Tech companies are racing to build data centers that draw as much power as a small city, and they want you to pay for the wiring. When one comes to town, the utility has to build new power plants, transmission lines, and substations, and unless your state says otherwise, that bill gets spread across every household’s rates while the company that caused it negotiates a special deal. Some of these facilities also pull millions of gallons of water a day from the same reservoirs and aquifers that families and farms depend on. The richest companies in the world don’t need a subsidy from your electric bill. Make data centers pay the full cost of the grid and water they use, through the public utility commission and in law, so the companies building them cover the bill instead of families.
Nobody chooses to get sick, and nobody should lose their home over it. Yet medical debt follows people for years, through collections, liens, and garnished paychecks, for bills they never had a real chance to pay. Here’s the part the collectors don’t advertise: old medical debt sells for pennies on the dollar, which means a modest amount of public money can wipe out an enormous amount of it. States and cities have already done exactly that, clearing debt for thousands of families at once. Fund a program that buys up and erases residents’ medical debt, and ban home liens and wage garnishment over medical bills for good.
No kid learns on an empty stomach, and no kid should be handed a cold cheese sandwich (or a lunch-debt notice) because a parent missed a form. Income-tested school meals leave out families who earn a little too much to qualify and not nearly enough to get by, and the paperwork alone keeps eligible kids from eating. States that feed every student see more kids eating, less stigma in the cafeteria, and an end to lunch-debt bills. Guarantee free breakfast and lunch for every public school student and, where your state already does, fund it permanently so it can’t be quietly cut.
Tech companies are racing to build data centers that draw as much power as a small city, and they want you to pay for the wiring. When one comes to town, the utility has to build new power plants, transmission lines, and substations, and unless your state says otherwise, that bill gets spread across every household’s rates while the company that caused it negotiates a special deal. Some of these facilities also pull millions of gallons of water a day from the same reservoirs and aquifers that families and farms depend on. The richest companies in the world don’t need a subsidy from your electric bill. Make data centers pay the full cost of the grid and water they use, through the public utility commission and in law, so the companies building them cover the bill instead of families.
Nobody chooses to get sick, and nobody should lose their home over it. Yet medical debt follows people for years, through collections, liens, and garnished paychecks, for bills they never had a real chance to pay. Here’s the part the collectors don’t advertise: old medical debt sells for pennies on the dollar, which means a modest amount of public money can wipe out an enormous amount of it. States and cities have already done exactly that, clearing debt for thousands of families at once. Fund a program that buys up and erases residents’ medical debt, and ban home liens and wage garnishment over medical bills for good.
No kid learns on an empty stomach, and no kid should be handed a cold cheese sandwich (or a lunch-debt notice) because a parent missed a form. Income-tested school meals leave out families who earn a little too much to qualify and not nearly enough to get by, and the paperwork alone keeps eligible kids from eating. States that feed every student see more kids eating, less stigma in the cafeteria, and an end to lunch-debt bills. Guarantee free breakfast and lunch for every public school student and, where your state already does, fund it permanently so it can’t be quietly cut.
