The shuffling parade of paid advocates for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus have made such an airtight case against their own proposal, they are desperate to block Archbald Borough Council from voting it down.<\/p>\n
Out of trick plays and losing by a landslide late in the fourth quarter, the visiting team is demanding the referees reset the scoreboard and bench the home side\u2019s starting lineup.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s installment of the marathon conditional use hearing on the monumentally toxic project began with Wildcat Ridge attorneys making a motion for six of the council\u2019s seven members to recuse themselves. The reason? \u201cUnreasonable bias\u201d against invasive hyperscale data center development.<\/p>\n
I am not making that up. After months spent making it impossible for any official of good conscience to endorse the project, Brooklyn-based Cornell Reality Management LLC now argues that allowing a vote on its glaring lack of merit would be \u201cunfair.\u201d Since the recusals would negate a quorum, the project should be legally \u201cdeemed approved\u201d without a vote.<\/p>\n
In terms of sheer audacity, you really have to tip the cap to Cornell. It\u2019s like accusing a community of an unreasonable bias against arson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t let us burn down your town because you\u2019re biased against pyromaniacs!\u201d<\/p>\n
Tell it to the judge. Personally, I can\u2019t wait to witness that proceeding. If this desperate mess ever makes it into a courtroom, I will petition for permission to set up a cinema-sized popcorn machine next to the bench.<\/p>\n
While some arcane legal framework for such a preposterous argument might exist, no judge who wants to be reelected or comfortable in public ever again is ever going to gavel in favor of such underhanded nonsense.<\/p>\n
According to reams of \u201cevidence\u201d offered by the developers, council President Louis Rapoch and council members Larry Marchetti, Madonna Munley, Lisa Osborne, Erin Owen and Larry West are incapable of impartiality in making the easiest decision ever posed to a governing body.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, Vice President Joseph Altier III was spared being singled out as a sentient human being who is likely to vote against the annihilation of his hometown for no good reason.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t feel left out, Joe. While the \u201cevidence\u201d cited several articles by Sunday Times Staff Writer Frank Wilkes Lesnefsky, none of my columns were included. Guess we both have to try harder to get noticed in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Frank\u2019s exhaustive reporting<\/a> lays out the exhausting \u201ccases\u201d against the targeted council members. In summary, they are \u201cguilty\u201d of forming and expressing evidence-based personal opinions about data center development and of association with similar \u201canti-progress\u201d riffraff. Cornell\u2019s motion is an analog manifestation of the AI thought and free speech police apparatus under construction across Our Republic.<\/p>\n Each Wildcat Ridge hearing plumbs new depths of perfidy and monotony, but Tuesday\u2019s tilt nosedived to stunning new lows. New to the Cornell team, a pair of stone-faced suits stood with crossed arms near the stage. I spoke briefly with both, and they confirmed that they were private security hired by the developer.<\/p>\n Both men were professional and polite. When I asked whether they were carrying concealed weapons, the older gentleman said, \u201cI can\u2019t answer any questions.\u201d The two Archbald Police officers present said they didn\u2019t know if the guards were armed. Frank texted Archbald Police Chief Tim Trently from the hearing. The chief assured Frank the guards were not packing.<\/p>\n It struck me and many others as absurd that the Cornell team would fear violence from a crowd with an average age of about 60. Some speculated that the guards\u2019 presence was an intimidation tactic. If so, it backfired spectacularly.<\/p>\n Whatever the motivation, the presence of private security at a public hearing feeds the false narrative that the resistance is an angry, ignorant mob that could resort to violence at any moment. So do the \u201ccredible threats\u201d the Cornell team claims they\u2019ve received.<\/p>\n Threats and violence are the tools of angry, ignorant mobs. It\u2019s OK to be angry about the data center invasion. It\u2019s not OK to be a thug. No threats. No violence. No exceptions. That such an obvious truth needs to be cited is absurd. Luckily, absurdity is my specialty.<\/p>\n Few settings are as ripe with absurdity as a Wildcat Ridge hearing.