Amid the flood of media coverage of the competition for the second headquarters project of Amazon.com were a couple of months ago, and they were written by me.

What a sap.

There is no Amazon second headquarters project with 50,000 new jobs. There may not have been.

Amazon.com managed to orchestrate a highly praised PR and marketing campaign that is pretty much all of North America, all to get offers of tax breaks and free stuff from cities and regions. We not only let Amazon get away with it, we are eagerly assisted, talking and writing and tweeting about Amazon's vision and stunning growth.

Amazon dubbed "HQ2," and the prize has been split in two. East Coast, one across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., in Virginia, and the other in the Queens borough of New York City.

Nearly 240 cities and regions in the United States and in Canada provided a guide to your information on their communities and their growth plans. What does Amazon do?

The businesses that compete with Amazon do not have access to that kind of information.

There are other frustrations for business here, too. Imagine owning a business in New Jersey, a perennial contender for the title of the worst tax-for-business, according to the Tax Foundation. As of the last ranking it has been 32nd among the states in unemployment insurance tax, 47th in corporate business taxes, 45th in sales taxes and 48th in property taxes.

Not a problem for Amazon, which was promised a package totaling up to about $ 7 billion, including tax credits and property tax abatements.

A New Jersey business owner's tax burden must feel like carrying a 94-pound bag of Portland cement to work every day. So how would you go to expand in New Jersey now without being offered an Amazonian-sized incentive package to lighten the load?

It's also discouraging to see Amazon pick sites in relatively high-cost areas on the East Coast that are both big and growing faster than other parts of the country. It remains to be seen what kind of incentives Amazon squeezed out of its two new hometowns, but what the company seemed to be when it was possible to hire people.

It's expensive to live in the Washington metro area and often, but it has the amenities and opportunities that Amazon has. And by putting a big facility there, Amazon is going to be a draw for others.

Nashville? Indianapolis? They made the list of finalists, but it was difficult to see how they could be.

Of course the twin cities missed that cut altogether. We were "the clear loser," the Washington Post declared, "We are in the Amazon, we are in the Amazon.

Now that we are getting closer to the game ends, maybe it was at least a partial win for Minnesota that we got knocked out so early? Sorry, but no.

Putting it to Gov. Mark Dayton for somehow sniffing that this Amazon project was a waste of time. You may remember that the governor, said Minnesota said, would be making a "restrained" proposal to Amazon.

That's not a lot of things in the business community, especially in the technology community, where you've grumbled that a great deal of effort has been spent.

The state's letter to Amazon revealed incentives for $ 5 million under Minnesota incentives. That's certainly restrained, when New Jersey was out with $ 7 trillion.

At the time that Minnesota's response came to light it was not a "bid." It seemed more like an invitation to talk – which is not the way to win an auction, by the way.

The letter from Minnesota's Department of Employment and Economic Development, which had a history of becoming more readily available.

The letter was addressed to Amazon, c / o Golden Site Manager. Even that, the apparent project name "Golden," adds a rich detail to the fiasco. Amazon's secret code of "Project Golden," it seems Golden was simply a call to Amazon's Seattle headquarters.

Given the hype for Amazon HQ2, it would have taken a truckload of political courage for any state governor to simply "no-bid" the Amazon project. Obviously, Amazon knew that.

If running a transcontinental sweepstakes worked this well for Amazon you know someone else will at least try it, so this might be the way to handle this the next time.

A bag of wild rice collected from a northern Minnesota lake, a gift box of assorted Spam and a "Keep the North Cold" knit hat along with a simple letter.

"We welcome you to come to the great state of Minnesota!" the letter should say, "There will be some special tax giveaways coming, but here you will find a great quality of life and some of the best workers in the world. of Minnesota's vibrant business community. "

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