Amazon to Split New HQ Between Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City, New York

Long Island City, New York

Crystal City, Virginia

It is expected that Amazon will announce today that its new headquarters will be split between Crystal City, Virginia and Long Island City, New York, handing Virginia governor Ralph Northam a major economic victory.  The other victor is the Long Island City portion of New York City which has already seen amazing redevelopment and gentrification over the last 20 years.  When the announcement comes, it will underscore the reality that red states are making themselves increasingly unattractive to progressive corporations and businesses that want educated populations that are welcoming to a diverse work force.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Amazon's decision and its likely economic impact.  Here are highlights (the Washington Post also has a piece here): 

After conducting a yearlong search for a second home, Amazon has finalized plans to have about 50,000 employees in two locations, according to a person familiar with the decision-making process.

The company has decided to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, and to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, the person said. Amazon, which plans to officially announce the decision on Tuesday, already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area.

The need to hire tens of thousands of high-tech workers has been the driving force behind the search, leading many to expect it to land in a major East Coast metropolitan area. Many experts had pointed to Crystal City as a front-runner, because of its strong public transit, educated work force and proximity to Washington.

About 1,800 people in advertising, fashion and publishing already work for Amazon in New York, and roughly 2,500 corporate and technical employees work in Northern Virginia and Washington. Amazon announced plans for a second headquarters in September 2017, saying that the company was growing faster than it could hire in its hometown, Seattle. The company said it would invest more than $5 billion over almost two decades in a second headquarters, hiring as many as 50,000 full-time employees that would earn more than $100,000 a year on average.

HQ2 would be the “full equal to our current campus in Seattle,” the company said. Picking multiple sites allows it to tap into two pools of talented labor and perhaps avoid being blamed for all of the housing and traffic woes of dominating a single area. It could also give the company greater leverage in negotiating tax incentives, experts said.

The HQ2 search sent states and cities into a frenzied bidding war. Some hired McKinsey & Company and other outside consultants to help them with their bids, investing heavily in courting Amazon and its promise of 50,000 jobs. Even half of that would amount to one of the largest corporate location deals on record, according to Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, which tracks corporate subsidies. “These are very big numbers,” he said.

As Amazon’s search dragged on, residents in many of the 20 finalist cities worried about the impact such a massive project could have on housing and traffic, as well as what potential tax incentives could cost the community. The decision to split HQ2 into two sites could alleviate some of that resistance.

Seattle has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country, in part because of Amazon’s growth. The company has about 45,000 employees in the city, and the company said it needed to hire more employees than the city could attract or absorb.

The piece in the Post notes as follows:

The choice of Crystal City in Arlington County as one of the winners could cement Northern Virginia’s reputation as a magnet for business and potentially reshape the Washington region into an eastern outpost of Silicon Valley over the next decade. The decision hands Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and local leaders the largest economic-development prize in a generation — one promising billions of dollars in capital investments alone — but could also put pressure on the region’s already steep housing prices, congested roads, and yawning divide between wealthy and low-income residents.

It also would represent a victory for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), who had joked that he would change his name to “Amazon Cuomo” if necessary to land the project.

Retired Judge: Why Virginia Should Legalize Medical Marijuana

This blog has looked at the issue of legalizing marijuana on several occasions and has looked at some of the negatives of Virginia's current draconian marijuana laws: (i) the laws are disproportionately applied to non-whites, especially black males, (ii) the resultant criminal records condemn young offenders to a permanent underclass and impede them from securing jobs and becoming productive citizens in the future, and (iii) alcohol is a much larger societal problem.  There are more, but numbers (i) and (ii) are to my mind the most relevant.  Now, a retired Circuit Court judge from Southwest Virginia has become and advocate for legalizing medical marijuana, in part because it makes economic sense, especially in that region of Virginia:

[W]hen retired Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Richard Pattisall came to see us recently, we naturally listened. When he suggested that Virginia should legalize medical marijuana, that definitely got our attention. After all, here’s a man who’s sent people to jail for drug offenses. 

