Hunting for our Freedoms...

I was reading a story about some rare African animal that just about went extinct in Africa. Some kind of curved horned creature. Fortunately, just before they disappeared from the savannah, a few of them got saved. A few of them went into the hands of a rapid environmentalist organization, and the others to the hands of a couple of Texans. The greenies intended to protect them from man, while the cowboys with guns wanted to breed them. Why? So they could find other idiots in blue jeans with expensive guns that somehow and for some unknown reason wanted to put a bullet through the gorgeous natural animals. They intended to kill them. Can you believe that? The poor Scimatar-horned Oryx being shot just for recreation? What kind of barbarian would want to kill something so beautiful - and something actually endangered - for the fun of it? What is next? Skeet shooting bald eagles?

Bald eagle hunting, anyone? I hear they are a little tough. Definitely tougher - and harder to shoot - than the Scimatar-horned onyx. The animal seems much safer and is thriving in greater numbers (by a factor of 200) on private hunting grounds, where texans raise them for the hunt. Not good, say environmentalists. They want it stopped and they want it stopped now. Those animals are endangered, you see. So is our freedom. At the hands of people that feel everything about us - from hunting to fishing to running our own businesses and maybe getting rich doing it - is not good for the God they called "Mother Earth". These people are the enemies of freedom, and fail to see that We are hunters. Progressives hunt for victims they can protect or save from danger or oppression. We hunt fish and Scimatar-horned onyx.

Here we are some years later. The environmentalists - who now have 150 of those creatures on their preserve in Africa - are fighing the Texans in court. Why? To stop them from killing the 10% of their stock each year. Killing those poor things are rich white guys with jeans and expensive, highly-accurate guns. The ten percent of their herds - which were raised on private ground with private funds for harvesting in the content of private hunts on those private lands - is more then one thousand six hundred animals. How the hell did one men get away with killing so many of those poor endangered animals?

The herd on the Texas ground numbers - according to a leading conservationist - somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 animals. Penalty to kill, eat, and enjoy. The herd is completely sustainable with a 10% harvest.

Priscilla Feral is the president of Friends of Animals. It is Priscilla that leads the law suit to stop the hunts. It seems that capitalism, rich white guys with guns, and killing animals for the sport is something so disgusting, and so in need of her personal help, that stopping it is on her Agenda.

If you had the time to read this story today, think about this, and give some thought to writing a letter to Priscilla. You can tell her that you heard this story from a guy who owns expensive guns and cannot wait to shoot one of the scimitars. I will put the head on the wall of the office I am writing this story from. And think about her.

There is money in killing animals and fish...

Sorry to say this, folks,but there is money in killing stuff. There is money in killing those Scimatars and there is money in killing tuna, and in killing marlin once In a while. I am in fishing management, and not the protection of animals. If I was, I would argue that the animals being hunted by rich white guys in Texas on private land are one hell-of-a-lot safer than they are in the paltry herd being maintained by the greenies. Greenies cannot manage fish and they cannot manage animals. We cannot get on the red snapper grounds most days. Cutting the entire season to forty days for recreational fisherman shuts down millions in sales of goods related to fishing, and let us fish about twenty days all year for a delicious and abundant species. What the hell is up with that? Those snapper would be fine - and we still would never reach 10% of the stock in "takes" - if that season were open 9 months a year, and not one?.

Marine Spacial zones are covering the earth in ever-increasing areas. Fishing for sport - catch and release fishing - is now illegal in Germany and Sweden. Who is next? Hunting and fishing are in mankinds blood, and they mix well with capitalism. Man mixes well with capitalism. It was money that has 6,000 - 10,000 love and healthy Scimatar-horned onyx on private ground in Texas and a remarkable 150 on the ground of the greenies protecting them in Africa. Who do you trust with fishery management? People like Priscilla or people like Travis Palladeno, commercial anglers, professional guide, and strong battler against the environmental left. He is also the mayor of one of our country's finest coastal communities. Devastated by the ever-increasing regulations being shoved down our throats by people that do not fish, and do not like fishing or capitalism, for that matter.

There is a simple reason for this problem. In managing the animals, they have to manage something connected in magical and invisible ways to the animals they are attempting to manage. The human factor. And the human factor that is connected to those animals are the men and women who hunt them, or the men and women who find fishing magical and mystical, and important to the way they see life.

Being on the water, or being in the field about to take down one of those Scimatar-horned onyxes - gives us a connection that beauracrats, scientists, and certainly activist environmentalists cannot understand. Leave the onyx alone, Priscilla. Leave them and the hunters taking them down alone, Priscilla. Find something else to protect. Maybe you should do sex studies on the Scimatars, and by next year you might have 175 of them in Africa.

 

Managing Americans

Managing those testy American anglers...

