LA Times

Many cities are pricey places to live. Acknowledging that reality, a growing number of cities have adopted higher minimum-wage standards than those set by the federal and state governments. San Francisco is on that list, as are San Jose, Seattle (where efforts are underway to raise the hourly minimum to $15), Washington (and two adjacent Maryland counties), Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M. Even in San Diego, no bastion of liberalism, the City Council is moving to put a wage hike before local voters.

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New York and Los Angeles have a lot in common. Each city suffers from income polarization, a shrinking middle class and a vast low-wage service sector. Each is heavily Democratic and is home to an effective labor-liberal political alliance. Each elected a progressive Democrat as its mayor.

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Labor Day this year finds American unions plunging into the unknown. Fast-food and retail workers in roughly 60 cities have been demonstrating for a living wage, though how exactly they will win concessions from such mega-corporations as McDonald's remains fuzzy at best. The AFL-CIO, which will convene its biennial national convention in Los Angeles this month, is considering throwing open its ranks to workers who may not actually be union members. Activity is plentiful; uncertainty is rife.

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The fight for immigration reform has landed in the lap of House Republicans, which is a bad place for it to land. Though it's hard to see a way that Republicans can retake the White House as long as they remain intent on denying citizenship to Latinos and Asians who are in the country illegally, the House Republicans seem blissfully indifferent to political consequences. By controlling just one house of Congress, they have discovered, they can bring government either to a standstill or close to it, and increasingly, that seems to be their raison d'etre.

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At first glance, two stories much in the news in Los Angeles of late would seem to have nothing to do with each other. The first concerns the fate of the Museum of Contemporary Art — whether it will affiliate with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or USC or the National Gallery in Washington — and the outsized role its primary benefactor, Eli Broad, is likely to play in the choice. The second concerns the low voter turnout in the first round of the city's mayoral election this month.

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There are many ways to illustrate the descent of the California Republican Party into oblivion. A starting point is the demographic breakdown of the members of Congress elected last week in the state.

Assuming the leaders in the few remaining close races hold their leads, there will be 38 Democrats and 15 Republicans representing California in Congress come January. Of those 38 Democrats, 18 are women, nine are Latinos, five are Asian Americans, three are African Americans, four are Jews and at least one is gay. Just 12 are white men. Of the 15 Republicans, on the other hand, all are white men — not a woman, let alone a member of a racial minority or a Jew, among them.

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