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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, May 11, 2012

The Plutocrats war on Democracy

Commentary By Ron Beasley


"If elections mattered they would be illegal".  This statement was from a citizen of Greece.  The Greeks are expeirencig this first hand as the technocrats working for the big banks have taken over their country - an economic Third Reich.  Over at The Moderate Voice Pete Barnes has a must read post - What Capitialist Don't Know: Without Democracy Capitalism Dies,


Here is a teaser:



In the 1990s renowned political scientist and author Ben Barber wrote in Jihad vs McWorld that global capitalism was at war with democracy. He was right, of course, and the intensity of that war has only increased since then. Global corporations are battling democracy�s environmental regulations, taxation, labor laws, legislation aimed at fairness or income equality. They are battling democracy�s concern for the long-term survival of community or any values more human than economic.



Go to the link and read the entire post. 



2 comments:

  1. You know, we can blame corporations, plutocrats, legislators and "the other guy" all we want, but when it comes right down to it, how do 329 million people lose to 1 million people? They lose because they choose not to exercise their power; their power to organize, their power to vote, and their power to engage in revolution.
    Only 8% of the people in this nation approve of Congress, but 85% or more of those legislators will be reelected to office in November. We will blame the 1% for that. We will blame corporate advertising and the "Citizens United" decision. We will blame the legislators themselves. We will blame the media.
    The things we will not blame are the millions of people who did not vote. We will not blame the millions of people who voted for the incumbent because it was the only name they recognized on the ballot. We will not blame the millions of people who voted for the incumbent because he brought "x amount" of pork barrel spending to their town.
    "We are working to support our families," we will say, "and we don't have time to research for the truth. What are we supposed to do?"
    Well, how badly do you want good government? The 99% has the power of the vote, and we don't use it. We have millions of excuses why we don't use it. If we spent as much time using it as we spend making up excuses why we don't use it and complaining about the results of not using it, we would have a far better government than we do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So Bill H if all headed out to the polls this November what's the choice for the top politician in the mythical land of the exceptional: Plastic man one or Plastic man two. The only thing differentiating the two males in this year's media and celebrity extravaganza is skin color. To any close observer both are vacuous narcissists who are simply clever at pretending to be human but in fact have both proven they offer nothing but highly polished emptiness. The real problem is that any one goes to vote. Let the 1% vote and continue to pretend they live in a democracy after all they've bought and paid for the illusion.

    ReplyDelete