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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

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

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.

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.

Three weeks ago, when the Nobel committee awarded its literature prize to Romanian writer Herta Muller, it lauded her courageous and unflinching fictional portraits of "daily life in a stagnated dictatorship" in communist Romania. What they did not mention, however, was Muller's ongoing nonfictional critique of the leadership of post-communist Romania.

In a recent speech to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, California Chief Justice Ronald M. George became the latest sharp critic of the state's system of direct democracy. "Frequent amendments -- coupled with the implicit threat of more in the future -- have rendered our state government dysfunctional," he said.

The chief justice isn't the first state leader to take aim at the way ballot measures are enacted in California, and he won't be the last.

Maybe we Californians have such a hard time figuring out how to fix the state because we are too close to the problem. How might an analyst sent here from another world--think of him as an extraterrestrial Alexis de Tocqueville, well read in California history and deeply versed on political practices elsewhere on this globe--diagnose California's ailments?  

From climate change to redistricting, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have teamed up on a number of issues. It's time to add another to the list -- updating the antiquated and misleading way we measure poverty.

It may seem like an odd concern for the Republican duo. But Bloomberg took the lead on the issue last year when conditions in New York City were similar to those California faces today: The economy was down; need was… more

The health care drama in the U.S. Senate is cresting. After months of hearings--and decades of dithering--it is time to see if the United States is going to remain the only advanced industrial nation in the world that does not provide universal health care.

It's not unusual for a global city to recruit an international talent like Gustavo Dudamel to conduct its symphony orchestra. (Alan Gilbert, the new conductor of the New York Philharmonic, is the first native New Yorker to hold the post since the institution was founded in 1842.) What is unusual is how the Los Angeles orchestra is using the high-culture, Venezuelan-born wunderkind to build a rapport with this city's native-born Latino masses. Gauging from the widespread, deliriously upbeat hoopla -- and taking into account Dudamel's

Health-care cooperatives have gotten a bad rap. But if properly designed, they could offer quite a lot to both the left and the right, as well as to anyone interested in expanding health-care coverage and reducing costs.

Once a month a tractor-trailer rolls up to the Family Early Learning Center, a one-room preschool in East San Jose, Calif., that doubles as a food pantry for poor families with young kids. On a bright Friday in August, a dozen or so women from the neighborhood gathered for the truck's arrival. Volunteers as well as customers, they had come to help unload the monthly delivery of groceries from the local food bank.

Want to understand why California is such a political and budgetary mess? Consider the case of Roman Polanski.

In a strange way, the attempt by Los Angeles County prosecutors to arrest, extradite, and presumably send the French-Polish film director to prison for a 30-year-old crime-having sex with an unwilling 13 year old-offers a clear example of this state's governing myopia.

Just about any celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15) will highlight the diversity among Hispanics.

They come from different parts of the Spanish-speaking world, have settled in various areas of the United States, have distinctive customs and come in all shapes and colors.

But an often overlooked difference among Hispanics relates to how many generations back they trace their roots in U.S. history.

Where is Osama bin Laden when we need him? Don't get me wrong; in no way do I wish death and destruction on our country. But as I listen to the increasingly vitriolic and even seditious rhetoric coming from the political right, I can't help thinking that we need a threatening external enemy to help us cohere as a nation -- a more looming threat than the almost vanished Al Qaeda leader or even his recently arrested alleged minion from Denver.

It has been a tough year for California. The Golden State, known for decades as an innovator and agent of change, had to issue IOUs to pay its debts. Investment in the future, which used to be California's guiding vision, has taken a back seat to plugging the many holes in the leaky dike of our antiquated institutions.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's not after you. Over the last few months, a lot of writers have dusted off Richard Hofstadter's classic 1964 essay on the paranoid style in American politics just so they can explain away the loony rumors and conspiracy theories coming from the far right. But no amount of intellectual condescension is going to make those powerful untruths go away.

Once upon a time, Hollywood cinematographers, disenchanted with black-and-white movies, embraced color film to more faithfully represent what they saw through the lenses of their cameras. Now Hollywood has taken an equally innovative step to represent the preferences of those who make the movies.

Much hope has been invested in Barack Obama's ability to strike a new course for the US following eight years of Bush administration unpopularity. Yet many in the US and abroad are impatient with the pace of progress under the Obama administration. The president made the rounds on five news talk shows on Sunday as he pressed his policies and vision, preparing for what is likely to be a difficult week.

