Hey Amazon, thanks for nothing
Thanks for nothing, Amazon, and I really mean that.
Thank you for not picking Boston for your second “headquarters.”
There is no way our decrepit MBTA, our gridlocked traffic, our overpriced real-estate markets, our hopelessly corrupt politics and our utterly broken public education system could have handled another 50,000 hipsters and all their dependents drifting in.
As if it isn’t already hard enough to find a parking space, anywhere.
Think of it another way: after all these years, we are finally about to get marijuana stores. Don’t you think the lines to buy weed are going to be long enough without adding tens of thousands more goateed blow-in nerds, average age 31?
There would have gone the neighborhood, all the neighborhoods, as if they aren’t already gone.
It has been clear for a while now that despite the breathless boosterism of the powers that be, Boston wasn’t going to get the nod.
But it’s nice to know that it’s finally official. It’s a lucky break for Boston, and let’s face it, it’s good news for Amazon, too. How’s General Electric been doing since they announced the big trek north?
Massachusetts has dodged a bullet, the biggest bullet since Boston 2024 — the proposed summer Olympics which would have bankrupted not just the city, but probably the state as well.
Like Amazon, Boston 2024 collapsed once the absurdity of the proposal became obvious.
One of the two Amazon “winners,” New York, is getting 25,000 new jobs. And, it was reported yesterday, the cost to the taxpayers of the Empire State will be $48,000 per job.
In Virginia, where the other half of the new headquarters is going, the public cost is more than a half-billion dollars. The government of Arlington is going to have to raise taxes to pay for this … handout.
Sounds like crony capitalism at its worst, but the altand left media around here were all in on creating our own massive boondoggle, just like they were waving the pom-poms for Boston 2024.
Here are some of the Globe’s rah-rah-rah headlines, and they’re enough to make a Babbitt blush:
“Dream big like Jeff Bezos, and you just might land Amazon” … “If Boston gets the next Amazon headquarters, will it get free bananas too?” ... “Boston lands No. 2 spot in new WSJ ranking for Amazon headquarters” … “A lesson hard for Boston to buy: We’re good” … “Only Boston made the list” … “Amazon’s bid is an opportunity and a wake-up call”
I haven’t read such incontinent gushing since the Globe’s bow-tied bum kissers claimed Whitey was keeping the drugs out of Southie.
Want some more embarrassing groveling? The city’s coatholders put together a whole website with testimonials from all their fellow local yokels in academia and elsewhere.
“At Berklee,” reads one from September 2017, “music is not just an art form but also a platform of creative problem solving, innovation entrepreneurialism.”
Not to mention sexual harassment. About a month after that braggadocio, Berklee College of Music admitted it had fired 11 faculty members in the preceding 13 years for sexual misconduct of one form or another.
On the same cheerleading website, Mayor Marty Walsh puffed: “People come from all over the world to take advantage of what we have to offer.”
Uh, yes, Your Honor, that’s one way to put it, I suppose. Like all those illegal Dominican dealers that Mahhhty’s own BPD admit have cornered the region’s entire heroin/fentanyl market.
Gov. Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker bragged that Bloomberg listed Massachusetts as “the number one state in the country for innovation.”
Innovation? Absolutely. Until Tall Deval’s state troopers started doing the perp walk down on Northern Avenue, had you ever heard of “ghost tickets” to cover up no-show overtime shifts?
Thanksgiving is still a week away, and already we have a lot to be thankful for.
Thanks for nothing, Jeff Bezos!