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This is why we need to continue to advocate for open government and open access to data. Weather companies like Accuweather were annoyed by the National Weathe
by Duff 15y ago
This is why we need to continue to advocate for open government and open access to data.
Weather companies like Accuweather were annoyed by the National Weather Service releasing weather data in KML form -- they saw it as a threat to their lucrative business of selling public domain weather data. Sen. Rick Sanatorum tried to come to the rescue with a bill that would limit their ability to release that data.
- parsnips 15y agoThis is disingenuous, Accuweather is headquartered in College Station, PA... The state that Santorum represented as senator. The owners, employees at Accuweather are his constituents.
- djtriptych 15y agoso... what part is disingenuous?
- parsnips 15y agoThe insinuation that as a Senator, your priority should be supporting open data standards vs representing the constituents you're elected to represent.
- anigbrowl 15y agoYes, you should be doing that. House members can run on bringing home the bacon - though not at the expense of monopolistic policies, in my view. Senate members are supposed to be above such things, in theory, an represent the national interest rather than the provincial one.
- pyre 15y agoIn theory, Senators are supposed to represent the State's interest. Originally, they were appointed by state government rather than elected, IIRC.
- anigbrowl 15y agoThey were appointed once, yes. Purpose is in the eye of the beholder to a large extent; it seems to me that the Constitution's authors saw the purpose of the upper chamber primarily as a check on the populist passions of the lower one, and specified the appointment of senators precisely to avoid them being beholden to public opinion in the their state of origin. Then again, the same people preferred the idea of Senator being a lifetime appointment, somewhat like the House of Lords in Britain...
- Klinky 15y agoYou know there are 12,000,000+ people in PA, the entire state is not employed by AccuWeather.
- parsnips 15y ago12,000,000 people who are building competitor weather services using public domain data? Less than 1% of the populace there probably knows they can get public domain data, let alone build a weather competitor business... which is really what the OP was complaining about.
- djtriptych 15y agoPlease never run for office.
- baconner 15y agoNo, 120,000,000 people who might benefit from apps built by others on the open data. It is good IMO for a rep to fight for legislation that helps local businesses when that action serves his constituents as a group over the long term. That's not the case here because what Santorum did is attempt to artificially block competition in a space where competition is likely to benefit all of his constituents in the long term. It's selling out the majority for the sake of one small business and creating a wasteful bit of government that small gov types like Santorum ought to be fighting against. It's creating a barrier to free market completion for the sake of a small win for one small company.
- stinkytaco 15y agoOne could argue that a taxpayer subsidized weather service kills private competition. How do you compete with free? Of course, all those arguments miss the point. The weather service is an important function of the government, we shouldn't have to pay for weather. It's a matter of public safety and information, the property of the commons, not some commodity. Protecting that is the reason we have a government, not to artificially support a Senator's local business.
- officemonkey 15y agoJerry Sandusky is also from Pennsylvania. Would you have Santorum lobby for his pardon?
- mbell 15y agoYou've managed to cover so much that is wrong with our current political system in so few words that I can't even down vote you, It's simply impressive. The job of the government, and in this case, the senate, is to represent the populous, in this case the state, not play special party to any particular organization. Accuweather has fewer than 500 employees many of whom are not even in Pennsylvania, meanwhile Pennsylvania has a population of almost 13 million. So why exactly is it that you think it is 'just', 'correct' or any other possible form of 'right' for this senator to support this company for any other reason than it being in the best interests of his _true_ constituents? That is, the people he represents that are not in the, at most, ~.0035% of his states population that work at accuweather?