Opinion

Two Massachusetts members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Barney Frank, of Newton, and John Tierney, from Salem, have been asking whether Bryson’s environmental background would tilt him against Bay State fishing interests. Fisherman, of course, have been running up against federal regulations for years, and don’t want to see someone at Commerce working to kill their business.

Sen. John F. Kerry, a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been asking the same sorts of questions. A president’s selections for key positions come before the Senate for “advice and consent.” This constitutional requirement not only keeps the chief executive from wielding unchecked authority, it also opens up the process. Frank and Tierney are listening to their constituents. Kerry is taking those questions directly to the nominee.

As a result, a guy running a small fishing operation in New Bedford is essentially asking the president’s Commerce nominee to address his own concerns.

This is how a representative democracy is supposed to function.

Read the complete editorial at Mass Live.

 

 

 

 

 

Sen. Scott Brown, in standing up for Massachusetts fishermen during a scathing indictment of federal fishing regulators at Faneuil Hall Monday, showed again why he’s a political natural who will be hard to topple in 2012. Sen. Brown accused the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its agents of stonewalling, shredding of documents, an out-of-control accounting system “that would have made Enron blush."

[The Senator noted that NOAA Enforcement often would arrive] toting guns and treating fishermen like criminals, destroying their livelihoods by levying unfair and excessive fines, and wasting the money it took in through fines on the industry.

Brown, citing a “damning review” by an inspector-general brought in by new NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, said NOAA’s enforcers wastefully bought more cars (202) than there were agency staffers (172) and a $300,000 “luxurious boat” which “CBS News says was used for fishing. There’s some irony.”

But the angriest man in the building was Ed Boynton of Gloucester, sitting at the hearing in a work shirt, faded jeans and a wheelchair. He lost a leg years ago.

“I was a fisherman for 33 years until the bastards (from NOAA) forced me out,” a boiling Boynton told me in a hallway. Under a stringent rule aimed at how often fishermen were allowed at sea, “They got me down to 11 days at sea to make my living,” he said. That wasn’t nearly enough for the groundfish dragger to earn sufficient income for his family, and he gave up fishing in 2006 and now subsists on disability checks.

Brown was hot, too, as he lashed out at a panel of NOAA officials. Things improved under Commerce Secretary Gary Locke (now on his way out) and the new NOAA administrator, but they are still far from where they should be. Brown said he had asked NOAA three weeks ago for documents for the hearing, but got them only last Friday.

“So what does it take to get fired over there?” he asked, asserting that most NOAA employees who violated the public trust remain employed at six-figure salaries.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Boston Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

Gloucester, Mass – June 19, 2011 – One of America's grandest public meeting halls will be home today to a hearing that, ideally, will shed more light on one of our federal government's worst and most unjust assaults on its own people.

And it's encouraging that the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security is not only holding today's hearing to delve deeper into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's war on New England's and America's fisheries, but that it is indeed holding the public session in Boston's Faneuil Hall.

That's because New England — especially Gloucester and New Bedford — has been the flashpoint for both the excessive NOAA enforcement now documented by a federal Inspector General's report, and for the new catch shares regulatory scheme that's steering control of more fishermen's catch toward larger companies and outside investors, driving out the small-independent boats that have long been the seafood industry's lifeblood.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fish aren’t the only thing disappearing under catch shares; so are jobs. Catch shares fundamentally alter the economic landscape of our nations fisheries by pushing smaller vessels off the water. Given the devastating economic effect these programs have on coastal communities and fishermen, the United States cannot afford to pursue catch shares under the guise of environmental sustainability, nor should we.

Fortunately, Congress, in an attempt to stop the madness, defunded the creation of any new catch share programs on the East Coast until the end of FY 2011. While this safeguards some fishing communities for the coming year, legislation is needed to protect them and other non-covered fisheries for years into the future.

Congress must prohibit NOAA from implementing catch shares as they have been in the past, in order to ensure the long-term health of our commercial and recreational fishing industries.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Hill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, in recent years, fishing jobs and livelihoods have been destroyed by overzealous enforcement actions and excessive regulation from the federal government. While a certain level of regulation is necessary to preserve the ocean's resources, the government should not be imposing draconian and unfair restrictions that are preventing this industry from thriving and creating jobs.

This Monday in Faneuil Hall, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, and I, in our respective roles as chairman and ranking member of the Federal Financial Management subcommittee of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, will hear testimony from government officials, as well as fishermen who have faced excessive financial penalties from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the last decade.

At the heart of the problem is a culture at NOAA that believes they are above the law. NOAA has appointed itself judge, jury, and executioner for New England's fishing fleet, unfairly punishing them with disproportionate fines in their enforcement of controversial regulations.

