Hacker News Reader

Comment by oksowhat | Hacker News Reader

I was about to say this -- the impact is to deep red states -- Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama.

They all voted for this with extreme skew towards the current policies. What is the point of trying to save this satellite data if the very people most affected dont care for it?

View on HN

I strongly suspect that said states will still find a way to get federal funds for relief, whether from the president directly (since Trump's stated plan is to replace FEMA with his own discretion) or, in an emergency, through a very quick act from congress. Of course, it's much cheaper to mitigate hurricane damage _before_ it's done so gutting all the planning related services as the Trump administration seems wont to do will only either hurt a lot of people in red states or, more likely, cost the country more than if they'd left NOAA and FEMA alone.

Republican governors will demand the aid and sometimes get it, but at the federal level it doesn't count against them to deny the aid. What are the constituents going to do, vote for a Democrat?

There may come a day when they have saved up enough grievance against the Republicans to look for an alternative. But right now they have a solid foundation of anti-woke grievance and they can be counted on to keep voting the same way.

I mean CA does nothing to mitigate fire risk and still gets funding and cries when they don’t. So why would any other state be different?

> What is the point of trying to save this satellite data if the very people most affected dont care for it?

Because people still should not suffer... jeez.

Do you realize how little people in these areas pay attention to these forecasts? Hurricanes until you hit CAT 5 are viewed as bad rain storms that may or may not take the power out for a week. There is little evacuation or prep for the majority of people there as they are consistently prepared. Even still, the real threat of a hurricane isn’t the hurricane itself but the storm surge and all the tornadoes they create. Neither of those can be predicted with any accuracy so please help me understand why pathing is important?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com