Sorry, but no

[nwhiker]

I certainly won't slag on Texans on twitter because, really, who needs to be slagged on when you have no water, only got power back two days ago so you can see the damage the burst pipes did? :P

But seriously, I am SO sick of Texans wailing on twitter "but our state is gerrymandered! This isn't really our fault."

Gerrymandering leads to crappy state legislatures and crappy House reps in DC.

It does not lead to:

• Ted Cruz crushing Beto O'Rourke in 2018


• John Cornyn easily sailing to reelection in 2020


• Greg Abbott, who is a scummy liar and totally fucked up on Covid


• Dan Patrick, who famously said older people should be happy to die for the Dow Jones
  
• Ken Paxton, who worked to suppress voting

All of these are state level.

Note that these people were elected and re-elected despite the fact that Texas is pretty close to the top in:

• Child poverty


• Uninsured people/lack of access to health care


• Income inequality


• Deregulation, which really means protecting corporations and fucking over people. See energy bills.
  
• fragility of its basic, essential services.

Clean up your act, Texas, but stop wailing that you are really just a gerrymandered blue state that deserves respect. You elected these goons. And re-elected them, despite strong, reliable proof of their incompetence. Yes, there is voter suppression, not gonna deny that, but these are state-wide elections.

Two things:

• I feel deep sympathy for the idiots who bought into the idea that subscribing to a power company that would sell them power at wholesale market prices was a good idea. They're just idiots, and I don't expect random people to understand the intricacies of the power grid and wholesale/spot pricing. That said, this is the consequence of deregulation and it remains to be seen if people will make the connection. Also, I find two more things disgusting (should I do an embedded list? I'm all about lists today!)
  
  
  
  • the Texas rep who said the Fed government should send relief to Texans so they can pay their power bills. Blink. Fuck that shit. Bailing out the utilities just pisses me off.
  
  
  • That in the midst of this mess, Texas officials found the time to specifically allow ERCOT to modify pricing as demand surged when people started freezing and needed more heat.
  
  
  
  
• The assholes who mocked California this summer for 'not being able to provide the basics of civilization, like power' should really have shut the fuck up. They'll double down and say their problems were not like California's problems, but ultimately climate change is at the root of all of this.
  

Comments

[minoanmiss]

well and truly said.

[camelsamba]

In general I agree with you, but in a Texas Senate election, a 2 point difference doesn't really count as "crushing." Also, my younger BIL's power company emailed all customers on Saturday and told them to switch to companies with fixed rate plans (he did). He's an engineer, not an idiot. What is idiotic is the powers-that-be who assume that customers really can change *their* behavior in response to price fluctuations. The professor who designed the system, and has the arrogance to say "it's working the way it's supposed to", probably isn't paying $1000 for a weekend of power.

[nwhiker]

To be clear, I don't BLAME people. I personally would have zero clue as to how to time the energy wholesale market, ie I'd be one of the idiots. That's part of the problem, people -like me, for example- do need to be protected from their ignorance, which the state of Texas is not doing.

Glad your BIL got out in time. :P Sigh.

[camelsamba]

I misunderstood then; glad to know you aren't blaming the people. So many of those people probably responded to a phone call or a form letter, "we can help you save money on your electric bill!", and had no clue what was really behind it. I talked to Matthew and it turns out my BIL did actually do some work with programmable thermostats & etc to take advantage of known peak times - e.g. run the AC to cool off the house when power is cheap, turn off stuff when it's high, the obvious. But that aspect doesn't sound so different from our time-of-day metering, so there must have been more to it with his provider.