Friday, April 24, 2009

Stevens headlines Hall of Famers

Al Burch, left, and Ted Stevens. UFA photo

Here's the press release from United Fishermen of Alaska on last night's annoucement of its Alaska Seafood Industry Hall of Fame charter class:

United Fishermen of Alaska

April 24, 2009

United Fishermen of Alaska Honors Senator Stevens in Inaugural Alaska Seafood Hall of Fame

Senator Ted Stevens honored with Lifetime Achievement award, among twenty industry leaders named to Hall of Fame.

In celebration of 50 years of Alaska Statehood and sustainable fisheries management, the United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA) honored former Senator Ted Stevens for his record of accomplishments dating from Alaska Statehood to the present, and named nineteen other individuals to its inaugural Alaska Seafood Hall of Fame. The honor recognizes individuals for their lifetime accomplishments in promoting and protecting Alaska’s seafood industry and fishery resources.

Senator Stevens was presented a UFA Honorary Lifetime Membership and Lifetime Achievement award for his work for sustainable fisheries spanning Alaska’s first 50 years of Statehood, including establishing the 200 mile limit; the Magnuson-Stevens Act, establishment of regional fishery management councils, ban on high seas driftnets, and his continuing work to bring a stop to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fisheries worldwide.

“Alaska’s fisheries were a focal point in the impetus behind the statehood movement, and through statehood, Alaska was able to influence national fisheries and ocean policy. Alaska’s founding fathers and fishing leaders took many very difficult steps to bring the necessary protections to rebuild and sustain fishing communities. Without the work of these twenty individuals, and especially Senator Stevens, we can only guess what would now remain of our fisheries stocks and fishing communities,” said UFA President Joe Childers.

In accepting the award, Senator Stevens called upon commercial fishermen to join together to continue his work to stop IUU fishing.

UFA followed a two-step process of open nominations followed by voting by the full board of 41 fishing leaders that comprise the UFA. Over fifty people were nominated and the top twenty after voting were named as inaugural inductees. The awards were presented at an industry banquet at the Comfish trade show this week in Kodiak, Alaska.

“The nomination and voting process was a very educational look back into the fifty years since Alaska statehood, reminding all of us that we owe our fisheries to the vision and hard work that so many individuals have made, and inspiring all fishermen and those who work in fisheries to continue this arduous and often frustrating work. The nomination list includes statesmen, innovative fishermen, activists, processors, biologists, regulators, and many who spanned across more than one of these categories.

“There are many men and women in the fishing community whose work might already well qualify them for inclusion, but that would agree that their work is not yet done. The list of eligible individuals will continue to grow and UFA will elect new members yearly,” said executive director Mark Vinsel.

UFA honored the following Alaska Seafood Hall of Fame Charter Members: Bob Alverson, U.S. Senator Bob Bartlett, Bob Blake, The Brindle Family, Chuck Bundrant, Al Burch, Phil Daniel, Oscar Dyson, Senator Dick Eliason, Governor Ernest Gruening, Governor Jay Hammond, Gordon Jensen, Knute Johnson, Armin F. Koernig, Jerry McCune, Alaska State Representative Drew Scalzi, Alaska State Senator Clem Tillion, Tommy Thompson, and Bob Thorstenson Sr.

“These individuals each made lasting contributions that helped Alaska fishermen and women continue our sustainable fisheries to the present and into the future. We look forward to recognizing the many others that are helping ensure our sustainable fisheries through to future generations,” Vinsel said.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

An amazing list it "IS"

You gotta love some of the members, like the Brindel Family, who gave us the "Civil Rights Act of 1991" after;

WARDS COVE PACKING CO. v. ATONIO, 490 U.S. 642 (1989)

JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN and JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.

I fully concur in JUSTICE STEVENS' analysis of this case. Today a bare majority of the Court takes three major strides backwards in the battle against race discrimination. It reaches out to make last Term's plurality opinion in Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. 977 (1988), the law, thereby upsetting the longstanding distribution of burdens of proof in Title VII disparate-impact cases. It bars the use of internal work force comparisons in the making of a prima [490 U.S. 642, 662] facie case of discrimination, even where the structure of the industry in question renders any other statistical comparison meaningless. And it requires practice-by-practice statistical proof of causation, even where, as here, such proof would be impossible.

