In today's pages: reform. Reform of the health care system, reform of immigration policy and reform of fire retardant laws. Let's start with health care.

The editorial board today takes a look at how to improve medical care while lowering costs in a reformed health care system, and suggests three ways to do so: invest in primary care, develop treatment standards for medical professionals and promote information technology that tracks patient care.

The board is perturbed by the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical landmark, and the businesses that are affiliated with it on Olvera Street. The site, which claims to be the location where Los Angeles was founded, has been costing the city money instead of paying for itself. The rents on the merchants' stalls along the back alley are much lower than market rate, and the board calls for the city to reset the rents and make this historical landmark cover its costs.

On the op-ed side of the pages, health care again! Phil Lebhertz, director of the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, points out that many health care programs exist for lower-income folks, but many just don't know about it:

And reform is again the word of the day, as Jeb Bush, Thomas F. McLarty III and Edward Alden broach the issue of immigration policy and the outcome of a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force they recently headed. Encouraged by President Obama's call for change of the immigration system, the three politicians propose to make it easier for some illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, reward businesses that use programs such as E-Verify to check applicants' immigration status, and align immigration policy with America's competitive interests.

Russell Long, vice president of Friends of the Earth, urges California to stop requiring that fire retardant chemicals be used on baby products. Long says the chemicals are not proven to be fire-proof, and instead could be dangerous to the infant's, and their parents', health:

Finally, columnist Gregory Rodriguez tries to find a link between the recession and the declining divorce rate. His conclusion? Our society has yet to find (or create) a marriage model that incorporates all of society's changes and the choices both men and women have:

Photo: U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden (C) speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (L), and President and CEO of Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) Carol Keehan (R) listen as Biden makes an announcement on health care at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House July 8, 2009 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

An international accord on global warming? The editorial board celebrates, even though the agreement falls far short of what's needed to make a real difference. Still, it represents a new willingness by industrialized nations to tackle the issue in a serious way. The board finds something else to celebrate in the new get-tough stance by L.A. schools chief Ramon C. Cortines, who sent out letters saying that teachers who don't perform basic job duties -- like giving required tests -- will be written up. A week later, the union suspended its boycott of the tests. Coincidence? The board thinks not. One final thing to kvell about: LAPD did a great job on security for the Michael Jackson memorial, the board cheers -- but what was going on with the rest of city government? Ordering sandwiches in from Wrightwood and posting a humiliating plea for pennies to cover the costs of the memorial? The posting didn't even work; the website went down.

It's not like the city is incapable of doing anything right. By all accounts, the Police Department and traffic officers handled their end of Tuesday's event flawlessly. But in so many other ways, City Hall bumbling makes Los Angeles look laughably low-tech, shamefully disorganized, simultaneously an easy mark and a swindler, and cheap and pathetic besides.

On the other side of the fold, former longtime legislator John Vasconcellos analyzes the ingredients that went into making the state budget crisis so bad (Hint: Proposition 13 gets dragged in by its tax-restricting toes), and offers his personal recipe for climbing out of the hole. And Miguel A. Estrada, a native of Honduras and member of the U.S. delegation to President Manuel Zelaya's 2006 inauguration, explains why Zelaya's ouster isn't the millitary coup people think. To understand that, he writes, you need to know a couple of quick things about the Hunduran constitution:

Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

As detailed in the attorney general's complaint, Zelaya is the type of leader who could cause a country to wish for a Richard Nixon. Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude -- as virtually everyone in Honduras did -- that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession.

Photo: The closing moments of the Michael Jackson memorial event at Staples Center. Credit: Mark Terrill-Pool / Getty Images

In today's Los Angeles Times editorial pages, race. Aren't we past all that? No. Even if the U.S. Supreme Court wants us to be.

But it's not clear how long this conservative court will hold off. In the Austin case, the court noted ominously that "we are now a very different Nation" and hinted that a new look at the constitutional issues surrounding race might be coming. In the New Haven case, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the court "merely postpones the evil day" when these issues will be taken up.

