by CHQ staff
Nothing illustrates how far Left the Democratic Party has moved than the reaction of the Democrats’ most popular and media savvy politicians to the news that Amazon was abandoning plans to build part of its East Coast headquarters in the New York city of Long Island City.
The move will cause New York to lose the 25,000 jobs that were expected to be created as well as some $27 billion in tax revenue the online behemoth was expected to pay into the Empire State’s coffers over the next decade.
Yet, as our friend Peter A. List at LaborUnionReport.com reported to his readers, three of the Democrats’ most popular politicians –Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [NY-14], Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-MA], and Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-VT] seemed happy with Amazon’s decision to not create the jobs in New York.
“Amazon – one of the wealthiest companies on the planet – just walked away from billions in taxpayer bribes, all because some elected officials in New York aren’t sucking up to them enough,” Sen. Warren tweeted. ” How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?”
” 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,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez stated on Twitter.
Bernie Sanders congratulated New Yorkers for “standing up to the power of Amazon.”
To give you some idea of what a vast deviation leftward this is from the previous position of top Democrat politicians consider that former Virginia Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe made millions from a deal to build a “green” auto plant that was financed in large measure with taxpayer grants and government subsidies. Government largess to billionaires and millionaires was the Mother’s Milk of Elon Musk’s Tesla, the Democrat solar energy scam Solyndra and much of the Obama administration’s green energy program.
Generally, criticism of crony capitalist schemes like the one New York’s Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo concocted to lure Amazon’s “HQ2” to Long Island City is left to free market conservatives who deride it as “crony government,” but rarely win the argument when 25,000 jobs are on the line.
However, according to Amazon’s statement announcing the decision it was politics and politicians that killed the deal. “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,” Amazon stated. “While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, 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 we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.”
Interestingly, Nate Silver of 538 says it was not the downtrodden urban workers of Queens and the Bronx who opposed the deal. His version of the question that asks about the Amazon tax incentives (available through this tweet) found support by people in Queens and the Bronx, and opposition by people in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He also found black and Hispanic voters supported tax incentives to create jobs, but such crony government giveaways were opposed by white voters.
Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s righthand man, had a very blunt response to those politicians who engage in class warfare “driving rich people away.”
“I think it’s really stupid for a state to drive the rich people out,” Munger told CNBC’s Becky Quick.
“They’re old. They keep your hospitals busy. They don’t burden your schools, the police department, your prisons. They give a lot. Who wouldn’t want rich people?” Munger asked rhetorically.
“There are a number of places [such as] that have shot themselves in the foot; Connecticut, California, New York City,” Munger told CNBC.
Interestingly, all those states are run by Democrats of the white coastal urban elite variety.
Rush Limbaugh’s take on this, explored during a segment on Friday’s Rush Limbaugh Program, was similar to our take:
I got a couple of emails today from a friend who said, “Man, Rush, this Cortez, she’s dead! She’s dead! When 2020 comes around, she’s responsible for killing this deal with Amazon. She’s…” I said, “No. No. You’re not hearing… This isn’t 15 years ago where killing a deal like this would anger supposed beneficiaries. The supposed beneficiaries of the Amazon deal are the ones that opposed it: The average, ordinary people that were gonna work there!
I don’t care what you’ve seen about polling data — and there is a lot of polling data saying that a lot of people wanted Amazon to move in. That’s traditional. But I’m telling you, the prime beneficiaries of this — the people who might have been among those 25,000 new jobs, a lot of them — are celebrating the fact that they told a corporate titan to go to hell and get away from them. It’s a new age out there in a lot of ways…
This new breed of Millennial socialists, they don’t like at all that any of these rich corporations — a corporation owned by the richest guy in the world — gets any kind of a tax break. But she doesn’t understand it, either. This is funny.
It’s funny, but it is also scary that knee-jerk anti-capitalism and class warfare have become central tenets of the majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives. We predict the humor will wear off as Democrats move further to the Left and implement more policies to punish the successful, as they have in Connecticut, California and New York City.
