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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Friday, December 3, 2010

The public sector shrinks

By Dave Anderson


This month's employment report was crap.  Total non-farm payrolls were up 39,000.  We need to see at least 100,000 more net new jobs per month to keep up with population growth, so the unemployed are facing even more competition for the few jobs that are opening up than they did last month.  Retail employment decreased despite the expectation that Christmas sales are supposed to be reasonably higher than last year, and significantly higher than the crater of 2008. 


Most interestingly to me is a quick glance at the government employment levels.  Federal and state governments have basically broken even in employment levels, although they have shrunk proportionally to the entire employment universe.  However, the area of greatest change is local governments. 







































































Nov.
2009		Sept.
2010		Oct.
2010(p)		Nov.
2010(p)		Change from:
Oct. 2010- Nov. 2010(p)		YoY
Government22507222602227222261-11-246
Federal283328432835283724
State government5172517051825183111
Local government14502142471425514241-14-261
Local government education8054.17893.47914.67910.4-4.2-143.7
Local government, excluding education64486353.46340.56330-10.5-118



Local governments are getting hammered right now. Education is not being exempted.  Year over year, education employment cuts have been roughly proportional to the employment levels of the local government work force. 


Local governments and school districts are the governmental units that are the most dependent on property taxes and also the units that tend to have the least amount of flexibility to get away from any balanced budget constraints.  As long as property values will remain low, local governments will continue to be hammered.  And even after property values increase, local tax collections will lag the growth in base values as reassessments lag reality. 


 



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