How Much Quicker You Think They'd Kill A Truth-Speaking Irresponsible Negroe Now?

lawandcrime  |  A late undercover cop left behind a letter in which he said he participated in the New York Police Department’s and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conspiracy to undermine civil rights leaders and Black nationalists in the 1960, and to kill them, said attorney Ben Crump in a press conference Saturday, joined by three daughters of Malcolm X. Notably, the former officer, Ray Wood, said he was involved in the arrest of two men from Malcolm X’s security team shortly before the assassination. He said Thomas Johnson, one of the men convicted in the murder, was innocent

“I participated in actions that in hindsight were deplorable and detrimental to the advancement of my own Black people,” Wood said in a letter read by his younger cousin Reggie Wood. “My actions on behalf of the New York City Police Department were done under duress and fear that if I did not follow the orders

Reggie Wood said Ray Wood wrote the letter, dated January 25, 2011, while suffering failing health. Crump said that attorneys worked to corroborate the letter’s version of events.

“This letter helps me to understand the pain and guilt that Ray felt for the last 55 years,” Reggie Wood said. “He conspired to help the NYPD assassinate Malcolm X.”

“Several months ago, the Manhattan District Attorney initiated a review of the investigation and prosecution that resulted in two convictions for the murder of Malcolm X,” the NYPD said in a statement to NY1. “The NYPD has provided all available records relevant to that case to the District Attorney. The Department remains committed to assist with that review in any way.”

The FBI declined to comment.

of my handlers, I could face detrimental consequences.”

Americans Need To Wake Up And Realize Where What Little Power We Have Lies!!!

power-grid |  Worldwide, similar experiences occur when electric utilities deregulate. Percentage increases in residential electricity prices from 2000 to 2010, as a result of deregulation and privatization of electric utilities, in the following countries are:

Chile, +166 percent; Canada, +72 percent; Czech Republic, +133 percent; Ireland, +100 percent; Hungary, +117 percent; Norway, +106 percent; New Zealand, +203 percent; Sweden, +88 percent; U.S., +42 percent; and the U.K., +86 percent. Electricity price increases globally after deregulation far exceed general price and wage gains, making the general population poorer but power generators and retailers richer.

Cold weather during February 2011 and ineffective weatherization that did not protect the plants caused many Texas electric power plants to shut down. Electricity prices spiked much higher, and Texas experienced prolonged and frequent rolling blackouts that primarily affected residential customers.

During another Texas cold snap in January 2014, two large power plants unexpectedly closed down because of incomplete weatherization, which resulted in the danger of rolling blackouts. As a result, Texas wholesale electricity market prices spiked higher–from a usual $30 to $100 per megawatt-hour to more than $4,500 per megawatt-hour. Under existing rules, all generators receive the same $4,500 per megawatt-hour regardless of their average costs.

The current incentives in electricity markets harm residential electricity consumers. Texas electricity generators, with multiple plants on the interconnection grid, receive much more money if they do not weatherize a few of their plants properly. As a consequence, these poorly weatherized plants must shut down during cold weather. All generating plants that remain online receive the spiking electricity prices, and the generating company makes much more money than if all their plants were operating properly. This is only one way privatizers are gaming the Texas electricity market: using laws and rules set up by their lobbyists.

Seven years ago at the top of the most recent credit bubble, it was believed that electricity prices would rise dramatically. Consequently, privatizers overpaid when purchasing electric utilities. Instead, U.S. natural gas prices unexpectedly dropped–a result of the nationwide shale gas fracking boom – and pushed many privatized Texas electricity generating companies into bankruptcy.

Houston-based Dynegy Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2012. Edison Mission Energy, which operated electric generating plants in 12 states, filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2012 and exited Chapter 11 in March 2014, when the company sold for $2.64 billion to NRG Energy, which has operations headquarters in Houston. Texas electricity generating company Optim Energy LLC – which is owned by ECJV Holdings LLC, which is owned by Cascade Investment LLC, a Bill Gates investment company – filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2014.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners took TXU – at that time, the main electricity supplier in Texas – private in 2007 in the largest private equity leveraged buyout (LBO) on record and renamed the new company Energy Future Holdings Corp. (EFHC), headquartered in Dallas. In one of the largest nonfinancial bankruptcies in history, EFHC filed a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2014.

Although these generating companies are dealing with bankruptcies, they cannot plan for and invest in new power plants to meet expected electricity demand in Texas. This results in below-standard reserve margins, which threaten Texas electricity supply and system reliability.

