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, November 21, 2009

Make Them Pay For It!

Commentary By Ron Beasley



I have said for years that the best way to end foreign misadventures like Iraq and Afghanistan was to make the millionaire pundits and neocons pay for them.  Let's see how enthusiastic Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes are when their wars are being paid for by them.  So they want to wage war in Afghanistan?  Carl Levin says says make them pay for it.



Higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for more troops sent to Afghanistan and NATO should provide half of the new soldiers, said Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.



An �additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000� a year, could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview for Bloomberg Television�s �Political Capital With Al Hunt,� airing this weekend.



White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added.



That cost, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. �They have done incredibly well, and I think that it�s important that we pay for it if we possibly can� instead of increasing the federal debt load, the senator said. 





I think a surcharge so they can actually see how much their wars are costing them personally might dampen their enthusiasm a bit. 



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1 comment:

  1. geoffNovember 21, 2009 at 8:46 AM

    The down side is that it may give them a larger appetite for the game as it is only money they'd be losing and if they partake in the adventures as war profiteers they may win really big. Yes an extremely high surtax but also a unique draft to which there are no exclusions and to apply to only the rich, their children, grand-children, great grand-children & great great grand-children and only for ordinary combat roles.

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