Southern California lost its last aerospace company on Monday:
In a blow to Southern California, Northrop Grumman Corp. said it would relocate its headquarters from Los Angeles — leaving the region that gave birth to the aerospace industry without a single major military contractor based here.
….Northrop’s announcement was seen as a bitter pill for the much-battered regional economy, which has suffered a series of high-profile corporate defections in recent years.
[Etc.]
This is a drag, but I really think they’re overplaying the “bitter pill” angle here. It’s only the corporate staff, after all, and I think everyone has known this was coming for ages. If you’re an aerospace company, the people you need to bribe lobby are all in Washington DC, and who wants to spend their entire lives flying back and forth to DC just to schmooze and eat lunch with congressional aides and Air Force colonels? On the list of bad things to happen to California recently, this barely even cracks the top 100.
