I respectfully disagree.

I have read the bill many times over...I read it several times before it was a bill...it was vetted past me and several other mets prior to it's introduciton. I don't agree in full with it, but what you are attributing to be bill is just not what the bill says...have YOU read it?

The hook to this is that the Secretary of Commerce, as the titular head of NOAA is (within the bill) the FINAL arbitor of what is to be produced by NWS, and what is not...not Joel Myers or Accuweather or Weather Data or anyone else. NOAA's boss gets to "guard the henhouse", so to speak. The intent of this bill is NOT to eliminate the Zones or about 70% of the other forecast products out there. The real beef is with the NDFD with it's hourly point forecasts (which NOAA promised it would NOT do....until they decided to turn their backs on their agreement and do it), and a few other products. The average joe will likely never notice a difference, cause free public forecasts (as well as LOTS more free data) will be out there...the bill would be an absolute boon to websites like this one.

Under this bill SPC, NHC, TPC, NCEP, SWC, EMC, and HPC would be unchanged...the only real changes would be the structure of local offices and how they do business (which NOAA has been screaming that they don't have enough resources to do their valuable work of saving lives, but their forecasters do an hour or 2 of forecasting and 6 hours of entering numbers in a digital database? What a boondoggle THAT is!) As I said earlier, the person that makes the decision about what NWS can and cannot produce is not Accuweather or anyone in the CWSU, the elimination of any particular product or service is NOT MENTIONED in the bill...it states the SecCom makes that decision. What is wrong with that?

There are good people on both sides of this issue, and I totally respect those who don't like the bill...what I don't like are the lies and distortions (check out the NWS Employee's Union press release about the bill for some VERY creative writing and fact juggleing) that are used to vilifiy this bill.

Just because you don't like Accuweather is no reason to not be open minded about this bill (*no one in particular that is pointed at ...just a statement*)