88th Texas Legislature

[nbmishoid 941]

Beautiful family.  I naturally miss that time of life.  

[atomheartbevo 89452]

16 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Anybody else notice how in the last few weeks, people of all political stripes have started conflating contraception and interracial marriage into the same political discussions?  People have misguided opinions on abortion, gay marriage, and birth control.  But have you taken note that we're already talking about birth control pills and interracial marriage in the same sentence as if they have jackshit to do with one another?  Think about how weird that is when you open a newspaper article tomorrow.  I know, like Roe v. Wade, they've been longstanding pillars of progress.  But think about how they actually don't have anything to do with one another, but are conjoined in bills and policy and media right now.  Pretty fucked up.  

If you are talking about educated/knowledgeable people, it's because abortion is the first domino to fall (and it was based in part on on Griswold, aka the Supreme Court contraception case), and it kicks off a chain of dominoes falling that contain, among others, contraception and interracial marriage, both of which led to the right for same-sex relations and same-sex marriage rights.  The LBGTQ community has to pay attention to those issues because if they fall, then legal same-sex relations and marriage are over.

If you are talking about your typical Cleetus, say "Griswold" to him and the thinks about a Chevy Chase movie, "Lawrence" is about some Peter O'Toole Ay-rab movie, and "Obergefell" is some game his kid is playing on the console.   Cleetus maybe a religious or racist nut (or both) as well, so getting rid of contraception or interracial marriage is just an end game for him. But people like Clarence Thomas, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and yes even Tucker Carlson, know exactly what they are talking about, and why they are goading the Cleetuses (Is "Cleeti" the plural form?) into pushing the notion of going beyond abortion and into interracial marriage and contraception.

It's because they are in fact related, and not just because they are US Supreme Court rulings that so-called "conservatives" want struck down.  Clarence Thomas didn't openly mention contraception and interracial marriage being next for shits and giggles, even though he's in an interracial marriage, and even though the Supreme Court ruling about contraception was originally just for married couples (it was extended in 1972 to unmarried couples).  Remember: Griswold = Privacy (based on a contraception case), Lawrence was about due process (same-sex relations) and Obergefell was about equal protection rights (same-sex marriage).  Thomas said the courts:

Quote

“should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell”

  He mentioned it for a very specific reason:

Quote

Tucked inside the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that overturned the long-held constitutional protection for abortion was a concurring opinion from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. In it, he pushed the court to revisit cases that have already been decided related to contraception and same-sex marriage.

Quote

Fueling already heightened anxieties from women and LGBTQ groups that the end of Roe could be the tip of the iceberg, Thomas wrote that “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents.”

“Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote.

Quote

The right to an abortion, they said, arose from the right to access contraception, which was established in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965. The decisions in the abortion cases opened the door for the court to protect the right to same sex sexual intimacy and same sex marriage in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

If you read up on those rulings though, you'll understand why all of this is actually related, from LBGTQ issues such as marriage and privacy to interracial marriage and contraception. From the dissent on Griswold:

Quote

Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart dissented from the Court's decision. Both justices' dissents argued that because the U.S. Constitution does not expressly mention privacy in any of its provisions, the Court had no basis to strike down Connecticut's Comstock Law. Black's dissent concluded: "I get nowhere in this case by talk about a constitutional 'right of privacy' as an emanation from one or more constitutional provisions. I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision."

It all comes back to privacy and the right of the government to intrude into our relations and our bedrooms.

TLDR: Your religious nuts oppose contraception or interracial marriage for dumbshit reasons, but the Republicans with legal backgrounds, as well as the talking heads, if they can get some of those 1960s/1970s court cases about contraception and privacy and equal rights struck down like they did with Roe v Wade, then legal same-sex relations and marriage are there for the taking.

[Paper_jam 831]

7 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

 

Wasn't "no taxation without representation" a big thing once? These crooks are doing the same thing--trying to deny citizens in Democratic areas from the ability to make policy or administer government, even at a local level.

I'd love to see a general strike, and large cities need to stop remitting sales taxes and other payments (Robin Hood, etc.) to this corrupt State. Individual citizens should stop registering cars, paying other licenses and fees, etc. 

 

 

 

 

[troph 24566]

22 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

If you are talking about educated/knowledgeable people, it's because abortion is the first domino to fall (and it was based in part on on Griswold, aka the Supreme Court contraception case), and it kicks off a chain of dominoes falling that contain, among others, contraception and interracial marriage, both of which led to the right for same-sex relations and same-sex marriage rights.  The LBGTQ community has to pay attention to those issues because if they fall, then legal same-sex relations and marriage are over.

