Issues You May Know, 6 March 2026.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Heron at Lackawanna State Park, Pennsylvania. July 13, 2025. Photo by Chloe Kaczenski Humbert
The “Quakertown 5” story in Bucks County PA is a grotesque injustice.
This Quakertown 5 story is outrageous. Students were outside their school protesting, and a stranger arrived, a grown man came counter-protesting the school children’s demonstration. The strange man put a girl in a chokehold, and when people pulled him off of her, it’s reported her torn backpack brushed the guy who was attacking her. The guy attacking her turned out to be the police chief, off-duty and in plain clothes. And now this girl is being charged with a felony for supposedly assaulting a police officer, and 4 other kids have also been charged, some are now required to wear ankle monitor bracelets. This was caught on video which is good because some witnesses are reportedly afraid to give account of what they witnessed, because they fear retaliation by the police department.
Interview with the girl’s defense lawyer: ICE Protest Turns VIOLENT After Police ATTACK TEEN Katie Phang Mar 2, 2026
Calls grow for Quakertown police chief to resign after clash during protest By Miguel Martinez-Valle and Shaira Arias NBC • Published March 4, 2026 • Updated on March 4, 2026 at 11:23 pm Another cellphone video shared with NBC10 showed a man in a brown shirt – identified as Quakertown Police Chief Scott McElree – in a fight while being surrounded by students. The video also showed a second officer bringing someone to the ground. The students arrested, known as the Quakertown 5, are all out of detention, but NBC10 learned at least some of them are now forced back in school with a court-ordered ankle monitor as their case continues. “Regardless of if they get cleared or not in this moment, there are still children being seen as perpetrators of violent crimes. They are children as young as 15, so what does it say to them when everyone that is supposed to be there to protect them is failing them,” said Upper Bucks United community organizer Laura Foster.
No tech product will protect anyone from fascist government overreach.
Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous ‘Stop Cop City’ Protester 404 Media Mar 6, 2026
Evidence that using a chatbot for health purposes is a threat to public safety.
‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies Melissa Davey Medical editor Thu 26 Feb 2026 09.00 EST The Guardian In 51.6% of cases where someone needed to go to the hospital immediately, the platform said stay home or book a routine medical appointment, a result Alex Ruani, a doctoral researcher in health misinformation mitigation with University College London, described as “unbelievably dangerous”. “If you’re experiencing respiratory failure or diabetic ketoacidosis, you have a 50/50 chance of this AI telling you it’s not a big deal,” she said. “What worries me most is the false sense of security these systems create. If someone is told to wait 48 hours during an asthma attack or diabetic crisis, that reassurance could cost them their life.” In one of the simulations, eight times out of 10 (84%), the platform sent a suffocating woman to a future appointment she would not live to see, Ruani said. Meanwhile, 64.8% of completely safe individuals were told to seek immediate medical care, said Ruani, who was not involved in the study. The platform was also nearly 12 times more likely to downplay symptoms because the “patient” told it a “friend” in the scenario suggested it was nothing serious.
Automation bias is a big part of this threat.
My letter to reps:
Why are chatbots proven to give bad information and known to be creating errors, being allowed for use in healthcare or pitched and marketed as good for use for healthcare purposes? How many people have to be harmed by this before we have laws against healthcare using shoddy AI products and official warnings against using chatbots for health purposes?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Electricity prices? It’s the data centers and nothing but the data centers.
Power prices: data centres. Nothing but data centres – Pivot to AI Mar 5, 2026
David Gerard: “Brookings talked to four regulators and experts. Here’s a great video. It’s 90 minutes. I don’t expect you to watch it. You should watch it, but you won’t. So, I watched it for you.
We’ve been hearing in Pennsylvania that the rise for electricity utility prices is not the data centers. But here’s a summary from a panel from Brookings where they say specifically it’s the data centers. It seems very similar to the propaganda insisting complaints about AI data center water usage are false. And of course the industry has been trying hard to hide the usage of both.
Former manager at Amazon says Return To Office was used to push people out without the appearance of layoffs.
AI being used as an excuse for layoffs seems a reasonable assumption. And there are people warning that OpenAI will be running out of money by next year.
Data centers are fighting towns that don’t want them by going to court with their fancy lawyers.
Dickson City adopts data center regulations, halts Bell Mountain campus By Frank Lesnefsky | The Times-Tribune PUBLISHED: February 13, 2026 at 1:27 PM EST | UPDATED: February 13, 2026 at 2:57 PM EST By adopting the ordinance, Dickson City could effectively shut down proposals from a local data center developer looking to build either three data centers above Cold Spring Road or a 403-acre campus higher up around Bell Mountain, though the fight will now likely play out in a courtroom.
One lawyer threatened he’d rather work with the township but, “one way or another” they’re doing it.
