I suppose the good news is that the Texas electricity grid — which covers much of the state, but not every part of far East Texas — mostly held Sunday, when the power demand exceeded the previous record for power use.
The bad news is it is still Spring.
The beginning of Summer does not roll around until June 21, about a week before most of you will read this. Think it might be a hot summer?
The only outages were in the Metroplex area and, while ERCOT attributed them to excess demand, they have been mostly dealt with easily. If this makes you feel better, I suggest you read the previous paragraph again.
Then remember all the times we were told by elected state leaders (all Republicans for the last two decades) that we had nothing to worry about with the electric grid. Improvements had been made. Everything is fine, go home and don’t worry your pretty little heads.
We would have been told the same thing before the great deep freeze of 2021 that took down the grid for days and killed 69 people but our leaders had no clue that such a thing was even possible.
Texas got through last winter with only one serious scare and a few deaths with that season’s cold spell. Gov. Greg Abbott and the rest of the lot used that to say the system was fine and dandy.
Well, Ted Cruz did get a bit of a Caribbean vacation, so there’s that.
The grid is not fine, and it is the furthest thing from dandy. It is no one’s fault that the need for more power in Texas has grown exponentially. The state has grown by millions of people just over the last five years and it has also become more of a center for the tech industry.
The fault lies in none of our leaders preparing or, so far as I can tell, even considering that such a thing might ever be necessary. Electricity is basic infrastructure and while it is provided by private utilities, the state has ways of encouraging investment in seeing that there is an ample supply.
Instead, our state legislature over at least the last three sessions has been focused on a few areas: Guns, bathroom use by transgendered persons, guns, abortion, guns, taxes and, of course, guns.
If Texas could find a way to use the recoil from guns to turn electricity generating turbines, we’d be the Saudi Arabia of power generation. But, alas, such dreams are even more fanciful than the Legislature or Congress passing laws that might protect children and innocents from getting felled by gunfire.
Speaking of guns, Sen. Cruz had the temerity to blather at the convention of the National Rifle Association that, “What stops armed bad guys is armed good guys.”
Really, Ted?
What about the dozens of armed good guys who stood outside the school just waiting for the single armed bad guy to get finished with his slaughter? No one wants police officers to get shot but an armed good guy may as well be a Uvalde mesquite tree if he isn’t going to do anything.
Uvalde proved the ludicrous idea of arming teachers to be just as fallacious as we suspected. If armed, well-trained police officers won’t, or can’t, take action, what do we expect from an English or math teacher? That equation just does not compute.
In his little speech at least Cruz proved once again why this man should never get closer to the Oval Office than in a tour. Honestly, let’s not even let him in the White House, I worry about the slime he might leave behind
Also, it is now clear that local and state police officials are going to do their best to keep Texans from knowing all the facts about what happened. The probable reason for this is that someone, or many “someones” might get embarrassed over what might be found out.
All Texans — and especially those from Uvalde — deserve to know Every. Single. Fact. about the events of that day. Nothing should be withheld from the parents of the victims that day. Not one thing.
It might still happen. Officials might come to their senses and decide that a lost election or damaged reputation is nothing when compared with the hurt those parents are feeling.
Wait, what am I thinking? They will never have that much empathy.
The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun are sensible, enforced laws that have some teeth. Who cares if the NRA gets upset? Not me and you should not care either.
Damn the torpedoes, or bullets, and full speed ahead.
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Phil Latham also writes another newsletter on Substack: American Slave Stories which aims to keep the alive the memories of those who did the labor to build this nation. The cost is $5 per month to subscribe.