Amazon is caught in a surprise grassroots battle with local critics who are furious that it's been promised billions of taxpayer dollars to put jobs in New York, Arlington and Nashville, the winners of its search for a second headquarters.

Why it matters: Amazon won the top-down battle, with support from governors, mayors and economic development organizations. But it’s now confronting bottom-up outrage from activists and local lawmakers who were cut out of the bidding process.

The big picture: Jeff Bezos’ empire is no stranger to fights, having taken out retail rivals with brute force and neutralized Washington, D.C., threats with grand gestures like backing a $15 minimum wage for its employees. Still, it has struggled to head off these local fights — all while Google and Apple plan major expansions in crowded cities without the backlash.

• Google on Monday announced it will spend $1 billion and lease 3 new properties (on top of the $2.4 billion purchase of Chelsea Market this year) to more than double its NYC workforce, already at more than 7,000 workers.
• Apple last week announced a $1 billion, 5,000-employee expansion in Austin.

How Amazon's HQ2 choices are playing out around the country:

• In New York, members of the city council took turns brutalizing Amazon executives over the tax incentives that are part of the deal for the company to set up shop in Queens. They also harshly questioned Amazon's engagement with the legislative body and the necessity of a helipad that could accompany its office.
• From outside NYC's city hall, Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s criticism of the company has been echoed by progressive activist organizations emboldened by her election win.
• Activists in Nashville and Virginia — the other HQ2 winners — are organizing around their own concerns about how Amazon’s negotiations will affect their communities. (Nashville isn't one of the two HQ2s, but Amazon is developing a new operations center there.)

“I don’t think they expected the level of public, grassroots outcry and the level of pushback from elected officials, neighborhood residents, the critical look that was taken at them by the press in New York City. I think they were surprised.”

— City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, a critic of the tax incentives

Across the winning locales and the losing cities, the criticism is the same: The entire process was shrouded in secrecy.

• "One of the things that the majority of people who ran for local office ran on is transparency, but then we woke up one day to find out that Amazon is coming to town,” said Odessa Kelly, an organizer in Nashville.

In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said the company is “excited to work with New Yorkers over the coming months and years to bring a new Amazon headquarters to Long Island City and help support the community."

• The spokesperson noted, "We expect our new headquarters to generate more than $20 billion in new tax revenues for community improvements and the people of New York."
• The company has also pointed to the fact that it will not receive many of the incentives unless it delivers on its promise to create jobs.

Amazon has responded to the criticisms by hiring more lobbying firepower in communities where it could face backlash to the office deals.

• Since October, Amazon has registered four more lobbyists in Virginia, according to public records.
• The New York Times reported that Amazon retained new lobbyists in New York City ahead of its council hearing.

Yes, but: The opposition to Amazon is making lots of noise, but it lacks legal authority to shut down the new satellite offices.

• Amazon also has buy-in from key officials, including governors, mayors and many federal lawmakers.
• According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 57% of New York City voters approve of Amazon’s headquarters project in Queens' Long Island City while 26% disapprove. They are more split on whether they support the tax incentives used to lure the project.

What to watch: Lawmakers in New York are looking to hold more hearings with Amazon, and activists in Nashville and Virginia are seeking out allies in city governments.

The bottom line: "This backlash is serious,” said Nate Jensen, a professor at UT Austin who studies tax incentives. “We haven't seen this kind of resistance at the grassroots."

breaking next president of USA launches AIparty

Published on December 13, 2018News today from Axios washington dc - all reporting errors mine alone chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk AIparty.net EconomistAmerica.com plan is next 2 years will be spent on a bipartisan debate across the country on how to humanise artificial's intelligence to create good jobs, renew communities thriving everywhere HU""AI before West-East cooperation helps us like Huawei again

it doesnt really matter if you use the term AI or one of 10 other interconnecting tech terms = Big Data who's who, g5 who's who, blockchain who;s who, quantum who's who ....- all of which are converging to change everything people linkin and do in next 5 years- the cost of doing nothing about this is now very large- in fact a nation could go from developed to backward in under 5 years unless we unite to connect positives of every tech not the negatives

