I am a very vocal anti-sovereign citizen person.
What ye need to know about Sovereign Citizens: among other tripe, they believe the US is run by maritime law...and because sovereign citizens are on the land they aren't subject to the law of the sea. It's not; continue following along. To denounce their stupid fucking belief system in a rational manner I started researching maritime law, and came upon the Jones Act. So I read it.
One HUGE reason the Republicans want to repeal the Jones Act is its protection of sailors' rights. We seem to be alone in this world in thinking a sailor has no duty to ship in an unfit vessel, but the Jones Act allows American sailors to sue their employers over unsafe equipment.
The problem with the Jones Act is it was written in an era when America's merchant fleet was the pride of the world, and there is quite a bit of protectionism in it - protectionism that isn't really workable now that most ships are foreign-flagged. If we could tone down the protectionism...say, require military cargo to travel in US-flagged ships, but place no restriction on their nation of construction (because, thanks to Republicanism, new merchant ships come from Asia)...and align the requirements of the law with the reality of the shipping industry as it now stands, it would be a real good law.
Having said that, the party our president is in loves to do this:
...so, between Protectionism Gone Wild and The Law of the Jungle, I think I'll side with the former and want the law kept as it is.
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