If you are talking about your typical Cleetus, say "Griswold" to him and the thinks about a Chevy Chase movie, "Lawrence" is about some Peter O'Toole Ay-rab movie, and "Obergefell" is some game his kid is playing on the console.   Cleetus maybe a religious or racist nut (or both) as well, so getting rid of contraception or interracial marriage is just an end game for him. But people like Clarence Thomas, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and yes even Tucker Carlson, know exactly what they are talking about, and why they are goading the Cleetuses (Is "Cleeti" the plural form?) into pushing the notion of going beyond abortion and into interracial marriage and contraception.

It's because they are in fact related, and not just because they are US Supreme Court rulings that so-called "conservatives" want struck down.  Clarence Thomas didn't openly mention contraception and interracial marriage being next for shits and giggles, even though he's in an interracial marriage, and even though the Supreme Court ruling about contraception was originally just for married couples (it was extended in 1972 to unmarried couples).  Remember: Griswold = Privacy (based on a contraception case), Lawrence was about due process (same-sex relations) and Obergefell was about equal protection rights (same-sex marriage).  Thomas said the courts:

  He mentioned it for a very specific reason:

If you read up on those rulings though, you'll understand why all of this is actually related, from LBGTQ issues such as marriage and privacy to interracial marriage and contraception. From the dissent on Griswold:

It all comes back to privacy and the right of the government to intrude into our relations and our bedrooms.

TLDR: Your religious nuts oppose contraception or interracial marriage for dumbshit reasons, but the Republicans with legal backgrounds, as well as the talking heads, if they can get some of those 1960s/1970s court cases about contraception and privacy and equal rights struck down like they did with Roe v Wade, then legal same-sex relations and marriage are there for the taking.

He actually left out Loving which is the interracial marriage case. He’s not 10 out of 10 on hypocrisy he’s 11 out of 10, the only privacy case that should be upheld to him is his right to marry a white woman.

[troph 24566]

25 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

Beautiful family.  I naturally miss that time of life.  

That was a few years pre Covid - I miss it too. Teenagers now, they are uh, stressful. 

[atomheartbevo 89452]

56 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Anybody else notice how in the last few weeks, people of all political stripes have started conflating contraception and interracial marriage into the same political discussions?

In my Lobo-esque manifesto about why they are related (I went down a rabbit hole a few weeks ago of why people were mixing the issues and didn't realize how closely intertwined they are), I didn't address that.  We've seen plenty of coordinated efforts to take things that were simmering and blow them up and get social media, Fox News, Republican politicians, etc. talking about them over the last 10 years, and this is a continuation of that strategy to generate buzz and own the libs or whatever.  "Woke", CRT, Hunter's laptop, Hunter's Dong, etc. are all those kinds of topics.

As to why it cropped up in the past few weeks, I think it's a few things.  Right now, there is a the court case in West Texas about one of the more popular abortion pills, and some seem to be hoping to get that ruling applied to other medications or whatever. You also have the Florida Legislature pushing some stuff to try and demonize/minimize certain groups in higher education, and in Florida society in general, and I think there is a trend to try and get this going in other state legislatures (which we see in the Texas legislature) and then take it farther and see how far they can take it.

I also think some folks are hoping to try and get state legislatures to dive into this issue and push out some legislation about this stuff that will then get challenged in the courts and then make it to the USSC, which then gets into what I mentioned in the above post about Griswold, etc. being struck down.

It may seem like a longshot, but Roe v Wade out front shoulda told you that it's coming.

[YGIFS 19449]

Don't be namecallling!  

I get the case law.  I get the end-game.  I just find it odd that four huge issues---abortion, contraception/birth control, gay marriage/LGBTQ+ stuff, and interracial marriage.  Three of these things, however backwards and twisted I find it, have a basis in religious ethos.  One does not.  Conflating them together is a very weird gambit, even for appealing to a base that has the same belief set on all four issues, even they don't necessarily compress interracial marriage into the other three despite the convenience.  

[atomheartbevo 89452]

20 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

I get the case law.  I get the end-game.  I just find it odd that four huge issues---abortion, contraception/birth control, gay marriage/LGBTQ+ stuff, and interracial marriage.  Three of these things, however backwards and twisted I find it, have a basis in religious ethos.  One does not.  Conflating them together is a very weird gambit, even for appealing to a base that has the same belief set on all four issues, even they don't necessarily compress interracial marriage into the other three despite the convenience.  

It's not a weird gambit once you realize that you have to chip away at the contraception ruling in terms of the Constitutional privacy issues, and the interracial ruling (Loving) to chip away at the equal rights rulings.  Those things (and subsequent rulings) gave Americans a right to privacy in the bedroom that they didn't have before. You have to get rid of those to get rid of same-sex equality and to extend the government's reach into the bedroom and elsewhere.

Your typical mouth breathing MAGA type will not understand any of that though.  He just knows he hates the gays and maybe hates the minorities, so it appeals to him. And the Christian fundies probably see contraception as enabling sex outside of marriage or procreation, so they are on board.

