Another Free Government Service Under Fire
A nice summer evening. Sitting outside, looking up at the sky and watching
the clouds go by. We are under a typical summer time storm watch, and there are
small storms just to the north. Of course I was already informed of this via my
Weather Bug, an advertiser supported
application, that I have installed on my computer.
Then suddenly I remember an article I read in April, a month before the birth
of my blog. The article, published by the
Palm Beach Post brought me out of the clouds and into the reality once again
that our government does not care about the citizens, but rather the corporate
contributors that support their costly campaigns.
Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa, introduced
Senate Bill 786 on April 14 of this year. This bill would limit the data
that the National Weather Service, a government agency, would make available to
the public. The bill is the result of a fueling debate between the
NWS and the private sector over
publishing forecast data.
The NWS recently introduced a new free service on their
website that provides the public, free of charge, forecast information for their
particular zone. This has upset the corporate weather services such as
Accuweather, who fears this free
service could cost them.
