Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Oligarchs Are Winning

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Health Care reform is threatened and if we don't see major health care reform the Obama presidency will be a failure.  Robert Reich has some advice:



Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine.


[.....]


If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon:


And what does he need to do?





  1. Go to the nation



  2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex.



  3.  Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship.



  4.  Insist on a real public option. It's the lynchpin of universal health care.



  5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care.



  6.  Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal health care.



 

 And Ezra Klein also had some good advice - Listen to the polls.

 


The public option is considered important by 76% of Americans.  Without a public option any plan will be a failure and Obama and the Democrats will pay the price and the Oligarchs will win.



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1 comment:

  1. Jason ArvakJune 21, 2009 at 6:12 AM

    Response to this post posted at: http://www.poligazette.com/2009/06/21/lets-have-a-real-health-care-debate/
    Newshoggers� Ron Beasley is even more direct in rejecting all compromise and all debate in favor of a Manichean crusade against �the Oligarchs�:
    And what does he need to do?
    1. Go to the nation
    2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex.
    3. Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship.
    4. Insist on a real public option. It�s the lynchpin of universal health care.
    5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care.
    6. Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items � financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation � pale in significance relative to universal health care.
    It is fascinating to behold the shameless hypocrisy here. Leftist purists are using the exact same kind of good-versus-evil rhetoric that they excoriated George W. Bush for using regarding the threat of terrorism. Apparently, those who would blow up huge buildings in the pursuit of an extreme religious ideology are no where near as threatening as �the Oligarchs�, eh, Ron?
    But even if we �get� those nasty �Oligarchs� and put them up against the financial wall, Ron, the ones who really pay the price may be the cancer patients who must wait months or years for their treatment due to rationing. Why do you refuse to even debate the issue?
    I guess your campaign of rhetorical and financial vengeance must be important enough to sacrifice their lives in the process?

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