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<\/p>\nRUSH: Susan in Richmond, Virginia. I wanted to get started. This is a good point she\u2019s gonna make. How you doing, Susan? Welcome to the program.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I wanted to share some hope. I was reading Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s Twitter feed, I think it was on November 12th, she wrote in response to Amazon moving their headquarters into her neighborhood, she said when we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep. And then she asked, has the company promised to hire in the existing community? And the first thing I thought was, she\u2019s a Queens firster. She\u2019s a Queensist, she\u2019s not a globalist, if she\u2019s thinking about her constituents first.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. She\u2019s a what firster?<\/p>\n
CALLER: She\u2019s a Queens firster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
RUSH: Oh, Queens in New York. Okay. Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n
RUSH: What Susan\u2019s talking here about is Amazon\u2019s HQ2, their second headquarters in Long Island City in New York, and she\u2019s upset that Amazon has been given a tax break of essentially $65,000 per employee to locate in Long Island City. And even though she doesn\u2019t know why, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right about this. You have to say that.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: It\u2019s actually $78,000 per employee that Amazon is getting a tax break for locating headquarters in Long Island City. Now, this is corporate cronyism on steroids is what this is. And I will explain when we get back.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: I have to tell you that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right, and I doubt that she knows why. She has an instinct on this. Her anti-corporate instinct is what has led her to being correct about this.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what happened. Amazon decided they needed a second headquarters. They\u2019re out in Seattle. Jeff Bezos wants to spread the wealth around, needs a second headquarters. And he started a bids process. And he went to a bunch of different cities and states and started having them make pitches as to which one would do the most to get his headquarters located there. And it was a heated competition.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/650-060717-Amazon-Bezos.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And, as always happens, as always happens, a state — in this case, New York — promised tax breaks out the wazoo if Amazon would locate in their state. So Amazon chose — I\u2019m really giving the compressed version of the story to get to the point. They chose Long Island City, which is right across the river from Manhattan, and New York cut the deal that will give them tax breaks that are the equivalent of about $78,000 per employee that Amazon is gonna hire.<\/p>\n
Now, this has a number of deleterious effects. Number one, of all corporations out there that do not need an incentive or tax break to locate anywhere, it would be Amazon. Now, New York can do what it wants, but this is totally unnecessary. The reason this stinks, how many existing small businesses are there in New York state today which started from scratch, which have to scratch and scrap and struggle to stay alive each and every day, and they\u2019re not getting any kind of a tax break. They\u2019re not getting any kind of incentive.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Amazon is getting the equivalent of $78,000 per employee in combined tax breaks, meaning that\u2019s how much tax they will not pay, in exchange for locating and creating that many jobs in New York and New York City. What also happens as a result of this is — I mean, Bezos is not a conservative and not a Republican — this furthers and cements the whole corporate cronyism idea of Democrat-led companies becoming partnered with government. And whoever Amazon\u2019s competitors are now, are at a huge disadvantage. They have nowhere near this kind of tax break or other kind of assistance.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s kind of like, you know, during the Obama presidency was when I first noticed this, although it predates that. There\u2019s been a lot of conventional wisdom out there that CEOs and Big Business types are Republicans because they are against taxes and oppressive government and regulations and so it\u2019s a natural fit that CEOs and other business executives would be Republican. That\u2019s so far away from the truth that it\u2019s not even funny anymore. In fact, it\u2019s the exact opposite.<\/p>\n
Once presidents and governors signaled that they would enter into cronyism relationships with specific, selected chosen corporations or companies, then it became much easier for a company to sign a deal with government as a means of beating its competition outside the marketplace.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give you an example, Walmart and Costco. Walmart\u2019s this giant behemoth. Costco\u2019s a big behemoth as well. But Walmart got in bed with Obama on the minimum wage. And they got some considerations from Obama for it. They went along with raising the minimum wage. Walmart said, \u201cThis is fine with us,\u201d because it wasn\u2019t gonna cost them as much as it was gonna cost Costco. And in this way they were able to compete against a competitor using their exclusive relationship, their crony relationship with the Obama administration.<\/p>\n
GE did the same thing. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE. Well, once this kind of arrangement started, once there became cronyism and crony relationships between CEOs and companies and government, then out the window goes that corporation\u2019s concern for regulation and taxes because they\u2019re benefiting already from the relationship with government.<\/p>\n
The way it happened with GE, General Electric didn\u2019t need at the time any loans or any government investment in whatever plants it had, but it made the deal with Obama, GE got — I forget how much money it was. I wish I could remember. It was an exorbitant amount of money to research and develop some aspect of their business. And in exchange, Immelt ends up on Obama\u2019s national employment council or what have you, and they\u2019re in bed together. The United States government, the presidency of Barack Obama and General Electric, their competitors were not.<\/p>\n
But the real problem here is that, you know, I hate talking in terms of who needs and who doesn\u2019t need. That\u2019s leftist lingo. “You don\u2019t need to earn that much money. You don\u2019t need that much. You shouldn\u2019t have that much. You shouldn\u2019t earn that. You shouldn\u2019t be making that kind of money.” I hate discussions like that, but if the government of New York is gonna be in the business of passing out tax breaks, there are a lot more worthwhile potential recipients than Amazon.<\/p>\n
But they can\u2019t bring to Andrew Cuomo\u2019s table what Amazon can. Amazon can hire a hell of a lot of people and revitalize a moribund, defunct part of Long Island City that the state can\u2019t or won\u2019t or no other small business could. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is opposed to this. You would think it\u2019s Amazon, it\u2019s Jeff Bezos, she should love it, it\u2019s one of her buddies. But as a dyed-in-the-wool, an avowed socialist, she hates corporations, and she hates any advantage they are given, and especially by government.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/APP-021318-Truth-Detector.jpg\")
So she\u2019s on the warpath on this. And even though she doesn\u2019t know fully why, her instincts are making her correct about this. But this is how relationships between gigantic CEOs and corporations, and in this case the Democrat Party, begin. Now, you might say, \u201cWell, isn\u2019t true Trump doing it?\u201d No, Trump\u2019s actually not forming crony relationships.<\/p>\n
Trump is actually changing policy that would benefit all manufacturing businesses and all others. “Well, what about the big deal made with Foxconn to go into Wisconsin?” Well, that was a Wisconsin deal that was made with Foxconn. Trump was involved. Foxconn is the assembler of iPhones and other electronic gadgets, and they\u2019re headquartered in Taiwan and the People\u2019s Republic of China. And I think the original plan was to build LCD displays for television sets in automobile dashboards, not phones or whatever.<\/p>\n
And it was in part because Trump was suggesting that Apple and other American companies which do a lot of manufacturing in China bring some of that work to the United States, and so Apple was eager and a lot of people that work with Apple were eager to satisfy Trump; so they relocated, or they built a factory in the process in Wisconsin. And Wisconsin doled out some tax breaks to Foxconn to do this. So it\u2019s become a way of life.<\/p>\n
All these people get all upset over cities and states subsidizing sports stadiums for billionaire owners. It\u2019s the same stuff. But you don\u2019t go to Amazon to watch the Steelers or the Giants or whatever. You go to the stadiums where they play. And so, since you as a citizen get to benefit, it\u2019s okay if they fund a stadium. Some people. Not all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: This is corporate cronyism on steroids is what this is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":292054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n