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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Saturday, May 5, 2012

Overvaluing big ideas

By Dave Anderson:


Big ideas are sexy to activists and political junkies. Big ideas are often policy ideas that promise rewards to certain groups and from the redistribution of the political-economic-cultural pie goodies, activists are motivated to engage.  And activists are important to a candidate, a party and a movement.


However, big ideas don't create immediate winning coalitions.  They at best create future coalitions that can win.  And sometimes big ideas don't have to be new ideas.  I write this in response to a comment over at Balloon Juice regarding the British Labour Party regaining its footing:


And although Labour has done well in the most recent elections, their leadership is devoid of workable ideas, and are doing well mainly because Cameron is intent on totally crashing the economy with his austerity program.


Sometimes not intentionally crashing an economy when there are viable options for growth given zero-bounds is a big, election winning idea.  Electorates respond well to opposition parties that have credibly opposed needless pain, and have a plan to alleviate the pain.  Old ideas can be big ideas. 



1 comment:

  1. Exactly - far too often big ideas = bad ideas and the results are catastrophic. Romney is advancing Bush 43's big ideas which have already proven to be catastrophic.

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