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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just slapped in the face by reality
Freshman lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., may be trying to ban cows… but it looks like she’s about to eat a big serving of crow.
And she may have to save room for some humble pie for dessert!C
After being slapped in the face by the economic realities of her district, she’s doing a 180-degree turn over her blown deal with Amazon.
Ocasio-Cortez and others on the far-left cheered when the company cancelled its plan to open a massive new headquarters in New York City.
“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,” she gloated on Twitter.
Now, she’s realizing the ramifications: She just chased thousands of high-paying jobs right out of the city.
And it probably didn’t hurt that company blamed her directly.S
Amazon noted that polls supported the plan but “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.”
Ocasio-Cortez was perhaps the ringleader of those politicians as she and others claimed the deal was TOO GOOD for the company.
They have a point; New York City and New York State promised more than $3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives in exchange for the company creating some 25,000 jobs in Queens.
That’s a sweetheart deal by any stretch.
On the other hand, jobs don’t exactly grow on trees, especially in New York, which is notoriously unfriendly to businesses big and small.S
Most are desperate to LEAVE due to high taxes, poor infrastructure and a corrupt local government.
Yet in that kind of environment, the city managed to lure in Amazon in with a deal that was – despite the high price – going to bring both high-paying jobs and an estimated $28 billion in tax revenue even with all those tax breaks worked into the equation.
So now, Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left are in a panic. They’re practically BEGGING Amazon to come back to the table and negotiate.
“We’d welcome having a process, yes… but I don’t know where the talks are at this stage,” Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti told Bloomberg. “If we can do it through a community process and there’s a way for the community to actually engage and make their demands heard, I think that would have been a better way to have done that.”
Even Ocasio-Cortez herself seems to have dramatically toned down her rhetoric and opened the door for a deal.T
After being told New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Dem., was trying to bring Amazon back, the far-left lawmaker ditched her angry talking points for a more conciliatory note.
“I understand why he would want to bring them back to the negotiating table,” she said, according to Business Insider. “I think what I would just have to say about that is we need to make sure that we are not imposing things on communities, but that communities have the ability to determine for themselves what they’d like to bring in.”
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said he hopes the freshman lawmaker learned a lesson.
“You can’t respond to every problem or anything that happens in public life ideologically,” he said on Fox Business, adding that the short-term tax breaks were going to give the city a huge long-term edge in both money and prestige.
“[With the deal], New York is now going to be one of the technological high-tech capitals of the world,” he said. “The city was going to make many times more back from Amazon over the years.”
But if Ocasio-Cortez can’t undo her own damage – and fast – all the money and jobs will go to another city.