Your editorial writers also find themselves wondering what the folks at the Orange County Museum of Art were thinking when they flouted art-world protocol and did a quickie and quasi-secret sale of California Impressionist works.

Though OCMA officials may have meant well -- and Szakacs is a respected director who deserves credit for returning more than 3,000 works to the Laguna museum -- they have done their institution few favors with the sale. At least one museum in addition to Laguna's is miffed at not being offered a chance to outbid the mysterious buyer.

Lots to think about on the Op-Ed side today. Start with Times columnist Meghan Daum's look at Sarah Palin's resigna... -- no, wait! Come back! This is new and different! There's some good stuff here -- Daum checks out Palin through the lens of her Christian conservative Palin-fan friend, and offers some insight:

* Photo: Karen Bleier / AFP / Getty Images

The Opinion Manufacturing Division squeezes one more piece out of the Michael Jackson Farewell Tour: columnist Tim Rutten's rumination on celebrity. He contrasted Jackson's recent treatment with that of Sarah Palin (Jacko and "Caribou Barbie" in a single piece: double columnist gold!), arguing that the alleged sins of the former were washed away even as the latter was overwhelmed by the scrutiny. My own sense is that Jackson's death actually led to two competing lines of commentary about the man: he was a genius (the sentimental meme), and he was a pedophile (the "you can't libel the dead" meme), as famously enunciated by Rep. Peter King). That's not washing away sins, it more like carving them into his grave marker -- albeit underneath the "King of Pop" banner and the silhouette of Jackson hovering on his toes.

Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, columnist Doyle McManus says don't hold your breath for another economic stimulus package. And economists Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale fret about the fiscal problems that are likely to be caused by the growing federal budget deficits:

The deficits projected over the next 10 years will accelerate our arrival at a debt-to-GDP ratio that for most countries would signal impending fiscal collapse. Indeed, Britain, with a debt-to-GDP ratio not appreciably worse than ours, was just warned by Standard & Poor's that its creditworthiness might be downgraded. The United States has traditionally enjoyed a favored status in this regard, as the supplier of the dollar, the world's reserve currency, and as a perceived haven in times of financial stress. But for how long?

In the editorial stack, the board expresses chagrin about the recent return to prominence of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, whose corrupt dominance of Mexican politics in the 20th century were so damaging to that country. (And by the way, how can you be both "institutional" and "revolutionary"? By advocating change so gradual, no one notices?) It urges the new General Motors, which may emerge from bankruptcy this week, to take lessons in openness and innovation from the computer industry. And it suggests a simple solution to the funding problem at the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center in Watts, which has run afoul of a new House Appropriations Committee dictum against grants for projects named after sitting members of Congress (in this case, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles): the center should drop Waters from its name.

A name change would involve some cost and inconvenience, but the investment would qualify the jobs center for funding now and in the future, while preserving a congressional rule that sets reasonable limits on pork. When Waters retires from public office, the program can honor her permanently.

Credit: Patrick O'Connor / Special to The Times

In the same Nov. 4, 2008 election in which Barack Obama was elected president, Los Angeles voters defeated (but just barely) a $36-per-property parcel tax measure to fund youth and anti-gang programs. Measure A was spearheaded by Councilwoman Janice Hahn; as a local tax, it had to pull in two-thirds, or 66.67% of the vote to win. It got 66.27%. Times endorsements may not have the clout they once did, but I think it's safe to say that our opposition helped make a difference on this one.

Hahn wants to try again, and wants to know what it would take to win us over this time. Fair question.

The subject came up at Tuesday's City Council committee hearing, at which Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr reported on the last six months of the city's still-new Gang Reduction and Youth Development programs.

When the Times called for a "no" vote on Measure A, we said the city had not shown it was ready to use new tax money properly. We explained that Los Angeles had floundered with anti-gang efforts for years, throwing money at programs without knowing whether they were working or even defining what they were supposed to accomplish. Just months earlier, the city had scrapped L.A. Bridges and authorized the mayor to take charge of gang programs and to establish standards and evaluation methods. Carr was a newcomer. It was too early to tell whether the city had improved. Here's a snippet, in case you don't want to click on the link and wade through the while thing:

Knowing I'm a papal proclamation buff, a friend referred me to the headline of a story about Pope Benedict XVI's just-released encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" (Love in Truth).The headline read: "In Encyclical, Pope Proposes New Financial Order."

