How Right Wing Media is Lying About the Power Outages in TX (4 Viewers)

Sandman said:

My state Congressman was quick to blame the windmills and green energy. It plays to the base as evidenced by one guy who replied on the Facebook page with a "Drill Baby Drill" meme. It supports their beliefs, so they look no further. This was a failure of de-regulation, plain and simple.

We had a plant close to us shut down because it wasn't winterized, and it was a gas plant. The facts are staring people in the face, but some people don't want to hear it. They aren't being fooled. They don't want the truth.

Click to expand...

Yup. My boss used to live in Dallas for a while and told me about how awful the power companies are up there, because of deregulation, you have too many 'middle men' to choose from and different kind of energy plans (I may not have heard that part right). So, since the actual power generation and transmission have been separated from the utility payment (via different companies), how do you hold the keepers of the grid accountable? How do you ensure things are winterized, set up for major storms, etc?

This is a clear example of companies not doing what they need to do, because it cuts into their profits, and they aren't held accountable.

Deregulation can't cure greed.

Further more, I do believe something I read about the windmills was that they always expect less efficiency in Winter, but that they were actually working better than anticipated during this freeze.

This guy has taken stupid and dereliction of duty to a new low, and I thought that achievement would be impossible considering 45.

Colorado City mayor Tom Boyd told the 4,000 or so of his fellow citizens in his town that he was “sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout” and blamed “a socialist government” for the dire situation.

“No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!,” Boyd continued in the career-ending rant he posted on a local community Facebook group.

Instead he suggested that people look to inspiration from their churches. “Only the strong will survive and the weak will perish. Folks, God has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this,” he said.

Click to expand...

wardorican said:

Yup. My boss used to live in Dallas for a while and told me about how awful the power companies are up there, because of deregulation, you have too many 'middle men' to choose from and different kind of energy plans (I may not have heard that part right). So, since the actual power generation and transmission have been separated from the utility payment (via different companies), how do you hold the keepers of the grid accountable? How do you ensure things are winterized, set up for major storms, etc?

This is a clear example of companies not doing what they need to do, because it cuts into their profits, and they aren't held accountable.

Deregulation can't cure greed.

Click to expand...

Deregulation without oversigt and clear definition of who is responsible for what = receipe for disaster...

Oh yeah, and since they're on their own grid, not with the nation, neighboring states who did the right thing, can't help and supply additional power.

wardorican said:

Oh yeah, and since they're on their own grid, not with the nation, neighboring states who did the right thing, can't help and supply additional power.

Click to expand...

I have no problem with this. Bootstraps, etc. etc. Maybe the people of Texas should take this as a cue that the people they keep putting in charge either aren't up to the task or don't care to be.

Let them eat cake, amirite? I'll bet he's sitting at his home nice and cozy with power and heat...

Dragon said:

Yeah.. nuclear bad and unnecesary...but as barbar said - the US is behind most of the world when it comes to renewable energy. It takes time to build the necessary infrastructure and coal and oil have invested a lot of money in political goodwill for many years.

Click to expand...

This may sound like an apologist argument and it'll probably piss off a few MAP posters, but the fact that oil and natural gas lobbies abilities to build up large amounts of political goodwill isn't really different then how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Tesla or other _______ multi-national corporations have followed suit in certain financial or energy key business sectors. Exxon, BP, and Shell are no different in those other abovementioned key corporate sectors of how they influence our nation's policies.


You make it sound all so ominous and despicable but it happens everywhere. Even in Nordic, Scandinavian mixed-model economies where the state works more closely in tandem with large foreign or domestic multi-national corporations and is more heavily regulated. Its just a matter of scope, and scale and how these various different sectors are perceived as being more negative in a long-term cost-benefit analysis opposed to any short-term benefits than others.

Also, American politics, for the longest time compared to maybe to its European neighbors, doesn't like to rock the boat unnecessarily just because some people in a still unknown, less mainstream sector were advocating new energy ideas that some felt gave too many advantages to China(Kyoto Treaty) and rapidly developing East Asian countries whereas we take a step into a long-range unknown where the benefits wont be visibly seen for 2-3 decades. Oil and natural gas, however, back in the 1990's, were proven, reliable energy commodities as they are seen by a large portion of Americans even now in 2021.

If you're Newt Gingrich and House GOP leadership in mid-late 90's, deciding and pushing for a drastic energy shift where the results won't be seen in some of their lifetimes can be a hard sell, and it comes across as "change just for change sake", and contrary to their party's platform rhetoric, Al Gore aside, most Democrats,.even some liberal ones, werent exactly jumping on the green, renewable alternative energy sources bandwagon, some would have you believe now.

The Democratic Party didnt really start adopting and embracing green, renewable, alternative energy sources until the early-mid 2000's as part of their larger party policy platform.

