New York billboard attacks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Amazon deal
The new Democrat darling, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is under attack in her home state as Amazon’s planned headquarters was quelled and a new billboard Times Square attacks AOC for the move.
“Amazon Pullout, Thanks for Nothing, AOC,” the billboard, located on 42nd street near 8th Avenue, reads.
Job Creators Network is behind the move, which will remain up until next Wednesday.
“The Amazon pullout is a perfect example of what we’ve been saying: socialism takes and capitalism creates,” Alfredo Ortiz, JCN president and CEO said in a release on Wednesday. “The economic consequences of the HQ2 termination gives America a small taste of the harm that is to come if Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-business canon comes to fruition and is made federal policy.”
“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.”
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.
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.”