More debate on who the Generals of Crab Ratz are

"John:
I read the TC "rebuttal" in which he says "Alaskans f..... Alaskans bigtime in Crab Ratz and Benton and Duffy led the charge. That will be my opening statement. Remember, everything is on tape. No speculation necessary. "

Pelican Cold Storage has a backer to get it running this summer. I sold here once and caused quite the stir in the office. Some of them had worked for my dad when he ran the place in the late 40s and early 50s. One of them might have been the one who made up a Fish Ticket on my birth for 'One large baby boy.'

He is right on one point. No speculaton is necessary. Neither is a "tape". Look in the Congressional Record. Last time I looked, Benton and Duffy don't insert riders in Senate Bills. If he listens to the "tape" he will see that it was Ted Stevnes that put the rider in the Omnibus Bill, no Council action necessary. Easy to blame Benton and Duffy, two of the bureaucrat/pawns of the huge multinational corporations, who are now gone to reap the rewards of selling out the independant fisherman of Alaska.

The others will be paid their 40 pieces of silver in due course, I suspect. It defies any possible logic to think that Ted Stevens follows the orders of Duffy and Benton, mere privates in the Crab Ratz War doing just what they are told, certainly not Generals by any stretch. Come on Tom, when it comes to Processor domination, fishermen don't need to fight each other, or bullshit each other either."

And this from another AlaskaReport columnist.

"John, try this for a counter-post from the fleet (a friend called in, and I typed it up for him with a couple of added points he agreed to).

Rumors ain't history. Neither are the tapes from the Council meetings -- they often just record the show being put on. Those familiar with the process have experienced that the behind-closed-doors action is where the gold operates. Benton ran a fairer show than Rick Lauber, the kingpin foreign lobbyist for Pollock ratz. But both served the major processors. You cannot isolate crab ratz from that. It's Lauber's PSPA successor now running GOA ratz.

We're not disputing the kingpin lieutenants and the roles they played, just who are the godfathers.
The mentality of Alaskanization is not only greedy, but unconstitutional. Alaska does not own this fish. The United States does not own this fish. Yes the coastal cities should flourish, but that can only come from returning the wealth there. Dave and Kevin don't have it. Ted and Ben take their own forms of kickbacks, corruption of power and also get other needs met. But the gold lies in overseas bank accounts, jet aircraft, yachts, island retreats, and in Tokyo banks.

Gunnar Knapp's own studies show a $1 billion drop in income on the ex-vessel level from 1992 to 2002. That never happened before. For Ted and Don to let that happen leads to only one conclusion -- if your head isn't buried so deeply "Inside" that you can no longer see "Outside".

If Ted is really for Alaska, then why has he not demanded the two-thirds protection for Alaska? You say it yourself, Ted and Don stole the MFCMA for Alaska. But Ted's entire history is in making billionaires out of the few, from his earliest days at the BLM and beyond. Every time the Japanese processors violated the laws and got in trouble they would call Ted, he bailed them out with special favors. He nearly always told them "I'll do it but this is going to cost you." Unprincipled.

No United States senator should be so far above the laws that the entire Congress enacted. Without a crook like Ted, none of the rationalization could have occurred, and Dave and Kevin would have still been counting fish in rivers, at the ADF&G. There is no hook to let him off of. He's got the rod and reel. And the taxpayers pay for it."