When Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal surrendered to corporate pressure recently and vetoed religious freedom legislation, Georgia state Sen. William Ligon complained, “Corporations should focus on creating jobs and serving their customers, instead of threatening states with economic retribution.”

Liberals and Marxists used to complain about big corporations purportedly throwing their weight around to influence politicians. Now that many CEOs are on the left regarding social issues, how many such complaints have you heard recently?

A Wall Street Journal profile of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff describes the new corporate arrogance:

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—When the North Carolina legislature passed a law designed in part to protect the right of private businesses to maintain a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms, the corporate backlash was apoplectic.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman axed plans on April 5 to open a new operations center in Charlotte, saying the law discriminated against transgender and gay residents. Deutsche Bank froze plans to add 250 jobs to its technology subsidiary in Cary, N.C.

On April 19th, the 241st anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, the Target department store chain announced a transgender policy by which male, female, and confused customers and employees may use whichever restroom (or fitting room) they choose. The American Family Association quickly responded with a “pledge to boycott Target stores” that by April 29 had gained 1 million signatures.

DUBLIN—They called it the “Celtic Tiger,” a period of prosperity between 1995 and 2008, during which everything in Ireland appeared to come up shamrocks.

According to Wikipedia, between 1995 and 2000, the long-dormant Irish economy took off, expanding by a startling 9.4 percent. There was a building boom; roads were widened to accommodate more traffic; newly confident people started buying things they had long denied themselves, including bigger and nicer houses, which, it turns out, many could not afford.

New York state passed the longest and most far-reaching family paid leave policy in the country last week. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law Monday as part of the state budget.

California legislators approved the nation’s highest statewide minimum wage—$15 an hour—on Thursday, but critics say they forgot to do their homework before taking their vote.

“In the end, this is not about politics or social justice—this is just about math,” said Mark Perry, an economic scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Small businesses don’t just have a magic pile of money somewhere to afford a 50 percent increase in their labor costs.”