A good day to talk about the weather would be a day like today – when Hurricane Dennis is bearing down on millions of Americans in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.
CNN reports that as Dennis came ashore, “the storm snapped limbs, tore off roofs and knocked out power to tens of thousands of residents.”
No doubt those thousands of residents, having lost television and internet service with their power, were left to scramble for something like battery-operated radios so they could tune to local stations for reports on the path and strength of Dennis – reports they could get from the National Weather Service.
Folks in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi owe no thanks to Rick Santorum for that, because, believe it or not, Santorum recently introduced Senate Bill 786 to limit the information the National Weather Service can provide the public.
Who would benefit from such a bill? The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says it would “favor the interests of private entities, such as AccuWeather, which is based in State College, Pa. AccuWeather has a great reputation and it can succeed on its own merits; it shouldn't need Sen. Santorum to act as its rainmaker.”
We’d like to agree, but there’s the matter of that April 12 Santorum campaign fundraising event in State College, where a $2000 contribution came in from Joel Myers, the CEO of AccuWeather. Two days later, Santorum introduced his bill.
Barry Myers, AccuWeather’s executive vice president and Joel Myers’s brother, told the Associated Press “it was ridiculous to think there was a correlation between the ‘modest’ donations and the filing of the bill.” But the AP also reported that the Myers brothers “have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.”
Not everyone agrees the correlation is “ridiculous,” including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida -- Florida, where an awful lot of people rely on information from the National Weather Service.
Nelson’s press secretary said the contribution "certainly raises questions about motivation as to why someone would push a policy that is so obviously crummy.”
In fact, Nelson thinks it’s such a crummy bill that he wrote to President Bush about it, noting it “would bar weather service forecasters from giving one-on-one interviews to media” and “could inhibit pilots' access to data the weather service provides to the Federal Aviation Administration online.” He also noted that when Florida was socked with four Hurricanes last year, the weather service Web site received 9 billion hits. 9 billion!
It’s not too surprising that Santorum could turn even the weather into a controversy – but, given the circumstances, we’re now going to keep a suspicious eye on that bill.