The first rule of Jerry Brown's campaign for governor is that he doesn't talk about his campaign for governor.

Barack Obama had no choice but to disagree with Jimmy Carter. Carter called some of Obama's most hysterical critics racist. But our first nonwhite president once again tried hard not to be sucked into a racial uproar. As much as he and his liberal allies like to declare that Americans need to hash out racial issues publicly, the subject of race can only damage his presidency.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

U.S. Supreme court confirmations are a good time to reflect on some basic precepts of our "separation of powers" system of government. Like previous nominees, Sonia Sotomayor faced the Senate judiciary committee's firing squad, as partisan tensions played out over lifetime appointment to a court that has no retirement age. At 54 years of age, Sotomayor, whose nomination the full Senate votes on today, easily could serve for three decades.

President Obama's biergarten moment at the White House on Thursday may have started out as a political stunt, but in the end it could become a model for the future of race relations in America. I'm not talking about the "teachable moment" nonsense. Nor am I particularly impressed by the idea that people of different backgrounds should get together to talk about their backgrounds. What's new here, and what I think might just stick, is the idea that people in conflict should sit down… more

As you ride the bus or freeway to work tomorrow, ask yourself: Can the person seated next to me, or driving past me, be trusted with the job of redesigning California's basic political and budgetary rules? Are "average Californians" ready to don the white powdered wigs to become the Founding Mothers and Fathers of a new California?

Just a few months ago, national health care reform seemed solidly on the path to congressional approval. A popular new president made it his top domestic priority and turned the process over to the leadership of large Democratic majorities in both houses. The path became rocky, though, with most Republicans and many conservative Blue Dog Democrats signaling concern.

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger's career in electoral politics coming to an end?

California, broke and dysfunctional, desperately needs a white-hot public debate over how to fix its budget, its economy, and its state constitution.

What the state may get instead is a white-hot public debate over marijuana.

About the only thing as disappointing as the frivolous arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was the loud, almost gleeful chorus of "I told you so's" coming from his defenders. You've heard of schadenfreude -- taking pleasure in the suffering of others? Well, this was the peculiar political version. It's not that commentators were happy that Gates had allegedly been mistreated. But they seemed inordinately pleased that some aggrieved yet righteous person had come along to help them prove a point

Border Patrol apprehensions may have dipped to the lowest rate in 35 years, but it has nothing to do with border security. Rates of illegal migration are governed by social and economic forces, not by expensive surveillance technology, walls and the Border Patrol. It thus makes no sense to continue to rely on an expensive and failed border fortification as a centerpiece of our immigration policy.

President Obama's visit to Ghana this month was downright biblical.

Can't stand your boring husband? Thinking of calling it quits? Well, you should have mustered the nerve to leave him well before this economic crisis. Now you might not be able to afford to live without him, literally.

It's a well-known fact that financial woes are the biggest cause of marital spats. With the economy the way it is, you'd expect lots of husbands and wives to be at each other's throats. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. This recession is so bad that you can count… more

Karen Bass is an unlikely tax cutter. She's the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, a fierce defender of the labor movement, and an advocate for repealing a constitutional provision that requires that tax increases pass the state legislature with a two-thirds majority.

The worst thing about Sarah Palin's decision to resign the governorship of Alaska is the conclusion she appears to have reached about the political calendar: Even three years before the 2012 elections, the job of potential presidential candidate doesn't leave any time for governing, even a lightly populated state.

As strange as her announcement sounded, Palin's view of the electoral world is clear-eyed. These days, politics trumps governing all the time.

Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial primary made all sorts of national news last month. The more typical stories equated former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe's defeat with the end of the Clinton era. Yet, despite the abundance of coverage, one significant detail has been left out of the generally agreed upon "story" about Virginia's recent gubernatorial primary -- the losing candidates received more votes than the winner.

How did we manage to have it all in the years after the Second World War--car, house, health care, affordable education, Social Security, rising wages, leisure--and where did it go? If anyone knows, please tell California. Things seemed to be going so well here a half century ago: unemployment rates just above 3 percent, swimming pools in every backyard, baseball teams poached from Brooklyn, matchless public schools and universities, and swift new highways. Good jobs were available to nearly anyone who came, and nearly everyone did.

