Greg Abbott, the right-wing hack who is governor of Texas, probably doesn't know what a "petard" is, but he's now been hoisted by a big one. "Hoist on a petard" is a Shakespearean phrase for a bomb maker being blown sky-high by his own creation.
Abbott's bombastic saga began last year, when he noticed that high-tech billionaires were waving political cash at lawmakers who'd help them build massive AI data centers across America. Sniffing a quid pro quo bonanza, Abbott shoved his way to the front of that money hustle, loudly proclaiming that, by golly, he would make Texas the "epicenter of AI development." Not only did he pour massive taxpayer subsidies into the billionaires' pockets, but he even passed a law making it illegal for local officials to interfere with the profiteers.
Sure enough, Texas is now the world's top location for these corporate invaders — so way to go, Guv! But ... oops. The governor's giveaway is now called Greg's Folly, for the vast majority of Texans (especially rural Republicans) don't just oppose his AI data centers — they despise, abominate, HATE them. And they're now in angry grassroots revolt against the perpetrators, including Greg.
So, hoist on his own petard, Abbott has now flip-flopped from hypester to reformer, comically demanding an end to the tax giveaways he created; he's frantically trying to regulate AI projects he deregulated; and now crying that the rural voice he silenced must be heard.
Sadly for him, those billionaires he courted so passionately are now laughing at him. When he recently commanded all data center owners to report their water usage to him, more than 70 percent simply ignored the petty tyrant.
A West Texas cowboy saying advises: "Never sign nothing by neon."
But that's exactly the key operational method of the AI data center hucksters who're foisting their exploitative, multibillion-dollar scams on local folks all across America. Corporate slicks for outfits like Amazon, Meta, OpenAI and Google are slithering through the countryside, luring locals to surrender land, water, electric power and democratic rights to profiteering billionaires who promise pie-in-the-sky prosperity.
The deals are typically cut in the dim light of secret meetings, where corporate lawyers whisper to bedazzled local officials: "Just sign here, cowboy." The key to this mass deception is a legalistic corporate contrivance called an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). It allows data center owners and a small group of insiders to "negotiate" a raw deal for area residents by hiding essential details from the public. Details like: Who pays, how much, who profits, what are the side effects, who's responsible for damages ... and why the hell is this room so dark?
These NDAs even have corporate code names like "Project Lightning." What's the rush? As one opponent of a Louisiana rush job said, "We live here. We want to know how it impacts us." The inside schemers pushing that deal clucked sympathetically, winked at each other, then assured bothersome locals that "an independent study" had shown the proposed data center would cause no harm. However, the profiteers said the study itself could not be released for public review. Why? Because the developer had covered it with an NDA.
Government by corporate-imposed secrecy is totalitarianism. Didn't "We the People" have an armed revolution against that 250 years ago?
Jim Hightower is an author, public speaker, radio commentator and former Texas Railroad Commissioner.