here is the bad news from robots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoemTySxFso the good news we can make robots better if we all help

good news references: search the AI caucus- q&a NYU's AI for 2019 breaking now ... rsvp with your favorite bookmark

go to www.axios.com - if you cant find todays interview of 3 leading politicians and intel sponsor tell me and i will try and send my favorite quotes that i scribbled down

back in 1960s america put 5000 bipartisan brains on getting to the moon- why cant we just invest in 5000 students going round the country programming ai debates until everyone linksin positively - happy 2019 eg i know people bot in usa and china who are determined to see a k-12 curriculum edited mainly by women and launched next year - why couldnt we all help mooc or wiki this

why is this urgent? because the social impact of technology are set to go from 1000 to 2000 times moore by 2025 versus 1946 - our 1984 book timelined this challenge would come some time about now - the fact that it actually is going to unite or destroy all of our youths sustainability goals is scary unless we make it great for everyone- just do it- oops that a nike slogan not an intel-edutech one- no worries both linkin out of oregon so i was tld in 2011 when dr yunus was chalenging women empowerment networks to linkin with students across the state, this is a story where we should value students more than their old professors stuck in siloised systems - you can't examine what future's about to happen, you can co-create it now with the universal connectivity we human now have and the robots will soon have-on the good news robots can scan eg ever piece of data ever recorded on cancer, and analyse connections humans just couldnt - or 100 other things where what maters is the transparency if the data and the owner- ai needs to be the greatest social collaboration race not one where separate pieces are privately owned - imagine if all 7.5 billion beings could join in  than just getting AI of one nations people 

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yunuscentre

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- maybe that's 2021's game once a president understanding ai by the people for the people is in office

but before that the world of valuig youth get a chance at the Jack MAolyuopics in 2020 corersponding to the first full year of fintech and ecommerce converging on edutech led out of geneva and with ai envoy sophia (now reformed tt Loveq humans) and UN human intelligence envoy and education commissioner jack ma

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Alibaba Group Founder and Commissioner, Jack Ma, Shares His Thoughts on the #LearningGeneration

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The CSIS Global Food Security Project presents:    When the City Does the Feeding: The Role of Local Governance in Urban Food Security     Featuring opening remarks by  Olivier de Schutter Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Secretary Maíra Colares Secretary for Social Assistance, Food Security and Citizenship, Belo Horizonte   Followed by a panel discussion with Secretary Colares and Chris Shepherd-Pratt Policy Team Lead, Bureau for Food Security, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)   Moderated by Christian Man Research Fellow, Global Food Security Project, CSIS   Welcoming remarks by Kimberly Flowers Director, Humanitarian Agenda & Global Food Security Project, CSIS     Tuesday, December 11, 2018 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm   CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 1616 RHODE ISLAND AVE NW, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20036   For 25 years, the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte has been an unsung hero in the fight against food insecurity. As Dr. M. Jahi Chappell put it, “The course to universal food security will never run smooth[ly], but steps forward have and can be made. Belo Horizonte has walked a bit farther down the path than most.” Annually, the municipal government’s Under-Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security spends upwards of $27 million running affordable “Popular Restaurants” that serve 14,000 meals per day; supporting retail “Food at Low Cost” outlets that annually move 50 million kilograms of produce; and making lunch from scratch for 150,000 schoolchildren. In addition, the government procures nearly all the produce required for these programs from small- and medium- sized family farms in the peri-urban area. Please join us for a keynote address from Belo Horizonte’s Food and Nutrition Secretary, Ms. Maíra Colares, as we examine the promise, challenges, and determinants of durable municipal governance in food security policy. The keynote will be preceded by a special video message from Olivier de Schutter, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and followed by a panel discussion with Secretary Colares and Chris Shepherd-Pratt from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Drawing on the experiences of Belo Horizonte, the panel will explore a number of issues: What special role can municipal governments play in food security, compared to regional, national, and international governments? What enables government institutions to maintain their commitments to food security over the long-term? How can U.S. development policymakers best support local governance? Join us after the event for a holiday celebration with food and drink.

