Centerfield

Republicans should be embarrassed by a moron like this, but I predict articles in The Weekly Standard apologizing for him.

I suspect this bill will be withdrawn rather quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the work of an overzealous, right-wing staffer. Of course, Senator Santorum did introduce the bill.

As long as my tax dollars are paying for it, I want the NWS to provide that information. Accuweather is very arrogant if they think they can have a free ride on *my* dime and profit by it.

Even better, turn the screws. Let's charge a fee for commercial for-profit republication of taxpayer-financed weather data. And let's make it a law that the weather channel must run the local forecast on a bottom of the screen ticker 24/7.

I'm afraid all I can say to that is...

what an ass.

I believe European weather agencies charge a pretty stiff fee for commercial use of their data.

It would be one thing to charge an access fee for commercial usage. It's another thing entirely to try to monopolize the market on the taxpayer's back.

Bad Senator! Where's my rolled-up newspaper?

I can't remember if we discussed the Washington Post's profile of Pennsylvania's esteemed junior senator a couple of weeks back...

Anyway, I consider myself one Republican who would be absolutely thrilled to see the man go down in flames. (Not literal flames, of course...lol. Don't want to get accused of any hateful rhetoric here.)

Just when you think you've heard the most brain-dead excuse for legislation, Rick Santorum comes up with a winner. I continue to ask how he does it.

"Comedy Central Presents Rick Santorum ... Un-Cut"

It might help to point out that the headquarters of AccuWeather is in the town of State College in Senator Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania.

I smell pork.

I had no idea until this week that Penn St. is NOT a state university. It is considered "state associated". It gets 300 million a year in state appropriations, but they don't even have to say how much money Joe Paterno makes, because they are not a public school!

Interesting tidbit, Tim. I'm sure those glasses are pretty pricey...lol.

The only thing I am left to hope for here is that Santorum introduced this bill as a sop to a constituent/major campaign contributor without any actual intention that it would pass. That happens down here in Louisiana quite frequently.

But gads, what a horrid idea. I like the proposal to introduce a counter-bill to impose a fee for the commercial rebroadcast of the data. Not that I would want it to pass, either, but just to shake them up a little.

Obviously there's a lot more to the story but on the surface it is not inappropriate for a conservative to question a government agency performing duties that can be perfored in the private sector.

Chris, that isn't the issue. No one proposed AccuWeather take over the NWS. The NWS by charter disseminates its data to the public for free. I use the NWS website all the time--and that's what pisses AccuWeather off. We pay for the NWS, we get the data. AccuWeather wanted a legal monopoly on such user-friendly presentations of NWS data, without paying for it.

Note my subtle insertion of the NWS website so you can skip AccuWeather and go enjoy the fruits of your tax dollars at no additional charge.

I'm not advocating for the position but I still say there's a conservative issue in there. If folks would pay for their weather info (and I don't know that they would) should the government provide it for free.

This was in some economics lecture I heard once I think...(lets see if THAT gets him going)

But Chris, the raw data that Accuweather is coming from the taxpayer funded NWS to begin with. Santorum is not proposing contracting out the collection of the data or anything. He's saying that the public should only be able to access the data that they paid to have collected through commercial intermediaries.

Conservative (libertarian, really) would be to say, hey, there's obviously a huge market of people willing to pay (or view ads) for weather data. So we'll step out of it and let the free market take care of it. Or alternatively, you could argue that the commercial sites should not be able to make a profit based on free data from the weather service, so any commercial rebroadcast of the data would require payment to the government. But to say that the commercial sites should get it for free and the people shouldn't get it directly at all is not at all conservative, to my mind.

I concede that there is some point at which it doesn't make a lot of sense for the NWS to add every little bell and whistle that the commercial sites add. The little bit of danger that Santorum is correct in worrying about is the risk that at this one point in time, the NWS manages to create a great website service, and all the commercial sites fold. Then like many government programs the NWS service tanks or fails to improve and take advantage of new technology to modernize, and there is no competition to keep everybody on their toes. But the situation as it is now makes it clear this is much more about Accuweather's profits, not ideology.

So, only the NWS to study weather (and oddly volcanoes, though that may come under the aegieis od their parent agency NOAA) that is disastrous? And only tell people about disasters?

I do NOT want to fly based on Accuweather, especially if they don't continue getting reports from NWS in the first place. Accuweather carved out a nice little niche, massaging data into nice graphics for sale to TV stations. But technology has caught up, as it has a tendency to do, and [even] government (ie, OUR) employees can do visuals (of data WE PAID FOR) that look good.