Well those protests were silly. Yelling at counter works at a store? What is that suppose to prove? I wouldn't protest Bezo either.
The ones you should protest is NYC mayor who agreed to the terms.
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@Rocket J Squrriel
And the Governor. Mensa candidates one and all.
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Stop yer belly achin'
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Protesting Amazon will amount to a rounding error on its bottom line.
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Fix the subway. No Amazon.Simple.
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NYC will benefit from having Amazon HQ2 in Queens. But Cuomo is setting a very bad precedent by using a 'Project Plan' to over-ride NYC's zoning laws.
Bezos is watching all these protests and I'm sure other cities are in contact with Amazon to emphasize the fact that it's starting to look like growing numbers of New Yorkers don't want Amazon in the city.
Bezos also needs to understand before he finalizes this deal that deBlasio doesn't really believe in private property rights:
Mayor deBlasio:
"What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/bill-de-blasio-in-conversation.html
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@NYC Taxpayer, so far Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have been valuable and pretty fierce IMHO as checks upon "Washington," and that's (I think) outweighed the problem of needing someone in government to fiercely check Cuomo and de Blasio. :(
HOLIDAY MADNESS
Dec. 8--The feast of the Immaculate Conception (L'Immacolata Concezione) is an Italian public holiday. -- Wikipedia
This gets car owners' okay
As they sing out hurray, hurray
And celebrate their way:
"It's a parking holiday!"
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@Leon Freilich December 8th was a day off for us back in my Catholic grade school days. We always liked it when it fell on a Friday or a Monday. But now I don't remember if we got the day off in my Catholic High School with it's stricter adherence to NY state rules regarding number of school days per year.
To Leon, I'm remembering holiday season 2016, between election and inauguration, that Leon's holiday wit stayed merry and bright while I certainly got acerbic and worried along with the news in general. Leon (same letters as "Noel" by the way) kept 2016 holiday mornings feeling happier than they were; of course, then Inauguration 2017 came and Trump had Spicer angrily pretend about the crowd size and it was "hold on tight for dear life, America, here we go!" - but Dec. 2016 had a reliable source of merriment. No pressure this year, Leon, but thank you again. [I have no clue how poets do what they do without a tune or meter as a guide; when I have to write a poem, I always make up a tune, good or bad, or I am lost, even when I lived in Brooklyn!!]
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Chase to the left of me, AmEx to the right - I know Hannukah gifts technically can get there any time in the 8 days, but the really young kids only seem to register your love based on what they get the first night. I’ll study up more on the protests later, because the shipping times seem to be in an English I can't follow. There's no box to check for "Get it there by this Friday."
Tune of Eye of the Tiger
Rising up, Channukah week
Sneaking in, it’s this Sunday
So darn early and I try not to freak
They’ll be miffed if their gift won’t arrive
So many years, I bought stuff too fast
Buying on Cyber Monday
I was convinced that supplies wouldn’t last
And the hype keeps the spirit alive.
It’s the high of the Cyber
It’s the thrill of the site
Spending smart with the power of my Visa
With a click, every fiber
Of my being feels right!
Won’t let protests deny me the high
Of the Cyber
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I checked with the parents of four cousins as to the children's current interests. Turns out everybody is very interested in Amazon gift cards, and the parents love them too because they can use them to practice budgeting and handling money (buy one big thing at once? or maybe a small toy now and see what you still want later?). It looks like I win by giving Amazon too, because I'll get a photo of each child with the gift they choose. (And I just got a reminder this afternoon that Disney store cards can be for a Star Wars-loving boy and a Princess-loving girl - obvious now that I see it, but I hadn't thought of it. And no one feels like you spent less on anyone else!)
I'd like to know why my local paper didn't cover a gas explosion on the upper west side?
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@Heidi Snellenburg
It did: https://nypost.com/2018/11/25/gas-line-explodes-inside-uws-equinox-gym/
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Amazon gets a $2 billion tax cut and gives $1.5 million for the subway. Laughable. I used to work in LIC. The subway and buses are pathetic there. Always late or crowded or both. Dysfunctional all around. The MTA Byford didn't come clean about that when he spoke about this deal. Amazon can't come clean on this either? Where's ethics, responsibility to ordinary people who have to use the subway. Try taking the L train at 8:30 in the morning and get back to me on this.
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I’ve been in Long Island city for four years now and the whole time I’ve been saying it’s getting better and better every year. I think it’s great that Amazon is coming. The area where it’s set to be built is a dump filled with burned out warehouses and parking lots for taxi cabs.
