Five major processors with plants at Kodiak are suing the federal government over the new Central Gulf of Alaska rockfish catch shares program.
The plaintiffs are Trident, Westward, North Pacific, Ocean Beauty and International.
The 21-page lawsuit accuses federal regulators of failing to do proper environmental studies before adopting the program.
The real issue, however, is who controls the fish.
Because the program establishes catch shares, but not processor shares, all the profit in rockfish harvest will go to vessel owners, the companies argue.
Well, Deckboss is sure he's greatly oversimplifying this. So he strongly recommends you read the lawsuit for yourself.
In particular, check out page 15, paragraph 39 of the complaint.
For background on the rockfish program, click here.
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29 comments:
Perish the thought our neofascist processors should be forced to engage in free enterprise!They believe in consensual, safe capitalism.
Bart Eatin' your way of life? Try Dent a monopolized fishery with federal law?
I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you've tread,
You fine-haired sons of b****es.
”
—Black Bart, 1877[3]
At least Bart the 1st rhymed.
No Anti-Trust Act mention in brief?
Forms of Collusion,
See;
Edmond Sherman's Family Values,
est; Boston Harbor 1636.
WTF, is
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/guidelines/211578.htm
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/testimony/202572.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
Senate 51-1
House 241-0
Criminal Law Violations, what else is new from Ted Stevens, Murkowski, ad Young, who never meet a oosik he didn't like to suck.
Another Privatization Arne Fuglvog
pursued and promoted.
He fished and had landings every
qualifying year.(conflict of interest)
How do they figure his shares, it does
say based on "legal landings".
Just get the new plotter with Maps installed.
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/criminal/red-flags-collusion.html
Those processors sure don't mind taking ALL the profit in the salmon industry. What a bunch of "can't do" thieves.
Stealing HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars worth of profits from salmon guys every year.
Average retail value: $20 lb.
Average grounds price: $1 lb.
You're telling me that it takes appx. $19 lb. to tender, process, package, ship, store, transport, and retail? Or rather $18.70 lb. so that you get an equitable profit as the harvestor does? BULLSHIT!
NO PROCESSOR SHARES, free market trade requirement. We're in the USA, remember???
The USA?
"Every Person" knows the Seattle Seven, where USA means Unlimited Sherman Act Violations.
http://www.antitrustupdate.com/Statutes/ShermanAct/ST-Sherman1-4.html
Good, good good. Maybe the tides are finally turning and the legacy pushing for processor control of our fisheries will begin to come to an end. We've all seen what a debauchery crab ratz is because of cannery control. RIP Uncle Ted.
There's no other precedent in this country guaranteeing a select cabal monopolistic control of a market.
Sure there is. There is seining and longlining.
How about for the processors 5% and the open market 95%.
The processors need to disclose their financial interest in the fishing fleet.At the time of crab ratz it was estimated a 15%. My guess time & money have increased that.But they need to compete, or perish,as does the fleet.
How quickly we forget about original Congressional intent to rid inside the 200-mile limit of foreign fishing and the spirit of fishing only by "Americans". With North Pac = Marubeni; Western/Westward = Maruha-Nichiro; and ISA = Korean church... is there really any legal argument a judge has to make other than summary judgment to throw this case out? Without prejudice, of course, to Trident and possibly Ocean Beauty - who should link with the three other smaller processors and throw foreign-controlled corporations off the docks. Just pondering...
Groundswell
"The new rockfish plan creates a huge surplus of processing capacity....unavoidably may bid up the price...all of the rents generated by the fishery will no longer be shared..."
The Plantation Owners are obviously not happy, with the rents generated from the rockfish going to the former slave ship owners.
OVERLIMIT SLAVES, brought to you by Chuck Bundrant's favorite's dixie democrats, Ted Stevens(D), Murkowski(D) and Don Young too(D). Way Down Younder, on the F/V Amistad, a Ocean Beauty it "WAS"
http://www.law.cornell.edu/background/amistad/supct.html
Man of the Year, at UFA?
"The harshness of these results is well demonstrated by the facts of this case. The salmon (insert any fishery) industry as described by this record takes us back to a kind of overt and institutionalized discrimination we have not dealt with in years: a total residential and work environment organized on principles of racial stratification and segregation, which, as JUSTICE STEVENS points out, resembles a plantation economy. Post, at 664, n. 4. This industry long has been characterized by a taste for discrimination of the old-fashioned sort..."
it is easy to sit on Whidbey Island, in the comfort of your home, and whine and cry about the processors, that do business in Alaska. Why not direct market you catch and bypass the companies, that you rag on! What a novel idea, do something instead of complaining all the time. It is getting very boring!
