By accessing Coast Guard Report, you accept our terms.

By accessing this site, you accept the terms of our User Agreement. Please read it.

There are many of us within the program that would like to have a full career

By Original Anonymous on the post Why are there so many anonymous supporters of the Commandant?

There are many of us within the program that would like to have a full career. While there could be no official retaliation, I’m pretty sure my command would close the door and tell me the following:

Why are you rolling around in the mud with Michael DeKort, he thinks everyone is lying to him anyways so you’re wasting you time.

Its not your place to comment.

If everyone ignores these people they will just go away.

If your command doesn’t like your postings all they have to do is tone down the recommendations in your OER and you find yourself in some worthless staff job until you give up and get out.

Be clear of the last point. I don’t really even feel like posting here anymore. You just assume they everyone is lying and that everyone is out to leak national secrets. Be honest, the CG has made mistakes but the ICGS model was not initiated by Allen, or even Collins. By the time Loy came in as COMDT the ICGS concept was already decided. Everyone wanted the concept to work and once the CG decided it wouldn’t then everyone within the program new it would take years to stand up CG-9 and fix all of the problems that brewed for 6 years. If you keep up such a one-sided spin on the COMDT and CG-9 then people are just going to stop caring about what you say.

Look at the article regarding the port swapping of hulls. CG-4 is trying to figure out the cheapest way to ensure that the hulls last and that they are mission ready. Even if Deepwater had been on track we would still have this problem. Buoy tenders, construction tenders, ice breakers, tugs, and 87′ WPB’s. These are the bulk of what is getting move around and these had nothing to do with ICGS. If the 123 program had worked out then we wouldn’t have been moving forward on the FRC for another 5 years. The 110 MEP program has filled the gap on the program and save for the loss of the 8 hulls there was no loss. The 210/270 WMEC MEP was already part of the ICGS model to bridge the gap until the OPC came online in another 10 years. Why don’t you admit that CG-9/4 are working together to develop the right model to preserve and replace the fleet? Why don’t you mention that the SFLC is the right step forward? Why don’t you talk about the FORCOM/OPCOM shift? These are the major changes in the CG that will allow us to truely modernize the fleet to eventually support the deepwater fleet. Broaden your perspective and stop looking at how Allen screwed up deepwater. He inherited this mess and we are in a better place than when he showed up three years ago.

The Packet Rat “Shut up and Smile” Coasties

by PacketRat

The commandant of the  Coast Guard has laid out a plan to use “social media practices” to “increase the organization’s transparency,” a blurb from the Armed Forces Press Service reports. Or, in other words, they’re gettin’ bloggy with it.  Naturally, Adm. Thad Allen announced this in…a teleconference with bloggers and online journalists.

The Rat has not been blogging long. But he knows already how the EgoSphere, er, Blogosphere works.  If you stroke their egos, they will come.  And if you throw some buzzwords at them, they will come even faster and more gleefully.The Defense Department(and the Coast Guard, by tangent, the fifth military service over in that other cabinet-level department) has figured out that nothing breeds online cred and swollen heads better than taking the message straight around the “filter”–that would be all you dead-tree and pre-Web electronics journalists out there, yo–to bloggers who not only will spread the word eagerly, but practically trip over their traffic statistics in a rush to get the credibility of interviewing a four-star anyone.

Step two in total blogroll domination:  say “social media”.  By not just pandering to the blogarati but using the same tools as them, the Coast Guard gains blogger cred–or as Joey Ramone sang, “Gabba gabba we accept you we accept you one of us.”

Back in September 2008, Thomas Jackson left this comment on PacketRats post

Have you been following this story … Adm. Allen has no more intentions of opening up to the new media than he does to resign.

PacketRat responded

I am now. I see the Commandant says that coastguardsmen should behave on blogs like they do on base–does that mean, in other words, “shut up and smile?”.

And by the way, a tip of the rat ears to your Coast Guard Report blog.

Reminder about our Comment Policy

The policy can be found here and on the tab at the top of the screen.  As a reminder we encourage everyone to comment, however if you’re only goal is to attack the messenger (contributor, author, etc.) and provide no evidence to support your opinion (as fact), then we exercise our right to disapprove your comment.

