Seems to me public review is a failsafe - an acknowledgement that laws and regs can't always keep up with real life harms.

I think you have to actually do local politics (I'm assuming you do) to really get just how fucked public comment is as a process, and I think this is an important and useful thing to talk about that just won't be possible to talk about in a data center thread, because of the political valence data centers have taken on.

Wait, we're talking about public comment.

That doesn't give anyone veto power, the worst people can do is say mean comments and make the listeners feel bad before they do the thing anyway.

Moving to cut off comments is simply breathtaking arrogance, which is on brand for this regime.

> Public review is a blight on the democratic process. Instead of having a set of democratically established laws and regulations that apply fairly to everyone, a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands can stop anyone they don't like from doing something that is perfectly legal.

We're talking about data centers, which are deeply unpopular with just about everyone. It's laughable to suggest that skipping public review is a good thing here, because it's only going to result in data centers being sneakily approved contrary to the overwhelming desire of constituents. We can ruminate all day on whether public comments or public review is useful in the grand scheme, but the realpolitik of the situation is that – barring possession of a time machine to go back and elect different representation – it's one of the few levers that constituents have to prevent data centers from moving into their area.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/why-does-everyone-hate-data-cen...

"The public having access to information on what corporations plan to do in their communities and having the ability to vote to against what corporations want is a blight on the democratic process" is a crazy stance to take.

What you call "a small handful of noisy people with too much time on their hands" I call "We the People" and it should fall to them to decide what happens in their own communities. It's legal for me to put a hot tub in my living room. My family doesn't have to let me put it there. It's legal to pave over city park in my community and turn them into parking lots, but the people in my city should have a say in that.

Thank you for this take.

It's like giving people excessive discretion. Then if you're someone they don't like (eg. a black person if you're racist), then you deal out a maximalist punishment. If they're someone you do like, you let them off and tell them not to do it again.

Policy like this is just corruption. It allows some people to exercise more rights than others, at the expense of the commons.

Often not everyone is impacted equally by a policy. So it is reasonable to allow, for example, the people living near a potential data center greater say into what happens.