“999 to 1 Against” Data Centers
As Republicans scramble for a grassroots issue for the New Year, to grow the Party as needed to be competitive in elections, opposing data centers could be the Christmas gift that keeps on giving. Local residents were “999 to 1 against” a data center planned for the town of Matthews, located in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, according to its Mayor John Higdon.
Allowing the development of a data center was on the agenda of a council meeting there in October, when it was withdrawn from consideration. If it had been approved, “every person that voted for it would no longer be in office,” Mayor Higdon observed. “That’s for sure.”
This is the reaction across the country to the efforts by Big Tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, to build massive data centers in the heartland of America. These projects gobble up land, electricity, and water, while creating very few jobs for the locals who have to endure the perpetual 65-decibel hum of the servers and louder backup diesel generators.
Lobbied state government officials tend to welcome these data centers, as Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas has. But often these projects are shrouded in secrecy and sprung on local residents without explaining the full risks and costs.
Texas has a dire water shortage, while data centers require enormous amounts of water to keep their computers from overheating. One data center can consume millions of gallons of water daily, the equivalent of the needs of an entire town of 50,000 people.
Prior to the invasion by data centers, a Texas agency estimated that many Texas towns and communities would face a severe water shortage by 2030. A harsh drought could accelerate that problem.
There are 411 existing data centers in Texas, second only to Virginia, and another 442 are planned for Texas, which is equivalent to nearly doubling its population in terms of water usage. Texans tap into broad but depleting underground aquifers for most of their water needs, such that data centers anywhere in Texas deplete the water supply for everyone there.
Meanwhile, since 2022 residential electricity prices nationwide have risen by 10%, while electricity prices for data centers and other commercial uses have increased by only 3%, according to a new report published by Yale Climate Connections. Data centers get favorable energy rates while homeowners are forced to make up the difference amid inflation.
If the Democrats who control California want to allow Google and Facebook to build data centers in unpopulated regions of the Golden State, then they can do that. But instead liberal Big Tech is lobbying Republican officials in other states, like Texas, to impose the costs and burdens of these monstrosities on unsuspecting local residents there.
The grassroots are rising up against this, and rightly so. A $2 billion new data center that blights the landscape, dries up the water supply, and overloads the power grid brings an estimated total of only 37 new jobs.
An outcry last year by the public in St. Charles, Missouri, blocked a data center project there by an undisclosed Big Tech company. When residents learned that 125 diesel generators would be used, any one of which could leak to contaminate the local water supply, they successfully defeated the development.
Supporters of data centers criticize the opposition by calling them NIMBYs, which is short for “Not in my back yard.” The same name-calling is used against residents who oppose resettling Somali or Afghan refugees in their communities.
But as with the refugee issue, valid objections are raised as to why people from halfway around the world are resettled far from their own homes in the backyards of those who never invited them. The homes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the States of California and Washington, so why aren’t most of the new data centers being built in those States?
Another analogy can be drawn to offshore wind turbines, which are typically opposed by local residents and yet pushed by lobbyists and corporate interests. California environmentalists are the biggest promoters of wind as an energy source, and yet Californians have not allowed a single offshore wind turbine along their own vast coastline.
Data centers externalize their many costs to burden the targeted communities, while developers line the pockets of lobbyists to push for these projects without transparency to the public. Often local residents receive little advance notice of rezoning demands.
In northeast Oklahoma, for example, Google is attempting to build one of these data centers in the town of Sand Springs, which the public is only recently learning about. Its planning commission has scheduled a vote on Tuesday, January 27, at the Charles Page High School Cafeteria on whether to approve this, giving people little time to mobilize in opposition.
Voluntary Deportations Gain Steam
On December 22, the Trump Administration announced it is tripling its bonus to $3,000 for illegal aliens who voluntarily self-deport, along with free travel back to their homeland. Liberals can hardly complain about this Christmas gift to those who crossed our border and remained in our country in violation of our laws.
Many illegal aliens are willing to self-deport. Since Trump became president on January 20, a remarkable 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily returned to their home country according to data released by the Department of Homeland Security, although some dispute this total.
Involuntary deportation costs an estimated $17,000 per individual, so it makes sense to share the savings in a way that everyone comes out ahead. There is room to sweeten this pot further while still trimming the overall expense.
The average lifetime cost of an illegal alien for American taxpayers is $100,000, with some estimates higher than that. The demands placed by these migrants on government entitlement programs, remedial education in schools, law enforcement, and our health care system are far greater than the $3,000 being offered for them to return home.
Self-deportation is the primary method by which President Dwight Eisenhower achieved the largest deportation in American history in 1954. It would have been unthinkable then for liberals to interfere with the president in removing aliens from our country.
CBS News had prepared a smear piece against Trump’s forced deportations, and scheduled it to air on its 60 Minutes show on the evening of December 21. But merely two hours before airing, the newly installed CBS editor-in-chief pulled its one-sided story off the air, illustrating that Trump is winning on this issue.
