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, September 13, 2011

Cheering Tea Party As 1 In 6 Drop Below The Poverty Line

By Steve Hynd


Census figures released today show that last year the number of people living below the poverty line rose to 15.1% of the population - a whopping 46 million Americans. It's the highest figure since records began.


The number of Americans with no health insurance hovered at 49.9 million, up slightly from 49 million in 2010.


And as Paul Krugman notes, the IMF has come out and straigh-forwardly said that austerity programs to try to control national debt levels have a significant negative effect on unemployment. 1% of GDP in fiscal contraction will put 0.3% on the unemployment rate withing two or three years. Yet that's the course the U.S. and every other Western nation are all embarked upon.


That'll give the Tea Partiers something to cheer about!



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