AOC’s Costly Anti-Business Antics Turning Off Her Constituents

Freshman lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was slammed by the majority of voters in her district who said, in a newly released poll, that she was wrong, wrong and wrong again for driving away Amazon and its promised 25,000 highly paid job openings.

Such is the thinking of a socialist: On paper, hitting hard at Big Business can seem noble. In practice, though, the people still have to eat.

There’s a big difference between scoring political points and harming the economic prospects of the people.

Ocasio-Cortez crossed that line with what should have been a righteous rally cry against taxpayer subsidies for private business and against secret dealings that leave out citizen input — but what she instead turned into yet another socialist pie-in-the-sky rant against the free market and capitalism.

“Amazon,” she said back in November, shortly after winning her election to represent the 14th District of New York, CNBC reported, “is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need more investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.”

On that, she has a point. Corporate welfare is a head-shaking shame. And it’s one that strangely enough, many conservatives seem OK with because they believe the payout justifies the payoff.

But Ocasio-Cortez’s socialistic anti-business, Big Government mind went full-throttle socialistic.

“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Chased Amazon Out Of New York City,” The Daily Wire wrote in February.

“Amazon cancels new HG: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez celebrates,” CBS News reported, also in February.

Amazon ultimately announced the construction of a facility in Northern Virginia that is estimated to bring in about 25,000 jobs to the area.

For that, Arlington County approved the payout of a $23 million incentives package to the company; that’s in addition to the $750 million in incentives already approved by the state.

A takeaway?

If not New York, somewhere else.

Amazon was being courted all over the country by counties filled with politicians only all too willing to pay to play.

Ocasio-Cortez, rather than denouncing capitalism and raging at Big Business, could’ve shown a more diplomatic side and bartered for some common ground.

She could’ve gone for the long term and fought for the rights of taxpayers by harping on the follies of corporate welfare, and in so doing, won even some conservatives and — gasp! — tea party types to her side.

But instead, she tossed the baby of capitalism out with the bathwater.

Now her constituents — her voters, her people — seem upset. Rightly so.

A Siena College poll found 58 percent of her constituents actually supported the payout of $3 billion in state and local subsidies to bring Amazon to the area.

Another 57 percent said it was “bad for New York” that Amazon dropped its plans to build in the area.

Those are sizable percentages.

That’s a sizable misstep for the freshman congresswoman.

And what it really shows — what it really underscores — is that paper politics and popular bureau-speak do not always translate well into the real world. Again, people have to eat.

And socialism, no matter all its whimsy promises and fanciful dreams, does not always take those individual needs into consideration.

Read more at Washington Times