Fishermen who were fined were forced to pay into the Asset Forfeiture Fund, a NOAA account that should be utilized to help fishing communities navigate the federal red tape. Instead, NOAA spent much of the fine money on hundreds of cars, a luxury boat, and international travel to exotic locations.

These violations of the public trust are outrageous.

Read the complete opinion piece at The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

"I continue to believe that Dr. (Jane) Lubchenco is the wrong person to lead NOAA in a new direction …"

Congressman John Tierney may never have spoken more truer words than those, articulated when he shared his sentiments over Lubchenco's shameful insistence that she actually initiated the Inspector General's investigation into NOAA law enforcement's wrongdoing.

At the same time, Lubchenco's blatantly misleading claims in writing to fishermen who received her and the Commerce Department's hollow "apology" for NOAA's excessive policing tactics — that she had made "fair and effective enforcement a top priority" from her "first day in office" — should be more than enough for Tierney, Congressman Barney Frank, U.S. Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown and others to push again for desperately needed new NOAA leadership.

Tierney is absolutely right. Lubchenco is the wrong person to head NOAA, or any other government agency that must be accountable to the people. And it's high time he and his colleagues renewed their demands for a change.

Read the entire editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bryson has been criticized for all the wrong reasons. He was co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970, and one of its first attorneys to file mountains of lawsuits against industry. He was just out of Yale Law School, filing suits over pesticides, smog and other fashionable issue-of-the-month cases. He got tired of that after six years, went into California Gov. Jerry Brown's first administration, and then into public utilities.

Obama's brief nomination announcement late last month recited Bryson's electric utility credentials and said the former executive would "add a business outlook to his inner circle."

But Bryson's resume neglected to mention that in August 2008, he joined the global private equities firm that pioneered Gordon Gekko-style leveraged buyouts, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, as a senior adviser.

And we missed the press release from two months earlier — coincidence, no doubt — that said, "Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Environmental Defense Fund Announce First-of-Its-Kind 'Green Portfolio' Partnership."

Read the complete opinion piece from The Washington Examiner.

 

 

 

 

 

There is, simply put, no way to explain Lubchenco's and Krupp's decision to turn down a call from a U.S. Senate subcommittee to provide input next week at a Boston hearing in which the panel, including U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, is seeking answers on NOAA's use of funds drawn from abused fishermen, and on the agency's incessant drumbeat for a catch share management system.

Krupp's snub of the committee's "request" is bad enough. As head of a multi-million-dollar nonprofit, one can argue that Krupp and EDF's only real accountably is to their billion-dollar corporate donors. They're the ones EDF serves by, as its own 2005 donor grant proposal notes, "working the regulatory process from the inside." So while his action shows no respect for the Senate committee members, there is a context to his digging in his heels.

But for Lubchenco — who has let EDF's corporate-backed policy essentially become NOAA's own "cap and trade" power grab for the oceans — boycotting the Senate hearing just reiterates the contempt for Congress she has shown in the past, even if she is sending NOAA fisheries caddy Eric Schwaab in her stead.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyone who wondered if the hollow "apology" and minimal reparations offered to fishermen and related businesses by the U.S. Department of Commerce last month might signal a change of heart by the department and its embattled National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration need not speculate any longer.

That's because a recent appointment and nomination for positions key to the fishing industry show the feds are committed, above all else, to maintaining the dysfunctional status quo when it comes to setting and enforcing oceans policy. Even worse, there are now signs that attitude extends all the way to the White House.

Take President Obama's nomination of John Bryson, a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, to succeed Gary Locke as Secretary of Commerce. The nomination drew immediate fire from Democratic congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank — usually staunch Obama allies — which should make it a non-starter. Both congressmen described the nomination and Bryson's NRDC ties as "troubling" — and with good reason.

The NRDC is closely aligned with the Environmental Defense Fund, the lobbying powerhouse that has — as it boasted in a now infamous 2005 grant request obtained by the Times — to influence government policy "from the inside."

Read the complete editorial from The Salem News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both commercial fishermen and the politicians that do their bidding must recognize that global overfishing by many nations now threatens the oceans and the economies that depend on them. And the only way to deal with that threat is with strong international rules to end all unsustainable fishing.

A chart on the Ocean2012 Web site approaches the problem in a different way. It shows that since the 1950s, the Spanish fishing fleet, once mostly confined to the mid-Atlantic and the Mediterranean, has become a global force, fishing in the Pacific and along the edge of Antarctica as well.

Read the complete editorial from The New York Times.