Senate Bill S.786 could kill NWS internet weather products

Blueskies wrote:

"FlyBoy" wrote in message ...

As a private pilot, I make frequent use of the NWS's Aviation Digital
snip...


I urge those who care about this
issue to sign the online petition, join the online forum, and write
their own senators with their opinions of this bill.

1: NWS ADDS: http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/
2: S. 786: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:s786:
3: http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/SaveTheNWS/

FlyBoy




This could end up like things in Russia. Public money funded resources are deemed too inefficient to be run by the
government, so the assets are put up for bid to private companies. The private company acquires the asset, and then
sells the service to the public.Very bad idea for the NWS, very bad idea for our freeways, very bad idea for our
airways...

I'm not sure it is all that bad. I think if most "public" services were
provided by a free enterprise system, then we'd get a lot more in
aggregate for our money. The problem that many of us, me included,
don't like to accept is that aviation is not self-supporting and is
subsidized heavily from other revenue sources. A private enterprise
wouldn't likely have this subsidy so the user costs would reflect the
true cost of the sytem and this likely would be ugly ... even if GA only
had to pay for the meager subset of services that it really needs. Most
GA airports simply couldn't survive without subsidies.

I don't know if this is true for freeways or not, but I'm not sure they
are self supporting either if you consider the total costs, both capital
and expense to maintain them.

It all comes down to what is less costly, the waste in government or the
profit margin that a private enterprise would require. If the private
enterprise is efficient enough that it can make a profit and still cost
less than a government agency, then it is a good deal overall.


Matt