Crowley says he would repeal data center tax subsidies, regulate AI and social media • Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsinites care about a great many things, but Crowley has come armed with an 11-point plan to restrict and regulate AI and social media, unveiled with fewer than three weeks until Election Day — that sweet spot on the calendar where conviction and leaflet logistics become indistinguishable. Eleven points. Not ten, which looks like a round number; not twelve, which looks like you asked a chatbot and it gave you a bonus item. Eleven is what you get when every point has to be separately fundable and separately photographable. Credit where it's due, though: one of the eleven has actual teeth, and it takes money off people who can afford lobbyists.

The banger is the pledge to repeal data center tax subsidies, and the justification isn't vibes but a September Marquette Law School poll finding 74% of Wisconsinites say the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. Seventy-four. That's not a polling margin, that's a coronation. It means the poor souls in the substation-adjacent postcodes have done the arithmetic their legislatures declined to do: the sales tax holiday, the TIF district, the 'innovation corridor' press release, then the noise, the water and the rate case. The data center lobby's business model is borrowing the public's electricity and patience at a discount and calling it investment.

Then points two through eleven: regulate AI and social media companies. Regulate them how, with what, on whose authority and against whom? The article doesn't say, because the article can't say, because a state-level promise to regulate frontier models is a man with a bucket promising to regulate the sea. Social media is marginally more tractable — you can at least fine a platform for something it said inside the state line — but 'regulate AI' at this altitude is a mood with a hashtag. Still, 74% is a real number, the subsidies are real money, and three weeks is not long.