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, October 11, 2011

HCR -- Reader Comment Nugget

By John Ballard


I waste too much time slogging aound in a swamp, otherwise known as the comment threads of The Health Care Blog.  
Sometimes I find a treasure. This is worth keeping...



Mr. Lane is edging back to the conversation about what to do with all those poor people. Mr. Ogden worries about the national budget. The big question is how we meet both concerns ?


We have wasted a TR!LL!ON $$$ on richard nixon�s failed War On Marijuana. Legalizing and taxing the stuff would make a huge difference in our national finances, besides dramatically cutting the income (and ability to buy assault weapons) Mexican gangsters make.


We squandered $$$4TR!LL!ON in the Bush crime family�s OFF BUDGET Iraq Fiasco II, and continue to waste $1 B!LL!ON/day there for no good purpose. We could make a huge difference in our national finances if we followed our allies out. The savings would be even more if we ended the Bush crime family�s failed Afghanistan Fiasco. In the end, by staying on focus, Obama caught bin laden. Now we can go.


The US navy ensures both allies and enemies alike of the safe transfer of oil from the ports of the Middle East, Alaska, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela. Without this protection, the oil companies would have to arrange for their own security. Let the oil companies save the expense of trying to establish their own defense forces, by making them pay the US navy for their services. This will easily bring in a TR!LL!ON $$$ per annum.


We spent a couple of TR!LL!ON $$$ bailing out Wall Street, and put several more TR!LL!ONs at risk to prop up �vital� banks. We could have arrested, charged, held in custody as high risks for flight, tried, convicted, and, imprisoned the scores of bankers who engaged in the massive securities fraud that precipitated the crisis, and who put federally guaranteed deposits at grave risk. One felony and one gross misdemeanor. That would have prevented future generations of greed-driven pencil pushers and bean counters from doing it again, although some business men will commit crime no matter what. It�s in their nature.


The convictions would enable the banks to strip the malfeasor�s of their funds, which B!LL!ONS of $$$ would have greatly aided our national finances.


Finally, whereas both poverty and wealth appear to be heritable, and whereas the US has contended since 1776 that all men are created equal, and whereas the lack of a Federal Estate Tax tends to make men increasingly less equal, and whereas estates are windfalls for the heirs, and whereas the national finances need annother revenue stream, it is advisable that the nation re-institute the Federal Estate Tax as it was before 2001. Do all these things and the US will be so well funded that the cost of a single payor universal health care system will not be a problem. Universal health care will decrease the burden on large corporations, allowing them to expand their work forces, further increasing the revenue stream.


What won�t work is continually pinch pennies, downsize, coddle corporate criminals, engage in expensive military projects that have no point, and police projects that are counter-productive. To deny health care coverage for Americans because you want to squander money on failed republican policies is worse than immoral, it is stupid.



Wow. Just, wow!.



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