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Critics say Amazon has contributed to rising housing costs in Seattle as well as heavy traffic and income inequality. (Photo: Kiewic/Flickr/cc)
While business-friendly politicians applauded Amazon's decision to establish two new headquarters in New York and just outside Washington DC, local officials, residents, and critics of the "race to the bottom" the $800 billion corporation held in its search for new office locations denounced the move on Tuesday, decrying the effects the new headquarters will likely have on the chosen cities.
After a 14-month-long process in which Amazon pitted cities against one another in a competition to see who would offer the company the most enticing tax incentives and other perks, the neighborhoods of Long Island City in Queens, New York and Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia were named as Amazon's new second and third homes.
Using the hashtag #HQ2Scam, journalists and critics condemned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam--all Democrats--for their desperate attempts to woo Amazon with tax breaks at the expense of their constituents.
\u201cAmazon pays no significant federal taxes and now is taking $2 billion from the actual taxpayers in NY and VA to subsidize their two new headquarters. They are nothing but #CorporateGrifters #HQ2scam\u201d— Stephen A. Rhodes (@Stephen A. Rhodes) 1542141878
\u201cah nice, the #HQ2scam means the mayor gets to dance a little jig while Bezos fires a revolver at his feet https://t.co/w74dV14zBN\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
New York offered more than $1.5 billion in "performance-based" tax breaks to the company, while Virginia offered $573 million, with officials from both states applauding the company's promise to bring jobs to both states.
\u201ca cool half a billion to a company that couldn't possibly need it less, so that housing prices in DC can go up another couple percent\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
\u201cSchools, first responders, the MTA, NYCHA, homeless programs, senior programs and others could all put this money to far better use.\n\nThe idea that New York needs Amazon so badly that they bend over backwards to give Bezos all this money is absurd.\n\nNYC doesn't need Amazon.\u201d— Ryan Gorman (@Ryan Gorman) 1542145048
\u201cThis is absolutely absurd. These cities need to update infrastructure and solve their own problems, not give money to a company owned by the richest man in the world. Amazon doesn't need incentives.\u201d— TG (@TG) 1542127858
New York City Council members were among those who asked why Amazon--headed by the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos--is in need of tax incentives at all from a state where 5.5 million daily commuters face frequent delays due to the city's decaying subway system and the lack of affordable housing has reached a "crisis point."
"I also don't understand why a company as rich as Amazon would need nearly $2 billion in public money for its expansion plans at a time when New York desperately needs money for affordable housing, transportation, infrastructure, and education," Speaker Corey Johnson said in a statement.
"New Yorkers have real unmet needs from their government," added City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer and State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represent Long Island City. "It is unfathomable that we would sign a $3 billion check to Amazon in the face of these challenges."
Johnson also decried DeBlasio and Cuomo's failure to seek input from the public as they forged ahead with their attempts to convince Amazon to come to New York--now mirrored by the company's evasion of the city's public land review process.
"You can't put a price on community input, which has been missing throughout this entire process," Johnson said. "I find that lack of engagement and the fact that negotiations excluded the City Council--which is elected by New Yorkers to guide land use projects with communities in mind--extremely troubling."
While DeBlasio celebrated the so-called "synergy" which will result from Amazon's new proximity to the nation's largest public housing development, weary locals spoke of their previous experiences when other large corporations opened locations in the area.
"What are they going to do for the community? Are they going to guarantee us employment opportunities?" April Simpson, the president of Queensbridge Tenants Association in Long Island City told the New York Times. "I'm worried about, when they come, they're not going to have opportunities for people."
Other multinational companies that have arrived in the area in recent years "did not hire here--they brought in their own people," Simpson added. "My thing is: If you build here, hire here."
While officials applaud Amazon's decision, residents of Long Island City and Crystal City need only to look to Seattle for a preview of the numerous harms the corporation's presence has done to the city. Housing prices there have doubled over the last six years, while frequent construction has caused some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. The company has also shown little interest in using its vast resources to help better the city, lobbying against a relatively modest corporate tax to help combat the affordable housing crisis and provide services for homeless people.
At Splinter, journalist Hamilton Nolan argued that no company should be able to hold nationwide competitions demanding tax incentives from cities, taking city and state leaders' attention away from the families they're elected to serve and focusing it on wooing a wealthy corporation--and that the only way to stop another "race to the bottom" is to make such subsidies illegal.
"The problem is that as soon as one place offers a company tax breaks, everywhere has to," Nolan wrote. "The only way for public--you and me and every other taxpayer and city and state government who all have much more pressing things to spend money on than bribes to Fortune 500 companies--to win this game is not to play. Nobody can play. The way to accomplish this is simple: We need a federal law banning these sorts of subsidies."
