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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Good Luck With Those Cuts

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Everyone wants to cut the budget and the Republicans are making it the center of their policy. As we have noted before there is a problem - the voters who want to cut the budget don't actually want to cut anything.  Gallup's most recent poll indicates that nothing has changed.


Spending1
The only thing a majority want to cut is Foreign Aid which makes up less than one percent of the budget.  Even more striking was with the exception of  funding for the arts and sciences and military and national defense there was less than a ten percent difference between Democrats and Republicans.  


As I have noted before if you want to balance the budget you have two choices:



  • Slash Military Spending and Medicare - or

  • Raise Taxes


Both are political third rails.  Cutting spending and reducing the deficit would appear to be a political no win for politicians of either party.


Note:


Even foreign aid is a problem - Israel gets the lions share.  I wonder how cutting that will go over.



Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

1 comment:

  1. Taylor WrayJanuary 27, 2011 at 7:34 AM

    Here's the congressional thought process on tax increases:
    Let's see, we can't raise taxes on the masses - most of them are getting broker and less employed every day, and they won't stand paying more when they just bailed out Wall Street and a bunch of other companies.
    And we can't raise taxes on the rich or corporations - they're the ones who keep our campaign coffers filled to the brim so that we get to keep our cushy jobs up here in Washington.
    Guess we can't raise taxes...

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)