The North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC‘s) goal is to safeguard North America’s electric power system reliability. The nonprofit reports on insufficient electrical power level capacity during peak load periods. Energy emergency alerts indicate electrical capacity shortfalls and are a leading indicator of inadequate system reliability. Texas is under increasing stress and has had three NERC Energy Emergency Alert 2 incidents and two more serious NERC Energy Emergency Alert 3 incidents since 2006.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ (ERCOT‘s) reserve margin forecasts for 2014-2023 are used as an indicator of Texas’ electrical system reliability. ERCOT’s forecast reserve margins show that Texas will fall significantly below the NERC reference reserve margin standard of 13.75 percent beginning in 2015 and continuing through 2023. New electric power plants are not being built fast enough to keep up with growing electricity demand in Texas because of the deregulation and privatization of Texas electric utilities. NERC and ERCOT predict the increased probability of brownouts and rolling blackouts in Texas.

The Earth's Magnetic Field And Global Climate Crisis

npr  |   An ancient, well-preserved tree that was alive the last time the Earth's magnetic poles flipped has helped scientists pin down more precise timing of that event, which occurred about 42,000 years ago.

This new information has led them to link the flipping of the poles to key moments in the prehistoric record, like the sudden appearance of cave art and the mysterious extinction of large mammals and the Neanderthals. They argue that the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field would have briefly transformed the world by altering its climate and allowing far more ultraviolet light to pour in.

 

Their provocative analysis, in the journal Science, is sure to get researchers talking. Until now, scientists have mostly assumed that magnetic field reversals didn't matter much for life on Earth — although some geologists have noted that die-offs of large mammals seemed to occur in periods when the Earth's magnetic field was weak.

The Earth is a giant magnet because its core is solid iron, and swirling around it is an ocean of molten metal. This churning creates a huge magnetic field, one that wraps around the planet and protects it from charged cosmic rays coming in from outer space.

 Sometimes, for reasons scientists do not fully understand, the magnetic field becomes unstable and its north and south poles can flip. The last major reversal, though it was short-lived, happened around 42,000 years ago.

This reversal is called the Laschamp excursion, after lava flows in France that contain bits of iron that are basically pointed the wrong way. Volcanic activity back then, during the flip, produced this distinctive iron signature as the molten lava cooled and locked the iron into place. Iron molecules embedded in sediments around the world also captured a record of this magnetic wobble, which unfolded over about a thousand years.

"Even though it was short, the North Pole did wander across North America, right out towards New York, actually, and then back again across to Oregon," says Alan Cooper, an evolutionary biologist with Blue Sky Genetics and the South Australian Museum. He explains that it "then zoomed down through the Pacific really fast to Antarctica and hung out there for about 400 years and then shot back up through the Indian Ocean to the North Pole again."

The Collapse Of A Previous Civilization Which Became Extinct Before Noah's Flood?

dailymail |  'The Adam and Eve story', a 1966 work by former US Air Force employee Chan Thomas, was only partially published until recently when censored sections of the book were released for the first time in more than 50 years. 

In the remarkable text, Thomas claims Jesus lived with the Naga tribe in Northern India for almost 18 years in the period of his life which isn't mentioned in the Bible.

'Curiously enough there was a tribe in the extreme north of India called the Naga tribe,' Thomas wrote.

'They told the British of Jesus' having been there as a late-teenager-young-adult who attended the Nacaal Temple as a student and graduate of the temple.' 

According to Thomas, Jesus was considered a 'genius' by the Naga people and spent ten to 15 years learning to speak and write the local language.  

Thomas says Jesus's last words were actually spoken in the Naga language and he translates them as 'I am fainting, I am fainting, darkness is overcoming me'. 

In another section of the book Thomas also claims that Jesus was abducted by aliens on Easter Sunday and says two 'angels came to earth in their space vehicle to take care of the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion'.

It then goes on to say that the Genesis story is actually a parable about the collapse of a previous civilization, in an extinction event before Noah's Flood.

Thomas begins the book with dedications to several US generals who are famous among conspiracy theorists for their covert work during the Cold War.

According to the Daily Star, the name 'The Adam and Eve Story' comes from Thomas's view that the book of Genesis is really a parable about the collapse of a previous civilisation which became extinct before Noah's flood.  

 

 

 

This Peculiar Adam And Eve Story Was In The News Before Subrealism Came Off Hiatus...,

reddit |  Just as we have seen with KGB declassifying huge amounts of formerly-classified "Tartaria" documents, apparantly the CIA had some special interest in "The Adam & Eve Story". It is basically a "research paper" explaining various earth-cycle catastrophes. It is pertinent to "missing time" and "history falsification" theories, and presumes many technologically-advanced ancient civilizations existed before us.

NOTE: The actual CIA dossier on the "Adam & Eve Story" also includes lots of peripheral documents up front, so skip to around pages 19-24 if you want a quick glance at the pertinent section.

