Dana Mathewson

Before assigning blame when a deal goes sour, it's always well to look on the inside. Sure, Alexandria Occasional-Cloudiness did her little victory dance when the deal was called off, despite the money that would have been made by a whole bunch of potential employees -- you'd think somebody who has a degree in economics would realize that.

But she wasn't the executioner, merely one of the scuzzy old women knitting at the foot of the guillotine. The deal was killed by good old-fashioned New York State sleazy politics, (im-)pure and simple.

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was not the main player who led Amazon to cancel plans to build a second headquarters in New York City. In truth, political malpractice by Democratic leaders on the state Senate was a much greater factor.

New Yorkers will suffer as a result.

Ocasio-Cortez and her radical business-hating minions played a supporting role in convincing Amazon to pull out of a deal that would have brought between 25,000 and 40,000 jobs to New York City with an average salary of more than $150,000.

Drawing enormous media coverage – especially for someone who’s only been in Congress for a few weeks – Ocasio-Cortez preaches an anti-capitalist dogma that put pressure on some Democratic state senators to jump on the bandwagon of the rising radical left.

But ultimately, it was a foolish decision by the newly minted Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins that convinced Amazon to takes its jobs and billions of dollars in new economic development and new tax revenue elsewhere, where they would be more appreciated.

Stewart-Cousins appointed fellow Democratic Sen. Michael Gianaris – who represents the Queens area near the planned Long Island City site for Amazon – to sit on a panel that would determine the company’s fate. In effect, Stewart-Cousins gave the hometown state legislator veto power over the entire Amazon plan.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, understand that years ago a single legislator – then-state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver – killed plans to build a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. Silver sat on a three-person panel deciding the fate of the proposed stadium.

Amazon quite clearly wanted no part of a crazy, rigged system that would force the company to do backflips for a parochial legislator who would probably never approve the company’s move to New York City under any circumstances.

There's plenty of red-meat analysis in this story; go here https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/political-malpractice-forced-amazon-out-of-nyc-and-it-wasnt-just-ocasio-cortez

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