Plucking Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory
Contrary to the political ethos on today’s college campuses, electing leftist politicians does have consequences. Leaving aside such blatant but far away examples such as Venezuela or North Korea, we can find examples of bad consequences MUCH closer to home. In fact, we’ll have to look no farther than the City of New York.
The two leftist provocateurs I’m thinking of are, of course, the mayor of New York City, Bill De Blasio (whose REAL NAME is Warren Wilhelm, Jr., by the way) and the newly elected Congresswoman from New York’s 14th District (parts of the Bronx and Queens), Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a SELF DESCRIBED socialist.
Ms.Ocasio-Cortez has recently proposed radical environmentally focused legislation, called, rather optimistically, the “Green New Deal” which called for, among other things, a near ban on air travel in the United States as well as disincentives to EAT BEEF (cows produce green house gasses, you see), as well as many other outlandish maxims. Because her proposal was recently voted down in the Senate by the downright embarrassing vote of 57 nays to ZERO yays (not a SINGLE member of her own party voted for it), and because recent national polling showed her approval rating to be down to TWENTY THREE PERCENT, the reader might feel that we can breathe a bit easier about her and her agenda. Neither the Senate nor our populace has, apparently, much patience for her crackpot socialist legislation. So, you might think that, with this clearcut rebuff, her ability to cause damage has been reigned in a bit…. NOT SO, however!
Just consider the COLOSSAL debacle of what happened recently to Amazon Corporation’s plans for building a second headquarters in New York City. Several months ago, a deal had been worked out between New York State, New York City and the Amazon Corporation to locate it’s headquarters in Long Island City in the borough of Queens. The deal required 3 billion dollars of tax incentives as well as some needed transportation upgrades. Over a ten year period, the project would have brought in THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS to the city and state of New York, netting a gain of TWENTY SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who has been proving herself not to be the sharpest tool in the shed, led the charge AGAINST the project that would have dramatically benefited the borough that SHE REPRESENTS. A politician fighting AGAINST a windfall of 27 billion dollars for their own district is a most novel and bizarre phenomenon! I can only surmise that her “position” on the matter MUST have sprung from the deep well of antipathy that leftists have always had against big corporations, and Amazon is, without a doubt, a biggie. None-the-less it would have been incumbent on the Congresswoman representing Queens to look past her Marxist prejudices and support a deal that promised such windfall prosperity to her district. Unfortunately for her constituents, this she was not able to do. Together with a number of “community leaders” she managed to stir up quite a bit of “pushback” against the deal. During that period, there were so many articles featuring this “pushback” in print and in broadcast media, you would have thought that what Amazon had really planned to do, in the heart of Queens, was to store NUCLEAR WASTE.
For several weeks, Amazon’s management ignored the “flack”, expecting, I’m sure, that the fracas would die down, and, once that happened, the project would go forward and would be a victory for both Amazon AND New York City. But just when this was about to happen, ANOTHER leftist, New York City’s mayor Bill DeBlasio, stepped in and was able to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory. First, the mayor began talking publicly about how NYC needed to “sweeten the deal” (for NYC, NOT Amazon), and Amazon execs began to get nervous. His Honor then delivered the coup de grâce, when he let it be known that Amazon’s non union policy would not be tolerated in New York. Although Amazon provides very good salaries for its employees as well as generous benefits, its workers are not unionized. (Amazon’s work force is aware that they’ve got it pretty good with the company, but pretty good was, apparently, not good enough for Mr. DeBlasio.) In an ill timed screed, he explained to Amazon that New York City was “a union town” and that Amazon could expect severe pressure from City Hall to unionize. Amazon’s simple response to this threat was: “See ya, Bill! Hasta la vista, baby! We’re headed to Ver Gin I A!”
NICE WORK, De Blasio!… NICE WORK, Ocasio-Cortez!… twenty seven billion dollars DOWN THE DRAIN. How are you going to explain that to a borough that’s struggling financially?
Well, it turns out, they HAVE figured out how to explain it! They will play, ladies and gentlemen, the blame game! I can just imagine the conversation between Ocasio-Cortez and De Blasio:
Ocasio-Cortez: “Bill, we’re in trouble. We blew an incredible opportunity and lost 27 billion dollars for Queens! What do we SAY to our constituents?”
DeBlasio: “Hmm… How about: ‘We MEANT well’”?
Ocasio-Cortez: “No, Bill, that won’t cut it.”
DeBlasio: “Hmm… How about: ‘POWER TO THE PEOPLE!’”
Ocasio-Cortez: “No, Bill. That’s been used already!”
DeBlasio:… “Hmm… “I’ve got it, Lexi! How about, we blame THEM!”
Ocasio-Cortez: “Blame Amazon?”
DeBlasio: “Yep!”
Ocasio-Cortez: “THAT’S the ticket, Bill!… I can say that Amazon isn’t a good “corporate citizen” or some such thing!”
DeBlasio: “Yeah! And, I’ll blame it on Amazon CEO’s Jeff Bezo’s philandering, divorce and family problems!”
Ocasio-Cortez: “Hmm… That’s… a bit of a stretch, Bill. Do you think New Yorkers will buy it?”
DeBlasio: “Lexi, if they re-elected me to a second term, they’ll buy ANYTHING!”
Ocasio-Cortez: “SO true, Bill! SO true!”