Los Angeles Times

"Unless someone can write a really big check, there really is no other source of money that we can tap," said Len Nichols, an economist who heads the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank.

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

(The New America Foundation estimates that in 2006 and 2007 alone, the US gave $3.5 billion in military aid to the Pakistani army, the most powerful institution in an institutionally weak state.) The dark view has only been underlined by the violence ...

In his 2003 book "Being America," Jedediah Purdy remarked that at "the same time we disclaim imperial aspirations, we Americans suspect that we are the world's universal nation." Without using the term, he was raising the question of ...

"A great director-general is one who artfully navigates the politics of the situation to permit the IAEA to fulfill its technical mission," said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation. "I think [ElBaradei] has lost that ...

TERRY TAMMINEN, Environmental advisor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "I think people’s bandwidth is a zero sum game -- if you’re increasingly concerned about something (your job, the economy overall, your mortgage -- all of which you previously didn’t ...

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.

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.

$150 billion to $175 billion a year, says Len M. Nichols of the liberal New America Foundation. The debate over this first proposal and related, still-to-come proposals will boil down to a discussion about the powers and size of the federal government. ...