Came across these two submissions while reading this week’s filings in Docket 58317. The first was simply a photo which I LOVED! No words and said everything. Item 92, filed today by Saunders Consigliere PLLC: Executive Brief — Texas Data Center and Large-Load Development: Community Protection, Siting and Lifecycle Framework. Such wonderful detail and well put together. A good read! It is not a yes-or-no on data centers. It is a list of questions officials should be able to answer before a project is approved, and stay able to enforce after. Who owns it. Who pays if the load never shows up. Who pays for the wires and water. What happens in a drought. What happens when the servers are gone and the substations are still there. That is the conversation this docket is supposed to hold. If those questions matter in your county, they belong in the official record, not just in a comment thread. Read Item 92: interchange.puc.texas.gov/Se… File your own comments in 58317 here: interchange.puc.texas.gov/fi… Silence is acceptance.

Rural Texas Industrial Compatibility Act 👩‍🏫 👀🔍📜 A friend reminded me that it is important that sponsors know what work they are supporting. 🤦🏽‍♀️ A little preview of my proposed legislation is attached below. I help everyday Texans understand what is happening to their land, their water, and their county; and then help them take the next step before a project is already in the ground. Calls. Research. Printed packets. Meetings. Presentations. Draft language that officials can actually use. That work has a clear aim: protect rural Texas without pretending the state can never grow. I have a working draft I want filed in the 90th Texas Legislature: the Rural Texas Industrial Compatibility Act. It is a practical way to say yes to growth in the right places, and no to industrial projects dropped next to homes, wells, and livestock with no real review. Right now, unincorporated counties cannot zone. That is how utility-scale solar, wind, battery storage, and data centers end up on farm and ranch land before neighbors ever get a fair hearing. This draft changes that. Before anyone clears a field or hooks up to the grid, they would have to get a state compatibility permit. Independent experts (not the company) would study water, soils, and effects on neighbors and livestock. Homes and herds would get setbacks unless the owner agrees in writing. The water plan would have to be sustainable. No permit, no interconnection. Landowners could still lease or sell. Oil and gas would stay under existing law. Counties would not get a blank zoning pen. Fees are meant to pay for the program so this is not another bill dumped on taxpayers. That is the benefit. Rural families keep a say. Farms and ranches are not treated as empty space. Good projects that belong on industrial ground can still move. Neighborhoods and working land get a process worthy of Texas. I have sent the draft to House and Senate offices (State Representative @brentmoney & @SenatorBobHall ) and asked that this Act be reviewed before pre-file opens November 9. If you love this country, share this. Tell your representative and senator you want a version of this filed in 2027. Rural Texas can grow without giving up what makes it home. If you want this work to keep moving (the research, the rooms, the miles, the packets, and the effort to get language like this in front of the people who can file it) I am asking for sponsors and one-time donors. Family businesses and neighbors. Public recognition if you want it. Silent support if you do not. Lucky Meadows Farm and Favored Realty have already stood with this. You can too. nancywhite.org/ [email protected] 469-595-1691 Venmo: @Cinder89 Cash App: $LEAFconsulting Zelle: 469-595-1691 Why does protecting rural Texas matter to you? 🚜👨‍🌾👩‍🌾🐄🥚🐓🍯🐝🥒🫑🥕🍅💦

Did you know 8.25% is NOT the sales tax rate for all of Texas? I didn’t either. I recently learned that the statewide rate is only 6.25%. The extra 2% is optional local tax for city, county, transit, and special districts stacked on top. Combined, it cannot legally go over 8.25%. In a lot of unincorporated areas (outside city limits), there is no city tax. Sometimes there is no county or transit tax either. So the correct rate can be 6.25%, or 6.75%, or something in between, not automatically 8.25%. That matters. If a store, restaurant, or online seller charges you 8.25% in a place that should only be 6.25%, you are paying extra money that was never approved for that location. The 6.25% state portion goes to Austin for the state’s general fund. The local slice is supposed to go back to the city, county, or district that levied it for local roads, transit, fire, and services in that community. Charge the wrong higher rate in a rural or unincorporated spot, and that extra money is not coming back to your community. It is collected and remitted through the state. How to check in 2 minutes: 1. Go to the official Texas Comptroller Sales Tax Rate Locator: mycpa.cpa.state.tx.us/atj 2. Enter the exact street address of the store or the delivery address (ZIP alone is not enough, Texas ZIP codes cross city and district lines). 3. Compare that rate to what is on your receipt. Quick math check: Tax ÷ pre-tax price = rate Example: $8.25 tax on a $100 item = 8.25% $6.25 tax on a $100 item = 6.25% If they overcharged you: Ask the seller for a refund first. They are required to collect the correct rate and to refund tax collected in error. If they won’t, you can file a refund claim with the Comptroller. Save this and share it. Next time a register defaults to 8.25% everywhere in Texas, you’ll know that’s not how the law works. Why does this matter? If you are tired of being over taxed then you must first understand and KNOW when you are being wrongly taxed. Do you really want to keep funding big government due to a clerical error? Do you think the government will tell you that you are over paying them? No the county cannot hold a business liable for overpayment of a state tax. That is the states job. I for one am tired of government overreach and big government expecting us to be held accountable but only if it does not benefit them. Know the truth in order to work towards change. It may only he 8 cents or 1 dollar on your receipt, but that change adds up when there are 100's or 1000's of purchases per business. Know your rights. Keep your change!