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the Wildcat Ridge team presented \u201crebuttal\u201d witness Thomas M. Muscenti to dispute a comprehensive, data-driven health impact assessment presented<\/a> last month by Harvard University environmental health scientist and biostatistician Michael Cork, Ph.D. The study was commissioned by Stop Archbald Data Centers<\/a>, the crowd-sourced grassroots group spearheading the resistance.<\/p>\n Coscenti\u2019s \u201crebuttal\u201d focused on \u201cproving\u201d the project could meet the minimum health and safety standards required to earn its permits. This is obviously vastly different from actually exploring health and safety impacts, but when mendacity and misdirection are all you have left, no bar is too low to meet.<\/p>\n I expect doubletalk and intellectually insulting deflection from lawyers and \u201cexperts\u201d who are paid to obfuscate and blur the lines that don\u2019t fit the picture they\u2019re fingerpainting. I expect better from elected officials who are paid to advocate for the health and safety of the public they swore oaths to serve.<\/p>\n Lackawanna County Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak utterly failed to meet that bar on Wednesday. Neither even tried.<\/p>\n Confronted with a standing-room-only crowd demanding that Welby and Chermak join Commissioner Bill Gaughan in commissioning a countywide baseline health impact study to be conducted by Cork\u2019s firm, the pair of \u201ccommitted bystanders\u201d raced each other to the bottom. Chermak \u201cwon\u201d by a mile.<\/p>\n The alleged commissioner cited his own health impact \u201cstudy\u201d on data centers, which he said out loud and with no apparent sense of irony was created using AI. I am not making that up, either.<\/p>\n Chermak said AI is just \u201cone of the tools I have at my disposal\u201d and that using AI is something \u201cwe all do.\u201d<\/p>\n When a constituent asked Chermak whether he understood that his use of AI was a tacit endorsement of the invasion, he shrugged and mumbled an invitation for the citizen to \u201ckeep beating me up.\u201d<\/p>\n Criticism of elected officials for their actions \u2013 or inaction \u2013 is not abuse; it\u2019s accountability. Public paychecks come with public scrutiny. I\u2019ve never enjoyed \u201cbeating up\u201d Chris Chermak. He\u2019s a genuinely nice guy and I\u2019ve always liked him personally. As a commissioner, however, he has repeatedly revealed himself as a deeply unserious person occupying a deeply serious position.<\/p>\n By the requirements listed for the top job at Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton International, Chermak is imminently unqualified. If it gets him out of his commissioner seat, I will gladly drive him to the airport.<\/p>\n Failing to read the room as usual, Welby stepped up as Chermak\u2019s willing wingman. He paid lip service to constituents\u2019 pleas for leadership, but retreated into the weeds with paeans to process and the powerlessness of county officials to intervene in municipal government decisions.<\/p>\n Welby was either being epically disingenuous or somehow misunderstood the multiple citizen speakers who plainly explained that a countywide baseline health assessment is urgently necessary to fight the inevitable lawsuits that will ultimately decide whether the county belongs to its people or to outside billionaire extractors.<\/p>\n Small municipalities can\u2019t afford such studies. The county can, and the people who live, work and pay taxes here can\u2019t afford commissioners who sit out the fight to defend their communities against industrialized annihilation.<\/p>\n An unscientific \u201dstudy\u201d created by a layman leaning on \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d is worthless as evidence in a court of law \u2014 or in a meeting room packed with frustrated humans demanding leadership. That such an obvious truth needs to be cited is as absurd as the effort itself.<\/p>\n The case against hyperscale data centers near homes, schools and public parks is airtight. In my evidence-based opinion, hyperscale data centers don\u2019t belong anywhere. I recognize AI as an existential threat to humanity and every other living thing on the planet.<\/p>\n Developers and the billionaires behind them would no doubt dismiss my resistance as an \u201cunreasonable bias\u201d against pyromaniacs.<\/p>\n Guilty as charged.<\/p>\n CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, professionally and politely refuses to recuse himself. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The shuffling parade of paid advocates for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus have made such an airtight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1590,2116,182,3052,139,1559,1560,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-262358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-chris-kelly","tag-data-centers","tag-local-news","tag-midvalley","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}