Brave activist kills development | Hour 3

Have you heard about the historical... uh, parking lot in Landover, Maryland. It's been protected. Thank goodness. It's a big old parking lot. Um, it's been vacant for like 20 years. There was an effort to build something on it, but thanks to the passionate work of a local activist and a bunch of, uh, TriCom money and quote-unquote grassroots activism, they saved it. They saved the parking lot. Yeah, this was the site of the old Landover Mall in Landover, Maryland. There was a mall there years ago. No, it was torn down some time ago as well. And, you know, I guess they are, you know, trying to pay respect to the footlocker that was there, the food court. And so they could not stand the thought of having this massive tract of land be developed into something that would generate tax revenue for the local government. No, no, it shall forever remain an empty parcel. The Landover Mall closed in 2002, okay? In 2024, a developer came along and, well, actually, it was the same developer that built the mall and then it closed down 20-something years ago and I guess they've been paying taxes on it all this time because it was a mall and so it's just been an empty, vacant lot for the last 20-plus years and the developer comes back goes to the county planners and got approval to redevelop the property. And outrage ensued. The story is told to us of the outrage by NPR. Yes, NPR. Doing the kind of journalisming that we should all aspire to. They tell the story, headline, an unexpected activist emerged to help block development, $ 5 billion development in Maryland. Her name, Taylor Frazier McCollum. And word began spreading through the largely black community near the mall, near the empty mall, the vacant lot. It's a predominantly black neighborhood, I guess, that's around the mall that was torn down. And, quote, she says, quote, I was like, oh, hell no. Mm-hmm. That was her description of what she thought when she heard about the redevelopment of this lot. She lived less than a mile away. Do you know where this is going? Can you guess what they wanted to build on the massive tract of empty, formerly mall property? Do you know what they wanted to build there? Take a guess. It rhymes with MetaMentor. That's right, it's a data center. They wanted to build a $ 5 billion data center at the site of the old Landover Mall. Mall doesn't exist. Nothing is there. Just chain-link fencing all around the vacant lot. As you might imagine, there's all sorts of vegetation growing in there. It's a blight. It's a blight. So in comes the developer and says, you know what, let's Use this massive tract of land, we can build a data center. Oh, sorry. I guess I should do this. No! Oh, hell no! That's what she thought when she heard of a data center that was going to get built on this mall site. She says, oh, hell no. Quote, why would you want to bring... water-polluting, diesel-generating data centers right down the street from where people live, work, and play. It just didn't make sense to me. Okay, Taylor. I'm sure in this life, there are a great many things that don't make sense to you. That does not mean that they are bad. That does not mean that whatever your thoughts are about the thing are true. You just said it doesn't make sense to you. But no, no, NPR doesn't take any kind of contrarian view on all of this. This is basically a hagiography of the unexpected activist. This one woman, a person of color from a predominantly people of color neighborhood. And she's standing up against this big developer and, you know, fighting back against the data center. And she won. She won. She blocked that $ 5 billion development of the vacant lot next to her neighborhood. She blocked it along with the help of a bunch of tricom funded socialists. Good for her! Oh my gosh! This is a real, like, I'm not kidding. Her father compared her to a civil rights leader. Like, by several of them, actually. By name. Mm-hmm. Just for the record, a data center like this, it does not pollute the water. Okay? Like, this idea that, like, Water consumption has been the argument that anti-data center people have been using, that they consume too much water. That's like an intake issue, you know? It's not like she's saying it's going to pollute all the water. It's like, what is this, fracking all over again, right? You're going to light your faucet on fire? Like, what's going on? Water polluting and diesel generating. Okay. That's not how diesel is generated. Diesel is not generated... At a data center. Compute is. Cloud storage. By the way, if you got to notice, Outlook is down, right? People are getting all these messages that the Microsoft Outlook has got like some widespread outages going on. That's data centers. So, I'm not sure why she thinks that a data center produces diesel. It's not a refinery, right? Now, there could be diesel generators, backup generators, that are located on the site, but they're not creating diesel. So again, very clear, as she states herself, it doesn't make sense to her. And her own words prove this very thing. I agree with her. Also, she does not own a home. She was working at a waxing