New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lambasted politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others over Amazon’s decision to leave New York City. Opponents of the deal with the tech giant had “put their own narrow political interests above their community,” he said.
“[A] small group [of] politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community — which poll after poll showed overwhelmingly supported bringing Amazon to Long Island City — the state’s economic future and the best interests of the people of this state,” Cuomo said in the statement, which did not mention Ocasio-Cortez or other lawmakers by name. “The New York State Senate has done tremendous damage. They should be held accountable for this lost economic opportunity.”
In the statement issued by his office, Gov. Cuomo mentioned that Amazon chose the Empire State because it is “the capital of the world and the best place to do business,” adding that missing out on Amazon is a lost opportunity to diversify “our economy away from real estate and Wall Street.”
Unfortunately, what this means is more Big Craphole residents will be relocating to Florida and bringing their politics with them.
But I DO agree with AOC on this particular matter:
https://theweek.com/speedreads/823590/amazon-pay-0-federal-income-taxes-second-year-row
Note that Amazon did not tell the cities that they might split their location when they went out for the gimmes. The cities bid in expectation that one ring would rule them all. And when Bezos decided to go with TWO locations, he didn’t give back half of the bennies to each city, but instead insisted on keeping them all even though each city was only getting half of what Amazon originally proposed. The Big Craphole was getting screwed, but now they are no worse off than they were before. The real question now is whether Arlington will get the whole deal, or if Bezos will try to screw them over again. Of course, with Arlington being as close as it is to the District of Corruption, Jeffy may decide to let them have the whole shebang.
Says the guy who doesn’t want and soft drinks in his state…
Hey, New Yorker’s, you can do without tainted Jeff Bezos and his horrendous working conditions.
Says the guy who told anti infanticide people to stay out of New York…
“Current Reaction”… https://goo.gl/T3d27J
Smart move to leave NYC.
China and India will continue to build new coal fired power plants. This means sea level rise will soon swamp NYC. 🙂 Ocasio’s district will be flooded. 🙂
Sarc off
Hopefully more companies and people will leave NYC.
New York City’s globalists were offering Jeff Bezos $3 billion in subsidies to come to Queens and drive most of the last of the city’s Republican voters out of the borough—after they’d coughed their share of the subsidy, obviously.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos couldn’t even convince his own minions to move to New York and pay New York taxes. Those that got word they would be moving started looking for other jobs.
The whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen, to the benefit of nobody but Jeff Bezos, who was looking forward to getting more taxpayer money to use to slander President Trump.
Americans should not be allowing their officials to sell their cities to Amazon. They should be insisting Jeff Bezos go to prison for defrauding taxpayers and destroying livelihoods, and that his firm nationalized and re-sold to good American entrepreneurs to cover his tax bill—and that the WaPo be shut down for good.
I see you’re another who doesn’t know how these subsidies work.
There is no actual money exchanging hands.
The subsidies are in the form of tax relief or deferred taxation. However, the employees do pay taxes, federal, state, and municipal. They also do things like, buy houses, cars, food, pizzas and.popcorn even, you know things that benefit communities.
Oh well so much for economics 101. It should be mandated for all students, before they are permitted to graduate, but if we do that we’ll never elect another socialist. Ever.
That is a nice trope, but have you ever bothered to look at the alleged taxes which are supposedly paid by all those “new workers”?
I thought not. Just like the geniuses in the Florida Tourism Board insist on what a great deal we get with all the tourists coming down here. Never mind that they force us to build out the infrastructure far beyond what would be required to support the normal residents, and they only pay taxes when they are here, while residents are stuck with paying for the rest of the year. And surprise, surprise! Crime rates increase when the tourists are in town. Who coulda guessed that?
Go shove your Economics 101 up your Krugman sideways. And you filthy snowbirds – stay home in your shitholes. We don’t want your kind down here!
Mark Mattis
Point 1. Employed people pay taxes. Unemployed pepple don’t.
Point 2. The employees weren’t going to be tourists.
Point 3. I don’t visit your shithole state of Florida, or for that matter any of the other 49. You think too much of yourself. It may come as a surprise to your rather dim witted mind, but there are far more interesting places to visit, where a tourist won’t get murdered or robbed by the locals.
And just as an afterthought. I don’t shop Amazon for the same reason that I no longer purchase Amarican made vehicles
I prefer quality to cheaply made products and I’m willing to pay a little extra for that quality.
Elections have consequences.
Occasional Cortex … She Guevara … claimed VICTORY tonight
AOC, AKA Alexandria Donkey-Chompers (Ace of Spades nickname) has to be a Republican plant. There is no way she can be that consistently wrong.
