Oh, what a great quote…
From the Palm Beach Post article in the OP:
Now really, does this even need a sarcastic comment?
According to Raw Story (article also cited by Viscera), Santorum has accepted $6,000 from AccuWeather.
It is awesome, and it’s been a goldmine for solid information for a long time. I used it frequently when I worked library reference. We’d get questions from everybody from lawyers working cases to insurance adjustors, writers and the general public.
This pissed me off mightily. There’s a glut of flashy, dubious and sometimes costly information out there. The NWS has an efficient, reliable data gathering network in place, it produces excellent information and does it for peanuts on the bloated scale of government spending. Dismantling it would be a ghastly stupidity–but that pretty much sums up Santorum’s self-serving political career.
Please, please, to those who can: vote this fool out.
Veb
No service I could possibly render you or anyone else on this planet would possibly please me more to perform.
The government provides services to the public and industry, and this argument can be extended to pretty much any of them. Mission in Iraq too dangerous? Outsource it to “contractors”.
Unless you advocate abolishing the federal government, wouldn’t you want to establish that the public is better served by supporting the program in the public sector?
It occurs to me that I use the NOAA website more than any other government website out there. It is truly remarkable. When you get into the depths, it can be difficult to navigate, but there is so much good stuff there. My desktop wallpaper is a hurricane satellite picture from their site. I have a link on my toolbar for the Atlanta radar loop. And, should I need, I can see a graph of real-time telemetry from a buoy off the coast of Florida (like, wind speed).
If I were compiling a list of federal services ripe to be privatized, NOAA’s website wouldn’t make the short list.
I hadn’t really checked out the NOAA site until I heard about Sen. Santorum’s ill concieved proposition. It’s awesome! Much better than weatherbug or weather.com. I’m going to use it as my primary source of weather information now.
I, too, do hereby swear to do my best to oust his ass.
From my viewpoint, the problem with the commercial services is that they completely do not serve my aviation needs. Sure it’s partly cloudly - fucking hell, I can look out the window and see that - but is it 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, or 7/8 overcast? How high are the clouds? What type of clouds? What are the winds at ground level? What are the winds at my choisen flght altitude? What the termperature/dewpoint spread? What, if any precipitation, including virga, is out there? Where’s the freeze line?
Commercial weather services that I’ve seen (outside of very specialized aviation ones) do not provide that information. The NWS does. Yes, as a pilot I have access to Flight Service, but I don’t think they want me calling them on the phone every hour during the day while I’m mulling over a go/no-go decision. How much easier (and cheaper on both sides) for me to hit the website.
If I ask weather.com or accuweather for “flying forecast” the assumption is that I’m flying the airlines, not that I’m flying in a small plane. And that sucks, because information is necessary to my personal safety and being forced to pay for it when my tax dollars have already subsidized its collection sucks doubly. I have to dick around with location to get localized weather on weather.com - on the NWS site I can ask for the information of a specific airport, whether it’s a big hub or a one-runway rural strip.
Show me a goddamned picture - NWS has all sorts of pictures and graphics. OK, weather.com has graphics, too - cute cartoon clouds and suns and stuff. How charming. How *fucking useless * to me.
How come every time one of this fucktard senators privatizes something to save money it winds up costing me dollars to get information or services I used to get for free? (well, paid for via taxes - but with “privatization” in this case my taxes pay for it then I get to pay for it again)
As do I. That’s what, three we have here now?
There’s plenty more than that. I don’t think I know any Pennsylvanians here on the Dope that think the man’s worth the spittle that flies from his mouth when he spews his stupidity and hate.
As noted above, Mr Moto is a sane conservative Republican who is quite willing to call partisan stupidity by that name when he sees it, and who formerly worked for your beloved Senator. I hope he will find time to comment on this thread, perhaps with a clue as to why (besides the obvious AccuWeather payoff) Santorum is making the claims he is in his press release.
Well, he doesn’t live here now (IIRC), which is why I skipped him.
You must read a different Mr. Moto than I do. His idea of calling partisan stupidity is, “So what if Republicans do it? Democrats do it worse!”
I have sent Senator Bill Nelson an email voicing my opposition to Santorum’s attempt to rip off the pubic; it was enteresting to see a link to the National Weather Service’s website on Sen. Nelson’s homepage.
Um. He’s an extremely hostile partisan shill for the Republicans who will stand behind the Swift Boat types even when there is iron clad proof that it isn’t true.
I will be more than happy to do my part to kick this piece of shit out of the Senate next November.
Robin
Is it time to revive the Weather Underground? 
On a more-and-less tangental note, this is a good website. It gives more data than either weather.com or the NWS website.
Back on topic, the dealbreaker for me is that I’ve already paid for the damned data. I am not going to pay for it twice.
As noted above, there’s a point to be made on both sides here.
As a former sailor, the weather has been mighty important to me in the past, and I’m not averse to a government role in researching and forecasting it. On the other hand, private industry does have a role to play here as well, by adding data, tailoring it, and making it accessible for consumers.
Like so many things, regulatory issues would come into play with this, and sometimes the kinks need to be worked out with legislation. I seriously doubt that this proposal will survive the committee process intact. Too many people want weather data.
We’ll likely see some clarification of the NWS role here, which would probably be a good thing. I doubt the amount of data provided to the public for free will be cut in any appreciable way, and I don’t favor that in any case.
I’d be interested to see what would happen if, say, Senator Schumer were to introduce a bill of this type. Would all of you call for his head? Or would you chalk it up to an issue where you happen to have a difference of opinion with a legislator, and work to resolve it in some way.
I notice Polycarp is taking this tack, rather than using this as an opportunity to bash Santorum yet again. Others of us might want to do the same. There is a place (a dubious one, but a place neverless) for personal attacks in politics, and a place for policy differences.
When the two are confused, you have a confused mess like this thread. “Santorum is evil, EEEVILLL I say, for proposing a highly specific change to the federal code that affects a single agency in a small way. He needs to be voted out of office for this outrage.”
It may affect the department in a small way, but it seems that it would affect a large amount of people in a very large way. And I haven’t seen much in the way of confusion in this thread. The general consensus seems to be that this is a lousy idea and if the government, that we fund with our taxes, is collecting this data; why should we have to pay again to get it off of an inferior commercial site.
(Exit chaoticdonkey, stage left.)
I used to work for NOAA, then my department got sold to the FAA. I still work in the NOAA complex, and NWS is two buildings down from me. I haven’t heard anything about this, but we have zero dealings with them. Though I can ask around even though I don’t know anyone that works there.
That said, the government is required to make all such information free of charge to everyone. That’s how a lot of companies make their maps and charts. They will either take the charts and put their name on them, which I have seen before, or make slight modifications to a chart, then charge more for it then you could buy it for from the government.
For instance, you can go here and see the types of charts I make for free. Or you could go here and pay for them.
I think it’s pretty shitty to say that NWS should just give away the information to so company and not to the public.