Thoughts on VA. Leaving ASMFC

[SeaHunt36]

What are you thoughts on Va. removing itself from the ASMFC. I believe Senator Stuart is pushing this bill. I take it he didn't like ASMFC's data on menhaden and being over fished. Any opinions?

[flight risk]

yep, he is a piece of work. I am sure he is no different than obummer, blagovich and the rest of the crooked politicians running this country. Things such as this are sad, truly sad and demeaning. It made me a little less proud to be a Virginian when I read it. I hope this election and the next ones are a cleansing for all of the crooked ones like him. I guess money, greed and his hidden agendas are more important than doing the right thing. Follow the money and you will find turds like him no doubt. sad, very sad to say the least. He is a piece of crap! and spineless no doubt...

What I wouldn't give to get him on my boat 20 miles out in the eez.

[martineta]

I am constantly amazed at our elected officials. They are elected by many to serve few.

[rappahanockman]

When does this Crooked POS come up for re-election?

[BLUEYZWAITN]

It's all about the Green under the table.... Be nice to expose someone like this to the point of no return....
His picture is in the slang dictionary next to AHOLE

[B-Faithful]

My bet is that NMFS/NOAA will hand down tighter restrictions on VA if the leave the ASMFC.

[ALLTACKLE]

Here is a local story on it:

Stuart hopes to take Va. out of fisheries commission
By Lee Francis | Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 1:05 pm

State Sen. Richard Stuart has had enough from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and when the General Assembly convenes in January, he will introduce legislation to take Virginia out of the organization.

Although he no longer represents Northumberland County where Virginia’s menhaden industry is centered, Stuart (R) said Monday that he felt he need to continue to stand up for the industry.

“I firmly believe that the other states are ganging up on us and the commission has completely abandoned science,” he said. “I have to stand up for the Northern Neck.”

The ASMFC is working on new regulations that would drastically reduce the catch allowed by Omega Protein in Reedville, a major employer in the lower Northern Neck. Stuart said he is aghast at the proposed reductions not just because the menhaden stocks are not in any trouble but because the coming catch reductions are half as large as reductions imposed on fisheries that actually are in crisis.

Stuart noted that in the past Virginia has agreed to reasonable measures to protect the menhaden stocks and the current attack on the industry is entirely unjustified.

The senator said he has talked to Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli about the situation and that Cuccinelli has agreed to back Stuart’s bill to take Virginia out of the ASMFC. Cuccinelli’s support might well involve a lawsuit if the ASMFC attempts to enforce its regulations on Virginia if the commonwealth has withdrawn from the commission, he said.

Stuart said he has asked the General Assembly’s legislative services office to draft the bill for him and he will file it as soon as the General Assembly opens.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Stuart said.

[BLUEYZWAITN]

Yea where will he be when our children try to fish 15 years from now and the Chesy is a giant dead zone....
At some point the bay will be completely depleted for a frigin pill for health purposes.. The are of course jobs at the cost of shutting it down or cutting back... I would not want to take livelyhood from anyone.. But at what price do you take the livleyhood of the bay..
Not an easy decison but one that has to be looked at under a Microscope..
Cuccinelli and Stuart may be cutting thier own livelyhoods , maybe not.. SOme look at them as Heros and others look at them as the AntiChrist ...... What do you do....? How many are employed in Reedville? how many would be affected in General....

I still hate thier decisions as well as many others .. It's grown to big and too political to fast

[goose70]

I wrote this last night and hesitated about posting it, but given the question in the last post, I have decided to add it to this thread. This is not intended to bash any political party, but rather, to address my concerns with one politician/policymaker who I think raises alarming issues concerning menhaden managment and the efforts to pass along a semi-decent environment to our kids:
____________________

We often cheer when “the little guy” stands up to the “big bully.” Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli feeds off of this sentiment by pursuing policies under the guise of “State’s rights.”

He would do well to crack a history book.

We experimented with a weak central government and a loose confederation of states – that experiment nearly destroyed this country before it got off the ground. Fortunately, level-headed folks such as Washington, Hamilton, Madison and others at the Philadelphia Convention, and in the Whisky Rebellion that followed, saw the need for a strong, competent federal government. Indeed, the text of an early draft of the Constitution, which read “We the States,” was changed to “We the People.” Even the Civil War, commonly touted as a “state’s rights” war, was really more about slave-owning states becoming fed-up that the federal government was not powerful enough. In the prior decades, a series of weak presidents and dysfunctional congresses allowed a patchwork of state-based laws on slavery, leading to bloody terrorism in border states like Missouri, and little effort by the federal government to help southern states enforce slavery laws by returning slaves that escaped to free states. (I’m certainly not endorsing slavery; I’m simply pointing out how a weak central government led to a power vacuum that resulted in civil war.)

Today we see this very issue playing out in our sport – different states impose different levels of protection for a natural resource that migrates through the water of various state and federal jurisdictions. The question is, can one state enact policies that cause this migrating resource to be severely degraded while it swims through that state’s waters? I don’t know the answer, but this has interesting parallels to the legal issues raised when one state diverts the flow of a river before that river can enter a neighboring state. (For an interesting read, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior-a...n_water_rights).

Given that Cuccinelli has squirreled away quite a bit of taxpayer money to initiate lawsuits on this and other federalist issues, while at the same time he and the governor claim that Virginia has no more money to clean its own pollution, this is a question that the courts will likely answer (if the Virginia voters don’t act first).

My biggest concern with Cuccinelli is that, at the end of the day, I don’t think that he actually cares about the academic aspects of federalism and small government. Instead, like many small-government zealots, he really wants power taken from a government entity with whose views he disagrees, and consolidated where HE can more easily control and wield it.

Take, for example, his crusade against Virginia universities. Cuccinelli is not convinced about man-made global warming. Fine. But he then used the subpoena power of his office to demand, big-brother-style, that any Virginia university professor who dared to research the issue be charged with fraud (since the universities were funded with taxpayer money). In effect, he wanted the government to silence, or at least not fund, research that lead to findings that did not comport with his own beliefs. Let us hope that he does not do the same to those who are researching menhaden.

Ironically, I have not heard Cuccinelli, or any self-styled anti-politician, demand that Virginia’s menhaden management be removed from the politicians in the legislator and back to the scientists who manage all of Virginia’s other fisheries. Ask yourself if that sounds like the position of a small-government advocate, or the position of someone who simply wishes to consolidate fisheries management power in the hands of allies.

That is who you Virginians are dealing with on menhaden, the Bay, environmental health and a host of other critical issues. And now he wants to be your Governor. I wish you luck.

[goose70]

Thanks. No, not yet, and I probably will just post it here.