Boo! Josh Shapiro restricts new data center construction in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has fallen into a progressive trap: he’s heeding calls to place onerous restrictions on new data center construction that will make it all but impossible to build more. That’s a win for angry left populists who are, knowingly or unknowingly, pushing talking points about the so-called harms of data centers that play right into the hands of America’s enemies, like the Chinese Communist Party. Nevertheless, Shapiro, who is a moderate Democrat with some commonsense principles and was previously a supporter of data center construction, said on Tuesday that data centers would need to get local support, use clean sources of energy, hire locally and more before the state would approve the construction. Listen to this. Now, that announcement might sound fairly benign, or even beneficial to you. And yes, as far as these things go, this is a moderate approach. He’s not banning data centers — which is what far-left democratic socialists and Bernie Sanders want to do — he’s simply making them jump through more hoops to get approved.   There are kernels of some fine ideas in here. Obviously, it’s ideal for local communities to want them, and for tech backers to sell the people on them. Of course they should have to pay for their own water and electricity, we all agree on that. It’s also ideal for some of the benefits to flow back to the community. The best way to do that is using the increased p…