Least worst option’: Carbon County community faces data center challenges WVIA | By Kat Bolus | WVIA News Published February 28, 2026 at 5:00 AM EST Mele Brothers challenged the township’s zoning ordinance for excluding data centers before it had defined data centers. However, the property owners have not submitted any plans to the borough to build a data center. During a Jan. 14 meeting, Attorney Matthew McHugh, who represents the Montgomery County company, said the project is in the feasibility stage right now. “One way or the other, we’re going to pursue a data center development on this site, whether it’s through this ordinance or through the validity challenge,” he said. He said their preference is to work with the township.
This is in the same county as the cryptocurrency data center power plant of Greg Beard, the US Dept of Energy Loans Director, that’s facility that burns tires and coal waste to print crypto.
My letter to reps:
Why do we, as a society, have to allow data centers to ruin our communities? This is supposed to be a government for and by the people, not a government for and by rich tech companies and data center building companies.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Data centers forcing eminent domain on someone’s bucolic home in Wisconsin.
My letter to reps:
I’ve seen a news report where private power companies are threatening homeowners with eminent domain grabs if they don’t play along with the data center development. This whole industry is questionable and we need a 5 year data center development moratorium, to give time for proper corruption investigations or at least for this house of cards to play out before the land in our region is marred with deforestation and before people’s homes in our communities are irrevocably wrecked by sham development schemes. Experts are saying some of these AI companies will go under by mid 2027. Why are politicians allowing this flailing industry to harm our communities based on dubious promises? It’s a waste of time and energy, on top of being a threat to society’s infrastructure. 5 year data center moratorium.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
AI Bubble: ‘This is dumber than WeWork’ | Ed Zitron The Tech Report Feb 20, 2026 I’ve heard out of Stargate Abilene that Oracle will not be extending buildings past building 8 because OpenAI is not making them enough money.
I’m not buying books or reading articles that are likely to be AI slop.
Whenever I hear that a published author or writer or journalist is using some chatbot, I make a mental note not to bother with any of their stuff, because I have to assume anything they’re putting out now is probably error-filled AI slop.
Problematic so-called “relationships” with chatbots.
Someone recommended to me a podcast episode, actually a 28 minute preview episode, and I put off listening to it for a couple of weeks. But now I’m actually going to recommend this podcast episode to others, just to listen to this discussion. II think it’s a good overview of the issue… I hesitate to use the word “highlights” a lot of the odd issues involved with AI products. I don’t think people really understand the “AI companion” stuff or even the oracle of chatbot phenomenon, and what’s going on with people getting emotional compulsions and attachments to this “technology” product.
Kill the Computer podcast - Tuesday Feb 17, 2026 Preview: One Hour of Dogs Barking Ft. Arif Hasan
I keep saying there’s no such thing as a relationship with a Large Language Model, but clearly these chatbots are designed to trick people into thinking there can be, and it was obvious to me from the get go that they were designed to be habit forming and LLM chatbots just inherently have aspects of gambling to it. And this aspect of it is in play with every single use of the chatbot, including computer code, people even can get a sort of slot machine addiction to rolling for code. So it makes sense that the human brain with all our cognitive biases, can be tricked into something that mimics an addictive relationship of some type. I don’t think most people know about what’s going on with the pull of the chatbot for some people, who are either secretly or not so secretly hooked on “AI companions”, or maybe just hooked on chatbots even though they’re not really getting a lot of benefit from it.
My letter to reps:
People are being misled into thinking they can have a “relationship” with LLM chatbot technology products, and even misled into thinking these products can act as some kind of therapist or confidant, when there are no privacy guarantees, and these products are known for giving out bad information and serious errors. The chatbots have also been found to be addictive on top of all that. Why is this stuff even allowed on the market?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
The machinations of data center development.