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While business-friendly politicians applauded Amazon's decision to establish two new headquarters in New York and just outside Washington DC, local officials, residents, and critics of the "race to the bottom" the $800 billion corporation held in its search for new office locations denounced the move on Tuesday, decrying the effects the new headquarters will likely have on the chosen cities.
After a 14-month-long process in which Amazon pitted cities against one another in a competition to see who would offer the company the most enticing tax incentives and other perks, the neighborhoods of Long Island City in Queens, New York and Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia were named as Amazon's new second and third homes.
Using the hashtag #HQ2Scam, journalists and critics condemned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam--all Democrats--for their desperate attempts to woo Amazon with tax breaks at the expense of their constituents.
\u201cAmazon pays no significant federal taxes and now is taking $2 billion from the actual taxpayers in NY and VA to subsidize their two new headquarters. They are nothing but #CorporateGrifters #HQ2scam\u201d— Stephen A. Rhodes (@Stephen A. Rhodes) 1542141878
\u201cah nice, the #HQ2scam means the mayor gets to dance a little jig while Bezos fires a revolver at his feet https://t.co/w74dV14zBN\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
New York offered more than $1.5 billion in "performance-based" tax breaks to the company, while Virginia offered $573 million, with officials from both states applauding the company's promise to bring jobs to both states.
\u201ca cool half a billion to a company that couldn't possibly need it less, so that housing prices in DC can go up another couple percent\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
\u201cSchools, first responders, the MTA, NYCHA, homeless programs, senior programs and others could all put this money to far better use.\n\nThe idea that New York needs Amazon so badly that they bend over backwards to give Bezos all this money is absurd.\n\nNYC doesn't need Amazon.\u201d— Ryan Gorman (@Ryan Gorman) 1542145048
\u201cThis is absolutely absurd. These cities need to update infrastructure and solve their own problems, not give money to a company owned by the richest man in the world. Amazon doesn't need incentives.\u201d— TG (@TG) 1542127858
New York City Council members were among those who asked why Amazon--headed by the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos--is in need of tax incentives at all from a state where 5.5 million daily commuters face frequent delays due to the city's decaying subway system and the lack of affordable housing has reached a "crisis point."
"I also don't understand why a company as rich as Amazon would need nearly $2 billion in public money for its expansion plans at a time when New York desperately needs money for affordable housing, transportation, infrastructure, and education," Speaker Corey Johnson said in a statement.
"New Yorkers have real unmet needs from their government," added City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer and State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represent Long Island City. "It is unfathomable that we would sign a $3 billion check to Amazon in the face of these challenges."
Johnson also decried DeBlasio and Cuomo's failure to seek input from the public as they forged ahead with their attempts to convince Amazon to come to New York--now mirrored by the company's evasion of the city's public land review process.
"You can't put a price on community input, which has been missing throughout this entire process," Johnson said. "I find that lack of engagement and the fact that negotiations excluded the City Council--which is elected by New Yorkers to guide land use projects with communities in mind--extremely troubling."
While DeBlasio celebrated the so-called "synergy" which will result from Amazon's new proximity to the nation's largest public housing development, weary locals spoke of their previous experiences when other large corporations opened locations in the area.
"What are they going to do for the community? Are they going to guarantee us employment opportunities?" April Simpson, the president of Queensbridge Tenants Association in Long Island City told the New York Times. "I'm worried about, when they come, they're not going to have opportunities for people."
Other multinational companies that have arrived in the area in recent years "did not hire here--they brought in their own people," Simpson added. "My thing is: If you build here, hire here."
While officials applaud Amazon's decision, residents of Long Island City and Crystal City need only to look to Seattle for a preview of the numerous harms the corporation's presence has done to the city. Housing prices there have doubled over the last six years, while frequent construction has caused some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. The company has also shown little interest in using its vast resources to help better the city, lobbying against a relatively modest corporate tax to help combat the affordable housing crisis and provide services for homeless people.
At Splinter, journalist Hamilton Nolan argued that no company should be able to hold nationwide competitions demanding tax incentives from cities, taking city and state leaders' attention away from the families they're elected to serve and focusing it on wooing a wealthy corporation--and that the only way to stop another "race to the bottom" is to make such subsidies illegal.
"The problem is that as soon as one place offers a company tax breaks, everywhere has to," Nolan wrote. "The only way for public--you and me and every other taxpayer and city and state government who all have much more pressing things to spend money on than bribes to Fortune 500 companies--to win this game is not to play. Nobody can play. The way to accomplish this is simple: We need a federal law banning these sorts of subsidies."
