I'm four square on the side of the NWS on this one - if AccuWeather or
the Weather Channel want the real time data, let them access it as a
cost of doing business - it will help offset the costs of the NWS to
boot. :)


********

Precisely.

It's unfair to ask the public to "pay twice" for the same information.
Once through taxes paid to support and operate the NWS, and a second
time through subscriptions and fees paid to private weather services.
Information developed by public tax dollars should be available to the
tax-paying public without enriching some hand-selected companies with
the "correct" political priorities.

Now of course if I could get in on this gig, I'd be all for it. :-)
It would make sense to me that something here in the NW, maybe Mt.
Rainier National Park, should be "privatized". Just like the weather
gig, I'll just take over all the federally funded assets there and even
allow the taxpayers to continue staffing and maintaining the place. In
the interest of "free enterprise", I'll just collect, and keep, all the
quadrupled or quintupled admission fees. The current admission fee
system generates revenue that supposedly helps offset the cost of
maintaining, repairing, and staffing the park. What kind of communist
system is that? All those admission fees should go into the *private*
sector, where the money can be spent effectively, not given to the
government to be wasted.