Los Angeles Daily News

Los Angeles public TV station KCET-TV (Channel 28) announced earlier this month that it will part ways with PBS after failed negotiations to lower the dues the station must pay to carry national programming. Does this move by the flagship station in the country's second-largest television market signal the beginning of public broadcasting's end?

Could the 2012 presidential election be a repeat of the 1980 or 1888 election?

President Obama is enduring his worse political season with a series of challenging poll numbers. His unfavorable rating is at an all-time high. In head-to-head poll comparisons, he now is behind major GOP contenders.

Health care reform isn't over. In fact, it's just getting started.

Legislators in Sacramento are making critical - in some cases controversial - decisions about how to build out federal health care legislation. But developing a medical system that keeps us healthy without making us poor isn't truly within the control of politicians in Sacramento or Washington, D.C.

Getting a better bang for our buck depends mostly on us.

... that amounts to 800000 households losing out on 1.2 billion dollars of unclaimed tax money, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation. ...

When it comes to elections, Angelenos are mired in a vicious losing streak.

Take last week's City Council runoff election between Paul Krekorian and Christine Essel. While Krekorian won the two-person runoff, thousands of people actually lost: Essel, Los Angeles voters, and Los Angeles taxpayers.

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.

..."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.

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...

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: