As mentioned earlier, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has introduced a bill that would make it illegal (!) for the National Weather Service to make its forecasts available for free on the Internet. The National Weather Service is supported by those of us who pay taxes, and its data is the foundation of all weather forecasting across the continent. There are private weather services that take the NWS info and supplement it with additional data, as well as processing the NWS data through different computer models. There are others that do a fair amount of their own forecasting but even those firms have derived their computer models by studying NWS data, and their forecasts are always done with one eye on what the NWS says. So basically, what the private weather services sell is information derived from the work of the NWS. Santorum's bill is based on the premise that it is "unfair competition" for the NWS to give away this information because it might make it harder for private companies to charge money for their versions of it.
The most prominent of the private companies is AccuWeather, which is based in Santorum's alleged home state of Pennsylvania. (He actually lives in Virginia, a fact you'll probably hear mentioned often as re-election time draws near.) Is anyone surprised that the top execs of AccuWeather have donated a couple thousand bucks to the "Santorum in 2006" campaign?
This is out-and-out, unabashed bribery. Sometimes, when a representative takes money from the cheese industry and then pushes for a law that benefits the cheese industry, there's a rationale: The legislation was long overdue. Others have noted the problems it's intended to fix. The beneficiaries are just supporting that benevolent cause. Something like that. But in this case, no one was pushing for this change. In 50+ years, no one thought it was bad for the National Weather Service to be making its findings available to the public. It's just Santorum taking money for screwing the public…and his price is darned cheap, at that.
Yeah, this kind of thing happens all the time, and about bigger issues than the weather forecast. But it still ticks me off.