It’s a political party that stands for nothing but obstructionism and making things more difficult for average people. The minute something bad happens to their own constituents, they run to Fox News to blame people who didn’t do anything. They have no ideas and give a fuck about nothing. But hey, I’m sure their undying efforts to stop abortion should help. If they put a fraction of the effort into infrastructure that they put into controlling women’s’ reproduction, I’d probably have power right now.
To further this idea, I love how "free market" people always say things like, "Well if the market was able to run deregulated and freely, you'd always see best practices used because otherwise the businesses would cease to exist due to customer demand." BULLSHIT. It's so easy to make more money by not giving a shit about safety or best practices what business in their right mind would ever sacrifice profits for regulations or projecting worst case scenarios.
It's the same shit with the forest fires in California... the energy company wasn't doing the proper line maintenance, and the lines were encroached with brush, some winds popped up, and forest fires. PG&E only went out and did the work after they'd caused a number of deaths and the government stepped in and held them responsible. Same thing here... "oh, maybe now that shit has happened we'll do what's required. Maybe." You do not need regulation around everything... but on some things, for the greater good, you do. I consider a public utility to be one of those things. Ideally we need to have some utilities, like power, controlled and operated by the government for the benefit of the people... but for some stupid reason they can't seem to figure out how to do it well, so people privatize the service "for cost savings".
1st just to address the space heater efficiency thing. While your statement is true it is very misleading. There are much more efficient ways to use the same amount of electricity to produce more heat. For instance a typical heat pump can provide 3kW of thermal energy out for 1kW electrical input giving a 300% efficiency. (This isn't violating any laws of thermodynamics the added heat output is actually drawn from the air.) Back the main point, it isn't a matter of spinning up more generation though. It is the need to winterize the generation they have so it doesn't crap out at time like this when it is most needed. Texas lost roughly 35% of their electrical generation from Thermal/Nuke. This is due to iced up instrumentation, frozen radiators on motors / generators / transformers. Wells and pumping stations on the natural gas lines have frozen up disrupting fuel supplies to the gas plants. All of these weaknesses were laid out in a 2011 report after similar (but shorter duration) blackouts were experienced there due to the cold. Of course the free market decided those fixes were expensive and it rarely gets cold here so no work was done. Edit to add link This is a pretty good twitter thread breaking down a lot of the bullshit being spread https://twitter.com/cohan_ds/status/1362022484841693190
F the theory, PRACTICALLY all that generated heat will climb straight up to the ceiling forcing you to crank it up even higher for just a hint of warmth. Been there, done that. I was better off running my oven with the door cracked.
Trump talked a lot of shit, but signed the paperwork and got California help. Same as Texas. Hell, last year we set records for federal assistance in disasters, COVID relief and fire management grants. Don't get me wrong, cock-ups abound, but no one has been denied federal funding. They tweet like twats, but generally speaking, they do their job and let us do ours. Going back to the "social media and politicians go together like crushed glass and genitals" premise.... There is a small, and highly unlikely case to be made that since Texas got federal funds for this exact same issue in 2011 and failed to adopt new standards, recommendations, or really do anything, it's possible their request would be denied for anything beyond emergency assistance. The issue is going to be balancing the suffering of the many with the actions (or inactions) of the few, and I don't think the Biden administration, his new DHS/FEMA leads are going to make a test case of the state that gets the highest number of disaster declarations annually. Texas talks a good game, but we're there more than any other state, year in year out. Not that they are poorly running things, just they get hit with the full spectrum of shit: fires, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc. Public utilities are regulated to a high degree, often to the point that it's financially impossible for them to modernize, make substantial changes or updates. Even new systems, like SC's infamous $7 billion hole in the ground, comes with a high degree of scrutiny, in part because the locals/states are on the hook when things fail. The issue isn't the high degree of regulation vs. free market. The issue is ignoring the stated risks, failing to address them and papering over the liabilities. We've seen some really whacky relationships and perverse incentives because of how the regs work at a local level vs. state or federal level. Keep in mind, Texas from a legal standpoint has some very unique aspects that make it an outlier in how it manages these things: a TON of power sits at the county level, and it's damned near impossible for them to be overridden. Often they will abjectly refuse help, because they are financially liable for a chunk of it (FEMA's usually a 75/25 fed/state split) and because of their tax structure, there's not a lot of liquidity to adjust. Especially now, where a ton of their revenue depends on sales tax (not a lot of retail going on, huh?) and property tax (skyrocketing prices, but low inventory means...pretty stagnant). The state might help the locals with some of it, but then again they might not. Politics notwithstanding (and God knows, they are atrocious), some of the locals are literally incentivized by their legal, tax and emergency authority structures to be recalcitrant and refuse help.
I'm sure most of you have seen this already, but Ted Cruz leaving Texas for a vacation to Cancun is peak 2021 GOP. (this isn't verified yet to be fair, but I'm guessing it's probably true) https://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/1362272883775582209
Everything about him hurts him. He’s a walking attack ad on himself, you couldn’t dream up a more vile piece of dogshit.
If your beard looks like Cruz's, just get rid of it. Rocking the double chin, or even triple chin, is better than that abomination. It's like he reached 49 or 50 years old and found out his facial hair has almost filled in, but not quite, but it's close enough, but it really shouldn't be close enough.
Maybe somebody could shave it while slitting his throat. Hire the kid from “Eastern Promises.” He looks like Jason Clarke if you injected him with Down Syndrome.
Between Ted Cruz pussing out to Mexico because his kids are cold, Emmy Award Winner Andrew Cuomo killing people’s grandparents, Congress failing to pass a stimulus package and Trump mismanaging the shit out of everything, I don’t understand why the public confidence in elected leadership is low.
If there was a position open for “average dude who can tell a politician that their idea is not good,” I could make a shitload of money on both sides of the aisle.
But, politicians do not care AT ALL about whether their ideas are good. They only care about getting re-elected. They do what the lobbyist want them to do and everything else that will position them to serve again.
I just remembered former Texas Governor Rick Perry was also Trump's secretary of energy. So, when he's talking shit about Federal regulation of Texas' energy grid... Also, the last time this happened, when they ignored the recommendations, he was governor. I think this man needs to shut the fuck up. AOC and Beto O'Roarke are raising money and organizing support, while Cruz is in Cancun and Abbott is spouting ridiculous lies about wind power, while presiding over what is going to be the most widespread incident to hit Texas ever. What is Texas' other Senator, the one whose name sounds like a Game of Thrones villain doing? Burning puppies for warmth? https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/19/texas-storm-response-cruz-abbott-perry-470109 Texas is purple, y'all. Calling it now.
Texas was trending blue before this, but I would have given it another 10 years before it actually flipped. This thing might have pushed that schedule up quite a bit.
These two tweets give a really solid illustration of why The Bee will never be The Onion: https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1362839538264121349 https://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1362449105432190979 The Onion's mindset is "how do we take a story, and go hard and make it funny?" The Bee's mindset is "how do we take a story, and make your dumb conservative uncle laugh at liberals?"
The problem with the bee is that there is no depth to their humor. They just say the thing and then explain it. I appreciate good satire but it’s not easy to do.