Here is what u/^redacted sent me:

There is insurmountable evidence that we are the 6th advanced civilization to exist upon this earth, each time getting wiped out by a calamity. I've wondered why America has long had the Smithsonian cover up many ancient artifacts that don't fit their narrative, such as the hieroglyphs in the grand canyon, or the bones of giants all over America, but then I realized the truth rather recently... control. The CIA just declassified a document called [The Adam and Eve Story] (https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79B00752A000300070001-8.pdf) which is about exactly this. Nobody is quite sure who wrote it, however it appears to be written by a scientist working for the government deciphering ancient texts then stumbling upon a terrible fact, that every 5-6-thousand years, the strength of the poles wane and begin to change positions and when this occurs, the mantle keeping our landmass in it's current position turns to jelly, causing the landmasses to be pulled 90-degrees, while the water on the earth stays put, like dropping an object into a glass of water then spinning the glass in a circle... water stay's put while the world around it moves. So, the world as we know it is obliterated in days, submerged under the ocean for 40-days (ala Tale of Gilgamesh, or Noah and the ark) until the poles finish their shift at which point the North pole becomes the South and vice versa. I believe that the rest of the story which was redacted tells of the survivors having to live in caves and resort to cannibalism to survive. I believe it's why the Aztec and N.American Indians both tell of a white man visiting them and giving them seeds to grow and teaching them how to harvest. I also believe those in power know this, and want to keep is a secret knowing full well that if they don't, they might have massive riots and won't be able to keep their "livestock" docile. What better way to fool the masses than to make them think they are being saved (such as the boats in the movie 2012), when in reality they are being taken to a facility where they will be used to feed the elite? How long will it take to regrow enough vegetation on Earth to not resort to cannibalism? Do some research on [our poles currently moving rapidly now!] (https://www.smalljoys.tv/earths-magnetic-poles/) Then read up on all the elite politicians and leaders visiting Antarctica now! I couldn't find any credible links, which is odd due to how many have been going up there, from the Pope, to John Kerry, to major leaders.

Google Diversity Thinner Than Skimmed Piss - Old Marian Croak The Only Responsible Negroe On Deck...,

theverge |  Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of the ethical AI team, after she used an automated script to look through her emails in order to find evidence of discrimination against her coworker Timnit Gebru. The news was first reported by Axios.

Mitchell’s firing comes one day after Google announced a reorganization to its AI teams working on ethics and fairness. Marian Croak, a vice president in the engineering organization, is now leading “a new center of expertise on responsible AI within Google Research,” according to a blog post. 

Mitchell joined Google in 2016 as a senior research scientist, according to her LinkedIn. Two years later, she helped start the ethical AI team alongside Gebru, a renowned researcher known for her workon bias in facial recognition technology.

In December 2020, Mitchell and Gebru were working on a paper about the dangers of large language processing models when Megan Kacholia, vice president of Google Brain, asked that the article be retracted. Gebru pushed back, saying the company needed to be more open about why the research wasn’t acceptable. Shortly afterwards, she was fired, though Google characterized her departure as a resignation. 

After Gebru’s termination, Mitchell became openly critical of Google executives, including Google AI division head Jeff Dean and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In January, she lost her corporate email access after Google began investigating her activity.

“After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees,” Google said in a statement to Axios about Mitchell’s firing.

The U.S. Is An Ordinary Country With Serious Shortcomings

usnews |  America's most consequential adversaries on Thursday pounced on the news of historic and deadly outages in Texas, saying the Biden administration should focus on taking care of its own citizens before assuming it has the mandate to advance its interests abroad at others' expense.

The Kremlin early Thursday took aim at American concerns in recent years at the Russian energy pipeline known as Nord Stream 2, which runs from its territory through the Baltic Sea and into key U.S. allies, notably Germany.

"It probably makes sense for our American partners to be less interested in Nord Stream 2 and to a greater extent be interested in the events in Houston, Texas, [its] energy and heat supply," Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters Thursday morning. And, taking a dig at a state that prides itself on its energy independence, he added: "Of course, gas [supplies] would not be in that way here." 

Iran, which U.S. officials privately say was behind this week's attack on an American base in Iraq, ran an almost gleeful gallery on the home page of its state news service entitled, "More Than 3.5 Million Texans Are STILL Without Power, Storm Death Toll Hits 23." It includes pictures of the widespread devastation in Texas wrought by the historic cold temperatures and broad outages.

And China's state-run Global Times published an op-ed Thursday morning blasting the massive electric grid failures in the Lone Star State, which have caused two dozen deaths and left more than 3 million without power amid bone-chilling cold temperatures in an area largely unaccustomed to severe winters. The plight of its citizens shows that China and others should no longer look to the U.S. for an example of leadership, it claimed.

"It is a severe natural disaster after all, and we cannot say that the U.S. is an ugly country just because many Americans are also suffering from man-made calamities. But what is happening there has undoubtedly shown that the U.S. is an ordinary country with serious shortcomings," according to the outlet, which is run by the Chinese Communist Party but is not considered a mouthpiece for it. "Actually, every country has its own problems, so the U.S. should focus on solving its own woes rather than denouncing other countries."

 

I Spent A Lot Of Time On The SPP.Org Website This Past Week

omaha |  Nebraska’s publicly owned utilities generated more power than their customers used during this week’s brutal cold snap in the country’s midsection.

