Now this is interesting. Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. this year offered local commercial salmon fishermen advances of up to $5,000 to pay for nets, insurance, fuel and so forth.
Borrowers must repay the loan, plus $25, by July 20. Details here.
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21 comments:
Millions of dollars for the CDQ villages and a handful of fishermen get a peanut loan with a charge of $25 of top of it all.
Why are we allowing these CDQs to act like banks? Bankers beware.
They can do anything they want because there are no federal or state guidelines for the CDQs. None, nada, zero. They can do anything they want, even compete against banks which have big bucks insurance to cover their tranactions with the public.
CDQs are not banks and should not be giving "loans" to anybody.
I wonder what their motive is for giving these little loans other than to buy support.
Lien on their permits most likely. It's a control issue.
All of a sudden, especially after 20 years of the CDQs, there's action to help a selected few with the Peoples Monies stemming from the pollock fishery. It's 20 year Review time!
Little loans to fishermen in Bristol Bay. Free nets to subsistence fishers on the Kusko.
What next?
What's so interesting about this?
CDQ groups have been giving out loans for years and it was just fine when they were under state oversight.
I think BBEDC is doing nothing wrong here, just trying to help fishermen out with start-up costs. Winters can be tough if the only job you have all year is fishing. This is no different than getting fronted some cash from the processor before the season starts.
The processor is a privately owned business and the CDQs are Public Monies - that's the difference.
It becomes an unfair business practice when you have to compete with free monies.
Canneries have advanced salmon fishermen for eons. BBEDC owns Ocean Beauty. BBEDC advances money, OB gets fish. Simple. Fishermen pay loan by way of fish sold to OB.
No amount of explanations is going to convince me that Public Monies competing against private enterprise in the United States of America is right. It's wrong. It's a trust issue and there are laws against that abuse of trust.
"BBEDC owns Ocean Beauty" thanks to the CDQ Public Monies.
I don't think the general public of the United States of America will condone this abuse of trust too much longer thanks to the destruction of the salmon in the Bering Sea. Billions and billions of dollars competing against private enterprise in the fishing industry in the backwoods of Alaska is hard to hide.
Yeah, my family and I would love to be handed a few billions dollars from the Federal Government so that we can pay ourselves an outrageous salary for our minimal or non-existing qualifications, put our buddies on salary to help us protect these free monies while we give the poor around us a few hand-outs every once in awhile and if some get too outspoken about the abuse, then we'll use the free monies to crush them into poverty just like all the other peons.
U guys are jack holes who know nothing about the poverty these outstanding groups battle daily. You all are a bunch of racists who hate to see your "natives" making a difference in their respective communities. Get over it CDQ's are here to stay!
These transactions resemble sharecropping.
The previous commenter's reference to "your natives" sounds disturbingly like ownership.
The CDQs need to get their PR act together, and quick. Nothing I've seen from their most aggressive defenders (lobbyists) makes ANY of them look good.
You know who else knows nothing about poverty? The CDQ group upper management who all live in Anchorage, Juneau and Seattle in their gated communities. They are rolling in CDQ program dough and staying as far away from the impoverished people in the villages they are supposed to be working for as possible.
I'm not a "Jack hole" nor am I a "racist" and making reference such as "your "natives"" informs me that as a native, I'm surely not "your(s)"!
I'm a nobody native and I know that the CDQs referred to as "outstanding groups" battling "poverty daily" are not "making a difference in their respective communities."
Because of the lack of above said progress, the CDQs are their own worst enemies. They don't care about the nobody natives, myself and hundreds that I know. I do see that "poverty daily" but I don't see the "difference" that is supposedly made by the "outstanding" group of my CDQ region.
I think that the CDQ Managers are actually afraid of the natives because the managers know they are ripping them off. As blogger states above, they avoid dealing with the "improverished people in the villages...". It's a sham.
The CDQ program is not a "native" program even though they appear to be. They were modeled after the Alaska Native Land Claims Act Native Corporations so that in itself is giving them the appearance that they are intended for the sole purpose of the natives living in the Western Alaska Coastal villages.
No where in the Congressional Act which bore the CDQs does it identify them as for the sole purposes of a specific race of people, the Alaskan Natives. That is against the law.
If you take a look at the control groups of the six different CDQs, you will not find one full blooded Alaska Native in the elitist echelon of upper management. I liken this control group of breed natives to what the American Indian Movement (AIM) tried to do back in the 60's and 70's. Placing the blame of their peoples problems onto the White Man in a radical movement. Racism was their driving force.
The natives in control of the CDQs have placed themselves in a Superior Platform - superior to the White people because of their native blood - superior to the Native people because of their white blood. That's where the attitude of racism comes from. They use it well, subtling blaming all the Native Problems onto the White Men using their little native blood as their link to the improvished natives of the villages. They hang tight with their friends and relatives because they are above the poor people they have no intention of helping. It's irony at it's finest.