While business-friendly politicians applauded Amazon's decision to establish two new headquarters in New York and just outside Washington DC, local officials, residents, and critics of the "race to the bottom" the $800 billion corporation held in its search for new office locations denounced the move on Tuesday, decrying the effects the new headquarters will likely have on the chosen cities.
After a 14-month-long process in which Amazon pitted cities against one another in a competition to see who would offer the company the most enticing tax incentives and other perks, the neighborhoods of Long Island City in Queens, New York and Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia were named as Amazon's new second and third homes.
Using the hashtag #HQ2Scam, journalists and critics condemned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam--all Democrats--for their desperate attempts to woo Amazon with tax breaks at the expense of their constituents.
\u201cAmazon pays no significant federal taxes and now is taking $2 billion from the actual taxpayers in NY and VA to subsidize their two new headquarters. They are nothing but #CorporateGrifters #HQ2scam\u201d— Stephen A. Rhodes (@Stephen A. Rhodes) 1542141878
\u201cah nice, the #HQ2scam means the mayor gets to dance a little jig while Bezos fires a revolver at his feet https://t.co/w74dV14zBN\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
New York offered more than $1.5 billion in "performance-based" tax breaks to the company, while Virginia offered $573 million, with officials from both states applauding the company's promise to bring jobs to both states.
\u201ca cool half a billion to a company that couldn't possibly need it less, so that housing prices in DC can go up another couple percent\u201d— ryan cooper (@ryan cooper) 1542121310
\u201cSchools, first responders, the MTA, NYCHA, homeless programs, senior programs and others could all put this money to far better use.\n\nThe idea that New York needs Amazon so badly that they bend over backwards to give Bezos all this money is absurd.\n\nNYC doesn't need Amazon.\u201d— Ryan Gorman (@Ryan Gorman) 1542145048
\u201cThis is absolutely absurd. These cities need to update infrastructure and solve their own problems, not give money to a company owned by the richest man in the world. Amazon doesn't need incentives.\u201d— TG (@TG) 1542127858
New York City Council members were among those who asked why Amazon--headed by the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos--is in need of tax incentives at all from a state where 5.5 million daily commuters face frequent delays due to the city's decaying subway system and the lack of affordable housing has reached a "crisis point."
"I also don't understand why a company as rich as Amazon would need nearly $2 billion in public money for its expansion plans at a time when New York desperately needs money for affordable housing, transportation, infrastructure, and education," Speaker Corey Johnson said in a statement.
"New Yorkers have real unmet needs from their government," added City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer and State Senator Michael Gianaris, who represent Long Island City. "It is unfathomable that we would sign a $3 billion check to Amazon in the face of these challenges."
Johnson also decried DeBlasio and Cuomo's failure to seek input from the public as they forged ahead with their attempts to convince Amazon to come to New York--now mirrored by the company's evasion of the city's public land review process.
"You can't put a price on community input, which has been missing throughout this entire process," Johnson said. "I find that lack of engagement and the fact that negotiations excluded the City Council--which is elected by New Yorkers to guide land use projects with communities in mind--extremely troubling."
While DeBlasio celebrated the so-called "synergy" which will result from Amazon's new proximity to the nation's largest public housing development, weary locals spoke of their previous experiences when other large corporations opened locations in the area.
"What are they going to do for the community? Are they going to guarantee us employment opportunities?" April Simpson, the president of Queensbridge Tenants Association in Long Island City told the New York Times. "I'm worried about, when they come, they're not going to have opportunities for people."
Other multinational companies that have arrived in the area in recent years "did not hire here--they brought in their own people," Simpson added. "My thing is: If you build here, hire here."
While officials applaud Amazon's decision, residents of Long Island City and Crystal City need only to look to Seattle for a preview of the numerous harms the corporation's presence has done to the city. Housing prices there have doubled over the last six years, while frequent construction has caused some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. The company has also shown little interest in using its vast resources to help better the city, lobbying against a relatively modest corporate tax to help combat the affordable housing crisis and provide services for homeless people.
At Splinter, journalist Hamilton Nolan argued that no company should be able to hold nationwide competitions demanding tax incentives from cities, taking city and state leaders' attention away from the families they're elected to serve and focusing it on wooing a wealthy corporation--and that the only way to stop another "race to the bottom" is to make such subsidies illegal.
"The problem is that as soon as one place offers a company tax breaks, everywhere has to," Nolan wrote. "The only way for public--you and me and every other taxpayer and city and state government who all have much more pressing things to spend money on than bribes to Fortune 500 companies--to win this game is not to play. Nobody can play. The way to accomplish this is simple: We need a federal law banning these sorts of subsidies."
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."