DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Texas floods and Trump spending cuts...

There's plenty of evidence out there that this is a mostly true statement.

Yep as I would have been growing up in Ohio if I build a house right up against the river when I know it floods.

Sure... as usual I blame the far right and far left for being to stupid and stubborn to come together on compromised on problems instead of acting like 3 year olds threatening to take their ball and go home if others don't do what they want. As for the Parents I would never send my kid to a champ in "Flash Flood Alley"

Flash Flood Alley: Why central Texas has a history of devastating floods
Elyse Smith Image
ByElyse Smith KTRK logo
Tuesday, July 8, 2025 6:31PM

Why central Texas region has earned the nickname 'Flash Flood Alley'

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The recent flood of July 4, 2025, is not the first time central Texas has been devastated by a flash flood. This region has earned the nickname "Flash Flood Alley" and is where the phrase "turn around, don't drown" was coined. This is because of the speed and force at which flash flooding occurs there. The increase in life-threatening flash flooding is based on a few key factors: the topography, soil, and changes in how much rain can fall during thunderstorms.

When rain falls across the hills and valleys of central Texas, it then rushes to lower elevations. This is what leads to the speed at which flash flooding can occur and how fast the resulting floodwaters move. As for the ground the rain falls on, beneath the top layer of soil is hard limestone. Think of that like a natural cement, which leads to runoff because it can't absorb the rainwater. And in terms of heavy rain events, those are not only increasing in number but also in intensity.

SEE ALSO: ABC13 meteorologist looks into timeline of weather alerts issued in central Texas flooding

ABC13's partners at Climate Central found that the average amount of rainfall produced by showers and storms near San Antonio has increased by 6% since 1970. And with it also being an extremely flood-prone area, any change in this statistic will lead to an increased risk of flash flooding.

Even so, floods like these in central Texas date back decades. ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith went back and analyzed three previous, deadly floods that impacted this region. Two floods were the result of tropical systems. But the July 1987 Guadalupe Flood has eerie similarities to what just happened last week, including slow-moving storms that dumped heavy rain across the Hill Country. It triggered a massive surge down the Guadalupe River. Also, 10 campers at the Pot O' Gold Christian Camp near Comfort, Texas, were killed in the rushing floodwaters of the 1987 flood.
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READ MORE: Deadly floods at Camp Mystic: How the tragedy compares to a similar event in 1987

Less than 10 years before that flood in 1987, there was flooding from Tropical Storm Amelia, which made landfall near Corpus Christi on July 31, 1978. ABC13 was there in central Texas to capture the aftermath of the storm and subsequent flooding. Once again, the Guadalupe River swelled after a record four feet of rain fell near Medina, Texas. Then, there's a flood that dates all the way back to the 1920s. Remnants of a hurricane in September of 1921 led to extensive flooding near both San Antonio and Austin, a flash flood that killed over 200 people. So as a rule of thumb, central Texas is susceptible to a major flood about once a decade.

Flooding is the second-deadliest weather event behind heat. Climate Central studied the cost of flooding across the country and how much is at stake to lose. Climate Central estimates the average cost of flood disasters across the nation comes to $32 billion a year. For Texas, flooding costs the state $1.5 billion a year, and that number could reach over $2 billion by the year 2050.

Once again, can you please explain to me how what happened in Kerr County Texas has anything to do with the left? They are a republican stronghold. They have Republican politicians running the county. They applied for a grant to install weather warning sirens to help prevent the loss of life to a Republican state government which wasn't approved. The very same thing could be said for the majority of Florida but they seem to have a very good warning service in place to cut down on deaths.

I get that this same situation of people living in places where severe weather events are common exists in both Republican and and Democrat run states but what's the alternative? Tell Americans they can't live close to the water or in severe weather prone states? I certainly don't believe that's what you're advocating here are you?

I think the best we can do is make sure our warning systems and weather service is best equipped to warn people to keep the casualty count as low as possible. That's not what happened here and the left had nothing to do with that.

Everything is always too expensive and not needed until it hits in their backyard-


Texas state leaders didn't prioritize flood management

Nicole Cobler


An aerial shot of the Guadalupe River.
Texas didn't complete a comprehensive statewide assessment of flood risks and solutions until last year. Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

As Texas state leaders have prioritized spending on border security and property tax cuts, they have been far more reluctant to fund flood management efforts.

