Mark this on your calendar: Valentine’s Day 2019 – the day Andy Cuomo lost the presidency.
Instead of exchanging chocolates, Amazon has decided to break up, and the Cuomo pretense of economic development has come tumbling down.
He can’t even get people to like him for $3 billion.
In a thundering repudiation, the biggest of the world’s big-money progressive titans told Andy Cuomo to go eff himself today. Jeff Bezos has picked up his toys and gone home.
Amazon will not be coming to Long Island City, HQ2 is AWOL and MIA and New York is FUBAR.
And the egg is on Andy Cuomo’s face. It was his project, it was his responsibility, and he fell flat.
Which, actually, is a good thing.
See, that’s the irony of this situation. Using the taxes of waitresses and welders to underwrite the expansion of the richest corporation in the world – for the profit of the richest man in the world – was always wrong.
Not just because Amazon kaiser Jeff Bezos is rich, but because private enterprise ought to be private enterprise. Businesses that want to move or expand should pay for such moves or expansions themselves. It is never right for the taxpayer to pick up the tab.
Never.
It is wrong for “industrial development agencies” to dole out tax breaks or grants or interest-free loans to any business for any reason – no matter how many jobs or how much economic development they promise.
It’s your business, you pay for it.
Taxes are for government expenses. They are not for rewarding campaign donors or letting dynastic politicians pretend they are stimulating the economy.
That’s the principle.
Andy violated that and more as he decided that it was so important to his presidential prospects that he snag HQ2 that he was willing to outbid the nation to do so. That lust for pretended success led him to offer up seemingly limitless taxpayer treasure to lure Amazon. When the offer was completed, he was not only taxing New York workers to build a private helipad for the richest company in the world, he was paying dramatically more per job created than either Virginia or Tennessee.
He was taxing New York stores and retail workers to help the richest man in the world put them out of business.
It was a horrific, vile, treasonous deal for a governor to make.
And it was denounced by people on the right and on the left. It stunk so bad, no nose could tolerate it.
But it was Andy Cuomo’s deal, and he made it.
And it became a representative of and referendum on Cuomo the governor.
He made a promise, and keeping that promise became his duty. He signed the check, and he had to make it good.
But it bounced.
Andy Cuomo has shown the world that, when it comes to running things in New York, he is second fiddle to a lady who was a bartender last year at this time. Neighborhood activists and other ne’er-do-wells just pantsed the governor. The incompetence of the man is revealed. When the chips were down, and it really counted, he couldn’t get the job done – he couldn’t control his own state.
He has been humiliated. This was the biggest accomplishment of his administration and it has just turned to crap. It’s like the Buffalo Billion – Part 2.
And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. A man who has ruled ruthlessly and vindictively has just gotten a taste of his own medicine.
And he has been embarrassed before the world. He will forever be remembered as the guy who let Amazon get away.
And a guy America will never trust with the presidency.
Which, all in all, makes this the best Valentine’s Day ever.
We got Bezos’ hand out of our pocket, and we kicked the governor square in the ass.