Rep. Peter DeFazio: People Will Die From GOP Cuts To NOAA, Disaster Response Programs

Here in 'Murka, the right wing actually tries to implement what it claims the left is trying to do--that is, impose mass government control over people's lives. It's mass projection and is a sign of their collective personality disorder.

They know they can manipulate those constituents with their perverted social wedge issues: guns, gays, "god" (which includes controlling women)

True, the voters in these states are putty in the Republican's hands.

How about think about floating palaces of government employees with good benefits, high wages and slush funds so full of cash they could put in casinos and still have enough money left over for indoor swimming pools.

Where do you get that from? Are you confusing those people who come into government as political appointees from high paying private sector jobs with career civil servants? That's the only explanation I can think of for that absurd statement.

absurd statement.?

You are responding to someone that knows exactly what he's talking about FrJack Hacket.

You should at least check his column, before you make absurd statements. You guys bitch about an agency and issue you don't know anything about.

There really are people that depend on NOAA on a continuous basis, (hourly) and if they tell you there is a problem, you should listen to them.

FrJackHackett- You probably don't know that the majority of US fishing vessels are run down and have low maintenance budgets.

You probably don't realize what happens to an industry like fishing when it is being destroyed by the policies of the regulators that are supposed to protect it like NOAA.

What do you think fishing boat engineers do when they are dis-enfranchised by unfair regulation promoted by political appointees that are from the oil trusts and foundations?

I will tell you what engineers do...they go to work for NOAA. That's right, people that I have trained to engineer vessels actually work there. Longtime friends, people that I have sailed with (which are really more like family).

Their first hand accounts of working on those ships would probably be a little bit more than you are ready for but I can tell you this.

Engineer for NOAA for 1 year and you will have medical insurance for you and your family for 100 dollars a month for the rest of your life.

Salaries will start at around 70k but you don't have to worry about earning that paltry sum because ...... Nobody does anything on regular time unless it is an emergency. Over time is guaranteed to those who want to work. No engineer working for them should take home less than 100k.

Work your way up to Chief engineer and you should be able to pull down 200k while getting all kinds of budget for new toys. Hire any repair job under 4,500 dollars without oversight which means you can get kick backs from any small contractors that want to work.

I sometimes wonder why I didn't jump the fence but I have other plans to make business and work in other countries.

So while I am telling you truths that don't fit in with your talking points (you should be able to get those adjusted) I might as well tell you the worst part.

I have worked government survey charters with NOAA scientists and technicians. Other countries use fishing vessels and charter the work that we send fleets of research vessels to do. That method does so much more science for so much less money but the accomodations aren't as nice.

We are spending the most money to do the least amount of science and the worst job at managing fish (it is a boom and bust management style that fails to take predation into account at all). NOAA has a way of screwing up everything with bad science and then blaming the victims for the problem.

Are you happy with their over-sight of the oil industry? The residents of the Gulf Coast aren't. JJ

Ps- The accommodations on those ships are really nice. Each ship got all kinds of stimulus money they had trouble spending because they are already over budgeted for maintainence and repair.

This column has bugs that impair editing, unable to make corrections of typos.

Overfishing is the problem with the fishing industry. Not NOAA and not environmental policies.

How do you think over-fishing occurs oh spouter of slogans?

TAC regulation is entirely provided by ....NOAA.

Fishermen only catch what they are told to.

Ps- When the waters are poisoned reducing the ability of fish to reproduce, it is still considered over-fishing when the stock fails.

Overfishing is the problem with the fishing industry. Not NOAA and not environmental policies.

Another absurd statement ?

The TAC (Total Allowable Catch) is the amount of fish, usually expressed in metric tons, that fisheries scientists determine may be removed sustainably from a stock of fish each year. Of the twelve species in the groundfish complex, fishermen had reached (or slightly exceeded) the target TAC for only two: white hake and monkfish. For monkfish, the target TAC was exceeded only in the Southern Management Area off the Mid-Atlantic. For the other ten species, fish that could have been caught (and landed and sold) were left in the ocean. The degree of underfishing (taking less than the TAC allows) ranged from 29% for monkfish from the Northern Management Area to 94% for haddock from Georges Bank. In 2008 the New England groundfish fishermen could have caught from 1/3 more monkfish to 16 times more haddock than they actually caught.

