Tag Archives: WSJ

WSJ’s Top Reason to Defeat Hillary: She’s Against Rape

By William K. Black
August 15, 2016     Bloomington, MN

The Wall Street Journal’s Deputy Editor, Daniel Henninger, wrote an op ed dated August 10, 2016 designed to convince Republicans to hold their noses and vote for Donald Trump.  His means of attempting to convince them was conventional – play on their hate of Hillary Clinton.  Op eds need to be brief, so Henninger picked as his argument the single policy he felt would be most compelling to the paper’s readers.

It is a testament to how bizarre the WSJ editorial writers are and how bizarre they believe their readers are that Henninger chose as his most dreadful policy supported by Hillary that should enrage the paper’s readership – her opposition to rape.  The specific context was that she opposes the rape of coeds.

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Peggy Noonan Joins George Will in Being Enraged at Rape – Victims

By William K. Black
Quito: May 26, 2015

Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal attacks and mocks a victim of a sexual assault and four of her classmates at Columbia University who supported her in an op ed in the school paper. Here are the facts as Noonan presents them.

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The WSJ and Barron’s Apologists for the Banksters Peddle Wallison’s Fables

By William K. Black
Quito: May 23, 2015

Few people’s efforts at myth-making have been as devastatingly refuted as Peter Wallison. But fables that are designed to make the banksters look less criminal are always welcome by the banksters. Any honest discussion of Wallison’s claims would begin with three points. First, Wallison’s adult life has been devoted, on behalf of the banksters, to pushing the three “de’s” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization. He is therefore as culpable as anyone in the world for the epidemics of accounting control fraud that drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Second, he was appointed by the Republican leadership to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) to assure that the banksters would have the benefit of their leading apologist. The chances that he would ascribe any problems to the three “de’s” was always non-existent because he does not have a scholarly instinct in his body. He is rabidly ideological and a willing tool of the banksters.

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The Libertarian Plea to Bring Back Jim Crow: An Oxymoron by a Regular Moron

By William K. Black
Quito: April 7, 2015

My April 4, 2015 column discussed the Wall Street Journal’s express endorsement of a right of merchants to discriminate against groups they detest.  I explained that the WSJ was adopting the position of Richard Epstein and quoted Epstein about the policy question he found to be a “very hard question.”  That question was “voluntary” hereditary slavery – he’s in favor of it as a “right” essential to “liberty.”  But he admits that he finds it “very hard” to justify the impact of the “voluntary” contract of slavery on the “externalities” – and yes, he is talking about children as commodities.  I quoted the passage from Epstein’s famous defense of discrimination in his book Forbidden Grounds to show how zany the policy views are that emerge like mold spores as soon as one endorses discrimination by merchants against groups they despise as a means of increasing “liberty.”

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The Wall Street Journal Applauds Homophobia

By William K. Black
Quito: April Fools’ Day 2015 

April Fools’ Day continues to bring it delights, including a trifecta of homophobia I found on the website of the Wall Street Journal and other papers today.  The WSJ news staff first reported on Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Restoration” Act in a March 27, 2015 story in which CFOs reported their fear that the Act was “Hampering Hiring Ability.”  The WSJ news sections recently cited the strong majority of Americans supporting marriage equality and the fact that support is growing quickly among conservatives.

The WSJ’s infamous editorial team was cranking up to send the opposite message.  They support the oxymoronic “Defense of Marriage Act” (defending marriage from marriage) and oppose any constitutional rights protecting gay Americans from discrimination.  The business community overwhelmingly opposes the new state hate acts adopted by the Indiana and Arkansas legislatures.  The CEOs of America’s leading business thought leaders oppose the new state hate acts.  The WSJ, on issues of hate, does not serve the interests of the business community.  The title of the opinion piece is “The New Intolerance: Indiana isn’t targeting gays. Liberals are targeting religion.”  The opinion piece doesn’t even try to support the claim that “liberals are targeting religion.”  But the use of the word “liberals” shows how out of step the editorial zanies have become with American businesspeople on the issue of discrimination against gays.  A majority of conservatives oppose discrimination against gays.  Young conservatives are even more strongly opposed to discrimination against gays.

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Bill Black appears on The Real News Network discussing Greece

NEP’s Bill Black appeared on The Real News Network (TRNN) discussing the Syriza victory in Greece despite what WSJ and NYT would like us to think. The video is below. I you would like to see the video and transcript, it is here.

Syriza Wins in Greece: NYT and WSJ Still Get Their Re-Writes Wrong

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 26, 2015

I wrote a column Sunday, January 25, 2015 as the Greek election results became sufficiently clear to know that Syriza was receiving a strong plurality from the voters and as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal posted on their websites the first reaction news columns. I criticized the dishonest nature of both paper’s coverage (actually non-coverage) of what austerity inflicted on the Greek people. Both of those initial columns have now been modified, so I have looked to see whether they improved their candor in their re-writes. The updated NYT column still contains this clunker.

“Syriza’s victory is a milestone for Europe. Continuing economic weakness has stirred a populist backlash from France to Spain to Italy, with more voters growing fed up with policies that require sacrifice to meet the demands of creditors but that have not delivered more jobs and prosperity.”

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Syriza Wins and the NYT and WSJ Coverage Competes for Mendacity

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 25, 2015

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Time’s eurozone reporters, who share the same unshakable devotion to TINA and austerity as the Murdochized WSJ news staff have been thrown into a panic by Syriza’s electoral successes in Greece.

Both papers are freaked out, as are the Germans, about the potential for Greece to spark a wave of rejections of the troika’s infliction of austerity in a manner similar to how the infliction of self-destructive austerity programs pursuant to the Washington Consensus’ demands led to the “lost decade” and the democratic election of what is now over a dozen Latin American candidates running on anti-austerity platforms. The Washington Consensus was drafted and named by an economist at Pete Peterson’s International Institute. Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire whose mission is causing debt and deficit hysteria and plugging the joys of austerity and unraveling the safety nets. His greatest goal is privatizing Social Security – producing hundreds of billions in additional fees for Wall Street.

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Which Economists Told the Wall Street Journal that 24% Unemployment Wasn’t “Dire?”

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 11, 2015

Sometimes it is the little things than make everything clear. The WSJ gem I ran across explains so much about what is wrong about economists and the Wall Street Journal. The headline of the January 9, 2015 article foreshadows the strong chance that the reader is about to be transported into a strange dimension: “Weak Industrial Data Suggest Eurozone Economy May Be Faltering.” I don’t know how to break this to Murdoch’s minions, but the word “may” is hilarious and “faltering” is a euphemism. Here’s the money quote.

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WSJ Praises the “Triumph of Austerity” in Greece

NEP’s Bill Black appears on the Real News Network and questions the authenticity of the coverage in the NYT and WSJ about the impact of austerity measures in Greece.

If you would like to view to video with a transcript, it can be seen here.