My only issue is the helipad. Why does amazon need one? NYC is filled with Fortune 500 companies and as far as I know they don’t get private helipads. Moreover,It’s going to be close to Gantry State Park which is one of the best parts of Long Island city. I would be pretty furious if I went there to go relax and was bombarded with the incessant thundering of helicopters.
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@Zack MD: Well of course Amazon *needs* a helipad - do you think they want their special snowflake VIP's stuck in the same lousy traffic that the rest of us will be saddled with?
This whole Amazon deal stinks, and so do Cuomo and De Blasio for giving away BILLIONS of dollars to a company that should pay us to be here, AND for hiding the details from all taxpaying New Yorkers.
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@nc11. Many things in life require finding common ground and compromise. Landing Amazon is a big deal and was by no means a forgone conclusion. The bet is that at the end of the day, it will pay off big time in creating jobs, providing job training, attracting talent and driving the local economy. I am not in a position to second guess Cuomo and DiBlasio on the economics of this calculus. And, I suspect, neither are you, based on the information that is now public. It would be helpful to see the numbers, of course. I presume that if the projections did not make sense, there would have been no deal. However, more transparency, the better.
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@Jeffrey Zuckerman: I DON'T presume what you presume, specifically that "if the projections did not make sense, there would have been no deal."
Cuomo and De Blasio act at the behest of lobbyists, and that's not news. But beyond that, there are FAR TOO MANY unanswered questions about this give-away deal to Amazon.
I oppose this entire deal b/c it smells to high heaven. I believe that all New Yorkers deserve to get full information about ALL the details of this. Frankly, I want to know whose pockets are getting lined by this sweetheart deal.
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Agreed with L. To assume that of DeBlsio and Cuomo is awfully naive. And the issue with the Amazon deal is that there *was* no compromise made in regards to transportation/infrastructure — Adding people and removing improvement funds (by way of the tax breaks) is doubly a loss for infrastructure, and fully a gain for Amazon. With all respect, I also find the belief that congestion isn’t an issue since it already exists to be absurd. Congestion will get worse. That is, of course, the very definition of it. I’m dumbfounded that people believe the current subway systems can support 25,000 new jobs every day. They are overcrowded as is. This will, it should go without saying, only cost the city more money. And does anyone really believe Amazon will step up for us? Have you seen how they’ve harmed to Seattle?
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@paul. Completely agree. New York stepped up for Amazon. Now is the time for Amazon to step up for New Yorkers.
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Publish the 10 financial projections, then let's decide if Amazon coming here is good or bad for the city.
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@nc11. Thanks for making my point. We basically agree. The congestion is already here. So is a transit system in desperate need of updating. It is not an either or situation. Let’s get the jobs. New York is going to need to to update its subways and find new ways to deal with traffic congestion. Maybe A combination of congestion pricing, ferry service, and most certainly, improved maintenance of public transport systems. Let’s get Amazon, which will reap many benefits, to play a constructive role.
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Amazon moving its headquarters to New York is a major plus for the New York economy. All the negatives - the trucks, the deliveries, the congestion - are already here. Now let’s get the jobs and the spending that will fuel the economy. Give credit where it is due. Cuomo and DiBlasio did what was needed to seal this deal. Let’s work to improve it where possible, not to kill it.
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@Jeffrey Zuckerman While saying that the congestion is "already here" is itself a flawed premise (since Amazon is not replacing an existing business/industry, but rather settling on space that is currently largely sparse, and therefore will be be adding *more* of everything to the mix, a.k.a. the very concept of congestion itself), I'm not so sure this is an accurate assessment of what Amazon's headquarters actually is. Amazon HQ2 doesn't mean trucks & deliveries; that's something you would see at an Amazon distribution center, which already exist across the country, and of which one is opening in Woodside. This is Amazon Inc, not just Amazon.com -- a retail & cloud computing company whose subsidiaries include publishing, film/television production studio, and smart technology development. It will "fuel" only a very specific part of the economy -- the highest echelons of it, while the aforementioned increased congestion in LIC will only further harm the subway system that is already failing fast & exponentially. Of course, the funds that could have been used to improve this subway are instead lost in Amazon's $1.2b tax cut, an incentive in which the company will be kicking back only a *small portion* of it's money on only a *portion* of its properties to MTA infrastructure improvements.
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@Jeffrey Zuckerman-Agreed. Although Cuomo did not give the fort away like red state Governors like Wisc. did ie turn Foxcomm into a corporate welfare client, they could have down better.
Concentrate now on Amazon giving back, not NYS giving more.
Make sure they don't renege on agreements, hold them to every clause and force them to address adverse issues they will come up.
We don't want a FoxxComm welfare state but also don't want the abandoned look the LIC had before it was developed.
I know. I lived around there.
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@nc11
So you're recommending we forego the revenue?
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