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The law may be as settled and permanent as any law can be. As an issue, however, it is not settled. Rather it is destined to spark more debate, a lot more, with each new issue adding grist to the mill. For starters, consider these four:
Oil Exports. Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation to allow crude oil to be exported from the United States. If we are reading the press reports on that correctly, there may be an effort to apply Jones Act like restrictions to those exports, which would be an expansion of the Act.
Puerto Rico, which is in the middle of a debt crisis, is trying to cut costs wherever it can and is seeking a five year waiver from the cabotage requirements of the Jones Act.
Icebreakers. America needs them and Finland can build them at a 10th of the cost of an American icebreaker. Whether the Finns can win the legal argument - namely, that the Arctic isn't U.S. waters and so not covered by the Jones Act - is quite another matter.
Dredging. The Dutch and the Belgians are awfully good at it, and the U.S. needs to do more of it. As Dan Ikenson of Cato pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal article, "Many American ports desperately need to be modernized if the U.S. is to compete successfully in the global economy. But arcane laws protecting domestic dredgers from competition - [the Jones Act] - are holding the country back."
Presumably, the issue will get raised in negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment agreement. But maybe not seriously. Negotiators are not fools - not the EU negotiators and not the American - and they won't spend a lot of effort on a truly hopeless cause. Put differently, the fate of the Jones Act will depend more on how Americans talk about it over the next couple of years than on the formalities of a negotiating round.
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Now as to Plymouth Rock and Betsy Ross, they are certainly myths. But are they falsehoods? The rock in Plymouth is there. We have seen it. No, we cannot prove that William Bradford and the other Pilgrims stepped on it. Can anyone prove they didn't?
And Betsy Ross, her grandson tells a plausible tale. George Ross, her husband's uncle, was a General in the Continental Army as well as a signer of the Declaration of Independence. She is credited not with the whole design of the original American flag but with the thought that a five pointed star would look better than a six pointed one. And, as her grandson told the tale, she made a flag with five-pointed stars.
Your editor's very conservative 1940 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica concludes the entry on Betsy Ross this way:
"All that has been verified is that there was a Mrs. Ross living in Philadelphia at the time of the flag's adoption, and that she was an upholsterer and flagmaker by trade."
That's hardly proof she didn't do it. We're sticking with the family lore. You, of course, are free to choose what you believe in this matter. Whatever you decide: put out the flag and
Enjoy the Weekend!
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