MT15 said:

so, after reading a bit more, this is exactly what sandman said in the very first page. TX GOP deregulated their power companies to the point where preparation for this type of cold, or winterizing in general, was optional. So, since it costs money to winterize, they didn’t do it because they didn’t have to. Natural gas, coal, wind and solar power operates just fine all over the north. It’s not the type of power that is to blame. They have all failed in TX, a deadly failure of governing by the GOP.

The GOP is lying because the truth points to them, it was their policy. So they would rather blame AOC and the GND, which is still an idea, not even in existence. It should be just painfully obvious to anyone. People who believe this deflection are just overwhelmingly stupid. Or they don’t care about truth, like at all.

Click to expand...

In some respects, AOC does make it easy for GOP politicians and policymakers to use her and the "The Squad" and the policies they'd like to implement as convenient, straw man boogeymen of how potentially radical and unsound some of her ideas might be even if they remain now, just concepts. She comes across as a bit self-righteous, indignant and thin-skinned when it came to moderate Dems criticizing her and her base's rhetoric being used against them by the GOP to edge into Dems House majority during the 2020 presidential elections. If you remember, MT, all we heard leading up to Election Day, was how much of a huge "blue tidal wave" of Dems reinforcing their House supermajority, taking a larger, maybe 3-4 seat pickups in the Senate(if Trump hadn't recklessly intervened in the Ga. Senate runoffs and made those stops all about just him and recked Purdue and Loeffler's chances, Loeffler probably doesn't win over Warnock but Purdue likely does as he had almost 2.5% point lead and was about 0.3 % points away from surpassing the 50% benchmark that wouldn't have immediately led to a states mandated runoff and Purdue holds on and some Dems, especially now-Senator Majority Leader Schumer were saying publicly in late December, that he would, GOP would still have a 51-49 razor-thin Senate majority.

AOC and other "Squad" members have had a tendency of creating controversy or giving unfavorable impressions with some voters. That makes them easier targets to caricaturize then lets say, Joe Manchin.

Saintman2884 said:

This may sound like an apologist argument and it'll probably piss off a few MAP posters, but the fact that oil and natural gas lobbies abilities to build up large amounts of political goodwill isn't really different then how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Tesla or other _______ multi-national corporations have followed suit in certain financial or energy key business sectors. Exxon, BP, and Shell are no different in those other abovementioned key corporate sectors of how they influence our nation's policies.


You make it sound all so ominous and despicable but it happens everywhere. Even in Nordic, Scandinavian mixed-model economies where the state works more closely in tandem with large foreign or domestic multi-national corporations and is more heavily regulated. Its just a matter of scope, and scale and how these various different sectors are perceived as being more negative in a long-term cost-benefit analysis opposed to any short-term benefits than others.

Also, American politics, for the longest time compared to maybe to its European neighbors, doesn't like to rock the boat unnecessarily just because some people in a still unknown, less mainstream sector were advocating new energy ideas that some felt gave too many advantages to China(Kyoto Treaty) and rapidly developing East Asian countries whereas we take a step into a long-range unknown where the benefits wont be visibly seen for 2-3 decades. Oil and natural gas, however, back in the 1990's, were proven, reliable energy commodities as they are seen by a large portion of Americans even now in 2021.

If you're Newt Gingrich and House GOP leadership in mid-late 90's, deciding and pushing for a drastic energy shift where the results won't be seen in some of their lifetimes can be a hard sell, and it comes across as "change just for change sake", and contrary to their party's platform rhetoric, Al Gore aside, most Democrats,.even some liberal ones, werent exactly jumping on the green, renewable alternative energy sources bandwagon, some would have you believe now.

The Democratic Party didnt really start adopting and embracing green, renewable, alternative energy sources until the early-mid 2000's as part of their larger party policy platform.

Click to expand...

And oil and gas companies usually pay really well.

All of my engineering friends who work for the bigger players all make a sick amount of money that I don't even want to talk about...

wardorican said:

And oil and gas companies usually pay really well.

All of my engineering friends who work for the bigger players all make a sick amount of money that I don't even want to talk about...

Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a bit boom/bust tho. If/when oil prices go kaput, a lot of those folks have to make do with less for a bit. But when it's healthy, those guys make some stupid nice money.

DJ1BigTymer said:

This guy has taken stupid and dereliction of duty to a new low, and I thought that achievement would be impossible considering 45.

US mayor quits after telling residents it's 'sink or swim' amid deadly snowstorm

Colorado City mayor Tom Boyd ranted on Facebook that he was ‘sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout’

www.theguardian.com

Click to expand...

Screw this guy (and the many like him) and the horses they rode in on.

wardorican said:

And oil and gas companies usually pay really well.

