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By EUGENE McCARTHY Rappahannock News Guest Columnist
According to a recent announcement, the Reagan Administration is considering selling parts of the nation’s weather service to private companies or possibly even to individuals, such as Gardon Barnes or Willard Scott.
The reasons given for the proposed sale are not quite clear. If reducing the national debt were the objective, it would be better to offer for sale all radio and television licenses as new ones are offered or old ones come up for renewal. The offering could be made at auction, in somewhat the same way that the rights to graze cattle and sheep on public lands are offered. The right to graze on the public mind and will could fairly be treated as something the government might also offer to the highest bidder.
The Reagan spokesmen have not said that they thought the private sector could give us better weather or more of it, as they generally assert in their support of the private sector in other services. Competition among weather analysis and torecasters, beginning with ownership of the instruments for studying weather, might give better results than we now get through the competitive interpretation of radio and television weather persons. That competition is not now judged on the basis of whether the weather expert is right or wrong, but on the size of his listening or watching followers. Professional competence does not seem to be measure of distinction, Willard Scott does as well or better than other weather persons who are “metereologists”. Willard is not.
The early television
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