LEAP District Keeps Sucking Vital Resource for Mega Corporations

Let's talk about what went down in Lebanon last night, because this is super important. This really matters, and it is the draining of our resources, the continual draining of our resources, to facilitate the development of mega corporations. We have seen this play out with the data centers in which the electricity, which is already in short supply, electric bills, which are already on the rise. I got my bill the other day. Do you guys get these in the mail where they'll send you what your bill was year over year and you can compare them? $9 more than the same month a year ago. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but you add it up, nine times 12? What is that? $108 a year? $108, it just disappeared. Didn't get better electricity, didn't get better service. The water's not 10 times hotter when it takes a shower. It's just money that just disappeared. You literally got nothing additional for your money, and we keep seeing this. It's water bills, sewer bills, and when money just disappears, obviously the food at the grocery store, when you keep getting homeowners insurance, when you keep getting the same amount, or in some cases less, for more money, it's a math equation. You're eventually going to have your buying power just completely diluted. That's $108 I could spend on something else, some other company, some of their local merchants, some other store. We have seen with resources that relates to power, to electricity, when there's only so much, and we're told the grid is strained, and these power companies, the utilities are supposedly able to do all this investment and research and development that we've got to pay for, by the way, thanks to Braun, thanks to the Republicans. I know we talked about this a lot on the old show, but for those of you who weren't listeners over there, last year, or this past year, the Republicans signed this, I guess it would be last year now, all these years run together. This Dr. Frankenstein bill, which essentially allows the utilities to do all of this unproven research and development on an unproven technology in terms of SMR, nuclear power, small modular reactors, and if it doesn't work, they still get to recoup 80% of the investment. You know any other business where it's like, "Well, you can invest it, and if it fails, you still get your money back?" You know anywhere else where that happens? I don't, but we have to pay now in terms of utility bills for these utility companies, for-profit investor-owned utility companies, to do research and development. We had to buy a bunch of stuff to get this podcast off the ground. Nobody told us, "Well, hey, if it fails, we'll give you your money back. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine." No, we did that because we said we believe in this show. I'm willing to invest my money. Hopefully, we'll get it back over time and through advertising and supporting the support button. By the way, support button, robkendallshow.com, if you want to support the show, $1, $10, whatever you want to give, we are so appreciative of it. The good news, you'll likely get a nice email from me. That's worth 10 times whatever you're going to give. The point is, no other place does this exist. We have seen the repeated draining of resources in our state to facilitate mega corporations that in many ways aren't benefiting the lives of any of us. Here is the latest example involving the LEAP District. This is the, for those who don't know, this was the IEDC, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, Dream Child, under Eric Holcomb, his baby in which millions and millions and millions of our tax dollars were taken to create this area in Lebanon and attract mega corporations. Thus far, they brought Eli Lilly and they brought Meta, Facebook. One of the issues with the district is it doesn't have enough power to sustain itself and it doesn't have enough water. Now, water is a mega issue in central Indiana. Reports have shown that if something is not done by the year 2050, we could run out of water in central Indiana. Well, what is their response, the state's response to, by the way, using millions and millions of our tax dollars to facilitate these large for-profit, profit center companies coming to Indiana, they don't have enough water to sustain themselves, they said, "Well, we'll just take it from somebody else and give it to them." People were like, "Well, where are you going to get that amount of water?" And the state said, "We know, Eagle Creek." And the people were like, "That seems like a hainously bad idea. Why are these companies getting to pull for 25 million gallons of water a day from Eagle Creek?" And the state's response was, "Well, they need it." And along the pathway from Eagle Creek to Lebanon, there's many, many people who don't have a utility, who are on wells, who those wells are running dry or at the risk of running dry said, "Okay, well, since META and Lilly are getting this water run to them, can we, the citizens, the taxpayers, the people you're actually supposed to be serving, the people who pay the tap, can we tap into that pipeline as well?" You know what they got told? No. Think about this. The state of Indiana has actual citizens, actual residents, actual taxpayers who live on homes, who were supposed to be serving. The whole premise of government is to serve the people. The people say, "We have this need. We have this desire. We have a well. We're having issues with our wells. You're going to run this pipeline to these mega-corps. Can we just get a little bit of that? Because since it's 25 million gallons going to them, we're probably not going to use that much." Nope. It's all for them. And so there was a meeting last night that caused great concern because with the city of Lebanon and the Eagle Creek Reservoir advocates are very upset about a new ordinance created with the LEAP District, the city of Lebanon, the LEAP District, it would allow, essentially, Citizens Energy to renegotiate its agreement with the city of Indianapolis. Right now, the Citizens Energy has stated that it will publicly pull this, by the way, is according to WRTV with the story, WRTV6. Right now, Citizens Energy stated that it will publicly pull 25 million gallons a day to Lebanon utilities. Nothing more than that. However, this new agreement between the city of Lebanon and the LEAP District would potentially allow Citizens Energy Group, who's supplying that water, to go back and pull more water. They're already saying they haven't even started. They haven't really even started and they're already telling you the 25 million gallons a day, probably not going to be enough. And why would it be? It's not like they're going to stop adding mega-corporations. And if you need 25 million gallons a day for Lilly and for META, well, obviously, you're going to need a lot more for these other people. This is what we say about government all the time. You can't trust the deal because it's never enough. Indianapolis City County Councilor Dan Boots said this as well. He said the same thing I'm saying. Quote, "The MOU specifically says that the IEDC may go back to CEG," that's Citizens Energy Group. "They can ask for more water, but they have expressed to us they would not ever do that. So if you're not ever going to do that, why do you need an agreement allowing you to do that? Obviously, like with anything else with the government, you can trust this as far as you can throw it, and they're going to come back for more water. It's never going to stop. And this is the question I keep asking. If you know some of your most important resources to sustain qualities of life, in this case, it's power, electricity, and water are in short supply to the tune you may run out of them, in the not too distant future, by the way, 2050 may sound like a long way off, it's not. Think about in 2000, how far off 2025 sounded, and now we're at 2026, right? It's less time now from 2000 to now than it will be from now to 2050. If you were at risk of running out of that resource, why would you keep allowing stuff to be built that would not just further drain the resource, it could suck it dry? And what does it tell you about your elected officials who run our state that they are willing to allow mega corps from out of state to come to Indiana and drain these resources that other people may need to live? And when these people say, "Hey, we'd like to kind of tap into that to help, you know, live because you need water," nope, nope, you can't do that. There are politicians out there who all the time get mad at me for saying, "Our elected officials hate us." And I look at stuff like this and say, "What else would I say other than you hate us?" You're allowing mega corps in the case of META from out of state, at least Lilly had a base here, but mega corps from out of state to come into our state and suck the resources that people need to live that are already running dry, and at the very least is going to cause everybody to have to pay a lot more for those resources. Why are taxpayers subsidizing Facebook? I love Facebook. Use it all the time. They've been great to me. No issue with Facebook whatsoever. But why are we subsidizing Facebook? Why are we subsidizing Lilly, the largest drug manufacturer in the world? I don't even know what the market cap is. Now, last time I checked, I think it was over $800 billion was the market cap for Eli Lilly. But our money is going to subsidize them in terms of sweetheart deals on land, putting real estate deals together, tax abatements, tax incentive, tax giveaways, money giveaways, and now taking something even more important than money, stuff we need to live and giving it to these people. It is going to run out. No matter how much money you even put into it, there's not an unlimited availability of it, and it is going to happen.