I think I made somebody mad the other day. The somebody I made mad was a guy named Roy Crabtree. Roy has a very important title inside of NOAA, but quite frankly I am so sick of beauracrats like Crabtree that theirs personal opinion of the importance is somehow connected to titles they make up themselves, so I won't waste a single pixel telling you who he is, what his title is, or why he thinks he is so important that he makes random decisions, driven by his desire to keep that title on his taxpayer-funded business cards. Crabtree is a friend of the fish and a friend of the global movement to govern us. His role is governing what we do to fish, but you get the idea. Roy is a government controller, and as such has a police force he can use to arrest you and put you in jail, or to take property that you've worked to own. Private property and private rights - those troublesome things written into an archaic document more than 200 years ago - are not something that Roy has on s agenda. Roy's agenda is called Agenda 21, and according that agenda, private property and the wealth-gathering that goes along with it are contrary to social justice. Social justice for who, one might ask. Social justice for fish? Social justice for the men and women that scout, hunt, harvest, and eat them? Social or economic justice for the thousands of related businesses touched by or touching the fishing industries? Or social and environmental justice for the likes of Roy Crabtree? I contend it is all about power. It is not all about fish, it is not about fisherman certainly, and it not about the environment. It is about personal and collective organizational power. Power to buy votes, and in turn the power to control elections.

Where do I start? I am a professional writer, and have been telling stories - and getting paid for them - for more than two decades. Three almost. I don't often find myself speechless; I can start with a blank piece of paper, decide what I want to tell the reader, tell it to them, and then tell them - in a paragraph or two (or a chapter) - exactly what it was I had just told them. That step-by-step approach is the textbook method of writing a book. You them what you are going to tell them, tell them what you want to tell them, and then tell them what you just told them. A prescription, if you will, for every technical writing project mankind has ever needed and ever will need. Try it. It will work for anything from an article about a great fishing knot or a book about shaving four points from your golf handicap. We have used the method to produce 500-page textbooks about how to use programs like Adobe Photoshop.

Doctor Roy Crabtree, the power behind the massive onslaught of regulations and behind-the-scenes forces controlling our lives, it is people like Crabtree we need to rid our government of. When asked if he had done mortality studies on the town of Madeira beach with the same fervor that now says we must protect tile fish, he rolled his eyes at me and said the "speech was over". I asked him the same question three more times. Have you done the report that the law requires you do, Crabtree? Who the hell do you think is paying your salary, you arrogant intellectual piece of nothing? You have to answer the question, Roy. Your butt is going to be seated before congress, and the PEW girls will not be able to protect you there. The days of Crabtree management will soon be over, doctor. The truth will set you free, and the truth about fishery management is the last thing you talk about at your taxpayer funded meetings. But it is coming. You remember that fat ass in the hot tub in the GFA meeting and taxpayer party in Las Vegas? You think we are gonna find any mis-steps at NOAA? You think any shady things have happened there? Just wait till September and the Magnuson hearings. Just you wait.

 

In 1976, a law was put before the House of Representatives called the Magnuson/Stevens Fishery management act. It quickly made it through the senate and was signed by the pen of President Richard Nixon. It was rewritten twice, with the last rewrite - the most devastating of all for the human element of the fishing formula - under the younger Busch. The fact that his UN friendly signature was on the document shoukdn't make anybody particularly comfortable. The last rewrite was the one that really hurt the fisher, though.

You see, as the law evolved, so too did the environmental movement. Anybody with a bit of sense can see that the government - whether it is the Greek government or the city council in most (but not all) city councils in your home town - are completely out of control. I live in a city that is committed to knocking down a perfectly good pier to replace it with "the Lens" - a $20 million dolle bubble over a vast piece of our fishy bay. You will not be able to fish there, of course. It will be a "protected zone". Three years ago, when I was called a conspiratorial nutcase for pointing out the basic premise of UN Agenda 21 as it relates to private property, and that marine Spacial zones were a way for a global government to take what is now public lands and ban our access to them in the name of animals we now hunt and harvest, I forecast projects like the Lens. And some of the world's leading fishery management scientists - the likes of doctor Ray Hilborn - presents solid evidence that they do nothing, and that the emergency, crisis approach to "overfishing" is driven more by blind fith than by science.

The Magnusson was meant to do wonderful things. It was meant to protect American waters from deep water bottom-trawlers arriving by the fleet from China, Russia, and every other nation on the earth capable of producing the increasingly popular "factory ships". Equipped with everything from the rakes that simply dragged the bottom, catching and killing everything unlucky enough to be living where it was used, to helicopter-landing pads, where supplies were brought in and injured workers transported to land-based hospitals. From the trawls to the decks to the processing machinery and into cans, the fish caught on the vessels was outside the control of American anglers, regulators, or law. Environmentalism was in relative infancy, and the law was seen by the already-active anti-fishing community as a poor move towards their true agenda, the elimination of commercial and recreational angling.

