Posted on 02/25/2021 7:06:45 AM PST by SJackson
“Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson,” Senator Schumer said.
“Texas thought it could go it alone,” Senator Schumer declared on the Lower East Side. “Now Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson."
But Democrats never learn their lesson. And they’re never expected to learn.
In 2003, New York City’s power went out because of a mistake by an operator in Ohio as part of the second biggest blackout in history which took down the grid in eight states and in Canada.
Texas’ decision to go it alone was a whole lot smarter than tying the fates of eight states and two countries to a control room in Akron. An interstate power grid means that a problem in a whole other state or country that you have no control over can leave you in the dark.
What was Schumer’s response to the 2003 blackout? He blamed President Bush for a “free market” approach of “allowing the states and utility industry to deal with it by themselves”.
Schumer and the Democrats extracted somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million to further integrate the power grid across a quarter of the country and parts of Canada.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit taking out power, leaving hospitals and residents in the dark. The East River power substation’s underground equipment was flooded by a “wall of water”, and the explosion that took out power across a large part of Manhattan could be seen for miles.
The station is located in the Lower East Side: the location of Schumer’s smug taunt to Texas.
You might imagine that after all that, Schumer’s home city and state would have moved the power substation away from the river. And you clearly don’t know New York City.
Instead, $1 billion was invested in a “storm hardening program”. The goal of the program was to make sure that the underground substation located right by the river in an area that regularly experiences hurricanes won’t be flooded because it will now meet current storm surge predictions. The substation was already built to withstand a predicted storm surge of 12.5 feet. Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge hit 14 feet. If another hurricane beats the predictions, then Manhattan will be in the dark again because of an underground power substation by the river.
But, it’s Texas that isn’t “learning its lesson”.
“When I wrote the Sandy bill, $60 billion for New York, we made sure everything was resilient,” Schumer claimed.
How resilient is it?
New York City politicians and media taunting Texas over power failures from the blackout capital of the country (at least the part of it not located in California) is a really poor decision. New York’s power grid goes down if someone sneezes or just looks at it the wrong way.
Last year, New York’s power failure left a quarter of a million in the dark.
Senator Schumer knows because he co-wrote a letter berating Con-Ed, and complaining, "we need to know why so many New Yorkers have been left in the dark, both literally and figuratively—a week after the storm—and get New Yorkers’ power back on ASAP.”
Schumer's letter noted that, "people had been trapped inside of their homes with live downed wires for days."
These letters are an annual tradition in which Schumer and other New York politicians blast Con-Ed, a relic of the corrupt Democrat Tammany Hall era, and then everything goes back to the way that it was before. Only the dumbest Democrat voters are fooled by the display.
Last year, Mayor de Blasio, who can’t even wake up on time, proposed a government takeover of Con-Ed. The Socialist never went through with it, but he would be welcome to try since Con-Ed was originally a network of companies controlled by Democrat officials which robbed the city on such a massive scale that its infrastructure was held back behind the rest of America.
All of these are part of the legacy that New Yorkers owe to Tammany Hall and the Democrats.
The bizarre corrupt shenanigans of the 19th century Democrat gas organizations continue to be a problem because every now and then an explosion happens, like the one that killed 8 people and toppled two buildings in Harlem, because there's a 120-year-old infrastructure of gas pipes under New York City, leaking gas which functions like a ticking time bomb under the streets.
After 120 years, New York still hasn’t learned its lesson about putting Democrats in power.
Con-Ed was formed out of the merger of these companies through a price-fixing agreement. And the occasional blackout, not to mention explosion, is part of the price New Yorkers pay.
New York City’s power grid remains an ongoing national disaster rivaled only by Puerto Rico.
The two years before that witnessed a blackout with an explosion so massive that it turned the sky blue and had Mayor Bill de Blasio's spokesman denying that it was the work of aliens.
Planes were forced to land on emergency power because the airport was blacked out
A year later, New York City celebrated the anniversary of the '77 blackout which kept the city in the dark for days after a lightning storm and led to the worst rioting and looting in the city until the Black Lives Matter riots last year, with yet another blackout.
Blackouts are an annual tradition in the blackout capital of America and no lessons are ever learned. Meanwhile New Yorkers pay on average 35 to 40 percent more than the rest of the country. New York has the 8th most expensive electricity in the country while Texas has the 12th cheapest. And New York residential rates shot up 5 times faster than Texas in just the last year.
That might be defensible if New York City’s power service were at least reliable. It’s not.
Now that Texas suffered major power failures, New York City politicians and media feel entitled to sneer. For the moment, the tiniest moment, the city’s power appears to be in better shape.