Pattisall had a very particular reason for why he thinks Virginia should take this step, one that he laid out in a recent commentary on these pages: Jobs (and the potential to tax the crops.) Specifically, that’s jobs in the coalfields, a part of the state where he grew up and still has an affinity for.
 His rationale: Medical marijuana is becoming more accepted — it’s now legal in 28 states (though not Virginia) and the District of Columbia. If states are allowing marijuana as a treatment for certain medical conditions, it’s got to be grown somewhere. Why not Virginia? And why not in a part of the state that’s desperate for jobs?
 Pattisall has not, we assure you, been smoking something. There really is an economic development argument to be made for medical marijuana. When Illinois legalized medical marijuana in 2014, small towns across the state were clamoring for a marijuana “cultivation center” to locate in their community. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a company say, ‘Hey, we want to bring in 50 jobs and we want to bring in tax revenue to your school,”’ Liz Skinner, the mayor of Delavan (population 1,163) told the Chicago-based Daily Herald. When Revolution Enterprises finally opened its “cultivation center” in Delavan, it instantly became the largest private employer in the town.
 Perhaps here’s a good place to stop and clear up some misconceptions. Medical marijuana isn’t the same as “recreational” marijuana. It also isn’t necessarily consumed by smoking a joint. There’s an entire industry springing up to turn the essential ingredients into capsules, chewables, sprays, ointments and even, umm, suppositories. Somebody’s got to do all that processing. We’re talking small pharmaceutical operations here, not Cheech and Chong with a bunch of rolling papers.
 Also you notice we use the phrase “cultivation center.” That’s not meant to be a euphemism. We’re not talking open fields of pot. The “cultivation centers” are greenhouses, with some pretty strict controls. The Chicago Tribune last year took a tour of one of the state’s 19 “cultivation centers” and described these security measures: “The Joliet facility has 144 security cameras monitoring its 40,000 square feet, with a feed to Illinois State Police. Every plant is tagged with an identification number to track it from seedling to sale.”
 The finished products at Cresco Labs are held in “bank-style vaults” until they’re ready to be shipped. Those deliveries resemble the way armored vehicles handle cash or other sensitive shipments: “Drivers deliver the products in locked boxes to any of 40 state-authorized dispensaries. Each time, workers at the retail stores must call Cresco to get a special code to open each box.”
 Even the otherwise conservative congressman from Southwest Virginia — Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem — is in favor of medical marijuana. This year, the Virginia General Assembly took up a bill that would have opened a crack in state law to allow medical marijuana for those suffering from cancer, glaucoma and 10 other conditions. It was sponsored by a Republican, state Sen Jill Vogel of Fauquier County. It even passed the Republican-controlled Senate by a robust 29-11 before dying in a House subcommittee.
 Is it possible that someday House Republicans will be persuaded that allowing capsules, chewables, sprays, ointments and suppositories laced with THC isn’t the same as telling Virginians “smoke ‘em if you got ‘em?”
 Let’s go with the smaller of those figures: 1,000 jobs. That’s not enough to make a difference in the state’s overall economy, but it’s more than enough to make a difference in a small community — or several small communities. Those 19 Illinois “cultivation centers” average 52 workers in each one. Question: How many localities in rural Virginia would like a company to show up that created 52 jobs in a growth industry? Answer: All of them, we suspect.

The South's Talent-Development Problem

Besides making the region unwelcoming to gays and minorities, the "godly folk" in the Bible Belt/American South also hate paying taxes and spending money on public education. It's part of the reason region lags behind other parts of America in talent development and upward social mobility.  A piece in The Economist - once again leave it to the European media to provide such good coverage - looks at the penny wise pound foolishness of the states in the South where among far too many embracing ignorance and bigotry are celebrated.  Here are some article excerpts:

[G]etting a good job in the South is tough if you’re young. A new report from MDC, a non-profit based in Durham, says that more than 30% of those under 25 in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and North Carolina are “underemployed”: they are either looking for a job, settling for part-time work or giving up on the search entirely.

Why are young people having such a tough time in the labour market? Part of the problem is competition. Many Southern cities, with their low cost of living, cheap property prices and good weather, attract graduates from across America, and there aren’t enough jobs to employ them all.

