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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Friday, March 26, 2010

Recession, migration and redistricting

By Dave Anderson:



Pittsburgh has been a nice place to wait out the current recession.  Housing is cheap and never crashed (it never boomed and the state actually regulated the mortgage markets rather intensely), the unemployment is consistently below the national average, and the cost of living is fairly low while the social safety net is in decent shape.  Again, not a bad spot to wait out a recession.  



Netdommig2009  Chris Briem passes along a Census tidbit that the Pittsburgh MSA was projected to gain population for the first time since before I moved here due to net internal migration.  The population loss due to people moving out of the region has been stopped (temporarily?).  We are still most likely experiencing net population loss due to higher than typical die-off rates because our population age distribution is still heavily skewed to the elderly as the younger boomers fled the region in the 80s.  But internal net migration is providing a minor stabilizer.  



The recession is having an impact on internal migration patterns.  Florida, for instance, had a net population loss in 2009 because of the recession.  Pittsburgh and Philadelphia actually gained population in the past year.  If the recession happened in the middle of the redistricting interval, it probably would not have significant impact on the apportionment of seats as the trend would most likely smooth out.  However, the census is being taken in the next couple of weeks so short term blips against trend could have significant but marginal impact.

The basic trend has been for population and Congressional seats to move south and west from the Northeast and Midwest regions.  Pennsylvania was projected to lose at least one seat and potentially two seats this time around.  The minor population blip won't save both seats, but it could be enough to guarantee only a one seat loss.  Conversely, states like Florida, Georgia and Arizona may continue to see seat gains, but minimal seat gains instead of their maximal aspirations because their economies have been hit harder by the boom and thus the bust part of the cycle.  



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