October 2, 2011 – Today's the day that NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco could finally face the music, so to speak, during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing pulled together by Sen. John Kerry at the Massachusetts State House.
And we can only hope that Kerry, fellow Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank pull no punches in posing hard questions to Lubchenco, who — in the midst of an ongoing economic slowdown, and in defiance of a supposed jobs push by President Obama — continues to push her nonprofit-driven and corporately-backed agenda of consolidating the fisheries, driving out independent fishermen, killing small businesses and forcing cutbacks in crew positions, all in one fell swoop.
Kerry, in a My View column in Saturday's times, noted his desire to use the hearing for bringing the polarized sides to the table, but we'll get a sense early on as to how seriously Lubchenco is taking all of this.
That's because the hearing will include two separate panels, with Lubchenco on the first one and a group of New England fishermen and nationally acclaimed fishery scientist Brian Rothschild on the second.
Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.