Will new NC Democrat majority try to kill data centers? | Hour 3

And again, thank you so much for your support. So at his press conference yesterday, the incoming North Carolina Speaker of the House, Robert Reeves, took a lot of questions about various topics, did not offer any actual specifics on how they're going to fulfill their campaign promises of making stuff cost less and affordability. But one thing they could look to do is to kill data centers. They could try to do that. A lot of Democrats want that to happen, ban the data centers because they have been propagandized to via a misinformation and disinformation campaign funded in large part by Neville Roy Singham and the People's Forum based out of communist China. I've detailed all of this for the better part of six months now. We've gone over the money flows. We've talked about the propagandists and their quote-unquote grassroots operators. So he was asked about this at the press conference, and here's what he said. I understand that the moratoriums that have been passed by some municipalities and counties are in contravention to the law. Illegal. I have seen that people have taken legal measures to make sure that they understand that. I'm not advising anybody to... go against the law. I think that unfortunately, you know, do I agree with the law? Don't agree with the law. But at the end of the day, that has been taken out of the hands of people. That was what the point of that down zoning bill was in December 24th that was thrown in with. The package is to take that ability away from people. I don't like a situation where a county, because I will tell you, let me tell you my situation. I came in in 2014. Our issue was fracking. Oh, yeah. It wasn't about whether or not Chatham County people agree with fracking. It was about the audacity of some guy in Raleigh telling Chatham County people they ought to be happy to have it. And I think that's where I am even with that. There are tons of municipalities and counties that would love to have a data center there. So it's not about agreeing with data centers or not agreeing with data centers. The question is who should make that decision. And in my opinion... If you're going to be, you know, for the people who have made that decision for us in December of 24, then put the data center in your backyard. And what I notice is none of them volunteer for a data center to be in their backyards. And so you can't tell a local community they have no rights. You've got people that have. Grown up in these communities that are fourth and fifth generation owning houses and properties there. And I just think that is a really tough pill to swallow when you tell them, yeah, normally on every other business, You've got a right to make some decisions about this, but now you don't. In the same vein, there's been over 200 of these things over the last 20 years in North Carolina. Nobody had a problem. With them until the last election cycle. Do you think it's become a little bit politicized? No, no, no, no. The confusing between a data center and a hyperscaler. And if that's the direction that some of my friends up here try to take it, that's fine. Let me tell you the one thing that every Democrat and Republican agreed on to an 80% clip in every poll. Data centers. everybody. So it's not political. It is clear where Republican voters are on this. This is clear where Democratic voters are on this. Yeah, but it, but actually I don't know that we did, but, but. No, no. Democrats did not use this as a wedge. No, I don't think we did. Not us. No, no, not at all. By the way, when he says it's not political, it is absolutely political. What he wants to say, I think they were meant to say, is partisan in that you've got a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats, but way more Democrats that are opposed to data centers. And I believe that the people, most of the people, yeah, this may be controversial, but I believe most people that are opposed to data centers are ignorant about data centers. I've talked with enough of them. We brought a data center builder to our neighborhood a couple weeks ago. Place was packed. We had like 150 residents there. And they answered all the questions. They talked about all of their processes. They talked about the closed-loop water cooling and everything else. People are ignorant about data centers. And they're being fed misinformation and lies, disinformation. They're being fed false stories and information in order to limit data center construction. Why? Because that sector of the economy is booming. Number one. Number two, this has the potential, right? Data centers has the potential to to allow America to get out way in front of all the other countries. And when people hate America, then you want to do everything you can to kneecap America in any kind of technological advancement that lets us get too far ahead of everybody else. We saw it with fracking. I thought it was hilarious that he mentioned fracking. Remember that? Yeah, I remember that. You guys tried to ban all the fracking as well. Thank God that didn't happen. Because now we're like the largest producer of... of oil in the world. So you got that, right? Where we've become an energy production leader. And you also have other countries that don't want us to get ahead. And so they, they fund a lot of the quote unquote grassroots, the party for socialism and liberation, specifically the PSL. And they were at the Charlotte city council meetings. They all had their printed signs, right? They were all speaking against data centers. They wanted the moratorium, but they only wanted the moratorium as a step to a complete ban. That's what they want. That's what they want. Oh, and by the way, this idea