It’s An Obama World… Fishermen Given $500 Taxpayer-Funded Bribes Not to Fish
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, March 2, 2012, 11:53 AM
It’s an Obama world…
(uaff)
The latest great idea to come from the Obama Administration is to bribe fishermen with taxpayer dollars not to fish.
It’s OK. It’s not their money.
The Boston Globe reported:
Pat Judge, an avid sport fisherman, has been walking around with a $500 check in his pocket for a week, trying to decide whether to cash it.
That’s because the money comes with a catch: Judge must agree to turn in his $10 recreational saltwater fishing license for the year.
In an unusual experiment being conducted only in Massachusetts, the federal government is surveying anglers to figure out how much it would cost to persuade Judge and 1,899 others not to fish off the coast.
But officials say the purpose is not to actually reduce fishing. Instead, they say, the survey is intended to measure the worth of recreational saltwater fishing to the estimated 1.2 million residents and visitors who do it annually.
The results could be used in variety of ways, officials say, such as to calculate the potential loss to anglers if an oil spill or other environmental disaster halted recreational ocean fishing.
But after years of government restrictions on commercial fishermen, and more expected because of plummeting cod stocks, some recreational anglers wonder if officials are up to something more sinister: revoking their right to fish. The no-fishing offer, which ranges from $15 to $500, is raising hackles among those who consider it another government assault on New England’s fishing industry.
“I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I imagine if you were in tough economic straits you would take the money. It’s not enough for me,’’ said Judge, who lives in Groton and owns a Provincetown home. “It raises certain ethical questions on whether it’s right for the government to be spending money to keep you from doing your hobby.’’
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has allocated about $145,000 to conduct the survey over the next several months, with about $75,000 allotted for cash offers, said Scott Steinback, a NOAA economist who came up with the idea.
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Published May 23, 2012 at 11:51 pm - 59 Comments
Dwayne the canoe guy commented:
$75k divided by 1900 comes to $39.47 for an average.
So if everyone bites at the high end, there is a lot of money to be lost in case of an oil disaster (they will use this to prevent further drilling and exploration).
If folks bite on the low end, they will jack up the fees by that much as a way to increase revenue.
Sounds like a lose/lose sucker bet to me. It would be funny if they were all signed over to the RNC.
KornKing commented:
Maybe the regime could start paying law school students to NOT have sex.
Robert commented:
And yet AGAIN the federal government is sticking its nose into a state’s business.
Gary commented:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day
Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
Pay him not to fish and you make him a welfare case
Pathetic.
This nation can do better than Obama.
Remember Breitbart!
BuddyG commented:
Here’s a better idea . . .
Pay lawyers not to practice law.
Gary B. commented:
The state should not charge someone to fish in the first place!!! The state does not own the fish!!
bg commented:
++
OT..
been posting about this for quite awhile, here’s the latest..
March 2, 2012
Chicago Police Dept. Embraces Hamas Front
[The NYPD has been criticized for surveillance programs, nearly all of which involved activity and material in the public domain, of Muslim subjects including the Muslim Students Association. As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported last week, the MSA was created by the Muslim Brotherhood and has a disturbing history of spawning people involved in terrorist plots and spewing radical rhetoric.
By yielding to CAIR pressure, the city's top police officer will share the microphone with an imam tied to a Hamas-support network which court papers indicate was responsible for CAIR's very creation.]
February 29, 2012
American Muslim leaders gather with
Cong. Pete King (R-NY) to support NYPD
more here..
==
FurryGuy commented:
FDR’s administration paid farmers to dump milk and destroy produce or not actually farm their fields, so Barry’s only following the example of one of his Socialists mentors.
Another waste of money that we don’t have for a survey to further track citizens.
JPL17 commented:
They can have my brown rubber worm lure when they prey it from my cold, dead fingers!
JPL17 commented:
They can have my brown rubber worm lure when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
JPL17 commented:
Oops…prey=pry
EBL commented:
Idiots.
I am for free market environmentalism (really free market conservatism) however. Fish are a limited resource and it does lead to a tragedy of the commons (if you allow people to go for a common resource there is no incentive to limit their take). You can create limits. You can privatize the resource by selling rights to it. Personally sport fishing pumps so much money into the economy (a sport fisherman probably spends hundreds in gear, charters, food, etc. to maybe catch a few fish) that milking them for a few more bucks in license fees is not a smart idea. A way to put free market factors into fishing is to sell rights to harvest fish by bidding. The state should only regulate methods (so as to protect the resource, prevent unintended by catch, waste, etc.).