center. and the waxing center cut her wages, and so she could no longer pay rent. And she said, the NPR story says they moved around, and then they were living in her grandfather's home when she learned about the proposed project less than a mile away. She created a, so she doesn't even live in the neighborhood, like that's not her home, she's not a homeowner in the neighborhood or anything, it's her grandfather's home, and apparently she was then living there, otherwise she would have been homeless. She then creates a petition, and at first, this is interesting because NPR doesn't explore how this got traction. They just say that her petition gathered over 25,000 signatures, leading to widely attended protests and culminating in multiple local moratoriums imposed on data centers throughout the county. It blocked the $ 5 billion project that was set to break ground this year or next year. The fight pushed her to the forefront of local politics. She went to county meetings, testified before Maryland legislators, and endorsed political candidates. She found herself in a coalition of socialists, environmentalists, people angry about their electric bills, and neighbors new to organizing. By the way, you don't have to say socialists and environmentalists. That's duplicative. They're the same. Local media interviewed her, and people in data center circles called her the Landover Girl. 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Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. Seth says... Pete, do you have any idea how much noise and water that mall used? It had to go. Yeah, that's... I think there were probably other socioeconomic reasons for that, but it's been closed for 20-something years. Dave in Mount Holly says, maybe they should build a silphab plant there. Yeah, the neighbors would be super happy about that, right? Kathy says, if we start calling them science and data centers, we could get the Democrats on board. Call them COVID centers. Okay, so what's her name here? Taylor, I think. Yeah, Taylor Frazier McCollum. She is now a rock star in the anti-discrimination or I'll just call it the Luddite community. I'm not sure how they organize with their opposition to the data centers and all, but she is now, she's now a rock star. She's getting media coverage, how she, you know, she led the movement to kill this data center, a $ 5 billion project, and huzzah for her. Huzzah, huzzah. But you could smell a butt coming, couldn't you? But with data centers now paused because of all of the moratoriums that were passed, some in Prince George's County worry about declining tax revenue. Last year, a local Six Flags theme park closed. They probably paid a lot of taxes. Those things are pretty big, right? Yeah, they're privately owned. A lot of property. A lot of structures, right, that are taxed. And sales taxes. But that closed. So, no more tax revenue from them. Oh, also, the NFL team. They're leaving. Yeah, the NFL's Washington Commanders. They're leaving. They're going back to Washington, D.C. Also... Thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs. The county faces a budget deficit reportedly of about $ 130 million. But good on Taylor. She killed that data center. Uh-huh. In September, Frazier Column, Taylor, Frazier Column, appeared at a county council meeting to advocate for a fund. So she wants some money from GovCo. She went down there emboldened by her Marxist sponsors, basking in all the limelight she was receiving for her anti-data center crusade. So she went down to the county council meeting to make a pitch for taxpayer funds to be used to repair her grandpa's roof. It's never the ones you would suspect. My goodness. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that a Marxist, and she does describe herself as a socialist, who would have thought that a Marxist would kill the private development of someone's property that would spin off millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue and then go down to demand money from the taxpayer till... which she is not contributing to, right? She's not a homeowner. She's not paying property taxes. She's living with her grandpa. They need a new roof. So she says taxpayers should fund that. Council member Juanica Fisher, who supports moving some data center projects forward, reminded her that the county needs development. Yes. Yes. You need to have a tax base in order to generate taxes. Yeah, you can't ask for money for taxpayer money. Well, I mean, you can ask for it, but it sounds pretty stupid to demand taxpayer funds if there's no tax paying happening. With the Landover Project on hold, Taylor Frazier McCollum now wants a full ban on that one and other data center projects. So she's not satisfied with just a moratorium, which of course she's not. We all, I've been saying this, right? The people who are demanding a moratorium generally want a ban. So like, I'm not going to be gaslit by your calls for just a pause. I just want to pause. You don't want to pause. You want a halt. She has received grant money. of course. And so now she has taken her message to black communities fighting data center growth in Atlanta, Memphis, and even to Zambia. Let's keep Zambia from developing because that's what acting humanely looks like. Let's block the development of third world countries for their own good. We know better than they do. You just don't know about all the diesel generating. 