Hey! Father Jack!

Where the Apocalyptic Rhetoric Comes From

To get the storyline correct, it is important to go back to the sources of the apocalyptic rhetoric. In 2006, a paper was published by Boris Worm in Science (Worm et al. 2006) that received enormous press coverage. It argued that, if current trends continued, all fish stocks would collapse by 2048. Worm and his coauthors concluded their paper with the following sentence: “Our analyses suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations.”

Others joined in, chief among them Daniel Pauly, who rang and continues to ring the apocalyptic note. “There are basically two alternatives for fisheries science and management: one is obviously continuing with business as usual…,” wrote Pauly in 2009 (Pauly 2009a). “This would lead, in addition to further depletion of biodiversity, to intensification of ‘fishing down marine food webs,’ which ultimately involves the transformation of marine ecosystems into dead zones.”

It might surprise you to learn Pauly’s views are not universally held among scientists. Indeed, these papers exposed a deep divide in the marine science community over the state of fish stocks and the success of existing fisheries management approaches. Numerous critiques of the apocalyptic stance were published after the 2006 paper, suggesting that Worm et al. had greatly exaggerated the failings of “business as usual.” For instance, Steve Murawski, director of scientific programs and chief science advisor, defended the U.S. fisheries management system and pointed out that the proportion of stocks overfished in the U.S. was declining, not increasing (Murawski et al. 2007).

Ret.NOAA Chief Scientist Steve Murawski declared overfishing has ended in the US.

Current catch limits and the long, unregulated overfishing that preceded them are two entirely different matters. Trying to blame the efforts to correct for overfishing after generations of degradation of fish populations is like trying to blame the a chronic disease on the doctor who can't produce an instant cure. But I should have also mentioned further that climate change and massive ocean pollution may be making any efforts at control futile. So, I would concede that overfishing followed by human related spoilage of the environment are both at fault, but overfishing was the primary cause, making fish populations more vulnerable and less able to survive other kinds of environmental threats.

Ret.NOAA Chief Scientist Steve Murawski declared overfishing has ended in the US.

It's pretty hard to overfish when there aren't enough fish left to even meet the allowable limits.

FR Jack-

Current catch limits and the long, unregulated overfishing that preceded them are two entirely different matters.

That is the limit of your understanding, some propaganda that isn't true....sigh....

Since you obviously know nothing about fishery regulation or the fact that it is and has been the strictest in the world.

I do not know why you would persist in trying to debate the topic.

I am now questioning every post I have ever read of yours and saying to myself, "Is this guy unable to tell the truth?"

No disrespect when asking this, but what do you base that statement on?

What information that you can provide, proves that?!

Show me the data.

Show me, and if I'm wrong, I'll do what you won't. Admit that I could be wrong!

You haven't said anything that's wrong, but it's just vastly oversimplified and ignores the origin of the problem. Our fishing limits may be the strictest in the world but it doesn't matter any more. The overfishing went on too long before those standards came into effect and now we have an additional ecological disaster in the making which is going to further decimate fish populations already in danger.

Here are some links, but I expect anyone who sides with the fishing industry will not accept them:
Fish
FewerFish
StillFewerFish

I may have confused to whom your question was directed, bore. The above post was really meant for both you and mightyj, but more for him than you.

Yeah, we got mixed up in the rotation.

I'm the weak link here, because it takes me a while to type!!

One fingered pecker, er... one pecker fingered,, no,no, wait,wai......................

I don't blame Nat Geo for going anti-fishing. The only lies I have ever seen them print were in stories about fishing. The only time I have seen photo shopped pictures and bogus images was in their special oceans edition. A lot of fishermen love that magazine and are saddened by their betrayal of the truth.

The people manufacturing propaganda against the fishing industry and financing the talking points you are using are the wealthy foundations and trusts that have made the current US administration the servants of plutocracy. JJ

ps- Those tax breaks for the wealthy would go a long way toward funding public service, gee thanks Obama.

That's almost funny, mightyj. So it just happens that the subject about which you're hopeless biased is the only one NG lies about. That's the kind of thing The Onion cut its teeth on.

Is that all you've got.

I actually had a big comment but it is deleted, besides why should I waste my time with you. You don't want to talk about NOAA anyway.

I refuse to help you lie about NOAA if that's what you mean. If you want to pout and go off an lick your wounds, fine.

