Thursday, July 01, 2010

The Jones Act

One of the GOP's talking points surrounding the Gulf leak is about Obama not waiving the Jones Act. The claim is that this is hindering clean up efforts.

McClatchy has done a good job of demonstrating that the Jones Act has no relevance whatsoever, and that it is a hollow talking point - baseless.

What we do have is another attempt to score political points with a fact free and emotionally driven public.

McClatchy: GOP's false talking point: Jones Act blocks Gulf help
FactCheck.org, a nonprofit website operated by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, analyzed claims that failure to waive the Jones Act is blocking foreign-flagged vessels from assisting in the Gulf. It concluded last week that "In reality, the Jones Act has yet to be an issue in the response efforts."


The Deepwater Horizon response team reported in a news release June 15 that 15 foreign-flagged ships were participating in the oil spill cleanup, FactCheck.org said. "None of them needed a waiver because the Jones Act does not apply," it said.

2 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

It's absolutely astounding that these people will even use a disaster caused by one of their own flagship Corps. to forward their anti-union agenda and to make it the center of their continuing drive to blame regulation. To this end they are using their entire noise machine to confuse the public and once again foist and boost their own agenda and shift blame away from the real villains.

Jim Sande said...

Exactly - They are deliberately confusing the public. The GOP is in real trouble right now.