It… more

The Obama administration is reportedly considering backing a radical plan to shrink deteriorating American cities by bulldozing entire neighborhoods and returning the land to nature. The idea, which originated in Flint, Mich. -- cratered by the auto industry implosion -- is to persuade disintegrating and depopulated cities to embrace their shrinkage, destroy abandoned infrastructure, save money and thereby stave off fiscal ruin.

Is a constitutional convention in California's future?

With the state's fiscal woes mounting and Sacramento seemingly frozen in place, a group of California leaders has proposed a constitutional convention as a way to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched structural problems. Perhaps the most important question about a constitutional convention is: Who would be the delegates charged with designing California 2.0, and how would they be chosen?

The spread of the swine flu contagion has yet to reach scary "I Am Legend" proportions, but things are getting pretty hairy out there. The World Health Organization has declared a pandemic, the first flu pandemic in 41 years, as infections continue to climb in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

Sure, California's economy has seen better days, our budget is a mess, and we've been wondering whether the federal government might help us out with our cash flow. But the barbs sent our way by politicians and commentators in Washington are getting to be a bit much.

What's going on? All along I thought hordes of angry young men posed the greatest threat to society. Experts are always telling us to worry about the social menace from brooding young Turks with too much energy and time on their hands. They commit the lion's share of crimes and terrorist acts. They generally have the least to lose.

It is a tragedy when a perfectly good political sex scandal goes to waste. It’s especially tragic in Los Angeles, which famously lacks the kind of public narratives that dominate news cycles and force citizens to pay attention to their elected leaders.

Los Angeles’ latest missed opportunity arrived last week with the glorious news that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose marriage broke up a few years back after an affair with a political reporter for a Spanish-language TV station, had been caught… more

California faces a crater-size, $24 billion deficit - and we're about to throw away millions more on three elections we don't need. But here's the good news: If we adopt Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, for special elections, we can save that amount and more.

With IRV, taxpayers could save nearly $2 million July 14 (fittingly, Bastille Day).

I recently spent several days in Northern California and came down with a mild case of wealth poisoning. This often happens when I travel to places like San Francisco and Palo Alto. The greenness, tidiness, and modernity of the Bay Area start to chafe, like a Barbra Streisand interview, and I become homesick for the soothing grime of Los Angeles. The feeling is especially strong in Silicon Valley, which seems determined to show the world how rich you can get… more

President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice has been widely hailed as a triumph for Latinos. But it could just as likely spell the end of the very idea that there is such a thing as Latino America at all.

Now you can add same-sex marriage to the long list of things that Californians have turned into an incoherent mess.

With Tuesday’s California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8’s gay-marriage ban--and the marriages of those couples who tied the knot last year while gay marriage was legal--California finds itself in a very strange place, matrimonially speaking.

President Obama has a problem. He’s promised to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, but is finding it hard to find a place to put them. States all over the union are saying not in my backyard.

California has a problem. It needs federal loan guarantees for its short-term cash flow borrowing. But President Obama and members of Congress are saying -- at least right now -- that such assistance isn’t forthcoming. The other 49 states, after all, don’t want… more

The economy is a wreck, and crime is down. Does that mean hard times and lawbreaking aren't linked?

IS California too big to fail?

That's the question President Obama and Congress will soon face. While many states have severe fiscal problems, the depth and unusual persistence of California's budget problems - the state has run deficits for most of the decade - has emptied Sacramento's till. On its current path, California will run short of the cash it needs to pay its bills in late July.

California provides more funding for stem cell research than the other 49 states combined. So what does President Obama's executive order lifting the restrictions financing and structure of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state's cash-strapped stem cell agency?

Not much.

The special election is over. The griping is not.

Here's one pair of complaints airing more often than "Law & Order" reruns: Why does California keep having special elections? And why are we forced to digest so many measures on the same ballot?

Arnold Schwarzenegger has built his career on what might be called the Armageddon Tease.

In less than 24 hours, you're going to be hearing the righteous indignation of all sorts of California pundits and policy types. They'll no doubt be shouting about an embarrassingly low turnout in Tuesday's statewide special election and the astounding ignorance on the part of those who did vote. Though not completely without merit, their rantings also will be part and parcel of the problem they're condemning: Our political elites are burdening the public with too much democracy.

