This
is Friday June 24, 2016, which is St John’s wort day or something. The election results are in from England and
England has voted to leave the European Economic Union, which surprised the
hell out of me given the numerous media rumblings over the subject. The xenophobes won the day and it’s the
immigration issue that turned the tide on this issue. They used paper ballots in England and
counted deliberatively. It’s a historic
day because it’s the reversal of a long term trend toward
internationalization. People like me
and Thom Hartman and Pat Buchannon are happy.
Now they are still saying that the TPP is going to be voted on with the
lame duck congress no matter who wins in November- - Trump or Clinton. So the will of the American people will be
thwarted. We’ll see if things stabilize
overseas. But nothing will happen till
the House of Commons takes a vote, and that won’t happen for a while and after
it does extrication from the European Union will take two years.
What
we’ve seen in the past 24 hours or so is a “Portmanteau” Norman Goldman reminds
us. (Believe it or not that word wasn’t
red-lined) This is a combination of two
words into one. I remember not so long
hearing about “The two most popular computer items are cats and brexits”. I thought “I know what a cat is but what kind
of an animal is a brexit?” The Dow Jones
Industrials went down over six hundred points.
If you’ve been following my blogs I never told anybody to get back into
the market. I was actually starting to
worry about maybe I should give a buy signal.
Now I won’t. Basically the
markets just had a hissy fit. The
British pound is the lowest since 1985.
I’m not impressed by that. Norman
says “A lot of lawyers will be kept busy in the next year or so”. England was never in The Euro Zone. Greece voted to leave the European Union a
year ago but somehow that vote didn’t count.
They cut some fast deal for Greece to stay in. Both Shawn Hannity and the top of the hour
WCPT news remarked that today is a good day for Donald Trump. He seems very pleased and vindicated by
yesterday’s election results. Those in
the know including Thom Hartman believe that this development of Britain
leaving the EU will greatly help Donald Trump’s chances in November. Personally I’m not buying it. There are too many other reasons to hate
Trump. Shawn even quoted Bernie Sanders
as “Someone who’s on our side”.
We
had better soup today. We had what I’d
call a lousey, ineptly made chicken Alfredo.
Patty liked it. My idea of
chicken Alfredo is fettaccini Alfredo with chicken pieces in it. This wasn’t it, but it did have parmazon
cheese on it. We had a dinner roll with
canned pears for dessert. I listened to
Shawn Hannity over the noon hour. I
smoked my last cigarette before one. I
have no remarks about today’s “Days of our Lives” episode except Kate saying
she’s heartless “because I’m a survivor”.
I was looking for cigarettes. We
had our resident’s council meeting today in the dining and Rico came by and I
had iced tea. The place was all women
except for me, someone pointed out. Jose
(or “Josie”) said we are entitled by seconds on coffee any time we want it plus
seconds on orange juice at breakfast, which I’d never heard of before. There was talk about the medication line and
people sitting, waiting in the front room and losing their place in line. I mentioned the clothing bag that’s been
sitting in our room for weeks. Patty
mentioned a bunch of stuff. We should
get butter on potatoes and dinner rolls and pancakes. Cathy at my table was saying a bunch of stuff
but I don’t think she was ever officially recognized. The other Patty wrote it down. There were complaints about the water cooler
having “warm” water. The button you push
is hard to work and sometimes there is a gritty feel to it. Someone said the upstairs TV wasn’t working
but it’s usually on when I pass by on my way to Glen’s. There is also no AC in the upper room. The meeting ended about a quarter to three. Just now Phyllis Green gave me a brown
cigarette. It is now six and a half days till I get paid
at the beginning of the month.
Advocates of international unions and super-states claim that centralization promotes trade and peace: that customs unions break down trade barriers and international government prevents war. In reality, super-states encourage both protectionism and warfare. The bigger the trade bloc, the more it can cope with the economic isolation that comes with trade warfare. And the bigger the military bloc, the easier it is for bellicose countries to externalize the costs of their belligerence by dragging the rest of the bloc into its fights.
A small political unit cannot afford economic isolationism; it simply doesn’t have the domestic resources necessary. So for all of UKIP’s isolationist rhetoric, the practical result of UK independence from the European economic policy bloc would likely be freer trade and cross-border labor mobility (immigration). Political independence fosters economic interdependence. And economic interdependence increases the opportunity costs of war and the benefits of peace. The Power of Exit Super-states also facilitate international policy “harmonization.” What this means is that, within the super-state, the citizen has no escape from onerous laws, like the regulations that unceasingly pour out of the EU bureaucracy. But with political decentralization, subjects can “vote with their feet” for less burdensome regimes. Under this threat of “exit,” governments are incentivized to liberalize in order to compete for taxpayer feet. Today we have a victory for Brexit and for the power of exit. That’s good news for European liberty. During its Industrial Revolution, Britain was a beacon of domestic liberty and economic progress that stimulated liberal reform on the European continent. An independent Britain in the 21st century can play that role again. In doing so, Britain would help Europe outside the EU far more than it ever could on the inside. Brexit may be a death knell for the European Union, yet ultimately the saving grace for the European people.
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