May 14, 2014 — Disappointing, embarrassing, offensive: White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett largely ignored Gov. Deval Patrick’s call for executive action to overturn the dire NOAA limit cuts.
Yet Jarrett’s — and presumably, the president’s — inaction is not surprising. Indeed, while trumpeting his agenda calling for “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and after bailing out some of the nation’s and the world’s financial giants because “they were too big too fail,” the president and others in his administration have long since shown they believe it would be just fine if the Northeast fishing industry failed. He and his Department of Commerce — which declared the Northeast groundfishery an “economic disaster,” yet has not provided a dime to address it — have shown no concern about the jobs already lost and fishing businesses that are folding under the NOAA’s corporately-driven catch share management system.
Commerce and NOAA, however, should at least be required to operate under federal law. And at least one such law already in place would provide the beleaguered industry with support it deserves and needs.
Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times