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https://www.newsweek.com/cost-me-the-election-data-centers-trigger-voter-backlash-12118327
A wave of voter anger over massive data center projects is beginning to reshape U.S. politics, with local officials and senior lawmakers losing elections after backing controversial developments tied to the artificial intelligence boom.
In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.
At the local level, the fallout was just as direct. "Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do," former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry said after conceding his primary race, after voting to advance the same project.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday June 28, @06:27PM (19 children)
That law is bare a month [prospect.org] old. Let's see how it fares after contact with the federal courts. I see warning signs [americanprogress.org] already:
In other words, they think they have an end run around constitutional protections such as freedom of speech by redefining corporations so they don't have these rights.
In other words, this will fail on the grounds of the Citizens United case: the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The state of Hawaii does have powers not available at the federal level. But it doesn't have the power to violate the US Constitution. Here, the catch is that one can't take away rights of people just because they are acting on behalf of a corporation. If a natural person has the right to spend in politics (pretty much guaranteed by the First Amendment BTW), then so do natural people acting on behalf of corporations.
Welp, it'll go through the courts and the lawmakers will have another opportunity to tilt at this windmill rather than solve (or is it create?) problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28, @07:47PM (17 children)
In a truly rational and lawful society, we would interpret "equal protection under law" to mean that the wealthy and large corporations don't get to buy their way to more access, and thus more protection, under law. Unfortunately, that is not the society we have now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 28, @07:52PM (16 children)
That would be wrong. Rewrite the Constitution if you want that change. Not "interpret".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28, @09:04PM (3 children)
Wrong, you say? The alternative is that some people are more equal than others, and that wealth buys you more equality. That appears to be your interpretation of the Constitution.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday June 28, @09:40PM (2 children)
Like it did with the "voter backlash" above? Wealthy can spend more, but they don't get a bigger vote. Finally, I think it's a bit perverse to complain about "more equality" while simultaneous propose less equality for businesses. Not to mention the disinterest in following sound constitutional law.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28, @10:01PM (1 child)
This happened because the wealthy and the corporations bought their access and used that access to get lawmakers to support the data center they wanted to build. In this case, enough people got pissed off about how the wealthy and the corporations used their ability to be more equal than others, and took action.
Too often, it doesn't work out that way. I'm sure people like Ansley Brown [x.com] would find your words comforting when Georgia Power wants to use eminent domain to take her mother's home to build infrastructure for a data center in Coweta County [11alive.com]. I suppose she should be glad that the developers of the data center in Fayette County can buy all the access they want to get their project approved and take whatever private property they want to get their data center. We sure wouldn't want to inconvenience the poor, mistreated wealthy people and large corporations to respect everyone else's rights.
You're on the wrong side of this issue. It's too bad you can't see it. The wealthy and large corporations really are more equal than everyone else.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 28, @10:48PM
Exactly.
We'll see what happens with that case.
(Score: 5, Informative) by number11 on Sunday June 28, @09:08PM (11 children)
The Constitution does not say a corporation is a person, or has a person's rights. I have nothing against giving a corporation the same rights as a natural person, so long as the same obligations also apply. Contribution limits. Jail time in the case of criminal conduct (it might have to be "house arrest", padlock their premises and freeze their bank accounts for the duration), with no more "force majeure" protection more than a natural person has. Same tax rates as individuals. And if there's a military draft, the same chance as a natural person to be forced to serve the government for a single recruit's wages.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 28, @10:54PM (10 children)
The Constitution doesn't have to. I was very careful in how I expressed the facts:
The rights of natural people are being taken away, thus the constitutional quandary. The rights of corporate personhood are a mechanism for honoring those natural person rights. It could be done in a different way, but you'd still finish at the same end point.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday June 29, @04:18AM (9 children)
There's no inherent reason for spending money to be considered speech. That's just something that SCOTUS invented in order to justify allowing the wealthy to have an undue influence over elections. Speech is speech, printing things, putting things over the airwaves, on tv or on the internet. There's really no valid reason why we are tied to the idea of allowing people with great sums of money to engage in so much "free speech" that now people think that the government is the problem and not also think that corporations and the Epstein class are.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30, @11:18AM (1 child)
And "printing things, putting things over the airwaves, on tv or on the internet" is free, right? Free speech isn't free as in beer. That's how money gets into the equation. And if you heavily regulate such speech, then the people in control of paid speech that can't be regulated (say troll farms in foreign countries), have an advantage.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday June 30, @04:42PM
Essentially yes, there was public access TV as an option for people that didn't own a media out let, I remember there were some pretty low budget people on there, and the cost to put stuff up on the internet is trivially cheap This is my second posting here this morning and I'm out like a couple cents worth of electricity. Even the poorest people these days have the ability to post things on the internet using a smartphone, so to suggest that there is any sort of significant barrier to getting messages out based on money right here is questionable at best.
Sure, there was a period where the printing press, TV, movies and radio weren't super accessible, but that's like 30 years ago at this point and all of those types of media are dying as they can't compete with the internet.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30, @11:42AM (6 children)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30, @03:39PM (1 child)
A corporation is comprised of a group of people. But that group is not a separate person. The group may have some of the powers and responsibilities of an individual, biological person, but that does not make it a person.
Can corporations marry each other? Does a corporation have a biological sex at its birth? Does a corporation have a right to vote in elections? Can a corporation hold public office?
If you can't answer yes to all of those questions and provide cogent explanations for why you're saying yes, then it's a sign that corporations aren't people. If you're insisting that corporations are people but can't marry other corporations or hold public office, then you're denying rights to "corporate personhood people" that you provide to real people.
So are you going to continue to gaslight everyone that "corporate personhood people" are actual people?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30, @06:14PM
My point was that rights are being taken from real people not legal constructs.
Are you going to read?
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday June 30, @04:37PM (3 children)
They already had, there were campaign donation limits that had been in place prior to those rulings. And, it's not like SCOTUS hasn't been going well out of it's way to invent reasons why you can't regulate that stuff.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 30, @06:16PM (2 children)
And those unconstitutional limits were gone afterward. Funny how that works!
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday July 01, @03:21AM (1 child)
They're not a unconstitutional, SCOTUS ruled them to be, which is kind of funny as the court gave itself the right to declare things to be unconstitutional, not the constitution itself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 01, @05:17AM
Already explained why.
Who should be doing it instead? Trump perhaps? It's one of those implied powers you hear about.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Reziac on Monday June 29, @02:35AM
Center for American Progress is a hard-left think tank. They sure as hell didn't recommend any laws that might advantage anyone else.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.