Los Angeles Times

Maryland police, claiming that Liberian college student Nelson Walker wasn't wearing a seat belt, dismantled his car searching for drugs; hours later, having found none, they handed him a screwdriver, saying, "You're going to need this." For two hours, sans explanation, Florida police held up a vacationing black family while they dismantled their vehicle, searched their luggage and brought in a K-9 unit.

Behind the Federal Reserve Board's interest-rate deliberations and months of sluggish stock-market performance lies a nagging question: Why did U.S. productivity, the nation's economic output per labor hour, suddenly accelerate in 1995 after decades of stagnation?

While former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer has begun speaking about the importance of educating "the new face of America," his appointment last week as L.A.

Rather than cause for celebrating the transformation of a former authoritarian ally into a vibrant democracy, the inauguration of Chen Shui-bian as Taiwan's new president was, in general, greeted indifferently in the United States. During Taiwan's presidential campaign, China railed against Chen's candidacy and threatened to use military force against Taiwan if he continued to pursue a path toward Taiwanese independence.

Although Los Angeles has always advertised itself as a place of new beginnings for migrants, it has never properly prided itself on being an immigrant city. One reason is that, until the 1960s, most new arrivals were native-born Americans from the Midwest, East and South. Neither rich nor poor, most were old-stock, middle-class Americans drawn to Southern California's image as a sun-drenched, suburban paradise.

It was no surprise that a House committee extended the federal ban on Internet taxes last week, ahead of schedule and with little debate. By concentrating wealth in the hands of the richest, most heavily taxed Americans, the new economy is pouring money into federal and state coffers as never before.

Six months ago, the city's Latino political elite was under fire for its reputedly ethnocentric defense of Supt. Ruben Zacarias in his tug of war with the L.A. school board. As the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart scandal unfolds, these same officials are being criticized for not being ethnocentric enough.

Reports that 88% of California's 6,700 elementary, middle and high schools failed to meet the state's Academic Performance Index (API) goals stirred new calls for reform. Yet, the results conceal even more troubling issues. As the "new economy" spawns unprecedented disparities in wealth, social class increasingly determines academic achievement.

Ever since it entered the Union in 1850, California has distinguished itself from the rest of America. One-hundred years later, Carey McWilliams called the Golden State "the great exception." Its population has always been largely composed of immigrants from around the world, who together created a highly dynamic and nontraditional state culture.

According to many observers, the United States, under the leadership of the Clinton administration, has replaced Japan as the enemy of free trade in the world. In their view, the administration destroyed the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle by refusing to discuss amending its anti-dumping laws, which aim to counter unfairly priced imports, and has slapped innocent Japanese steel imports with prohibitive duties.