We invite you to read CGblog.org or the Commandant’s Blog at iCommandant.com.  CGblog has a much more liberal comment policy and iCommandant a much more stringent.  Either way, you have an alternative to reading Coast Guard Report.

Sincerely, Jerry Johnson

Why are there so many anonymous supporters of the Commandant?

by Michael DeKort

If the Commandant and his staff did and are doing the right things, the right way, why would anyone feel the need to be anonymous? If they truly believe what the Commandant says then there would be no reason to be anything other that fully transparent.  There should be no need to fear any retaliation. Didn’t the policy put forward by the Commandant stress his desire for those in the know to post and to do so named?

I could see those who criticize the Commandant being anonymous – but the supporters?  Doesn’t that say a lot about the true state of affairs in the Coast Guard?  You would think people, especially those with lofty career goals, would love to be out in front supporting their chain of command as a named poster?

So what reasons why so many choose to stay anonymous?

- Are you actually on the Commandant’s staff and use this opportunity to spin?

- Are you really not confident that you can speak honestly without retribution?

- Maybe you are not as convinced about your position as you let on?  Maybe there is some doubt? Or maybe you actually know you are wrong?

- Maybe you don’t want your posts, which are part of the public record, to be traced back to you by the DoJ, DHS IG or others?

If the Commandant truly believed what he says and walked the talk he would be extremely frustrated by all of this.  Maybe he will do and not just say something about this?

(In closing while I do find the practice rather hypocritical and cowardly, especially if these people are senior enlisted or officers, I do support these people’s ability to be and stay anonymous.)

Is your job in jeapordy under Coast Guard Modernization?

The answer to the question above is “we don’t know.”  That’s the tag line management were directed to use across the nation last week by Coast Guard Headquarters in what was the first wave of notifications.  National Unions were officially notified on 22 January 2009 of Coast Guards Modernization plans.  Shortly thereafter employees started learning that they won’t be getting any hard answers to their questions anytime soon.

Peter Stinson at CGblog wrote a post on Wednesday last week that had Atlantic Area and the 2nd Deck at Headquarters fuming.  Stinson chronicled a GS-13s notification by management and said

Among the notified was a GS-13 who is in an AC&I-funded billet. He’s been told he’s being moved from an acquisitions billet (did I mention he’s a level 2 acquisitions professional… or some such thing) to a standard analyst billet funded through the standard appropriations. When he asked what was happening to the AC&I-funded billet or where it was going, he was told that information was not available. The management official didn’t have the answer, and the union official likely didn’t understand the distinctions.

This same scenario played out across the Coast Guard last week.  Where does the Guardian Ethos fit into this?  No one will argue that Coast Guard needs to modernize but what this really is – is a transformation.  Allen banned the phrase transformation and instituted modernization, but there is a clear distinction between the two.  Coast Guard is modernizing its practices, resources and acquisition processes, but they are transforming a culture.

Allen needed a locked on time-line to get subordinate leadership onb0ard for the win.  The time-line however was far too advanced according to most leaders.  1 June 2009 was the date cut in stone by the Commandant last year.  That date still seems to be far too ahead of reality given Congress allowed H.R. 2830 to die a slow and silent 9 month death.  H.R. 2830 if passed would have approved the promotion of the Vice Commandant to Four Star Admiral, and created the four new Three Star positions.

The American Federation of Government Employess (AFGE)  has made no public comment to date on the notification.  If Coast Guard is not prepared to answer employee questions on how modernization will impact them and their lives, then maybe  “they’re not ready to modernize.”

“Go ask the Chief” used to be the phrase of choice; now it’s “go ask the Union.”

Technical Difficulties

by T. Burgess

We experienced technical difficulties on Saturday that may have cause several comments to be inadvertently deleted.  Please resubmit any comments you made yesterday, that are not reflected today.  All comments submitted as of 0700 this morning have been moderated.

We had all three moderators – moderating at the same time yesterday afternoon.  That apparenlty cuased our technical if not human difficulties.

This Month in Civil Rights History: Woolworth’s Lunch Counter

Feb. 1960

(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth’s counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other public facilities.

This Month in Civil Rights History: Emmett Till

February 2007

Emmett Till’s 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially closed. The two confessed murderers, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were dead of cancer by 1994, and prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue further convictions.