Why it matters: Texas leads the nation by a wide margin in flood deaths.

More than 1,000 people died in Texas floods from 1959 to 2019, according to an academic analysis, most having occurred in the Hill Country.
Local officials in areas like Kerr County have struggled to secure funding for basic warning systems and have instead relied on National Weather Service text alerts and word-of-mouth to alert residents of flooding, rather than costly outdoor siren systems.
Driving the news: Weekend floods in Texas claimed nearly 90 lives, with dozens of people still missing.

The big picture: Despite Texas' vulnerability, the state didn't complete a comprehensive statewide assessment of flood risk and solutions until last year.

"P​​lanning, in the long term, is going to save lives; it's going to protect people; it's going to reduce misery ... not just in monetary costs but also in human suffering," Reem Zoun, the director of flood planning for the Texas Water Development Board, told members of the board last August.
"What we do will not eliminate flooding. If we have large storms, we're still going to flood — but if we work properly and proactively, and have appropriate floodplain management practices, we will see less impact."
By the numbers: Though the Texas Water Development Board has identified more than $54 billion in needed flood-control projects, lawmakers have only allocated roughly $669 million so far, the New York Times reported Monday.

This year, the Legislature approved $2.5 billion for the Texas Water Fund — used to finance water projects in Texas, including conservation, desalination, and flood mitigation — with the possibility of $1 billion per year over 20 years using sales tax revenue, pending voter approval in November.
Lawmakers also passed Senate Bill 1967, expanding projects that can be awarded from the Texas Flood Infrastructure Fund.
One key proposal, House Bill 13, would have created a state council to establish a unified disaster response and alert system, but it stalled in the Senate after some Republican lawmakers questioned its cost.

The bill would have required the council to consider the use of outdoor warning sirens and implement an emergency alert system.

"I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now," state Rep. Wes Virdell, a Republican who represents Kerr County, told the Texas Tribune.
Zoom in: In the Hill Country, technological and infrastructure barriers have slowed adoption of modern flood alerts.

Kerrville officials explored installing a warning system in 2017 but rejected the idea over its price tag. The county later missed out on a $1 million grant and, as recently as 2023, was still weighing other funding options, according to KXAN.
Outdoor emergency sirens may have given people more time to escape, former Kerr County commissioner Tom Moser told the New York Times, but a single siren can cost as high as $50,000.
What's next: Gov. Greg Abbott suggested Sunday that he'll include the notification issue on the upcoming special session agenda, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on Fox News Monday that the state should pay for sirens on the Guadalupe River by next summer.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) said on X Monday he will file a measure "to bring back civil defense sirens" in flash-flood prone areas.

https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2025/07/07/texas-flood-kerr-county-warning-system

just following the playbook


Trump appointees have ties to companies that stand to benefit from privatizing weather forecasts
BRIAN SLODYSKO and MICHAEL BIESECKER
Wed, July 9, 2025 at 7:38 AM EDT
7 min read



President Donald Trump, left, listens as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, N.J., Sunday, July 6, 2025, en route to Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — As commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick oversees the U.S. government’s vast efforts to monitor and predict the weather.

The billionaire also ran a financial firm, which he recently left in the control of his adult sons, that stands to benefit if President Donald Trump's administration follows through on a decade-long Republican effort to privatize government weather forecasting.

Deadly weekend flooding in central Texas has drawn a spotlight to budget cuts and staff reductions at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two agencies housed within the Commerce Department that provide the public with free climate and weather data that can be crucial during natural disasters.


What’s drawn less attention is how the downsizing appears to be part of an effort to privatize the work of such agencies. In several instances, the companies poised to step into the void have deep ties to people tapped by Trump to run weather-related agencies.

Privatization would diminish a central role the federal government has played in weather forecasting since the 1800s, which experts say poses a particular harm for those facing financial strain who may not be able to afford commercial weather data.

The effort also reveals the difficulty that uber wealthy members of Trump's Cabinet have in freeing themselves from conflicts, even if they have met the letter of federal ethics law.

“It’s the most insidious aspect of this: Are we really talking about making weather products available only to those who can afford it?” said Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, a Democrat. “Basically turning the weather service into a subscription streaming service? As a taxpayer, I don’t want to be in the position of saying, ‘I get a better weather forecast because I’m willing to pay for it.’”


