Today, a digital billboard appeared in Times Square directly above Ripley’s Believe It or Not! The sign listed statistics on the number of jobs the city supposedly lost thanks to Amazon pulling out of their deal in Queens. Below the numbers, it read, “Thanks for nothing, AOC!” The billboard also featured the hashtag #SocialismTakesCapitalismCreates.
The billboard, located in New York’s biggest tourist center, was a bizarre move that will likely impact exactly no-one’s opinions on whether the Amazon deal would have been good or bad for New York.
According to the New York Times, the ad was paid for by a Texas group called the Job Creators Network. The conservative billionaire family the Mercers seem to have funded a connected group, the Job Creators Alliance.
Reporter Andrew Perez found that other conservative politicians have ties to the group.
On Twitter, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dismissed the sign as “wack” and noted the absurdity of putting a sign supposedly targeting New Yorkers in Times Square.
JCN’s website blamed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Amazon’s decision to pull out of New York. The group wrote that the decision was made “once opposition from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with other anti-business politicians, ramped up.”
It’s true that AOC was against Amazon building their new headquarters in Long Island City, which touches her Congressional district. But as the Congresswoman noted on Twitter, the movement to keep Amazon out of Queens encompassed many community organizations and grassroots groups.
The ad, which is supposed to be up for a week, is costing the company a lot of money.
“The billboard went up Wednesday. The contract is scheduled for one week at a cost of about $4,000,” Elaine Parker, a spokeswoman for Job Creators Network, told the Times.
But they’re not done yet! The JNC has now apparently bought two more billboards.
From the Times:
After Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets, the company said it bought space on two more billboards, at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. “Hey AOC, Saw your wack tweet,” read one. The other: “This billboard cost about $4,000. But you cost NY 25,000 jobs and $4,000,000,000 in annual lost wages. Ouch.”
These people don’t know how to take a L.