Texas, Ted Cruz power failures: Darcy cartoon

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Texas electric power failure is a direct result of the Texas political power failure, exemplified by Governors Gregg Abbott, Rick Perry and Senator Ted Cruz flying the coop down to Cancun while millions of Texans were left behind without heat and safe water.

Instead of the ‘Texas Two Step’ it has been the Texas Four Missteps.

First: Texas eschewing joining either the Western or Eastern interconnection power grids, as Ohio has. Texas did so to avoid federal regulations which include winterization.

With the exception of Texas, the rest of mainland U.S. is split between the Western Interconnection power grid and the Eastern Interconnection power grid. Both those power grids, and all the electrical systems in them, abide by regulations to winterize.

Texas set up its own grid called ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council) which reliably avoided imposing basic federal regulations such a winterization.

That failure to winterize is what caused the Texas power failure and the deaths from it.

Second & Third: Governor Gregg Abbott and former Governor Rick Perry both blaming green energy for the power failure. Even Abbott’s own energy department contradicted that claim. Green energy is the source of just one quarter of Texas power, and only 13% of it went out due to the snow storm and the failure to winterize.

Perry, who was Energy Secretary in the Trump administration, actually suggested Texans would be willing to endure longer preventable outages and deaths to avoid federal regulations.

“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”

“If this Green New Deal goes forward the way that the Biden administration appears to want it to, then we’ll have more events like we had in Texas all across the country.”

Texas didn’t want federal regulations like winterization, but wants all the federal relief funding it can get for disasters caused by the failure to winterize.

President Biden declared a major disaster making federal funding available to 77 counties in Texas. More counties may be added pending damage assessments.

Fourth: Senator Ted Cruz flying down to Cancun, Mexico with his family to escape the power outages millions of the voters he represents were suffering in, and leaving his dog behind.

While Cruz was cruising to Cancun, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to work raising $4 million to aid his constituents.

Cruz barely won reelection. He will serve out the remainder of his six-year term unless he resigns or is somehow recalled. Of course, Cruz is probably still deluded thinking his term will end when he’s elected President in 2024.

The only positive to come from Cruz in Cancun was that it took attention away from his being one of the instigators of insurrection Jan 6 with the Capitol Coup attempt. In addition to perpetuating Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ that the election was stolen, Cruz opposed counting the certified Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, certifying he’s unfit to hold any elected office, let alone Senator or Presidency.

Although Cruz forgot his oath of office, he did remember to call for a police escort by two officers at the airport to and from Cancun.

In contrast to CanCruz, Beto O’Rourke, who nearly beat him in his last Senate race, sprinted to set up a virtual phone bank to connect Texas senior citizens with disaster aid.

“BIG THANKS to the volunteers who made over 784,000 phone calls to senior citizens in Texas today, You helped to connect them with water, food, transportation, and shelter. And you made sure that they knew we were thinking about them and they matter to us.,” O’Rourke tweeted.

Full Disclosure: Relatives of mine live in Dallas and Houston. I’m wishing them and all their fellow Texans well and that they had a Governor as competent, responsible and accountable as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has been in dealing with the Coronavirus crises.

Power’s on…