But energy experts say the targeted rolling blackouts criticized by Gov. Pete Ricketts prevented Nebraska and other states from catastrophic failure of a shared electricity grid.

Those cuts, dictated by the Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool, likely prevented Nebraskans from living the nightmare facing Texas, where millions went without power for days.

The World-Herald spoke with energy experts, utility leaders and others about what happened, why it happened and what might prevent a repeat occurrence.

Why did Nebraska have rolling blackouts?

A polar vortex brought freezing temperatures to the southern U.S., with the cold snap staying for days as far south as the Mexican border.

Utilities in Oklahoma and slices of Texas that belong to the power pool struggled to operate some natural gas, coal and wind power plants not equipped to run in such cold temperatures.

Getting natural gas out of the ground was also slowed in both states, with frozen wells and pipelines making it harder to deliver the gas needed to generate electricity and heat homes.

Even in Nebraska, where colder temperatures are common, some power plants struggled in sub-zero conditions to operate at full capacity, including coal-fired units in Nebraska City.

The loss of that power production left the power pool, which manages electrical supply and demand across a 14-state power grid, with a power imbalance.

 

Silly Pissants - You Think You Pay Taxes For Public Services?

pressenza  |  Hours after writing his screed, Boyd announced his resignation and apologized. But he qualified his apology by saying that he never meant to imply that the helpless elderly were the lazy ones—just everyone else. “I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout,” he wrote in a manner that suggested he was “sorry, not sorry.”

Most Republicans are not as overt as Boyd in their faith in social Darwinism. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who instead of openly blaming Texans for their own suffering instead decided to blame climate-mitigating policies and renewable energy programs like wind power. Speaking on Fox News, Abbott railed against the “Green New Deal,” claiming that a reliance on wind turbines was disastrous because the state’s wind-generated power “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.” For good measure, he added, “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”

The conservative Wall Street Journal, which has long been hostile to tackling climate change through renewable energy, repeated this claim in an editorial blaming “stricter emissions regulation” and the loss of coal-powered plants for widespread misery in the snow-blanketed South.

In fact, millions of Texans are going without power because of the Republican emphasis on cheap power over reliable power. Seeing electricity generation as a profit-making enterprise rather than the fulfillment of a public need, GOP policies in Texas have made the state vulnerable to such mass outages. Moreover, plenty of wintry areas successfully run wind turbines when properly prepared to do so. And, Abbott did not see fit to point out that harsh winter temperatures lead to frozen natural gas pipelines—the real culprit in the outages.

Even as a majority of Texans now believe that climate change is really happening, their governor in late January vowed to “protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack from Washington.” Apparently protecting Texans from the ravages of the fossil fuel industry is not in his purview. This is hardly surprising given how much fossil fuel industry contributions have ensured Abbott’s loyalty to oil and gas interests.

The conservative mindset can be counted on to prioritize private interests over public ones. In a Republican utopia, the rich are noble and deserving of basic necessities, comforts, and life itself. If they have rigged the system to benefit themselves, it means they are smart, not conniving. In the future that Republicans promise, “Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic),” as per Boyd’s post. In other words, our lives are expendable, and if we die, it is because we deserve it and were simply not smart enough to survive.

Love Of Money FAIL: As Goes Tex-ass - So Goes America...,

theeconomiccollapseblog |  We are getting a very short preview of what will eventually happen to the United States as a whole.  America’s infrastructure is aging and crumbling.  Our power grids were never intended to support so many people, our water systems are a complete joke, and it has become utterly apparent that we would be completely lost if a major long-term national emergency ever struck.  Texas has immense wealth and vast energy resources, but now it is being called a “failed state”.  If it can’t even handle a few days of cold weather, what is the rest of America going to look like when things really start to get chaotic in this country?

At this point, it has become clear that the power grid in Texas is in far worse shape than anyone ever imagined.  When extremely cold weather hit the state, demand for energy surged dramatically.  At the same time, about half of the wind turbines that Texas relies upon froze, and the rest of the system simply could not handle the massive increase in demand.

Millions of Texans were without power for days, and hundreds of thousands are still without power as I write this article.

And now we are learning that Texas was literally just moments away from “a catastrophic failure” that could have resulted in blackouts “for months”…

Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.

As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.

I can’t even imagine how nightmarish things would have eventually gotten in Texas if there had actually been blackouts for months.

According to one expert, the state really was right on the verge of a “worst case scenario”…

The worst case scenario: Demand for power outstrips the supply of power generation available on the grid, causing equipment to catch fire, substations to blow and power lines to go down.

If the grid had gone totally offline, the physical damage to power infrastructure from overwhelming the grid could have taken months to repair, said Bernadette Johnson, senior vice president of power and renewables at Enverus, an oil and gas software and information company headquartered in Austin.

