Well gents, fascinating reading from our patron saint, John Konrad today. First off, many thanks to John as always for being a useful public voice for the industry, which doesn’t have the most robust relationship with the media otherwise.
What say you all about Captain Konrad’s thoughts and ideas? This is an old discussion. We all know the industry is dying, we’ve all asked this question of each other before, so does anyone have anything new to add? What is the best path forward?
Well thanks for the kind words but the only thing I seem able to patron is lost causes 
.
Do we? Maybe “we” do but, while the fires burn, our “leaders” continue to hold self congratulatory awards dinners multiple times a year and give speeches saying how great they are doing.
That is why the alarm needs sounding before any progress can be made. We must push leadership past theIr current stage of denial.
Do you mean big awards dinners like this gigantic maritime subsidy gravy train circle jerk where a table costs $10,000?
And where they give out awards to people who have spent their careers actively protecting sexual predators and rapists from prosecution or punishment and allowed them to continue sailing and assaulting people…
Great story John. My question, Admiral Buzby is a great supporter of our current problems as compared to the prior people in his spot. What makes you think his focus is on the Pentagon rather than his MARAD duties?
John,
Who would you define as our leaders in this industry? I’m not being patronizing, I really want to know, because I used to think that I knew, but now I only feel like I have no idea. Who’s driving this crazy train other than Ozzy Osbourne? Is it MARAD and the shipowners? Is it our senators and congressmen? Is it the union heads? The Maritime Industry as we know it today has become such a nebulous thing that I can’t clearly define for myself who exemplifies its leadership. Also, many of the people that I already mentioned are at such cross-purposes with each other that I’m not sure if any of them could be defined as industry leaders since they’re all so often working against each other.
Very confused (but through no fault of yours),
Deleted and combined with previous post for clarity.
So now you are criticizing Seafarers International House’s fund raiser whose mission is to assist seafarers. Since you linked to the Setting the Course Banquet facebook page did you note how many seafarers they assisted that year (If not, 27,000). Seems like a worthy cause to me.
2nd that…
I guess the money goes to a good cause? I don’t really know what they do aside from running a hotel in union square (where I’ve stayed at a discounted rate with my mmc)…they probably do some good work…although I imagine most of the money goes to paying a bloated leadership structure
Konrad was talking about these self-congratulatory awards banquets the Industry “leaders” love to throw themselves and this is a prime example.
I’m not dumping on seafarers house…just the “leaders” …
Here is their 2019 annual report. https://d9efe642-f8bd-4cba-8f4d-5a503d12d57c.filesusr.com/ugd/0a725f_8e39d599b37549bdaddecc1a386eba0c.pdf
Thank you
Yeah, that report really doesn’t tell us much.
31,000 benefited is counting every crew member aboard every ship a chaplain boards, im sure.
I’ve probably been counted at some point and there was no benefit to me.
The asylum stuff seems legit…but that’s less than 100 people…
~1,000 goodie bags for Christmas is legit. Ok.
So where is the $2.9 million going?
There’s no way to tell from this report.
$600k to the port chaplaincy…supposedly…
Like most charities the vast majority of the money is probably eaten up by the people who run the charity and a much smaller percentage actually goes to helping people
Just to be clear I’m all for fundraising, I’m just questioning why the Majority of the fundraisers need to be awards dinners. I can think of a few CEO types who ran their companies into bankruptcies, made a LOT of miney doing so, have not done anything notable since, but still get a major award every few years.
And I don’t even care about the awards themselves. I care about the message they send the industry: everything’s fine here, maintain course and speed.
I am sure the award dinners are a means to stroke the egos of those people to give money. But if it works for those entities that help seafarers (for Seafarers House) what other avenue is there. Note the list of donors in the annual report.
You know what would be really bad? If someone did us shipping awards like this: