Amazon to New York City fuhgettaboutit.

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ASPartOfMe
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14 Feb 2019, 6:58 pm

AMAZON CANCELS NEW YORK HQ2

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Amazon has canceled its HQ2 project for New York City, the company announced on Thursday in a blog post.

"After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens," the company wrote.

The company had announced back in November that it would bring 25,000 jobs to a large campus in a western section of Queens' Long Island City neighborhood. Now, the program has been scrapped.

Amazon said it made the decision because "a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project."

Local opposition to the deal sprang up quickly after the deal was announced. The New York City Council, specifically its speaker, Corey Johnson, and Jimmy Van Bramer — the member representing the district where HQ2 would have been — were outwardly critical about the company's decision to accept tax breaks from the state to the tune of $3 billion and circumvent the land-use process.

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Amazon's HQ2 deal with New York is officially off — and it means that the state and city will lose out on $27.5 billion in tax revenue


As Amazon drops New York City project, progressives claim a major coup
Quote:
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time on Thursday in calling Amazon’s decision to scrap plans to build a major New York outpost with nearly $3 billion in city and state incentives a big victory for progressive politicians.

Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

“They have shown sufficient power to back off the largest corporation in the world,” Douglas Muzzio, a professor at Baruch College in New York and an expert on city politics and public opinion. “They killed Amazon, the biggest beast around.”

Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has made anti-corporate criticism a key tenet of her 2020 presidential campaign, called the subsidies “billions in taxpayer bribes” and asked on Twitter, “How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?”

Amazon had already been a favored target for some left-wing politicians due to its dominance of online shopping and reputation for imposing difficult work conditions on warehouse workers. The company has defended its practices and last year raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than twice the federally mandated level.

But since Amazon announced plans for its so-called HQ2 in 2017 and began soliciting bids from hundreds of U.S. cities, the political environment in both New York and the country has shifted significantly.

Democratic leaders in the state Senate then nominated Michael Gianaris, whose district includes the proposed Long Island City Amazon site, to a little-known state board that could have vetoed the project.

Gianaris, a Democrat, was a vocal critic of the billions in subsidies offered to Amazon despite initially calling on the company to consider New York.

“This was a shakedown, pure and simple,” Gianaris told reporters on Thursday.

Critics of the deal questioned why the third-most valuable company in the United States – with a chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who ranks as the world’s wealthiest man – required that level of public funding, including tax breaks and grant money.

Amazon also faced anti-gentrification sentiment in a city where income inequality and a lack of affordable housing have become major concerns. Some labor leaders opposed the deal unless Amazon agreed not to oppose unionization efforts, a position that the company representatives rejected.

till, public polling suggested the deal, which Amazon said would eventually create at least 25,000 jobs, was fairly popular among New Yorkers.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, an enthusiastic backer of the project, faced outrage from left-wing activists who questioned how he could defend the subsidies while staying true to his liberal principles.

But he and Governor Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat who spent the last year burnishing his own progressive bona fides while running for another term, had argued that the deal’s job creation benefits far outweighed any cost.

In a statement, Cuomo cast blame on a “small group of politicians” he accused of putting political interests ahead of their constituents’ needs.

Amazon ditches New York City expansion plan
De Blasio, by contrast, put the blame on Amazon for refusing to address local concerns.

“We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world,” he said in a statement. “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity.”


Amazon to New York: Drop dead
Quote:
Amazon thought it had locked down support for a new headquarters in Queens, New York by wooing a feuding mayor and governor. What it failed to anticipate was how the neighborhood’s politics would sweep it up in the growing split between establishment Democrats and the party’s insurgent progressive wing.

But Amazon wasn't prepared for the groundswell of opposition by progressives, who criticized the idea of giving $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies to one of the world’s biggest companies, headed by the world’s wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos. They also worried that Amazon’s arrival would burden local transit and worsen the scarcity of affordable housing.

"I do think Amazon misread New York. They assumed their consumer popularity translated into a free ticket to gentrify and instead got their lunch handed to them," said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonpartisan watchdog group that promotes accountability in economic development.

The anti-corporate dynamic, always an undercurrent in union-friendly New York City, was supercharged with the phenomenon of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her social media-fueled rise. Her primary win last year in a Queens-Bronx district upended local party bosses and gave new heft to progressive causes in New York and across the country.

Any notions Amazon had of a warm welcome after its November announcement of the New York headquarters were swiftly disabused by a months of protests led by unions and their elected allies. But the low point was a recent City Council hearing where Amazon officials said they would not remain neutral should workers attempt to unionize, a position that sparked outrage from council members.

"This is a city that was built on unions, a city that loves unions," Council Speaker Corey Johnson told Amazon executive Brian Huseman. "This is not a way to come to our city."

"Shame on you," said Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Amazon HQ2 was that it represented a partnership between Cuomo and de Blasio after years of feuding between the politicians with national ambitions. The deal departed from the anti-corporate image de Blasio has fostered as mayor, and he faced bitter criticism from local leaders on his left for siding with the tech giant — and with the governor — while cutting out the city council.

For New York, the episode was a lesson in Amazon’s hardball tactics, which critics have described as uncompromising. In a statement Thursday, the company said "the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term."

Amazon has had a much smoother ride in Virginia, despite the state's ongoing political leadership crisis. Gov. Ralph Northam this month quietly signed a bill providing tax incentives for the company's headquarters, even as he was embroiled in a scandal over a blackface photo on the personal page of his medical school yearbook.


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Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 14 Feb 2019, 7:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Prometheus18
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14 Feb 2019, 7:03 pm

Quote:
Amazon said it made the decision because "a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project."


In short, decent men who refused to prostitute themselves out to a corrupt, amoral billionaire like Bezos and aid him in his neo-feudal agenda.



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14 Feb 2019, 7:10 pm

Was a terrible deal to start, good for them


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Prometheus18
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14 Feb 2019, 7:18 pm

Good on Cortez and the progressives. This gives hope for the future.