that like, oh, you don't want it in your backyard. Well, what do you mean by backyard? What do you mean by that? I got a data center right down the road from me. Very large one. One of the hyperscale ones. I'm fine with it. It's 0.8 miles away. I'm within a mile of it. I'm fine. I do not mind it being there. Now, if you're going to put it literally in somebody's backyard, I have to wonder, first off, how big is your backyard? Is it like 100 acres? Because that's how much space you need for one of these projects. And the downzoning thing, which is what the Charlotte City Council keeps talking about, I'm going to get into the details of what happened with that. And they make it sound like, oh, this was like some terrible idea. But the reason they were doing it was because property rights. Local governments were down zoning your property without your permission. In order to block data centers, that's that. I mean, that was why they were doing it. As I've said on the data center issue, when it comes to the local control here, this is zoning. It's about zoning. All right. And so I don't know who's asked. I can barely make out who's asking the questions at this press conference. But he's like, oh, no, no, we weren't using it as a wedge issue. Not us. You know, not debating that. It's not as much about it being a wedge issue. It's just like I said, it's arrogance. We have been arrogant enough to think that we know better than everybody. We have made laws about issues we know nothing about. We have backgrounds that have nothing to do with it, and we have made laws that say you guys are too stupid. And some of us have been commissioners, city council people, board of education members, and the minute we got into this building, we decided we were smarter than all those little guys that got elected. Now, mind you, this does not apply to the left-wing environmentalist moonbats that come in or the lefty retirees that come in and are Democrat lawmakers. When they start blocking and banning everything because they read something at Media Matters or Progress NC or something, that's different. That's Democrat privilege. Those people matter. My father has done more on the county commission than I'm probably ever going to be able to do as statehouse representative. I mean, it just has, because those are the people who make people's lives better. They make decisions that immediately affect people. So to me, that's the issue. It's not an issue. If we passed a law that allowed local decision-making on all this stuff, I bet you would actually get more receptive people at that time. I think the pushback that you saw is when people realized that we had taken away their power to even have the conversation. That is where I think the pushback. I don't think the pushback, and I agree with you, there have been data centers everywhere and nobody had a problem. And I do agree with you that, that everybody could have handled it better in the way that they presented it. But I think that it was even handled differently because an arrogance had come. Yeah. And I don't even know what he's saying there. Everybody got to handled it better. Mistakes were made both sides, blah, blah, blah. What are you saying? What are you saying? Why do we have so many data centers already? He admits that. So what happened? What changed speaker Reeves? What happened? What changed? How did this campaign against data centers rise up? Is that going to be part of your legislative review? The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. 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All right, so Robert Reeves talked about this downzoning bill. And the... Charlotte City Council referenced this a few times also, and they're like, you need to go up to Raleigh and lobby for the change in this legislation, get a law changed about this down zoning. And what is all that about? Okay. Back in 2024, late 2024, here is the story from February 26th about Senate Bill 382 that was passed at the end of 2024. Okay, so it's like, I don't know, 14 months after the fact. And it was part of a post-Hurricane Helene disaster relief bill. And there was this law change that was put into the bill, like the second to last page of the bill. And the provision in question restricts municipalities from initiating a downzoning. All right. So that means like, if you have like a down zoning would be like, okay, I can build a multifamily housing on this property. A down zoning would be now you can only build a single family home, right? Like let's say the property is zoned commercial. A down zoning would be to zone it down to residential, right? So, it restricts the use of the property from a higher impact to a lower impact. Make sense? Okay. So you can imagine here, if you've got a property that is by right or currently zoned to allow a data center to be built on it, and the property owner knows this, right? The property owner says, hey, I've got, you know, 150 acres of commercial or industrial property. zoned property data centers are allowed to be built on this zoning uh under the zoning classification and so i'm going to i don't have to go to city council for a zoning approval i got to get permits and all of that stuff sure but i'm allowed to build by right this project okay And what the state came in and said was that the city cannot initiate a downzoning of your property. It's your property. Okay, so downzoning is like reducing the density, number of uses of a property without getting written permission from all affected owners. Okay, so the city cannot come in, downzone your property unless you agree to it. It also broadened the definition of downzoning in residential areas to any policy that creates nonconformity. For example, if a building