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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Monday, November 30, 2009

Stating the obvious (gambling edition)

By Dave Anderson:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is trying to put on a happy face to the region's gambling revenue declines.  There are gains, month over month, as long as one neglects to mention the G-20's effective closure of the Pittsburgh casino, or admit that some months have more days than other months, and therefore, one should expect to see slightly higher revenue in months with more days in them than short months.  There was very little learning or the possibility of learning going on in that article as the PG just took quotes and slapped them together without applying too much thought. 

However there was one valuable line in the entire piece and it came from a PR spokesman for the Washington Downs casino:

"We are in an incredibly competitive marketplace..."

Gambling is a mature industry now.  There are no more freebie monopoly profits for easy public revenue that is not a dreaded broad based tax. 

And from a public finance perspective, the problem will get worse as Ohio will be introducing casinos soon, and an already saturated market will have even more large entities competing for the same set of dollars at the same generic facilities. 

My next question is when do we start seeing stories speculating about one of the Pennsylvania casinos current ownership groups going bankrupt?  I suspect sometime in the spring is when we see the first story of this type. 



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