\u201c(The AI \u2018Revolution\u2019) Is happening whether we like it or not.\u201d \u2013 Dave McCormick, MAGA Republican Pennsylvania Senator from Connecticut.<\/p>\n
I grew up in a Walter Cronkite\/Charles Kuralt household, so I\u2019ve been watching \u201cCBS News Sunday Morning\u201d since it premiered in 1979. The show is a Sunday staple, like bacon and eggs, The Sunday Times and Steelers football in the fall.<\/p>\n
I was especially interested in the latest installment, which featured a piece on the data center invasion threatening to erase Archbald and other small towns across the country.<\/p>\n
In March, a crew from the show attended the second \u201cconditional use\u201d hearing<\/a> for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center \u201cCampus,\u201d the most objectionable of six individual disasters proposed in the borough of about 7,500 citizens. Anticipation for Robert Costa\u2019s report<\/a> was high, but the delivered product was a regrettable letdown.<\/p>\n Kayleigh Cornell and Sarah Gabriel, of the Archbald Neighborhood Association, carried themselves well, but the bottom fell out when Costa sat down with McCormick. In the piece that aired and in an extended\u00a0interview<\/a> available at the show\u2019s website, Costa platformed \u201cData Center Dave\u201d to prattle on about the endless \u201cbenefits\u201d of paving over Pennsylvania without noting that the senator\u2019s wife, Dina Powell McCormick, is president and vice chairman of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and one of the most powerful players in the data center invasion.<\/p>\n \u201cData Center Dina\u2019s\u201d compensation includes a base salary of $1 million, with incentives that could earn her an additional 200% of her salary. She received a $2 million signing bonus and stock grants valued at $60 million, according to a Meta filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n The median household income in Archbald is about $72,000, according to U.S. Census data.<\/p>\n Costa has earned a reputation as a thorough reporter, so it was a huge disappointment that he failed to raise this scandalous conflict of interest with McCormick. If the \u201cSunday Morning\u201d crew had been present at Monday night\u2019s third \u201cconditional use\u201d hearing<\/a> on the Wildcat Ridge project, they would have received a thunderous earful about Costa\u2019s conspicuous oversight.<\/p>\n More than 500 riled-up citizens packed the Valley View High School auditorium to send a strong, unified message to Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management: \u201cWe don\u2019t like your project and don\u2019t accept it as inevitable! Take your \u2019revolution\u2019 somewhere else! P.S. \u2018Data Center Dave\u2019 represents your interests, not ours!\u201d<\/p>\n In yet another cartoonishly tone-deaf incitement of the already agitated crowd, Wildcat Ridge attorney Edmund J. Campbell Jr. clutched his pearls over a \u201cWildcat Ridge Propaganda Mailer Return\u201d box placed on the stage.<\/p>\n The box was provided by the grassroots resistance group Stop Archbald Data Centers<\/a> for citizens to deposit pro-project, anti-Archbald\u00a0 junk mail<\/a> designed and distributed by Ryan Leckey Media. By the end of the hearing, the box was stuffed with hundreds of junked mailers.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it inappropriate for the decorum of the meeting,\u201d Campbell said to a chorus of boos. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of social media out there discussing this application and others, and any time anyone suggests or posts something on those forums that is in any way supportive of data centers or this application, those things are immediately stricken.\u201d<\/p>\n Incredibly, Campbell\u2019s complaint not only minimized the thermonuclear blowback from the mailer, but also pitched the absurd fantasy that a \u201csilent majority\u201d of citizens privately support invasive data center development but are too intimidated to say so publicly. When any of Campbell\u2019s imaginary army of corporate bootlickers dares stand up in support of the concrete entombment of their own neighborhoods, their comments are scrubbed from antisocial media and they\u2019re bullied into the shadows.<\/p>\n When the box was moved to the auditorium floor, streams of citizens surged toward the stage to deposit their mailers. For Campbell and his crew, it was all downhill from there.<\/p>\n The hearing was ostensibly focused on a \u201ctraffic report\u201d that its presenter explained was not a \u201ctraffic study,\u201d which apparently would be more scientific and contain accurate, verifiable data citizens could trust as reliable.<\/p>\n