Privacy is important to Google

The company monetizing every bit of personal data about everybody on earth is very careful about what information it shares about itself.

Last May, officials in Midlothian, Tex., a city near Dallas, approved more than $10 million in tax breaks for a huge, mysterious new development across from a shuttered Toys R Us warehouse.

That day was the first time officials had spoken publicly about an enigmatic developer’s plans to build a sprawling data center. The developer, which incorporated with the state four months earlier, went by the name Sharka LLC. City officials declined at the time to say who was behind Sharka.

The mystery company was Google — a fact the city revealed two months later, after the project was formally approved. Larry Barnett, president of Midlothian Economic Development, one of the agencies that negotiated the data center deal, said he knew at the time the tech giant was the one seeking a decade of tax giveaways for the project, but he was prohibited from disclosing it because the company had demanded secrecy.

A very long time ago Google was more or less just a website you used to search for information.  Like if you wanted to know about who your elected representatives were about to shower favors and tax breaks upon, you might use Google to do some of that research.  You can still do that. But Google is hoping you won't find what they're up to until it's too late.

Why are they so worried? Well, it turns out that showering favors and tax breaks onto mega-corporations and international oligarchs isn't the no-brainer political winner it used to be.

The inevitability of Amazon’s arrival, however, had formed a strong common sense. Many acknowledged that it was a crummy deal – including, at times, the plan’s own architects – but urged New Yorkers to resign themselves to its eventuality. Just two days ago, the New York Times published an editorial by historian Kenneth Jackson that granted the subsidies’ absurdity, but suggested still that the city capitulate, stating: “this is how the game is played.” A few weeks earlier, Governor Cuomo, in an interview with Brian Lehrer, said that in a perfect world a company should not have states bidding against one another, but that: “We pray for the perfect, we live in the real.”

In other words, the deal may stink but our hands are tied. Mayor de Blasio acknowledged the obscenity of tax breaks for Bezos, but insisted that the deal was democratic because its key negotiators — the mayor and governor — were democratically elected. The message to New Yorkers was clear: sit down, there is no alternative.

And then, on Valentine’s Day, New Yorkers proved them all wrong. They burst the ideological bubble the establishment was floating, and showed that they will not accept the trickle-down, supply-side urban economics under the vague and misleading banner of “progressive” policy. This demonstrates that we can — and we must — do more than “play the game,” “pray for the perfect,” and follow the leaders.

God bless the kids who write this stuff for Jacobin.  They really do try like hell to convey a sense that great things are happening and victory is right around the corner and man is that ever annoying.  But that doesn't mean they're wrong about what happened. People in New York got together and said they'd had just about enough of this shit in so loudly that it ran the world's richest man right out of town.  So good job, those guys.  How's the rest of the world making out, though?  Not so good.

Making out especially not so good are we here in Louisiana where we're still very much invested in a model of governance that requires us to shower favors on the wealthy first and then hope for good things to come from that.

Maybe they can run Bezos off in New York but we can barely reserve the right to review the occasional industrial tax exemption. Not a single person in New Orleans questioned the cash payroll subsidies handed out to DXC Technology in 2017.  The Sonder STR hotel project is going to have full city council backing. 

In New York they told the world's richest man to fuck off. We can't even stand up to Torres and Motwani and Joe Jaeger. Jaeger just bought himself a dang plantation.  But all indications are we're going to subsidize his downtown hotel with money that could be better spent on shoring up our infrastructure.

What's worse is all of this stuff happens right out in the open where we can read about it in the local papers and whatnot.  What would happen if the local oligarchs started getting all huffy about their privacy when anybody tried to hold them accountable.