Yakitty yak yak, when are u all going to get over it. By and large the people served in these communities whether you like it or not are Native. (I think u all don't). You are right about it not being a Native program.
Y'all are lucky the crafty writers of the Ak constitution, and later ANCSA steam rolled "Native" rights. Those crafty Caucasians took all the Native aboriginal hunting and fishing rights from all the Tribes that were here for thousands of years subsisting off of the land, sea, and air. They didnt stop there, they went and took all the land that was worth anything in terms of oil and minerals and made sure the "Natives" didnt have a pot to pee in. Assimilation (damn near genocide) it was called if memory serves me correct, well shove your assimilation I want my culture back! "Us Natives" welcome anyone hardy enough to live in our villages to come live with us. But, oh dear, you would miss your rush hours, big city shootings, fast food, and strip bars!
You will never know the shame my people have felt with all your "NO NATIVES ALLOWED" signs hanging everywhere.
You all are damn lucky it isn't a "Native" program, I think the outcome would have been a Boldt decision with way more at stake than a measly 10%!
There maybe others abusing program, but it isn't fair lump all groups into one.
"it isn't fair to lump all groups into one."
"How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." Luke 6:42
Defending the CDQ program because you think it is a de facto native program shows an incredible absence of critical thinking skills. Some of the people who benefit the most from the program have some Native American ancestry but it you take a good hard look, you will find that similar to the ANCSA corporations, many of them don't. But race is not what is important here.
The CDQ program is not a race based program by design, and that is a good thing. It is a program designed to create economic opportunities in 65 coastal communities for everyone who lives there regardless of their race or ethnicity.
Unfortunately, right from the start a few people highjacked it and turned it into a way to support their lavish metropolitan lifestyles and then the multinational, industrial fishing industry realized it was an opportunity to unload some of their assets at premium prices to a bunch of unsophisticated CDQ group managers in control of a large pile of other people's money.
The thing that nonnatives would miss most if they took your invitation to live in "your" villages is the virtual absence of viable ways to earn a respectable living. That was the problem that the CDQ program was supposed to address but hasn't .
Although the CDQ program has brought in a breathtaking amount of revenue during the past 20 years, it really hasn't done very much to improve the lives of people living in the villages regardless of race.
Why it hasn't done that should be the subject of the decennial CDQ program review that the State of Alaska is supposed to be conducting this year, leading to recommendations for substantive improvements in how the CDQ program will be managed in the future. For some reason it looks like that is not happening and I doubt very much that race has anything to do with it.
When billions of dollars are up for grabs, everyone is of the same race.
Yeah, I agree that there are bad, intolerate people amongst people of all races that would put up signs such as "No ...... allowed". Using some intolerant person's behavior from the past isn't a justifiable reason to "lump all into one group". But that's all racist see - the color of skin. Opportuntists of all races use that as a weapon as is happening right now as I write. Intolerant, greedy people in control of millions and millions of Public Monies is very destructive. They don't care who or what they hurt as long as they get their piece of the pie.
I'm not anti-village native. The CDQ program was formed to give the Western Alaska Coastal villages an economic boost. Since it's coming from the Pollock Fishery, they knew their Salmon Bycatch would cause the Western Alaska area hardships 30 years ago. These people are not dummies, we are for allowing the CDQs to continue to operate for a handful who ignore the poverty-stricken stakeholders.
They are the modern day bad people who have the invisible "No Natives Allowed" signs out for the village natives that are forgotten by the people in charge of their monies supposedly there to give them a better chance at a good life.
We can "lump all the (CDQ) groups" together. Alaska Non-Profit Corporations dabbling in a For-Profit fishing industry that is known to destroy the salmon that was once the livelihood, the bread and butter, the tradition and culture resource for thousands of poor people in the Western Alaska Coastal area.
Stakeholders of the CDQ program try this:
Hold out both hands.
Flap one up and down at your CDQ group for attention.
Spit in the other hand.
Which one gets full faster?
That fuller hand will become full to overflow until you demand the CDQ managers to become accountable and responsible to you, the stakeholders. You hold the power in your hands.
Are there guidelines to quilify for these funds? Maybe there are fisherman who cannot get traditional funding due to lack of credit or a relationship with a financial institution. This seems logical since most traditional financial instuations don't give loans to people who are not employeed year round. Have a heart.
Heartless people don't have a heart for the downtrodden nor do they give a penny crap for those people "who are not employeed year around. The CDQ programs intent was not to supplement those who already can but to give those who can't a chance in the industry. People without compassion or empathy cannot solve the problem of poverty. Heartless people cannot help the downtrodden.
The CDQ program wasn't intented to be a "traditional financial institution". It's formation is not similiar to the banks therefore "traditional" loan programs shouldn't have bank like guidelines for getting people "who are not employeed year around" a chance to make money on something they are familiar with because it's part of their culture and tradition - fishing. CDQs were not intended to act like banks or scholarship programs or small business initative programs or resource controllers or Gods like some are behaving just because they are in control of billions and billions of Public Dollars without state or federal oversight.
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