Fox News host Laura Ingraham thought she was owning Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) by thanking billionaires for putting up a billboard attacking the progressive congresswoman. But AOC turned the tables and made Ingraham just another in a long line of conservatives she has humiliated.
Right-wingers have been attacking the New York lawmaker ever since Amazon canceled a fiercely opposed headquarters in New York City.
Amazon wanted $2.5 billion of taxpayer subsidies to build a base there along with $500 million of capital grants even though the company is worth $1 trillion and its CEO Jeff Bezos is worth over $100 billion.
In response to outrage over the deal, Amazon canceled it. And Republicans have been blaming Ocasio-Cortez.
And that continued on Wednesday when Ingraham posted an image of a billboard that recently went up in Times Square that attacked the freshman lawmaker for alleged economic losses suffered by the state because the deal fell through.
Check out the sign in Times Sq.! Thanks to @JobCreatorsUSA! pic.twitter.com/iIN0DTo8r2
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) February 20, 2019
The problem is that the billboard was funded by right-wing billionaires, which Ocasio-Cortez pointed out while mocking Ingraham.
Few things effectively communicate the power we’ve built in fighting dark money & anti-worker policies like billionaire-funded groups blowing tons of cash on wack billboards (this one is funded by the Mercers).
(PS fact that it’s in Times Sq tells you this isn’t for/by NYers.) https://t.co/B4QTPi1r2k
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 21, 2019
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 21, 2019
Billionaires paying to put up anti-progressive propaganda in Times Square is like the obscenely rich version of the scene where Michael Scott points to the Bubba Gump and saying “This is it, this is the heart of civilization, right here.” ? https://t.co/NJXggcSZJv
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 21, 2019
She even posted a video featuring the scene she mentioned.
https://t.co/qUuTGDJ7yl had to
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 21, 2019
The fact is that Amazon’s presence did not necessarily guarantee 25,000 jobs.
As Forbes pointed out in a recent analysis of the deal, it would not have really benefited the region.
The planned 25,000 jobs were to come over 10 years, meaning an annual 2,500. Nothing to dismiss as unimportant, but the New York City region already is adding more than 28 times that many jobs a year. No one stated whether the $150,000 average salary included cost of benefits, which would bring the number closer to $100,000. Given that is an average and that many of the positions were for developers, who command high salaries, quite a few of the jobs would probably have modest pay for the region, and there are already many high-tech jobs in New York. Given the difficulty many companies claim hiring people, having more jobs might mean more positions that don’t get filled, so little benefit to the region.
Furthermore, Amazon would have caused rent to skyrocket and would have put great strain on the mass transit system, which would have required taxpayers to cough up billions of dollars more to improve it to handle the increased traffic. And so, the cons of the deal clearly outweighed any possible pros.
Taxpayers would have been on the hook for corporate subsidies and capital grants, high rent, public transportation costs and fewer jobs per year than ones being added. Not to mention the various small businesses that would have gone out of business trying to compete with a corporate giant.
In the end, it just wasn’t a good deal for New York and Ocasio-Cortez understood that, which is why she opposed it.
One has to wonder what billionaires stood to gain from the Amazon deal at the people’s expense, and their behavior makes it clear that we need to enact higher taxes to make them pay their fair share. It’s time to put an end to their harmful greed.
Featured Image: Screenshot