The White House referred requests for comment to the Commerce Department, which said in a statement that Lutnick has "fully complied with the terms of his ethics agreement with respect to divesture and recusals and will continue to do so.”

Trump nominees have ties to weather-related industries

Privatizing weather agencies has long been an aim of Republicans. During Trump's first presidency, he signed a bill that utilized more private weather data. And Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for Trump's second presidency that was co-authored by his budget director, calls for the NOAA to be broken up and for the weather service to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

Lutnick is not the only one Trump nominated for a key post with close relationships to companies involved in the gathering of vital weather data.



Trump’s pick to lead the NOAA, Neil Jacobs, was chief atmospheric scientist for Panasonic Weather Solutions and has been a vocal proponent of privatization. The president’s nominee for another top NOAA post, Taylor Jordan, is a lobbyist with a roster of weather-related clients.



“If confirmed, Dr. Jacobs and Mr. Jordan will follow the law and rely on the advice of the Department’s ethics counsel in addressing matters involving former clients,” the Commerce Department said in its statement.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent more than $250 million to help elect Trump, owns a controlling interest in SpaceX and its satellite subsidiary Starlink. Both are regulated by the NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, which lost about one-third of its staff in February layoffs facilitated by the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk helped create.

SpaceX also stands to gain through a new generation of private and federally funded weather satellites that would be carried into orbit on its rockets.

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Though Musk has now departed Washington and had a very public falling out with Trump, the DOGE staffers he hired and the cuts he pushed for have largely remained in place.

Emails seeking comment sent to a lawyer who has represented Musk, as well as to media contacts at his companies X and SpaceX, received no response.

While Musk is focusing on his companies, others with potential conflicts remain immersed in government work.


His two 20-something sons were given the reins of his financial empire. Brandon Lutnick was named chairman of Cantor, while Kyle Lutnick was tapped to be executive vice chairman. But his most recent ethics filing from June 19 stated that he was still selling his holdings in the firm.

An ethics plan submitted in February states Lutnick would request a waiver allowing him to participate in matters that would have a “direct and predictable effect” on his family’s business while he was still divesting. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, meanwhile, show Lutnick has agreements to transfer his shares in the Cantor companies and a family trust to his son Brandon.

The Department of Commerce referred questions about Lutnick's ties to Satellogic, a satellite company that offers natural disaster imagery, to his former firm.

Cantor spokesperson Erica Chase said that since Lutnick’s resignation from the company, he has not made any decisions with respect to the company’s investments or customer positions, or other operational matters.


“Cantor and its subsidiaries operate in heavily regulated industries, and maintain robust compliance programs to ensure compliance with all applicable laws,” Chase said.

Federal officials are barred from making decisions that benefit the business holdings of themselves or their spouses, but that prohibition does not extend to assets held by their adult children, according to Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer during Republican George W. Bush's administration.

Among its legion of disparate businesses, Cantor has interests in weather and climate. It owns a controlling interest in BGC Group, which operates a weather derivatives marketplace that essentially allows investors to bet on climate risk and where hurricanes will make landfall.

Lutnick also played a pivotal role in cultivating Satellogic. He helped raise the capital to take the company public and held a seat on its board until Trump nominated him. Cantor holds a roughly 13% stake in Satellogic, according to a March SEC filing.


The company now bills itself as an emerging federal contractor that can offer crisp images of natural disasters and weather events in real time, which in 2021 Lutnick said makes it “uniquely positioned to dominate the Earth Observation industry.”

While Lutnick was still in charge of Cantor, it paid a $6.75 million fine to the SEC after it was accused of making misleading statements to investors about Satellogic and another company. The White House’s 2026 spending plan, developed by Trump’s budget director and primary Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, proposes $8 billion in cuts for future NOAA satellites, which capture imagery of the planet provided to the public.

Satellogic stands to benefit if the government retreats from operating climate-monitoring satellites.

2 Trump nominees have ties to weather companies


Jacobs, Trump’s pick to lead the NOAA, led the same agency on an acting basis during Trump’s first term.

He is scheduled to appear Wednesday before a Senate committee weighing his nomination. Jacobs has long advocated for a greater role for the private sector in government weather forecasting. During a 2023 hearing focused on the future of the NOAA, he argued that the agency needed to be “relying more heavily on the commercial sector.”

