“ By Bill Hethcock – Staff Writer, Dallas Business Journal 2 hours ago The 20 finalists for Amazon’s second headquarters should expect an announcement from the company after the midterm elections, a top global site selector said Monday. John Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co. Inc. location consultants, said it’s increasingly looking like the company’s announcement for the 50,000-job, $5 billion investment will come after the midterm elections if the news doesn’t break elsewhere before it’s officially announced. “They’re engaged in a number of high-profile lobbying activities and efforts,” said Boyd, whose company is based in Princeton, New Jersey. “So, eliminating L.A. and eliminating California’s 57 members of Congress today rather than two months from now would not be the wisest thing.” On the health care front, for example, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) wants to begin dispensing drugs and is lobbying to decrease the number of licensed pharmacists that they will be mandated to have employed, Boyd said in an interview with the Dallas Business Journal. Amazon Web Services is also bidding for the Department of Defense’s $10 billion cloud contract dubbed the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. The winner of the massive government contract will modernize the Defense Department’s computing infrastructure and their combat forces for better artificial intelligence and big data analysis. ”
