Tag Archives: BREXIT

By William K. Black
July 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN

NYT Editorial Decrying BREXIT – Part 7

The NYT editorialized against the BREXIT vote, just in case the six columns it printed attacking the vote might not make it clear where the editorial board stood.  The editorial explained what it saw as the basis for the vote.

It was a cry of anger and frustration from more than half the country against those who wield power, wealth and privilege, both in their own government and in Brussels, and against global forces in a world that they felt was squeezing them out.

Continue reading →

By William K. Black
July 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN

The sixth column that the New York Time published on the same date condemning the vote in favor of BREXIT can be dealt with briefly.  It too attacked the legitimacy of democracy, which it presented as a threat to “representative government.”

Steven Erlanger – Part 6

Steven Erlanger quoted with apparent approval this revealing quotation in his column condemning BREXIT.

Bronwen Maddox, former editor of Prospect Magazine and the new director of the Institute for Government, a research institution, commented by email that “there is a growing intolerance for representative government, which is likely to have consequences for the ability of any government to run the country.”

Continue reading →

By William K. Black
July 5, 2016     Bloomington, MN

Jim Yardley – Part 5

Jim Yardley wrote a column entitled “Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic.”  Yes, anyone in the UK who supported BREXIT is just like an American supporter of Donald Trump because they are angry.  Indeed, it’s “the same” as every non-establishment politician and political supporter throughout Europe and the U.S.

The same yawning gap between the elite and mass opinion is fueling a populist backlash in Austria, France, Germany and elsewhere on the Continent — as well as in the United States.

As Tony Blair’s column correctly noted, however, the leadership of the pro-BREXIT movement was ultra-elite.  Elite opinion was fractured in the UK along multiple fault lines.  EU “elites” have, of course, brought the EU over a decade of massive bubbles, widespread fraud by financial elites, financial crises, a Great Recession, an economically illiterate response to the Great Recession that forced much of the eurozone into Great Depression level unemployment.  Oh, and those elites have been exposed in far too many cases as tax frauds and cheats.  Oh, and the head of EU Commission is the guy who turned Luxembourg into a “let’s make a secret deal” cesspool for large corporations seeking to evade paying taxes.  The dominant EU elites are colossal failures in terms of competence and ethics.  Any rational, adult citizenry would reject the dominant EU elite “opinion.”  Yardley admits at one point that the rejection is rational.

Continue reading →

By William K. Black
June 24, 2016     Kansas City, MO

Tony Blair

Tony Blair disgraced his office as Prime Minister and continues to disgrace it as lobbyist for murderous kleptocrats.  Blair’s column claims personal credit for a series of supposed triumph, blames the BREXIT vote on the Tories, and throws Jeremy Corbin, his successor as Labour Party leader, under the bus.  The title of Blair’s article refers to the democratic vote in favor of BREXIT as a “coup,” which helps explain why he specializes in getting ever wealthier by fronting for tyrants and kleptocrats who he presents as evolving democrats.  The English language is just one of the things Blair helps torture.

Continue reading →

By William K. Black
June 24, 2016     Kansas City, MO

Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen published a column decrying BREXIT.

Warnings about the dire consequences of a British exit from President Barack Obama, Britain’s political leaders, major corporations based in Britain and the International Monetary Fund proved useless. If anything, they goaded a mood of defiant anger against those very elites.

This resentment has its roots in many things but may be summed up as a revolt against global capitalism. To heck with the experts and political correctness was the predominant mood in the end. A majority of Britons had no time for the politicians that brought the world a disastrous war in Iraq, the 2008 financial meltdown, European austerity, stagnant working-class wages, high immigration and tax havens for the super-rich.

That some of these issues have no direct link to the European Union or its much-maligned Brussels bureaucrats did not matter.

Yes, “Project Fear” failed in its goal of intimidating voters.  It isn’t simply the “politicians” that failed, it was the “experts” – the elites that rig the system in finance and the ideologues who create the self-inflicted wounds of EU austerity – who designed the failed policies and grew wealthier and more powerful because of those policies.  Cohen ignores that obvious point, but much of the public has come to realize that the foreign policy and financial “experts” are dishonest and self-serving.  Their principal competence is making themselves wealthy at our expense.  I urge people to understand that ideology and self-interest rather than competence is what causes these elite “experts” to act as if they were stupid.  They are typically not stupid; they are skilled parasites.

Continue reading →

By William K. Black
June 24, 2016     Kansas City, MO

The UK vote in favor of BREXIT has stoked the fears of the New York Times to a fevered pitch.  Their greatest collective fear is the rise of “populism.”  The NYT fashions itself the last redoubt of “serious people” under siege by the rabble.  BREXIT is an opportunity to drive home to the rabble the folly of failing to fall in line with the policies of the serious people featured in the NYT.  The moral of the story is a simple one – when the electorate in a democratic election ignores the technocrats the result is an economic and social catastrophe.

Even for the NYT, however, their attacks on the UK electorate for daring to vote for BREXIT were extraordinary in their intensity and multiplicity.  At least seven articles, each of them negative about the UK voters, were featured in today’s paper.  (I had no strong views on the vote.  I think reasonable UK voters could disagree on the desirability of BREXIT.)

Continue reading →