Another victory for Trump came on December 18, when Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted of a felony count of obstructing federal agents seeking to arrest an illegal alien who was in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the federal agents in one direction while leading the illegal alien to exit by a private jury door to evade arrest.
It is safer to arrest a suspect in a courtroom than to try to catch and handcuff him on the street, which was a point emphasized by federal prosecutors during the short trial of Judge Dugan. She was continuing to collect her full salary of about $175,000 as a judge despite being a felony defendant, but after the conviction she finally resigned.
Liberals are appalled by the jury verdict, as they are accustomed to juries in D.C. rendering every verdict against Trump and his supporters. D.C. and Virginia grand juries have even refused to indict opponents of Trump, despite how indictments are nearly always automatically rendered as prosecutors request.
But Wisconsin is in middle America, and the 12 mostly rural counties that comprised that jury pool are nothing like D.C. Few if any of those jurors in Wisconsin are federal employees, as D.C. juries predominantly are, and Trump won Wisconsin in the last presidential election.
Conservatives who were once disappointed at Trump for not building a full border wall during his first term in office, because Congress failed to fund it, are seeing that deportations have nearly as strong an impact as a wall would.
There has been a 93% decrease in apprehensions at the southern border near San Diego, a 50-year record low of only 1,793 apprehensions. During the Biden Administration a year ago, there were more than 24,700 apprehensions for the same two-month period.
The termination of the catch-and-release program, whereby the Biden Administration would senselessly release illegal aliens in the United States after capturing them, is cited as one reason for the disappearance of nearly all of the illegal crossings. But surely the high-profile deportation program by the Trump Administration is the single biggest factor.
Still, some say that the deportations need to go faster in order to meet the goals set by Trump. There have not been as many workplace raids of illegal aliens as expected.
Where illegals have been arrested en masse and deported, it appears that Republican areas like Omaha, Nebraska, have been targeted more than Democrat strongholds like Los Angeles and New York. The much-publicized raid on a food plant in June in Omaha was in a swing district that Democrats hope to capture in the midterm elections.
The thousands of Democrat loyalists who staff the Department of Homeland Security still have their jobs, and have not been replaced by conservatives. Those staffers appear to be picking regions for deportation for political reasons, rather than to meet Trump’s goals.
Activist judicial rulings have also hindered deportations from Democrat strongholds. For more than two months the U.S. Supreme Court delayed and then denied an emergency petition on this issue by Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, despite quickly ruling in his favor nearly two dozen times on other issues.
Job Visas Are Costing GOP Elections
The young men who carried Trump and Republican Senators to victory in 2024 have recently been drifting back to the Democrat Party, or staying home, in the off-year elections. The perception that top jobs in America continue to be given to foreign workers is a big reason why.
In the second week of December, Democrats flipped a Republican state house seat in a special election in Georgia, an upset that has rattled Republican leaders nationwide. A Democrat who fell short of 40% last November won this seat with a 12-point gain, signaling the potential for landslide GOP losses in the upcoming midterm elections.
Job postings for recent graduates and students have dropped by more than 16% this year on one popular website. Unemployment for recent graduates is higher than overall unemployment, a historic shift that is bad news for young men.
On December 13 the New York Times ran a long story about the dismay among young Trump supporters (dubbed zoomercons) at the continued use of the H-1B visa program that allows ambitious foreigners to grab jobs in fast-growing industries such as robotics and AI. Most of these jobs are entry-level and do not require any special skills other than an engineering degree that many unemployed American graduates have.
The job prospects for college graduates this year are near a record low. Imagine spending four or five years working hard and incurring a pile of debt, only to be unable to find employment as our own government is recruiting foreigners to fill these positions.
Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, and other tech giants are run by foreigners now and, like chain migration, they tend to hire workers from their homeland. In the most recent fiscal year, 71% of H-1B visa workers came from India and 12% came from mainland China, almost none of whom is Christian or likely to assimilate into American culture.
In the week of December 7, many H-1B visa holders received official notices from their consulate that their visas have been “prudentially revoked” due to their run-in with law enforcement. But these notices take effect only if the foreigner leaves the U.S., so their impact is to encourage these foreigners never to leave.
A commentator in India, lamenting the brain drain from his country, applauds Trump’s new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which is being unsuccessfully challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a separate lawsuit by 20 Democrat-led states. Very few of the H-1B visa holders ever return to their home country, even though a visa is supposed to be only temporary.
Big Tech companies have amassed record-breaking wealth, at levels never seen before in world history. They do not need the incentive of H-1B visas, which enable them to hire lower-cost foreigners who would face deportation if they leave to work for a competitor.
It is not only Big Tech that is abusing the visa system. Professional sports, particularly baseball and basketball, are also bringing in too many foreigners to take jobs that should be going to Americans.
