"Stop The Steal": Freeze the Unbridled Plundering of America's Energy Resources.

      Once upon a time the telephone industry had their own

 independent power infrastructure, one that included back-up 

generators the size of those that power Ocean Liners.  

Stop the Steal.

The untold story, at least so far, of the big Texas freezer frisson is that not only was the resulting chaos predictable ... it was predicted. But instead of providing a buffer against the expected spike in demand, the Texas energy barons started salivating and planning for a profit bonanza not seen since the California debacle that Bush contributor Kenneth Lay's Enron engineered under another Texas governor, one whom they had ensconced in the White House together with his still-on-Halliburton's-payroll Vice President, the Dick Cheney, who purposely told FERC to stand down, as the Dubya had plans for California, at the center of which stood The Terminator, that included the recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis and his replacement by GOP yes man, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

No such fate will befall the hapless Greg Abbot, of course, as he is the handmaiden of Texas energy interests.

In late December/early January the Arctic was experiencing an event referred to as an SSW - a Sudden Stratospheric Warming -  the result of which is that the polar vortex is significantly weakened. Thus, it was not surprising that the weather prediction for February would include sub-zero temperatures, a fact reinforced by the February 12'th warning that:

"Temperatures will be 20 to 50 degrees colder than average throughout the Plains and into the Midwest early next week. Low temperatures will plunge into the single digits as far south as Texas, with subzero temperatures expected in both Texas and Oklahoma. This arctic outbreak resulted from a late December through early January sudden stratospheric warming event, which occurs when temperatures in the polar region's stratosphere rise dramatically.

Sudden stratospheric warming causes the polar vortex to weaken, which then affects the jet stream pattern. There can be a lag of several weeks between when the polar vortex gets disrupted to when it affects the jet stream and then brings colder weather. In this case, the change in the jet stream led to a blocking pattern in the upper levels of the atmosphere near Greenland, allowing arctic air to surge southward into the Lower 48."

So this event, one that was predicted, not just in January and early February, but one that was known even to a non-meteorologist such as myself (no lie ... I read about it in mid-December and had been monitoring it since then, just because that's the kind of nerd I am) were acquainted with, had no impact on the not only continued, but increased amount of Texas' bonanza of  natural gas that has been the bane of the fracturing industry, being exported out of the State of Texas by companies using LNG technology. While simultaneously, the flaring of "excess" natural gas continued to such an egregious degree that in January, which, as you may note, was long after the SSW in the Arctic, so it was already common knowledge what was heading their way, the Texas Railroad Commission yet again delayed a decision on flaring permits, as it just couldn't bring itself to step on the industry's toes by denying them the right to simply burnoff the store of Texas' natural gas reserves so that Texxon could continue to supply China with oil from the Permian basin. Which in no way faults China. China is filling its energy reserve as we dredge out the last dregs of our own to sell them at rockbottom prices. There they are considered the property of the public, here they belong to private interests. Any country that cares about the well-being of its citizens would jump at the chance to leverage a scarce resource to provide a broad-based industrial platform to create jobs from ... not just sell the energy resources to a competitive economy to use so that a few billionaires can further allocate the country's wealth for their own aggrandizement. For crimes of such enormity, knowingly impoverishing the vast underclass, Chinese business executives have actually been executed. Capital crimes there beget Capital punishment. Here, nowhere more than in Texas, they earn you an enormous bonus. 

Thus can one of the major political parties proffer theories so ridiculous and absurd that the non-white populations, whose intelligence the members of these avatars of so-called white Supremacy abjure, are smart enough to know to ridicule the infantilism such theories make manifest in those who adopt them as facts.

It is not only that energy companies in Texas supposedly didn't know what was coming, the suggestion, at least to one who was cognizant of the predictions of the SSW and the science behind them, that they didn't, is of course, absurd. However, it is not the bailiwick of unregulated companies to buffer against such prognosticated events, but to instead profit from them. It is in every Corporate charter to run their businesses so as to provide their shareholders with the maximum payout in dividends, and such payouts are dependent on profits, and those profits were going to get a nice surge from the frigid air surging down from the Arctic. As in Enron before them, they simply used their knowledge of what was going to happen to the spot price of electricity, ie its 300% increase, to maximize their customers' pain, and thereby maximize their gain. Just ask Ted Cruz missile, who flew off to Mexico on the monies flowing into his campaign chest from Texas' energy companies he aids and abets in their untrammeled exportation of America's energy reserves to countries he then calls our enemies (which they may or may not be, but they most assuredly are our competitors), one of which holds more than 80% of the rare earth elements needed to power our future, since the USA will have neither any energy reserves of its own, having sold them at rock-bottom prices to counties inimical to our interests, but, because the Reagan/Bush administration instigated the off-shoring (the word didn't even exist before the 80's) of our industrial base, few industries are left with which to earn the foreign reserves to pay for the energy resources we will need to import in the next decade, since, by that time, our own will have been sold off to the lowest bidders. 

The mayor of a small Texas town told residents they were owed "NOTHING" as many went without power, heat, and water during this deadly cold snap:

 “No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas , wrote Tuesday in a since-deleted Facebook post. "Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic) not the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this Sink or swim, it’s your choice I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout [ we ] owe you nothing Quit crying Think outside of the box." 

That is the Corporate stance not only toward Americans, but the world, to which they imagine they don't belong. To leave the entire populace to the predations of such mendacious entities has predictable results. The state of Texas is living through them now. We should read the Texas Tea leaves as they predict the future our so-called leaders are setting us up for.  But not to worry. As the USA did after 9/11, we will take a path exactly the opposite of the one this event has done us the favor of illuminating. Besides, the whole thing is fake news, it is just a hoax, Texans. Like the corona virus and climate change, SSW's and the polar vortex are but the products of fervid imaginations. Just ignore them. "Just wait ... it'll get warmer soon", to paraphrase the remark your anti-hero made while California was choking on the smoke from its wildfires. Fires that were caused, (per Qanon, which now is the propaganda arm of the GOP, since science, you know, is the province of (shudder) "elites" who went to college and stuff), by jews in alien spaceships firing laser beams into the wilderness to set it ablaze. Yeah. 

V= IR: The Nation's Electorate's potential Current Resistance to facts leaves future generations' power capacitance farad away from where it should be. That's Sherlock Ohm's Law, Henry, well, mho or less.

Now that makes sense, right?