{"id":4308,"date":"2005-05-27T10:51:09","date_gmt":"2005-05-27T14:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4308.html"},"modified":"2005-05-27T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2005-05-27T14:51:09","slug":"santorum-wants-to-control-the-weather-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/santorum-wants-to-control-the-weather-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Santorum wants to control the weather — redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, there was a mini-controversy surrounding Sen. Rick “Man on Dog<\/a>” Santorum and his effort to go after the National Weather Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, Santorum’s legislation would prohibit federal meteorologists at the National Weather Service from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. A free government service, available to everyone online<\/a>, would probably disappear, so a private service — which happens to be based out of Pennsylvania<\/a> — could flourish.<\/p>\n

Today, the AP has picked up on the story<\/a>, noting the financial connections that may have motivated Santorum in the first place.<\/p>\n

Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data. […]<\/p>\n

“I think the timing of it is what makes it so suspect,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, a Democratic-leaning watchdog group. “It’s like here’s the money and you’re going to do what I want.”<\/p>\n

Santorum said the $2,000 contribution, received from AccuWeather CEO Joel Myers on April 12, came during a fundraiser in State College that happened to be two days before the bill was filed. He said he has worked on the issue for three years.<\/p>\n

The donation was disclosed in the April filing to the FEC by Santorum’s PAC, America’s Foundation.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think there’s any coincidence between the two,” Santorum said. “It’s just that I happened to have a fundraiser in the town he was in.”<\/p>\n

Combined, Joel Myers and his brother, Barry Myers, AccuWeather’s executive vice president, have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granted, the financial connection between Santorum and AccuWeather is not entirely new<\/a>, but it’s nevertheless nice to see the national media pick up on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, there was a mini-controversy surrounding Sen. Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum and his effort to go after the National Weather Service. In a nutshell, Santorum’s legislation would prohibit federal meteorologists at the National Weather Service from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel. A free government service, available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}