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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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Recession and Redistricting

By Dave Anderson:

The Sun Belt for my entire life and then some, has been growing its population faster than the rest of the country.  Its population growth comes from the three normal sources of growth --- more kids are being born, more internal migrants are heading south, and more external immigrants are settling across the Rio Grande.  Those trends have had profound political impacts including turning Virginia and North Carolina into swing(ish) states but more importantly, there has been a steady flow of Congressional seats going south and rightwards after each Census. 

Since 2007, Florida has been projected to gain another two House seats in 2011 when the Census is released.  However that may not be the case anymore as the demographic trends that had been indicating continual population growth for Florida and other Southern states have stagnated. 

Here is the Orlando Business Times:

The university�s Bureau of Economic and Business Research estimated the state�s population slipped by 58,294 people, to 18,748,925 on April 1 from 18,807,219 in April 2008.


Florida right now is in the middle of a massive housing bust as some of the most extreme lending practices outside of California took place in the state.  This means there are very few people willing or able to trade-up their homes, which means there is no open space at the bottom end of the market.  Home construction has frozen as well, which means the demand for casual labor from the marginally attached worker (migrant or citizen) is minimal and those individuals are leaving the state.  Potential domestic migrants are stuck in their homes up north either because they are upside down as well, or are scared of incurring the high fixed costs of relocation. Immigrantion, legal and undocumented, has slowed dramatically.  Finally, national birth rates declined slightly this year.

All the sources of Florida's population growth have slowed to a trickle, and given the age distribution of the population, Florida's population has a higher unadjusted death rate so it shrinks faster than the national average. 

I wonder if any other states could lose a projected House seat due to labor immobility due to home ownership and the recession in general?



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