"Texans must ask their *elected leaders* these 4 questions"

I’m curious how the idea of keeping their electricity separate was sold to the people. Were they aware that this could happen (as Rick Perry implied when he said that Texans should be willing to sacrifice to keep the regulators out?) I hope that people realize that regulations are there for a reason and that big business can’t be counted in to do the right thing. And neither can Some politicians.

I was watching TikTok last night and there was a guy who "said" he lived in TX and owned an energy company. Then he went on to say that it's not the energy companies that failed, it's not their fault it's that the GOVERNMENT IS CONTROLLING THE WEATHER AND SENDING THE POLAR VORTEX TO TEXAS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO SECEDE. WHAT?!?!!? W.....T.....F?? Then he is going on about HAARP and all this other crap. And the comments....so much support in the comments. People believe this shit. I commented "yeah, ok, the government is controlling the weather. Sure, let's believe the energy company guy who FAILED his fellow Texans". What a clown. I had thought I had seen/heard everything but that surprised me. I just had to put my phone down. Reading the responses makes me weep for the future.

I sometimes read the comments on social media and what people believe and the comments they make is nothing short of frightening.

I’m not aware that there are other areas of the country where customers were without power and water for days due to this storm. “Rolling blackouts” don’t really describe what we’ve had here. This article makes me think we narrowly avoided total catastrophe.

www.kwtx.com/2021/02/18/ercot-texas-was-seconds-and-minutes-away-from-catastrophic-months-long-blackouts/?fbclid=IwAR2JJxP-vxRKDe5nh09SXTjjTX2HFQW9sMt7Ra56QyTw25oIp3etTfD0ZL4

So yeah, I think the expense of upgrading and weatherizing our power generation facilities might be worth it. Power company owners like the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, crowing about his big windfall from the sudden spike in power costs for regular customers, can pay for it.

If we don’t want to hook into the national grid (which seems foolish to me, because then we have no insurance policy when things go bad), then we as a state need to be willing to enact regulations that protect the lives, safety and property of the people who rely on the utilities. Profit is clearly not sufficient motive for power company operators to protect their customers, so they’re going to have to be regulated into doing so.

So the rest of the country should spend billions to help Texas when things like this happen, so you can have lower utility costs than the rest of us? And FYI, we don’t pay $600 a month for electricity any time of the year.

Hahahahahahahaha!  Yeah. No.

Have some Texas folks been led to believe the rest of us are paying $600 a month for electric!?! 

I've given up arguing with idiots on the internet for Lent. 

I don’t pay that much at all. While we’re careful with our electric use, our winter balanced billing works out at $120 a month for gas/electric where I live in ND.

The $600/month scare comes from the assumption that most Texans, like the state GOP leadership, are living in 6,000 sf McMansions with three air conditioning units keeping the place at 68 all summer.

Well that has to be true, right?

Also—people in countries with universal healthcare are all dying of cancer while waiting for an appointment. I read it on FB, so it has to be true.

Yep. This is why Texas can't have nice things.

Instead of asking those questions above, too many will be asking:

Will this elected official if I vote for them:

1. Push my version of my god on the rest of the state, in schools, courthouses, town halls, etc?
2. Keep guns absolutely without any common sense regulations? Registration, training requirements, etc?
3. Keep my taxes as low as possible - even if that means no/low services no/low help for others?

God, guns, greed. The favorite 3 questions of too many Texans (and too many GOP voters)

One of the main things the myriad of articles about the Texas power that are not being mentioned is a key piece of history. One of the main reasons the power grid in Texas was isolated was to support the war efforts in WWII. Much of the war manufacturing was taking place in Texas. If the major citie of the East and West coasts were attacked the US as a whole would have been seriously SOL. Keeping the Texas grid isolated meant we could keep churning the needed supplies to fight and support our allies during Hilter's rein across Europe. I am trying to find the articles to support this but they are buried with the current repeat of winter storm stories about Texas.



As for the rest of country spending billions to help Texas? Texas and Texans pay taxes, too, so that argument is pretty short-sighted. If the rest of the country really wanted to go there then Texas could shut our ports and exports down but that sure would put a dent in everyone's Keto diet, ability to wear cotton t-shirts, fuel their cars, build just about any building, have heavy equipment and parts to maintain what is already in place not to mention what it would do for our national defense and country's technology climate.

I'm not for secession but when your state has the 10th largest GDP in the world (in front of Brazil, Canada and South Korea) and it keeps growing then you know you are doing something right that puts things back into the coffers of the entire US in some shape, fashion or form.

Yes, we do have friends in northern parts of the US who have exorbitant electric bills when summer hits and their power grids cannot maintain the demands to keep cool. It may not have happened to you personally but it does happen.

FYI - the Texas grid is connected to the East, West and Mexico grids. We can (and have) transferred power to both Oklahoma and Mexico before. Almost got in trouble for it but the Federal government sided with Texas because we were doing the right thing to help neighbors out when the Eastern Interconnect couldn't fix their issue in a timely manner.

(I'm sure these comments are going to stir up a hornet's nest now. )