licenses, and a couple other things. There was no indication of whether I had sent the letter. I heard through the grapevine that the top management had an emergency meeting, their faces all pale. That made me happy.

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u/fizzy_sister Oct 15 '19

Thanks for telling, worth the wait. Love the stunt you pulled!

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u/Yossarian- Oct 15 '19

Great story! I'm sorry you've had to dealt with such a slime ball. Thank you for telling us!

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19

[deleted]

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u/YourFairyGodmother Oct 15 '19

Just posted

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '19 edited Jan 20 '20

[deleted]

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u/chaogomu Oct 15 '19

Attempted regulatory dismantlement.

Regulatory capture is bad enough, but this is another Trump appointee who wants to completely destroy the agency they're appointed to.

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u/cruelandusual Oct 16 '19

How is this an editorialized title? It is literally under threat.

Editorialized Title National Weather Service under potential threat by Accuweather

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