But your educated talking heads and politicians that hate the LGBTQ crowd, hate minorities, want more power for themselves, they know exactly what is in play, and that they need Griswold, Loving, etc., to be knocked down, and if they can get these groups talking about it, and get state legislatures to act upon it, maybe a case can make it to the Supreme Court and take out Griswold. We already have Texas legislators talking about things like contraception, so it's in the Texas MAGA/GOP headspace.

 

[Longhorn94 2427]

49 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Don't be namecallling!  

I get the case law.  I get the end-game.  I just find it odd that four huge issues---abortion, contraception/birth control, gay marriage/LGBTQ+ stuff, and interracial marriage.  Three of these things, however backwards and twisted I find it, have a basis in religious ethos.  One does not.  Conflating them together is a very weird gambit, even for appealing to a base that has the same belief set on all four issues, even they don't necessarily compress interracial marriage into the other three despite the convenience.  

it makes sense when you realize that these are white evangelicals and according to them, Jesus is white, he loves white people and he hates brown people. Duh. thus, all 4 have a basis in religious ethos.

[atomheartbevo 89452]

Just for some context, these are what Texas Republicans in Congress thought about the matter last year:

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/21/texas-congress-contraception/

Quote

The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday that would prevent states from banning birth control, though nearly the entire Republican delegation from Texas voted against it.

The bill, which faces far more hurdles passing through the Senate, largely responds to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ recent opinion casting doubt on past rulings guaranteeing legal protections for contraceptives. It is part of a Democratic rush to codify policy on social issues that have since been put under question after the high court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Quote

All Texas Republicans voted against the measure, except for Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who did not vote. Only eight Republicans in the entire chamber joined all Democrats in voting in favor of the contraceptives legislation.

It's just a matter of time before the Texas legislature makes a move to restrict it.  They've already tried to make it heard for teens to access it without parental consent.

[Woland 729]

Don't be namecallling!  
I get the case law.  I get the end-game.  I just find it odd that four huge issues---abortion, contraception/birth control, gay marriage/LGBTQ+ stuff, and interracial marriage.  Three of these things, however backwards and twisted I find it, have a basis in religious ethos.  One does not.  Conflating them together is a very weird gambit, even for appealing to a base that has the same belief set on all four issues, even they don't necessarily compress interracial marriage into the other three despite the convenience.  

Somehow “more white babies” ties it all together. You’ve also got that evil communist libs are for all those things.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

2 hours ago, YGIFS said:

Don't be namecallling!  

I get the case law.  I get the end-game.  I just find it odd that four huge issues---abortion, contraception/birth control, gay marriage/LGBTQ+ stuff, and interracial marriage.  Three of these things, however backwards and twisted I find it, have a basis in religious ethos.  One does not.  Conflating them together is a very weird gambit, even for appealing to a base that has the same belief set on all four issues, even they don't necessarily compress interracial marriage into the other three despite the convenience.  

In some religious circles, the belief is that God intended for the 'tribes' to remain pure among themselves. Others use the as long as both are Christians then interracial marriage is to be considered after prayer and reflection upon the views of their community or some such. With approximately 104 completed versions of the Bible, there is ample space for folks to find something that forms to what they desire pro or con.

[nbmishoid 941]

20 hours ago, troph said:

That was a few years pre Covid - I miss it too. Teenagers now, they are uh, stressful. 

I might have mentioned something along those lines, 20 years ago.  But, to mild surprise, it works out ok.  

[Guest]

 

[YGIFS 19449]

There are dozens of us Michael!  DOZENS!  

csb/ I'm sure there were other staging areas around the Capitol Complex, but obviously they probably experienced the same situation.  I was at McCombs this morning and wandered over to AT&T to get something to eat.  There were a few busses and a couple hundred folks milling about.  Eating, using bathroom, coffee, charging devices.  All were from some pro-children group or other.  They make the announcement they're heading to the Capitol for the demonstration.  Literally, in the literal sense of the word, about half of them stayed and just hung out at AT&T.  I mean, yeah, it was drizzling, but I think most just didn't enough of a shit.  They just wanted credit for caring and getting a day off work.  

Then I'm driving through downtown to get back to my home office.  I go past the Capitol.  I saw a huge mob of people at a stoplight, figured---oh maybe there'll be more of them after all.  All wearing the same shirts, so this must be the cavalry?  I get closer.  Nope, it's about 50 volunteers to set up the Gel Blasters game on the Capitol Lawn for the International Day of Play promo deal they're doing this evening.  There's more people setting up lawn games than were at this "political demonstration."  

[ChuckNorrisActionJeans 2659]

Good because 99% of everything that's couched in terms of "pro-children" is unmitigated horseshit

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Our state is batshit fucking crazy.

[atomheartbevo 89452]

Just now, Patricio Swayze said:

Our state is batshit fucking crazy.

[Updawg 2261]

Our state is batshit fucking crazy.

It’s sad what it has become

[atomheartbevo 89452]

42 minutes ago, Updawg said:

It’s sad what it has become

The people running or representing this state are a bunch of followers, basing a lot of their decisions on what DeSantis is doing in Florida, or what will attract (or be attractive to) people from other states, or what will get them noticed by the national media.  Fucking pathetic.

It's not hard to run this state - look at doing things that help *everybody* and not just this or that donor or special-interest group that makes veiled threats of not supporting you.  Abbott is terrified of these little groups pulling their endorsements of him, and it showed during the primaries, even though he turns plenty of other people off.

[Post Oak 20187]

Electric bills are going higher .

From Doug Lewin

SB 6 would put 10,000 new megawatts of gas generation — around a dozen new gas power plants — onto every Texan’s electricity or tax bill. It’s a great deal for folks who would build these gas plants. SB6 provides a guaranteed rate of return and requires Texans to pay the full cost of the plants — plus profits for generators — even if the plants become “stranded costs.” 

In other words, some big generators will win, even if you lose. If the plants are a bad idea, or they’re a bad investment, or they become obsolete because technology and markets pass them by, you’ll still pay for them — AND you’ll guarantee a 10% profit for the corporations that build them.

 

 

Spoiler

The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter
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Texas Senate Prefers A State Monopoly To Competition
Senate Bill 6 would mean the end of electric market competition in Texas

Doug Lewin
1 hr ago
5
1
Last week, a Texas court ruled that the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) set prices too high during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. 

The Third Court of Appeals noted that the Texas Legislature enshrined competition as the cornerstone of the electric market. By fixing the price, the court ruled, the PUC overstepped its bounds and arbitrarily raised Texans’ energy bills. 

There are a few reasons that energy bills are poised to climb even higher in Texas — it’s not just a bad PUC decision or two (though those have certainly made things worse). It’s also because state government — especially the Texas Senate — is moving rapidly away from the competitive principles that have been at the core of Texas’ electricity system since Dan Patrick was on AM radio.

In his ruling last week, Third Court Judge Edward Smith invoked the opening lines of the chapter of the Utilities Code focused on competitive markets: The legislature finds — or it did 24 years ago, when lawmakers created Texas’ revolutionary energy-only market — that “the production and sale of electricity is not a monopoly warranting regulation of rates, operations, and services … electric services and their prices should be determined by customer choices and the normal forces of competition” (emphasis added).

How quaint.

A Win-Win that Texans Lose

This Thursday at 8:00 a.m., the Senate Business & Commerce Committee will hear a slate of energy bills that Lt. Gov. Patrick and his committee members unveiled less than two weeks ago. The $12 billion centerpiece is Senate Bill 6. 

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SB 6 would put 10,000 new megawatts of gas generation — around a dozen new gas power plants — onto every Texan’s electricity or tax bill. It’s a great deal for folks who would build these gas plants. SB6 provides a guaranteed rate of return and requires Texans to pay the full cost of the plants — plus profits for generators — even if the plants become “stranded costs.” 

In other words, some big generators will win, even if you lose. If the plants are a bad idea, or they’re a bad investment, or they become obsolete because technology and markets pass them by, you’ll still pay for them — AND you’ll guarantee a 10% profit for the corporations that build them.

Further, the generators will be allowed to “test” the plants for 336 hours per year at ERCOT’s direction. A small provision slipped in toward the end of the bill says “any net revenue earned during testing or operating would be for the benefit of the ERCOT power region.”

Yes, a a state-contracted monopoly utility is poised to compete against other generators. Not quite how generations of Texas’ leaders drew it up. 

If SB 6 passes, we’ll likely never see another dispatchable plant built beyond these that Texans will directly pay for. We’d almost certainly see an accelerated wave of power plants retirements, leaving the system less reliable — and more expensive —  than before the bill was passed. 

Hopefully, at least out of honesty if not decency, the Senate will also delete the statutory language that Judge Smith quoted — under SB 6, “customer choices” and “normal forces of competition” will be things of the past. The government will become the single payer for power plants: a centrally planned, government-owned power system designed not by a big-government bureaucrat, but by Dan Patrick.

More Legislation, Less Competition 

SB 6 isn’t the only anti-competition bill from Patrick and the Senate. SB 2015 would mandate that 50% of all Texas electricity generation must be “dispatchable.” Quick reminder: Texas’ energy-only market is delivering a world-leading amount of low cost solar power to Texans. But solar development, which 64% of Texans support, would slow significantly under this bill. 

Losing this source of zero fuel-cost power, Texans’ electric bills, already historically high, would go even higher. And it would be even harder to keep air conditioners humming in the summer.

Then there’s SB 1287, which would force clean energy developers to pay extra — more than any other generator — to move their electricity to Texans who need it. Want to guess what those extra costs would do to your power bills?