KornKing commented:
Dear Sirs:
I didn’t grow any wheat last year.
Please send me $ 650,000.
Sincerely
myohmy commented:
It is election time. Obama wants donation from the uber-rich environmentalist extremists.
mike191 commented:
Donate the money to a good charity,Soldiers Angels,for example,and go fishing the next day.
Robert commented:
“In an unusual experiment being conducted only in Massachusetts, the federal government is surveying anglers to figure out how much it would cost to persuade Judge and 1,899 others not to fish off the coast.”
Leaving aside the fact that they have no business mucking around with the state licensing procedure, they could just ask the fishermen. But no, instead some bureaucrat has to cook up some scheme that really won’t achieve the stated purpose, and of course costs more.
When you think about the money invested in the boat and equipment, $500 doesn’t seem like much to convince someone to forgo the use of said properties. Yet we have to have some dreamed-up scheming government study to provide this common-sense logical answer.
So, if they get no or very few takers, the next question is, “Well, then, how much would it cost to persuade Judge and 1,899 others not to fish off the coast?”
A better question would be, “Why does this person and his supervisors still have their jobs?”
Robert commented:
So just this one person has come up with a lame-brained study that can’t achieve its purpose, in the process wasting $145,000 of taxpayer money. Multiply that by thousands of bureaucrats and you have the source of much government waste.
These people spend this money frivolously, to use up their allotted budgets, then the politicians cut the military, and police and firefighters at the local level, to make it seem as if the funds are soo sorely needed.
thegoldman commented:
They want control of everything…
Take the fish away you don’t eat…
Regulate dust and you can’t grow food…
thegoldman commented:
Ohhhhh my look at this !
UN to Propose Regulations of Water and Food for Earth
Duffy commented:
They don’t want us hunting or fishing so companies like Monsanto can continue with it’s government sponsored corruption….
democraps suck commented:
here’s an even better idea… toss odumbo overboard and we can right the ship…loser mooslum
Reaganite Republican commented:
Same as in Europe, they try to control uncontrollable market forces and end up with lakes of surplus wine and mountains of butter in warehouses… while paying more and more people NOT to work
Sometime I wonder how the Chinese could possibly NOT take over the world…
Nelle commented:
I’m not sure what it would cost to get Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Biden, Clinton et al to take the rest of the year off, but I’d be willing to pitch in!
The Ambivalante commented:
The only people being played are GatewayPundit’s readers. For y’all to read, here’s the transcript of her testimony from that partisan joint C-Span.org.
Hearing on women’s reproductive health and contraception before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee held on Feb. 23, 2012
Transcript of testimony by Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown University Law School, a private Jesuit institution:
“Leader [Nancy] Pelosi, members of Congress, good morning. And thank you for calling this hearing on women’s health and for allowing me to testify on behalf of the women who will benefit from the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage regulation.
“My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today…”
And so far, I an find only one reference to her as a 23 year old. My question for all you paranoid TightyRighties is this: who cares? She’s 30 and a law student. Wow. What an amazing conspiracy. Biggest news since 9-11.
Y’all just need something to hate, don’t ya? I’m sure that’s what Jesus would want you to do.
Swifty commented:
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Give a man a welfare check, a free cell phone with free monthly minutes, food stamps, section 8 housing, a forty ounce malt liquor, a crack pipe and some Air Jordan’s and he votes Democrat for a lifetime.
No man commented:
Ambivalante in 20 words or less:
Obama needs more power or people will . . .
You ain’t christians!
You ain’t got no compassion or humanity, and you are racists, and fascists!!!
You have no right to religion!
Anyhow, back to this post.
I would use the $500 to buy bullets . . .
ratsofred commented:
Just another way they can control you , and take away your rights . Obama can stick this up his oreo ass . Andrew Breitbart , God be with you .
Redlite commented:
Right on 5
Barry is hell bent on turning this country into some grand utopian fantasy of his. That maybe only 1% of the country likes.
Well f### the 1%. It is time for the voices of the other 99% to be heard.
bg commented:
++
OT..
