Santorum's bill discussed on MSN's Slate...

[stormie_skies]

I don't know if this belongs here or in the weather section, and I am not trying to start a debate (so feel free to lock it or move it if necessary), but I thought the people here might want to know that this story is getting a little bit of attention somewhere in the media where people might actually notice it:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2123557/

At the bottom of the article is a link to the Fray, where anyone with an MSN/Hotmail account can discuss the bill (without clogging up the board here and giving the mods a headache ).

[TexasStooge]

I'm not even gonna comment on what Santorum the dork has in mind.

[The Big Dog]

I like how the writer titled the article: The AccuWeather Protection Act of 2005.

That sums it up.

Excellent article, BTW. Pretty much summarizes the main arguments we've made (over and over and over) on this board.

[tropical]

There are two possible responses to AccuWeather's suggestion that competition with NWS would wipe it out.

One possibile response is that it isn't true—that AccuWeather might be mildly inconvenienced by the government's dissemination of weather information, but that consumers will always want AccuWeather's prettier weather maps. If it turned out that the federal government was withholding vital weather information from AccuWeather to such an extent that the company couldn't make its prettier maps, the true free-market solution would be for AccuWeather to start collecting its own damn data—not for AccuWeather to go crying to Santorum for legislative relief.

The other possible response to AccuWeather's whining is that it is true—that the NWS will squash AccuWeather like a bug by providing taxpayers with the weather information that they, ahem, already paid for, instead of leaving it to AccuWeather to charge taxpayers a second time for access to that information. That obviously would be a problem for AccuWeather. But why should the rest of us care?

Well said.

[Stephanie]

EXCELLENT article!!

[Stephanie]

When I get home, I'm going to e-mail the author and thank him for the article.