Keeping Up With the Jones Act

The latest false narrative about the federal response to Puerto Rico deals with the Jones Act.  That's the federal law that requires shipments from one US port to another to be carried on American flagged vessels.  After the hurricane hit Puerto Rico, there was consideration of waiving that law for shipments to the island, but the DHS recommended against it and no waiver was issued.  That was all the usual suspects on the left needed; it was RACISM!  After all, if the Jones Act wasn't waived, it had to be because the Puerto Ricans are Hispanic, right?  WRONG!  If any of these morons had bothered to look into the situation, they would have learned that the supposed purpose of waiving the Jones Act was to get help to the island more quickly.  The problem, however, is not a lack of aid arriving.  Right now, there are enormous numbers of containers of aid in port in San Juan and other smaller ports.  The problem is a lack of truck transport to take the containers from the ports to places across Puerto Rico where the aid is needed.  Basically, there are two parts to the problem:  1) roads, bridges, etc. have been blocked or washed out by the storm.  This makes it difficult to get from the ports to places where the aid is needed.  The roads are being cleared, but there will remain closures until bridges are rebuilt.  2) The number of large trucks available to transport the aid is reduced from normal because many on the island were destroyed in the storm.  Some are being repaired, but more are needed.  Only certain very specialized ships can carry these large trucks, and waiving the Jones Act would not add any to the fleet.  In fact, while waiving the Jones Act could mean more aid shipped to the island, there is no place to put it all right now because of the bottleneck in distribution at the ports.

These facts are taken from the briefings given by the mayor of San Juan and the governor of Puerto Rico.  Of course, those briefings were in Spanish.  No doubt the people like Hillary Clinton (and Chelsea) who are busy accusing the Trump administration of racism for not waiving the Jones Act didn't bother to check out the facts first.  Actually, Hillary may have checked it out and made the accusation anyway.  No one ever said she is a slave to the truth.