For years, I have been telling my readers that they have got to have a back up plan for power, because during a major emergency the grid can fail.

I Googled Joe Rogan Freezing In Texas And Ran Into The Musk Fsckery....,

RT |  Texans may be suffering without electricity in bitter temperatures, but Young Turks host Cenk Uygur can see the bright side, as podcaster Joe Rogan and others who relocated to the state are “freezing their asses off.”

Two dozen Texans are dead, food supplies can’t reach supermarkets, and nearly 200,000 homes are still without power as of Friday morning, as freezing temperatures wreak havoc on the Lone Star State. So paralyzing is the weather that firefighters in San Antonio on Thursday were unable to extinguish a burning apartment block due to frozen fire hydrants.

Public watchdog Rachel @Maddow warned us about Putin's plans for the #TexasBlackout and we didn't listen https://t.co/2BicIelNAF

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 18, 2021

One pundit managed to find an upside, however. On Twitter, Uygur, a progressive commentator, celebrated the fact that Rogan, a libertarian podcast host who had recently moved to Texas from California, was likely suffering.

“Only upside of Texas power outages is people like @joerogan, who were so proud to leave CA and move to TX, freezing their asses off,” he tweeted on Thursday. “They said they wanted less government. Congrats, mission accomplished! I hope you're not asking the government to come help you. #Freedom”

Uygur was instantly hammered for his apparent gloating. Commenters reminded the progressive pundit that California, a byword for liberal statism, regularly suffers from blackouts and wildfires, while Texas, known for its economic libertarianism, just got hit with the cold snap of a century.

 

Elon Why You Fscking With Turtles While Your Baby Mama Cold?!?!?!

mxdwn |  Acclaimed pop singer Grimes has shared a few updates from her social media accounts on the ongoing winter storm in Texas. Hit with unprecedented cold and snow, Texas is currently experiencing widespread power outages, leaving millions throughout the state without heat and electricity.

Earlier today, Grimes tweeted that she had spent several days in Austin without power and drove south to get out of the storm. A native of the Vancouver, Toronto area, the singer also responded to a Twitter thread, wondering if there was a way for Texas cities to “mass salt cuz then ppl could get food or go to warming centers.”

Just spent however many days in Austin w no power, no heat + a baby in -0. drove south all night 2 escape incoming storm but roads r rly dangerous rn. Super worried about ppl. What’s best way to get food and heat to ppl rn? This is a v dangerous esp for kids

— 𝑪𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒅𝒆 𝑳𝒖𝒏𝒆࿎ (@Grimezsz) February 17, 2021

Grimes also used her social media channels to share helpful resources to those being impacted by the weather including warming stations across north Texas, mutual aid funds throughout the Dallas, Houston and Austin areas, as well as a separate thread complete with ways to cope with freezing temperatures. Additional weather reports show that more freezing temperatures and snow are heading toward the area this week.

Meanwhile, Austin Energy also reported that customers in the Austin area “should be prepared to not have power through Wednesday and possibly longer.” The multi-talented Grimes famously relocated to the Austin, Texas area recently with her Tesla-founder boyfriend Elon Musk, and their young child.

 

Is Elon Musk On The Cusp Of New Opportunity In Texas?

maxim |  Tesla CEO Elon Musk ridiculed the Texas electrical grid operator for being unreliable after millions of Texans were left without power during a powerful winter storm that hit the Lone Star State with historic freezing temperatures.

The billionaire electric car mogul moved from California to Texas in December—following the lead of podcaster pal Joe Rogan—to build a new Tesla factory in Austin. 

.@ERCOT_ISO is not earning that R

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2021

On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that the state’s energy agency, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), “is not earning that R.”

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that Texans have been posting on social media about sleeping in their Tesla cars to keep warm during the cold nights—thanks to the "Camp Mode" feature that allows Tesla owners to use the car's climate control for more than a day without draining the battery.

The Bills For Light - Are Out Of Sight - Deep In The Ass Of Tex-ass...,

wfaa |  The Texas power outage has become the Texas power outrage. Electricity supply and demand in Texas has really stabilized now. But when it was grossly out of whack over the past several days, the cost of power in the wholesale market went crazy. It went from about $50 per Megawatt to $9,000. That didn’t affect retail many customers because they were on a fixed-rate plan. See explanation of plan types here.

But if you were on a variable or indexed plan, your rate — and therefore, your electric bill — may have skyrocketed. One customer messaged us: 

“Mine is over $1,000…not sure how…700 square foot apt I have been keeping at 60 degrees."

Another couple tweeted at us: 

“Using as little as possible 1300 sq. ft. house and this is my bill. How is this fair. I only paid $1200 for the whole 2020.” 

That tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of their bill, which now stands at $3,801.16. 

