Los Angeles Daily News

Banking districts proposed for LA | Los Angeles Daily News

Cecille Isidro — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:58:00 -0400

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," ...

Gregory Rodriguez in Los Angeles Daily News | 'One Man Realizes the American Dream'

Communications — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:24:00 -0400

"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..." LINK

Joel Kotkin in Los Angeles Daily News | 'For Many Immigrants In the Valley, Life Continues As It Did In Their Native Countries'

Communications — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 09:19:00 -0400

..."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 new century"... LINK

L.A. Daily News Quotes Joel Kotkin on Mayor Villaraigosa

Communications — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:43:00 -0500

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 Foundation, said the mayor was skillful in his use of political power during his first full year on the job.

"We are in this kind of strange period where (Villaraigosa) and the governor are both governing from the center -- or at least what passes for the center in Los Angeles and California -- and there is no real opposition," Kotkin said.

Kotkin said that even when Villaraigosa has suffered a setback -- such as the court ruling against AB 1381 -- he used it to his advantage.

"From a political and P.R. point of view, it's brilliant," Kotkin said. "This way he can argue he tried to make reform but was blocked by the courts. And it enables him to do that… more

Gregory Rodriguez on Mayor Villaraigosa in the L.A. Daily News

Communications — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:36:00 -0500

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 the very Horatio Alger-like tale the mayor himself has often told about his childhood: Abandoned by his alcoholic, abusive father while he was in kindergarten, raised by a mother he describes as "a woman of indomitable spirit who never stopped believing in me," and further traumatized when his father sired another son as part of another family and christened him with the same name he had given Villaraigosa at birth -- Antonio Ramon Villar Jr.

In that rocky upbringing, some experts say, lies the seed for the drive, ambition and, yes, even the indulgent bravado behind the self-reinvented Villaraigosa, as well as many others in public life... Longtime Villaraigosa watcher Gregory Rodriguez, a fellow with the New America… more

Michael Dannenberg in L.A. Daily News on Student Loan Subsidies

Communications — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:04:00 -0500

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 found those kinds of loans cost the government less than federally backed loans from private lenders...

Private lenders pressure the government to guarantee a certain rate of return on their student loans, which were historically risky investments. But critics say the system puts lenders ahead of students.

"It drives me crazy how much taxpayer money has been wasted on excessive subsidies for student loan companies, instead of making college more affordable for families," said Michael Dannenberg, director of education policy for the New America Foundation...

For the complete article, please visit the Los Angeles Daily News website.

What's the Proper Role of Government?

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 04:00:00 -0400

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 shape of government's responsibilities; secondly, the question of public fiscal policy; and third, the matter of confidence in America."

Throughout the rest of the speech, Kennedy then launched into an insightful discourse that outlined his view about the proper role of government. He framed the discourse by asking two key questions:

"How do we eradicate the barriers which separate substantial minorities of our citizens from access to education and employment on equal terms with the rest?"

"How can we make our free economy work at full capacity--that is, provide adequate profits for enterprise, adequate wages for labor and opportunity for all?"

In recent years, America's political leaders have answered those questions by downplaying government's role, even to the point of demeaning it. Instead, they have promoted the notion of the individual as the essential actor in an "ownership society."

Since Ronald Reagan's presidency, conservatives have mounted an ideological campaign to malign government and portray it as "part of the problem." Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush continued this attack, part of a decades-long strategy to enact huge tax cuts by portraying government as an ineffectual bumbler and sugar daddy for welfare queens and wasteful programs. Bill Clinton signed up the Democrats for this detail when, with one eye on re-election, he declared that the "era of big government is over."

Yet as we watched helplessly on our TV sets the rising pools of water drowning an entire region and its people, with the poorest and most vulnerable citizens taking the brunt of it, it raises uncomfortable questions such as: Why, in the world's wealthiest society, were these citizens so poor and vulnerable to begin with?

The answer to that question strikes at the heart of the conservative ideology that government is "part of the problem." Who will deny that, for hundreds of thousands from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, whether Republican or Democrat, right now they are wishing they had had more government, not less, prior to the storm and in the days afterward?

Under decades of conservative attacks, the reputation of government has suffered a massive public relations crisis. It gets no credit for the good things it does, and all the blame and scorn for the mistakes it makes.

But whether the service is delivering the mail, taking care of seniors via Social Security and Medicare, constructing roads and highways, telecommunications, hospitals, schools, defense, scientific research, national parks, railroads, airways and waterways, environmental protection, the Internet, and much, much more, government has been the leading player, oftentimes partnering with America's businesses.

Government has been the driving force behind regulating the economy, interest rates and inflation, as well as creating policies that grow and maintain the middle class such as pro-homeownership, worker protections, the 40-hour workweek and paid vacations and holidays. And yes, the federal government has been there many times in the past to shoulder the burden following natural disasters.

Americans should be proud of the many accomplishments of their government. Yet instead of a balanced discourse about the proper role of government, its good and its ills, that discourse has become entangled in the partisan war. But President Kennedy tried to move this discussion away from partisanship. He said:

"What is at stake in our economic decisions today is not some grand warfare of rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion, but the practical management of a modern economy. What we need is not labels and cliches but more basic discussion of the sophisticated and technical questions involved in keeping a great economic machinery moving ahead."