As someone who drove a clattering old pickup in the slow lane for nine years, I watched with interest earlier this month as House Democrats reached a compromise on “cash for clunkers” legislation that would give people vouchers worth as much as $4,500 to replace their older cars with new ones. But the plan, which would cost $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion, is a huge disappointment; any program that expensive should deliver much better mileage.

What does a Mexican-hating right-wing radio shock jock named Jay Severin have in common with President Obama's yet-to-be-named Supreme Court nominee? The former already is, and the latter will likely turn out to be, a signifier of a new political calculus that is lowering the profile of the burgeoning Latino electorate, two-thirds of which is Mexican American.

Mark Arax is a great reporter. He has an ear for a good story. He knows where the action is, and the remarkable level of detail he captures tells us he's as tenacious and unrelenting as the most hard-boiled noir detective. He's also clearly an obsessive character, particularly enthralled by dashed dreams and hopeless causes, and in "West of the West" -- 10 loosely knit essays and an epilogue -- it's sometimes not clear where his story ends and California's… more

Steve Barr stood in the breezeway at Alain Leroy Locke High School, at the edge of the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, on a February morning. He's more than six feet tall, with white-gray hair that's perpetually unkempt, and the bulk of an ex-jock. Beside him was Ramon Cortines--neat, in a trim suit--the Los Angeles Unified School District's new superintendent. Cortines had to be thinking about last May, when, as a senior deputy superintendent, he had visited under very different… more

The unincorporated community of Mountain Pass, California, has little to recommend it to tourists. A scraggly outcrop of rocks and Joshua trees alongside Route 15, it has no kitschy landmarks like the 134-foot-tall thermometer that nearby Baker, California, installed in the Mojave Desert, and no casinos like Las Vegas has an hour up the road. But behind a Band-Aid-colored industrial gate lies an attraction of sorts: a 55-acre open-pit mine created by a 21st-century gold rush, one result of the… more

I wonder what the late historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. would have made of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's pandering to Lone Star secessionists on April 15. I'd love to hear what he'd say about Sarah Palin's flirtation with the Alaskan Independence Party and its disdain for the rest of the United States.

Has California seen its last honest ballot measure?

Perhaps. One unintended consequence of next month's special election may be the demise of ballot initiatives that are "self-funding" -- that is, initiatives that include new taxes to pay for the programs they mandate.

A bill to dramatically increase national service by expanding AmeriCorps hits President Obama's desk soon. While he's at it, we hope he will consider creating a different kind of corps -- a volunteer financial services corps to put quality financial advice within the reach of every American.

How much is your ethnicity worth? In hard cash. Dollars and cents. How much do you think you can get for it?

When we talk about race in America, we speak in terms of power and strife. When we bring up ethnicity, we focus on the gushy stuff -- pride and the sense of belonging that strong cultural identities create. Think of those quaint, exotics-on-display "isn't diversity great?" stories on National Public Radio.

A whopping 44 percent of Mission District residents don't have low credit scores. They have NO credit scores. Without them, the only loans they can get are the loans no one wants - those with pricey interest rates and harsh terms. And if doors to affordable credit seemed closed to these consumers before the financial meltdown, they're slammed shut now.

A whopping 44 percent of Mission District residents don't have low credit scores. They have NO credit scores. Without them, the only loans they can get are the loans no one wants - those with pricey interest rates and harsh terms. And if doors to affordable credit seemed closed to these consumers before the financial meltdown, they're slammed shut now.

Mexico's drug war is bound to have a profound effect on the lives of Mexican immigrants in the United States. On the one hand, the image of Mexico's chaos as a spreading contagion most likely will strengthen the hand of anti-immigrant forces. On the other, as Mexican newcomers look back at their increasingly dangerous homeland, they will -- consciously or unconsciously -- set down deeper roots in the United States.

Few outside of Argentina remember him, but a good man died yesterday. Raul Alfonsin was the first democratically elected president of the Argentine Republic after seven years of military rule in which over 10,000 Argentinians were "disappeared" by the military in a "Dirty War" against leftist guerrillas.

This year, California state and local governments will spend close to $10 million on at least three elections we do not need. That makes no sense amidst California’s and our nation’s brutal recession.

Remember fieldtrips? All 535 members of Congress should take one this week to Room 675 of the County Courthouse in Philadelphia. Doing so would bust some myths surrounding the "cram down" legislation – now stalled in the Senate – that would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce payments on troubled mortgages.

