When I mentioned earlier my criticisms of the President’s leadership related to the Gulf, I mentioned that he should either suspend the red tape, or blatantly disregard it in order to facilitate cleanup and containment. Via Instapundit, here’s a perfect example of what I’m referring to.
The opening lines:
We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.