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

Incentives and the probability of at least one day of default

By Dave Anderson:


Just a comment I left at another blog that I think should get aired here:


For almost every member in Congress their optimal political situation as they read it is the following:


a) A Majority votes �YES� for a relatively clean debt ceiling increase.
b) The individual member in question votes NO and screams against the tyranny of debt for the next fifteen months.


For a Republican from a safe seat (say R+8 or better) a YES vote means they get teabagged in the primary. Even if they win the primary, that is a pain in the ass. And given the % of GOP Reps who voted for TARP and have since left office (around 50%,) voting YES on the debt ceiling is a career breaker.


A Rep in a marginal seat (R+8 or less) might get primaried, although the Establishment of the GOP will try to head that off, but won�t have any door knockers in the general election if they vote YES.


A Dem in a marginal seat (R+anything to D+5 or so) will see a YES vote as guaranteeing a million dollar ad campaign from the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity or Crossroads GPS plus whatever official money is spent in that district with the punch line of �Congressman X voted to sell us out to the Chinese or the Saudis�


The D+5 to D+10 Dem Congresscritters are the �gettable� votes if they get credible committments from the GOP to not fund strong challengers against them (not gonna happen)


The only Congresscritters who don�t have to worry about losing their seats due to a Yes vote is a Dem in a safe to super-safe seat (D+10 or more). A clean debt ceiling vote is not a primary challenge inciter, and the seat is Democratic enough to hold the ramparts in the general election. Now if there is a grand bargain that fucks over the lower half of the income distribution, then a YES vote is a primary inciter.


Furthermore, look at the dynamic you propose � Republicans get to be massively irresponsible, force the Dems to take the political heat in order to allow Republicans to be even more irresponsible. Bad incentive structure there



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2 comments:

  1. Ron BeasleyJuly 15, 2011 at 1:46 PM

    The Republicans rode the Teabillys to victory in 2010 and now they can't control them. The Corporatist Republicans must be so pleased with themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bill H.July 15, 2011 at 6:15 PM

    My Representative is a super-safe Democrat, but I will vote against her anyway because of her votes for the war in Libya and similar issues. I don't care how she votes on the debt issue, she's toast as far as I'm concerned.

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