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. Thank you, Monica, for sending over the Down Detector. It's an app and a website that shows you outages of various services, and we are approaching 37,000 services that are down, affecting 72 countries. I reported earlier that Outlook was down, but it's not just Outlook, it's Microsoft Teams, as well as Copilot. So just in case people are wondering, why do we need data centers? This is why. You want duplication. You want more cloud storage. Everybody is saving everything into the cloud, and there is no cloud. Spoiler alert here. I don't want to ruin anybody's ideas here, but there is actually no cloud. They're data centers. That's where that stuff goes to be stored. That's the cloud. And a data center is just basically a whole warehouse filled with racks of computers. That's it. It's just computers in racks, floor to ceiling, right? Now it gets warm because the faster the computer runs, the more heat it builds up. And anybody who's ever looked into buying a gaming computer, console or a computer, like a PC, to run games on, and or to to mine bitcoin that's another one right you need a lot of power to do that and it like they get hot you remember um was it the xbox i believe it was the first was it xbox or was it playstation i think it was the xbox like the first generation of the original xbox or maybe the second xbox that came out um They were running so fast, so hot, because it's basically a CPU, right? Just stripped down. It's a computer. It's a PC. It's just stripped down. And with a graphics card, sound card, and then you're just trying to make it as fast as possible so you can play games without any kind of hiccups and lag and that sort of stuff. And these things were running so fast and so hot, they were melting. They were catching fire, right? So that's what happens with computers. If you get them going so fast and that's why they have fans, right? They got a fan inside the computer. It's to cool the computer off with a little fan. But when you get too powerful, like some, I've seen some computers, PCs, and they've got cooling systems inside them. It's like an air conditioner or something inside the PC because they run so fast. They're so powerful. That's what power means. compute power, right? Anyway, so this woman, Taylor Frazier McCollum, wants the full ban. She successfully blocked this development in Landover at the old Landover Mall that was demolished like 20 years ago. It's a big empty lot. She's now going all around the country, even to Zambia, arguing against data centers there. Her father is sees the data center fight as rooted in civil rights. Quote, we're talking about the right to water. Nobody's taking away your right to water, if there even is such a thing, which I don't think there is, but nobody is taking away your right to water. He says the right to clean air, the right to a place to live. Nobody is taking any of that. That's everybody's fight, right? Well, I'm afraid for her, we need those people. We needed the Medgar Everses. We needed the Martin Luther Kings. We needed the Malcolm Xs. This is a woman who blocked a $ 5 billion data center development that would have spun off tens of millions of dollars for her local community. Maybe they would have had a fund to pay for the roof replacement for grandpa that she's now demanding from taxpayers. In the meantime, she's pitching plans to turn the old Landover site into a sports complex or affordable housing, or to use some of it to support heritage tourism in the county. But none of those ideas, she acknowledges, would be as lucrative as a data center campus. I'm going to play a clip for you. This is the mayor of Memphis. His name is Paul Young. The recently... Just speaking on the kind of revenues that data centers are creating for Memphis, Elon Musk recently tweeted that Memphis is quote-unquote booming because of the data centers. He said that hotels and restaurants are full and called tax revenue in Memphis tremendous right now. Do you just have any. Thoughts on that? Well, you know, we've talked a lot about the financial aspects of the project. I think that as we talk about data centers in our city, we want to talk about it in a balanced way. Of course there's an economic side. We want to make sure that we are articulating what protections and guardrails we're putting in place for the environmental sides that people are concerned about, the quality of life, noise, traffic, all of those aspects. But There is tax revenue. I think this year it was $ 54 million in taxes that have been generated. And I know last year when they generated about $ 25 million in tax revenue, it was the second largest taxpaying property in Shelby County. I don't know where $ 54 million puts it, but it is significant taxes. And so as we look at the tax revenue. We also want to look at how do we ensure that there are