What she said!

Quick reminder, Texas: The official record moved. Have you? Last week Project 58317 at the Public Utility Commission of Texas had 69 filings. As of today it has 91. That bump is real people finally putting it on paper. Since the Sept. 22, about 20 new public comments landed: Bowie County, Hood County, Hays County, Medina County, Jim Hogg County, North Richland Hills, Westlake, Lufkin, and more. Names. Towns. Water. Bills. 765 kV. Data centers next to homes and farms. Good. Still not enough. The Governor’s August audit letter is already in this file. The first audit write-up is still aimed at December. PUCT is a state agency. It regulates electric utilities across Texas. ERCOT is one of the grids in this state, not the only one. If you live in Texas, this docket is how you talk to your government about who pays, what load is real, and what gets built near you. Here’s the gap that still matters: far more people are loud in group chats and at local meetings than have actually filed. A post to friends is not the record. Staff and commissioners keep what is in Interchange. Silence in the docket still reads like consent. If you have a concern or information, file it now; before that December packet comes together. How: 1. Write a short note: your name, city or county, the project near you, and what you’ve seen. Save it as a PDF. These filings are public, so leave out account numbers and other private details. 2. Go to interchange.puc.texas.gov/fi… 3. Click Begin, accept the box and enter Control Number 58317 4. Filing Party = your name 5. Filing Type: Comments 6. Description: Public comments on data centers, 765 kV, and the Governor’s audit 7. Upload and submit. Keep the confirmation email. Read the file: search 58317 at interchange.puc.texas.gov If you already filed, thank you! Send this to one neighbor who has been talking but hasn’t. That’s how public participation actually works. Keeping silent shows your consent. This is how you engage your government OFFICIALLY. Social media will only get you so far, the outcome depends on your participation. 🫡

The math is not mathing.

Watch. Once you know...

You do not hate Blackrock enough!! 💸💣 🧓👵 Your 401(k) is already in the game, you just weren’t invited to the meeting. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. It runs trillions of dollars that sit in pension funds and 401(k)s. A lot of that money is yours, even if you never chose BlackRock by name. Many workplace plans dump you into index funds by default. Those funds buy slices of thousands of companies. You don’t get a vote on every stock. The manager does. In 2024, a bipartisan House committee looking at the Chinese Communist Party reported that major U.S. financial institutions had put about $6.5 billion into 63 Chinese companies already flagged by the U.S. government for military ties or human-rights problems. The committee said BlackRock had invested at least $1.9 billion in those companies. This was not treated as illegal under then-current rules, but the money still came from American savings and retirement products. That same pool of retirement capital is now being pointed at the next mega-project: AI data centers and the power to run them. Fink has said the U.S. buildout of data centers and energy infrastructure could run around $10 trillion over a decade, and that long-term pools (pensions, 401(k)s, insurance money) are where much of the private capital will come from. Default retirement funds become construction financing for someone else’s infrastructure race. How this hits a regular person such as yourself? You work. Your employer puts money in a 401(k). Fees come out. Returns or losses show up decades later. You rarely pick the individual stocks. A giant firm does. If those funds hold companies tied to a rival government, or pour into data-center deals that may or may not pay off, YOU eat the risk. The managers collect fees either way. AI data centers need huge amounts of electricity. That can mean higher power bills, more plants near communities, and more of your savings riding on whether the AI boom produces the profits promised. That is not a secret handshake. It is how modern retirement investing works when one firm is this big. 💸⛓️ Fink and the World Economic Forum: Larry Fink is not a random banker giving speeches. In August 2025, Bloomberg and Reuters reported he was named an interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees. The WEF is a gathering of CEOs, politicians, and NGOs that talks about “stakeholder capitalism,” climate rules (?!¿), and how the next decade should be organized. The "elite" planning for everyone else by using your money? The Forum says it is a platform for public-private cooperation. How does that seem to be working for America so far? 💸 What you can actually do: Look at your 401(k) or pension statement. See if you are in a target-date or “total market” fund. Ask HR or the plan website what China exposure they have and whether they are adding private infrastructure or “alternatives.” BlackRock has publicly pushed putting more private assets into 401(k) target-date funds; those holdings are less liquid and harder for a regular saver to watch. This is not a movie plot about one man emptying your checking account overnight. It is quieter: a handful of firms sit on the default path for American retirement money, have already routed some of it toward Beijing-linked names flagged by Congress, and now want more of it aimed at data centers. If you want that money building your future instead of someone else’s balance sheet, you have to look at the fund list, because nobody is going to call you first. 🧾 Sources: - House Select Committee on the CCP, April 18, 2024 report: “How American Financial Institutions Provide Billions of Dollars to PRC Companies…” - Wall Street Journal: “Wall Street Steered Billions to Blacklisted Chinese Companies, House Probe Finds” - Snopes: “BlackRock CEO said Americans' savings and investments will fund data centers…” - Media Bias/Fact Check summary of the same Fink remarks

