Dear Senator Clinton,

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton
United States Senate
476 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Fax: (202) 228-0282
Voice: (202) 224-4451

April 22, 2005

Dear Senator Clinton,

Senator Santorum has recently introduced S 786 IS1S, a bill that would block the National Weather Service from releasing any information to the public for free that would otherwise be sold for profit by private companies like Accuweather. Please oppose this brazen attempt to help a special interest group profit from work done with our tax dollars.

Accuweather and similar organizations get most of their information from the National Weather Service. If all weather information had to pass through these companies, the taxpayer would be paying for the information twice, once payment to the government so that they can do the actual work of gathering the data, and once to a private sector firm for the privilege of seeing what we already paid for.

Although the bill contains an exception for issuing notices about weather emergencies, such as hurricanes, sealing even ordinary weather information will cause deaths, because people in precarious situations—those at sea, in the air, or in the wilderness—can be killed by ordinary weather systems.

The rationale for this bill also makes no sense. The government provides services all the time that compete with the private sector, services like the post office and public schools. When the government can do something well it should be able to do it.

Finally, anyone can easily discover Sen. Santorum’s true motivation for this bill: the $3550.00 contribution he received from Accuweather is, for now at least, free public information.

Please fight the Republican frenzy to dismantle every effective government project.

Sincerely,



Rob Loftis