carlin

Since I started writing for the Independent Weekly in January, three issues have garnered much of my attention: the misleading and counterproductive national conversation we’ve been having about deficits, the declining economic fortunes of many Americans and the weakening of meaningful representation in our political system. The debt ceiling deal consummated last week by the […]

The current high-stakes political standoff over the debt ceiling and America’s budget deficit is a fraud. At the end of 2010, President Obama and the Democrats caved to GOP demands to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years. Had those cuts expired on schedule, the projected savings over the next decade would have […]

The recent dustup between President Obama and Congress over the relevance of the War Powers Act to American military involvement in Libya has diverted America’s attention from the deeper issue at stake in the conflict: the growing incompatibility between our global military empire and our pressing domestic needs. Yes, one can accuse Republicans of hypocrisy […]

Tim Pawlenty is considered by many observers to be among the more serious candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. On June 7, Pawlenty gave a major address, titled “A Better Deal,” in which he laid out his plan for America’s economy. The once moderately conservative governor of liberal Minnesota offered a collection […]

As most schoolchildren know, the Golden Rule tells us, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Yet, when it comes to the politics of Medicare, Republicans are having an especially hard time following it. Earlier this year, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican budget guru, triumphantly introduced his ambitious plan […]

The Indy‘s series about the forced sterilization movement in America is a reminder of a time in the not-so-distant past when prominent public figures in the United States could rally around a public policy campaign that had overt racism at its core. It evoked a larger racist past of segregated schools, segregated neighborhoods and intentional […]

Since Osama bin Laden was killed last Sunday, a growing chorus from across the political spectrum has expressed doubts about our ongoing presence in Afghanistan. When the United States invaded that country in the fall of 2001 in retaliation for the catastrophic attacks of 9/11, our military campaign was justified on the grounds that Afghanistan […]

H.L. Mencken once said that every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. Indeed, all modern U. S. presidents sit atop a sprawling government bureaucracy that is intimately intertwined in a $15 trillion economy. There are those who believe that this apparatus long ago became far too large and unwieldy and, in […]

A friend recently asked what has become a standard question on the left: Why do so many Americans vote against their interests? Thomas Frank’s 2004 best-seller, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, provided one answer to that question. In a widely cited passage, Frank wrote: “The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to […]