West Virginia Republicans are betraying their voters for AI special interests
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I spoke with several locals who were irate beyond words about the injustice occurring in a state with barely any Democrat elected officials.
What’s worse is that West Virginia is also being violated with endless transmission lines to power the blue-state “data center alley” in northern Virginia. According to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysts, West Virginia energy consumers will be expected to pay $572 million in higher rates to fund the rope to hang themselves.
What is so offensive is that these projects are not even creating jobs. According to the February JOLT report from BLS, construction remains in the greatest recession since the Great Recession, despite these so-called data center projects. Oracle, which is at the center of the cloud computing in the data centers, is laying off 18% of its workforce.
Shockingly, Henshaw and his minions attempted to pass even greater handouts for data centers offered to no other industry, in addition to what was in HB 2014.
This session, they introduced SB 623, which offered a complete property tax exemption and sales tax exemption on all data center equipment. They also introduced HB 4013, which would have created a new tax credit available to data centers to offset all state income, sales/use, franchise, and payroll withholding taxes based on capital investments, construction costs, and wages.
How many jobs did they have to create to qualify? Just 10! Which, of course, is a tacit admission that these behemoths don’t create many jobs, despite their enormous footprint, cost, and consumption of power.
In other words, Agenda 2030 is being fulfilled right under our noses in a state where Republicans control both houses of the legislature with 32-2 and 91-9 majorities.
What West Virginia, with its mind-numbing GOP majorities, shows is that the lack of conservative outcomes under GOP control is not due to a lack of power or votes but too much access to money and special interests.
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