How the hell AOC graduated college is beyond me.
How the hell AOC graduated college is beyond me.
Warning: The posts of this forum member may contain trigger language which may be considered offensive to some.
Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it.
RBP (02-16-2019), Teh One Who Knocks (02-16-2019)
By Frank Miles | Fox News
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested on Sunday that critics of the potential Amazon campus New York City — such as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — got the facts wrong over the money behind the tax breaks.
On Sunday morning, de Blasio responded in the affirmative when Chuck Todd of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” asked if the tax breaks offered to Amazon weren’t “money you had over here. And it was going over there.”
The Democratic mayor said: “And that $3 billion that would go back in tax incentives was only after we were getting the jobs and getting the revenue.”
“There’s no money — right,” de Blasio added.
Amazon had chosen the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens to build a $2.5 billion campus that could house 25,000 workers, in addition to new offices planned for northern Virginia.
“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,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week after the technology giant announced on Thursday that it had dropped plans to build the new headquarters in America’s largest city amid pressure from politicians and activists.
The mayor also noted to Todd that the deal could have been a way for progressive leaders to show a balance on economic issues.
“I have no problem with my fellow progressives critiquing a deal or wanting more from Amazon — I wanted more from Amazon, too,” de Blasio said. “The bottom line is, this was an example of an abuse of corporate power. They had an agreement with the people of New York City.”
He added: “They said they wanted a partnership, but the minute there were criticisms, they walked away. What does that say to working people, that a company would leave them high and dry, simply because some people raised criticism?”
The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying technology jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange in November.
De Blasio and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the $2.8 billion in tax breaks and subsidies they were offering Amazon would result in $27 billion in tax revenue. The governor and the mayor had argued that the project would spur economic growth that would pay for the $2.8 billion in state and city incentives many times over.
“We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York,” the online giant from Seattle said in a blog post announcing its withdrawal.
Cuomo lashed out at fellow New York politicians over Amazon’s change of heart, saying the project would have helped diversify the city’s economy, cement its status as an emerging hub of technology and generate money for schools, housing and transit.
“A small group (of) politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community,” he said.
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
RBP (02-18-2019)
She is a special brand of stupid
DemonGeminiX (02-20-2019), RBP (02-18-2019)
RBP (02-18-2019)
She's super smart and you're just jealous. Here's what she said about it all:
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. We need to have good jobs, and they need to come to the table as in — you know, any company that wants to come to New York needs to come to the table as an equal partner, and you look at how Google came to New York; it was not nearly as controversial as this, and I think it’s because of, they were willing to work with local communities.
She continued:
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,ooo 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, to a company that has not shown good faith to New Yorkers. And we can ask for more because we deserve more.
RBP (02-18-2019)
The government is so good at business
By Adam Shaw | Fox News
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vigorously defended her role in sinking Amazon’s move to New York City on Tuesday in the face of bipartisan criticism, claiming the deal would have been “one of the biggest giveaways in state history” and would have priced people out of the local community.
“Frankly, the knee-jerk reaction assuming that I ‘don’t understand’ how tax giveaways to corps work is disappointing,” she tweeted. “No, it’s not possible that I could come to a different conclusion. The debate *must* be over my intelligence & understanding, instead of the merits of the deal.”
The freshman Democratic New York congresswoman has faced days of criticism from normally friendly media voices and fellow Democrats over her role in Amazon's decision to pull back from building a $2.5 billion campus in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.
Amazon had cited the opposition of “a number of state and local politicians” in its decision to abandon the plans. Ocasio-Cortez and others at the local level had pointed to incentives such as a $2.5 billion in tax breaks as a reason for their opposition.
“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,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week.
Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed back on that claim on Sunday. Even as he slammed Amazon for its decision, the mayor said critics wrongly suggested that tax breaks represented money that could be spent on other things. He said it wasn’t “money you had over here. And it was going over there.”
The Democratic mayor said: “That $3 billion that would go back in tax incentives was only after we were getting the jobs and getting the revenue.”
Fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., accused those who are against the deal, including Ocasio-Cortez, of being opposed to jobs.
"It used to be that we would protest wars. Now we are protesting jobs?” she said on CNN Friday, before criticizing the economic arguments of those opposed to the Amazon move.
"I'm a progressive too, but I'm pragmatic,” she said. “We are $4 billion less than we usually get and yet we are kicking out a company that would have been projected [to pay] over 10 years roughly $27 billion in taxes.”
New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin ripped into critics of the deal, saying it was evidence of a “financial literacy epidemic” in America.
“Quick lesson: NYC wasn’t handing cash to Amazon. It was an incentive program based on job creation, producing tax revenue,” he tweeted. “There isn’t a $3 billion pile of money that can now be spent on subways or education.”
But on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez mocked critics, saying “there’s NO WAY that this deal - one of the biggest giveaways in state history - could possibly have been bad, right?
“Surely there can’t be anything wrong with suddenly announcing a massive restructuring & pricing out of a community without any advance notice or input from them,” she asked
In her list of criticisms, she included claims that Amazon was selling facial recognition tech to immigration officials, and that real-estate insiders were creating rent spikes.
“Folks handling the failed deal treated community w/condescension+disdain for their legitimate concerns,” she argued. “I warned early to any & all that surging NYC costs+failing subways are creating major political forces to be reckoned with.”
“But I don’t know what I’m talking about, right?” she quipped, with a shrugging emoji.
RBP (02-20-2019)
Good for her doubling down on her stupidity
RBP (02-20-2019)
Her profile looks like Nefertiti.
I wanted to be a Monk, but I never got the chants.
PorkChopSandwiches (02-20-2019), Teh One Who Knocks (02-20-2019)
She keeps whining about the failing subways but doesn't say anything about all the infrastructure improvements that were part of the deal.
RBP (02-20-2019), Teh One Who Knocks (02-20-2019)