New America in California: Publications, Events and More

Please join us in a lunch discussion featuring two dynamic authors. Nicholas Schmidle, author of To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan will discuss the most recent and turbulent period of Pakistan’s history. His observations provide a contemporary history of this country at a time when President Pervez Musharraf’s power was waning and the Taliban’s was growing, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan’s fate is inextricably linked with our own.

AB 30 is based on a signature idea from the New America Foundation's Political Reform Program. AB 30 would create an option for young people who are 17 ...

Media Contact Liz Wu (510) 295-9859 wu@newamerica.net Sacramento, CA - The California legislature approved AB 30 (Price & Swanson), a bill lowering the voter registration age to 17. If signed by the Governor, this legislation could dramatically improve California's alarmingly low voter participation rate for young voters. Almost half of the eligible voters between 18 and 24 years of age were not registered to vote in 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available).

Go ahead, hit me with all the Tipper Gore jokes you want, but I'm beginning to think that U.S. political news, like rap music, needs a parental warning notification.

Every few years or so, we have a collective paroxysm over the bad behavior of this or that group of public figures. We fret over what the antics of sports stars or celebrities teach our children. Whether they're taking illegal steroids or partying without their knickers, we hope and pray that… more

To: Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina From: Joe Mathews Re: CEO Candidates Running for High Office in California

I would advise each of you to run for the hills. But the hills are on fire.

The national media have been full of stories about how California Republicans are "pinning their hopes" on the two of you--former CEOs who are running next year for governor (Meg) and U.S. Senate (Carly is exploring a challenge to Barbara Boxer).

Treating children that way is like giving a lion their food without making them hunt for it.

Jacinth Thomas-Val writes the sentence on the blackboard in her classroom at Sacramento City College, then asks her students what's wrong with it. "What does ‘them' refer to in this sentence?" she asks one young woman. The young woman doesn't know, shakes her head, then gets up and leaves the classroom without explanation, not returning for the rest of the period.

Nelson Rising, chairman of Tom Bradley’s 1982 campaign for California governor, still remembers the phone call. Bradley called him shortly after 4 a.m. on a long election night, when it was clear Bradley had lost to Republican attorney general George Deukmejian. “You were right,” Bradley told Rising a bit wearily.

"Heavy with bold-faced names... fast, loose, often funny, and wholly unpredictable." San Francisco Chronicle 

Think back to the spring of 1968. The U.S. is mired in Vietnam. The country is in turmoil. The sitting Democratic president abruptly pulls out of his campaign for reelection, and the leading conservative columnist of the day neither gloats nor does a victory dance.

It's nearly impossible to imagine this happening today.

She cited figures from a New America Foundation study indicating that, in California, employer-based family insurance plans will cost $25682 in 2016, ... and more »

Hamilton Chan was the smartest person I knew at Harvard. He was maddening. When I stayed up all night because a paper was due the next day, I worked on the paper. Too often I got a B. When Hamilton pulled an all-nighter, he played computer games, chatted with girls in the dorm, beat all comers at foosball, and napped. At dawn he began to write, and inevitably he got an A.

As Mark Paul of the New America Foundation pointed out in his wise article in the latest issue of the American Interest, those cuts are part of the ...

According to New America Foundation, 38% of all households are in a state of asset poverty, in that they lack liquid financial resources to support their ...

Don't get too outraged, those of you who are looking down your noses at those unreasonable, misinformed anti-healthcare-reform town hallers. No matter what particular clan, tribe or party you belong to, you can't really disown them any more than you can your own grandmother. You may not agree with them, but their brand of hotheaded, self-righteous, obnoxious, stick-it-to-the-manism is as American as apple pie.

Besides the capitalists of the Bay Area Council, the center-left New America Foundation loves it. So does the left-left Courage Campaign, ... and more »

Eunice Kennedy Shriver is likely to be most remembered for her blood relations, especially her politician brothers John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Teddy Kennedy.

In California, she has a lesser-known but crucial role: as the state's most important mother-in-law.

Eunice's son-in-law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has described her as his mentor and strongest political supporter. He's not exaggerating. Without her, there never would have been an Arnold governorship.

California, said Steven Hill of the New America Foundation, used to be known as a place of innovation; it was time get back to an innovative California. ...

In the siege of a city, each of the final days plays out much like the one before, the monotony belying the imminent danger. Early on one particular brilliant and beautiful day last June, a kind of siege played out at the California State Capitol. Health advocates gathered on the west steps to rail against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts to Medi-Cal services for seniors and the disabled. On the north steps came a group of school support workers whose purple shirts--the ubiquitous uniform of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)--read,… more