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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408
Buried on page 25 of the 2019 budget proposal for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the heading "Fundamental Measurement, Quantum Science, and Measurement Dissemination", there's a short entry that has caused plenty of debate and even a fair deal of anger among those in the amateur radio scene:
NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency via the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO. These radio stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches, and may be used in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation controllers.
The NIST stations in Hawaii and Colorado are the home of WWV, WWVH, and WWVB. The oldest of these stations, WWV, has been broadcasting in some form or another since 1920; making it the longest continually operating radio station in the United States. Yet in order to save approximately $6.3 million, these time and frequency standard stations are potentially on the chopping block.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/20/what-will-you-do-if-wwvb-goes-silent/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27 2018, @03:10PM
But, in most cases there's no point in making those 10% cuts as most of those agencies aren't being allocated enough money to be a real problem. In this case, that's $6.3m, which for an individual is a lot of money, but for a hundred people, that would be enough to buy most of them houses. Not a large amount of money when you consider how much money is being spent by the government.
The real budget problems never get addressed because they're supported by powerful special interest groups, the defense budget and those asinine tax cuts for the rich are nearly the entire budget problem. We don't need over $700bn for our military, that's more than we were spending at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with all the funding, you better believe their going to find a war that will necessitate further increases.
Likewise with the tax cuts for the wealthy, the only thing it's succeeded in doing there is throwing fuel on the stock market and moving the upcoming market correction closer. The poor will wind up losing out and the rich will use that as an opportunity to secure even more wealth and buy weaker companies at a discount, further concentrating the power in the hands of a small number of people, just like they did during the last recession.
And yet, the cuts we're likely to get are going to be to social programs that benefit normal people and the tax hikes are ultimately on the normal people as well.