He also has expressed concerns about what happens to commercial data purchased by the government. “They give it away to the rest of the planet for free,” he testified before Congress in 2023.

He was a consultant at the time for Spire Global and Lynker, both of which have millions of dollars in weather data contracts with the NOAA, according to records including his most recent financial disclosure.

Jordan, Trump’s pick for another top NOAA post, has similarly close relationships. His financial disclosure lists more than a dozen weather-related lobbying clients, including Spire and Lynker. He also represented AccuWeather, a commercial forecast provider, before Congress and in meetings with the Commerce Department on “issues related to private sector weather forecast improvement,” according to lobbying disclosures.

Though his nomination is pending before the Republican-controlled Senate, disclosure reports show he still represents weather and space companies and is still listed as a principal employee at a Washington lobbying firm.

Unreal- the TRUMP effort to downsize the US Gov. Weather Service is an effort to hand off the Weather
Service to Republican supporters who helped Trump get elected.

All of the drowning dealths were simply a Trump/Republican payback to rich donors who helped elect Trump..nothing but campaign give backs..

I hope the named greedy sleep well tonight...

They always do mac. They always do. Their minds tend to function just a little differently than the rest of us. Most of us count sheep when we have trouble sleeping while they simply count their money.

Just imagine, we even have one of our very own posters who states that he thinks spending just to keep children from starving is a waste of money but refuses to say a peep about giving oil companies more in taxpayer subsidies. Who could have imagined?

Ladies and Gentlemen.... WE have a celebrated Climatologist in our group.World renowned for his insight and wisdom. He knows all, sees all and is without a doubt the preeminent authority on Climate. He says, there is no climate change and everyone else in the world is wrong.

"Trump says NWS staffing levels didn't affect Texas storm preparedness"

Trump also said they are eating the cats and eating the dogs in Springfield Ohio...

He also tried to blame Biden... Then said he wouldn't blame Biden... All in the same sentence. He'll blame Biden if it meets a goal of his. If he thinks it will help him, you can bet Biden will be blamed.

So I wonder about those laws about building structures in flood plains?

It is as much of a building code issue as it is an Emergency Response Notification issue.

Washington
CNN
—
As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters.

But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN.

As CNN has previously reported, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.

For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.

In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.

“We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”

For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.



In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.

But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.

Homeland Security officials have defended the federal response in Texas and President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response to states.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for DHS, told CNN: “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

One Texas state official told CNN that the Texas emergency management division has been interacting with FEMA “in the way we always do for disasters like this.” The official added that Texas has “quite a bit of capabilities” related to disaster management on its own.

Other aspects of the federal government have assisted, including the US Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection.

But the additional red tape required at FEMA added another hurdle to getting critical federal resources deployed when hours counted.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference where she announced that most airline passengers will no longer have to remove their shoes at security checkpoints on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, at Reagan National Airport in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference where she announced that most airline passengers will no longer have to remove their shoes at security checkpoints on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, at Reagan National Airport in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Texas did request aerial imagery from FEMA to aid search and rescue operations, a source told CNN, but that was delayed as it awaited Noem’s approval for the necessary contract.

FEMA staff have also been answering phones at a disaster call center, where, according to one agency official, callers have faced longer wait times as the agency awaited Noem’s approval for a contract to bring in additional support staff.

The chaos has exposed a deeper uncertainty within FEMA about its ability to respond, its mission, and its authority under the Trump administration — just as hurricane and wildfire seasons have gotten underway. Officials within FEMA warn that if the disaster had spanned a larger area and multiple states, the confusion and delays could have been even more severe.

For months, FEMA officials have been warning that the agency is unprepared amid a mass exodus of experienced emergency managers and the looming threat of the agency being dismantled.



CNN has reached out to FEMA for comment.

Rest of article at link

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/fema-texas-flood-noem

Rain is the only thing that had anything to do with the flooding. The deaths, maybe something could have helped.

The NWS did what they could. Doge didn't hurt that.

Locals some years back could have voted for a siren type system but voted if down.

In insurance terms, not religious terms, It was an act of God. Like it or not, and these are just general comments and not so much directed at you, we can't protect everybody from everything. This flooding was historic in nature, ever for a flash flood prone area.

I don't know if sirens would work. Maybe. My thinking is the camps in that area need to hire off duty county sheriff deputies for nighttime security and to alert people of the warning as they come over the radio.