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, September 9, 2009

Deficit Hawk Incredibility

By Dave Anderson:


Ahh, the curse of memory and political statements --- context is a killer to anyone claiming to be a budget hawk and who has a voting record of more than 3 minutes.  Steve Benen takes us down memory lane for the past eight years:



During their reign, Republicans took an annual surplus of a quarter of a trillion dollars and, in just eight years, turned it into a $1.2 trillion deficit. The GOP added $5 trillion to the national debt, and inexplicably put two tax cuts, two wars, Medicare Part D, and No Child Left Behind on the national charge card, left for some future generation to worry about.


So for anyone who publicly supported or voted for two or more of six policies and are now claiming that we as a nation cannot afford to do anything about anything besides imposing mandates with inadequate subsidies; Fuck You, and this includes Max Baucus and the other Democratic enablers who pine for the days of ideological confusion and non-accountability. 


At least have the honesty or the courage to argue the belief that the proper health insurance reform is to reduce the generosity of health insurance, increase risk, increase individual costs in the short term in the pursuit of the panacea of 'free markets' solving everything. 


We had the money to go on a pointless binge, act out a national freak-out in one truly voluntary war, and an escalation of another, gift wrap several hundred billion dollars for Billy Tauzin's new employers at Phrma by crippling basic negotiating powers of large purchasers of prescription drugs and pushing large and unfunded mandates to the states with a horrendous accountability system that is too easy to game.  We had the money for that, and you voted for that without a peep about the deficit.  Hell, you attacked successfully individuals who supported your policy goals but actually wanted to raise taxes to pay for those goals. 


So again, fuck you hypocrital scum bag. 


 


 



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