Except for the power outages that came with the storm and took down power in Brooklyn.
It’s easy for New York special interests to take cheap shots at Texas because the media may experience blackouts, but it won’t blame New York Democrats for them except for political gain.
Governor Cuomo was praised by the media while the dead filled New York City nursing homes until the left flank of the Democrats decided that it had a shot at replacing him in the next election. And then, suddenly, the media began reporting on the scandal it had covered up.
The Democrats never have to learn any of the lessons from their latest disaster because the only reason the media will ever hold them accountable for any of them is for political gain.
Why bother doing a good job running anything if the only metric that matters is political?
Had Cuomo stayed to the left of AOC, but killed twice as many seniors, he would have been fine. Had President Trump stayed in the White House, Cuomo would have also been safe.
That’s why blackouts in New York and California go politically unpunished, but the media is blaming the Texas power failures on Senator Ted Cruz taking his family to Cancun.
When the snow is cleared away in Texas, New Yorkers will be getting ready for the city’s annual spring and summer blackouts. In ‘21, these will almost certainly be accompanied with riots. But no one in the media will sneer at New Yorkers or Californians huddling in the dark. Unlike sneering at Texans, there’s nothing to be politically gained from such a show of contempt.
New Yorkers won’t learn their lesson. Not even when it’s 120 years in the making.
And I'll add that nobody who is freezing in the dark waiting for power to come back gives a second thought to what their Senator is doing at that moment.
I think new york is solving their infrastructure problems with covid. Currently vacant and soon to be vacated buildings don’t use much power from the grid..
Occasionally we lose power here on LI. More than a day if it’s a hurricane. But usually No power outages. And I have a generator ready to go.
For over 60 years, the New York City mindset has been, everything and everybody that is NOT NYC, is squat. That has flowed over to the TV, and the newspaper.
That, and chasing away residents for decades - they’ll have no power demand whatsoever.
Just remember NYC after Hurricane Sandy; they didn’t mind asking for help.
Yes, that we're not Lone Star enough! *middle finger*
“Texas thought it could go it alone,”.....
We can go it alone and don’t need no stinkin yankee telling us what we can and can’t do. Double middle finger.
The Texas electric grid failed because George W. Bush’s “deregulation” scheme placed customers who think that virtue signaling is morally superior to preserving human life in charge of the service reliability of customers who’s top priority is service reliability.
Customers who want federally-subsidized unreliable service should be forced off the grid.
Hay Shithead. Your tax base has left for Texas. Texas gets the last laugh.
I’m not sure that the Texas Grid would have survived the
situation without major outages if it had been connected to
other grids. With the freezing, lines down, substations off
line, plants shut in, etc. etc.there still would have been
major problems. JMO
To a degree it was like a major hurricane and its destruction
along the Gulf Coast and inland where it comes ashore. No
power for days until the system can be rebuilt, etc.
Never even thought about my Senator. Why would I?
Having him load water?? Just a photo op....crap that Obama pulled.
If we’re really heading into a sunspot minimum as some theorize, Texas is going to have to spend the money to make all their grid systems robust down to perhaps -10F.
The technology is available and proven, just needs to be funded.
Alternative systems like Big Wind and Big Solar also need robust amounts of backup from the good old stuff, which is expensive.
Yep any system is dependent upon its fuel source. As you say
wind/solar aren’t in the generation dependable category.
Shut up Schmuck!! Stay in your own back yard and the crap hole it is.......POS!!!
Texas can go it alone. Secede, already!
No thanks to Biden and the EPA. Our mistake was having out of state ERCOT officials kissing up to the libs. Someone also needs to look into why the Chinese own so many West Texas wind turbines.
After the first 2-3 days, our local power company wised up and ignored ERCOT. They had enough power to send help down south.
If only this was broadcast on the news channels. No democrat would ever be elected.
No, I’m not overlooking the outages caused by non-wind sources. However, the information is in.
Wind power plummeted while natural gas power surged. Texas can’t afford to be the biggest U.S. relier on the most unreliable energy source anywhere. The only reason why responsible Texans are forced to rely on wind is that the “deregulation” structure forced on us by Governor George W. Bush forces us into this position.
It need to be scrapped. Customers should not be able to use public infrastructure to make their neighbors dependent on unreliable power sources.
I believe you can have “green” power and unreliability.
Or you can have “green” power with robust backups from carbon and have a lot more cost. Because maintaining power plants at a state of readiness to go online with hours notice isn’t cheap.
Or you can have cheap, reliable carbon power.
It’s a choice ratepayers and taxpayers should get to make themselves.
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