Posted on 10/15/2021 11:24:12 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder
The FAA is headed by a pilot, NASA is headed by an astronaut, the US Marine Corps is headed by a Marine but for the fourth time in a row, and during the worst shipping crisis of the century, the US Department of Transportation, has appointed someone to the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) who is not a captain and has no commercial shipping experience.
Yesterday afternoon, President Biden announced his intention to nominate Rear Admiral Ann Phillips, US Navy (Retired), as the next US Maritime Administrator, a position that has been vacant since Rear Admiral Mark Buzby stepped down following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January.
Phillips is a highly decorated Navy leader with a long list of accomplishments and is highly respected by everyone gCaptain has interviewed. She was head of the Navy’s Climate Change Task Force and is a highly sought after consultant on climate security issues. She holds an MBA. She was chairman of a local government Sea Level Rise Preparedness and Resilience project. She once captained a Navy warship. The appointment looks great on paper except for one minor problem. There is only one problem. This is not a warship position. It’s a commercial shipping appointment and she has zero experience aboard any commercial ships. She does not even have experience leading navy military sealift ships.
The US Maritime Administrator The position of US Maritime Administrator is traditionally held by a commercial shipowner or captain, but President Obama left the position unfilled for years then selected a former congressional staffer, David Matsuda. He was highly unpopular and was pushed out in 2013. Obama followed the appointment with a relatively low ranking navy submarine commander Chip Jaenichen.
The Trump administration appointed US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Buzby for the position. Buzby, while not a commercial mariner or ship owner, was a graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA), and spent years traveling around the country, meeting with ship captains and commercial maritime stake holders. He reached out and listened to stakeholder needs. Buzby became highly popular within the industry on his promise to publish a new US Maritime Strategy. That strategy was finished but was lost in the malaize of government bureaucracy.
Mark Buzby did accomplish one seemingly impossible task, he saved Aker’s Phillidelphia Shipyard from closing by purchasing four new state maritime academy training ships, valued at over $1.5 billion. Construction of the NSMVs supports over 1,000 direct shipyard jobs in Philadelphia. Buzby also convinced the US Transportation Command to do a major “turbo-activation” of the Ready Reserve Fleet which proved the abysmal state of our nation’s readiness to move materials for war.
Buzby was popular, but he had numerous failures. Despite working with USMMA alumni to roll out a major advertising campaign to increase funding for the school, that funding never materialized. He failed to expand the US Maritime Service. He failed to publish a new National Maritime strategy (the one MARAD eventually did get approved was a lightly edited copy of the last failed strategy). He failed to get the US Navy to include commercial shipping and sealift in its strategy. He failed to fund the Short Sea Distribution and Short Sea Shipping networks he championed.
Many of these failures were not his fault. The Trump Administration arrived with three major shipowners in cabinet position (Chao, Ross and Tillerson), Trump arranged weekly meetings between Buzby and his top advisor (Navarro), opened a maritime desk in the Council of Economic Advisers, and brought maritime experts in to advise the US Export-Import Bank. At the time congress was lead by Senator Mitch McConnel who married into one the world’s most successful shipping families. But despite a promising start, Buzby’s most new policies got pushed to Trump’s second term, a term that never happened. Senior Washington sources also claim that his boss, Elaine Chao, lost interest in MARAD after the New York Times published an article highly critical of her family’s shipping fortunes.
Buzby’s final act as administrator was endorsing a licensed ship captain as his replacement but Biden never called his nominee in for an interview. Biden appointed no ship owners to his cabinet, he closed the White House maritime desk, he delayed his MARAD appointment for 278 days. The Biden administration is so sea blind that they even forgot to recall critical republican appointed positions to the International Maritime Organization in London.
“I respect the hell out of Buzby,” one White House insider told gCaptain. “He did a lot of great work but it’s already been lost or forgotten. Some of his work is classified, some were shipped off to the National Archives by Biden aids, but what really killed his legacy is a lack of continuity at MARAD.”
Numerous sources inside the beltway have told gCaptain that MARAD is fundamentally broken. Nearly a decade of neglect by the Obama Administration left MARAD with a broken, tired, and ineffective workforce. Buzby made only one major internal move of significance, replacing the highly unpopular Obama selected Army Colonel running USMMA with a major shipping CEO. “The rest of MARAD he naively thought he could motivate and foster, as he had done many times during his naval career,” says a US Navy Officer who works with MARAD. “But commercial shipping is not something the Navy understands. The dead wood inside MARAD showed some signs of life under his strong leadership but, once he left, the place reverted to infighting and morass. If Buz had fired more people like Hellis, and replaced them with shipping experts, his legacy might have continued.”