The harshness of these results is well demonstrated by the facts of this case. The salmon 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: a preference for hiring nonwhites to fill its lowest level positions, on the condition that they stay there. The majority's legal rulings essentially immunize these practices from attack under a Title VII disparate-impact analysis.

Sadly, this comes as no surprise. One wonders whether the majority still believes that race discrimination - or, more accurately, race discrimination against nonwhites - is a problem in our society, or even remembers that it ever was. Cf. Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989).

Then the old Icicle Seafoods v. Baker, and BobbyT and friends?

The final issue is whether this case should be treated any differently because Exxon received an "assignment " rather than an agreement to "cede back." Exxon is here pursuing the claims in its own name, rather than indirectly through the settling plaintiffs as was the case in Icicle. Appellees maintain that an assignment is different from a cede back agreement because in form, an assignment grants Exxon a claim to collect on a judgment against itself and thereby creates a legal impossibility that extinguishes the plaintiffs' claims. In support, appellees rely on language in two cases: Matter of Lockard, 884 F.2d 1171, 1178 n. 13 (9th Cir. 1989) ("He cannot, after all, have a claim against himself."), and Bartneck v. Dunkin, 1 Cal. App. 3d 58, 62, 81 Cal. Rptr. 428, 431 (Cal. App. 1969) ("The assignment of the claim to some of the defendants is ample evidence that there was an intent to release those defendants from any further liability.").

VOTE Uneducated Fishermen of Alaska, you can get a sticker for your boat too;

I VOTE SCAB!

Anonymous said...

Nice to see that JTGranger (aka Mr. Anonymous), of the Lummi Island Grangers, with Alaska commfishing a family tradition since 1878, is at it again.

Kinda missed you JT>
Business has been tough lately without your consistent jabs and judisprudence interference.

Musta really bummed you out about Ted, eh?

bobbyt

Anonymous said...

There are many other folks out there who have done a great many good things for the Alaska commercial fishing community, while respecting subsistence and sport fishing privileges as well, with conservation of the resource as the key.

But this is a great recognition of some great leaders in the commercial fishing community and hats off to UFA, Kodiak and the Commfish organizers for stepping up to the difficult task of filtering out the initial folks to go to that Hall of Fame.

As for JT's complaint about the Brindle family, they were like a combo BIA and Uncle Sam for 75 years in Western AK, Southcentral, SEAK and Kodiak.

They invested tens and tens of millions in human capital with Alaskan resident employees and fishermen, as well as good families like the Grangers ( a Lummi Island fishing family since 1878) who, while wintering "outside", were and are great contributors to that huge ecoomic and socioeconomic engine we call the Alaska Commercial Fishing Industry.

I recall the dismay of the Knowles-Murkowski transition when WCP (100% owned by the Brindle family at the time) had to make the difficult decision to pull the plug and let their Alaskan operations go in the face of the pathetic, frivilous Bristol Bay Antitrust lawsuit. There were hundreds and maybe even thousands of calls into the Governors office asking for rural assistance as most folks were used to buying fuel on credit with the company store.

Who knows how many uncollected debts the Brindle family erased off the books for Alaskan fishing families over the years but I'll bet it was in the tens of millions as well.

Great people, the Brindles.
Alaska could use more like them.

As for the BS lawsuit you refer to, if I came to work for a Granger, would you make me President? The Brindles owned their company 100%. Would it not be natural that they may advance their own folks first? And as for the Filipino and Japanese bunkhouses and cookhouses, check your history books. That's how we did things in Alaska and that's how everyone liked it.

None other than Jim McFriggingDermott was the lead harrasser in the now-famous WCP discrimination lawsuit, trying to use a 1983 Statutory law to apply retroactively to what he considered a 1970's violation. The whole thing stunk to high heaven and all it did when the good guys finally won( the Brindle family) was cost the whole fishing community money that went to jerkoff pondscum lawyers that should have gone to fish and employee prices.

Anyways, don't have time to join you here JT, but maybe you'll get Vic Smith in his spare hours and you guys can compare notes about Sherman, the Civil War and your impeccable legal background.


cheers

bobbyt

Anonymous said...

Yes Cheers bobbyt?

