Torn between whether to order cookie dough or rocky road? No matter. Newly minted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez followed up yesterday’s laugh-a-minute disquisition on how New York City could spend the $3 billion it would somehow gain access to by not offering a tax break to Amazon with a scoop of example.
For those who missed it, AOC said of her “victory” over “corporate greed,” by helping to skunk the deal with Amazon:
You know, I think it’s really important that we understand that we need to invest in our economy, but we need to invest in our people, and to give away $3 billion to a company that has a history of worker exploitation that’s paying below what the cost of New York City is not acceptable for us. …
What’s great is that our economy, our local economy, is already growing. So I firmly believe that if we want to take that $3 billion dollars that we were willing to give to Amazon and invest it in our local community, we can do that. We can make those jobs. We can make 25,000 jobs. But we don’t have to give away and allow our subway system to crumble so that Amazon essentially owns a part of New York City. We can create 25,000 jobs with Mom-and-Pops; we can create 25,000 jobs with companies that are willing to come to the table, but we should not be giving away our infrastructure, our subway system, our schools, our teachers’ salaries, our firefighters’ budgets. …
Here is a video of her remarks shared with a reporter:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
New York Rep. @AOC, another critic of the Amazon HQ2 deal, hails the news that it won't come to #LIC, citing concerns about Amazon's treatment of its employees. She says Amazon should have come to the city by working with the community, like Google did. #NY1Politics pic.twitter.com/gaWe83rDM9
— Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) February 14, 2019
A number of people, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, pointed out the glaring error in Ocasio-Cortez’s thinking. In a nutshell there is no $3 billion floating around in the ether that New York can now seize and spend on infrastructure or anything else. The $3 billion was simply an amount that Amazon would have saved in taxes as an incentive to go ahead with its plans to open a satellite headquarters in New York.
A few of AOC’s critics used sarcasm to highlight her tenuous grasp on the economic reality of the Amazon kerfuffle. One of these, a Twitter user who goes by the handle Boomieleaks, brought out Ocasio-Cortez’s priceless followup to her original comments:
More like, “I’d like to order 25 pizzas. I made up this $300-off coupon + demand you take it, and if you want to talk about it at all I’ll leave.”
Queens: Where did this coupon come from? $300 is too much. Who gave this to you? This is weird.
Them: I TOLD YOU $300 OFF 25 PIZZAS https://t.co/nPfQAssYnC
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 15, 2019
In July 2018, long before her election to the House, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she was the “future of the Democratic Party.” Let’s all cross our fingers and toes that he was right.
