advocacy<\/a> for her former neighbors is inspiring, infectious and urgently needed. The residents met with a tenant-advocacy attorney, but she said \u201cnothing much\u201d came of it. County officials have promised help, but Tina said Valley View tenants need immediate, proactive assistance to find homes in a tight rental market.<\/p>\n\u201cBelieve me,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve looked everywhere and there\u2019s nothing out there. These people literally have no place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the people are gone, there will be no one to care for the colony of about 30 stray cats that call the trailer park home. Many are spayed or neutered. Some have collars. All need rescue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have called animal shelters and rescues and all they say is they don\u2019t have an answer for me right now,\u201d Tina said.<\/p>\n
It was a holiday week, so getting in touch with public and private resources who might be of help was a tall order. Let this column serve as a distress call for the soon-to-be homeless people and stray cats of Valley View Estates. If you can help them, now is the time. I\u2019m happy to help bring you together.<\/p>\n
While the Archbald Borough Council vote was a hard lesson on the impact of local elections, the politics of the data center gold rush are largely a distraction from the class war being waged in the name of \u201cprogress\u201d and under the guise of \u201cshared prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sales pitch is, \u201cJoin us in a bright new future of ease, innovation and limitless riches!\u201d The underlying but increasingly obvious message is, \u201cJust lay still until we\u2019re finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
To billionaire CEOs like Sam Altman, everybody with less money and power than him is \u201cnobody.\u201d A lot of the world is being covered by data centers daily, from vast farmlands out west to small communities and tiny trailer parks right here in Our Stiff Neck of the Woods. Small towns are being steamrolled to build mammoth concrete mausoleums that are likely to be obsolete by the time they go online. If (when) the \u201cAI Bubble\u201d bursts, today\u2019s data centers will be tomorrow\u2019s culm piles.<\/p>\n
The elites who stand to benefit most are no different than the corrupt coal barons and railroad tycoons who ruled the \u201cGilded Age\u201d and are no less hardwired into every level of business and government. Forget Republicans and Democrats. When mountains of money are at stake, there are no parties, just profits.<\/p>\n
The cavalry isn\u2019t coming. We Are Oldham County, a grassroots nonprofit, accepted this grim fact and mobilized against a data center project in rural Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Amid unrelenting public resistance and accusations of government collusion, Western Hospitality Partners (WHP) scrapped its plans to build a $6 billion data center campus on the site of a former drive-in theater. WHP is the developer behind \u201cProject Gravity\u201d in Archbald. Opponents who vowed to fight on should take heart in a statement issued by We Are Oldham County after WHP pulled out of Kentucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we are happy to hear the news, we are still saddened at how the process played out. Private citizens were forced to invest what should have been unnecessary time, funds, and emotional toil to hold our elected officials accountable. It is unfortunate that our citizens were forced to protect themselves from our own government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tina Goble got out before the flood. The neighbors she left behind are in dire need of lifeboats.<\/p>\n
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is inhospitable to data center developers steamrolling small towns. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Blue Sky Social.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers.\u201d Sam Altman, billionaire CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1612,"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":{"0":"post-48257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-chris-kelly","9":"tag-data-centers","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-midvalley","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-opinion-columnists","15":"tag-scranton","16":"tag-scranton-headlines","17":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48257","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=48257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}