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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Thursday, June 16, 2011

For Once a good Bi-Partisan action

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Ethanol from corn was always a really bad idea.  It made food more expensive and cars less efficient while enriching agribusiness. In a bipartisan vote both Republicans and Democrats stood up to their corn belt piers and said enough is enough.



The Senate voted 73-27 Thursday to kill a major tax break that benefits the ethanol industry, handing a political win to a bipartisan group of lawmakers that call the incentive needless and expensive.


The vote also could have ramifications on future votes to reduce the deficit. Much of the GOP conference supported Feinstein's bill even though it does not include another tax break to offset the elimination of the ethanol tax credit.



Bio-fuel may be a solution but ethonal from corn never was.  Will they have the guts to end the ethanol requirement?  Will Obama veto the bill?  A secondary benifit is it hurt that repulsive little twerp Grover Norquist.



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1 comment:

  1. joel hanesJune 16, 2011 at 5:47 PM

    In terms of carbon emissions and energy use, ethanol from corn is worse than the equivalent gasoline -- the energy and chemical and machinery inputs required by modern industrial corn cultivation make corn ethanol fuel a net energy loss.
    It's always been a boondoggle, a political sop to the ag states, not a sustainable energy program.

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