characteristic, like blue exteriors or building use, is currently permitted in a zone, New regulations cannot limit future blue buildings or data centers in that area while grandfathering in existing ones unless property owners agree. Oh, did I say data centers there? Yes, because the characteristic or building use, this was targeted at data centers. So why are they doing this? Why did the state do this? Nobody knows. Oh, I got a pretty good idea. It's the same thing with the forcible or involuntary annexations. When Democrats controlled the state government, they empowered local governments, cities, counties, to forcibly, involuntarily annex property outside city limits, even when the people did not want to be in the city limits. But the state gave cities the power to do that. That's why Charlotte takes up virtually all of Mecklenburg County and why it controls all of the zoning virtually in Mecklenburg County. It's because the state gave them the power to just swallow up all of the surrounding areas, even when the residents and businesses of those areas did not want to be inside city limits. So the state came in much the same reason. They're saying, The city does not get to do this to your property without your permission. That's a property rights issue. And they say if you have a building characteristic, like a building use, if that's currently permitted in a particular zone, like let's say a commercial zone that allows for data centers to be built in it, New regulations cannot limit future data centers in that area while grandfathering in existing ones unless the property owners agree, right? So cities were trying to ban data centers. That's what was going on. That's why they put this in, obviously, right? That's why everybody's like, oh, I don't know why they would do such a thing. I do. Because city Democrats, urban Democrats, were like, we don't want data centers because our socialists in the grassroots, they don't want data centers because they want to hamstring American development, so we don't want data centers. We want to ban them. How do we do that? Oh, let's downzone them. Let's take away their property rights so they can't build them, right? And then cry about the fact that they can't do anything, yet they controlled the zoning approvals. Now there were some unintended effects because it's GovCo. So there always are some, uh, jurisdictions were working on what Charlotte did was a unified development ordinance, right? Zoning laws and stuff. And they say, uh, like for example, the town mayor of Southern Pines says that it's overly restrictive on zoning. So they had planning initiatives that were going on in like, uh, in cities and in towns, big and small, and all of that stuff came to a halt because that second part of the provision about the nonconformity and future uses and grandfathering stuff in, that left ambiguity. So people were like, we can't now do anything new because of the way the state law was written. So if they want to fix that, I got no problem. They want to try to get at that, whatever. But once again, just like the moratoriums, if you want to pause to do it, to craft a regulatory regime for data center development, fine. But if you want to do a pause in order to do a ban, I'm out. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real, it's in your name, and... 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Let me jump over and chat with Andrew. Hello, Andrew. Welcome to the show. What's up? Hey, Pete. Good afternoon. How's it going? All right. What's new? I'm sorry to interrupt you. No, that's fine. This data center issue is probably one that I will disagree with you on partially, but at least I want to let you know I live in Georgia, and of course what's happening here in North Carolina is going to be vastly different from what's happening in Georgia, but at least let you know where some of this distrust is coming from. So in FDM County, which FDM County is just to the north of Savannah, back in July, there was a data center that was announced from OpenAI. It was going to be a 1,400-acre, $ 20 billion data center that was announced. And, of course, upset a lot of the residents. And looking at some of the maps that OpenAI has plan for the data centers could be next door to homes, next door to some businesses and in elementary schools where there's not one, but it's like seven buildings. Right. What parts of the data centers were going to be near the homes? Well, the map. Shows there's seven different, roughly about five to seven different buildings is where the quote-unquote data center is going to be. Right, but each of those, right, but Right, but the building itself doesn't produce any sound. I'm assuming that's the problem, is the sound that people are worried about from the diesel generators, or was there a natural gas plant that was supposed to be built in it? There is actually a Georgia-powered natural gas plant on the other side, probably about 15 minutes away from where the data center is. That was one of the concerns that was mentioned by residents. Another one was the water issue. Wait, hang on. What's the concern, though, about a power source on the other side of the property that's not next to the homes. So, of course, that means Georgia Power is going to be stringing tons of transmission wires. It means that they're going to be building new transmission lines, which goes from where this data center will be to the nuclear power. Plant, which is about an hour away in Waynesboro. Right. But Georgia Power. Already has four reactors currently producing power there. Right. And When they're building these transmission lines, it means that Georgia Power is going to expand the network. Wait, so why is that a problem tying into the