March 2, 2012
Obama: US Military Strike On Iran Is No Bluff
==
YourMaster commented:
the ones they try to pay should just take the money
and then fish 4x as often… and hopefully wipe out a few of the endangered species of fish
and when they are gone the environmentalists will scream
….but they won’t be able to do sh*t about it. *lol*
the fishermen should just reply with… oh… I thought they were paying me to fish MORE! bwahahahahahaha ….well, I did take the money… but y’know….
did I ever say I agreed to do what they ask by fishing less? …nope!
hahaha… suckers!
bg commented:
++
just for the heck of it..
March 13, 2011
Talking left, living right
==
WillofLa commented:
Animal rights mentally ill have been trying to forbid all blood sports for years now. That $500 supposed payment to not fish is actually the government trying to figure out if they should charge that much to allow sport fishing. And besides there are already limits on everykind of fishing. You have to be 12 years old before you have to have a license, and as far as that goes I’ll tell you something that will blow your mind.
Here in Louisiana there is legislation that is trying to go through the works that will prohibit people from fishing on any tributary that touches private property. What that will do is if you fish on a river, you have to stay in the main river, you can’t go down any tributary where each side touches private property. The liberals are saying that the way the old law is worded does not give proper recognition to property owners by allowing their property lines to come to the center of the tributary. That means if you are going down a tributary off a river somewhere, and you are fishing, you are actually on private property. Their law would prohibit any fishing down tributaries, and restrict you to the main river which their law indicates is “public property” and is open to the public.
I don’t know who is behind this but it kinda sounds like some stingy property owners who don’t like seeing some fishermen on their little part of the river, a tributary that runs along their property line, along the bank. I look at it this way, if it’s the river, or any part of it, it’s all public property and people have the right to fish anywhere they want. Lakes are the same. What it that law pertained to lakes, that you couldn’t fish along the part of the lake that skirts along someone’s property line. Hell, down here most all the lakes have property on them. They’d have to ban all public fishing in those lakes because there are houses all along every foot of the shore line of the lake. And most rivers down here in Louisiana have houses or farmland along them. So most of every part of any waterway has private property next to it. And I’ve heard that this law is going no where, so I’m not worried about it.
But, yeah, liberals don’t want American’s fishing because it kills fish, and they don’t like that, the fish has the right to live without being caught and eaten. What a bunch of crap, including this law in Massacommie.
Winghunter commented:
What?? Is Obama trying to lessen the blow before he tells us his Brazilian oil rig has had a spill?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166.html
feduptoo commented:
Did you know that the US pays a certain South American country to NOT cut down their rain forests?
Last year where the elites of the world met in Mexico, the leader of this country, (I believe it was Brazil, but cannot remember for sure), said he wanted more money from us to NOT cut down the forest!
We are paying them Billions for this! I call this Obama made blackmail! A foreign country can tell us how much they want to NOT do something!!!
Kissmygrits commented:
The epa is stopping fishing all over the country. A small community in Montana wanted to build a fishing area with handicap access on a river but the project was stopped by the epa because it might cause some flooding in the area. They also didn’t get the proper permits from the Army Corp. See how this works.
thegoldman commented:
Here’s the real story !
Look at the size and poundage also # of fish you can have….
Commercial Finfish Regulations as of Feb 16, 2012
Species
Fishery
Season
Open – Close
Size Limit
Possession Limit
American Eel (1)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 6 in No Limit
Black Sea Bass (2)
S1: All Jan 01 – Apr 30 12 in 100 lb
S2: Fish pot & weir TBD TBD TBD
S2: All others TBD TBD TBD
S3: Fish pot TBD TBD TBD
S3: All others TBD TBD TBD
Bluefish
All Jan 01 – Quota Dep. No Limit 5,000 lb
Cod (3)
North of Cape Cod Jan 01 – Dec 31 22 in 800 lb
East & South of Cape Cod Jan 01 – Dec 31 22 in 1,000 lb
Dab (Plaice) (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 14 in No Limit
Dogfish
All May 01 – Quota Dep. No Limit 3000 lb
Fluke (4)
P1: Nets Jan 01 – Feb 18 14 in w/o LOA: 500 lb