The Global Shipping Crisis The appointment of Rear Admiral Ann Phillips comes as the shipping crisis dominates the world media headlines and the USMMA, which MARAD runs, faces the biggest scandal in its history. Biden has taken strong action in response to these problems. This summer he elected a port envoy to fix the shipping crisis. Last month MARAD hired a high level GS15 to handle media relations. Just last week took MARAD took strong and positive action against allegations of rape at USMMA.
Each action however has been a misstep. To the untrained eye the 139 ships waiting to leave Los Angeles may look like a port crisis that can be solved by a US Port Envoy, it is not. It is a SHIPPING crisis. Numerous ports around the United States including Oakland and San Diego, have extra capacity, what we don’t have is anyone with recent SHIPPING experience at MARAD directing the SHIPS to empty ports. This week Biden addressed the nation with a plan to prevent containergeddon from ruining Christmas but experts say his plan is doomed to fail because, again, not a single ship captain was called to give advice on how to fix this SHIPPING crisis.
While MARAD’s strong and decisive action to address reported rapes initially looked highly productive, it is not enough. It has now been weeks after the allegations were made public and no arrests have been made. MARAD has also failed to engage commercial shipping organizations with experience handling this problem, organizations like WISTA or Human Rights at Sea, or Safer Waves to address the wider industry problem of rapes.
(They have, thankfully, engaged with Woman Offshore or, at least, WO engaged them.)
Worse still is the fact, while addressing the topic of rape at USMMA, they have not issued a single statement about allegations of sexual assaults, hospitalizations, and coverups aboard MARAD owned training ships mastered by US Merchant Service captains who, while employed by state maritime academies, are uniformed officers sworn in and commissioned by MARAD.
And now with what Forbes has called Biden’s single most critical appointment, he appoints a highly capable and impressive leader to run MARAD but one with zero industry experience.
It is clear that President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg have good intentions but continually fail to consult the right experts.
“If the international space station was disintegrating as fast as our shipping and logistics network currently is,” said one ship owner at this week’s Connecticut Maritime Conference. “They would have experts of all types inside mission control, but astronauts would be reviewing each plan. Now we have a shipping crisis and not a single ship captain is called? Nuts.”
But you can’t blame Biden and Buttigieg and MARAD alone. MARAD has been pushed aside by politicians for many decades… and it’s not just a government problem, thousands of small businesses, large businesses, militaries, NGOs, and world councils are struggling to fight the problem yet none of them showed up for the United State’s single most important shipping conference of the year, the CMA conference. Neither did the world’s largest ship owners Maersk CMA CGM, and the US Navy. According to the President of CMA, Chris Aversano, attendance was fifty percent lower than pre-covid levels.
Driving into the nation’s most important conference held just outside the world’s media capital, during the worst crisis in decades, gCaptain was worried we would even be able to get a media pass. We should not have worried, we were the only journalists who even bothered to attend.
It’s not just Biden who doesn’t understand shipping and is failing to consult with ship captains and ship owners, it’s media and logistics professionals around the world.
No wonder that Christmas will be canceled. Santa and the reindeer are getting lots of attention but nobody has asked the elves who maintain the sleigh what help they need.
Philips is completely bought into the Global Warming aspect, and it is sh*tbirds like her that cause us to expend huge amounts of money developing and implementing costly “green fuels” when that money is taken from training and operational budgets.
And, because the green fuel is so much more expensive, there is less of it for deployment purposes.
That was just one example of putting people like Howard and Philips into roles that bear on important military or industrial issues.
Some people thing this BS of putting these douchebags into these positions for social experimentation purposes doesn’t have any long reaching effects, but it damn well does.
When we have an enemy who is going to go toe-to-toe with us using hardware and tactics on a par with us, they aren’t going to be using damned “green bunker oil”, and sure as hell aren’t going to be worried about operations for transsexuals or women in combat units.
And is isn’t going to turn out well for us.
The only thing I disagree with in your post is the future tense of things not turning out well.
It may seem unrelated or a stretch but what I am about to tell you is about principles, what little exist are disappearing. I went to get firewood advertised in farcebook for $55 yesterday, $60 today, when I got there it was $70 after lunch. They had fun unloading two ricks off the trailer after trying to negotiate $65. I told them I would not take it now if it was free and that I would pay more and go further to buy it somewhere else now. They never understood why and never will even though I told the kid working there it is about principle and only because he seemed like there might be some hope for him. The manager,not so much, he got a little saucy and I told him they could either unload the wood or watch it leave and don’t be slow to unload it. I’m sure they wrote it off as just some goofy old white guy.