From Joseph Nye

The current information revolution is putting transnational issues like financial stability, climate change, terrorism, cybercrime, and pandemics on the global agenda – at the same time as it tends to weaken the ability of all governments to respond. Complexity is growing. One model for the future is great power conflict or concert, but a second model involves “information entropy.” In that world, the answer to the question “Who’s next?” is “No one.”

A man photographs a WikiLeaks billboard in Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Richard Frazier/Shutterstock

While this answer is too simple, it does indicate important trends that will affect the place of the U.S. and others in the world. World politics will not be the sole province of governments, as individuals and private organizations – ranging from WikiLeaks to corporations to NGOs to terrorists to spontaneous societal movements – are all empowered to play direct roles in world politics. The spread of information means that power will be more widely distributed and informal networks will undercut the monopoly of traditional bureaucracy. As of 2018, there are about 20 billion devices connected to the internet, and most are autonomous.

Even if the U.S. remains the largest power, it cannot achieve many of its international goals acting alone. That means the case for providing leadership in multilateral institutions remains stronger than ever. In some areas of military and economic goods, unilateral American leadership can provide a large part of the answer. But on the new transnational issues, while American leadership will be important, success will require the multilateral cooperation of others: International financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the cooperation of others to ensure it. Regardless of potential setbacks to economic globalization, environmental globalization will increase. Climate change and rising sea levels will affect quality of life for everyone, but Americans cannot manage the problem alone. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, nations must use soft power to develop networks and build institutions to address shared threats and challenges.

In this sense, power becomes a positive-sum game. It will not be enough to think in terms of American power over others. One must also think in terms of power to accomplish joint goals, which involves power with others. The United States benefits if China improves its energy efficiency and emits less carbon dioxide. In this world, networks and connectedness become an important source of relevant power, and the most connected states are the most powerful.

The Need and the Threat

If the key to a multilateral world order is developing cooperation and valuing “power with” as well as “power over,” the opening years of the Trump administration are not encouraging. Every country puts its interests first, but the important question is how broadly or narrowly those interests are defined. Trump has shown an inclination toward narrow, zero-sum interpretations. At the same time, while Trump won the 2016 election, he did not win the popular vote, and in recent polls by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a large majority of Americans say globalization is mostly good for the U.S. and they continue to support multilateral engagement.

President Trump gestures during a rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, November 5, 2018.

Courtesy of AP

At mid-term in 2018, on the four major strands of the post-1945 liberal order – security, economics, global commons, and values such as human rights and democracy – the record is mixed. Thus far, while the Trump administration has weakened American alliances, it has not destroyed them. The security regimes for restraining proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are challenged, but remain in place. The damage to economic institutions, particularly those related to trade, appears to be greater than to the monetary order (where the dollar still dominates).

On global commons issues, the Trump administration has withdrawn U.S. participation in the Paris climate accord, but the substitution of natural gas for coal continues. As for values, Trump has shown less interest in human rights than his predecessors, and has often embraced authoritarian leaders. Some defenders argue that his unorthodox style and willingness to break institutions will produce major gains, but as The Economist argues, the institutional costs of using a wrecking-ball approach may reduce American power to deal with the new transnational issues that we face.

The terms “liberal international order” and “Pax Americana” have become obsolete as descriptions of world order, but the need remains for the largest countries to organize multilateralism for public goods. Leadership is not the same as domination. There have always been degrees of leadership and degrees of influence during the seven decades of American preeminence after World War II. Now with less preponderance and in a more complex world, American provision of global public goods, in cooperation with others, may be threatened more by the rise of populist nationalism at home than the rise of new powers abroad.

***

Joseph S. Nye (@Joe_Nye) is university distinguished service professor and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has published 14 academic books, including Soft Power, The Future of Power, and Is the American Century Over?