This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.
The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
DHS is arguably a much more appropriate home for the Coast Guard than its previous department, Transportation, given all of the facets of their actual mission (source: father and grandfather both in the Coast Guard for 30+ years).
I send more emails than anything, but if you tried to get me to spend time being trained on sending email they wouldn’t find your body.
Conversely I design new courses rarely, but when I do it matters immensely that it’s done well. Resources and support and structure to help me do that well when I need to is most welcome.
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-09/24_0712_ncfs...
The activities listed are:
1. "...advise and provide recommendations in writing to the Secretary of Homeland Security...on matters relating to the safe operation of commercial fishing industry vessels"
2. "review regulations..."
3. "review marine casualties and investigations of vessels..."The NTSB, through its Office of Marine Safety (OMS), investigates major marine accidents across all sectors, determines probable causes, and issues safety recommendations. It operates independently.
In contrast, NCFSAC is an advisory body focused solely on commercial fishing safety, providing recommendations but not conducting investigations.
Or more likely, somewhere inbetween, thousands of teams, mediated by a few hundred of the most influential, struggling to get the attention of this or that decision maker. Most of them just throwing random things at a wall and seeing what sticks.
The truth is HN readers won’t know and can’t ever know, barring a tiny handful who can read the tea leaves successfully year after year.
Edit: Thanks to @lelandfe for pointing to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Street_(Washington,_D.C.)
I'll leave this comment up in case there are others this term is also new to.
As your document says, it is literally the commercial fishing industry, shipbuilders, shipowners, equipment manufacturers, insurers etc. getting together to swap notes on safety because shipwrecks and deaths are not good for business.
"members serve as representatives of their respective interests, associations, or organizations"
This is not woke communism.
One of the interesting bits about the job posting is that, not too surprisingly, there are no salaries:
> All members will serve at their own expense and receive no salary or other compensation from the Federal Government, with the exception that members may be reimbursed for travel and per diem in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations.
Which, to me, can read two ways: altruistic people trying to make the industry better
OR
You won't even be selected to this committee unless you're already wealthy enough to foot the bill yourself and shape policy in a way that advantages ones self.
I don't know which way to read it, but if it wasn't costing anything, cutting it "for cost savings" can't be completely true. Maybe there were other overhead costs, but even saying that those costs are $1M/yr is a rounding error for the national budget.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/13/2020-22...
And notably, most military spending is discretionary, so the remaining funds for basically all the neat dynamic things government can do is less than a trillion.
A million is of course still a rounding error at e.g. $900 billion, but it adds up really fast, especially when you consider that these are ongoing costs.
What a ludicrous statement. I mean, I know inflation has been bad but not THAT bad. One or two trillion dollars is an absolutely enormous amount of money.
When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error.
But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion.
But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt.
It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.
Without the direct line, the association has to rely on lobbying/bribing politicians for access.
Industry associations have no such reach unless individual members make it so, and unofficially at that.
Nobody except you is talking about woke communism. Nobody except you is talking about "owning the libs". You're making paranoid, nonsensical arguments against people on your side by imagining they're some sort of alt-right strawman.
It's obviously the "you're backing me up with documentary proof that this is a boring sensible thing" interpretation. The original comment had similar intent.
The US Department of Homeland Security "began operations on March 1, 2003, after being formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks" (wiki).
So are you saying that for 78 years of its existence, the USCG had no "plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble" until the DHS assembled a (assuming this is a thing) "National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee"? You dont think theres any redundancy? That just maybe bureaucracy cant help but to expand forever every time someone with a title has a question that cant be answered immediately by someone standing in the room, they have to create a committee so they can have someone on speed dial? If the coast guard doesnt have plans for this, one wonders what the coast guard does all day.
It could just as easily have been, for example, that back in 2002 someone realized USCG was involved in drug and weapons interdiction in the waters off Florida, swept them up into DHS under anti terror laws, and got the fishing boat thing as a freebie. It does not mean that USCG were not doing anything on the latter until DHS showed up.