Santorum is putting blame onto NOAA for not giving a good enough warning in
the lead up to Katrina’s disastrous landfall. Here is what
WITF is reporting:

Santorum has critical words for forecasters in wake of Katrina 09/09/2005
Damon Boughamer (Washington) — U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is suggesting
that early mistakes in predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina may be a
symptom of lost focus at the National Weather Service. Santorum, who
introduced legislation earlier this year to curb the output of government
weather forecasters, says tracking life-threatening weather must be central
to what the agency is doing.

Asked about Katrina by WITF, Santorum described weather service warnings
for Florida, where the storm first made landfall, as, quote, “not
sufficient.” Santorum’s bill instructs the government to abandon weather
prediction and data reporting efforts that duplicate private-sector
activity. He came under fire when it was revealed that the head of State
College-based AccuWeather, which would benefit, has given his campaigns
thousands of dollars.

In the wake of a disaster, Santorum once again has taken the argument to a
politically funded level. I

posted a couple months ago on this bill Santorum is trying to get through,
and it is a joke. It is meant as another way to only help businesses.

The whole argument started when NOAA started releasing forecast and
conditions for the country via an XML feed. They were just releasing data that
they already had, but Accu-Weather was upset over it. Why? Because it would lead
to further competition for them.

Santorum argues that NOAA should only focus on severe storms and hurricanes.
The challenge I have to Santorum is simple. How are they going to predict storms
without predicting weather? You have to look at all weather models. Some produce
nice sunny days while others produce storms. Unless NOAA has a magical crystal
ball they will never know when the storms are going to hit. All they are doing
is taking data that is required to predict storms and making it publicly
accessible.

The fact that Santorum wants this data to be taken from the public is a
crime. We already pay for NOAA through tax dollars. His argument now is that we
should also have to pay for it through private enterprises such as weather
services. Why on earth should we have to pay for the same thing twice? Actually,
a counter argument can be made that businesses should have to pay for the NOAA
data since in fact they are making profits from it.

This is just a further example of how the right is willing to exploit a
disaster in order to promote their own greed. The man who claims to be a
Christian and compassionate in fact does not care about the people but only his
own evil greed.