Just a story but the real point is that we are changing for the worse and will continue to be worse because the attitude of the staff is a reflection of the attitude of the management or leadership. We may have had sodomy before Clintoon was president but we didn’t discuss it and we must not have practiced it so much because it was not until after his example of “leadership” that oral herpes became notable.
Duplicity and outright fraud and failure are the examples of “leadership” we are getting now. Anything goes even when someone is looking, never mind what goes when nobody is looking. Character is what you do when there are no witnesses and the people setting the example don’t even know what it is.
Yeah, I remember oblunder’s green bunker fuel bought at multiples of the going price. Wonder who sold it?
What you say is 100% true-homosexuality is an example. It has been with man since biblical days (I have only just begun reading the Bible, and had to pause early on in Genesis when I saw “...men from every part of the city of Sodom-both young and old-surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.” That took me aback, being unschooled in the Bible)
So it is nearly as old as man.
But we are in a situation where we are being forced to accept it as the equal of a male-female relationship. Actually, we are being forced not just to accept it-we must celebrate it.
It is principles we must stick to in order to combat this kind of thing. And it isn’t just homosexuality, it is everything from combating political correctness to getting a COVID vaccine against your will.
Wasn't that your view on Admiral Howard?
That said, from the perspective of these two female naval officers advanced during the Obama administration, for them it seems absolutely true that they were advanced through affirmative action.
And has there ever been a single female officer who wasn't advanced due to affirmative action? In your opinion, of course.
I defy you to look at the service history of the people in both cases they were promoted over and come to any other conclusion.
I don't know who they were promoted over, any more that I know who any given male admiral was promoted over. But looking at Admiral Phillips' career and comparing that with some of the current men admirals - thanks to navy.mil - it seems like she had the same kind of positions. But then again I keep forgetting that she just had to get all those jobs through affirmative action while every single male was promoted on merit alone.
So please forgive me if my refusal to accept less qualified people being shoehorned into slots (in a way that ensures a less qualified person will occupy it) where actual human life in the form of our valuable military personnel can be uselessly expended, and eventually, success in a conflict depends.
Then it gets back to my original question. In your perfect world wouldn't the only way to guarantee that a less qualified person is never placed in such a position is to ban women because they can never, ever, ever do the job as good as or better than a man can? If you did that then you would never have a ship run into another ship, never have an airplane crash, never have anything go wrong because guys would be running everything.
That is absolutely my view on Admiral Howard. I backed that up with my own research. It isn’t hard to do. The records of positions military officers of flag rank have held is not a state secret, so it isn’t hard to look them up and compare.
Because she is black and female alone does not make her an affirmative action hire, but the fact that IIRC there were as many as ten other officers being considered for that advancement slot had demonstrably far more operational and naval experience than she did who were passed over in favor of her, and the fact that she was part of the Biden transition team convinces anyone who has two brain cells to rub together, that she was indeed an affirmative action political hire.
Of course there have been capable women who have been advanced on their ability alone. Admiral Grace Hopper (who was the speaker at my graduation) was an extraordinary woman who was likely advanced over many men to her position. And there are others as well.
Women should not be in combat roles, or on combat ships. They are not physically as strong as men are. I don’t question their toughness and intelligence. It is durability, strength, logistical concerns, mission preparedness, and unit cohesion. That is the crux of it.
A woman who weighs 120 lbs will not be able to carry a 200 lb. shipmate up a ladder out of a fire. And a woman who weighs 180 lbs sure as hell won’t be able to do it, because women who weigh 180 lbs for the most part aren’t made up of muscle.
My concern is about our military in a combat situation. That is it.
In the civilian world, some of the finest people I have ever worked for, people I would go to the mat for and work my ass off for (and DO) are smart, strong, intelligent, capable women.
The military is NOT civilian life.
When people’s lives are on the line in a combat situation, every single bit of muscle fiber may be needed to save the situation, never mind save the battle or the war.
The military is NOT civilian life.
The US Army did a study in 1985 to evaluate how women might do in combat, and tested lifting capabilities based on MOS
demands as light, medium, moderately heavy, heavy (over 50 lbs.), and very heavy (100 lbs. which just coincidentally happens to be just about the weight of a 155 mm howitzer round). In the heavy lifting category, 82 percent of men and 8 percent of women qualified.
