Los Angeles Times

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U.S. manufacturers who provide health insurance spend an average of $2.38 per worker per hour on healthcare -- more than twice as much as their foreign competitors, an analysis released Tuesday found. . .

But the new analysis suggests that neither lower wages nor higher prices are an option for most companies. Employers can't slash wages fast enough to keep up with rising healthcare costs because of minimum wage laws, union contracts and other… more

Los Angeles Times | Democratic and Republican Healthcare Plans Offer Clear Choices

"McCain is talking about Wild West competition where there are no limits," said economist Len Nichols, who directs the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation and served as an advisor in the Clinton White House.

Barack Obama loves reconciliation, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it isn't even possible, and let's be honest, it isn't always the point.

About six weeks ago, during his "More Perfect Union" speech on race that some heralded as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, Obama had a choice between reconciliation and renunciation, and, true to form, he chose the former. He protested that he could "no more disown" the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. than he… more

If Americans are such huge fans of big dreams and high rolling, self-made tycoons and upward mobility, why then do we insist on seeing our national political elites -- who are also generally our economic and educational elites -- throw back a shot of whiskey or lace up bowling shoes?

Why do we need to pretend that high-flying politicians who graduated from the fanciest schools and dine at the toniest restaurants really don't live in a different world and -- dare… more

Politicians don't like to talk about taxes except to brag about cutting them. But with California's widening budget deficit threatening deep cuts in education and other public services, it's difficult to avoid discussions about raising taxes.

Unfortunately, what's likely to be lost in the upcoming partisan melee over whether new taxes are needed to close the $16-billion gap is an equally important tax issue -- California's aging and often unfair tax system needs to be overhauled.

The goal of tax… more

If I didn't already prefer Ketel One vodka in my martinis, I might very well call for my own boycott against Absolut.

Not because I agree with the knuckleheads who fear that the Swedish company's advertisement featuring a map of the American Southwest as Mexican territory is fueling ethnic secessionism, but because, in its attempt to lure upper-middle-class consumers in Mexico, the company played on an age-old canard that has historically been used to justify discrimination against Mexican immigrants and… more

Education cuts and reform campaigns can be the drinking and driving of California politics. Each carries certain risks when pursued separately. Combined, they can be deadly.

This is a truth that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found hard to accept. Three years ago, just as he launched his breakneck drive to win voter approval of budget and political reforms, he decided to withhold part of a mandated increase in education funding from his 2005-06 budget proposal. The delay in Proposition 98 funding… more

Osama bin Laden lives among friends, follows news on satellite television or the Internet and reads books about American foreign policy; this much can be safely inferred from his periodic audio and video statements. His latest topical punditry surfaced just a few weeks ago on jihadi websites when he addressed violence in Gaza and the pope's travels.

Because of his passable grasp of current events, Bin Laden may well understand what many Americans do not: that he is more likely to… more

Last February, I found myself in the difficult position of explaining American insecurity to a group of Mexican undergraduates at a college in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the border at Brownsville, Texas. I was taking questions after delivering a lecture on the long-term prospects of Mexican immigrants being accepted into U.S. society. A neatly dressed young man in the back stood up to ask a pointed question. "How," he said politely in Spanish, "could such a rich and powerful… more

If you've watched any of the televised men's college basketball tournament this year, you've been bombarded by NCAA commercials that declare: "There are 380,000 NCAA student athletes... and just about every one of them will go pro in something other than sports."

It's an uplifting tagline, but there's a catch. In order to "go pro in something other than sports," that athlete needs a college degree. And far too many male athletes in top-tier Division I basketball programs never graduate.

The teams… more