proper protections. That's what this 90-day executive order has been about, and it's the conversation that we'll continue to have with the community. One facility spun off $ 25 million in tax revenue the first year. Now it's $ 54 million in tax revenue for Memphis. They apparently just did a moratorium of 90 days. Again, there's nothing he said there that I disagree with. You want to make sure you've got the guardrails and whatever. You want to require closed-loop water systems. You want to require buffers, whatever. You want to address that stuff, you go right ahead. If a moratorium is going to lead to the creation of a regulatory framework that the local government and officials and the community, that they're okay, then, like, okay, we've got these protections in place. That's one thing. When you're trying to ban them, you're being stupid. You're being stupid. Okay? And that's basically what Charles C.W. Cook writes about this story over National Review. This woman, she's ignorant, reckless, and allied with a Marxist group with ties to China. That's true. Charles C.W. Cook at National Review commenting on this NPR story. I mean, just this story is the perfect encapsulation of the data center dumbassery. It really is. It is super frustrating. So this woman is boasting that people are depending on this fight to be successful. But are they really? The county is running $ 130 million deficit. Unemployment is high. Six Flags Amusement Park just closed permanently. The NFL team's looking to move. The FBI is trying to leave Landover. The mall closed 24 years ago. The lot has been vacant ever since. He goes on to say, where I wonder does Taylor Frazier McCollum, this celebrated activist saint, right, of anti-data center dumbassery, Where does she think the money comes from? Where does she expect Prince George's County, where does she think the county is going to get the funds that it needs to close the budget deficit or to pay for grandpa's roof that she's requesting money for? From the taxpayer till. Most of what McCollum believes about data centers is hysterical nonsense. the product of a rolling Luddite moral panic that has activated the worst instincts in the electorate. McCollum told Fox News this week that her preference would be for the area to be filled by a trampoline park. Cook says this made me wonder by what mechanism she thinks such facilities are built in the United States. My progressive friends are fond of telling me that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilization. I have heard this argument myself, folks. Taxes are, I mean, we have all these luxuries and privileges and, like, this is the cost of living here. Taxes are the price we pay for all of this. Okay, well, then, businesses are the price you pay to generate the taxes. Meanwhile, the Washington Free Beacon. They uncovered, which should be obvious to everybody, you've been listening to my show, you've heard me mention this group before, the ones that are behind the anti-data center push, you know who it is. That's right, everybody. It's the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the PSL. Yes, they're the ones who have used this woman, pushed her to the front, and rallied behind her with all of their, quote, grassroots activist support. Spoiler, they're backed by Neville Roy Singham's People's Forum network based in China. Which, you know, not for nothing, Jarvis, Jarvis Best over on Twitter, points out that between the ousting of the NVIDIA CEO, the astroturfed anti-data center movement, and now the Democratic takeover of Congress, the Chinese Communist Party is on a generational winning streak. They are just racking up wins, folks. The group that collaborated with McCollum, a struggling single mom with no history of activism, is the PSL, a Marxist-Leninist group tied to Neville Roy Singham and his extensive Chinese propaganda network. The revelation is the latest evidence that the increasingly effective anti-data center movement can be traced, at least in part, to Chinese-tied funders. An investigation published earlier this year by the Bitcoin Policy Institute we covered it at the time, linked several anti-data center campaigns to the TRICOM organizations. While the social media platform XAI reported in August, its safety team had identified a network of Chinese inauthentic accounts that repeatedly spread anti-data center content. According to the watchdog site Influence Watch, as well as a recent report from the Anti-Defamation League, the PSL is funded by and shares staff with Neville Roy Singham's $ 100 million pro-China Marxist network of activist groups. Specifically, the PSL boasts funding and personnel overlap with groups like the Answer Coalition, Breakthrough News, and the People's Forum. Surprise, surprise. That's who McCollum was working with. She started that petition. It got like 12 people to sign up. They see it. They push it. They amplify it. It gets 25,000 signatures. They then stage protests. They hand out their pre-printed signs. Data center dead. Good job, America. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalinershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.