New America in California: Publications, Events and More

The New America Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of the first HAND Foundation Philanthropy Fellow, Dr. Lucy Bernholz. With the generous support of The HAND Foundation, based in Redwood City, Dr. Bernholz will analyze key trends in the philanthropy sector, with a focus on the reforms and regulations that will determine its future.  

The global celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall aren't entirely about commemorating the rebirth of freedom or reliving those thrilling moments when a perverse and repressive system collapsed. Listen closely to the exalted commentary recounting the events of those historic days and you're also likely to hear the subtle intonations of regret and nostalgia.

Bad ideas, if they were ever widely accepted, have a curious way of sticking around. That's because they give rise to institutions that have a momentum of their own. We've long known there are better ways to fix blighted neighborhoods than simply pressing "reset" -- that is, letting the government tear down old buildings and put up new ones. But we remain saddled with a system of public housing that keeps looking for ways of, well, pressing reset.

The most expensive mayoral race in Vancouver's history is over. The bad news: It took two elections, hundreds of thousands of dollars and a fair amount of mud-slinging to produce a winner. The good news: Vancouver has the ability to cut election costs and campaign spending as well as restore civility to the electoral process in one fell swoop.

Dear Gov. Schwarzenegger,

I hear you're searching for a new lieutenant governor. If I may be so bold, I can think of one Californian who is the right fit for the job.

Me.

Now that Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is vacating the office to take a seat in Congress, I know you're considering smart politicians of both parties. But selecting a proven leader would be a terrible mistake. Someone with real experience in government would be frustrated by the utter powerlessness and insignificance of the lieutenant governor's… more

On the docket: "Proposition 13," the referendum by which the people of California, in 1978, voted to amend the constitution of the state to limit taxes. The text of the referendum caps the property tax to 1% of property value. To raise taxes, there needs to be a super-majority vote of two thirds in the legislature. "California is the only state where it takes a two-thirds majority vote to pass a budget and raise taxes, comments Steven Hill

"We thought we were getting a man of action. Instead, we got someone who'll spend six hours chasing a white ball around a park," Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said, with tongue planted only partly in cheek. "If voters had known about the golf, they would have been less surprised by his lack of urgency on many issues." ... Original Article

Forget the issues with cash and the polls, says New America Foundation senior fellow Joe Mathews, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to leave the Democratic race for governor boils down to one thing. ... Original Article

... medical care," Micah Weinberg, a senior research fellow in the California Program of the New America Foundation, argues in a Sacramento Bee opinion piece...

Unlike the wave of immigration that came through Ellis Island and then subsided, immigration to the United States from Mexico has been virtually uninterrupted for one hundred years. In this vividly detailed book, Tomás R. Jiménez takes us into the lives of later-generation descendents of Mexican immigrants, asking for the first time how this constant influx of immigrants from their ethnic homeland has shaped their assimilation. His nuanced investigation of this complex and little-studied phenomenon finds that continuous immigration has

San Francisco writer Douglas McGray (an Irvine fellow at the New American Foundation), a contributor of social-policy narratives for The New Yorker and the acclaimed public-radio show, This American Life, is Pop-Up's editor in chief. "Branching out into radio opened my eyes to all the ways a story can be told," says McGray, 34. Despite what he calls the "awkward phase" that journalism is currently suffering, the Maine native claims that Pop-Up Magazine is not a reaction to a floundering… more

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, has introduced legislation that, if passed, would instruct the U.S. Census Bureau not to take into account illegal immigrants and other noncitizens in the 2010 census. I'm all for it. Furthermore, I propose that the government no longer recognize deficits in budgets, record violent crimes in police reports, acknowledge casualties of war or count -- let alone give proper names! -- to hurricanes in weather reports.

“This fact should have been disclosed during the campaign,” wrote Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation. “We thought we were getting a ...

According to the New America Foundation, premiums in California have grown seven times faster than median household income. Even being the very best, ...

Don't mess with Moonbeam.

The most striking thing about San Francisco Gavin Newsom's decision to withdraw from the race for California governor is that no one else is in the race. Newsom's only opponent-Jerry Brown, the former governor and attorney general-may be the frontrunner in the polls, but he isn't a declared candidate. Brown only recently set up an exploratory committee.

There is widespread agreement that if federal health care reform passes, making it work will depend in great part on getting a handle on spiraling medical costs that already consume nearly one of every five dollars spent in the United States.

For Immediate Release