"Apparently he thinks the SEC really should regulate derivatives and he worries about mission creep over at the Fed," my friend quipped. "The pope also thinks that Sallie Mae should be regulated as a bank."

Not quite, but Benedict does argue in the encyclical, released on the even of the G-8 summit, for what conservatives will see as a form of international economic regulation, if not world government.

In typically turgid Vaticanese, the pope writes: "In our own day, the state finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial. This new context has altered the political power of states." And the solution? "Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally . . ."

Benedict is in a long tradition of popes who offered prescriptions for enlightened economy policy. In my Catholic high school, required reading included "Rerum Novarum," the 1891 encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII offered a defense of union organizing that could have been ghostwritten  by a labor activist. Leo said that "some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. . . . "

Capitalism-friendly Catholics  have always had trouble with the Vatican’s leftish line on economics and have wrestled with the problem of how they can be loyal to the pope  and opt out of this part of the program. Their discomfort must tempt liberals in the church to hurl the conservatives' favorite gibe back at them: "cafeteria Catholics."

Photo by L'Osservatore Romano Vatican Pool via Getty Images

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans in the Legislature are playing hardball with their Democratic counterparts: No new taxes, balance the budget with cuts and -- as Schwarzenegger ordered earlier today -- force state employees to take a third monthly furlough day, further reducing their pay. According to The Times' article, thousands of public employees plan to show up in Sacramento today to protest the additional pay cut.

The third imposed furlough day opens a deeper divide in one of the more drawn-out battles of this year's budgeting process: the one pitting public-employee unions and their Democratic allies in the Legislature against Schwarzenegger and state Republicans, who seemed to have rekindled their relationship after the May 19 special election. It's a topic being debated in this week's Dust-Up exchange between Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and John Tanner, executive director of SEIU Local 721, which represents tens of thousands of government employees in Los Angeles County (their third and final exchange, in which they mull ideas to preserve state services in this budget crisis without reducing pay or laying off workers, will be posted later today). In the comments board for Monday's Dust-Up installment, several readers have come down on the side of Schwarzenegger and the GOP, posting comments similar the one left by "Pete":

Photo: Service Employees International Union protest Schwarzenegger's proposed furloughs and state employee pay cuts Tuesday, June 30 (Rich Pedroncelli/AP) 

Here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division, we like to check in on how our editorials and Op-Ed articles are doing -- and where they are going -- in the blogosphere. What follows is a sampling of blogs that have picked up our opinions and generated opinions of their own.

Jerry Roberts' and Phil Trounstine's Op-Ed listing six factors that are at the root of California's inability to be governed caught the attention of several blogs this week. The Housing Chronicles Blog linked to a post about its own theories on California's detrimental changes:

Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post linked to the piece in his take on California's growing troubles and who's to blame:

On FarmPolicy.com, a blog dedicated to news about the farming industry that took particular interest in the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, linked to The Times' editorial that supported the bill. It seems the farm industry, based on the blog's long and varied list of supporters and naysayers, is quite conflicted on this issue. The Harvesting Justice blog came out slightly more strongly against the editorial's favorable position on the bill, offering this comment (which I believe is meant to be sarcastic?):

Another example of the excesses of the "greedy growers," as former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson used to say.  We poison the environment and our farmworkers and agribusiness continues to lobby for the ability to continue to do so, while getting paid subsidies not to do so.

On June 26, The Times ran an Op-Ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton -- a controversial figure in the world of diplomacy -- that encouraged the United States to support regime change in Iran. Not surprisingly, several bloggers had a lot to say in response. The Citizens blog said Bolton's argument is a veiled call for war:

The UN Dispatch blog offered a similar reaction, and added that the target of Bolton's attack was clearly the Obama administration, and even worse, offered no real solution to his goal. It was written for a partisan purpose and little else, the blog said.

