Non-political things that make you say...WTF?!?! (Welcome To Florida!) **NOT CV RELATED** NO TALKY!

But seriously that girl probably got some serious head/neck trauma she gets tossed around like a rag doll.

 

He went full flop at 2:20 or so, right into the floor. The girls that landed on him at least had something stupid to cushion the impact.

 

Perfect analysis

 

My father did the live aboard thing for about five years on a 36’ Beneteau and was seriesly plotting going full time when he found out that he had kidney failure and needed a transplant. Was jealous more than once after a month aboard with him. Was a great way to live.

 

It would be pretty sweet. Especially with how gorgeous the Caribbean is. I love the snow, but spending the winter island hopping down there would be pretty stellar.

 

The issues with short sea shipping have less to do with the ships and more to do with taxes and fees. For example, if you were to try and ship a container by sea from Oakland to Sacramento you'd have to pay taxes on loading the container onto the ship. This is in addition to the cost of the longshore, (of which cost includes a penalty fee for using container cranes because those took jobs). You then ship the container, and on the other end you again have to pay the longshore their fees and another tax on unloading because it's a different port. US Bureaucracy has more to do with the lack of short sea shipping than the Jone's Act does. In the PNW, short sea shipping would make a tremendous difference on the I-5 corridor but it will never happen mostly due to the costs of doing cargo. I've spoken with Tacoma longshore drivers that make over 90k a year working two eight hour shifts a week. The loading/unloading costs have nothing to do with the flag of the ship. I have noticed in cases of strikes and work slowdowns that the longshore tend to favor US ships. They continued working US flagged vessels while they all but stopped cargo on foreign flagged ships.

The issue with PR that doesn't get talked about much is the excise tax that the govt of PR imposes on imports. For example, I hear regularly how the Jone's Act doubles the price of vehicles imported to PR. Let's pretend we're moving to PR and we want to take our 2015 DCSB with us. Shipping the truck will run you about $1500 by RORO. Not too bad and not far off from the rate to ship to HI or AK. It hardly doubles the price of the vehicle. Except now you have to pay the excise tax to the government of PR. On a base model '15 DCSB that'll set you back $3500. That's not payable to any shipping company, that cash goes to the PR government. Oh, and that doesn't include registration, which will set you back even more. Where it gets really silly is that the excise tax goes up as the vehicle gets older. There is nothing stopping a RORO full of new cars coming from Mexico to PR, nor is there an issue with a RORO bringing a bunch over from Europe or Asia other than that the economy of PR is so small that it's not financially worth it to them. That's just a bottom line issue, not a vessel's flag.

"But fuel is so expensive on PR" is another I hear. Can't help you with that, they don't import their fuel from the US.

"But food is more expensive" Please see again the excise tax. I've heard this about HI as well but imagine my surprise when I priced out pineapple during one of my visits and found it to be the same price as the mainland. Shouldn't it be cheaper on the islands?

Take a look at the cost of living in Bermuda. It's much higher than PR and they don't have the Jone's Act to contend with.

"But American sailors are expensive" Sure, we're not willing to work for $500 a month like many 3rd world sailors will. On the flip side, the payroll costs are negligible when you compare it to the price of fuel. Last time I was out we were CC'd an email that showed the price of fuel. We ran some numbers and found that if we slowed down from 21.8kts to 21.3kts that we could save the company almost a quarter million dollars a week. On the flip side, they would have a day less time in port to do cargo. To them the schedule is more important than fuel savings. US sailors are well compensated, but our salaries are nothing compared to fuel costs. I won't even get into the cost of parts for doing maintenance.

We can get into the military usefulness of American ships with American crews if you'd like, but y'all are probably tired of reading my post by now anyways. Might be time to start a new thread on the topic.

 

There isn’t supposed to be politics here, but this BS continues to be spouted. I’ve seen several statements saying this. Show me a link where this statement can be supported by facts. Until then, it’s just a sentiment repeated by people of a particular political bent as a “fact” that isn’t that at all.

 

Oh it's for real, when I watched the first clip I thought they were making a music video.

 

https://youtu.be/hqbVMLOialU

This one is fake...

 

Japan usually always sends aid they just don't publicize it. They were the number 1 foreign donor for hurricane Katrina.

 

I wish they would do away with Jones act period. The price of goods where I live would be lowered by a lot. We pay almost 20% more for common goods, we call it the "Aloha Tax".

 

This thread is wandering into the this is why we can't have nice things zone

 

So, serious question, what do you think would happen to the price of fuel in HI if the Jone's Act is removed?

 

We do have a refinery here. So if we can get crude shipped in on foreign flagged tanker for with the same tax and price per barrel as an American flagged tanker, the price would reflect the cheaper barrel tax. But our state would just raise the fuel tax anyway.

 

Politics alert. I’m gonna go stand over by the fish tank.

 

That illustrates my point perfectly. The vast majority of fuel imported to HI is on foreign flagged (non Jone's Act) ships. The only US flagged tankers are delivering to the military. Removing the JA wont lower prices but it would make shipping companies wealthier at the expense of US jobs. HI isn't on the way to anywhere really so it will always be expensive to ship there.

 

Agreed but common house goods, foods, among other things would go down.

 

Not political at all just showing pros and cons of the Jones act.

 

I once knew a guy that sharted in his while snorkeling. The chumming of the water drove the fish insane. It was like throwing a bag of coke at sorority girls. The fish were trying get in his pants.