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, June 21, 2011

California Does Good

By BJ Bjornson

Every now and again you see a story that restores at least a tiny part of your faith in democracy. California may have just managed to make its electoral system look at least slightly sane for the time being.


Elected representatives in California have been told their wages and expenses have been stopped and they will not be paid until the state budget balances.

. . .

It is the first time Proposition 25 has been put into effect - and it means all 120 elected members of the State Assembly and Senate will not be paid their wages, or their living allowances, until they pass a balanced budget.


The legislators are obviously upset, but I�m betting the sympathy levels of the voting public will be pretty near non-existent. I hadn�t heard of this proposition and have no idea who came up with the idea, but it is truly an awesome way to get some real work out of the fools that seem to get sent to legislatures everywhere.

All I need to know is how we can expand this idea beyond California. There are more than a few legislatures that could do with a true wake-up call, and getting their pay and expense accounts withheld should do the trick.



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