Blog the truth and the truth shall set you free

Dear Mr. Enge:
I was told a recent article you published stated that Madeleine, my deceased wife, was Governor Murkowski's daughter and that my children refer to him as grandpa. Just so you know, Madeleine was not related

I was a zealous company man once. Me and this pile of pop-weed cleaned up a bunker C spill at a cannery one time. (That's the Davis row-boat dad bought for us in the '50s.)

to the Governor or Mrs. Murkowski. My father and her father were both active with our children and they referred to my Dad as grandpa. (He passed away in 2004. ) They still refer to Madeleine's father as "Papa Gary." My children have only met the Governor a few times and have never referred to the Governor as grandpa.
Sincerely,
Joe Plesha

Joe, my apologies, and I'm sure the reader's too, who sent me the article. Thanks for the correction. If you don't recognize Joe's name you should. His business card says "Second Most Powerful Person in the Seafood Business." Just kidding about it being on his business card. I don't technically publish in AlaskaReport, just to my blog, AlaskaCafe. But the whole reason I do blog now is like "Deep Throat" said to Larry King last night, "to show the minuses and pluses." He was trying to save the FBI. I'm trying to save the fishing community.

The other thing I am a stickler for is accuracy. Necessarily, I have to forge ahead, use strong similies and words and hope most of it is accurate. So far I've only had three people correct me out of 200 or so posts, and one was by a reader who corrected me on my use of the word "irregardless." This is going to work as long as readers send information and as long as others check for the accuracy of that information. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, I have to describe another minus, that may be a continuing problem. That is, at least one State employee is using his position to villify us columnists on AlaskaReport for telling the truth. Of course, he doesn't see it as telling the truth, just as getting in the way. Who's way, I wonder? Eventually anyone in the fishing business who doesn't love the truth will stumble and fall over the truth in this new paridigm, and there won't be much remedy for them. And it sure isn't about me. It's about why blogging was predicted by Business Week magazine to become more important than the Guttenberg Press. Freedom.

Queen Elizabeth I said, "The bane of a Monarch is the overzealous subject." That's why Murkowski's ratings are in the toilet these days, besides his own work, his people are a little too zealous for the rest of us. In the fisheries realm, one of these "subjects" is ADF&G Commish. Campbell, who was trying to ram Gulf ratz down the throats of Gulf communities and fishermen.

Another is Bruce Schactler, who was appointed to run a cargo shipment tracking project. He had been in Kodiak leading United Seiners Association efforts to wrangel higher prices from processors. (He had forced out the Chairman so he could run it himself.) (USA instantly went from a RSDA prototype to a glorified "bitching about prices" organization.) I know this because I gave Bruce's predecessor at USA the blueprint for the prototype in the early '90s and heard how he ditched the whole original idea that they agreed on in Ballard.

Well, Kodiak is finally rid of him, but now Murkowski will have to suffer. The product tracking device was already developed by the manufacturer, so he shouldn't wreck that. But by villifying us, he villifies by association, the tens of thousands of readers we have who are trying to make sense of the seafood industry, and especially Kodiak readers who were our earliest contributors.

What are we supposed to think when we are villified? That "the people suffer when the King is evil?" Or maybe, "rejoice when they persecute you for (the truth's) sake?" "Deep Throat" didn't reveal his identity until he was 92 years old, and at this rate, I don't blame my correspondents for not coming out either.