Posted on 02/15/2019 1:46:56 PM PST by NoLibZone
The deal drew opposition even before it was officially announced.
The news that Amazon picked Queens as one of its coveted second headquarters in exchange for nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies broke the day before the 2018 midterm elections, and negative reactions from a newly energized left wing grew quickly in New York City.
The company, valued at $800 billion as of early February, hosted a beauty pageant of a search for what was believed to be a single headquarters, only to split its workforce and settle on two already-thriving East Coast cities. New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, out of favor with his party’s progressive wing, joked about changing his name to “Amazon,” a not-so-subtle wink and nod to selling out that sounded particularly tone-deaf to his Queens constituents. Most significantly, the deal was approved through a process that prevented city officials and residents from weighing in at all — let alone vetoing the plan.
The opposition to the project united an array of advocacy groups, elected officials and activists rallying over concerns about affordable housing, infrastructure, environmental causes and labor. Among the opponents were officials such as Ramos and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), part of a crop of liberal lawmakers who unseated centrist Democrats during the primaries last summer.
The opposition also included local chapters of the progressive groups that have grown since President Trump’s election, such as Indivisible, True Blue and the Democratic Socialists of America, the same organizers who propelled Ocasio-Cortez to a surprise victory in her race for Congress. The group held a town hall in Astoria about the deal; hundreds of people packed the venue.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
te whole article:
https://outline.com/d7LHC3
Stuff it, Jeffy.
Your propaganda rag and your Silicon Valley brethren who love censorship are largely responsible for turning this country leftwards.
Welcome to the world you helped to create. I hope you find living in it to totally suck.
A rational person would realize that if it takes a $3.5 billion tax abatement to attract all that investment, jobs and construction, then your high tax rates and byzantine regulations are stifling and preventing all sorts of productive investment. Of course the “progressive socialists” are incapable of this insight, so the decline and poverty in NYC will only worsen.
Well just imagine all those foolish people who were fighting for any piece of property to buy surrounding this new Amazon HQ and paying top dollar to get it...Bankruptcy will be order of the day soon for these fools..Teach them not to trust Leftists..
“We are thrilled. This shows that even in today’s age, with corporations like Amazon amassing such incredible political power, people standing up together for our neighborhoods and neighbors can actually win.”
Some would consider 25,000 jobs a win.
Nothing dumber than a dumb New Yorker. Idiots cost themselves 25K jobs and untold billions in tax revenues. Dumb and dumber.
I think the bullet that took the kill shot was the unions. Amazon refuses unionization.
The people who would consider 25,000 jobs a win are not representative of much of this area; it has many people who consider any work for wages as slavery. Also, most of them wouldn’t have qualified for jobs that averaged six figures; they probably would’ve been just priced out of their neighborhoods. For the city and state, it would have been great (that is why the mayor and governor supported it); for the local residents, their fear is understandable.
Last night the news featured interviews with business owners who seemed crushed; today the story is quickly fading from the news because it really was a disastrous loss for the NYC leftists.
I hate this kind of tax deal anyway.
But I remember how proud the SJWs out there in Brooklyn and Queens were years ago when they similarly defeated Walmart’s attempt to locate a store there.
God forbid the poor and working class in the City have access to the same cheap products from China that the rest of the country was loading up on!
That’s a good summation of how Bezos screwed himself. I love it when a plan comes together.
I LOVE watching Zillionaire Capitalist Leftists and Leftist pol’s cannibalize each other! If their Zombie Brainwashed masses were actually functioning thinking individuals, it would be readily apparent to them. Unfortunately, our enemy was shrewd enough to understand the the initial brainwashing would insulate them from such outrageous displays of hippocracy such as this. We celebrate, but our enemy remains unharmed and unfazed.
Well, apparently $3.5 billion is NOT ENOUGH to overcome those hurdles. New York State is the cluster that cannot un-f##@K itself.
NYS can’t afford Amazon.
It was a bad idea. It’s on Long Island, in an area where infrastructure, density, and traffic are already out of hand. They’d get a tax break and the town it’s in would get revenue. What about surrounding towns that would suffer the impact, with no tax benefits? Is that really a sensible place to put it?
“NYS can’t afford Amazon.”
NYS has been programmed, like Kalifornia, to become a 3rd World Welfare hellhole. There is no escape from this, as no dose of “reality” will awaken their inhabitants. Such is the stuff of Brainwashing. All must be burned and destroyed in order for any opportunity to re-create our divine experiment exist.
Au contraire, there is an escape. Folks can vote with their feet. And have been for decades. Which is why NYS has lost almost half its Congressional districts over the last 60 years or so.
” Is that really a sensible place to put it?”
No that’s not “sensible”. Replace a semi abandoned old warehouse district with an East Coast “Silicon Valley”? Of course not! It would not be Sustainable! It would not promote Social Justice! The crumbling old warehouses would be better than that!
It’s not in LI, it’s in Queens.
It would still affect the infrastructure, but it wouldn’t be as bad as trying to go to Farmingdale, Port Washington or the Hamptons from B’klyn or Manhattan.
NY’s stupid progressives are upset they didn’t have the chance to hand $3 billion of taxpayer money to Jeff Bezos
“It was a bad idea.”
I can see immediately that you are intimately familiar with the area. “It’s on Long Island”. Yes. On the East river directly across from the Manhattan skyline. “On Long Island”! “And the town it’s in would get revenue.” The “Town” that it’s in! That “Town” is called “Queens” a Borough of NYC! You have never even visited New York City, have you?
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