June 3, 2013 — If it takes a lawsuit to clip the wings of regulators who are willing to overrule their own advisors, even if it means “financial ruin” for a treasured local industry, so be it.
The Obama administration is hastening the death of the New England fishing industry by allowing environmental ideologues within its ranks to favor the interests of fish over the interests of families.
But Attorney General Martha Coakley, joined by other elected leaders, has now taken a dramatic stand in an effort to protect the local fishing industry, filing a lawsuit that accuses federal fisheries regulators of illegal overreach, relying on shoddy science and a lack of consideration for the interest of the industry.
The green lobby was immediately all over the AG when she announced the suit against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week, accusing her of political grandstanding. “She’s scaring people,” Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation told the Herald.
We have to wonder whether Shelley has ever chatted with Gloucester fisherman Joe Orlando, who said at last week’s press conference that he is in “financial ruin” because of drastic new catch limits adopted this year that Coakley says violate federal law. Talk about fear.
Read the full story at the Boston Herald