Make no mistake: Patrick intends to hurt Texas’ homegrown clean energy industry, and his bills certainly would succeed at that. But they also would hurt his own constituents — we’ll all pay more for electricity, and for no good reason. Patrick’s bills will raise yours.

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Worst of all, not one of these bills directly and affordably addresses the problems that caused the 2021 blackouts or repeated electricity scares since. There are many, many solutions available at a fraction of the cost. 

Flexing Ratepayers’ Credit Card

The Senate appears to at least partially understand that energy costs are mounting for consumers. Unfortunately, their proposals would put us all into more debt.

Last session, the legislature authorized $11 billion in bonds to help pay for the staggering costs of 2021’s Winter Storm Uri. This year, SB 30 would pay down nearly $4 billion in 2021 costs. (Had they just paid the cost last session, they would have saved several hundred million dollars in bond fees and interest.)

But only gas customers — about one-in-three Texas families — would benefit from this year’s giveaway. The other two-thirds of Texans are on their own. 

SB 6 would spread the pain around: everyone would get to pay off the roughly $12 billion that the new gas plants would add to energy bills. That eats up the savings for gas customers, and it piles yet more costs onto 6 million Texas households and small businesses with all-electric heat. 

Focus on What’s Important

The worst part of all these bills: they’re partial solutions at best. 

The main source of power outages is still the distribution part of the grid that delivers electricity to individual homes and businesses. Thousands of entrepreneurs are working across the state to bring real resiliency solutions to Texans — distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar and batteries (whether in a car or on a wall), widespread weatherization and energy efficiency, and technologies that optimize energy use to increase reliability and reduce costs. 

The Senate will not take up any bills this week to support those solutions, even though they increase reliability when there’s not enough supply to meet demand and when local power lines go down. 

It’s frustrating to watch state government flail about, grasp at false solutions, and throw bad ideas at the wall — and then stick consumers with the bill for it all. 

These are complicated issues. They’re not easily solved, even when policymakers are focused on the right things. 

But right now, policymakers are not focused on the right things. In Dan Patrick’s Senate, they’re focused on a very expensive state takeover of Texas’ energy market. 

They need to get back to basics. Texas’ competitive market didn’t cause the Uri blackouts; inadequate winterization of gas supply, power plants, and homes and buildings did. And as the Third Court of Appeals pointed out last week, suspending market competition made the costs of the disaster much, much worse for Texas consumers. 

Now Patrick’s bills would finish the job, effectively ending competition in Texas. 

That will take a heavy toll on this state — and you’ll pay for it

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Post Oak

[CooterBrown 17914]

If my math is correct, that’s $2,000 per household that will be added to your electric bill.

Sounds like a small price to pay for freedom.

[YGIFS 19449]

which will conveniently be hidden by a reduction in your property taxes from the rainy day fund.  Which will then be raided in the off-session year for the wall.  Gee, the money is so hard to follow governor.  

[HenryJames 65890]

[DigglerontheHoof 21068]

Jesus fucking Chrst

[mchookem 16230]

38 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

[Biff Tannen 45500]

On 3/19/2023 at 3:49 PM, Paper_jam said:

Individual citizens should stop registering cars,

Mine has been out since the pandemic started, so doing my part. 

[Voldemort86 2259]

1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

We’re definitely not being represented by our best and brightest. In Texas, the more crazy you are, the more you win. Get on a stage, talk about thrashing the libs, throwing transgenders into closets that lock permanently after closing them, carrying guns to churches and kids soccer games, pretend to care about the children, and freak out about some obscure book in a school library that most kids don’t even find or check out.

do all these things and you’re a winner in Texas.

[tx 3 putt 76414]

And of course old Jared is from the north Dallas maga gqp area of crazy (frisco) AND an Aggie grad 

 

[cactusflinthead 27594]

 

[Post Oak 20187]

Here's Tomlinson in the Chron on the energy bill fuckery that's a foot.

Get ready to bend over.

Tomlinson: Texas lawmakers' plans to fix the grid will cost consumers tens of billions

 

Spoiler

BUSINESS//CHRIS TOMLINSON

Tomlinson: Texas lawmakers' plans to fix the grid will cost consumers tens of billions

 

Chris Tomlinson, Columnist

March 22, 2023

 

Comments

 

 

2

 

1of2

Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, speaks about several energy bill in the senate he says will address Texas grid issues. Schwertner, Lt Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. Phil King, along with other lawmakers. held a press conference to discuss Texas energy bills in the works in the senate at the Texas State Capitol, Austin, TX Wednesday March 9, 2023.

Nell Carroll/special contributorShow More

 

 

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Trust Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s enablers in the Texas Senate to drive up customers’ electricity bills, wreck the climate and possibly enrich one of the world’s wealthiest men while wasting billions on 1950s-style solutions for 21^st century problems.

If the lite guv’s favored bills become law, they would also destroy the competitive electricity market and return Texas to the era of big government. Republican senators would squander a rare opportunity to modernize the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid and bring true reliability.

Perhaps the best example of a bad idea is Senate Bill 6, which establishes the Texas Energy Insurance Program. Senate Business and Commerce Committee Chair Charles Schwertner calls it a statewide backup generator. But it’s really a multibillion-dollar waste of money designed to enrich one of a handful of corporations, most likely Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

 

For 20 years, ERCOT has required generators to compete to provide the cheapest power to Texans. Corporations built power plants with their own money and got paid only when their electricity was needed.

Tomlinson's Take

• Tomlinson: Texas grid plans couldn't be more different

   
  

• Tomlinson: Texas PUC must drop half-baked ideas for fixing grid

   
  

Schwertner would blow up that system. He wants consumers to pay government-mandated prices for companies to build 10,000 megawatts of natural gas-fueled power plants as backup power for 40 years. That’s enough power for 4 million homes that will sit idle at least 97 percent of the time while earning a guaranteed 9 percent rate of return for the company’s shareholders.

Only the biggest companies would participate. Prerequisites include already operating 15,000 megawatts of generation and possessing $1 billion in assets for every 1,000 megawatts they provide.

One of a handful of companies that qualify is Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which just so happened to pitch a very similar $8.3 billion plan shortly after the 2021 winter storm that killed more than 200 people.

 

Schwertner’s bill would force Texas consumers to pick up a $10 billion price tag to have the brand-new, highly-efficient power plants sit idle, waiting for another, perfectly avoidable crisis.

Schwertner’s bill excludes battery storage and all other clean emergency power sources. Such a significant change to the Texas grid would require voter approval of a constitutional amendment, so Texans will have an opportunity to nix this bad idea.

Schwertner’s Senate Bill 7 would kneecap new wind and solar power, which are the cheapest sources of new electricity. The bill forces renewable facilities to subsidize fossil fuel power plants, which the bills euphemistically and inaccurately call “dispatchable generation.”

The Republicans’ goal is to keep coal plants open and burn more natural gas. SB7 requires the Public Utility Commission to help the Legislature “ensure that market signals are adequate to preserve existing dispatchable generation and incentivize the construction of new dispatchable generation.”

Market signals, if you didn’t know, are the dollars you and I spend on electricity every year.

 

Senate Bill 2015 puts a bow on Patrick’s plan by mandating that half of the state’s electricity come from natural gas, regardless of the cost to consumers. Everyone would have to pay higher prices for natural gas-generated electricity because the law would force ERCOT to reject cheaper wind and solar energy to obey the law.

Finally, there is Senate Bill 2012, Schwertner’s and Patrick’s nuclear option if the electricity industry fights too hard against the other bills.

This nightmare legislation implements the PUC’s favored reliability plan, the Performance Credit Mechanism, but with onerous obligations on generators.

 

• CHRIS TOMLINSONBusiness Columnist

  Tomlinson: Lawmakers to send electric bill much higher

   
  

Proposed bills would destroy the competitive electricity market and return Texas to the era of big government. 

• DWIGHT SILVERMANTech Columnist

  Silverman: Here are 3 apps to ease you into the AI revolution

   
  

Some of the most advanced AI technology on the planet is now available to anyone with a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone, usually at little...

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  Beneficiaries entitled to accounting from trustee

   
  
  A trustee's report must include a listing of trust assets, receipts, expenditures and distributions, plus more information.

The measure also breaks up the retail electric business, which some generators rely on for profitability. Lastly, the law would end the prohibition against transmission line companies owning power plants and force them to build natural gas facilities if existing generators do not build enough.

Patrick and Schwertner want to funnel money away from clean energy and toward fossil fuels just as we need to phase them out to stop global warming. Their proposed laws ignore new technologies that are revolutionizing the electric industry by boosting efficiency and controlling demand.

 

Schwertner offers a fig leaf with Senate Bill 2404, a classic do-nothing bill that establishes a toothless Texas Energy Efficiency Council to make recommendations to future legislatures.

Texas’ GOP leadership is trying to destroy the system it built, which encourages companies and technologies to compete to provide the cheapest, most reliable power. Our widely admired free market system would be replaced with the big-government structure we abandoned in 1999.

Senators and representatives will debate these bills in the weeks ahead, so it’s not too late to influence them. But if the current proposals succeed, natural gas providers will win, and the rest of us will lose

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Of course it's Schwertner. My shock and awe face is taking a vacation this week.

[atomheartbevo 89452]

We are just such a joke of a state.  Truly Florida with oil and gas.

[Biff Tannen 45500]

24 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

Schwertner’s bill excludes battery storage and all other clean emergency power sources. Such a significant change to the Texas grid would require voter approval of a constitutional amendment, so Texans will have an opportunity to nix this bad idea.

Well we need to get the fucking word out then.

[Beau Vine 54007]

12 hours ago, HenryJames said:

I wonder how he feels about the section about sex with farm animals in The Last Picture Show?

Wait, I have a clue:

Edited March 22, 2023 by Beau Vine

[C-Man 27063]

16 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

I wonder how he fells about the section about sex with farm animals in The Last Picture Show?

Wait, I have a clue:

Could there be a more stereotypical aggy than this fuckstick?

[Guest]

I'm amazed at how many Aggies there are in the Texas House. It seems like it's a lot...

[Player 4575]

Could there be a more stereotypical aggy than this fuckstick?

Did your parents have any children that lived, Private Patterson?

[HenryJames 65890]

40 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Could there be a more stereotypical aggy than this fuckstick?

[Disco Strangler 1865]

 

Of course this fucking Aggie has never read what is in the pantheon of great Texas literature.  Texas A&M only had one copy of it in their library and it has already been colored in.

[ChuckNorrisActionJeans 2659]

https://twitter.com/JaredLPatterson/status/1638593101185916942?s=20

 

embed? 

This tool says parents can't be trusted, so big bad gov't must step in to keep icky content out of kids' hands 

Edited March 22, 2023 by ChuckNorrisActionJeans

[atomheartbevo 89452]

52 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

This tool says parents can't be trusted, so big bad gov't must step in to keep icky content out of kids' hands 

Every accusation is a confession with Republicans.   Just remember that.   They claim to hate big government that intrudes into parents’ sphere of influence over literature, masks, vaccines, religion, etc. but they literally want to control all of that.  

[elfenix 34174]

On 3/19/2023 at 6:30 PM, Woland said:

Somehow “more white babies” ties it all together. You’ve also got that evil communist libs are for all those things.

it does and it always has, we just now have a more expansive view of what a white person is than we did back in the mid-1800s (which is also tied to maintaining anglo-saxon political dominance)

Quote

The critical political context for the anti-
abortion movement was not only suffragists’
claims for women’s rights, but also the massive
immigration that undermined Anglo-Saxon
political power and social hegemony. Anglo-
Saxon political control in northern cities and
states depended on numerical dominance at the
polls, which led to concerns about the repro-
ductive prowess of Anglo-Saxon women. In
other words, reproduction of an aspect of the
racial structure—political dominance—was tied
to the reproduction of an aspect of the gender
order, women’s role as mothers. Immigration
created a social as well as a political problem for
the Anglo-Saxon elite, who saw the mid-nine-
teenth-century newcomers as the bearers and
propagators of alien values that would ulti-
mately destroy American culture. This problem
was historically specific: the Anglo-Saxon polit-
ical dilemma sprang from the history of parti-
san politics in the context of the Civil War,
which temporarily curtailed use of race as
grounds for denying citizenship. The war also
killed more than 500,000 men, which exacer-
bated concerns about the nation’s demography.
Finally, the Anglo-Saxon predicament was cre-
ated in a specific cultural context: one in which
the cultural meanings of “race” assigned Anglo-
Saxons, Celts, and Teutons to different races.

https://sociology.northwestern.edu/documents/faculty-docs/faculty-research-article/Beisel-AbortionRaceandGender.pdf

[tx 3 putt 76414]

12 hours ago, Post Oak said:

Here's Tomlinson in the Chron on the energy bill fuckery that's a foot.

Get ready to bend over.

Tomlinson: Texas lawmakers' plans to fix the grid will cost consumers tens of billions

 

  Hide contents

BUSINESS//CHRIS TOMLINSON

Tomlinson: Texas lawmakers' plans to fix the grid will cost consumers tens of billions

 

Chris Tomlinson, Columnist

March 22, 2023

 

Comments

 

 

 

2

 

1of2

Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, speaks about several energy bill in the senate he says will address Texas grid issues. Schwertner, Lt Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. Phil King, along with other lawmakers. held a press conference to discuss Texas energy bills in the works in the senate at the Texas State Capitol, Austin, TX Wednesday March 9, 2023.

Nell Carroll/special contributorShow More

 

 

•  
•  

Trust Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s enablers in the Texas Senate to drive up customers’ electricity bills, wreck the climate and possibly enrich one of the world’s wealthiest men while wasting billions on 1950s-style solutions for 21^st century problems.

If the lite guv’s favored bills become law, they would also destroy the competitive electricity market and return Texas to the era of big government. Republican senators would squander a rare opportunity to modernize the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid and bring true reliability.

Perhaps the best example of a bad idea is Senate Bill 6, which establishes the Texas Energy Insurance Program. Senate Business and Commerce Committee Chair Charles Schwertner calls it a statewide backup generator. But it’s really a multibillion-dollar waste of money designed to enrich one of a handful of corporations, most likely Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

 

For 20 years, ERCOT has required generators to compete to provide the cheapest power to Texans. Corporations built power plants with their own money and got paid only when their electricity was needed.

