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Originally Posted by Notyrview
Oh man, that's a bummer. But no doubt good for the people of DC.
This is pretty compelling stuff from the article:
"Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, already owns the biggest newspaper and the largest mansion in Washington, and his ties to the city have long been a reason that the region tops most lists predicting HQ2’s result. It doesn’t hurt, either, that choosing the area would put Amazon in the backyard of lawmakers just as talk about the company’s labor practices and potential antitrust regulation is picking up." |
It would really help if columnists writing about politics actually understood politics. Being close to Washington only works if you need access to agencies or lawmakers and don't want to use intermediaries like lobbyists or trade groups. Being a large employer in the area isn't really going to influence Congress because each member is more concerned about the constituencies that vote for them than the constituency that makes up their place of business (for example: See the slogan DC puts on their license plates). What isn't clear is how Amazon's recruiting and retention goals are satisfied by a NoVA location. Sure it's near critical network infrastructure in NoVA but this is a headquarters project not an engineering or trading project that requires absolute bests in speed and capacity. The universities in the area around DC skew more towards the liberal arts, particularly law and government, than the sciences like engineering.