While Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio regret Amazon's decision to pull out of its plan to build a new headquarters in Queens, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is ecstatic. Reporters caught her celebrating in the halls of Congress after the company's shock reversal. Last week, she was impressed with how effectively people organized against the "creeping overreach of one of the world’s biggest corporations."
JUST IN: @AOC smiling after Amazon decides to not bring new HQ to NYC. "I think it's incredible!" she told @RebeccaRKaplan.
— Bo Erickson (@BoKnowsNews) February 14, 2019
"It shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize...and they can have more say in this country than the richest man in the world.” @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/qkJvRfCFrQ
But, um, what about those thousands of jobs Amazon HQ2 would have produced?
"The district is now going to lose thousands of jobs that would have come there," a reporter quietly noted in the middle of Ocasio-Cortez's celebratory dance.
"Well one of those things is, A) we were subsidizing those jobs," she said. "The city was paying for those jobs so frankly if we were willing to give Amazon so if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to."
Secondly, the representative explained, there was "no guarantee that those jobs were for the New Yorkers that were here." This deal, she concluded, did not sufficiently "invest" in New Yorkers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was also pretty gleeful that a major corporation was facing some heat.
.@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. How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage? https://t.co/O9pz7en43B
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 14, 2019
But, as noted, these were thousands of tangible jobs. Something that did not escape Gov. Cuomo. Last week he chided some of his fellow New York lawmakers for opposing Amazon HQ2 because, he insisted, they needed the company.