Roosevelt Island Mailbag

The Jones Act, shaming, and alternate Covid-19

I’m on a very quick trip to a conference on Roosevelt Island in New York City, where I’ve never been despite having grown up in NYC. It is of course best known to the world as the setting of “Dark Water” (2005), a screenplay by Rafael Yglesias.

Kate Hall: What needs to happen before we can finally get rid of the Jones Act?

Mike Lee is the main Jones Act repeal guy in Congress, and while I think Lee sometimes hops on good issues (this is a good issue, for example), I don’t think he has much of a track record as a workhorse who actually gets things done.

What it would take for it to happen is for Lee to add at least one mainstream-to-progressive Democrat and one moderate Republican (the kind of person who makes deals) to his coalition. Then you build from there. It’s a natural conservative issue (deregulatory, most of the support is from unions), and moderate Democrats love to be on bipartisan bills so suddenly things are happening. So if you’re looking at Democrats, who might be interest…