Posted on 02/18/2012 11:18:53 AM PST by epithermal
Federal fish cops in Seattle bought a $300,000 luxury boat to spy on whale-watching tours — but didn't go through an appropriate bidding process, held barbecues onboard, ferried friends and family across Puget Sound to restaurants and resorts, and used the boat for what one visitor called "a pleasure cruise."
When confronted, one federal employee in Seattle misled inspectors about how the vessel was used, and one interfered with federal investigators, according to an internal investigation by the Commerce Department. Those documents were released Friday by U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass.
At issue is a 35-foot, 14-passenger boat purchased by federal agents with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) using money seized from fishermen who violated the law.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Hopefully they’ll get stranded on a desert isle as the pack of theiving, dictatorial GILLIGANS that they all are.
They’re terrorizing the Monterey Bay, and Santa Cruz surfers.
They have an opulent building with needless security, and it’s festooned with expensive hippy art.
They’re a pack of thuggish enviro-elites bullying everyone, while pursuing their expensive tastes.
Some pigs are more equal than others.
You know that Sparta movie, “300”. The star of that was making a surfing movie in Santa Cruz —that’s where there are some super huge waves some parts of the year.
We’re talking huuuuuge —ya gotta be nuts to surf then.
OK well that famous rich guy got held down for 2 waves, and he nearly drowned.
But NOAA hands out $50k tickets to the guys who streak out on Jet Skis to rescue 1/2 drowned people.
They’re NOT partying and making tons of noise —this is LIFE SAVING. But that’s not good enough for NOAA, so they arrest them and confiscate their stuff and hand out huge tickets.
They also do that if they remotely suspect you of “feeding” whales, too —20 years in jail.
Yes, that does SOUND made up.
Federal agents safeguarding `killer whales’ from being harassed by whale-watching tours needed an unmarked luxury boat so tour operators wouldn’t recognize them and yell, “Get a real job you bums!”
Our tax dollars hard at work ...
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost.
The funds raised in these FReepathons go to pay our current quarter expenses. But we're also going to try to replace some of our older servers and failing equipment this year so we're going to add a little extra to our FReepathon goals. John is estimating ten to fifteen thousand to do this and I'd like to get it all in place and working before the election cycle is fully heated up, so we'll try to bring in a little extra now, if we can, and the rest next quarter.
Jim Robinson
I forgot —these joy-riders also have their own PREDATOR DRONE. They call it Altaire, or something. Don’t worry —they won’t blow you up, push-button style.
Not yet.
They also confiscate lots of expensive boats —they like that.
They have maybe 120 badged officers, but there’s something like 1.5 vehicles for EACH of them —nice.
That all comes from loot they confiscate from folks who make their living from the ocean —it’s stolen. They have, “skin in the game”, and incentive to target property they fancy.
Meanwhile, this creates an incentive to target ONLY those violators with property worth seizing, and ignore anybody else.
what???? government employees abusing their positions??? say it ain’t so... (sarcasmn off)
The saddest thing about that graph is that the years portrayed are for the Bush administration. If you’d plot the data for 2009 - present, I’m guessing it would make algore’s “hockey stick” graph look like a flatline by comparison.
We ceased being a nation of laws some time ago. Everyone is on the take in one form or another.
“Everyone is on the take in one form or another.”
Not everyone. There are still many of us in the private sector that live within our means, support ourselves without assistance, pay our taxes, and live honest lives.
But our numbers are dwindling. 70% of the federal budget is now dedicated, in one form or the other, to “entitlement” programs.
A government that no longer functions for the benefit of the taxpayers, has lost its moral authority to govern.
The question is, what to do about it? Depending on the same old group of politicians to correct their lawless ways is futile. Are there still enough of us left, with the sand to do so, to return this country to what the founders envisioned?
NOAA has undercover boats?
The weather people?
Why?
The article didn’t mention any agents being “surplused”
Yet so many of those on our side, remain blindly in favor of sending what jobs are left, to China.
Doesn’t take much logic to see we’re eventually going to lose those also, the very same way.
Then we’re all. Every one of us, well and truly scr@wed as a nation.
WTF? NOAA has an enforcement arm? I thought they were a scientific organization? It is the job of the Coast Guard to enforce the shoreline, not NOAA. WTF? WTF?
Government is not out of control, it if FREAKING OUT OF CONTROL!
But that’s not all they have —soon there will be a large volunteer auxillary organization in Southern California, and likely elsewhere:
The volunteers will use binocs, boats, and even airplanes; if you are doing anything on the beach or off the coast they —and they make no secret at all about it— will be watching and recording what you do.
If they have the slightest doubt if what you’re doing is OK, then they state they’ll call NOAA, and you’ll owe huge fines. So this huge group of mean-faced volunteers are basically legalistic eco-nuts with no lives who imagine they’re saving otters, or something.
This new organization has some name, and it was covered in the L.A. Times last month.
And my second novel, "Domestic Enemies," where the SW regional director of the DHS kept a "Mobile Emergency Management Platform" docked in San Diego Bay, which was actually "his" 85' luxury yacht the Eldorado.
I'd say you can't make this up, but you can. I did, in two recent novels. And I'd be willing to bet that our tax dollars have purchased plenty of luxury yachts this way, for the use of our own nomenklatura class.
Welcome to the USSA, comrades, where some animals are more equal than others. 
See #19.
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