 

When your electric company tells you to switch but there has been a hold on switching for over a week now. Using as little as possible 1300 sq ft house and this is my bill. . How is this fair. I only paid $1200 for the whole 2020 year @FoxNews @wfaa @tedcruz @GovAbbott pic.twitter.com/AylTS4m0j4

— kat and tony (@katandtonyT) February 18, 2021

Then, I spoke with a guy named Ty Williams. He sent screenshots of his three electric meters (one for his home, one for a guest house, and one for his office). Last month, his bill for all three was $660. So far, for this month’s electricity, he owes more than $17,000.

Williams wondered: “How in the world can anyone pay that? I mean you go from a couple hundred dollars a month...there’s absolutely no way...it makes no sense.” 

 

Anarchocapitalism: Deep In The Heart Of Texas

ineteconomics |  In 2002, under Governor Rick Perry, Texas deregulated its electricity system. After a few years, the electrical free market, managed by a non-profit called ERCOT, was fully-established. Some seventy or so providers eventually sprung up. While a few cities – including Austin – kept their public power, they were nevertheless tied to the state system.

The market system could, and did, work out most of the time. Prices rose and fell, and customers who didn’t sign long-term contracts faced some risk. One provider, called Griddy, had a special model: for $9.99 a month you could get your power at whatever the wholesale price was on any given day. That was cheap! Most of the time.

The problem with “most of the time” is that people need electric power all of the time. And Texas’s leaders knew as of 2011, at least, when the state went through a short, severe freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather. But they did nothing. To do something, they would have had to regulate the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed – most of the time. In 2020, even voluntary inspections were suspended, due to Covid-19.

Enter the deep freeze of 2021. Demand went up. Supply went down. Natural gas froze up at the wells, in the pipes, and at the generating plants. Unweatherized windmills also went off-line, a small part of the story. Since Texas is disconnected from the rest of the country, no reserves could be imported, and given the cold everywhere, there would have been none available anyway. There came a point, on Sunday, February 14 or the next day, when demand so outstripped supply that the entire Texas grid came within minutes of a collapse that, we are told, would have taken months to repair.

As this happened, the price mechanism failed completely. Wholesale prices rose a hundred-fold – but retail prices, under contract, did not, except for the unlucky customers of Griddy, who got socked with bills for thousands of dollars each day. ERCOT was therefore forced to cut power, which might have been tolerable, had it happened on a rolling basis across neighborhoods throughout the state. But this was impossible: you can’t cut power to hospitals, fire stations, and other critical facilities, or for that matter to high-rise downtown apartments reliant on elevators. So lights stayed on in some areas, and they stayed off – for days on end – in others. Selective socialism, one might call it.

When the lights go off and the heat goes down, water freezes and that was the next phase of the calamity. For when water freezes, pipes burst, and when pipes burst the water supply cannot keep up with the demand. So across Texas, water pressure is falling, as I type these words. Hospitals without water cannot generate steam, and therefore heat; and some of them are being evacuated right now. Meanwhile, ice is bearing down on the power lines.

Past Due Time For Bill Gates To Shut His Great Reset Piehole

finance.yahoo |  Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday rebuked a claim made a day before by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that put the blame for that state's massive cold-weather power outage on the failure of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.

In fact, extreme weather like the winter storm that swept across the country in recent days will become more likely as climate change worsens, Gates told Yahoo Finance, advocating instead for an expansion of renewable energy as part of his call for the U.S. to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

On Tuesday, Abbott blamed the outages on wind turbines and on the Green New Deal, a plan for combating climate change that the Texas governor called "a deadly deal for the United States of America."

Bill Gates, who has been emitting ten thousand times more greenhouse gases than the average person for decades, wants us to believe that he really cares about climate change and the solution is for him to start more companies and make more money off other people's labor.

— Dubula (@killerguerilla) February 16, 2021

“Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. ... It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary,” Abbott told Sean Hannity in an interview cited by the Washington Post.

When asked about the blame directed at wind energy by Abbott, Gates said, "He's actually wrong."

"You can make sure wind turbines can deal with the cold," adds Gates, the former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO and author of a new book entitled, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” "[The extreme cold] probably wasn't anticipated for the wind turbines that far South. But the ones up in Iowa and North Dakota do have the ability to not freeze up."

The storm struck a large portion of the U.S. on Monday, bringing snowfall and ice that caused power outages for millions of people. Overall, more than 150 million people came under a winter storm warning, the National Weather Service said.

'The extreme events are coming more often'

The cold blast hit especially hard in Texas, where as of Tuesday 4 million households lacked power, the Washington Post reported. Some conservatives blamed frozen wind turbines for the power outage but wind energy contributes a fraction of the state's power in the winter, the Post pointed out.

The loss of power caused by blackouts of thermal power plants — which mostly rely on natural gas — outpaced the loss caused by frozen wind turbines by a factor of five or six, the Post reported.

"Actually, the main capacity that's gone out in Texas is not the wind, it's actually some of the natural gas plants that were also not ready for the super cold temperatures," Gates says.

