LA Times

The departing head of the SEIU had a profound effect on California's politics and economy.

Andy Stern has arguably been the most influential non-Californian in the affairs of California in the past 15 years. The organizing director of the Service Employees International Union from 1984 through 1996, and the SEIU's president since then, Stern has shaped the state's politics and much of its economy.

During Stern's tenure atop the SEIU, the union doubled in size to roughly 2 million members, and in California it grew to nearly 700,000 members, far more than any other union in the state's history. Stern, who stunned the liberal and labor worlds by announcing his resignation last week, turned the SEIU into the nation's single biggest and most influential liberal political player. The union turned out the most precinct walkers, spent the most money and financed organizations that mobilized new immigrant voters and turned out the vote in key swing states.

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Pelosi's role in passing healthcare reform puts her in the top rank of House speakers.

Anyone who has heard Nancy Pelosi speak knows she is not a great speaker. Her favorite rhetorical device is to seize on a word and club her listeners over the head with it.

When she spoke from the floor of the House on Sunday in support of the healthcare reform bill, the word she wielded was "opportunity." Her point -- that the bill would enable Americans to leave their jobs to start up new ventures without fear of not being able to get health insurance in their new gig -- was altogether valid and perfectly good, but she insisted on repeating the word "opportunity" so many times that she left listeners (this listener, anyway) a little woozy.

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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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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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The filibuster is an affront to the most basic principles of democracy, and California's senators should take the lead in getting rid of the tactic.

It's been a maddening year for California liberals. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama carried the state by a stunning 24 points. He took office with a distinctly progressive agenda and with heavy Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. A moment of liberal breakthrough -- another 1935 or 1965 -- seemed at hand. And then . . . nothing happened.

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Los Angeles has long been a place where it's easy -- dangerously easy -- to labor in obscurity. Just ask any of the 90,000 workers employed at the immense warehouses of Ontario and Fontana, where more than half the goods unloaded at L.A. and Long Beach harbors are trucked, sorted and sent on their way to Wal-Marts, Targets, Home Depots and the like for a thousand miles around. The warehouses are a key switch-point in our new global supply chain, the place where Asian production meets American consumption.

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