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, December 21, 2011

Socialize the clean-up, privatize the profits

By BJ Bjornson

Why, oh why does this story sound so familiar?


An old N.W.T. gold mine that was recently cleaned up by the federal government is set to become a mine once again.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) took control of the heavily contaminated Colomac Mine site in 1999 after its owner, Royal Oak Mines, went bankrupt. Cleanup work was completed this year.

Now, mineral company Merc International Minerals Inc. announced it is acquiring the mineral rights to the property.

. . .

Tlicho elder Joseph Judas said he doesn't understand why the federal government would let another company mine at Colomac after it took them nearly 10 years and millions of dollars to clean it up.


Well Joseph, near as I can tell, the reason is likely that this federal government is made up of �business friendly� Conservatives, which means that they are happy to help out their business friends by spending taxpayer dollars to clean up the mess one of those friendly businesses left behind once the mine stopped being profitable enough, and then once the costly mess has been dealt with, they are more than happy to let another one of those friendly businesses move in to make even more money off of the property without all that nasty toxic clean-up to worry about anymore.

Being �business friendly� also likely means that the Conservatives will not be pushing too hard for the mining company to put up a bond against the eventual clean-up costs for this new project. After all, it wouldn�t be �friendly� to note that mining companies have a notorious history for spinning off failing mines that then declare bankruptcy and stick the clean-up bill to the taxpayers.

After all, friendship is all about trust, and if you can�t trust a mining company to clean up after itself, who can you trust really?



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