You and Dr. Crapo, on the Alaska Supreme Courts "Hall of Fame"

"I Vote Scab"

In response to our decision in Grunert I, the Chignik
Seafood Producers Alliance (the Alliance) petitioned the board to
adopt an amended version of the cooperative regulation as an
emergency regulation. The board met on May 2 and May 4, 2005 in
response to the Alliances petition and voted to take no action on
the petition. Instead, the board considered whether to find an
emergency under AS 44.62.250, which gives agencies authority to
promulgate an emergency regulation upon making a written finding
that the regulation is necessary for the immediate preservation
of the public peace, health, safety, or general welfare. After
considering the comments of board members about the detrimental
effects potentially resulting from the unavailability of a
cooperative for the 2005 Chignik salmon season, the board voted
to find an emergency under AS 44.62.250. The board then
considered and adopted Emergency Regulation 5 AAC 13.358, an
amended version of the invalidated cooperative regulation. The
board did not intend to make the regulation permanent, and it
expired on September 2, 2005.

Difficult reading at the Juneau Department of Law, eh bobbyt?

Grunert II, for the Juneau imbecile, showing your colors in every session.

Anonymous said...

Or does this ring a bell bobbyt?

Late 2004/early 2005 was a busy time: Crab Ratz rules published in the Federal Register on 11/5/04, Southeast Salmon group (Bobby) talks about Ben Stevens' need of $500,000 on 11/13/04, in PSVOA meeting, Ben Stevens tenders his check on 11/16/04 for $50,000 to bind the downpayment on his secret option. Kevin Duffy announces retirement 11/18/04.

Or was that also missed legislation in Senator Magnusens, 1976 Act?

At least this Senator(D) could read Sherman(R)Connecticut; IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction forien to our constitution, and unaknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation...For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:...and our sacred Honor."

I vote Scab!

Love that sticker on your boat bobbyt!

Anonymous said...

Yea and Ted on Stage, boobyt?

"Oscar Dyson inspired me in 1970, and I hope some of you are inspired, keep up the fight."

"The Worst That Could Happen Is They Pay A Fine And Spend A Little Time In Jail. ".Stevens said investigators 'can't really hurt us.' 'They aren't going to shoot us,' Stevens said. 'It's not Iraq . Hell, the worst that can happen to us, is that we run up a bunch of legal fees . . . might pay a fine, may spend a little time in jail.' [Jury Hears Phone Tapes in Stevens Corruption Trial, Washington Post, 10/6/08]

Anonymous said...

JT

Never met you. My dad's side -the unalaskans- knew your family back in the day, they moved over from Victoria to Point Roberts in abour 1892 and after a brief driftnet fishing career in the late 1800's, switched to farming to deliver milk and eggs to the old APA plant at Lily Point.

We know what it is like to grovel for a bread crumb and to farm rocky soil.

I do totally appreciate your legal accumen (sp) but if you could take some of the Taufen's advice and funnel that in a positive fashion, rather than just run down the establishment, I think you'd go much further.

In any event, someday we'll bump into each other at Expo or somewhere and I sincerely hope that we can work on supporting the advancement of the 21st century Bay fishery and get the quality and infrastructure that we all know is necessary to deliver some of the worlds finest sockeye in the finest condition.

Again, no hard feelings. I understand the rage against the machine. You should see my early copies of that in the US-Canada rantings -pre internet- back in the late 80's and early 90's!!

Funnel that energy into something productive and you may be onto something but I have to stand tall to defend Big Frank, Ted, Lisa, Don, Sarah and all the folks who are working hard for this disfunctional family we call the commercial fishing community.

We just busted our backs supporting an East side Clam Gulch setnetter, Brent Johnson, whom you probably would see eye to eye on nearly all issues. Look him up sometime. Can't be a big phone directory up there.

While we come across as ardent foess on the web, I truly believe we have very similar goals, and that is to maintain a healthy resource, for all Americans, and esp. Alaskan fishermen and for our kids, grandkids and so on for their opportunity and privilege, not a specific right to get rich off of someone else's backs.


your friend

bobbyt

lovesmarzipan said...

People should remember that a LOBBYIST Linda Kozak led the already corrupt Kodiak Chamber to allow this "Lifetime Achievement Award" to take place. (With lots of plainclothed heat in attendance.) Wonder what Ted and others felt so worried about? They obviously realized they're guilty of SOMETHING that could push people to contemplate subversive acts. This is the way revolutions get started....