Brexit is giving me 1980s flashbacks – Reagan, Thatcher, and The Clash. The British punk rock band had one big hit: Should I Stay or Should I Go. This morning in Britain they are hand counting paper ballots to find the answer concerning the EU.
The last time I looked “Leave” was leading 50.1% to 49.9%, but they had only counted about 4.5 million votes and it is estimated that the winner needs 16.8 million. It will be hours yet.
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So Boris Johnson appears to have won. They’re leaving.
What. The. F.
And people say that Donald Trump can’t win in the fall? BS. All he has to do is continue ranting about immigrants and he’ll get the same votes that Boris got. This might be a disaster for Britain. But it might also be a harbinger of a disaster for the US in the fall.
The currencies are tanking; the markets are tanking; Cameron is quitting; Corbyn is being challenged; Scotland will have another vote to leave Great Britain. Cameron did this and it blew up in his face.
People didn’t bother to figure out what this means before they voted, and, as usual, the people voting against something felt a larger need to vote, that those voting for the status quo.
And the “Brexit” has inspired the “Texit”! Go Texas, GO!
Texas is in for a rude surprise if it leaves – it can’t afford to exist as a country.
Texas is the only red state that actually sends more to the federal treasury than it receives, but a lot of that is because of a) oil and oil refineries, b) the banks in Dallas, and c) the technology industry in Austin. The oil wouldn’t be affected by a Texit, but the banking industry certainly would — suddenly they would all be covered by the anti-money-laundering laws that make international banking a pain in the ass for non-billionaire Americans nowadays and since most of the corporate HQ’s are elsewhere, the natural reaction would be to shut them down and move those functions to other states — and I don’t know what would happen with Austin. That might stay, but with some diminishment due to travel issues (i.e., now needing a passport to fly between corporate HQ in San Jose and the branch office in Austin).
In short, yes, on paper Texit looks financially feasible, but that’s not counting the benefits that Texas gets from not having passports and international banking requirements. Once you add that in, plus funding for a new Texas National Army (the National Guard is mostly paid for by Federal funds and all their equipment is on loan from the U.S. military), yeah, they can’t afford to leave.
The military aircraft rehab facility near DFW, the NASA facilities, all of the pork that Sam Rayburn and LBJ shoveled into Texas for decades as Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, all gone. All of the jobs, all of the infrastructure. What about pipelines?
Let them go, and figure out how to survive.