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, July 15, 2011

HCR -- Medicare Part D, a GOP Boondoggle

By John Ballard


Via Joe Paduda


The Medicare drug program - Part D - was the largest expansion of entitlement programs since the Great Society.


And it was - and is - a Republican program. A political masterstroke, Part D undoubtedly helped George W Bush get re-elected along with many GOP legislators, as seniors loved the new program


It was also completely unfunded; short term, long term, any term. The GOP decided to NOT set aside funds, or raise taxes, or cut other programs; they just passed Part D, committed to paying for it out of 'general funds' and to hell with the future.


Well, the future is here, and to listen to Eric Cantor, you'd think he had nothing to do with Part D.


The latest Medicare Actuary report indicates the GOP-passed Part D program has contributed $9.4 trillion to the $38 trillion Federal healthcare deficit. (page 126)


I bring this up not to anger my conservative readers, but rather to educate some who aren't aware that Part D, and the costs of Part D, are the handiwork of Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell et al.


Yep, the strident voices screaming for cost control were single-handedly responsible for a program that's added $9.4 trillion to the ultimate deficit.


Here's how one Libertarian sees the GOP legislators who voted for Part D.


"In particular, anyone who was in a position to vote on it, and voted for it, can simply never, ever be trusted to guard free enterprise or the Constitution against the ravages of Washington's welfare state...Every single one of these folks, without exception, is in no position to criticize Obamacare or claim to want to beat back the tide of socialism [emphasis added] that supposedly began only two years ago when Obama rose to power. Every single one of them voted to shovel tax dollars to the pharmaceutical industry and the wealthiest age demographic -- the elderly -- in unambiguous defiance of the Constitution, individual liberty, the free market, fiscal sanity and classical American values."


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Who Is Fighting Lower Drug Costs For The Poor?


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1 comment:

  1. Ron BeasleyJuly 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM

    There was method in the Republican madness - they knew in would bankrupt Medicare which is what they wanted. It was anything but a boondoggle.

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