Sometimes, life is weirder than fiction. Such is the case with this Dispatch story that explains how a set of FOIA’d documents from the Maritime Administration contained a sentence on how Mercatus colleagues of mine past and present, the entire staff of the Cato Institute, and I should be charged with treason for criticizing the Jones Act:
Nestled among bullet points recommending policy changes to fix those problems is one labeled, “Unequivocal support of the Jones Act.”
Beneath it: “Charge all past and present members of the Cato and Mercatus Institutes with treason. The President inform the Heritage Institute that he will personally disavow them if they continue to advocate against the Jones Act.”
A Maritime Administration spokesperson confirmed receiving the document from a member of the subcommittee but did not comment on the substance of the recommendation.
It is actually funny that someone not only said this, but actually wrote in a memo that was then sent around.
Under the circumstances, I thought it would be a good idea to double down on my act of ‘treason’ and write once again that it is time the end the Jones Act. The piece starts with a special thanks to all the scholars, many of them at the Cato Institute, who over the years have devoted so much energy making to the case for the repeal of this detestable Act. Here is my conclusion:
In the name of catering to a handful of cronies, U.S. politicians repeatedly have agreed to keep the Jones Act in place. They have agreed to foist expensive and outdated ships onto American merchants and shippers. They have agreed to pollute, and they have chosen to make it harder to carry out relief efforts in Puerto Rico and other places when hurricanes strike.
No tongue-in-cheek accusation of treason will change the economic facts. It is time to put an end to this monument to cronyism and special interest politics.
Repeal the Jones Act.