I sent a records request to the Texas Comptroller for every sales-tax outlet in Van Zandt County: name, address, and whether it sits inside or outside city limits. I am not hunting property tax. I want to see which rural registers are legally at the lower rate and which ones are hitting 8.25% anyway. If that extra is not coming back here for roads and fire, I am done paying it by accident. Rate is by address. ZIP codes do not count. I do not have the store-by-store list yet. That is the point of the request. When it lands, I will share what is public. Until then, look at your receipts. I for one have questions. 🤔

Why I ask & why that is not strange 🤔🔍 More than once I have been told I should not ask for donations or sponsors. I have sat with that comment long enough to answer it plainly. I choose this work. I choose to take the calls, answer the emails, attend the meetings I can, research, print, travel, and put usable information in other people’s hands. Other people also have a choice. They may choose to donate. They may choose to ask for help. They may choose to do neither. That is one of the better things about being an American: we get to decide. Freedom of choice. I am not a nonprofit. I am not a corporation. I am one person doing the work. If you believe in it, you may contribute. If you do not, you should not. The request is voluntary. It has always been voluntary. This is not a new idea. Grassroots America We the People, True Texas Project, as well as a most groups in existence ask for support because the work costs something. Newspapers, magazines, and radio stations do the same. It is common practice for those that do a public service to seek support via funding. People fund what they want to keep available. A filed entity does not make the labor more legitimate, and the absence of one does not make the labor free. I have expenses. My time and effort carry value. If they did not, people would not keep calling every week. I am not getting rich. In fact if one reviewed the expenses to that of received donations, then the opposite would prove to be more accurate. There are far fewer donors than the criticism would suggest. The lectures about asking often outnumber the gifts. (Potentially an argument as to why the need to share often¿) That does not change the principle. We support what we believe in, or we do not. If you disagree with the ask, do not give. That is your right. It does not mean I will refuse to answer the next call should you need help. Community work and public engagement come with criticism. I have grown accustomed to it. None of it has been enough to turn my heart cold toward those who are afraid, angry, or unsure of where to begin. I will keep showing up and I will keep asking, no matter the opinion of the ask. The day the calls stop, I will know the job is done. Until then, I will do my best to answer every call, text, and email so you are not left to face it alone. For as long as the phone rings, I am here. If you believe the work should continue, your support is welcome. I would rather it come with a conversation than a silent transaction, because I want to know why it matters to you. That is a personal preference not a requirement. Either way, the standard does not change. I will keep showing up and I will keep answering the call. 💪🙏🫡🇺🇲

Over the last couple of days several people have asked why their electricity bill suddenly jumped this month. Here’s the simple version. Your bill has two main parts: the price of the electricity itself, and a separate charge for the power lines that carry it to your house. That second charge is what went up. Two things hit at the same time this month. You used a lot more power. July and August were brutally hot. People ran their air conditioners almost nonstop. A lot of homes used far more electricity than they did in the spring. When you use more, the bill goes up. The charge for the power lines went up on September 1. That fee pays for transmission lines, poles, and the equipment that moves electricity across Texas. Demand for power is growing: more homes, more businesses, data centers, and heavy industry. Companies like Oncor and CenterPoint build those lines, then collect the cost from regular customers. You and me. State law allows that. Texas rules let these line companies recover the cost of building and upgrading the grid through charges on everyone’s bill. They can start collecting as the projects go in, not years later. Large new users may sign interconnection deals and pay some of their own hookup costs up front, but the big statewide lines are still largely paid for by all of us. Households end up carrying a large share of Texas growth on the monthly bill. If you live in the Houston area (CenterPoint): That power-line charge jumped about 28% on September 1. On a hot-weather bill, that alone can add $20 to $40 or more, even if your electricity company and energy rate did not change. This is not a one-month blip. Texas is planning a major line buildout for West Texas and the Permian Basin. Those projects are expected to add more cost to bills statewide in the years ahead. Look at two things on your bill: 🧾How much electricity you used this month versus last year 🧾The line that says transmission, delivery, or TDU That’s usually where the extra money went. Switching electricity companies will not remove that power-line charge. It’s the same no matter who you buy your electricity from. We the People have been made responsible for carrying this cost. For those that are watching the 765kv shenanigans and think it does not apply to you... look at that second line mentioned again. Largest lines ever built in Texas means higher cost and YOU will be expected to pay it.