Campaign For Liberty

Campaign For Liberty: "Do you remember those dreadful scenes of oil-drenched Norwegian fiords, or the helpless birds stuck in the ooze in Kuwait, or the miles and miles of black gunk layered over the beaches of Saudi, Dubai, and UAE? That's right, you don't - because when those underwater wells blew, these foreign fleets scooped up all the oil before it ever hit shore.

As soon as the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the Dutch and Belgians and eleven other countries immediately offered to send their oil-sucking fleets to the Gulf, but President Obama refused to allow it. The use of these vessels is prohibited by the Jones Act, and unlike past Presidents in times of crisis, he has refused to waive it.

The Jones Act is a 1920 law that prohibits the use of foreign vessels and crews to transport cargo between U.S. ports. It can be waived by Presidential order at his discretion. It was enacted to protect union shipbuilding jobs, although like all protectionist measures, it has had just the opposite effect and we now produce less than 1% of the world's ships."