UPDATE:
The Washington Post reports that power has been restored to nearly 2 million homes in Texas, albeit hundreds of thousands of residents remain without electricity and with “water boil notices.”
Warmth and margaritas-seeking Ted Cruz, who — wanting to be “a good dad” — flew to Cancun Wednesday night, flew back Thursday afternoon to “keep working to get the grid reopened, to get power restored, to get the water back on” for Texans who “are hurting…” It is, however, reported that he wasn’t planning to return to his disaster-stricken state until Saturday.
Original Post:
Texas politicians seem to have a penchant for sacrificing the welfare, health – even lives – of Texans to satisfy their political goals and ambitions.
As the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to grip the nation, claim more victims, and as states were beginning to implement stay-at-home orders, Republican Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that old people, e.g. grandparents who are 70-plus, should volunteer to die to save the economy.
As the Great State of Texas is gripped by one of the worst winter storms in recent history, with its power grid buckling, its water treatment and distribution systems failing, plunging millions of Texans into abject misery and, in dozens of cases, taking lives, Republican lawmakers are once again deflecting, pointing fingers, even being dishonest and just plain callous.
Take (former) Republican mayor of Colorado City, Texas – Tim Boyd – who told his town’s people to fend for themselves during the freeze and power outage: “No one owes you [or] your family anything. I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!” he said.
And just for effect, Boyd added:
The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!…Only the strong will survive and the weak will [perish].
Texas’ highest official, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, falsely blamed renewable energy for the disaster, disingenuously suggesting that 90 percent of the crisis was caused by 10 percent of the Texas power generating sources – wind and solar power – “[thrusting] Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis.”
Abbott, prematurely and just as disingenuously, also predicted that “the [possibly in the future] Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” ignoring, according to the Texas Tribune, that “experts and officials agreed that a disruption in energy powered by fossil fuels was the biggest culprit behind Texas’ outages…”
Not to be outdone, former Republican Texas governor, 2011 “oops” Republican-primary presidential contender and Trump’s Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, piped in on Wednesday suggesting that people of the Great State of Texas would rather spend more time without electricity than see increased federal involvement in their state.
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” a blog post on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s website quoted Perry as saying.
The blog post says Perry’s remark was made “partly rhetorically.”
Perhaps just as rhetorical as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz flying to Cancun, Mexico, with his family this week as Texans are burning furniture — even a baby safety gate — to keep from freezing, and as Texas is dealing “with a winter storm that as of Thursday still has left 500,000 without power,” according to conservative news source, Fox News.
