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Joined June 2023
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The only two people I really see fighting are Torian and Scott. Considering one is a known sexual predator and the other is actively covering for him, we should all be cheering on their defeat.
“FAFO”
Today, Virginia Sen. @SenLouiseLucas visited Prince William County. She told me lawmakers who are fighting to keep data center tax breaks are going to get primary challenges.
@DelegateTorian is leading budget talks in the House, and he is for data center tax breaks. Del. Luke Torian represents Prince William County.
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I have to imagine most of the rest of the House members have more nuanced opinions, but that wasn't reflected in the budget. There's a giant universe of options to make data centers pay that are a lot more stable than ending a tax break in the budget.
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For example, sunset the tax break in 2 years with an exception for anyone who has an existing MOU and implement a new tax on compute or raise the electric utility consumption tax. Instead we are fighting over something mathematically and economically ignorant.
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Trying to act reasonable while negotiating with Senator Lucas is a losing proposition. The only winning strategy is to solely focus on the fact that there is no actual proposal and Lucas is just gaslighting everyone into a shutdown.
Another interesting takeaway from my conversation with @GovernorVA today:
She says the budget is "not an either/or" when it comes to the data center sales and use tax exemption.
Spanberger added, "It is not that we make some monumental change to the sales and use tax provisions now, or that is never a possibility."
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I'm starting to think the reason we have not seen a Senate budget proposal yet is that the professional Senate staff have yet to figure out a way to square reality with what Senator Lucas is saying.
New: I just wrapped up a lengthy interview with @SenLouiseLucas
Senator Lucas on Governor Abigail Spanberger:
“She’s a diva.”
Right now, Gov. Spanberger is fighting to preserve data center tax breaks. Sen. Lucas wants to get rid of the tax breaks.
She had much more to say about the Governor. I will be posting more of our interview.
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I don't think they can justify $2 billion from ending the exemption because they know you can't model the revenue that way & that's why impact payments got floated. But even that needs some kind of metric to work out. The compromise is probably the first thing that adds up.
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Coming soon: the ability to talk shit about public policy issues on the internet with receipts.
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Tangier is disappearing and yet somehow my mom has sold 2 houses there this year, so at least some people are betting on a solution.
Jun 15
Tangier Island sits in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and serves as a test of what could be done to save communities slipping into rising water. The island needs creative ideas and funding to save their history and culture. #vagov #valeg
virginiamercury.com/2026/06/…
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Jun 14
If you think there's $2 billion to be made from repealing the sales tax exemption for data centers, think again. In addition to importing depreciated GPU's from other state's, Google is exploring data centers powered by old cell phones.
People replace their phones every ~4 yrs. This means there are hundreds of millions of old phones discarded each year that are still perfectly usable as computing devices. @Google in collabration with @UCSD is exploring how to turn these old phones into cloud-computing “phone clusters”. Putting phones back in service in this way can directly reduce the environmental footprint of computing by avoiding the need for further raw material extraction, and taking advantage of the embodied carbon already incurred from manufacturing these devices, and modern phones actually are already quite powerful computers. Read more in the blog below ⬇️
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Jun 13
Forget taxing Elon Musk’s wealth. If you really want to change things, we should pay him $1 trillion cash, nationalize SpaceX and Tesla, and put AI in charge. Ironically AI means there’s no longer a strong argument you actually need capitalists and industrialists anymore.
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Jun 13
I’m only half joking. AI isn’t actually that good yet but it’s getting there quickly and it won’t be long before there really isn’t any need for Musks’s and Bezos type people anymore.
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Jun 13
Everyone keeps talking about $2 billion from data centers but they don’t understand how GPU economics work in the AI era. They don’t understand calculus either but that’s at least understandable.
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Jun 13
The reality is both the House and Senate are acting immature here. The problem of data center impacts is entirely tractable. We don’t need another fake commission anymore than we need a government shutdown over this fake $2 billion number.
Jun 13
This data center study the House cooked up with the Governor will be staffed by members of the data center industry and lobbyists. It’s a “blue ribbon” commission that’s designed to not actually accomplish anything.
Giving a $2B a year tax break to Big Tech is not in the best interest of Virginians, especially when they’re paying higher electric bills to subsidize the data centers’ electricity needs too.
Meanwhile, this budget gives the General Assembly a 150% pay increase. What’s been done to earn that?!
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Jun 13
Everyone is talking about $2 billion like DCs can’t import H100s from other states.
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Jun 13
The Speaker got picked for an audit and decided to kill the funding for it. Clearly appointing his boss as his Chief of Staff was a smart move.
Jun 13
"A nine-word sentence – “That § 24.2-948.5 of the Code of Virginia is repealed” – would strip the Virginia Department of Elections of its authority to audit campaign finance reports."
davidmpoole.substack.com/p/h…
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Jun 12
If Spanberger is lying, Lucas should be able to produce PDFs showing real Senate Finance proposals. If she can’t/wont do that, we can safely assume she’s lying.
Jun 12
We worked with the House and the Governor to come up with multiple compromises. We answered her questions and she continued to move the goal post every time. Any notion that she didn’t know what our proposal was is just complete bullshit.
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Jun 12
I’m not saying this was an exhaustive search, but it’s probably more than the House or Senate has done. Bottom line: no clear evidence in public capital markets that losing Virginia’s data center tax exemption is a material risk to data center companies.
Jun 12
My basic theory is this: tax exemptions are not treated the same on an accounting/finance basis as actual contracts because they are subject to change. That means when financial statements and debt issuances are done, they are going to weigh the risks if it's actually material.
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Jun 12
Not the worst ideas, but some poorly named ones like this. VA gets a Fed grant that has basically let us to create our own CDC. If that grant goes away October 16th, we would be SOL with this language. It's pretty dumb to call this "uncertainty" when it requires certainty...
Jun 12
The House budget proposal is out hac.virginia.gov/conference-…
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Jun 12
Apparently there's a large number of grants that may/may not expire around September. But that makes this even worse. If we know for certain that X number of positions and programs are on the chopping block, we should have already decided what to protect.
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Jun 12
The House literally had an entire commission study this, but alas, Del. Bulova struggled in accounting in grad school and therefore was entirely disinterested in actually doing the real work needed to properly plan for Federal budget reductions.
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