The MSA went on from there, though. Fishing was a uniquely American thing in many ways. And fish were identified as a national resource, best protected by a well-educated, centralized and organized government. The federal government, of course. Designed to protect fish, fisherman, and the resource they loved or lived with, the MSA, like a thousand other well-meaning laws, had teeth hidden deep inside it's mouth. Teeth we didn't realize were about to start biting the very people and industries it was meant to protect. Anglers.

Rewrites and definitions: the Magnusson/Stevens

The law started having problems right away. In case you do not know this yet, there is money in politics. Big, sickening, and corrupt money. Money and power that is passed hands, bank accounts, titles to beautiful homes, cars, airplane tickets, and summer houses in the Hamptons. Follow the money, and you follow the law. There were companies like Tyson foods and companies like Walmart that have coin on that table. The law was modified in 1996 and again in 2006. Do you fish? Do you eat fish? Do you care that the number of fish we are allowed to catch in the gulf of Mexico is roughly ten percent as many fish as we could catch fifteen years ago? You should. Do you even own now what defines a fish as being "overfished", and therefore under the anti-fishing control of men like Doctor Roy Crabtree, who, when I asked if mortality studies had been done on the town of Maderia Beach with as much fervor as he was presenting charts about the mortality of American Red Snapper, said I should stop making speeches. It was that comment, and how to describe the events under which the conversation between the doctor and me happened, that had left me speechless when I started writing this comment.

Who would have thought that a law designed to control foreign vessels from taking all of our fish would become part of a global attempt to completely control all fish - one species at a time? The overuse of the Magnuson/Stevens act by environmentalists, stockholders, and global companies like Walmart and Tyson foods eventually charging us to access our public - and American - waters. For thirty-five years a single law had devastated an American industry, an American way of life, and our freedoms at many basic levels. This story of the mortality rate of a once vibrant coastal community should get you interested in the law, and how we can revisit it in these troubled times. Our government has more important things to do than play computer games with fish stocks. Games that will ultimately result in America being like Germany - where recretional fishing is now illegal in an attempt to protect fish from our desire to torture them into extinction.

Bur worry not, readers and interested parties. My ability to talk has returned.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council

I call myself a member of the Tea Party, whatever that might be. Many of my friends - people I really respect - either roll their eyes when they hear me say that or "advise" me not to bring up the forbidden subject of politics in stuff I write. "Those articles will be on the Internet forever, Gary." they say. "In ten years somebody will be able to use it against you." Use what? My belief in the purity of that document called The Constitution?" That? The belief I share with many that a completely out-of-control federal government has been slowly but certainly shredding us of our personal rights? The belief that with each new destructive regulation something precious is being lost?

That member of the tea party also owns half of an online fishing magazine. And I went to a meeting the other night of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The meeting was lead by a man that is far from a friend of fishing. A beauracrat more protective of his position and envisioned power then in the protection of any species. But Crabtree can bring fifty head-bobbing beauracrats, scientists, academia, and administration taxpaid head bobbers, but the truth is what it is. Regulators are too busy regulating to see the damage they are doing. It is time for the regulated to regulate the regulators.

It is time to remove doctor Roy Crabtree from his position of power. And to replace him with somebody that sees fisherman as being at least as important as the fish he is supposedly protecting. I you do the research on the number of finish being caught 20 years ago and what they - they, whoever the hell Crabtree thinks he is - have allow us to catch now. Who the hell are they anyway?

I asked him a question at that meeting that he refused to answer. We strongly recommend that you ask him yourself. The question is is this, and should serve as an open question to doctor roy Crabtree:

An open letter to Roy Crabtree

Doctor:

What was the American red snapper season in 1992, 2002, and 2012? In months open and seasons closed? And who could take how manu fish home to eat and share with friends and family members?

Also provide the same numbers for the top ten species you see as in need of regulatory protection during that same time period and which species you had control over that was limited to our capture and harvest over that time. Include changes made to a guide's ability to take fish home for their paying clients.

Can you show me how the decrease in the fish you allow us to catch has fixed or protected species? I need on-water numbers, doctor, not mathematical models done on computer. Real numbers of real fish.

When does this increasing regulatory pattern stop or even slow down? When will regulations not be rewuired at such crisis levels. You are now stopping us from taking tile fish. Can you draw a picture of perfect fishery management?

To protect fish from torture, catch and release fishing in Germany and sweden is now illegal. What is your personal stance on such draconian shutdowns? Are you in direct content with any individuals or organizations that were connected in any way to the acceptance and passage of that legislation?

Relative to the three decade take-reduction and season reduction imposed on our community by scientists, academics, and beauracrats like you, can I see the studies you are required by law to provide me as a journalist and citizen relative to the economic impact of your regulatory changes on one town? The city of Madeira beach. I will supply numbers, and I want to compare them to your required studies.

