Sen. Slick Rick Santorum to push Weather Service OFF the internet...

[nickshepDEM]

Senator Santorum has proposed legislation to ban the National Weather Service from posting weather information on its website. He proposes that we should have to go to private companies to obtain the information that we as taxpayers have already paid to collect.

Whenever the Senator isn't bullying gays, he's trying to keep you from getting the best information possible in trying to protect your family from dangerous weather.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html

[cap]

1. marine weather...

accuracy is really important...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Aviation weather, too --

Pilots (except for airlines, which have other access to wx information) rely a lot on NWS information. But I guess if there's a buck to be made, the fact that WE PAY TAXES to support the NWS shouldn't entitle us to actually USE them.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate Rick Santorum with the fire of a thousand suns?

[FreedomAngel82]

11. You would think

after what happened in Florida and the Tsunami you'd want to make sure you have good weather services and protection. These people want to privatize everything if they can. They want to make sure there are no more government programs like this. Fuck them.

[Boo Boo]

13. Actually, they aren't really trying to privatize...

It's worse than that. These online weather guys are getting their information from government sources, like NOAA. But, it's kinda hard to monetize something when the gov is giving it away for free. So Santorum is trying to give them a "monopoly" of sorts. He's going to take your tax-payer funded information and let these contributors of his charge you money for it.

Fuck that.

Look at Apple's new OS. They include a little "Dashboard" application that shows the weather forecast for your area on your desktop. The weather web sites don't like that. They want to cut off the source of free weather data. They want a lock on taxpayer funded information.

We should fight this. All of us have a right to that information, and the NOAA should be making it available online. We payed for it.

[davidinalameda]

2. just one question

why bother having a National Weather Service if it doesn't make the weather info public?

so he wants a public agency to sell the information that it gather to private businesses that would in turn sell it back to the public that originally paid for the information in the first place

is that right?

am I missing something here?

[sandnsea]

7. And then

cut FEMA because if people are too poor to be able to afford weather warning services, it's their own damned fault anyway.

What the hell, we do it with health care.

[Up2Late]

4. With him being such a scumbag, It's hard to believe that he couldn't...

...be brought down in SOME sort of scandal. :wtf:

[The Straight Story]

5. link:

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/

[MnFats]

6. and hey, we don't need severe weather watches/bulletins...

just go outside and look to see if there's a tornado coming...


Santorum is such an idiot.

[Erika]

8. Santorum's message, pay private enterprise or get lost

He doesn't think a federal site should offer weather warnings? God, I'll be glad when his ilk get ran out of office.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. NOAA Weather Radio

Yeah, but....

I really think you're better off with a NOAA weather radio. Radio Shack sells them. So does Uniden, as well as the other usual suspects. If your power fails, you're not going to be on the Internets, but your battery-powered radio will still be going. Weather radios with SAME alert can give you warning of approaching tornados.

NOAA Weather Radio

Every programmable police scanner can pick up NOAA weather radio stations.

Find your local station.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. You want to bet Weather Radio is next?

Santorum will want to sell the weather broadcasts, too. Want weather? Gotta pay for it.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

17. Must confess...

It does seem like the sort of thing Clear Channel could do better than the gummint. CC would have one person, in one studio, taping the weather for the whole country. No need for a local aspect. That's so old fashioned.

[mitchum]

14. He really is just a disgusting little corporate toady, isn't he?

[NVMojo]

15. go here to send your Senators a message about this issue!

Alert: Protect Public Weather Data

The National Weather Service (NWS), a taxpayer-funded agency, monitors thousands of weather stations around America in order to predict hurricanes, sunshine, and every meteorological event in between. In addition to the raw data that it assembles, NWS has recently started offering more user-friendly info to the public via the Internet. So why has Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced a bill that would restrict the kind of information that NWS can freely share?

The National Weather Services Duties Act (S.786) would ban NWS from "competing" with private entities by making it unlawful for the agency to publish user-friendly weather data and barring NWS experts from speaking one-on-one to news agencies. Why? Because Senator Santorum believes that companies like AccuWeather would make more money if they didn't have to compete with "free." That's right - he believes you should pay twice for your weather information in order to line the pockets of the private weather industry, which *already* benefits from repackaging the data that tax-funded agencies like NWS give away. That's not only unfair, it's a bad precedent for our national information resources

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr003=i9wjumbb61.app2a&page=UserAction&cmd=display&id=123

[Up2Late]

16. If you want to hear how truly Extreme he is on Abortion, check out...

...this link from when he was interviewed on WHYY/NPR's Fresh Air. Even though it's a very good interview, he mostly repeats the "talking points," until the last 4 minutes (at 16:30 in) when Terri really backs him into his hypocritical corner.

Sen. Rick Santorum on Abortion

Basically, he was so ridged, that he almost caused the death of his wife AND the 20 week old baby she was carrying. Instead of ending the pregnancy of a Baby that had less than a 1% chance of survival, he but his wifes life in danger too, but insisting the try to do surgery on the unborn child. The Baby DID die, and then he brought his Dead 21 week old baby home, to show the other children.

He's nuts.:crazy: