Hannity and Bastardi - Accuweather's shame....

[txprog]

Joe Bastardi, Accuweather's greatest "star" is all over cable TV these days. When I saw him on with Hannity last night, I couldn't think that here were two peas in repuke pod. Bastardi often sprinkles his rambling - on occasion brilliant - discussions with his conservative political views. But we now know that Accuweather is a big contributor to Santorum and that Santorum wants legislation to ban public access to most National Weather Service forecasts as they compete with the private sector. Bastardi and Accuweather are often very critical of the NWS.

Santorum's bill is unlikely to pass I'd guess and it is unlikely that Santorum will get re-elected.

But this is the same kind of corporatist fascism as Cheney formulating energy policy with energy companies themselves. The public interest is secondary to profit.

Accuweather is a business and let them make a profit if they are good enough. But to lobby for, to try to outright buy, the elimination of a public service so necessary, so valuable, is more than disgraceful.

Shame on Accuweather.

[yellowcanine]

1. Sounds as if Joe BASTARDi is aptly named. Funny how that works.

[Kelvin Mace]

3. Italian, plural of bastard

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. This connection of cronyism and patronage is so classic.

THIS is what Republicans stands. I hope the freepers choke on it.

[txprog]

5. I only read Joe in the winter....

because I love winter weather. I have not heard him on the privitization issue, but I'm glad he's against it.

My complaint is not with Bastardi per se - although when I read his stuff I do not want his political opinions just the weather - rather with Accuweather and Joel Meyers (?) who is trying to buy the legislation.

[woodsprite]

4. Bastardi does complain about the NWS being

too cautious at times, relying only one one model much more heavily to make decisions instead of taking them all into consideration, AND not using much historic data and scenario info to more finely tune their guestimates as to what the weather is doing.

Bastardi has also lamblasted the idea of privatizing the weather service on his net videos, despite his boss's connections with Santorum. You used to be able to get them for free, but now they're part of the paid subscription service.

He's a good forecaster, especially long range forecasting, and he's AccuWeather's bread/butter. If you compare his net broadcasts with what "AccuWeather" actually puts out on the airwaves thru the outlets, you can notice a 'watering down' of the info. I haven't seen him on regular TV or heard him on regular radio, so can't judge if he's different on the netcasts vs. the realtime TV/Radio.