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina is a perfect time for Americans of all stripes to reflect on the proper role of government in the "practical management of a modern economy." That discussion also should include a dialogue about who benefits from that economy. After two decades of shoving government to the margins, and the poorest and weakest Americans along with it, it is time to renew this dialogue with a new vigor.

Yes, it's true, government can be good for you. If one of the consequences of this natural disaster is that Americans re-evaluate our views of government, that would be a good thing.

A River Runs Through It

Cecille Isidro — Sat, 14 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

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 of its natural environment a new lease on life and provide an economic spur to varied communities along its course.

The current sad state of the river is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back in the 1930s, a series of floods pummeled the Los Angeles basin. This being the era of the Depression and the WPA, the Army Corps of Engineers went to work in a big way to make sure these types of floods would never again devastate the lives and properties of Angelenos. In a fit of engineering overreach, the entire 52 miles of the L.A. River was tamed, and turned from a wild and unpredictable river into a "flood-control channel."

In the mind-set of the times, any such modernization and development was seen as a positive move. There was little awareness of how such a massive alteration would affect local ecosystems, or wilderness treasures that might be lost forever.

For Valley residents, the river has been viewed mostly as a broad scar across our landscape. What once united Los Angeles, and served it for centuries, now separated communities from each other, and disconnected Angelenos from their natural birthright. Today we have a chance to begin to repair the damage to the river, and to our city. Like many such bold efforts, it began as the dream of a few. But now, an ever-growing group of visionaries is making serious efforts at restoring some of the river's former glory.

This will require some reverse engineering. Right now, instead of using storm-water runoff to recharge the Valley's massive aquifers -- the natural underground reservoirs that underlie the Valley -- millions of gallons of fresh water are shunted off to the ocean.

The result of this sad state of affairs can be seen in stark, barren shorelines, with signs posted to keep bikers and hikers away. What could be a place teeming with wildlife, trails and foliage -- an aquatic oasis in a desert city -- instead only contributes to a sense of bleakness.

More than anything, this squanders much of the capital that brought people to Los Angeles. People poured into L.A., and later the Valley, for a vision of what Dana Bartlett, a Methodist minister at the turn of the century, called "a better city." Los Angeles was supposed to be a city where we would blend urbanity with nature, smell the flowers and enjoy the fruit trees that flourish in this place.

By restoring the river we can recover some of that promise. Today Los Angeles is woefully lacking in parkways, open spaces and, most of all, water features such as rivers, streams and lakes. We need to take a cue from other regions -- such as San Antonio -- that have glorified their rivers, making them the center of their commercial and recreational lives.

The Los Angeles River can serve as such a catalyst here. Unfortunately, there is a hitch. In today's tight budgetary times, public money is scarce; putting money on lifestyle improvements tends to get short shrift when vital services like schools, hospitals and public safety are threatened.

Our proposal is to find a way to make a large portion of river improvement self-financing. With only a small public investment, we propose using the enhanced economic value of an improved riverway as a means of gaining private investment.

The essential element here is real estate, the one component of our local economy that is generating the most new wealth. We propose that the government use its power -- the control of the property adjacent to the river, the power of the General Plan, and the ability to create and implement specific plans -- to lure private capital.

This can be done by providing tax incentives and by assisting in the assembly of land. It is possible to create "envelope" entitlements that would allow and even encourage investors and developers to go into projects with their eyes wide open. Ask developers; knowing exactly what they can create in advance, and eliminating the risks of typical projects, would provide a huge incentive to invest.

There is something that the business, investment and development community can do to help realize this vision for a river renaissance: Create an economic development plan and a practical vision that will complement current private and public efforts and initiatives. Of course, any development or commercialization would have to be river-friendly, but it is entirely possible to incentivize the kind of investment that will enhance the river proper, encourage community-friendly uses, and provide a return on investment all at the same time.

The Community Redevelopment Agency might be of some value in this area as well. With its planning expertise, as well as its ability to assemble properties and to construct tax incentive packages, the CRA is well positioned to provide the nexus between public intervention and private investment.

An L.A. River-specific plan could include meandering paseos for hiking, biking and skating. This would be complemented with shady grassy areas with benches and other facilities for picnicking. Imagine a park that is 52 miles long!

On the commercial side, there could be myriad opportunities for coffee and refreshment stops, snacks and rentals, as well as specialty stands and stores. Where the shorelines are wide enough, opportunities are presented for mixed uses alongside linear housing developments of various configurations.

This great parkway could do much for the varied communities through which it runs. Many of these are now trying to develop a sense of identity, which the river could help provide. There is no need for uniformity along the way. Sections of river could be decorated in manners that reflect the enormous diversity of our populace and of each of our communities.

Reviving the Los Angeles River would be a great ecological triumph, but it can be much more than that. It could become the catalyst for a rebirth of Los Angeles as the great, natural expansive city that brought so many of us here in the first place.