Along the Alaska coast, the federal government is preparing to put hundreds of mom-and-pop fishing companies out of business in 2011, and the state of Alaska remains strangely silent.

Odd, given Gov. Sean Parnell thundering away in his State of the State speech about the wrongs imposed upon the 49th state by the federal government. Here's part of what Parnell had to say in case you missed it: "With statehood, the strong assumption prevailed that, as a fledgling state, we would be allowed to develop our own resources without constant federal interference. Today, however, the federal government's actions often seem at war with Alaskan interests."

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Alaska halibut fishing business, where the federal government oversees an operation wherein small, charter-fishing operations in communities like Homer, Ninilchik, Seward and Sitka are relegated to a thin slice of the fishing action while commercial interests dominated by big businesses in Seattle haul in most of the fish. It was merely bad when a paltry 10 percent or so of the halibut went to the charters with the 'commies' pocketing large amounts of cash for the other 90 percent. It is about to get a whole lot worse.

New regulations proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) would cut the halibut charter business by an estimated 30 to 40 percent in 2011. The Alaska Charter Association estimates about 150 businesses in Southcentral and another 100 more in Southeast could be forced under by NOAA's new limits on who can fish.

"The state could do something," Homer charter operator Bob Howard said Monday, "but it won't."

No, the state under half-term former Gov. Sarah Palin stood by and watched the charter business marching toward the gallows. And now the state under replacement Gov. Parnell appears willing to remain silent on the issue of halibut as the already struggling charter industry is hung. This despite the new governor's blustering about those evil, Alaska-abusing feds.

"We haven't heard anything from the governor," Howard said. He's not sure why. Palin, Howard added, at least had an excuse for ignoring the issue. "She's a commercial fisherman," he said, which, in Alaska fishing terms, puts her among the ruling elite. Alaska commercial fishermen stick together even tighter than rich Massachusetts Democrats.

No one connected to the commercial fishing business in Alaska is going to complain about federal 'crats dancing to the tune of the commercial-fishing interests that dominate the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC). And the commercial fishing interests behind the council don't just want to limit the sport fishing charter business to its current, tiny percentage of what is supposed to be a publicly owned resource.

That would be bad enough, but what the commies want to do now is devastate what they consider 'the enemy'. They try to rationalize this by portraying the angling crowd as guilty of overfishing, an idea some ignorant Alaska journalists (of which there are plenty) have bought into.

Yes, those little charter bastards should be happy with their paltry share of the catch instead of trying to spread the bounty of "the industry's halibut" among the common folk. How dare these little bastards help a man from Houston, Alaska or a woman from Houston, Texas, enjoy an Alaska fishing trip and take home a couple flatfish when those people should be made to pay $20 per pound for halibut in the supermarket.

Sharing Alaska's fishery wealth like this? Why, that's what half-term, ex-Gov. Palin might call "socialism."

The NPFMC puppets, obedient to the strings of their big-business puppet masters, know full well the halibut don't belong to the people. The halibut belong to the commercial fishing business. The halibut belong in the supermarket aisle, not the cooler of some common Joe the Fisherman. And to put as much halibut as possible in the market, so it can put big bucks in the pockets of big business, the NPFMC is happy to shrink the one segment of the Alaska fishing economy that could provide for future economic growth and future jobs in Alaska.