Incompetent Sock Puppet Politicians + Predatory Corporate Governance = TEXAS

NYTimes  |  The crisis dates back to the 1930s, when the Federal Power Commission gained the authority to regulate interstate transmission of electric power. But politicians in Texas, with their slavish devotion to the fossil fuel industry, didn’t want Washington regulating the electricity business and chipping away at those hefty profits.

So the business went entirely unregulated until the formation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas in the 1970s. But ERCOT has been anything but reliable. While it is technically overseen by the state, its board is really just an industry club. Several of its members don’t even live in Texas.

On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott solemnly declared the state would not see another accident like Thursday’s deadly 100-plus-vehicle pileup on a frozen Fort Worth highway. On Monday, he reassured Texans that power would return. That day, two million people were plunged into darkness, and many into 8 degree weather. Then four million. By Tuesday, 10 people had died in the Houston and San Antonio areas alone. Water pipes burst across the state, forcing people without power to boil water just to drink it safely.

After taking a beating on Twitter, Mr. Abbott spun around on Tuesday and blamed the utilities. He promised an investigation into ERCOT. George P. Bush, the state land commissioner, cravenly blamed the renewable energy industry, a talking point that caught fire among conservatives.

It was all just cow pie, though: Renewables like wind and solar can contribute up to 20 percent of the Texas power grid, but they were forecast to account for just 7 percent of the winter grid, with some 80 percent of electricity in the state’s capacity projected to come from natural gas, coal and a bit of nuclear power. And while some wind turbines in Texas froze, many of them kept turning. By Tuesday, renewables were helping to get the power going again. But it wasn’t enough. Each time the power came back up on Tuesday, demand spiked, and the power supply ran right back down. The rolling blackouts would just keep on rolling.

On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott ordered natural gas producers not to let their supply out of the state until Sunday, and to instead send it to the electrical grid. How soon this could help the millions of Texans who continue to shiver in the darkness is unclear. ERCOT has, once again, ordered utilities to cut power.

“It feels colder than 25 degrees outside. I’m shivering in the house. … My hands are freezing. My feet are freezing, and my nose is freezing,” Laura Bettor, a psychologist in Austin, told me as she watched people ski down her street. “People’s phones are down because they can’t charge. And the government here? Everything about the state government here is stupid.”

Texas Not Only Frozen But Also Wrecked And Parched...,

nbcnews |  As large parts of Texas woke up Thursday to another day of a power crisis amid extreme winter weather, issues with water systems added to the misery for much of the state's population.

Texans were under notice to boil tap water before drinking it after days of record low temperatures damaged infrastructure, caused blackouts and froze water pipes.

Millions across the U.S. were left without electricity or heat in the aftermath of the deadly winter storm as utility crews rushed to restore power before another blast of snow and ice this week.

• Out of more than a million people in the U.S. who did not have electricity, Texas accounted for nearly half with 511,421, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The state dropped below 1 million power outages for the first time Thursday.
• In Texas, the extreme weather disrupted water service for more than 12 million residents, forcing many of the more than 680 water systems in the state to issue boil water notices.
• Other parts of the country are bracing for snow. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York City and the tristate area are expected to see 6 inches of snow, while Washington, D.C., is expected to get 2 to 4 inches.
• At least 37 people have died because of weather-related fatalities since Thursday, the majority in Texas.

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Another major winter storm is expected to track from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast through Friday, the National Weather Service said, bringing more heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain to further complicate recovery efforts.

Travel remains paralyzed across much of the United States, with roadways treacherous and thousands of flights canceled. Many school systems also delayed or canceled face-to-face classes.

However, staying home also carried risks in places without power.

The winter weather has caused blackouts in Texas that affected 1.8 million customers Wednesday night, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. That number was down to just over 511,000 as of 11:28 a.m. local time, the site said.

Without power or heat, some Texans posted videos on social media of them burning old furniture to stay warm. Others shared images of flooding caused by burst pipes and collapsed ceilings.

The extreme winter weather this week and accompanying problems — water facilities without power and lines that broke after freezing — disrupted service for more than 12 million Texans, forcing nearly 680 water systems to issue boil water notices, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Nearly 264,000 Texans live in areas where water systems are completely nonoperational.

Texas Is Experiencing A Self-Inflicted $Trillion Dollar FAIL

slate |   Of all the continental states, Texas alone has its own power grid. (The rest of the continental U.S. is covered by two other grids.) The reason for this is very Texan: The utilities wanted to avoid the oversight from the federal government that comes with interstate business. So Texas developed a massive market governed by the rules of supply and demand that led to low prices for consumers.

