"Job creation" will be a major focus of President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, according to the preliminary reports.
That is very much as it should be, or should have been. The president should have focused on the economy and job creation before turning his attention, and expending his political capital, on a government takeover of health care.
But any promises he makes about jobs will ring hollow for the region's fishing industry if his administration allows its own federal fishing regulators to continue on their current path.
The result of those policies will be fewer jobs in an industry that has, over the past two decades, been crushed to about a third of its former size.