Newcomers clash over the available jobs, and residents with inferior credentials are easily displaced. Those who fail to become knowledge workers often end up shunted into the growing service sector, doing the kind of jobs (serve coffee, fix up houses) that techie types are too busy to do for themselves. “Talent recruitment is not balanced against talent development in the South,” says David Dodson, president of MDC. “It’s almost like a colonial economy, because the benefits accrue to those that come from someplace else.”

The South certainly has a talent-development problem. Poor education standards are a big part of it. The numbers bear this out. In an average group of 100 14-15 year-old Americans, 27 of them will not finish high school on time, according to the MDC study; this number goes up to 40 in South Carolina, 39 in Mississippi and 37 in Georgia. The problem is made worse by recent drops in education funding. Between fiscal years 2008 and 2014 state spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, decreased in Alabama by $1,242—more than anywhere else in America. In Georgia it dropped by $707 and in Mississippi by $648. In fact, such spending declined in every Southern state apart from Tennessee. During this time spending actually increased in 12 other non-Southern states.

So it is unsurprising that Southern cities are among the worst in the nation when it comes to social mobility and inequality. . . . A study by the Equality of Opportunity Project last year says a child born into an Atlanta family with income in the bottom fifth percentile has just a 4.5% chance of making it to the top percentile; in San Francisco the chance is 12.2%. 

All of this makes life tough for young people in the South. Even for college graduates, finding good jobs is no piece of cake.

Living in the past and thumping on one's Bible constantly does little to prepare one's children and grandchildren for the future.

McAuliffe: Same-Sex Marriage Equality Aids Economic Development

Statements by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe must be causing spittle flecked shrieks and convulsions at The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading Christofascist organization that seeks to return Virginia society to the 1950's.  Last week McAuliffe announced the creation of a new LGBT tourism task force aimed at attracting more LGBT travelers to Virginia.  LBGT tourists as a group  tend to stay longer and spend more on their vacation than other tourists.  Yet heretofore, other than the city of Richmond over the last few years no effort has ever been made to attract LGBT travelers.  Indeed, the Virginia Beach oceanfront area with its police state atmosphere and obsession with "family tourism" has done all but put out a "gays not welcome" sign.  Now, McAuliffe is lauding same sex marriage equality in Virginia as enhancing the state's hand at economic development.  Here are highlights from the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Gov. Terry McAuliffe told a local business organization Thursday that he considers same-sex marriage equality to be good for economic development in the state.
McAuliffe signed an executive order last month directing state agencies to comply with legalized same-sex marriage in Virginia.

And earlier this week, he announced the creation of an LGBT Tourism Task Force that will focus on showcasing Virginia as a friendly destination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender visitors.

McAuliffe said one of his priorities as governor is to foster “a climate that is open and welcoming to everyone.”

“My point, and the signal I try to send to everybody, is if you want to come to Virginia, and you want to start a business, we want you,” he said in a speech to about 150 members of the Greater Richmond Chamber.

“If you want to come here and create economic activity, I want you here,” he said during the meeting, held at the Williams Mullen law firm office in downtown Richmond.

“We really have to diversify our economy,” he said, after noting that cuts in federal defense spending could cost the state 150,000 jobs.

Is the Fight for Gay Marriage Effectively Over?

Click image to enlarge

Today same sex marriage is legal in 24 states - the number was only 19 at this hour yesterday - and as the rulings of the 4th, 7th and 10th Circuits begin to be applied in other states in their respective circuits, the number will rise to 30.  Another shoe will drop when the 9th Circuit likely also rules that same sex marriage bans are unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.  Then the number of marriage equality states will rise to 35.  That will leave 15 outlier states.  States that will suddenly find themselves at a huge disadvantage in therms of recruiting businesses and top talent to locate to bolster their economies.  And if the 6th Circuit strikes down the marriage bans before it, then the number of outlier states will be even smaller.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the possibility that the battle for gay marriage may be effectively over and anti-gay states may find their bans going onto the trash heap of history with not much more than a whimper.  Here are article highlights:

Many observers of the court were stunned that the justices passed up reviewing lower-court decisions that overturned prohibitions on same-sex marriage in five states, delaying a decision that would answer the question for the nation.

Gay rights proponents took it as a sign that the court likes to move slowly when endorsing momentous societal change, that it feels no need to decide an issue before it must — and that the court’s move provides a clear signal for future challenges of voter-approved prohibitions on same-sex marriage.

