Cankle Ankle Trump’s $400 million ballroom construction project aside, there is a lot of other proposed mega-building construction taking place throughout the country with but scant information about the potential impact it might have on local communities.
And Louisiana is right in the thick of it all.
On the one hand, ICE is discreetly snapping EMPTY WAREHOUSES for conversion to massive detention centers capable of storing as many as 8,000 to 10,000 human beings indefinitely without benefit of attorneys or due process.
On the other, water-gulping data centers are also cropping up that will perform God-knows-what functions, buildings that promise to dwarf Walmart supercenters.
Squeaky toy Jeff Landry says the announced Amazon $12 billion center in the Caddo and Bossier parish area will create 540 new permanent jobs as well as 1700 indirect new job opportunities in the state’s northwest region.
Already, construction had begun on another $10 billion (but already edging up to $30 billion in cost) Meta-run AI data center about 100 miles to the east along I-20 in RICHLAND PARISH. It promises to eat up more electric power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans on one of those typically sweltering hot August days.
Anthropic plans a similar $10 billion facility in West Feliciana Parish
But get this: the Richland Parish data center, located in the tiny community of Holly Ridge, is registered to use an astonishing 23 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER PER DAY, or 8.4 billion gallons per year. Those in northwest Louisiana and West Feliciana Parish promise to be equally thirsty for water and power, which is certain to adversely affect consumer rates in the area.
But the bigger—much bigger—question should be: just what in the name of George Orwell’s 1984 will these data systems be used for? Besides posing as a significant drain on subsurface water tables and creating unfathomable demands on electric power, questions should abound on exactly what type of data is expected to be gathered by all these data centers.
The industry as a whole has been criticized for its lack of transparency in development decision. In Louisiana, local and state officials have created seeming airtight NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS (NDAs) in order to hide the economic development process.
But in an era of Trumpian dystopia when Repugnantcans openly espouse less government intrusion in our personal lives while privately obsessing over our bedroom preferences, our health care, blocking our preferences over the quality of air and water we breathe and drink and stripping away our rights little by little, it’s more than a little alarming to contemplate just how much personal information Big Brother is amassing on us in those mammoth data centers.
Perhaps the promise of good-paying jobs for the few is supposed to assuage the concerns of tens of thousands of others living in the area of these monster structures.
As if those concerns are not enough, there’s the hush-hush effort to buy up empty warehouse space for conversion to DETENTION CENTERS to hold thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom have never done a thing to harm us and in fact, probably have a lower overall crime rate than the general population of this country.
We have those who claim these undocumented people are taking our jobs but an equal number claim they’re freeloaders. They can’t be both. And while they’re claiming that they’re a drain on society, ICE keeps raiding work sites to apprehend them. At the same time, claims are made that they’re taking up our housing while remaining homeless. And Trump’s claim that millions of undocumented types are voting illegally, that is a myth, as well; Even as state legislatures like our very own in Louisiana are passing legislation making it illegal for undocumenteds to vote, it’s already illegal for them to vote and precious few cases of illegal voting have been certified, Trump’s wild claims notwithstanding.
Yet, here we are, building more and bigger prisons to hold these people indefinitely, converting many working people into those wards of the state the Repugnantcans are so damned concerned about.
And more and more, bigger and bigger data centers to keep tabs on the rest of us.
Louisiana Voice 
Along with these monstrosities, Landry has proposed a new state budget and penciled in an $82 million increase to cover local offender housing, administrative costs to oversee parole and probation and prisons, and housing for immigrant detainees. And Louisiana’s juvenile justice system has asked for $28 million for the construction of a new juvenile detention center.
Sen. Royce Duplessis of New Orleans makes such a valid point, as does Mr. Cree Matlock, the director of government affairs and policy at the Power Coalition, a nonprofit group focused on building civic engagement in minority communities. Can you imagine what could be done with that much money to improve the lives of at-risk children and families, such as providing better education, early education, addiction and mental health programs, decent child care, bringing back Headstart, Early Development programs, meaningful education/vocation programs, decent public schools, decent teacher pay, access to health, rehabilitation programs, etc., etc., especially in those high-risk, very poor areas. Northeast Louisiana is made up of many of the poorest parishes. Attention needs to be put there. Rep. Villa says incarcerating them longer will give them more time to “partake in meaningful prison programming. What sense does that make? Do these juvenile prisons have “meaningful prison programming” at all???? Provide preventive services!!!! $28 million to build another facility for juveniles????????????? Use that money to provide services that will make a difference so they don’t have to be locked up in the first place.
Hopefully Democrats in our legislature will join Sen. Duplessis in his effort to bring back some sense of reasonableness and human compassion.
https://www.newsbreak.com/share/4509667940135-louisiana-gov-jeff-landry-proposes-82-million-increase-for-prisons?s=a3&share_destination_id=NzA0NzE0ODMtMTc3MTk1OTA0NDI2NQ==&pd=04lgqpx6&hl=en_US&send_time=1771959044&actBtn=bottomBar&_f=app_share&trans_data=%7B%22platform%22%3A1%2C%22cv%22%3A%2226.6.2%22%2C%22languages%22%3A%22en%22%7D