Many types of visas for entertainers and other highly paid workers are being abused to give coveted positions to foreigners rather than American citizens. High-paid finance positions, such as investment banking, medical positions such as physicians, and executive management employment are going to foreigners on visas too.
It is wonderful that Trump is rebuilding American manufacturing, which traditionally offers higher wages than unskilled menial labor. But manufacturing is only 9% of the American workforce, so even if Trump were able to double that it would still not be as large, or as well-paying, as jobs in all the non-manufacturing fields that foreigners are taking on visas.
The professional baseball and basketball players who come here on visas should be sent back home after a year or two, or not allowed here in the first place. American teams can play foreign teams, including competing with them at the Olympics, and nothing is gained while much is lost by promoting and overpaying foreigners to play on American teams.
The three largest contracts in Major League Baseball have been given to foreign players. More than half of the players on the Houston Astros this past baseball season were foreign-born, despite how Texas high schools and colleges are rich in athletic talent.
One of the biggest travesties is in college basketball, where foreign players who are not serious students gobble up scarce scholarships and publicity here at the expense of American players. As budget shortfalls hit college athletic programs due to court-imposed liabilities, it makes even less sense to have foreigners playing on American college basketball teams.
There is a panoply of different visa programs available to foreigners to enter the U.S. at high salaries. These programs should all be shut down as part of the MAGA goal to protect and create good job opportunities for American citizens.
Somali Daycare Fraud Uncovered by Citizens
It has been ordinary citizens, not billions spent on federal law enforcement, that uncovered the immense daycare fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. In one video posted on Facebook, a Minnesota resident explains that he personally visited 40 to 50 Somali-run daycares in the Minneapolis area and never saw a child at any one of them.
“So one of the things that I’ve noticed is there’s an exceptional number of childcare centers that are set up mostly in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul. And I said, wow, how many kids are there in the Twin Cities?” the Minnesotan commented to a reporter.
When he inquired at one facility about availability for his grandson, “they said, no, we’re all full, we’re all full. And they had the door open and I looked and there were no kids.”
The Minnesotan noticed this beginning five years ago, and yet the Democrat Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, bragged in his debate against JD Vance that Walz had made it easier for folks to run daycare businesses. The fraud is obvious to anyone who visits these centers.
The 23-year-old social media influencer Nick Shirley has aired videos of his own visits to these Minnesota childcare centers; his videos have attracted more than 116 million views on X and 1.6 million additional views on YouTube. With that publicity, there is finally movement in uprooting this fraud and holding the perpetrators legally accountable.
FBI chief Kash Patel threatens to denaturalize and deport Somali refugees responsible for this. These immigrants from a country on the equator were ill-suited to be relocated by Democrat presidents to Minnesota, where they lacked the skills and background needed to thrive in that winter climate.
As a Shirley video demonstrates, calling the phone number for one of these apparently fraudulent daycare centers allegedly resulted in the office of Tim Walz answering the phone, as the Governor of Minnesota. He has refused to resign amid this engulfing scandal, but did drop his campaign for reelection.
In another video Shirley features the “Quality Learing Center” daycare which misspells the word “learning” on its own sign. Someone would have corrected that error if the daycare were really in daily operations serving many families, and the video shows that it appears empty in the middle of a weekday when it should be active.
This fraud in Minnesota could be part of a broader government-funded childcare scandal that extends to many other states. Publicly funded childcare has long been a bad idea as public policy, vulnerable to fraud, and yet even conservative states like Missouri have large programs like this.
The newly elected socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, ran on a campaign of free childcare for everyone, because mothers “are giving up paying jobs to do unpaid childcare.” Zohran vowed to “implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years,” and to pay childcare workers the wages of “public school teachers.”
Government-run childcare has never worked. President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, which would have established universal federally funded daycare nationwide, and he properly called it the “most radical piece of legislation” ever sent to him by Congress.
Democrats in Congress later pushed for the Act for Better Child Care Services of 1989, for federal funding of childcare centers nationwide. President George H.W. Bush successfully opposed it for not sending assistance directly to parents as tax credits, for reducing options available to parents, and for discriminating against two-parent families where one stays at home with the children.
Government-run daycare separates children from their families and marginalizes the essential role of fathers both financially and in the upbringing of children. At the time of Nixon’s veto, the communist Soviet Union was an example of the failed approach of pushing women into the workforce while government controlled the raising of their children.
It is estimated that Mamdani’s plan of universal child care for New York City could cost $6 billion, and such enormous funding is unavailable for this. Quebec tried government-run universal child care beginning in 1997, and it has been a billion-dollar step backward which 30 years later is available to only about half the population there.
Economists at MIT, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto studied Quebec’s program and reported in 2015 that it caused a “sizeable negative shock” to children’s non-cognitive skills, resulting in “worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life” among boys.
On November 1, Democrat-controlled New Mexico became the only State providing universal free child care, as funded by its oil and gas revenue. Every other state, including liberal California and Massachusetts, has rejected this costly socialist approach.