“An action like this is profound,” said Mary Bonauto, a lawyer with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD). “I expect that lower courts will get the message.”

Marriages could soon be available in six more states, for a total of 30. The Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles estimates that when the rollout is complete, 65 percent of gay couples and a majority of all Americans will live in a place where same-sex unions are legal.

“There is something called the ‘normative power of the actual,’” said Walter Dellinger, a solicitor general in the Clinton White House. “People get used to an idea over time, and they come to think it’s right.” That is what will happen as more Americans see same-sex marriage as positive or, perhaps, simply inconsequential, Dellinger said.

[I]t is hard to think that the action carried no strategic importance. By putting holds on marriages in Virginia and Utah — lower courts had stayed the action in other states — the court had hinted that it did not want more same-sex unions to occur until it had a chance to weigh in.

There was enormous pressure on the court to take the case. The winners and losers in all five states had urged the court to get involved — a flock of high-profile lawyers had written the briefs asking for review. More than 30 states and a like number of the country’s biggest companies had asked the court to settle the issue for the nation.

With same-sex marriage, a similar situation may soon exist, with one important caveat: While public polls at the time of Loving showed that the public was still opposed to interracial marriage, public support for same-sex marriage has dramatically increased, especially among the young.

 Leaders in what remain anti-gay marriage states truly are going to need to think about where they take their states from here.  If they don't embrace marriage equality now, then it may ultimately be forced on them by the Supreme Court.  Meanwhile economic development staffs are going to face a real problem as more and more businesses full embrace same sex marriage and find anti-gay states less and less palatable places in which to do business.

Virginia GOP Wrong on Tax Cuts and Attracting Entrepreneurs

Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly constantly blather that cutting taxes is the way to attract new businesses and entrepreneurs to Virginia.  Meanwhile, they seek to slash education spending, allow the Commonwealths infrastructure to crumble and maintain a societal atmosphere that enshrines Christofascist religious values into the civil laws, making Virginia look like it is governed by the Christian Taliban.  Based on a new study, the Virginia GOP has things ass backwards to put it mildly.  Quality of life, good schools and other factors are much more important in attracting entrepreneurs than low taxes.  But then again, today's Virginia GOP has most things ass backwards.  Here are highlights of a review of the study findings:

Cutting state taxes to attract entrepreneurs is likely futile at best and self-defeating at worst, a new survey of founders of some of the country’s fastest-growing companies suggests.  The study, which is consistent with other research, should be required reading for state policymakers — especially those in [Virginia,] Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin who are pushing for large income tax cuts.

The 150 executives surveyed by Endeavor Insight, a research firm that examines how entrepreneurs contribute to job creation and long-term economic growth, said a skilled workforce and high quality of life were the main reasons why they founded their companies where they did; taxes weren’t a significant factor.  This suggests that states that cut taxes and then address the revenue loss by letting their schools, parks, roads, and public safety deteriorate will become less attractive to the kinds of people who found high-growth companies.

• “31% of founders cited access to talent as a factor in their decision on where to launch their company. . . .  A number of founders also highlighted the link between the ability to attract talented employees and a city’s quality of life.”
• “Only 5% of entrepreneurs cited low tax rates as a factor in deciding where to launch their company” and only 2% mentioned “business-friendly regulations” and other government policies.

Kansas, North Carolina, and Ohio have cut personal income taxes significantly in the last two years, and in each case the governor argued that it would give a big boost to creating or attracting new firms.  This new study provides more compelling evidence that that’s the wrong approach.  Let’s hope other states don’t start down the same dead-end path.

Richard Florida who coined the term the "creative class" has further observations in The Atlantic:

But what really attracts innovative entrepreneurs who create these economy-boosting companies?

The answers: talented workers, and the quality of life that the educated and ambitious have come to expect – not the low-tax, favorable-regulation approach that many state and local governments tout.

Endeavor identified two fundamental patterns.

For one, size matters. These top business-creators gravitated towards cities with at least a million residents in the metro area. This offered the scale and diverse array of offerings needed to attract talent.   

A city also needs to be able to appeal to the young and the restless. The entrepreneurs surveyed were a highly mobile bunch when they first started out. 