w/ LOA: 2,000
P1: Nets Feb 19 – April 22 14 in 100 lb
P2: Nets April 23 – June 9 14 in 100 lb
P2: Longlines April 23 – June 9 14 in 100 lb
P2: Handlines or Rod & Reel April 23 – June 9 14 in Prohibited
P2: Nets Jun 10 – Quota Dep. TBD TBD
P2: Longlines Jun 10 – Quota Dep. TBD TBD
P2: Handlines or Rod & Reel Jun 10 – Quota Dep. TBD TBD
Haddock (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 18 in No Limit
Illex Squid
All Jan 01 – Quota Dep. No Limit No Limit
Loligo Squid (5)
All Jan 01 – Apr 30 No Limit No Limit
All May 1 – Aug 31 No Limit No Limit
All Sep 01 – Quota Dep. No Limit No Limit
Monkfish (6)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 17 in 470 lb tails
1,560 lb whole
Ocean Pout
All Prohibited
Pollock (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 19 in No Limit
Redfish (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 9 in No Limit
Scup (7)
Winter I Jan 01 – Apr 22 9 in 50,000 lb
Fish Weir May 01 – Quota Dep. 9 in No Limit
Trawlers Apr 23 – Quota Dep. 9 in 2,000 lb
Non-Trawl May 01 – May 31 TBD TBD
Non-Trawl TBD TBD TBD
Winter II Nov 01 – Quota Dep. TBD TBD
Smelt
Hook & line only Jun 16 – Mar 14 No Limit 50 fish
Smooth Dogfish
All but longlines Jan 01 – Dec 31 No Limit 100 lb
Spiny Dogfish
All May 01 – Quota Dep. No Limit 3,000 lb
Striped Bass (8)
Sunday Jul 12 – Quota Dep. 34 in 5 fish
Tues, Wed, Thur Jul 12 – Quota Dep. 34 in 30 fish
Tautog (10)
All Apr 16 – Quota Dep. 16 in 40 fish
All Sep 01 – November 30 16 in 40 fish
Weakfish
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 16 in No Limit
Windowpane (3)
All Prohibited
Winter Flounder (9)
Gulf of Maine Jan 01 – Dec 31 12 in 250 lb
Southern New England Jan 01 – Dec 31 12 in 50 lb
Witch
Flounder (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 14 in 1,000 lb
Wolffish
All Prohibited
Yellowtail Flounder (3)
All Jan 01 – Dec 31 13 in 250 lb
Notes:
1) Subject to regulation by the Division and local community. Consult local regulations
2)
The black sea bass season has been divided into 3 sections (S1, S2, & S3). During the Spring Period (S2), the landing and/or possession of black sea bass is allowed on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays during May 1 – May 31. During the Summer Period (S3), the landing and/or possession of black sea bass is allowed during Sunday through Thursdays for all authorized gear types. When the director has determined that 100% of the commercial fishery quota has been reached the fishery will close. Black sea bass are measured from the tip of the snout or jaw (mouth closed) to the farthest extremity of the tail, not including the tail filament.
3) Groundfish species regulated under the federal Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan are subject to area and season specific groundfish closures in both state and federal waters. It is illegal to harvest cod from a portion of Massachusetts Bay (Winter Cod Conservation Zone) between November 15 and January 31 and in the Spring Cod Conservation Zone between April 16 and July 21.
Commercial fishermen may fish for striped bass only on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday within the commercial season. Striped bass May be taken by hook and line only; spearing, netting, snagging are prohibited. Note: Permitted party/charter vessel operators may fillet striped bass for their customers. See 322 CMR 6.07 (4)(g) for details.
4) The fluke limit is 500 lbs for nets during Period I from February 1 until 25% of the annual quota is reached, at which point the possession limit will be dropped to 100 lbs. During the squid season (April 23 – June 9), the fluke limit taken by nets will be 100 lbs. It is illegal to land or possess fluke between the hours of 8 PM and 6 AM.
5) A 2,500 lb trip limit may be implemented if 80% of a trimester’s allocation is landed. From April 22 – June 10 trawlers may use small mesh to fish for squid in state-waters.
6) The minimum size for monkfish is 17″ total length or 11″ inches for tails
7) All fish weirs combined are subject to a quota of 275,000 lbs during the year. During the May 1 – 31, commercial pot and hook & line fishermen are prohibited from landing and/or possessing scup on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
9) Winter flounder can not be taken inside the spawning closure area or the inshore net areas between Feb 1 and May 31. It is unlawful for commercial fishermen to take winter flounder from Mount Hope Bay and its tributaries
10) The spring tautog season runs from April 16 to May 15 or until 28% of the quota is harvested. The winter tautog season runs from September 1 to November 30 or until 100% of the quota is harvested.
thegoldman commented:
Didn’t come out right here’s the link !
http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dmf/commercialfishing/regulations.htm