Tag Archives: Groundswell
Groundswell – Opposing Catch Share Embezzlements for the Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawl bycatch amendments for analysis top this week’s North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Kodiak. First up is the 10-year review of the Crab privatization quota system. It put roughly 1,350 fishermen out of work and shifted roughly $800 million of labor’s surplus to some sealords — embezzled from captains and crew. Into today’s capital flight torrent enters 40 groundfish trawlers, also wanting a mixed economy of brutish capitalism combined with another socialistic program of government giveaways. That’s Alternative 2 in the analysis outline, an IFQ proposal. It will result in more capital fleeing Alaska, robbing our communities of the labor surplus that drives rounds of respending that stimulate coastal economies. Greed and lazy are common economic bedfellows. They’ll embezzle 70% off the top, too. IFQs are euphemistically called “catch shares,” while those who do fish get less of a share than before. Since they saw trawl IFQs as inevitable politically, a splinter group of weak feeling local fishermen came up with a nonsensical idea to at least get one piece of the giveaway trawl pie, in something misnamed a Community Fishing Association. Read the op-ed here 20:51
Pulling one out the archives for Stephen Taufen. “Ted Steven’s may be dead, but his virus is affecting every American!”
“Hesitating in the face of evil is equivalent to siding with the enemy” – Marion Pritchard
Senator Ted Stevens. THE Stevens in Magnuson Stevens Act. The much revered Senator from Alaska. The Icon to every quota holding participant in Alaska, and now New England, soon in California. The hero of Catch Shares. Consolidation.
About Stephen Taufen A public watchdog and advocate for fishermen and their coastal communities. Taufen is an “insider” who blew the whistle on the international profit laundering between global affiliates of North Pacific seafood companies, who use illicit accounting to deny the USA the proper taxes on seafood trade. The same practices are used to lower ex-vessel prices to the fleets, and to bleed monies from our regional economy. Worked 20 years in the Alaska seafood industry for processors in cost accounting, fleet management, operations.
Groundswell Fisheries Movement
Welcome to Groundswell’s Public Advocacy website for Alaskan Fisheries
