Los Angeles Daily News

Olivia Calderon of the New America Foundation said New York found it successful in overcoming fears by the banks and the community in dealing with banks. "If you didn't grow up with a bank on your corner, it's not part of your everyday experience," ...

"They are totally new Latinos in the mixture of Latinos in America," says author and Latino culture specialist Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based fellow of the New America Foundation. "Their reason for immigrating was less economic than political. They are also more urbanized than Mexican immigrants, Salvadorans especially, and have established themselves institutionally more quickly than Mexicans.

"They also have no long-standing connection (to the U.S.) the way Mexicans historically have had, through the Bracero Program, for instance, and the relationships between Mexico and the U.S..."  more

..."Latinos," says Los Angeles author Joel Kotkin, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, "represent the city's grass-roots future - from its aspiring working class to a rapidly growing middle class.

"They are the city's emerging majority. Their ownership of small businesses has exploded, increasing nearly fivefold since the 1980s. They constitute the majority of new homebuyers in many Southland communities.

"Few can deny that, ultimately, Latinos - their music, their cultural values and political sensibilities - will reshape the essence of Los Angeles in the… more

Even as he burnished his image as an international political figure, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faced heightened challenges at home last year over his aggressive efforts to consolidate and assert his authority...

And after a lengthy honeymoon in office, Villaraigosa's frenetic public pace and wide-ranging reforms -- including raising wages, hiking trash fees and hiring more cops -- have begun to prickle critics who say the mayor must start turning promises into actions...

Joel Kotkin, senior fellow at the New America… more

Antonio Villaraigosa had promoted his ambitious trade mission to the Far East for almost an hour when he slipped into a monologue about Chinese food and chopsticks...

As chroniclers of Antonio Villaraigosa invariably come to discover, sometimes what comes out of the Los Angeles mayor's mouth -- particularly when it's about his past -- and what ultimately turns out to be true are not always entirely the same...

Ironically, a window to understanding why Villaraigosa tries so hard may be in… more

As the Democratic takeover of the House sidelines Santa Clarita's Republican Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, changes are expected in how the committee he chairs handles student loans.

Democrat Rep. George Miller, who's expected to replace McKeon as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wants to halve the interest rate charged on loans to needy students.

He also wants to increase the number of "direct" loans that the government makes to students. The president's budget office… more

As we reflect over the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, and the role that government failed to play in protecting American citizens trapped by that natural disaster, the words of President John F. Kennedy ring boldly down the decades.

In a 1962 commencement speech to Yale university graduates, Kennedy stated:

"There are three great areas of our domestic affairs in which, today, there is a danger that illusion may prevent effective action. They are, first, the question of the size and the… more

Los Angeles originally took shape along its river, but over the last 70 years, it has turned its back on the waterway that gave it birth. Now, by returning to the river, it could find a new lease on life.

Reviving Los Angeles -- turning a concrete conduit into a green waterway -- would change the very nature of the city, and nowhere more than here in the San Fernando Valley. It would give a place that has lost much… more