Did you see John Oliver last night? It was a great episode about the attempts of the Trump administration to make the National Weather Service — which is paid for by us and which works for us — to instead be paid for by us and work for private industry. The N.W.S. is a super-efficient, right-more-often-than-you-think operation which gives away its expertise for nothing. Private weather companies take the N.W.S. data and process it further, making it more specific or tailored to paying clients, and profit off it. But what they'd really like is for the N.W.S. not to give away their forecasts for free to the public at all so they [the private companies] can sell it to us.
This is not new. Back in those wonderful pre-Trump days, companies like AccuWeather fought for this. On this blog in 2005, I wrote about how then-Senator Rick Santorum had introduced a bill that would make it illegal for the N.W.S. to make its forecasts available for free on the Internet. It was, of course, just a coincidence that Santorum was from Pennsylvania, AccuWeather was based in Pennsylvania, and AccuWeather had contributed lots of bucks to Santorum's campaign fund.
That didn't succeed but now Trump is trying to put one of the chief execs of AccuWeather in control of the National Weather Service. Trump has never believed that The Public Good ever takes precedence over someone increasing their profits. Ever.
So I just decided, while writing the above paragraph, that I ought to embed Mr. Oliver's report for anyone who didn't or couldn't see it. Keep in mind that the National Weather Service saves lives and property. To me, putting its resources under the control of those who want to make big money from it would be like letting a private, for-profit company take over the Fire Department in your town…and when your home was on fire, you'd have to call them and get an estimate on them sending someone over to put the fire out…