L.A. Weekly

From "The Liberal Hour"

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It's an exaggeration to say that liberals ever controlled the Democratic Party, but by any measure, holding them down to a single hour's speechifying has to mark a new low....

Out of the Frying Pan

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

For those of you who follow such things, the reports of my impending severance from and by the Weekly are not exaggerated. For readers who developed a chemical dependency on me during the past 17 years in which I've been writing this column for the Weekly, I do appear every Wednesday on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. My work can also be found in the pages of The American Prospect (www.prospect.org), the Washington-based liberal monthly where I've worked for the past five years and where I'm taking the helm next week as executive editor. And all my work is glumped gloriously together on my own Web site, www.haroldmeyerson.com. (Note to editors: Yeah, it's not a word. What's it to you?)

Our Town, Our Paper

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

'TIS THE FINAL COLUMN, the last Powerlines, and I'd like to use it to think back and forward about the city I've reported on and marveled at and hectored and prodded for nearly two decades.

An Autumn's Long Nap

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

PHIL ANGELIDES IS SO LEAN that it's hard to find a physical description of the Democratic gubernatorial nominee that doesn't include the word "gangly." With just under seven weeks until Election Day, he seems to be made of lead, a dead weight threatening to drag down other worthy Democrats and ballot measures to an undeserved defeat.

Y'all Don't Come Back

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

ALL THE HOO-HA about immigration notwithstanding, America remains more a white working-class nation than anything else. Those white Americans may no longer be laboring on farms or in factories, and the national median skin color is clearly growing darker, but, as public-opinion analyst Ruy Teixeira and sociologist Joel Rogers have demonstrated, working-class whites in this country still outnumber any other class or race.

Reversing Brain Waves

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

PERVERSE THOUGH IT MAY SOUND, the one thing that this year's gubernatorial race has confirmed is that to become, or remain, governor of California, you have to come across as a Democrat. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a Democrat, of course, but he currently plays one on television, and, as in almost all of his films, while his performance isn't really stellar, the production values may carry the day.

L.A.'s Red

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

WHEN THE POSITION OF CHAIRMAN of the Los Angeles Communist Party came open in the late 1940s, the two obvious candidates were Dorothy Healey, then the party's organizational secretary, and Ben Dobbs, the party's labor secretary. Both were smart and affable and had charisma to burn. They were also the best of friends, so - as Dorothy related the story in California Red, her quasi-autobiography cowritten with historian Maurice Isserman - they flipped a coin and it came up on the Dorothy-becomes-chairman side.

The Greatest Good for the Smallest Number

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

IF THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS HAS a guiding principle, it must be that the government that governs least governs worst.

Democratic Elites Rethink

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

HERE IN WASHINGTON, Democrats are engaged in a frenzy of rethinking. Two new magazines have been unveiled this week (in one of which - full disclosure here - I wrote a piece on the nonexistence of Democratic policy toward offshoring in the age of globalization). Major conferences abound. Think tanks are adding staff. To be sure, much of the rethinking amounts to reaffirming support for old ideas that are still good and necessary (such as raising the minimum wage) or to stating a problem for which Democrats don't yet have a solution (such as offshoring in the age of globalization, for which, in fairness, no political tendency in the world has a solution). But even if all this activity amounts to no more than what Kant would have called a Prolegomenon To All Future Democratic Rethinking, it has, at least, reached fever pitch.

Downwardly Mo

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

LIKE ANY MAJOR METROPOLIS, Los Angeles has its normal sea of troubles, but there are two fundamental problems that really define the city and the challenges it confronts. The first, with which the Weekly has dealt extensively of late, is the quality of its air. The second, which may be even harder to fix, is the quality of its economy. Over the past quarter century, Los Angeles has been downwardly mobile, with its middle class shrinking to a fraction of its former size. Both these problems - air quality and, even more, the vanishing middle - afflict the nation generally. But Los Angeles has opened such a wide lead on every other city that we're not just quantitatively different; we're qualitatively in a class by ourselves.