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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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Let Them!

Commentary By Ron Beasley



GOP readies wave of objections to stall healthcare bill in Senate

Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.

Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told
The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious
fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget
maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple
majority.

I'm beginning to think that the best thing the Democrats could do is to put up a bill and let the Republicans block it.  Polls show that a majority want health care reform and yes, a majority even support a public option.  Unlike 1993 the insurance companies are alone.  American business is sick of the cost of the current system and if nothing is passed this year they will begin to cut back their benefit packages even more than they have already.  As the economy improves the people who return to the labor force are going to find they either no health insurance or less than they had before. 

The already bad situation is going to be even worse next year - an election year - and the voters will remember who it was that blocked reform.  Obama and the Democrats should come back next year and start with opening Medicare to everyone.  It's not new, people like it and they can't call it socialized medicine.  Business will love it - they want to get out of the health insurance business. 



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