The New York Governor REALLY wanted Amazon to set up a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, New York….
He was excited about the thousands of jobs promised at around $150,000 a pop….
There was quiet support for the ‘get’ for New York State….
But the opposition was very vocal….
According to the inside reports though?
It wasn’t about anything except unions….
Amazon is NOT a union company….
In fact its operation in Staten Island NYC is trying to unionize , something that is NOT unique to the ‘Big Apple’…..
The word reported quietly , despite all the progressive and Ocasio-Cortez noise in Amazon CEO Bezos personally would NOT back a deal that required the company to just entertain the idea of unions in their work force…
The media being who they are have dressed the whole turndown in the cloak of progressives being happy with the loss of the move , focusing on the view that Amazon is just a big company trying to exploit local and state governments….
(Amazon paid no Federal taxes for 2018 and will receive a $129 million tax return)….
I have pointed out that Democratic lefties and Progressives tend top just look at things with a short game view….
While their points on the Amazon deal ARE valid?
Politicians who actually have to make things work in a political environment often have to make deals that involve weighing and accepting comprise…..
Cuomo has signed out his wrath also for a lone NY State Senator in his party…..Michael Gianaris, who reps the district the Amazon project would have actually benefits….
……“What happened is the greatest tragedy that I have seen since I have been in government,” the governor told WAMC’s Alan Chartock during a nearly 30-minute radio interview that consisted almost entirely of his anger about Amazon, although none of it was directed at the company.
Mr. Cuomo’s approach was markedly different from that of Mayor Bill de Blasio, another of the deal’s chief architects. Since the plan’s collapse under the fierce opposition of progressive activists and politicians, Mr. de Blasio has turned on Amazon, perhaps in preparation for a presidential bid in which those same people are likely to play a major role.
Mr. Cuomo showed no interest in currying that favor. He returned instead to one of his favorite talking points: that so-called progressives, some of his loudest critics, did not know how to govern.
“We have gotten superficial. We have gotten anecdotal,” the governor said of the anger of “certain political groups.” “Nobody understands what it really takes to make change in a governmental process.”
Of opponents’ argument that the $3 billion tax break promised to Amazon could have been spent in other ways, he said, “How ignorant.”
The tax break was contingent on $27 billion in revenue that Amazon promised to generate, not a check to the company.
Mr. Cuomo’s comments were echoed a few hours later by President Trump, who also dismissed the idea of the tax cuts as a gift to Amazon, and who called the deal’s demise “a big loss” for New York.
“It’s the kind of thinking that our country’s going to on the left, on the radical left,” Mr. Trump said.
Friday’s interview was also the first time that Mr. Cuomo singled out by name the person he blamed for Amazon’s retreat: State Senator Michael Gianaris of Queens, whom Mr. Cuomo accused of opposing the deal to avoid a primary challenge from the left.
Mr. Gianaris, whose district would have included the headquarters, was one of the deal’s most high-profile opponents — and also potentially its most powerful, after the leader of the Senate Democratic majority chose him for a state board that could have vetoed the project.
While Mr. Gianaris never promised outright to veto the deal, he sent fliers and led rallies against it, aligning himself with figures such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and activist groups including the Democratic Socialists of America….
image….Hans Pennink/AP