All of my engineering friends who work for the bigger players all make a sick amount of money that I don't even want to talk about...

Click to expand...

And likely risk losing their jobs if the price of a barrel of oil falls one cent. It seems like once a week there's an article about thousands of oilfield layoffs in Lafayette.

I could have made a lot more money putting my education to work in oil but the volatility is just too high. I've had the same job for almost 10 years. I seriously doubt I could have done that in the oilfield.

Maybe this will cut down on the TX secession bluster. It’s a terrible tragedy and they need help from the federal government.

2884, you make some good points about AOC, especially when she was brand new in Congress. I think she is a really quick study, though, and she is learning how to survive and still advance her projects. I am also 100% sure that she would have been targeted by the GOP no matter what she did or said. There are more than just a few of them for which her party affiliation and just her presence in Congress are enough to make her a target.

wardorican said:

Further more, I do believe something I read about the windmills was that they always expect less efficiency in Winter, but that they were actually working better than anticipated during this freeze.

Click to expand...

From what I understand, there are ways to mitigate the effects of frozen weather but it is costly, which means of course that no one in Texas did it.

MT15 said:

Maybe this will cut down on the TX secession bluster. It’s a terrible tragedy and they need help from the federal government.

2884, you make some good points about AOC, especially when she was brand new in Congress. I think she is a really quick study, though, and she is learning how to survive and still advance her projects. I am also 100% sure that she would have been targeted by the GOP no matter what she did or said. There are more than just a few of them for which her party affiliation and just her presence in Congress are enough to make her a target.

Click to expand...

I sincerely hope she and others like her do, because a perceived inability to compromise on certain key policy issues or foreign policy problems will hamper her "Squad"'s potential. She has to start listening to more experienced, wiser statesmen, House and Senate Dems who don't see compromise as this filthy, repugnant concept that if she and her Progressive Dems don't get 75-80% of what their demands are, its a loss. Politicos like Pelosi and Schumer know better and if they can somehow negotiate a Covid-19 stimulus package last year with Mnuchin that doesn't even have 40% of what they'd like or propose but if they can frame it as helping the American people more then it hurts, they take it and see it as a win or as a positive.

Saintman2884 said:

This may sound like an apologist argument and it'll probably piss off a few MAP posters, but the fact that oil and natural gas lobbies abilities to build up large amounts of political goodwill isn't really different then how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Tesla or other _______ multi-national corporations have followed suit in certain financial or energy key business sectors. Exxon, BP, and Shell are no different in those other abovementioned key corporate sectors of how they influence our nation's policies.


You make it sound all so ominous and despicable but it happens everywhere. Even in Nordic, Scandinavian mixed-model economies where the state works more closely in tandem with large foreign or domestic multi-national corporations and is more heavily regulated. Its just a matter of scope, and scale and how these various different sectors are perceived as being more negative in a long-term cost-benefit analysis opposed to any short-term benefits than others.

Also, American politics, for the longest time compared to maybe to its European neighbors, doesn't like to rock the boat unnecessarily just because some people in a still unknown, less mainstream sector were advocating new energy ideas that some felt gave too many advantages to China(Kyoto Treaty) and rapidly developing East Asian countries whereas we take a step into a long-range unknown where the benefits wont be visibly seen for 2-3 decades. Oil and natural gas, however, back in the 1990's, were proven, reliable energy commodities as they are seen by a large portion of Americans even now in 2021.

If you're Newt Gingrich and House GOP leadership in mid-late 90's, deciding and pushing for a drastic energy shift where the results won't be seen in some of their lifetimes can be a hard sell, and it comes across as "change just for change sake", and contrary to their party's platform rhetoric, Al Gore aside, most Democrats,.even some liberal ones, werent exactly jumping on the green, renewable alternative energy sources bandwagon, some would have you believe now.

The Democratic Party didnt really start adopting and embracing green, renewable, alternative energy sources until the early-mid 2000's as part of their larger party policy platform.

Click to expand...

We started the process after the oil crisis in the late 1970's. While we do have enough North Sea oil to see us through hard times. the government started a lot of research into alternate energy sources. In our case - windpower made the most sense since we don't have any major rivers, and the country is too densely populated to allow for nuclear (people don't want it). So in 1991 we completed the worlds first Oceanbased Windfarm and have been expanding ever since.

We also have powersharing agreements with Norway. They deliver hydropower when we don't have enough wind, and we deliver wind when the water dont supply enough hydropower.

We are currently exploring Wave based hydropower and are hosting 4 different prototypes currently under development

https://ens.dk/en/our-responsibilities/wave-hydropower

This is a 10 year test that examines both productivity, reliability as well as environmental impact of the installations

Hmm, maybe I can participate here, but only in meme form-