Welcome to Texas. The modern conservative's wet dream.

Yep, Texas is the poster child for what conservatives want for the rest of America. Deregulation to the max. Smell the freedom. The free market will take care of us if we just get government out of the way and let corporations weave their magic.

In the words of one recent right wing intellect, "how's that workin' out for ya?"

As many have pointed out what is happening now in Texas was totally predictable. They wanted their own power grid free from those terrible federal regulations. Regulations like making sure the companies would invest in safety measures. Regulations ensuring the supply lines and equipment would be protected from severe weather. Regulations like making sure the emphasis was on providing service to the residents of Texas as opposed to maximizing profits.  

So here we are. Texas devised a system where there is no incentive for the utility companies to invest in safety or protect their infrastructure from unusual weather events that unfortunately will become increasingly "usual", what with that other reality the leaders of Texas deny - climate change.  

There is also no incentive for them to build additional capacity into their system. No profit in that. And since they wanted to be so free, the Texas grid truly stands alone, isolated from the rest of the country. So they are unable to bring in any excess capacity any other regional grid might be able to send their way in times like now. But again this is by design. As their former governor, Rick Perry, opined, the people of Texas prefer being free of federal regulations. Who needs running water or heat when you are warmed by the glow of such freedom?

What's worse we are now learning the Texas leadership knew of all these shortcomings and potential disasters years ago. And did nothing. 

So caught with their thermostats around their ankles what did the leaders of Texas do? Lie. Well lie and fly to warm weather in Cancun. But mostly lie.

They blamed everyone but themselves and their disaster-waiting-to-happen power grid system. First it was the wind turbines. Surprisingly a lot of the power used in Texas is generated by wind turbines. Because it's cheaper than gas and coal. The Governor, Senators and others were quick to point the finger at wind power stating it showed how dangerous it is to rely on alternate, renewable energy sources rather than good old reliable fossil fuels.

They have continued to tell this lie even after acknowledging that the wind production was at near full capacity and it was the freezing of natural gas pipelines and other components that was the main culprit. But even after that they went on national television and identified wind and solar as the problem. Fox News and others in the right wing media world have been more than happy to pick up that lie and broadcast it non-stop.
 
Building on that lie they continued on to one of their favorite boogey-men - AOC and the Green New Deal. This is a cautionary tale they warned of what awaits us all if we implement the Green New Deal. Wait, what? 

Did those radical socialists in Texas like Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick and Attorney General Paxton (Republicans all of course) implement the Green New Deal when nobody was looking? Did the Green New Deal get passed out of Congress and signed into law? Of course not. The Green New Deal is not law or policy in Texas or anywhere else. But it makes for a great rant for the right wing. Do they even teach critical thinking skills anymore? 

So the culprit isn't wind power. It's not AOC. It's not the Green New Deal. It is everything that the Texas legislature had already identified back in 2012 as the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of the Texas power system. As other have pointed out, it is working in this disaster exactly as designed.

So much for the GOP being the party of personal responsibility. Because they never seem to take any for their actions or lack thereof. 

This is just another example of how modern American conservatives are lousy at is governing. They don't believe in it. So the last thing they are interested in is having government show it can make life better for its citizens. It's difficult to be good at something you don't believe in. So call your incompetence and lack of delivering for your people "freedom" and hope that works on enough voters. 

Quick question though, can I use freedom to thaw out grandpa?

For decades now we have been going down the road of deregulation and privatization. The promise is always the same. Competition, leading to more choice, more efficiency, lower prices. 

We also know what the reality has been every single time. Consolidation. Monopolies or near monopolies. Less choice. Lower quality. Higher prices. Lack of oversight and checks and balances leading to abuses. Whether it was the savings and loan industry, electricity and energy production and distribution, commodities and stocks, the results have always been disastrously the same. And yet the conservatives keep pushing the "government is bad and ineffective, let the free market works its magic" message for everything.

One of the latest areas of deregulation to catch my eye is that of telecommunications and the cable industry. In large part this is due to personal experience. We have underground utilities in our neighborhood and so the cable wire comes in through the basement. We have bundled services through the cable company: cable, internet and the land line phones. Until we bundled our services,  the internet modem, and our wireless router, were on the second floor of the house, in the study where our desktop computer still resides. However apparently that was too far away from the initial point of entry (the basement) to provide a strong enough signal for the land line. And so the modem and router were moved to the basement.  

We adjusted to that. But lately, at least every other day, there comes a time during the day where the internet is "lost". Cable and phone will still be working, but the internet is down. One of us has to go down to the basement, unplug the modem from the strip it's plugged into, count to 10, and plug it back in. Then the internet "reappears". 

And don't get my wife started on the cable itself. Remotes that don't work. Features heavily advertised that it turns out you have to pay extra for. Down times where suddenly you can't DVR programs. And then to find out that other people we know in town are being called by the cable company offering them free services or reduced rates, to make up for the inconvenience of this DVR outage. The calls were initiated by the cable company mind you to these friends and relatives, but we get no such calls or offers. We suspect it is because we already have a fairly high number of optional program services so there is less opportunity for the company to entice us to upgrade or add services than there might be for others by "giving" them free trials.

So all this led me to do a little research. I remembered hearing that our experience in the USA is not the norm in other modern, industrial countries, but I figured I'd take a look. Sure enough, the wonders of the free market, free from government interference and regulation, means that Americans are paying more for less service. Sound familiar?

For example, people in the U.S. pay about twice as much for slower internet connection speeds. According to a study by the New America Foundation, in New York City you pay approximately $70/month for slow to moderate download speeds of under 20 mbps (megabits per second). Meanwhile in South Korea you would pay the equivalent of about $28/month for download speeds of about 45 mbps.

A comparison of bundled packages (internet/cable/phone service combined) that includes low to mid-range download speeds found the following internet charges for American cities:

San Francisco $99/month
New York $70/month
Washington DC $68/month.

For the same service in representative international cities:

London $38/month
Paris $35/month
Seoul $15/month.

So why do we find this pattern? According to Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy, "Americans pay so much because they don't have a choice". 

The deregulation of the telecommunications industry has led to consolidation and even more monopolies in the cable/internet marketplace than existed prior to deregulation. The result, in another quote from the BBC News Magazine article where Ms. Crawford's quote was found, is that "companies face neither competition nor oversight". And so there is no incentive for internet service providers to expand broadband or to build faster networks. The New America Foundation study concluded: 

"...the most affordable and fast connections are available in markets where consumers can choose between at least three competitive service providers." This is not the case in most American cities or regions.  

Ah, taste the freedom as the dollars fly out of your wallet.