{"id":177157,"date":"2019-12-08T18:50:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/08\/what-a-surprise-3\/"},"modified":"2019-12-08T18:50:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T23:50:00","slug":"what-a-surprise-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/12\/08\/what-a-surprise-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\">\n<blockquote data-lang=\"en\">\n<div dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Won\u2019t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway &#8211; *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, &amp; corporate giveaways.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BbqhXbB9MM\">https:\/\/t.co\/BbqhXbB9MM<\/a><\/div>\n<p>\u2014 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AOC\/status\/1203083485252112384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 6, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Well, what do you know, after Amazon&#8217;s subsidies were threatened, and the company took its marbles and went home, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2019\/12\/07\/we-were-proven-right-says-aoc-after-amazon-expands-new-york-without-taking-billions\">Amazon just brought its marbles back<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested the Trump administration &#8220;focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families&#8221; after news broke Friday that Amazon was expanding its presence in New York City without the state giving the company billions in tax incentives.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/newyork.cbslocal.com\/2019\/12\/06\/amazon-new-office-hudson-yards\/\">decision<\/a> by the online giant to lease 335,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan and employee 1,500 employees in the consumer and advertising departments was first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/amazon-leases-new-manhattan-office-space-less-than-a-year-after-hq2-pullout-11575671243\">reported<\/a> by the Wall Street Journal.  <\/p>\n<p>The announcement came roughly 10 months after Amazon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2019\/02\/14\/anything-possible-declares-ocasio-cortez-after-defeat-amazons-corporate-greed-new\">announced<\/a> it was ditching its widely condemned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/11\/13\/corporate-bribery-lands-amazon-hq2-queens-ocasio-cortez-says-outrage-best-describes\">plan<\/a> to locate a second headquarters site in Long Island City, Queens\u2014a plan for which New York state would have given the online giant nearly $3 billion in tax incentives. <\/p>\n<p>Ocasio-Cortez was among that plan&#8217;s most vocal critics, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2019\/12\/07\/news\/2019\/02\/15\/new-york-hq-fiasco-and-0-federal-taxes-say-critics-confirm-amazons-status-deadbeat\">asking<\/a> at the time, &#8220;Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>In a Twitter thread Saturday morning, the New York Democrat said that Amazon would now be &#8220;bringing work without the welfare.&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez also countered the Republican <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2019\/12\/07\/aoc-criticized-for-tweet-slamming-amazons-nyc-plans\/\">talking point<\/a> that the city was losing out on thousands of jobs.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What a surprise.&nbsp; Subsidies don&#8217;t make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>And Amazon dot com is the biggest welfare cheat in the nation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Won\u2019t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway &#8211; *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, &amp; corporate giveaways. Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families. https:\/\/t.co\/BbqhXbB9MM \u2014 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 6, 2019 Well, what &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[617,446,365,368,634,480],"class_list":["post-177157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-amazon","tag-budget","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-subsidies","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}