In today's pages: Yuppies, young voters, and the pope

Columnist Jonah Goldberg has Barack Obama pegged -- he's the yuppie candidate:

For those too young to remember, "yuppie" was shorthand for young urban professionals...who allegedly represented the collapse of '60s values and the triumph of '80s greed. Yuppies sold their souls for a BMW and a condo.

Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies -- like the Obamas.

The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to '80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she's complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League law degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family's half-million-dollars-a-year income.

UC Berkeley's Jerome Karabel says Obama's newly-mobilizing young supporters could get alienated just as easily. Author and political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson discusses whether the black community suffers because of illegal immigration. And Steve Martin plans a bad-neighborly day.

The editorial board explores why Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez unjustly targeted MTA's Richard Snoble over the region being shortchanged on bond funds. The board also says the pope will need all his diplomatic skills for his U.S. visit, and launches a new series exploring changes for California's tax system:

Who pays too much now and sees too little in return? Who enjoys unearned subsidies? What level of taxation promotes business, and what level drives it out? Did Proposition 13 ruin everything? Nonsense. Is Proposition 13 sacrosanct? Not necessarily. Is the golden California of another era an irrecoverable ideal?

Let's find out.

On the letters page, readers discuss the cost of healthcare for prison inmates. Pacific Palisades' Pepper Edmiston has an idea: "Here's what I'm going to do if I develop a catastrophic illness: rob a bank and leave my card."