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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Thursday, September 10, 2009

Dysfunctional

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Windmill I was not surprised or disappointed by anything in Obama's health care speech because I wasn't expecting anything.  Only a Don Quixote could think that a dysfunctional political system could actually fix a dysfunctional health care system.   

The two major problems with the current health care system are only reinforced.  The first of those flaws is the employer based health care system which in turn reinforces the second flaw - for profit insurance companies. 

The majority of Americans do not "shop" for health insurance their employers do.  Those employers are shopping for plans that will least impact their bottom line - as they should.  At the same time the insurance companies are looking to maximize profits - as they are required to do by law.  No rational health care system can be expected to come from this. 

As is usually the case our dysfunctional political system had no desire to actually fix the problem only to make it look like they did without offending any of the big money special interests.  It would have been simple to fix the problem - open Medicare to everyone.  Instead we got thousands of pages that fail to address the actual flaws.



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