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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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Paying for services

By Dave Anderson:

A shocking event happened in Pittsburgh last night. Its citizens decided that they actually wanted to pay for public services. A special tax levy of $25 per $100,000 of taxable property was passed in order to partially fund the library system.

The Post Gazette has details:


By a margin of more than two to one, Pittsburgh voters Tuesday approved a binding referendum to add 0.25 mills to the tax on all real estate in the city, and steer the proceeds to the fiscally challenged Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The levy could bring more than $3 million a year to the library system for operations and maintenance.

In 2009, the Carnegie Library administration decided that branches...should be closed,... merged... and moved. Administrators said declining population, cuts in public funding, inflation.... Stopgap funding from the city and state forestalled the moves. The referendum drive sprang from that crisis.

That is almost un-American, being willing to pay for public services that are available to everyone including people like me, non-residents who are fairly heavy library users.



2 comments:

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  2. Thanks. Good news is in short supply. I like the symbolism, too. Warren Buffet seems to be cut from the same fabric as Andrew Carnegie.
    There are Carnegie libraries all over the country. We have one in Atlanta. I read somewhere that when he donated a library to a town he leveraged his "investment." He paid for the land and building, but not until the local civic authorities first agreed to furnish the books, maintenance and staff. That was a sweet deal for any city or town wanting a library.

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