Michael Hiltzik: Amazon's pullout from New York shows that it misplayed a bad, and expensive, hand
Well, that should show them.
Stung by intensifying opposition to a $3-billion incentive handout from New York city and state, Amazon on Thursday abruptly canceled its plans to build a new half-headquarters complex in the New York City borough of Queens.
The outcome is shaping up as a disaster - but arguably for Amazon more than New York. It reinforces the giant company's reputation as a grasping bully that cares little for the communities where it operates.
Amazon's withdrawal from New York may well inspire more opposition to its quest for incentives and other accommodations in northern Virginia, which was to share the big headquarters development with New York, and other communities where Amazon dangled the prospect of major business expansion.
"This is going to be a rapidly metastasizing process where people are going to be emboldened to push back," Richard Florida of the University of Toronto, an
