Harold Meyerson

A life spent stranded in Los Angeles traffic can nonetheless yield its epiphanies. One such moment came in November 2008, when L.A. County's beleaguered commuters voted to increase their sales tax by half a cent over the next 30 years to build an electric rail system that could speed their journeys and clean their air.

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Like earthquakes, Goldman Sachs can strike anytime. Its work can slumber undetected for years, only to erupt, unanticipated, with catastrophic consequences.

Consider: In 2001, Goldman set up some opaque financial transactions for the Greek government, the New York Times reported last month. Last year, when a new government took office, it found that Greece's debt was far greater than the old government had acknowledged, thanks to deals that allowed borrowing to be treated as currency swaps rather than as loans. It also turned out that Greece's deficit wasn't 3.7 percent of gross domestic product but 12.7 percent.

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Unless the sun rises in the West tomorrow, Thursday's health-care reform summit will yield no bipartisan concord. Congressional Republicans remain unalterably opposed to health reform; the ideas they've advanced -- which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says would insure no more than 3 million of America's more than 45 million uninsured -- barely reach the level of piddling.

But unto themselves, the Democrats have the votes to enact comprehensive reform. And -- what is new -- they finally have a plan on which the president has put his stamp.

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California's economic woes can do more damage to America's recovery than Greece's can do to Europe's. Yet which of the two may be getting a bailout?

If I were the governor of California, cursed with an insoluble budget crisis, and if I had asked the federal government for help and been rebuffed, and if I hailed from Europe and noticed that the European Union had agreed -- in principle at least -- to bail out Greece, I might be mumbling, "Vut gives?"

When Greece (a charming though relatively piddling land) comes calling in Brussels, it gets embraced (and lectured); when California (an economic powerhouse) comes calling in Washington, it gets, almost universally, the cold shoulder.

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Immigration and labor law reform needed filibuster-proof majorities to pass.

The casualty list from last night's Massachusetts disaster is long and sobering, but I don't think in the end that it will include health-care reform. Any number of Democrats may fear passing the bill for which they've already voted, but the consequences of not passing it will be far worse: a near-total collapse of turnout from the Democratic base in the November elections. (If Barney Frank truly wants to start over, as he suggested last night, then Barney Frank should be primaried.)

Besides, the Democrats don't need 60 Senate votes to complete their job. They need only win a majority in the House for the Senate bill, in conjunction with legislation, passed through the budget reconciliation process that requires just 51 Senate votes, that reflects the compromises on funding and benefits that House and Senate Democrats have already reached.

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For American labor, year one of Barack Obama's presidency has been close to an unmitigated disaster.

Labor's primary priority -- the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) -- died when the Democrats lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate. Labor's normal priority -- a functioning National Labor Relations Board -- also seems out of reach, with Republicans on Tuesday blocking the appointment of Obama nominee Craig Becker (that's why Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown scurried down to Washington last week to take his seat). Other key legislation for which labor has lobbied, including health-care reform and financial regulations, languishes in the Senate.

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