I have finally let the cat out of the bag and publicly confessed that I'm nostalgic for the first years of Antonio Villaraigosa's mayoralty, when His Honor seemed to be everywhere all at once.

There is an encouraging – perhaps surprising – amount of agreement that health care in the United States must be reformed now. Key players in the debate, from Wal-Mart executives to labor union leaders, agree that reform should expand affordable health coverage to all, that no one should be denied insurance, and that government, employers and individuals should all share responsibility for funding health care.

I thought U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. was a little over the top last month when he called us "a nation of cowards" for our collective failure to adequately discuss our troubled racial past.

Less than a month later, officials at his Justice Department are believed to have pulled the plug on the nomination of Thomas Saenz, chief counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to head the department's civil rights division. Why? Apparently because of Saenz's past… more

A constitutional convention has been proposed by some California business leaders as a vehicle to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched political and economic woes. While a convention offers the hope of a new beginning, it also inspires understandable fear that hard won rights may get trampled in the horse-trading.

The state's leadership in recent years has hardly inspired confidence.

Why should we imagine that it could match the brilliance of James Madison, George Washington and the other Founders, and chart a new course for our state?

Some presidents have first-rate minds, others have first-rate temperaments. Barack Obama had both. In the first months of Obama's presidency, every appearance he made reinforced the public's admiration. It was an Aaron Sorkin show brought to life, except with likable characters. The Obama family's Portuguese water dog, Rushbo, charmed visitors with his antics and yapping. Rahm Emmanuel amused everyone by graduating from the f-word to the c-word and even beyond. Obama oversaw ambitious and well-received spending on

In the same week that the media reported on a burgeoning tent city in California's capital, Sacramento joined Los Angeles and other cities in making it a crime to scavenge in recycling bins placed in front of homes. A staff report for the Sacramento City Council argued that such scavenging "can result in identity theft, injuries to the scavengers, waste being strewn about the surrounding areas, containers being left open to emit foul odors [and] attract animals and pests, and… more

You've got to look out for No. 1. It's a dog-eat-dog world. Everybody's in it for themselves.

These are some of the more charming axioms of American-style capitalism, and during hard financial times, you'd expect that they'd ring truer than ever.

Think of high unemployment and economic scarcity, and up come images of savage competition, broken marriages, corroded race relations and the scapegoating of immigrants. And if things get worse, we're probably going to see all of this and more.

Madison Nguyen shouldn't be the only one breathing a sigh a relief.

When San Jose District 7 voters rejected a recall of the city councilwoman Tuesday, they spared the entire city the cost of holding two additional special elections.

This week, Los Angeles reelected a mayor in a race so unheralded that, on voting day, it failed to make the front of The Los Angeles Times. (Turn to page A3, goo-goo geeks.) So somehow the city has wound up again with Antonio Villaraigosa, a handsome fellow who keeps asking city residents to "dream with me," perhaps out of worry that they might awaken. Well, no danger of that just yet: Turnout barely reached 15 percent.

My relationship with my Los Angeles Times subscription is extremely contentious. Three times in the past six months, I have called up and cancelled the paper (you get an operator in Manila--much of the old circulation department has been outsourced), only to reconsider a few days later and restart my subscription.

Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour's drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.

She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door -- the famous French doctor's house call. I couldn't get over it. "House calls in the United States… more

Many generations test their mettle in a crisis that defines them through the ages. The "Greatest Generation" had World War II. The baby boomers had Vietnam. Now the millennial generation -- the computer-savvy, coddled and cocky children of the 1980s -- may find that the current financial crisis is their crucible. If they survive it.

Newspapers won't die. They'll survive, along with local TV and radio news broadcasts, by publishing and showing content produced by others. Those old media brands still have value in a fragmented world. I live within walking distance of Hollywood, so forgive the metaphor: The publications and broadcasts will be like movie studios - marketers and distributors.

Journalists, the folks who make the movies ... er ... news, will work for content-production companies.

For the record, "Yes we can" emerged as a slogan later and less deliberately than one might think. The year was 1972, three years after César Chávez had appeared on the cover of Time magazine and two years after he had led farmworkers to a major victory against grape producers in California. Chávez was in Arizona trying to reverse a law prohibiting strikes by farmworkers during harvest time. Supporters of Chávez told him the law couldn’t be repealed. "No se puede," they said. Dolores Huerta, a