Whining and crying? Surely you refer to processors and their perfected tactics:
The fish are too big.
The fish are too small.
There are too many fish.
There are not enough fish.
The dollar is weak.
The dollar is strong.
The quality needs to improve (so that I can sell it for $X lb. more).
No whining here, just stating the facts.
You have NO defense against the accusation of profit hoarding other than "stop whining and crying". Shows some numbers and defend yourself with proof! Calling you out, not calling you names. You wouldn't dare show the vertical price points of the biz.
The implications of this suit are far-reaching, this isn't just about the trawlers or rockfish. Rationalization of the GOA is coming, whether we want it or not, and this suit could set a precedence that would affect all gear-types and fisheries. Fishermen need to start looking at the big picture and realize the "us vs. them" is not within the harvesting sector.
$1,000,000 greenback reward offered to anyone who can produce a supremely accepted legal or statutory right that the USA actually "Owns" the fish inside the 200-mile limits and it has any kind of an ownership right to privatize it, and give it away to a few special interests. No such authority exists in law, and Catch Shares like the Crab Ratz program have been ruled to be "100% internationally illegal" under United Nations Civil and Human Rights convention signed by the USA in 1992. Privatization is not necessary for meeting the stewardship roles of conservation and management. Harvesters have no monopoly by any stretch of the economic concept, they individually fish under a vertical supply curve set at the total annual allowable catch limits (ACLs or TACs). Racketeering is rampant... and rockfish just another species in its gunsights. History is replete with resource usurpation examples where national resources suffer under the public larceny mindset. That the large closed-class Kodiak processors also practice abusive, cross-border transfer pricing - tax evasion - is an acceptable condition to the executive branch, courts and Congress, or else we'd see them put a stop to it. This is "America" 2012, the land of overstretched corruption. Maybe NOAA will stop this one with a judge's help. Darned right, the entire GOA is on the line and then some...
Groundswell
Ah, so now this makes even more sense: trident bought the hazel lorainne, pacific ram, and the miss Sarah in anticipation of a favourable groundfish ruling. I see how the cards were played now....
They can't settle for making honest money, they have to make it all. Greedy devils.
Well everyone knows this game, as published in the Federal Register's Rockfish Planning Device...
Reflections, from the Corrupt Bastards Club
"NO CHANGE" "Change We Can't Live With"
"...NMFS uses standardized ex-vessel values instead of fish tickets because the State of Alaska does not require the reporting of prices on fish tickets. In cases where price is reported on fish tickets they do not necessarily reflect complete price information and are not intended to be used as an indication of the ex-vessel value of Alaska’s fisheries. No change was made to the regulations..."
20. "other applicable law"
Persons, including corporations, as persons...
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/becker/antitrust/statutes/sherman.html
"Trident's testimony and comments on all points relevant to this complaint were ignored by Defendants."
Ocean Beauty "were ignored by Defendants."
Westward..."ignored by Defendants."
North Pacific...."ignored by Defendants."
28. "reasonable alternatives"
".. Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes in Atlanta. Yours in haste,
W.T. Sherman(R), Major-General commanding
The Opportunity Council(R), always confusing Stevens(D), Always!
Old Chuck Bundrant had a farm, eieio
and on his farm he had a pig, eieio
with an oink oink here, and an oink oink there, here an oink there an oink, everywhere another oink...old Chuck Bundrant, left that farm eieio...
http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/testimony/202572.htm
Processors are required by law to not collude, lest they violate anti-trust laws, so wtf?
Thanks to Groundwell for keeping it real and sticking to the facts.
Hey.... maybe this is an opportunity for those that want to get rid of crab ratz to file amicus brief. Show the courts that Steven's crab ratz program and processing shares was wrong in the first place. I can see this case getting appealled to higher federal courts with some very conservative bench warmers that don't like anything but a free market system?
Hey...maybe this is an opportunity for those who want to get rid of halibut and sablefish ITQ's to file amicus brief. Show the courts that Clem Tillion's Free Willy program to enrich the Tillion family was wrong in the first place. I can see this case getting appealled to higher federal courts with some very conservative bench warmers that don't like anything but a free market system?
I saw in the Kodiak Daily mirror on Friday February 24th that International Seafoods opted out of the lawsuit.
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