Idrees M. Kahloon
It Might Have Been
Instead, seeing the writing on the wall, the administration may begin to wonder what could have been done differently: a less controversial, better-argued healthcare bill, avoiding the detrimental austerity of the debt ceiling, sidestepping the self-harm of sequestration. Arriving at the recognition of his own irrelevance, as the media whips itself into 2016 frenzy and Congress stonewalls, President Obama should ponder the mistakes of his term and consider what could have been done differently.
A Tale of Two Cities
In the wake of terrorizing shootings and nightmarish bombings, Boston summoned heroism. In the wake of Newtown and avalanches of gun violence, Washington mustered histrionics.
The Ideas Deficit
Deficit hawks, bolstered by self-interested billionaires like Pete Peterson, campaign for severe entitlement reforms, including raising the age at which seniors receive Social Security benefits. The fiscally austere mistake the deficit as a result of runaway government spending instead of weak demand caused by the recession, where deficits actually improve overall demand.
Game of Drones
It’s not that I have some superstitious mistrust of aerial weapons—only mistrust for an opaque military program, governed by either nonexistent or secret law, that trusts anonymous, high-level bureaucrats with the power to kill American citizens without a trial.
The Scary, Narrow Minded, Out of Touch Party for Stuffy Old Men
The Republicans must focus on their product rather than its packaging. The current unofficial slogan, The All-New GOP (Now With 25 Percent Less Crazy), simply will not do.
Ten Years Later
By the time U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan, children old enough to be in high school will have never known a day when their country was not at war.
Masters of the Universe
There’s an appalling inequality of justice in this country. In the eyes of the government, fraudsters like HSBC and UBS are clearly exempt from the laws. Too big to fail has become too big to jail.
The Paradoxical President
There’s a striking cognitive dissonance between candidate Obama and his actions as president.
Tranquility before Defense
The modern American crisis is less poverty than it is poverty of education. Even if politicians are stubbornly stuck in ...
Still Broken
That Republicans managed to lose seats in both the House and the Senate, despite outspending Democrats $102 million to $70 million on House races and $135 million to $89 million on Senate races, is more a symptom of the ideological radicalization of the Republican Party than of the public’s distaste for the broken campaign finance system.
Milo's Missionaries
Today’s the big day! Citizens will participate in our greatest civic duty—and be accessories to the most excessive and expensive campaigns in history. So here’s my prediction for the evening: a loss for the common man.
Bitter Pills
FDA inefficacy is but a particular instance of an endemic culture of corruption that has infected nearly every governmental agency inside the Beltway.
Reclaiming Our Republic
Who, on either side of the aisle, can justify billions of dollars in subsidies to enormously profitable oil companies? Or that six of the 400 wealthiest Americans paid no federal income tax?
That Hope Has Been Tested
Instead of sheepishly staking his electoral bid on a shaky unemployment rate and praying that the ticking time bomb of the European sovereign debt crisis explodes sometime after November 6, Obama can and should explain the shortcomings of his term.
