Subsidies under fire – for good reason 71%
By Jim Heaney78%
7/27/2026, 3:00:18 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Confirmation Bias, and Unattributed Quote, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 41.8% saturation with 313 hits. Analysis detected 2,231 faulty-reasoning hits from 749 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.3% and a BS Rank of 71% (8,312 of 28,112 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 70.40% of the article peer group.
The tide is turning against taxpayer handouts to the developers of data centers.
Gov.
Kathy Hochul made headlines recently in stating her opposition to them in New York, and she’s not alone.
Governors in Nebraska, Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Massachusetts have also acted to nix data center subsidies.
Pat Garofalo , in his Boondoggle newsletter , wrote:
The case for subsidizing data center construction is weak at the best of times: Data centers don’t need many permanent workers, they create no knock-on economic development effects, they are often a net negative for their neighbors because of noise and aesthetics, and they have the potential to increase costs for water and electricity across entire states and regions if not managed correctly.
Speaking of subsidies, New York is showering the developers of the last vacant piece of real estate at the site of Memorial Auditorium with all sorts of goodies, worth $153 million , The Buffalo News reported.
There’s debate whether affordable housing is appropriate for the site, but there’s a larger issue to consider: the lack of quality, affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods.
If the objective is to promote affordable housing, there are better ways to spend public dollars than what’s planned for the Aud site.
ICE is swimming in money thanks to a huge increase in funding via President Trump and Congressional Republicans.
Yet the Trump administration announced last week that it’s shifting the docket of immigration judges working at the ICE detention center in Batavia to downtown Buffalo in what could be construed as a cost-saving measure.
The change means cases heard in person up to this point will be conducted virtually.
One attorney who represents detainees said it will put detainees fighting deportation at a further disadvantage .
Meanwhile, Homeland Security is ramping up pressure on immigrants who have been ordered to leave the county.
Reports The New York Times :
More than 100,000 people have received letters from the Homeland Security Department informing them that they owe $998 for each day that they have stayed in the United States after an immigration judge has ruled they have no legal right to remain in the country.
The Buffalo News assesses the mess that is the Buffalo Board of Education .
The School Board, never a well-oiled machine, may be more dysfunctional than it has been in decades.
Chains took over the daily newspaper business over the course of the last half century.
There are now fewer newspapers in the hands of a shrinking number of chains.
Consolidation is also happening in the television industry .
A Substack entitled You’re Probably Getting Screwed provides the history and consequences for news consumers.
Research has found a range of harms from this consolidation.
One is higher prices, as retransmission fees charged by these broadcast conglomerates have increased over 2,000% from $1.47 to $21.71 per month over the last 14 years.
Those costs are then passed onto consumers as higher rates for cable and satellite services, which hit seniors and rural communities particularly hard.
The quality and amount of local news has also decreased as these corporations have gained more control.
The national economy’s reliance on the tech sector – especially artificial intelligence – to foster growth could be a bubble waiting to happen, according to reporting from The New York Times and the Atlantic .
As the Atlantic put it: “Tech companies need to generate huge revenues fast, or the economy could be in trouble.”
Speaking of the tech bros, fresh reporting shows how Amazon has acted to jack up prices at the expense of consumers and spent millions of dollars in an astroturf campaign aimed at killing proposed legislation in New York City that would require it to treat its drivers as employees rather than independent contractors .
If passed, the bill could have national implications.
Google, meanwhile, is purging critical online reviews of ICE detention centers .
Polling shows what’s on the minds of voters as mid-term elections approach.
It’s the economy, stupid .
By a wide margin, voters most want candidates running for Congress to talk about economic issues – with many specifically mentioning prices and affordability.
While the economy is top of mind for 29 percent of respondents, immigration was prioritized by just 7 percent.
Here’s your weekly dose of Doonesbury .
For my money, “Coyote” is Joni Mitchell’s best song.
Here’s the story behind the song and the video , with accompaniment by Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn.
Speakers
8speakers39%attributed speech459writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coveragePat Garofalo
72 attributed words25% of attributed speech87% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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