NWS Duties Act of 2005: comments in defense of it

[Agua]

I smell a rat with Westlaw - perhaps the misinformation spoken of?

Man, that is how they make their $, and have been doing it for probably 150+ years. They have no interest in fraudulently editing legislation, and in fact, have ALL interest in making certain that their work is current and accurate. That is what is so darned curious about the thing. In 12 years of law practice, I don't believe I've ever un upon an instance where there was a misprint in a West publication, but then again ... how would I know if that's all I looked at?

[Agua]

I'll say this. The Bill doesn't explicitly state the things you guys are saying are the consequences of passage. HOWEVER, there's enough ambiguity in it to open up a huge can of worms. People could argue intent one way or another and, on that basis, it would be better to leave things as they are than open up the NWS to lawsuits every time they turn around when some commercial entity wants to offer some service.

I'm with you guys on this one.

[x-y-no]

I'll say this. The Bill doesn't explicitly state the things you guys are saying are the consequences of passage.

Well, I'm no lawyer, so I'll defer to your expertise. But it sure seems to me that if you repeal the part of the code which says the Commerce Dept. should produce forcasts, data, etc. for the benefit of agriculture, commerce and navigation and you put language into the code that says they may not compete with private enterprise in presenting weather data but must provide private enterprise with that data in the form of a volume feed, the net result of that is exactly what we're claiming it is.

HOWEVER, there's enough ambiguity in it to open up a huge can of worms. People could argue intent one way or another and, on that basis, it would be better to leave things as they are than open up the NWS to lawsuits every time they turn around when some commercial entity wants to offer some service.

I'm with you guys on this one.

OK, cool.

[Agua]

Well, that's an argument. The contrary position would be that the elmination of the section is merely to eliminate redundancy since the Bill itself clarifies that the NWS has those duties, without reference to delegation through the Department of Commerce.


That's the very type of lawsuit-generating ambiguity that causes me to say it's better left as is.

[x-y-no]

Well, that's an argument. The contrary position would be that the elmination of the section is merely to eliminate redundancy since the Bill itself clarifies that the NWS has those duties, without reference to delegation through the Department of Commerce.


That's the very type of lawsuit-generating ambiguity that causes me to say it's better left as is.

Well, it's not totally redundant. There's overlap, but the new langauge is clearly more circimscribed - for instance talking about providing "core forecast information" instead of "forecasting of weather" (see how that's more restrictive - particularly when taken in conjunction with the direction on delivering data in volume feeds and the proscription against competing with products and services private entities are willing to provide?), making no mention about "displaying signals" or "distribution of meteorological information in the interests of agriculture and commerce" etc.

I'm really trying my best to see a more charitable interpretation of this bill, but I simply can't.

Jan

[Agua]

No, it's not totally redudant. Again, the other side of the argument is that there doesn't have to be an agricultural, blah, blah, purpose behind the NWS forecasts and warnings so in that sense, it expanded the scope.

But we could go round and round all day with this and playing advocate for the sake of advocacy isn't something I want to do with my free time.

[LarryWx]

Thanks all for very interesting discussion of both sides of this issue. Based on the poll and most of the comments, there is a strong majority that are opposed to this bill despite the defending comments of JB and KR. So, based exclusively on this thread/poll, it doesn't appear their comments were convincing enough to bring much support to the bill's side.

Any other comments?