Gary Poyssick, publisher

 

I see your studies on biomass. And on fishing allocations, and on your allowing us to catch an additional 10,000 odd American Red Snapper this season. By emergency granting of your power to let us fish. Hve you done the studies you are required to do concerning the economic impact of your increasing and ever-expanding species shutdown?

I said it at that meeting the other night, doctor. You line up with people only who agree with you. Vast wealth is moved around 501c3s for global governance strategies like catch share and marine special zones. You know what is happening and you agree to be part of it. But ask yourself this question. What is the end game for our country if you get your way, animal rights activists? What is the end game of an America where it is illegal to catch a bluegill with a little boy and put it on a frying pan? Or putting a $250,000 Sportfishing boat on the edge of a school of black fin tuna? What is better for the civilization on the shoreline? The gray rooms of socialism, or the open oceans of the tuna boat? Making sure nobody hurts those poor helpless tuna takes away something on that expensive boat that is the same on an ancient fishing craft. Something magical and something free. Don't protect the fish and make the angler go extinct,

 

 

Anclotte Key Fishery

Captain David M. Rieumont with a hefty snook (Robalo in Spanish) from the waters of Anclotte Key. The recreational fisheries in Florida generate more than $50 billion (with a B) in direct and ancillary revenue in the State of Florida. That said, the NMFS (National Marine Fishery Services) has shut down our grouper, our American red snapper, and further over-regulated many aspects of our beloved sport out of business. With Catch Shares, Sector Separation, and many other anti-angling regulations coming into play, it’s only a matter of time before we match what Germany and Sweden have done in the name of these poor fishies. And that’s to completely shut down, and deem it illegal to catch and release a fish.
What, do you think this isn’t coming our way? Well think again, ladies and gentleman, think again. First the animal rights activists show you pictures of dead seals, dead fish, and eventually dead freedoms. Wake up and smell the fish, folks. Wake up and smell the fish.
I would rather die free with these fish in my hands than live under the rule of the tofu-eating, bi-curious saviours of the environment. Why don’t they save themselves first, and leave our freedoms to people that care about them. I can tell you that the first time somebody with a blue helmet on their UN-compliant heads come up to me while I am fishing, on the water, or anywhere on American soil, rounds are gonna fly. And the last time I checked, the people that want to take my guns ain’t got any of their own. They can send their lawyers, perhaps. Or even the current attorney general. He’s gonna be looking for a job soon enough. Send him my way.
Please. Send him to Florida with a blue helmet on.

Just what is fishery management?

We have talked a lot about fishing politics. Largely to no avail, unfortunately. For several years now, since I was told that I could not enter what I thought was a federal meeting with a camera, we have argued that something really bad is happening concerning fishing, fishing regulations, environmentalists, and money. Big big money. The logic that the guy running the meeting (or the guy I thought was managing the meeting) used to keep my camera out was something called the Chatham Rule. When he attempted to evoke it at a Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, I was familiar with the Oxford University method of managing meetings. Combined with a tactic designed specifically to steer the "consensus" of a meeting run by a predetermined and trained meeting managers, Chatham argues that cameras and audio recorders 'stifle' people's willingness to share their true opinion. Being afraid that somebody might hold them accountable for what they said, bureaucrats in the United Nations feel much better if the press is kept far away.

At that meeting in Tampa two years ago, I called the police. They agreed with me that the Florida sunshine law - which demands freedom of the press (I have a card with the letters PRESS in big red letters on them that are actually official) - trumps UN protocol. That protocol is commonly used by fishery management people, you know. More than three quarters of the time reporters just believe it is law, and lay down and hide their cameras. And let regulations pass and pass and pass that reward friends and demolish towns like Madeira beach.

It is time to start recording every one of these meetings. Tomorrow night in Orlando, the south atlantic fishery management council is having a meeting, and reporters - and camera crews - will be there. It is at the raddison and of you visit the council's site there is information about the meeting. If you have the time, we would love any angler concerned about their freedom to fish, their access rights, and the rights of the American press to enter meetings of government regulatory bodies, we would love to have you there.

Holding the fort against the wild ones...

Back at the keyboard, and recently off the phone with partner in pixels and all things political, publisher Gary Anderson. He is well and slowly returning to a physical condition where he will be able to string his typically 400-word articles (sentences, I should say) to the pleasure of his reading public. For now and the immediate future, it will be yours truly posting most of the commentary here on ThePoliticalSandbox. The blog will also be making a somewhat dramatic technical transformation as it moves out of the blogspot blog space and not the world of real, commercial, money-making blogs. We hope you will find the content as good as you even found it over the years that Gary has managed it, and how while I help out.