Gregory Tejeda, a Chicago-area freelance writer and former UPI reporter, took issue with Zev Chafets' Op-Ed, in which Chafets argued that Latino baseball players are being singled out by the Hall of Fame for their use of steroids. Tejada said he knows just as many non-Latino ball players who were disgraced by their drug use:

And finally, Noel Sheppard on the NewsBusters blog was quite taken aback by Karen Bass's statement during an interview with Patt Morrison that Republican radio talk-show hosts were "terrorizing" their fellow Republicans in the California legislature.

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses a joint session of the state legislature in Sacramento on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Schwarzenegger urged state lawmakers to act quickly to close a $24 billion deficit that opened in the state budget because of the worst U.S. recession in half a century. Credit: Ken James/Bloomberg News

The Times editorial board focuses on the failing healthcare system in the United States, urging Congress and all parties involved to start the reform process now before it's too late. Despite sharp disagreements over some of the proposed fixes, the board notes the broad consensus about three main problem areas: rising costs, incomplete coverage and questionable quality:

On the Op-Ed side of the fold, Steven Hill proposes several ways that California can approach a constitutional convention that will potentially remake the state into California, Version 2.0. The problem, he writes, is how to choose delegates. He concludes that random selection -- as done in Canada, among other countries -- may be the best and fairest option. Gregory Rodriguez discusses the danger of urban downsizing and the Obama administration's consideration of a plan to shrink deteriorating cities by bulldozing neighborhoods:

And Susan R. Barry reflects on the beauty of a 3-D world as well as the potential benefits of 3-D movies in spotting visual defects in children.

Photo: Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee hold a rally in Washington, D.C., for their healthcare overhaul bill on June 16. Credit: Robert Giroux / Getty Images

Four months after its enactment, the economic stimulus bill that Congress passed in February is drawing fire for not injecting money into the economy as quickly as promised. One illustration is a Small Business Administration loan program funded by the bill that finally launched this week, providing a trickle of help to struggling small business. The government is presenting the program as a win-win situation for the small companies (and itself, of course), but lenders simply don’t see the incentives.

Small businesses, which collectively employ more people than large and mid-sized companies, are being hit hard in this recession. The America’s Recovery Capital Loan Program -- interest-free loans of up to $35,000 to qualifying businesses – is SBA’s answer to its constituents’ growing hardship. Private banks make the loans but the government guarantees them, minimizing risk for the banks. Win-win, right? Not exactly. The program didn't start until June 15, and the reception from lenders was cool.For example, spokesmen for two Los Angeles area banks -- one large, one small -- expressed reservations about the program because they didn't know enough about how it would work, who would benefit and how the lenders would make any money from it.

So far, most Southern California banks that are also SBA lenders have either not signed on or put a cap on the number of loans they will provide. Both the smaller Gilmore Bank that serves Los Angeles and California giant Bank of the West told me yesterday that they’re still exploring their options, including tacking on their own addenda to the SBA’s guidelines, and therefore haven’t yet agreed to participate.

Christopher Lorenzana, the public information officer for the SBA’s Santa Ana District Office, said 10 out of about 125 lending banks in the Santa Ana district have contacted the office about the program, and the office has been conducting web chats and teleconferences to provide participating lenders with more information. The SBA seems to have taken the necessary precautions to make sure the loans go to businesses with the financial wherewithal to survive the downturn. And it has made it clear that the money can be used only to lighten a company's debt load. But because borrowers don’t have to make payments on the loans for a year, lenders have to front the cost while getting little in return from Uncle Sam.

To compensate the lenders in the program, the SBA will pay interest on the loans they issue -- but at a rate that's much less than what banks usually charge. As a result, banks are being offered next to nothing by the government to make what most lenders regard as puny loans. SBA lenders want bigger loans that make banks more money, and a higher interest rate.The SBA is dangling a few carrots in front of lenders, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to persuade them there’s a benefit for more than just the borrowers and Washington.

Photo: SBA Administrator Karen Mills speaking to small business owners in Ohio earlier this month. Credit: AP Photo / Skip Peterson