She’s a millennial. Get ready because they’re all like her and they’re taking over. Kate has suggested millions of times now to build a bunker in the backyard and she’s not wrong.
I much prefer the alternate nom de guerre that Ace tagged AOC with: the Breakfast Club Evita.
Amazon is not a tech company.
They are a retail purveyor of assorted stuff.
The left doesn’t want jobs, just free stuff.
Amazon is not a tech company?
Never heard of AWS (Amazon Web Services)?
Probably runs the cloud operations of 50% of US companies – its bigger than Microsoft.
To me, Amazon only sells stuff. They use more and more tech to sell more and more stuff. Like GM calling itself a tech company, no they are a car company that uses more and more tech to sell more cars.
You would be what I call wrong. They’re a gigantic tech company that runs half the internet essentially.
davis, your stupid is so thick it hurts
Did I insult you?
NME666 = A**h**e!
On the plus side, the area won’t have to fret about gentrification any more.
True dat.
From Twitter – Amazon’s plan to open an HQ in NY experienced a “late term abortion”
Apropos to a T.
One set of leftists screwed another set of leftists who were going to be screwed by a wealthy leftist.
Sit back and watch the train wreck. Don’t forget your favourite beverage/snack.
Exactly. A beautiful sight to see.
Like the boss says, blue on blue.
The thing is there is so much more of this to be had.
The left enjoys political cannibalism.
Not sure how Amazon was going to be screwing anyone.
Willing buyer, willing seller . . .
It’s just that the crazy commies don’t WANT there to be more jobs. Makes people beholden to an employer instead of a government official. In the perfect world, government – and only government – makes our lives better.
yep, they are starting to eat each other. one needs to ask them, when is job not a job? The answer is, when it is a non-productive government job.
I won’t get involved in the arguments on this thread, save to say the hard left in NYC won this battle, and the NY centre left lost. And there is agreement that the way Amazon went about this business of accepting bids is sordid. The process went on for too long, with the media — particularly the business media — getting caught up in generating “excitement” over the bidding process. As mentioned on this thread, Amazon then belatedly mentioned that there would be TWO second headquarters, which truly blackened the Amazon process.
I am an economist and a small retail investor, and have always bern suspicious of the huge, tech companies run by left-leaning oligarchs. They earn mega dollars, treat the majority of workers like c**p, pay no dividends to dhareholders, and allow the price of their shares to rise into the thousands of dollars per share without engaging in stock-splitting to allow small investors to invest. Jeff Bezos is perhaps the riches man in the world, and his disruptive tactics in the retail world has threatened the jobs of many ordinary store workers. Yet the business TV media, CNBC and BNN-Bloomberg, tread these mega-tech companies like gods. One of Donald Trump’s failings is that he hasn’t gone after these crooked monopolists like Teddy Roosevelt did.
There is a Canadian angle to this story. Toronto is quietly becoming a tech centre over the past several years. I own shares of two office and real estate REIT companies whose share prices popped up yesterday, on Amazon’s announcement. The politics of Toronto are hysterically left leaning, and I wonder how long can the tech growth, and the regentrification, last before the left-crazies in Toronto become like the left-crazies in NYC.
Good point about Toronto. I think Toronto is slowly trying to copy the Quebec model and feed off the rest of the country.
With John Tory in charge it won’t take too long. Just has to make it safer for the gang-bangers….Steve O
Toronto has long fed off the rest of the country. The headquarters of the major Canuckistanian banks are there, which are really just arm of the government, and they have long been parasitical. Banking service charges are some of the highest in the world in Canuckistan.
Toronto generates enormous amounts of wealth some of which pays for your highways.
Excellent post David, agree with everything. I’d only add that Bezos may well have nixed the move to NYC after discovering just how bad local politics really are. In the words of a writer at the NY Post:
“That is, in a culture where a signed, sealed and delivered agreement traditionally is just a starting point for the so-called community-benefits-agreement shakedown — the process where local politicians attempt to squeeze cash and other considerations from good-faith investors.
And, sure enough, local pols began circling the deal the instant it was announced — Âpiously preaching policy concerns, but clearly on the make for extracurricular advantages. It’s a tradition, don’t you know.”
That was about NYC, but it applies to a lot of cities today.
Ditto on David’s excellent post.
And yeah Exurban, other cities do the community benefits shakedown. For one: Vancouver, where I live.
Blue on Blue. Damn, missed that. Brilliant. Sounds like a song title.
Dare I state my opinion on this? OK, here goes:
Meh.
A big win for the progressive left. They mobilized against Amazon and pulled it off. Sound familiar?