Bay Area Houston

You would think that Texans would have figured this out by now.

In 2021 Texans endured days without power, living in freezing temperatures after the failure of the electricity grid. In 2024 Harris County residents endured days without power, sweating through their sheets after a failed response to Hurricane Beryl. Now the republican leaders, the very individuals who were partially responsible for the failures, are riding in shooting their mouths off, talking tough, and promising to solve the problem they created.

According to the Houston Chronicle State Senator Paul Bettencourt came to the Committee on his white wing horse spewing fire about a problem he created:

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt raised the specter of fraud in CenterPoint’s selection of a small, little known company to provide the generators rather than a well-established company with a much cheaper bid. Bettencourt, R-Houston, condemned what he portrayed as the overcharging of ratepayers in fiery comments Monday morning in the first meeting of the Texas Senate’s Special Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery and Electricity. 

This isn’t new for Republicans in Texas. In 2003 they deregulated electricity resulting in a fragile grid, higher rates, and a need for $12,000 generators. They reformed insurance resulting in a crisis of rising rates and premiums. Both of these issues are now being investigated by the House and Senate with Republicans leading the way as if they had nothing to do with the very problems they created.

Lucky for republicans Texans are pretty stupid voters. Instead of demanding a fix to the electric grid they cash in their retirement and buy a $12,000 generator. Instead of demanding insurance companies pay claims and reduce premiums they are satisfied with less coverage in exchange for lower premiums.

We’ve seen this before. In 2023 they passed bills that passed on the cost to fortify the Texas grid to the consumer. Expect them to do this again in 2025. Why? Because we will let them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 1st, 2024 at 6:24 am and is filed under Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.