AOC gets what she wants: [NYT] Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters

lol

 

"If I gave you 3 billion dollars and you gave me 27 billion dollars back, I'd say that's a pretty good deal." oh well. AOC for the win.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/02/...an-invest-that-3-billion-in-our-district.html

 

watch the clip and listen to Andrew Ross Sorkin

 

watch AOC at 6:00 say we can just invest that $3 billion "into the community" and watch Sorkin just shake his head in disbelief

 

lol. even CNN is harshing AOC's mellow

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/opinions/amazon-cancels-nyc-hq-avlon/index.html

Amazon decision leaves New York looking like a loser
By John Avlon
Updated 3:18 PM ET, Thu February 14, 2019
opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)This is why we can't have nice things.

Local liberal activists -- championed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- loudly protested Amazon's decision to move half its eastern hub to Long Island City ever since it was announced.

Amazon just called their bluff and is now pulling the plug on the $2.5 billion deal that would have permanently brought 25,000 high paying jobs to the heart of Queens. This isn't a win for liberal Democrats -- it's a face plant, an epic fail.

The activists were outraged that the incentives given to the world's wealthiest company were too generous. But they just screwed their community by depriving it of a transformational investment. It's a painful reminder that nobody wins when the not-in-my-backyard activist crowd stands in the way of the real progress that comes from investment.

***

After all, Amazon choosing a community could shift its fortunes overnight with the promise of sustained investment. It would have been a game changer for Baltimore, Newark or Philadelphia. But Long Island City won on the strength of New York City's resurgence and a generous $3 billion incentive package that included massive tax incentives -- which means a reduction in New York's sky-high business taxes. For what it's worth, that was less of a tax incentive package than other cities, such as Newark, were offering.

But the activist class doesn't understand that the real prize isn't tax revenue. It's local economic growth and the kind of vibrancy that occurs when local small businesses -- restaurants and shops -- start springing up in the community.

Yes, there are winners and losers when investment comes and local rents rise. But it is foolish to fetishize rusted-out communities that have little economic activity or to presume that government investment can create a vibrant local community as much as private enterprise can.

Perhaps the protesting local pols were merely hoping that their anger would translate to a better deal on the margins -- more money set aside for infrastructure, for example. But people tend to negotiate in better faith when they're not being yelled at.

So New York is left looking like a loser, out of touch and extreme. It just spurned an investment that other cities and communities were competing hard for. And Amazon announced that no other city would get second prize; they would focus their efforts on more business-friendly Virginia and Tennessee.

In the process, the right wing gets a substantive talking point to bolster their negative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez obsession. This will only reinforce their fear-fueled hyperpartisan narrative that all Democrats are anti-business proto-socialists. But every political stereotype has a kernel of truth -- or it wouldn't stick.

There's a lesson here for business beyond the fact that they don't need to be a perpetual punching bag. Income inequality in our country has become unsustainable and destabilizing. The three richest Americans control as much wealth as the bottom 160 million.

That inequality creates a destructive dynamic that is going to logically lead to more redistributionist policies. Businesses are going to need to think bigger about the connection to communities. But that conversation will be around inclusive public-private partnerships, not protesters who pretend that they can win with unilateral demands.

There should be scrutiny when big business tries to write special rules for its benefit. But local investment unleashes larger creative dynamics that improve the quality of life for the community. And that's what the activist class should be focused on.

​

 

tell that to Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio today . . .

 

Pete King's not too happy

 

25,000 jobs "vanished in a blink":

Amazon’s sudden decision to cancel its plan to build a corporate campus in Long Island City, Queens, amounted to a stunning rejection for the two often-at-odds politicians who had heralded its arrival, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the biggest win yet for emboldened left-wing progressives in New York.

The turn of events on Thursday represented a reordering of New York’s political power structure, as one of the world’s biggest companies was driven from the city by a group of rabble-rousing activists and elected officials who objected to a suite of corporate sweeteners and tax breaks.

But as this reality settled into New York, the architects of the uprising faced a backlash of their own, as 25,000 jobs — potentially remaking Long Island City as a high-tech hub — had vanished in a blink, and with them the chance to inject billions of dollars in tax revenues in the coming years.

The victory of the resurgent left also placed a new target on its back, especially with polls showing that the deal offering Amazon tax incentives remained largely popular with New Yorkers.

Some Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district bordered the Amazon site, cheered the deal’s demise, with one leading opponent calling it a “shakedown;” others, such as a Queens councilman, called it “the greatest economic loss and missed opportunity ever” for New York City.

***

The Amazon fight has exposed deep fissures within the Democratic Party between business-friendly centrism and unalloyed populism, in New York and beyond, as the party’s economic policies and positions are reconsidered, signaling the tricky path going forward into 2020.​

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/cuomo-aoc-amazon.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 

it is, kinda. Unless the whole thing was really designed to give them a foothold in each of the two most important markets in the country--NYC for financial reasons and northern Virginia/D.C. for political reasons. So it was probably NYC or Bust all along.

 

one difference between NYC and "plenty of places" is that young, educated, tech-savvy professionals want to work in NYC. That's not necessarily the case elsewhere. It's why Google and countless other companies thrive in downtown Manhattan. Amazon is surely factoring that in as well.