Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) may very well have scared Amazon away by riling up the anti-corporate base. The company was preparing to set up shop in Long Island City until the freshman lawmaker and other progressives upended the move by sounding off on "corporate greed."
The Job Creators Network is firing back at the representative with a new billboard reminding New Yorkers what she just cost them. It will be displayed just outside Times Square.
Photo courtesy of Job Creators Network
Ocasio-Cortez has called these thousands of jobs “scraps.” That's after now-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the wage increases and bonuses that resulted from the GOP tax cuts “crumbs.”
“Now I guess they’re the party of crumbs and scraps,” JCN President Alfredo Ortiz observed in an interview with Townhall on Wednesday.
Ortiz explained why Ocasio-Cortez's arguments against Amazon are not valid. In particular, he rebutted her point that the headquarters would've cost the city $3 billion, money which she says they could invest in education or the subway system.
"It’s not like they had a pot of $3 billion and they were writing a check taken away from different social programs to give to Amazon," Ortiz responded.
The number he saw was $27 billion in terms of the total tax revenues that would come in with Amazon. So he did some math.
"Twenty-seven billion minus $3 billion, I think that’s $24 billion," Ortiz calculated. "So that sounds like a good deal."
But there’s another stinging loss Ortiz says may hurt more.
“I’m more focused on the lost economic impact,” Ortiz said. “Literally about $12 billion…what does that translate to? It’s the deli guys, the pizza guys, the shoeshine guys, the dry cleaners. Think about all the economic activity that could have been created for small business owners who really would have been feeding that kind of influx of jobs. It’s tremendous all gone. All because she truly had no clue what she was talking about.”
Yes, Ocasio-Cortez is just one person, but she seems to have played a major role in Amazon's reversal.
"She was one of the key folks that played a role in this pullout decision," Ortiz said. "Look at the tweet she put out right after the decision she clearly took credit for it."
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. https://t.co/nyvm5vtH9k
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019
Even New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both liberal in ideology, wanted Amazon. De Blasio blamed the company for folding, but Cuomo channeled his anger at Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers who led the anti-corporate campaign.
By the way, Ortiz noted, what makes her an economics expert?
“She had one job,” Ortiz said. “She was a bartender. I don’t know how all of a sudden she becomes the expert on economic expansion and economic activity.”
It's important that folks wizen up on the economy, Ortiz cautioned, warning "we can’t just count on Twitter feeds from politicians to tell the truth."
He “can’t blame" Ocasio-Cortez, however, because maybe she never received that economic education herself.
Meanwhile, even liberal Sen. Cory Booker says Amazon is welcome in his state of New Jersey.
"We want HQ2," he said.