News & Brews April 3, 2025
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Retired Pa. coal-fired power plant to become data center
WTAE reports that the former Homer City Generating Station in Indiana County, which was once a coal-fired power plant, will become “the largest natural gas-powered data center in North America.” The news caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which reported, “The power plant will rely on natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a major natural-gas field that underlies parts of Pennsylvania and other states. New data centers are increasingly being built near some of the country’s largest oil and gas reserves for access to the city-sized amounts of power that they need to train large AI models.”
‘What teachers’ unions don’t want you to know’
Did you know that when a student leaves a traditional public school in Pennsylvania to attend an alternative school, the public school continues to get paid for that student, even though he or she is no longer there? Janine Yass, founder of the Yass Prize for Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless Education, writes of this “baffling scenario” in a new op-ed in RealClear Education. “[A]s more families opt for non-traditional schooling options,” she notes, “most of the money allotted for their education stays with their zip code-assigned public school. In some cases, the school keeps all the money, retaining thousands of dollars for each student they no longer teach.” Further, “even as enrollment falls, test scores drop, and students leave, teachers’ unions and public-school administrators continually clamor for even more money, arguing it’s the panacea for public education’s failures.” Yass debunks the spending-equals-progress myth, and then outlines the “clear” solution: “Connect education dollars to living, breathing children. Not to bureaucracy-buoyed buildings where students don’t learn.”
‘Shapiro supports Big Dope, hoping for big money’
As Gov. Shapiro pushes to legalize recreational marijuana so he can tax it for more revenue, an op-ed by Stephen Catanzarite in the Post-Gazette points out the “irony.” Namely, “the very institutions [i.e. government] meant to protect the common good now have a vested interest in promoting personal and social disorder.” He also points out that the big players behind efforts to “deny, downplay, and deflect” any dangers of marijuana “include familiar names from Big Tobacco (Phillip Morris), Big Alcohol (Molson Coors), Big Pharma (Johnson and Johnson, Bayer), Big Ag (Monsanto) and Big Finance (Berkshire Hathaway).”
Here comes 2026
We haven’t even reached the 2025 primary elections, but the 2026 mid-term elections are already here. Democrat Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie has announced he plans to run for the Democrat nomination to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick next year. Hardly a conservative firebrand, Fitzpatrick has been named the most bipartisan member of Congress for five years running. As for Harvie’s complaints about Fitzpatrick? Well, they’re “somewhat muted,” per the Inquirer. Instead of pointing out specifics, Harvie said, “I just feel like there hasn’t been enough leadership coming out when it comes to fighting for the things this district really needs.” Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick heads into this year with a strong war chest of more than $5 million.
Lawmakers want unions to reimburse agencies for union work on taxpayer dime
U.S. Rep. Scott Perry has sponsored the House version of the Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallet Act, which would require federal employee unions to reimburse federal agencies whenever employees leave their federal jobs to do union work—while still being paid by taxpayers. The practice, sometimes called union release time or official time, has cost taxpayers millions of dollars. In fact, Perry noted, “In 2019, before President Biden halted tracking of ‘official time,’ OPM [the Office of Personnel Management] reported that federal [employees] were paid $135M to do 2.6M hours of union work while on the clock at their official government jobs.”