LA Times

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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Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who's served on the five-member county board since 1980, is trying to persuade his colleagues to put a measure on November's ballot that would extend the number of four-year terms a supervisor can serve from three to five. L.A. County voters established supervisorial term limits by initiative in 2002. They weren't retroactive, so Antonovich's clock began to tick when he was reelected in 2004. Now, with time's winged chariot threatening to run him down in 2016, he wants voters to let him serve longer.

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The reporting and commentary on the bankruptcies of California cities over the last month haven't been journalism's finest hour. From reading the voluminous accounts of the fiscal woes of Stockton and San Bernardino, you'd think that municipal unions and feckless city officials are primarily what led these cities down the path to fiscal ruin.

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Have you ever heard anyone — anyone — rave about their phone carrier's service? Say, "Wow, that customer service rep solved my problem in no time flat"?

If you haven't, there's a reason: The companies don't compete on service. Indeed, their service contracts are designed to keep you from jumping to other carriers unless you pony up several hundred bucks.

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Are political centrists in America without a political home? Do we need a third-party presidential candidate to represent those socially progressive, fiscally austere voters who find our two parties too extreme?

There's no disputing that the Republican Party continues to move rightward at warp speed. Virtually every GOP elected official who's been in office for more than a couple of years has had to repudiate previously mainstream Republican positions (such as creating a health insurance system with an individual mandate, an idea cooked up by a right-wing think tank) to keep today's more rabid Republican activists from challenging them in party primaries or caucuses. Such longtime conservative stalwarts as Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Lugar of Indiana could lose their party's renomination this spring from just such challenges.

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