You may not think that is important. But if you are an infantryman in a unit being attacked, and you call in a fire mission that can’t be met because the 155 mm rounds have to be humped 30 yards because that is as close as the trucks can get for some reason...and half of the artillery unit is women where only 8 percent of them can pick up an move at least ONE of those rounds, well...you better hope it is your lucky day that the unit you call happens to have the guys on duty so they can move the rounds to where they can be fired.
If you can’t see that issue, then you have no business commenting on it. Or even asking a question like the last one you made up which isn’t deserving of a response.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s all going according to plan.
Really? Grace Hopper spent 16 years as a commander and 10 years as a captain before being promoted to admiral. Not having been in the military I will have to count on your expertise but don't men usually move up the ladder a bit quicker than that? Or were all the men in her specialty slow learners?
And there are others as well.
Like who?
Women should not be in combat roles, or on combat ships.
What ship is there that doesn't go near combat these days?
I don’t question their toughness and intelligence.
You've been doing it all night. The only way a woman in the military gets ahead is through affirmative action. You've been very clear on that.
Good, concise summary your points. Thank you.
But that said, she entered the Navy a year before my father did, and she made Commander six years before my father did as a line officer. And she made Captain the year my father retired. He could have advanced faster and higher if he had continued to go to sea, but after his tour of duty as the XO on a destroyer that was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he chose to ask for shore duty to be with his family, and once he made Commander, he wasn't going to go much higher after requesting shot duty.
That is the way it is. So, no. Admiral Hopper's advancement was not slow for someone who was assigned shore duty her whole career. It is the US Navy, not the US Shore Duty.
I leave it to you to find others who advanced. As a military enlisted man, I served only under male officers. As a civilian, I worked for a retired female Army Colonel whom I respected and who respected me. She just didn't reach her rank in combat billets but undoubtedly advanced ahead of many men. And she commanded the respect (if not open hatred) by most who worked under her. She was demanding and not easy to work for, but she got things done. She was no affirmative action hire, that was not among her faults.
The same cannot be said of these two women who advanced to flag rank, both of who were promoted under the Obama-Biden regime, and both who have or are benefiting from jobs within the regimes promoting issues like homosexuality and global warming instead of navigation, ship handling, or war fighting skills.
The fact is, that is the focus of my declaration in Post #40 about how the gender/race/political stew has replaced the focus of navigation/ship handling/warfighting (and that is not in question) which has resulted in poor training, poor maintenance, , poor mission readiness, mishaps with loss of life, and extremely low morale and not just in the US Navy, but in all the services.
And that is because in a zero sum game where every precious dollar, every minute, and every human resource spent on these ludicrous homosexual and climate goals is TAKEN away from real training and real mission goals.
And as I said in post #40, it is that EXACT mindset that has us where we are today.
DoodleDawg, I would rather not be crossways with you on this, but you seem to think I hold women in low esteem because I maintain that women should not be in combat units (and all US Navy ships apart from utility ships and certain support ships ARE or should be combat ships) and nothing could be further from the truth.
My point of view is not a misogynistic one, it is a realistic analysis based on facts, not a Hollywood feminist based view that women are completely the same as men, are interchangeable, and can do any job a man can do in combat. They cannot.
Men and women are biologically not the same, and the difference isn't limited to the fact that men have one set of equipment and women have another. The physical differences go far beyond the sexual apparatus. And that is a fact, not opinion. And it isn't just me who says this.
If you are at all willing to have a rational discussion of this, I suggest you read this paper written by Jude Eden, a female Marine who served in the Middle East. She is unsparing on this subject, and knows of what she speaks:
LINK: "Women in Combat: The Question of Standards" by Jude Eden
I feel very strongly about this. Our society has made the choice to fully open police and firefighting to women. And any man who criticizes that is going to end his career, thanks to people like these two women I mentioned, and those behind their political appointments.
So they can’t be criticized without being characterized as misogynist, in the same way those same people label as racist anyone criticizing someone who is black.
And they have done the same thing in the military.
Great environment for getting the best out of people. /s
So, we have made that decision on the civilian front, and we fully accept as a society any loss of life or other deleterious effects that might result from that. So be it.
But I won’t accept it in military combat units, where our foes won’t be making that same asinine decision.
“If you polish all the doorknobs and you never go to sea, then you’ll become an admiral in the queens navy.”
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