The top rated factor by far was access to talent. Nearly a third of those surveyed mentioned it as a key factor in their decisions for where to live and work (many specifically prized access to technically trained workers). Entrepreneurs explained that they proactively sought out the places that educated and ambitious workers want to be.

The study found that two other key factors in the location choices of entrepreneurs are major transportation networks (like airports and highways that can connect them to other cities) and proximity to customers and suppliers. This echoes MIT’s Eric von Hippel's claim that end-users and customers are key innovators.

Perhaps even more interesting from the perspective of urban policy are the location factors that did not make the cut – those that high-growth entrepreneurs found to be of little consequence in their location decisions. At the very bottom of the list were taxes and business-friendly policies, which are, unfortunately, exactly the sorts of things so many states and cities continue to promote as silver bullets. Just 5 percent of the respondents mentioned low taxes as being important, and a measly 2 percent named other business-friendly policies as a factor in their location decisions.

Here in Hampton Roads we meet the 1 million plus population factor, but thanks to years of neglect and GOP refusal to raise taxes our transportation system is inadequate.  Adding to the problem is the poor air service available at the regions two airports.  If Virginia wants areas like Hampton Roads to prosper, they need to (i) drastically improve the transportation infrastructure and quality of air travel service and (ii) cease trying to drag Virginia back into the 1950's.  For now, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia alone meet this requirements and, as a result, they are booming while areas like Southwest Virginia atrophy and become increasingly unattractive to anyone other than religious fanactics and rednecks.

Pat Robertson: Lesbian Friend Might Turn Your Kids Gay

Governor elect Terry McAuliffe has said that he has high hopes for turning the Hampton Roads area of Virginia into a progressive, high tech dynamo.  Most area residents would welcome the economic benefits that would accrue from such a development.  There's one major obstacle, of course: the Christofascist lead by The Family Foundation who want to drag Virginia back to the Dark Ages.  And leading this charge in Hampton Roads with monthly batshitery eruptions is Pat Robertson that make it clear to would be progressive businesses that Hampton Roads remains in inhabited by far too many spittle spewing Kool-Aid drinkers.  Right Wing Watch looks at Robertson's latest insanity in which he advises that having a lesbian friend may turn your children gay:

Pat Robertson told a 700 Club viewer today that she is right to be wary of inviting a lesbian friend over to her home, because that might cause her children to “grow up as lesbians.” Robertson, who has previously claimed that gay people are “trying to recruit more of the straight population,” said that while the viewer should love rather than shun her friend, she should tell her that she doesn’t approve of her “lifestyle.”

“You keep love, you loved her, you were close and your influence may have something significant to her, the idea is you don’t gain anything by shunning,” Robertson said. “But at the same you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians, that’s what you’re talking about, you don’t want to show them that that’s an acceptable lifestyle for your family.”

He added: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody: I love you, we are going to do what we can to be friends if we can. I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian and you have yours, it’s not; I’m sorry we can’t indulge in certain things together.”

In past episodes of the 700 Club, Robertson has alleged that gay people wear dangerous AIDS rings and quipped that gay couples make him want to vomit.

It is Robertson who ought to make decent people want to vomit. 

Pat Robertson told a 700 Club viewer today that she is right to be wary of inviting a lesbian friend over to her home, because that might cause her children to “grow up as lesbians.” Robertson, who has previously claimed that gay people are “trying to recruit more of the straight population,” said that while the viewer should love rather than shun her friend, she should tell her that she doesn’t approve of her “lifestyle.”
“You keep love, you loved her, you were close and your influence may have something significant to her, the idea is you don’t gain anything by shunning,” Robertson said. “But at the same you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians, that’s what you’re talking about, you don’t want to show them that that’s an acceptable lifestyle for your family.”
He added: “It doesn’t hurt to tell somebody: I love you, we are going to do what we can to be friends if we can. I have my lifestyle, it’s Christian and you have yours, it’s not; I’m sorry we can’t indulge in certain things together.”
In past episodes of the 700 Club, Robertson has alleged that gay people wear dangerous AIDS rings and quipped that gay couples make him want to vomit.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-lesbian-friend-might-turn-your-kids-gay#sthash.qYAXSJAp.dpuf