"Then Amazon takes an intriguing tack: It tells California that if it will just drop the tax, Amazon will site a bunch of jobs there. Stimulus by blackmail, as it were."
===

Yeah, blackmail indeed.

Almost as bad as Intel saying, "Hey, cut some slack on taxes, and we will "site a bunch of jobs there" in Hillsboro.

Or all that greenmail coming from BETC addicted Vestas and Solar PV-R-Us vapor-jobs.

Where does Bezos get off, anyway? Blackmail is illegal in America.

Someone explain the difference between blackmail & doing what's best for your company. If my taxes were going way up, I'd move too. That's blackmail?

On second thought, maybe it's more like hostage-taking. They're holding these jobs hostage, and repeal of the tax is the ransom being demanded.

Did anyone notice that Oregon pols used to say we needed a sales tax to have a more steady revenue base. To save us from all those ups and downs. Like California.

Oh, never mind.

Thanks
JK

Hey Jack,
Can't you at least make your little woodchuck (or chipmunk or whatever) dance?

Thanks
JK

After California takes all those new internet tax revenues and gives teachers and other public employees raises and pads their pensions, and spends it all gone thataway as they always do, and also commits all future internet tax revenues to such things, what are they going to do then to solve their budget crises?

Gee - California is desperate (once more) for more taxes. Why is that NOT a big surprise to anyone. And this Loni Hancock woman who is pushing for this internet sales tax; is just another Berkeley tax-and-spender with a long history of same.
It should also be no great secret that Amazon.com has a huge warehouse and distribution operation right here in Northern Nevada. And it looks like they might just be expanding operations here soon if Jerry Brown and the Democrats get their way...

Makes you wonder why Amazon set up shop in the Puget Sound region and not Oregon...being that we have no sales tax...

I wonder when Amazon moves to Nevada...or Texas...or some other (likely Southern) state. Got to love being a virtual company.

The beauty of transnational corporations is that they've found a way to make even the most reasonable man act out of desperation and fear. I'm sorry to say that if we don't stop compromising our human values for corporate ones, one day there'll be nothing left to compromise with.

--Warren Buffett

Shall we then give increasing freedom to the corporation? Or shall we keep this beast without morals away from the power we have fought so hard to secure for mankind and our fellow countrymen? Let us never compromise away our own values for those of a faceless body built solely upon greed, but calling itself Benevolence.

--Thomas Jefferson

The percentage of working-age Californians with jobs has fallen to a record low, and employment may not return to pre-recession levels until the second half of the decade, according to a research group.

Just 55.4 percent of working-age Californians, defined as those 16 or older, had a job in July, down from 56.2 percent a year earlier and the lowest level since 1976, the Sacramento- based California Budget Project said in a report released late yesterday.