Once again, Team Berger panders to big donors while shivving small businesses

It’s not hard to imagine a PTSD epidemic sweeping across our state’s commercial fishing business.  Organizations — like the CCA — have been stuffing Raleigh politician pockets with cash for more than a decade as part of the fight to end commercial fishing.

All of us have seen those small trawlers working the coastline during our beach vacations.  Those boats are usually run by families and a few friends.  Their catches go toward putting food on the table and revenue into the local economy.

Environmentalists and so-called sport-fishermen have been working to create more and more regulations to make it harder and harder for these small mom-and-pop operations to do their jobs.

The efforts of the fishing industry opponents are succeeding in putting North Carolinians out of work and forcing restaurants and resellers to rely on fish provided by sources like Red China. Reliance on foreign sources forces restaurants and markets raises prices for consumers.

Click here for a good refresher on this on-going saga.

The latest?  It turns out the North Carolina Senate – home to Team Berger — has passed a ban on shrimping off the coast of North Carolina.  (Of course, we al know that stuff like this happens in the North Carolina Senate when just the *right amount* of cash has been counted out and placed in just the *right campaign accounts.*)

You would think the GOP majority in the state Senate would be the defender of small businesses. (Not this time, amigo.  No way, José Padilla.).  This all sounds so much like something Republicans would have attacked Democrats for in the old days. 

Four senators from the coast were the only brave souls to stand up to the chamber’s capo di tutti and his henchmen and say NO. 

The ban moves on to the North Carolina House.  The shrimping industry is already pleading its case to House leaders.