power grid? I'm sorry? Why is that a problem tying into the power grid? Well, Georgia Power, since 2022, has increased the rate six times. And it's already left Georgia Power in a bad spot. Right. So is OpenAI paying for those transmission wires to be constructed? No. As far as we can tell, no. OpenAI that we know of is paying for, besides the infrastructure, is a couple projects around the community. But as far as we know, the So Open Air is not paying for any new transmission lines that could be held by Georgia Power. Right, but you're saying as far as you know, but they're also paying for the infrastructure. That would be the infrastructure. That would be a question to ask them. I don't know the details of your plan. I'm just asking these questions. But, like, the hyperscale that's getting built near my place, like, they're paying for all the Duke Energy transmission tap-in. And I like the fact that, as you've mentioned before, that the project managers are being transparent. The problem here in FDM County is between the time the project was announced, like I said, back in July, and this was actually outlining the lawsuit, we found out the project was being planned for 19 months, as early as 19 months before it was announced. And it's also basically alleges that the county commissioners The plan is as far back as October 2024. So what's wrong with that? The fact that they kept the public in the dark about this project, and basically residents had no say. In it up until now. Were there non-disclosure agreements signed? To the extent that we know, there was none. Okay, so what's the process, the normal process for doing a project? Are they supposed to go through a rezoning process? and advertise it? From what I've read, there's a state law that basically says that projects basically have to be publicly announced. Which there was none. Okay, well, there's... All right, so there's your problem. So who was supposed to announce it? The local government, right? The local government, yeah. Right, so they didn't... Right, so that... Right, well, they're planning staff, right? I mean, they're communications department. Whoever's supposed to be in charge of sending those notices out they were the ones that did not do their job is what you're telling me. Yeah, pretty much. Okay. So your beef then is with them. Yeah. And, uh, the fact that, uh, it's just, it's just been a, a, a ugly battle between the residents and the county commission, even though, even though, and I'm going to say, even though three of them got reelected just past, just past election, which, you know, of course people are not happy about that. Um, but at least. Right. So, so the, but to go back to my first question, um, The buildings that are, you say it's like a 1,400-acre campus, right? And so you've seen the plans? I have at least a map of the, at least a map that Open AI announced. Okay, and so how close is the closest building to a home? How close is the closest building to a home? If I remember the scale correctly, I mean, I could send you the. No, I'm just curious. I don't need to see the plans, but that's something that you should look at if you're saying, oh, they're building it right next to homes. Like, are they building it right next to homes, or are there requirements of, like, buffering with natural areas and stuff around the perimeter in order to create that buffer, much like you would build in, like, an office complex? Yeah, in one of the cases, the side of highways where you have those, or in some communities, I. I've seen a couple down here. Along I-77 where you have this concrete barrier. But from what I can tell from the plans is that there's. Like no concrete barriers, nothing to keep the. Sound or anything. Okay, so that then goes to my first question, which was where is the building situated in proximity to the homes? Because the thing that people are most upset about is regarding noise. That's from the diesel backup generators, right? Right. And the cooling systems... Well, hang on, hang on. I'll get to the cooling system. But the diesel is the sound, right? And so the diesel generators are backup only, and they only go on when the power's out. And if the power goes out, you've got your own power supply, and you're tapped into the transmission lines. If they lose power, that's a big problem for the entire region. You're all out of power, right? So that's when the generators would kick on, aside from their testing that they have to do. And so where are the generators in proximity to the homes? That's another question, because if they're on the other side of the property and they're up against a road or they're not anywhere near somebody's home, you're not going to even hear them when they come on for the testing. Yeah, there was, we couldn't really tell based on the overhead plans where certain parts of the data that would be. Like you said, the generators. Yeah, look for that. Generate the power. All right. And so then on the waterfront, are they using a closed-loop water cooling system? That was not disclosed, although there was a couple studies that was announced, or a couple studies that was said that if they were not to go through a closed-loop system, that it could use up to 25 million gallons of water a day. Right, but they would know what kind of water or whatever cooling system they're using. They're going to know that. Yeah, but they haven't told us about whether it was a closed-loop system or not. And they've not... done any public appearances at the county commission meeting and the county commissioners haven't held any public comment period or any public comment session on any of this? There was, uh, there was two, uh, county meetings. The most recent one was a vote to basically