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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Forget about the weather

I'm sure there's a libertarian case to be made for eliminating or privatizing all functions of the Commerce Department. Such a case would include discussion of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department, and would analyze how NOAA's network of weather satellites, ships and planes could be operated on a private basis; to be really compelling, the argument would recognize that there have been partial efforts in that direction over the years, and would draw upon that history in seeking to chart a future course.

Or, one could just write something like this glib Matt Welch post, which shows no awareness of any of the above other than dismissing a Department web page about the weather as "marginalia." After all, you can get weather reports from lots of other websites, right? (But where do they get the data?)