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Dylan Ratigan returns as news commentator

Dylan Ratigan (Photo provided — Megan Robertson via Wikipedia)

SARANAC LAKE — Dylan Ratigan, one of this village’s most famous natives, is returning to news commentary with a new job at a progressive online news network.

The Young Turks, which goes by the acronym TYT, has hired the former host of “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” which was MSNBC’s highest-rated non-prime-time show from 2009 to 2012, according to The Hill. Ratigan, 44, was previously Bloomberg News’s global managing editor, hosted various CNBC shows and wrote “Greedy Bastards,” a book that made it to the New York Times best-seller list. He was known for focusing on corporations bending American politicians to their will.

After leaving MSNBC on the eve of the 2012 election, he founded Helical Holdings, a company that makes a hydroponic farming system.

Now Ratigan will once again be a news commentator, one of several well-known left-wing pundits TYT recently hired using more then $1.5 million raised from a crowdfunding campaign. Others include David Sirota, a former radio host and newspaper columnist and current investigative editor for International Business Times, and Jonathan Larsen, who has been a producer at Al Jazeera America, Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show “Countdown” and Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central.

Progressive activists Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz launched TYT in 2002 on Sirius radio and then on YouTube in 2005.

Ratigan was born and grew up in Saranac Lake, the son of Adrienne (Dodge) and John Ratigan. Now, according to his website, he is “a nomadic road warrior constantly traveling around the country, primarily residing in New York City, Louisiana, California and Chicago.”

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