Santorum's Dark Cloud for Boaters

 

I don’t often get political with OnBoard, but up here in NH a few days before the primary it’s hard to avoid. With Rick Santorum’s Iowa boost, he’s moved on to the Granite State with an extra million in his pocket but here’s a little tidbit for all my boater friends worth noting.

 

The National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 was a legislative proposal he sponsored in April 2005 to prohibit the National Weather Service from publishing weather data (except in case of severe weather alerts) to the public when private-sector entities, perform the same function commercially. Funny thing is..surprise, surprise .. AccuWeather, the commercial weather company is based in Santorum’s PA district and their head honcho, Joel Myers is a constituent and a campaign contributor.

 

Of course, this has implications for boaters as it would mean that the free information via the NOAA website and such like would no longer be free. Although this bill was sponsored in 2005 and to many may be seen as dead in the water there is a good chance that it could resurface if Santorum gets to the White House. Boaters are not the only ones who should be concerned both commercial and recreational pilots have expressed deep dismay and in fact were somewhat more vocal than many boaters back in 2005.

 

Granted, his bill never made it out of committee, but it does give us an indication of his sentiment.

 

 

Comments

[Mike]

Do you think that government should compete on price with commercial/private businesses? We have a county owned RV park that at least sets its rates the same as the KOA down the street. With the weather data, maybe the user whether boater, AccuWeather, Wunderground, NOAA, etc should pay or reimburse the NWS for the data.

[Mark]

NOAA and the NWS are both government depatments, Accuweather and the like pay for information which they they disseminate via various outlets such as TV, radio and so on. The whole point is that weather information that the tax payer has already paid for should be freely available. The NWS and NOAA are publically funded, if there is an additional cost then you are in a sense paying for this twice. But the bigger picture is that farmers, boaters, airmen and others rely heavily on weather data. If there is a cost then there is chance that many boaters will set sail without checking the weather properly and could get into difficulties. This may not be much of a deal if you are out for two hours in an afternoon when you can easily make a safe harbor but when I am offshore and get my weather via weather fax from the SSB radio I don't want to end up as a statistic because I did not see the bad weather front approaching.

[Paul]

I may or may not agree that government should provide weather services, but please don't refer to it as free. There is no such thing as "free". Getting things from the government shifts costs, but it does not make costs disappear. And in most cases (not sure about weather info) government increases costs dramatically. It may seem free (or very cheap) only because costs are dispersed and benefits are concentrated.

Your web site is (otherwise) awesome.