Steven Malanga is City Journal’s senior editor and a Manhattan Institute senior fellow. He is author of Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer, about the bankrupting of state and local governments by a new political powerhouse led by public-sector unions. He writes about the intersection of urban economies, business communities, and public policy.
Republicans began their march to dominance in statehouses around the country shortly after Barack Obama won the presidency. Running anti-Obama candidates, the GOP captured a net of eight governors’ mansions between 2009 and 2013, giving the party 29 in all. In 24 of those states, the GOP also controlled the legislature. Some of those governors ruled boldly...
On October 24th I observed in the WSJ that private and public unions were increasingly in conflict this election season, particularly as left-leaning public union leaders align with members of the Democratic coalition like environmentalists, whose no-growth economic policies cost blue-collar workers jobs. One example I didn’t discuss in that piece is a campaign transpiring in California,...
California loves Tesla, the Los Angeles Times informs us, but the electric car company is ambivalent about the Golden State. In a blow to efforts to stem manufacturing job loss in California, the car company, based in Palo Alto, said it would definitely not build a new $5 billion “gigafactory” employing up to 6,500 workers in its...
We’ve written before about the efforts of Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lure California businesses to his state, which elicited a scatological response from Gov. Jerry Brown. Relocation expert Joseph Vranich, who has done such a good jobassembling the list of California firms leaving the state, has a revealing column chronicling a further list of governors poaching in the Golden...