Let’s start out with Bob Lonsberry [1] today who says it well…
Mark this on your calendar: Valentine’s Day 2019 – the day Andy Cuomo lost the presidency.
Instead of exchanging chocolates, Amazon has decided to break up, and the Cuomo pretense of economic development has come tumbling down.
He can’t even get people to like him for $3 billion.
In a thundering repudiation, the biggest of the world’s big-money progressive titans told Andy Cuomo to go eff himself today. Jeff Bezos has picked up his toys and gone home.
Amazon will not be coming to Long Island City, HQ2 is AWOL and MIA and New York is FUBAR.
And the egg is on Andy Cuomo’s face. It was his project, it was his responsibility, and he fell flat.
Which, actually, is a good thing.
Bob Lonsberry
See, that’s the irony of this situation. Using the taxes of waitresses and welders to underwrite the expansion of the richest corporation in the world – for the profit of the richest man in the world – was always wrong.
Not just because Amazon kaiser Jeff Bezos is rich, but because private enterprise ought to be private enterprise. Businesses that want to move or expand should pay for such moves or expansions themselves. It is never right for the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
Okay let’s say right up front that I’m sympathetic to where he’s going with this. That said however, there’s something even more telling than what Bob is talking about here.
That being, if you need to cut businesses huge tax breaks so that they’ll come and do business in your state, your taxes and the spending requiring those taxes, are too damned high to begin with.
The ironic part is that Cuomo the Lesser and his Draconian tax policies as well as the over-regulation in New York is precisely why anyone with dime one, much less the Jeff Bezos type, is leaving New York, as fast as the traffic on the Cross Bronx will let them.
There’s this, too… why is it that such tax breaks are always given to the large businesses, and never to the small ones where the majority of people work? I’ve addressed this one before of course. Big business such as Amazon or GM, etc are easy to regulate unionize and basically control. Small business, not so much… Being akin to, well, herding cats.
This once again points out what I’ve been saying for years in these spaces, Democrats are not about actually helping people, they’re about controlling people.
There are other factors in Amazon’s decision of course. I’ve already spoken to a few of them [2].
But, Bob is quite correct when he says that Cuomo has lost his presidential bid before even announcing for it.
And yes, that is an extraordinary really good thing.