$300,000, and no downriggers? Don't forget to add fuel, insurance, pay for personnel, and id bet that they ran up a good tab cruising too.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017537782_noaaboat18m.html

Yeah, I was surprised too that they didn't even have downriggers or a kicker. Dumb cops don't even know how to properly fit a clandestine ops boat.

Whaler over Grady any day and corruption is the bane of any mature democracy.


From the article it sounds like our NOAA special agent is the one who needs to take the boater safety test and maybe even read HIS owner's manual.

At least they should've done something useful with it (and all that it costs) and stake out a bunch of Sports Crab Trap Stealing Indians that a certain well donated "Prosecuting Attorney" won't "Prosecute."

Todd -- consider this a "Bump" on that thread.

Put a bow mounted rifle up front to whack those Sea Lions.....

Didn't know there was much of a demand for whale watching boats in Puget Sound... Most of what I see is those porpoises by the thousands, nothing that exciting...

FP,

That's not waste my good man! That boat's for covert ops to keep tabs on those whale watching boats and make sure they stay the mandatory 200 yards away from the endangered whales. I bet the flat screen was for reviewing the day's videos and re-measuring how close those dangerous whale watchers were getting to the whales.

The older I get the more I'm convinced that the reason the public has so little respect for government agencies is exactly because there are always just enough staff or policy level people who are either dumb enough or arrogant enough to pull the stunts that earn public scorn.

Sg

That was pretty lucid Salmo g.

Arrogance, it's the name of today's authorities.

It's the "I know, you don't....and besides that your kids are too stupid to know either, so I/we will do it for you. Oh, and that will be $$$$, thank you very much. Never mind where that money goes, either."

Sometimes arrogance, but I'd bet the majority are just average people who ordinarily did their jobs just fine - or else they wouldn't have been hired in the first place - but then they succomb to basic human weakness and do some stupid sh!t in the moment. The real mistake is not owning up to that, and then spending an inordinate amount of energy trying to justify or cover up the first, and usually smaller, mistake.

Yeah, you're probably right, Sg. It's just that the few "Gods" stand out in one's memory and tend to ruin the reputation of the honest ground-pounders.