Hi y’all,
I never thought I would actually say this and mean it, but it truly is better to live in Oklahoma (or Arkansas, or Louisiana, or New Mexico) than it is to live in Texas, because apparently all the Texas utility companies are just completely ate up with dumbass. Feast your eyes and ready your figurative guillotines on this:
All through last week, struggling utility companies across the Plains states and the South did their level best at trying to keep the lights on, keep the gas pumping, and send clean water to folks’ homes through historic freezing weather. In Oklahoma, for example, there were 31 major water main breaks across Oklahoma City in the course of a single 24-hour period. And OG&E threatened (and then backed off from) rolling blackouts across its coverage area to reduce the strain on the aging and frozen grid. Residents here are wary about higher bills, as the utility companies have wanted to raise the rates for a while and this gives them an occasion to do so. But so far, nothing I’ve seen from our state has come close to the absolute tomfuckery on display in the supposedly-“great” state of Texas.
We’re talking about days-long blackouts in poor and working class neighborhoods in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston, to say nothing of rural communities and suburbs on these metro areas’ outskirts. We’re talking beer breweries having to step upto provide residents with clean water and food because the water mains were busted and grocery stores emptied out. People fucking died of the cold in their own god damn homes, including children and the elderly. Ted god damn Cruz, an elected Senator of the People of The So-Called Great State of Texas, tried to skip town for fucking Cancun, leaving his dog to fend for itself in a home without heat – to say nothing of what he was doing to his constituents. ERCOT, the closest thing to a regulatory body this fucking garbage state has apparently, said that they were “minutes or seconds away” from a blackout lasting MONTHS.
The worst part of all is that regular Texans are seemingly being footed the bill for this bullshit.
From this story at the Hill:
Ty Williams told WFAA in Dallas that he normally spends $660 for his home, guest house and office electric bills each month. His new bill after the rate spike exceeded $17,000.
And also:
Jose Del Rio told NBC News that the bill for his two-bedroom home is usually between $125 to $150 a month, but this month his bill exceeded $3,000. Rio claims the house, which is empty and for sale, only ran the heater at 60 degrees to prevent pipes from freezing, but that lights and other utilities remained turned off.
And here we return to the proposed so-called “solution” from CPS Energy, a San Antonio-based utility. A payment plan, spread out over “ten years or longer,” for people whose bills ballooned. A new kind of debt.
It should go without saying that this should be rejected whole-heartedly by Texans. It’s not regular people’s fault that their infrastructure nearly failed. “Personal responsibility” goes both ways in this situation, and it was the responsibility of the utility companies to keep shit running properly.
It’s utterly baffling to me that these companies think this is fine. That they’re “merely” responding to market forces, and that anyone could ever think to pay a fucking multi-thousand-dollar bill for a fucking apartment. They better be careful how they move forward. Otherwise,
There’ll be a reckoning.
Talk to you next time.