Tomlinson's Take

• Tomlinson: Texas grid plans couldn't be more different

   
  

• Tomlinson: Texas PUC must drop half-baked ideas for fixing grid

   
  

Schwertner would blow up that system. He wants consumers to pay government-mandated prices for companies to build 10,000 megawatts of natural gas-fueled power plants as backup power for 40 years. That’s enough power for 4 million homes that will sit idle at least 97 percent of the time while earning a guaranteed 9 percent rate of return for the company’s shareholders.

Only the biggest companies would participate. Prerequisites include already operating 15,000 megawatts of generation and possessing $1 billion in assets for every 1,000 megawatts they provide.

One of a handful of companies that qualify is Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which just so happened to pitch a very similar $8.3 billion plan shortly after the 2021 winter storm that killed more than 200 people.

 

Schwertner’s bill would force Texas consumers to pick up a $10 billion price tag to have the brand-new, highly-efficient power plants sit idle, waiting for another, perfectly avoidable crisis.

Schwertner’s bill excludes battery storage and all other clean emergency power sources. Such a significant change to the Texas grid would require voter approval of a constitutional amendment, so Texans will have an opportunity to nix this bad idea.

Schwertner’s Senate Bill 7 would kneecap new wind and solar power, which are the cheapest sources of new electricity. The bill forces renewable facilities to subsidize fossil fuel power plants, which the bills euphemistically and inaccurately call “dispatchable generation.”

The Republicans’ goal is to keep coal plants open and burn more natural gas. SB7 requires the Public Utility Commission to help the Legislature “ensure that market signals are adequate to preserve existing dispatchable generation and incentivize the construction of new dispatchable generation.”

Market signals, if you didn’t know, are the dollars you and I spend on electricity every year.

 

Senate Bill 2015 puts a bow on Patrick’s plan by mandating that half of the state’s electricity come from natural gas, regardless of the cost to consumers. Everyone would have to pay higher prices for natural gas-generated electricity because the law would force ERCOT to reject cheaper wind and solar energy to obey the law.

Finally, there is Senate Bill 2012, Schwertner’s and Patrick’s nuclear option if the electricity industry fights too hard against the other bills.

This nightmare legislation implements the PUC’s favored reliability plan, the Performance Credit Mechanism, but with onerous obligations on generators.

 

• CHRIS TOMLINSONBusiness Columnist

  Tomlinson: Lawmakers to send electric bill much higher

   
  

Proposed bills would destroy the competitive electricity market and return Texas to the era of big government. 

• DWIGHT SILVERMANTech Columnist

  Silverman: Here are 3 apps to ease you into the AI revolution

   
  

Some of the most advanced AI technology on the planet is now available to anyone with a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone, usually at little...

• RONALD LIPMANBusiness Columnist

  Beneficiaries entitled to accounting from trustee

   
  
  A trustee's report must include a listing of trust assets, receipts, expenditures and distributions, plus more information.

The measure also breaks up the retail electric business, which some generators rely on for profitability. Lastly, the law would end the prohibition against transmission line companies owning power plants and force them to build natural gas facilities if existing generators do not build enough.

Patrick and Schwertner want to funnel money away from clean energy and toward fossil fuels just as we need to phase them out to stop global warming. Their proposed laws ignore new technologies that are revolutionizing the electric industry by boosting efficiency and controlling demand.

 

Schwertner offers a fig leaf with Senate Bill 2404, a classic do-nothing bill that establishes a toothless Texas Energy Efficiency Council to make recommendations to future legislatures.

Texas’ GOP leadership is trying to destroy the system it built, which encourages companies and technologies to compete to provide the cheapest, most reliable power. Our widely admired free market system would be replaced with the big-government structure we abandoned in 1999.

Senators and representatives will debate these bills in the weeks ahead, so it’s not too late to influence them. But if the current proposals succeed, natural gas providers will win, and the rest of us will lose

 

Dan Patrick can seriously go fuck himself and hopefully eat a lead sandwich 

[Frank Erwin 203]

13 hours ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

I'm amazed at how many Aggies there are in the Texas House. It seems like it's a lot...

Because aggies comprise the 3% of the population who decide the Republican primary.  Now it makes sense, aggy is the reason our state is becoming a shitshow

[Frank Erwin 203]

2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Dan Patrick can seriously go fuck himself and hopefully eat a lead sandwich 

Dan Patrick fucked up his own suicide, twice

[Gap03 3287]

39 minutes ago, Frank Erwin said:

Dan Patrick fucked up his own suicide, twice

Third time's the charm, I always say.  

[YGIFS 19449]

1 hour ago, Frank Erwin said:

Dan Patrick fucked up his own suicide, twice

Wait; what?

[tx 3 putt 76414]

 

[Bozo_Casanova 26290]

Keep going I’m close