try to approve of it. And that was, uh, I think last week or the week before, uh, and the, the meeting ended with no vote. Uh, the one prior to that, um, There was nobody from OpenAI, but there was a lot. Of upset residents. That was their opinion. But nobody from OpenAI. Right. So it sounds like then that it's still dependent on county approval, right? There still has to be a government vote in order to allow the project to proceed for the permitting and all of that to start. So that means you can ask the questions that I've asked you. You can ask those questions. You can look at the plans, the site maps and stuff, and you can see where are the buildings situated, right? You actually have the ability to impact the design of the site before it wins approval, right? So that's something then that your local government can then push OpenAI to implement, along with a closed-loop system for the water usage. Because a closed-loop system doesn't even use, like, they don't even, they're not even tapping into any local water supply for that. But that would be. Good if they intend on doing a closed-loop system. Yeah, because it's like, it's basically like, I don't want to say freon because it's not freon, but it basically is. They bring it in, they put it into the system, and it just keeps using the same stuff and cooling it and recycling it. Now, this data center that's going to be near you, did they say it was going to be using a closed-loop system? Yes. Okay. That's what they're building. And also look into the company that's building it. I don't know if OpenAI is actually the one doing the building or if it's a data center company, right, that they're building it for OpenAI. It may be OpenAI. They're big enough. They may be doing it themselves. Right, yeah. Yeah, and that's something else to look into, and then you can find more about how those companies build their data centers. Yeah, closed-loop system, diesel generator backups that are removed from proximity to nearby homes, buffers around the perimeter, and that should address really all of the issues that anybody raises. And those are all zoning issues. Right. And there's also a couple of issues that you actually were about to tap on, which was the noise. And also another one that really hasn't been announced, but at least you want to bring to your attention that could also be a subject of distrust, is EMF frequency. And the reason. I kind of became aware of that was actually courtesy of Senator Hawley and R.P. Jr. Back in April, there was a hearing with the HHS Secretary of State. Regarding EMF-required data set construction and residents' concerns about the cancer risk around them. And I can send you a link to the video if you want, but basically. RFK is saying that, yeah, we're looking into some of these concerns about. Yeah, and there were similar concerns about cell phones and about 5G towers, fracking, nuclear, right? These are not All of these concerns, what you're talking about here is what's called the precautionary principle, which has been used to stifle innovation because if we don't know, then block everything. We don't know what kind of harm might exist out there, so we need to study, study, study, study, and then technology moves on, you know? It's just the fact that there's a severe lack. Of studying on basically pushing. Stuff and not really hearing what people's concerns are. Look, I've heard all of these concerns. These are not new. I've heard all of these concerns, but I've given you responses and answers to the questions, right? But people, they don't bring the concern in order to get an answer. They bring a concern in order to kill it. So they're not raising concerns in good faith. They're raising concerns in order to kill it. That's my that's my beef. That's my beef is that the people pushing for the bans are, quote, raising concerns. And they're just throwing out all of this information, all of the misinformation. They're throwing out all of these projections and predictions of horribles. And they're not a lot of them are just not true. So, yeah, I mean, look, any zoning issue in your neighborhood, you should be concerned about, right? You should. You should take an interest, right? You want to look at the plans, do all of that. Absolutely. And if the project as it's planned is not a good plan, then you definitely should go in there and be like, hey, we want a better plan. That's how you get better plans, no doubt. But if you're going at it from a position of we want to kill this thing, yeah, that's what I push against. Because like I said, it's a cash cow for your local government. It's going to ease. In fact, Georgia Power and Light says that data center construction has kept their rates lower than what they otherwise would be. Because if the centers produce their own power, they push it back into the system, especially if the system is hitting peak usage and they need to draw from extra energy production. I saw that statement from JP, too. Yeah. So, all right. Well, good luck. Andrew, I appreciate the call, sir. Thank you. Safe travels to you. Pam says, last month, Chester County, South Carolina, hosted a representative from Loudoun County, Virginia, who was a big proponent of data centers and discussed how much money and employment and goodwill data centers have brought to Loudoun County. Yeah, that's like more per capita than anywhere else, I think. Bain says, how far away can data centers be? Is there a service radius? They want to locate them close to populations because you end up with latency issues being too far away. You want the speed, and you get that from the fiber and the lines. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. 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