Kline Township Community Meeting Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania Mar 4, 2026 (auto-transcript, emphasis added) “Um so well let’s just talk about Kline really quick. But yeah to tack on to that the right to know process is definitely being um uh abused. Yeah. By many townships. Not just trying to single out Kline here, but um okay. So here we have just a little uh quick timeline. And I have a little blurb at the bottom because I’m human and I’m imperfect and there’s things I mess up. So this is not official and may contain errors. Um stage one. So, um, and this really some of the stretches beyond that. Patty might be able to talk to a little bit of that if we have questions, um, with that, but at least by 2024, this is some stuff we know for sure. So, Brewster Land Company, um, they had begun even earlier than that, um, obtaining, uh, permits and approvals at the local and state levels for what was told you guys was a warehousing project, right? Um, in uh if we keep moving on, in 2024, there also was a $182,500 donation made to the Klein Township Police Department uh by the Brewster Land Company, which was the um uh ended up being the the shell development company that then sold it to uh Amazon. And then uh after that or kind of going along with that, the meantime starting even earlier than 24 uh PPL uh began um obtaining easements and permissions for expanded or uh new use uh to install u high voltage power needed for industrial scale projects. Um and that’s been happening all over this region. uh where I live were really close to where they want to put that 500 kilovolt line through which turns out once we kind of um held their feet to the fire it turns out it was for the Amazon project up there project hazelnut um which by the way they haven’t officially come out and said it but they have now because we found all of that in state right to know documents that is an Amazon project and then it was admitted to me by the head of the northeast regional office uh uh Mr. Bashinsky at the conclusion of the Project Hazelnut hearing cuz I was reading him the the riot act in the vestibule because they shut the hearing down early because that’s what they like to do. Um so I said I thought it was a sham that he was sham hearing and he was doing it that way and um and I said and I think next time you should you should hold another one and you should have your enduser developer there. And he looked at me and I said and we all know it’s Amazon and I have proof of it right to know. He goes, “Well, yeah, it is Amazon.” So, there you and I have a witness for that. Um, okay. Klein Township municipal leaders in 2024, then a little bit later after that, uh, but not too far into the year, uh, did go ahead and and enact an ordinance that changed language, um, to make data centers a permitted use. Um, so when Josephine was talking about making something um, a conditional use, when you have something be a permitted use, uh, it doesn’t give the people a lot of, uh, leeway if there aren’t conditions placed on that permitted use. And in this case, there are none. There are no additional protections, restrictions, or safeties in place. And I’m talking not even basic. There’s not even a decommissioning requirement in there. So that when these things go obsolete like any technology does, there is literally nothing to protect you people. They did not update any of their zoning ordinances to protect the people with um the noise setbacks. They did not um update any of their zoning ordinances Kline Township to protect the people like with noise setbacks, pollution. They just they approved the ordinance and that was it. They did nothing else…
(..)
… So Brewster got all those D permits with the state for Brewster for warehousing. Now they’re coming in with arguably heavy industrial use, a totally different use. And but they still want to be able to have those same permits roll over. And guess what? They’re getting them right now in real time. They’ve been getting them like that since January. I logged on the one day and I couldn’t believe I couldn’t believe my eyes. I sent it to Patty and and a couple other uh folks are aware of it locally. It was a same day permit transfer. January 20th. January 20th, 2026. Has anyone ever heard the term rubber stamper? Cuz that’s what that is, folks. That’s a rubber stamp. They just close their eyes and went bam next. And that’s cuz of Governor Shapiro fasttracking all these permits. It is part of the fasttrack program. This is part of a series of executive orders that he started after he took office. And unfortunately, what that’s done is before there’s even local uh approvals in place on on, you know, in your municipality or county or whatever, uh these companies, and it’s not just Amazon, it’s other companies as well, can go to the state, get preapprove, they’ll have pre-approval meetings. Um, in fact, I have the minutes from their pre-approval meeting for this one. It’s lovely. And um they have these meetings and then they say, “Okay, yeah, sure. H it’s not that much different. It’s kind of roughly the same area. We’ll go ahead and approve the use.” And so that that means they can go in and clear land. They can clear cut. They can timber. They can uh they get blasting permits through the local mining department down in Pottsville. Okay. and they can do major earth moving, too. Well, that’s significant. Why is that significant? Well, a couple reasons. I think it undermines local autonomy. And hey, wait a second. We’re a commonwealth. That’s what makes us cool. Like, where’s our say in this, right? Should be should be backwards. The locals should approve it first and then they can go get their state permits. That seems backwards to me. But what it also means is that that could greenlight earth and water groundwater disturbance. That’s problematic because of your guy’s water source that got cleaned up. You know, a lot of it got cleaned up in the last couple of years. Whoa. If we’re doing this less than a mile from an EPA superfund site, what in the heck are we doing to the direction of the groundwater flow? I’m not a hydrologist, but a real hydrologist ought to come in and do studies on that. But this is scary and that should be mandated by the township and by the state, but at least by the township. I actually called D several months ago about the permits that were issued for Brewster carried over to Amazon cuz I was worried about the super fund site and he promised me on the phone that they would not approve them until Amazon met all the criteria that they had to follow and you see how that went. They gave them to them anyway. Yeah. So that’s okay. They did this in uh Hazel Township with Project Hazelnut. gave them all. Okay, we have a question. And they gave it all to them uh there, but in the midnight hour, they were able to pump the brakes uh in Hazel Township and the supervisors ended up at the very last minute not approving the preliminary and major land development. Um and that proved to be uh not something that the developer was expecting. So now they’ve taken the township to court, but that’s okay. It’s going to be tied up in court for a little while. This is what they’re going to do. Uh they’re the developer for uh Amazon in this case, North Point Development.