But according to Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, there’s no incentive for Texas power generators to jump in at a moment’s notice, thanks to the way the market is structured. The average wholesale price of electricity for the past decade or so has been lower than what it costs to provide that electricity. He notes that the high-cost generators know they have to be ready to go in the summer, but after that, they “button up and go fishing,” and it can be difficult to bring them back online quickly. For some companies, providing that reserve power in offseason times, such as February, could prove very rewarding if an unusual spike happens. But it’s a high-risk venture, and larger companies are motivated to avoid sinking so much into the cost of producing supply without a reliable demand. So Texas doesn’t have a lot of reserve power.

Julie Cohn, a historian with affiliations at the Baker Institute at Rice University and at the Center for Public History at the University of Houston, added that in Texas there is no law or regulatory entity requiring a power system to have a certain amount of backup in case of a sudden spike in demand, as is the case elsewhere. It’s possible that, because of its isolation, the Texas grid was unable to pull power from the surrounding regions. But as Gürcan Gülen, an independent energy consultant and a former researcher at UT Austin, noted, the surrounding regions were dealing with their own blackouts, so it’s unlikely that would have helped much.

At least one expert has argued that Texas had little reserve power on hand simply because it had little need to worry, given its abundant natural gas resources. But natural gas, which powers a large percentage of Texas electricity plants, was a major culprit in this week’s blackouts. Multiple technological elements in the extraction and distribution of natural gas failed in the extreme temperatures, knocking out about half of its normal output. This would have been a huge problem even if natural gas’s role in the state’s power generation wasn’t taken into account: Texans rely heavily on natural gas for heat and fuel during the winter, and when demand skyrocketed as temperatures plunged, the utilities were forced to prioritize individual houses and hospitals over the power plants. And even then, some of those power plants that received the natural gas were forced to halt operations due to the cold.

The cold was punishing for other power sources as well: At least one nuclear power plant partially shut down in the cold, and some coal generators failed in the frigid temperatures.

 

This Explains Why PennyAnte Local Politicians Have Felt So Lockdown Emboldened

gpenewsdocs  |  Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy making at the national and international levels. From agriculture to technology, decisions historically made by governments are increasingly made by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations says Nick Buxton.

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries, producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today I’m joined by Nick Buxton. He’s going to be giving us some big picture of context on The Great Reset, a World Economic Forum initiative to reset the world system of global governance.

A worldwide movement crossing not only borders but all walks of life from peasant farmers to techies is fighting against this initiative on the grounds that it represents a major threat to democracy. Key voices from the health, food, education, indigenous peoples and high tech movements explained why in The Great Take Over: How we fight the Davos capture of global governance, a recent webinar hosted by the Transnational Institute.

Today’s guest, Nick Buxton is a publications editor and future labs coordinator at the Transnational Institute. He is the founder and chief editor of TNI’s flagship State of Power report. Welcome. Nick.

NICK BUXTON: Thank you very much, Lynn.

FRIES: The Transnational Institute was co-organizer of The Great Takeover webinar. So what is it that you’re mobilizing against by opposing this Great Reset Initiative.

BUXTON: What we’re really concerned about is really that this initiative by the World Economic Forum actually looks to entrench the power of those most responsible for the crises we’re facing. In many ways, it’s a trick. It’s a sleight of hand to make sure that things continue as they are; to continue the same.

 That will create more of these crises, more of these pandemics, will deepen the climate crisis, which will deepen inequality. It’s not a Great Reset at all. It’s a Great Corporate Takeover. And that’s what we were trying to draw attention to.

What we’ve been finding in recent years is that really there is something I would call it a kind of a global, silent coup d’état going on in terms of global governance. Most people don’t see it.

And people have become familiar with the way that corporations have far more influence and are being integrated into policymaking at a national level. They see that more in front of them. People see their services being privatized. They see the influence of the oil companies or the banking sector that has stopped actions such as regulation of banks or of dealing with a climate crisis.

What people don’t realize is a global level there has been something much more silent going on. Which is that their governance, which used to be by nations, is now increasingly being done by unaccountable bodies dominated by corporations. And part of the problem is that that has been happening in lots of different sectors but people haven’t been connecting the dots.

So what we’ve been trying to do in the last year is to talk with people in the health movement, for example; people involved in public education; people involved in the food sector; to say what is happening in your sector?

And what we found is that in each of these sectors, global decisions that used to be discussed by bodies such as the WHO or such as the Food and Agriculture Organization were increasingly done by these unaccountable bodies.

Just to give an example, we have now the global pandemic and one of the key bodies that is now making the decisions is a facility called COVAX [COVID-19 Vaccines Global Alliance]. You’d have thought global health should be run by the World Health Organization. It is accountable to the United Nations. It has a system of accountability.

Well, what’s actually happening is that the World Health Organization is just one of a few partners but really [COVAX] it’s being controlled by corporations and corporate interests. In this case it is GAVI [The Vaccine Alliance formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization] and CEPI [The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations].

And they are both bodies, which don’t have a system of accountability. Where it’s not clear who chose them; who they’re accountable to; or how they can be held to account. And what we do see is that there’s a lot of corporate influence in each of these bodies.