I’m not one of those people, and there are a bunch of them out there, who are screaming about the big data center projects coming into Louisiana. You probably have heard about the giant one Meta is building in Rayville, and then there’s the Hut 8 center they’re building in St. Francisville.

The argument against them is really twofold. First, these things are being built all over the place because the computing power needed to run the various AI engines that are going to take over so much that humans are currently doing simply isn’t there at present, so these data centers are going to be the foundation of AI putting loads of people out of work.

And second, the data centers are going to suck up so much power from the electric grid that (1) we’ll deal with brownouts in our homes and (2) our electric rates will skyrocket.

I don’t think either of those will end up being true. Having dealt with AI, what I can say is it’s not a replacement for a human being in total. AI can replace tasks humans can do, but it can only do that within certain parameters. Can it fill in spreadsheets, complete forms and do rote paperwork that we’re running through an office staff? Yes. And given the right prompts and parameters, AI can do things better and faster than humans can. But any changes to those kinds of functions will require humans to reprogram the AI, and it has to be supervised at all times because the AI doesn’t have human judgment and will never understand context in the way that humans will. Besides, somebody has to do the prompting, and AI isn’t actually so great at prompting itself.

And machines taking over simple jobs generally empowers people to do more interesting and rewarding work, rather than displacing people. That’s been true since the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

What will be a really interesting thing to watch evolve, though, is what happens to all of these paper-pushers and office workers in, for example, human resources departments in Corporate America whose jobs are impacted by AI. Those jobs have increasingly been held by women, so much so that you’ve got the stereotype of the corporate career woman who puts off family until she hits terminal velocity in her corporate career, and by that point she’s knocking on the door of being too old to have kids and finds out that she’s not in much demand in the dating marketplace as a result.

That’s not just a stereotype. It’s actually a real thing. And when AI comes for a lot of those office jobs, the societal effect of that development will be a fascinating thing to see. Could it lead to a rediscovery of family and a rejection of feminism? Who knows?

As for the power grid, this is not the problem people are saying it is. When power companies recognize an increased demand for electricity, they’ll build more capacity. So long as stupid governmental bodies don’t get in the way, Entergy, in whose footprint Hut 8 will be, will put up a power plant to service the data center.

Why wouldn’t they? From a business standpoint this is the biggest no-brainer of all time. A data center is always running, and its power demand is going to be pretty consistent, unlike what you’ll get from houses or factories. So putting up a power plant to service it is a sure thing from a profit standpoint.

I’m throwing all this in, because this latest Kenny Havard thing is really just a dumb/depressing local corruption story which doesn’t require much conversation.

There are accusations being thrown around about Hut 8. The land the data center will sit on was originally owned by West Feliciana Parish. But it was sold for its appraised price, which was $500,000, to an LLC, and then it was sold again to the owners of the to-be-built data center for $5 million.

Which is a very nice land flip indeed.

Havard is the parish president in West Feliciana. The rumor mill has it that he was involved in the land flip. So far we don’t think there’s proof of this, but rude questions are being asked. And that led to this…

The WBRZ Investigative Unit has learned that West Feliciana Parish President Kenny Havard was found guilty of simple battery for hitting another man in the face.

According to Chuck Spillman, Havard assaulted him before a parish council meeting in December.

Reporters were there that day to cover the unveiling of a brand-new AI facility coming to St. Francisville. The WBRZ Investigative Unit has covered the project in-depth, addressing questions about how it came to be.

Spillman says before it began, he was talking to a reporter when Havard approached him.

“He comes over there and he just blurts out ‘If you got any questions, you need to talk to me,'” Spillman recounted.

Spillman says he then asked Havard about the sale of parish land for that project, questioning “why did you sell it for so cheap and then turn around and sold it again?”

“Well, he became irate and said, ‘You calling me a thief?’ And I said ‘No, I’m not calling you a thief… I think it’s a crooked deal.”

hat’s when Spillman said Havard hit him.

“He said ‘I’mma tell you right now, I’mma whip your a**,'” he recalled. “And he came up to me and punched me in the face. Just like that.”

As we’ve previously reported, Spillman and others have publicly questioned the sale of parish property approved by Havard to an LLC for a much cheaper price than what the AI company, Hut 8, paid the LLC for it.

Since then, the WBRZ Investigative Unit has learned the 107-acre tract sold by the parish for $500,000 was flipped to Hut 8 for around $5 million. It’s alleged that Havard knew the tech company was coming and sold the land to the LLC to make a profit, which Havard adamantly denies.

This sort of goes without saying, but you’re less likely to persuade people you aren’t a crook when you slug them for making the accusation.

Havard hasn’t really set himself up as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Before he got elected as the parish president in West Feliciana, he was a state representative, and he made a name for himself with the “no fat chicks” amendment.

We covered this at the time. Havard was responding to an incredibly stupid and sanctimonious bill which nobody had the stones to vote against which made it illegal for anybody under 21 to be an exotic dancer in Louisiana (this was supposed to fight human trafficking; don’t ask me how). Havard put up an amendment to the bill which included a maximum age, 28, and a weight limit of 160 pounds.

Naturally, that got him screamed at by the female state reps, and he tucked tail and ran rather than leaning into the joke to demonstrate how stupid and arbitrary the bill was (there is zero reason why, if it’s legal to wait tables at a strip club at 20 years old, you can’t go on stage and dance at 20 years old). That earned him a certain reputation. Then he got caught plotting a coup d’etat aimed at toppling then-House Speaker Taylor Barras, and very few people were upset to see him move on from the Legislature.

So is Kenny Havard a crook?

We don’t know.

But we can say this.

When somebody flips a piece of land for 10 times its previous value and that land was owned by the public, people are going to ask about it. And you aren’t going to convince a soul that you’re innocent of wrongdoing when your response to those questions is a knuckle sandwich.