And this is even funnier than the earlier one:

ps- Those tax breaks for the wealthy would go a long way toward funding public service, gee thanks Obama.

Is this where you try to pretend you're for raising taxes? Oh, my achin' back.

You think I was for tax cuts for the rich? Why would I do that when I am being run out of business by the richest people on the planet? You serve the plutocrats by spouting their talking points not me.

You lost a lot of credibility when you started talking about over-fishing. Dredging up the past to attack a group of people that are just trying to earn a living is best left to those that make a damn good living at it.

If liberal talking points is all you have, then you and I are only going to agree on things about half of the time.

My biggest problem with the cuts to NOAA was that they were added to cuts to the EPA and some childrens benefits that I am against.

Cutting the EPA doesn't help a person that depends on a healthy eco-system and a clean environment.

The reason fishermen support cuts to the NOAA budget is because it defunds catch share programs which are dis-enfranchising fishermen and coastal communities nation wide. JJ

If you are capable of moving past the talking points and actually discussing these matters you should stay tuned.

Fr Jack- I forgot to mention....... Who needs to go pout or lick wounds? You only answer about 7 percent of what I am saying anyway.

jj?

I haven't gone to all your links yet, but the couple I've seen so far are interesting but not all that enlightening. The one in the Gloucester paper started out seeming like it was going to tell us that decreased cod numbers was a hoax but explained clearly that these clusterings of fish, while seemingly in immense numbers in the small locales where they are sometimes seen, are not indicative of total cod numbers in its entire habitat. In a way, it reminded me of what loggers did out in the redwoods here in CA. They'd leave a fifty-foot or so wide strip of big trees along the roads and highways so that tourists would go through redwood "groves" marveling at the dense profusion of the forest while just a one minute walk past those strips would take you into a moon scape of clear cutting. Those were called "fool-em strips" out here by the locals and it was always good for a laugh at the "city folks'" expense. Of course, I realize fish can't be herded around to fool people into thinking there are more of them than there really are but the article points out that as big as these clusterings seem they're still minute compared to what should be out there and isn't. The newspiece about the excesses of NOAA fines and extravagance is one of those superficial jobs that the MSM is so good at. For example, although some of the fishermen seemed to get draconian fines for seemingly trivial infractions, we don't know whether this was the first or fiftieth time this fisherman was caught "fudging." I also noted that the current administration has put someone in charge to try to clean up NOAA's act where needed. So many of these apparently overly tough measures must have gone well back to the last administration. Just as with the economy, the people who identify and try to fix the problems seem to get more blame than those who apparently created or at least ignored them. But never fear, @!$%#s like Chuck "Death Panel For Granny" Grassley is right on top of it now, NOW, and wants' "heads to roll." That's one head that's just about all it's worth to roll. Anyways, I don't find anything so far to make me want to retract anything I've posted up to now, if that was your intention.

FrJack- Outside of the US EEZ things aren't good in spots. There is a lot wrong in the world but nobody cares about the open ocean because the oil companies do not want to drill there. No money in chasing those boats around.

You do realize the Japanese are some of the worst ones. JJ

I surely do and I support all efforts to get Japan's (and Russia's) overfishing under control or punished...hard. But having no restrictions in areas we can control will just bring the devastation down all that faster. We might get a few years of mediocre catches in before the whole industry is destroyed. Is it worth it?

Did you mean areas we can't control? The US has all kinds of restrictions. So many in fact that fishermen are being run out of business in unprecedented numbers in areas with historically high levels of fish population. The over fishing that is occuring in say the Yellow Sea would require warships and a lot more balls than we and the UN have. The idea that we can control the entire ocean is not going to happen.

So in the US we have different issues than the rest of the world unless you include highly migratory species which I have written my share of articles about.

Discussions about US over-fishing hit the brick wall of fact very quickly. It isn't happening and the demonization campaign is pretty much over.

I think it is telling that we have been able to rebuild US fish stocks in the face of rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidity levels. Fish behavior and population are fluctuating quickly making it already difficult to manage. That required a lot of sacrifice by people that just want to have a future.

A future that NOAA is selling out to Wall Street with their privatization programs. JJ

Ps- NOAA didn't even get a budget cut so they are actually crying over milk that is still in the glass.

Don't think so, bore. We'll just have to agree to disagree.