Prepper Paul Martin’s After Action Report on the Texas Winter Storm

February 23rd, 2021

Paul Martin, a much more serious prepper than I, has an after action report on what went right and wrong in his own disaster preparations. Following winterization checklists and having good gear on hand were among the successes. On the other side of the ledger:

  • I need a better cold weather management plan for the tankless water heaters. This was our weakest point in our house. The drain lines would freeze up, requiring me to go out at all hours with a heat gun to thaw them out to get them back on line and to prevent damage. I was up between 3AM and 4 AM on the coldest nights, outside in the elements (temps between 10 to 15 degrees), working on them. Not fun.
  • I should have started working the checklist items sooner than I did. My original strategy was to do a few items on the list every night until the big event on Sunday night/Monday morning, when the snow fell and the temps really dropped. The problem came when the first ice storm on Thursday night/Friday morning took out a bunch of limbs around the house, requiring me to spend several hours cleaning that up instead of preparing for the bigger storm that was coming. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have burned a day of PTO and just done everything in the milder temps and when there was still food and ample supplies at the stores.
  • I should have cleaned out my gutters before the storm started. That’s going on the checklist. Leaves from the winds filled the gutters in the first storm, which then got backed up with rain, which in turn froze in place. Not good. Cleaner gutters drain quicker and collect less ice.

    • Plus some sobering thoughts:

    You’ve now seen our grid under stress. Cold snaps in 2011, 2018 and the worst cold on record in 2021, along with the boil water order of 2018, provide real world examples of what the local grid will do when it’s stressed. You are now on notice of the grid’s limitations. What if the next emergency isn’t in the cold, but in the 105 degree heat of a Texas summer? And what if the power is off for a week or more? What if the failure is caused by a cyber attack which not only shuts off the power but causes physical damage to the grid? By the way, don’t think this can’t happen:

    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.

    ******

    While generators rapidly dropped off the grid as the weather worsened, operators monitored the difference between the supply of power on the grid and the demand for that power. As supply dwindled and demand grew, the margin narrowed to more and more dangerous levels, forcing grid operators to enact emergency protocols to either increase supply or decrease demand.

    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.

    Things could have been much worse. They could be much worse in a future outage. Is your family ready for that? If your family isn’t ready, you will then be relying upon not only the grid operators but also your local elected officials to provide you with answers and solutions. Some of you may not be very keen on doing so after all of this.

    And that’s where much of our community’s struggle lies. As a community, we need to make sure that while we’re holding our government accountable that we’re also holding ourselves accountable. I get it: not everyone can afford to have a whole house generator. But a lot of people can afford less expensive options that would have made their lives a lot more comfortable and safer.

    Hence my cheap prepper supply list.

    I plead with you: make preparedness a priority for your family. If it means you have to take a smaller vacation or put off buying a nicer car for a year or so, do it. Many people can implement the step by step preparedness plan I have created in the Ready Citizen Manual which is absolutely free, which will quickly get you to a base line level of readiness enabling you to handle what we just went through.

    I don’t see things getting easier in the days ahead. Our economy is showing worrisome signs, our communities are still seething from the last election with no sign of abatement, our grids are vulnerable, and we’re still dealing with a pandemic for the foreseeable future. We now see how uncomfortable things can get. Take steps now to protect yourself and family from enduring that again.

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »

    The Cheap Prepper’s Guide for Cold Weather And Other Disasters

    February 22nd, 2021

    The recent Texas ice storm and power outage crisis once again emphasized how important it is to prepare for such events.

    There are some people who put significant time, effort and money into preparing. I am not one of them. What I am is a cheap prepper who probably spends about $20 a year on prepping supplies. But I found that just doing that made me much better prepared for surviving the ice storm/energy outage/boil notice event than other people. So here’s a brief guide to cheaply prepping for a range of disasters.

    I’ve included Amazon links, but for some items (like batteries), Sam’s or Lowe’s tends to offer better prices. Batteries are among good that can be purchased tax free during the Texas emergency preparation sales tax holiday, which is April 24-26 this year, along with smoke and CO detectors, fire extinguishers and first aid kits.

    The Basics

    These are just all-purpose tools everyone should already have, listed here for completeness sake.

  • First aid kit: There are a lot of different makes and models of these, and this is another one where Sam’s offers a kit that’s a bit cheaper than this one. Has a little bit of everything. A good thing to keep in your car for emergencies.
  • Smoke alarm: Everyone should already have these, but if you don’t, or want more, these are cheap, and it has a silence button so you can put it in your kitchen. This batch seems to be made in Mexico, but First Alert also makes stuff in China, so caveat emptor.
  • Carbon Monoxide detector. Doean’t say but I suspect it’s another made-in-China item. There are some combination carbon monoxide/smoke detectors, but I think you want to avoid the possibility of a single point of failure there.
  • Fire Extinguisher: Every home should have at least one, and make sure it’s not expired. This is what I have (I think it’s made in Mexico), but fortunately I’ve never had to use it.
  • Water leak detector: A lot of people don’t have these, but I consider them essential basic gear, as they can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars in water damage. I had one of mine go off a week before the ice storm hit because a shutoff valve I had closed to plunge an overflowing toilet had started leaking. Usual made in China caveats apply, but it’s very simple tech (two parallel wires on the exterior that water closes the circuit and sets off when wet). That link goes to a 5-pack, because I recommend putting one behind every toilet, under every sink you use, under your water heater, and next to your washing machine (I’ve had mine start rocking for an unbalanced load that pulled the drain hose loose). (There’s an even cheaper five pack from another manufacturer (also made in China) that I have no experience with.)
  • Speaking of plunging toilets, I imagine everyone already has a plunger, but if you don’t, here’s one, and you might consider one for each bathroom, or at least each floor. Also, the black bell shaped ones are a lot more effective than the small old red ones.
  • Speaking of things everyone should already have more of, everyone needs flashlights. I have an old bulb-type Maglite, but here’s a pretty close equivalent with LEDs. As a bonus, it’s also heavy enough to conk someone out. I have flashlights in my bedroom, my kitchen and in my car’s glovebox. The highest rated flashlight on Amazon is the Streamlight 75458 Stinger DS, which is about four times as expensive as the Maglite. I assume it’s brighter and with a longer life, and maybe you have a use case that justifies the cost. And if you have a flashlight, chances are you’ll also need…
  • Batteries. The Maglite takes D-Cells, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should be enough to get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Check your flashlights every six months when you check your smoke and CO detectors. Speaking of which, those and the water leak detectors take 9 volt batteries, and you want enough around to be able to change out every battery in your detectors as needed. Those links go to Duracells, which I’ve been pretty happy with.
  • Car jump starter: Much better than jumper cables, and can save you money when you have a dead battery, or beacuse it’s just not cranking in the cold.
  • Water shut off tool. The toilet valve problem made me keenly aware that I did not have the specific house water shutoff valve tool, so I went ahead and ordered this one, which also has a gas shutoff tool. You need one of these for the same reason you need a water leak detector, i.e. it will greatly limit damage before the plumber gets there.
  • Sawyer Products Water Filtration System: Austin is still under a boil notice, and the Sawyer system (which I bought the last time Austin was under a boil notice) is Good Enough, even if it is a slight pain to fill and squeeze the bag enough times for my dogs and I to drink (but still less of a pain that boiling water and waiting for it to cool).
  • Duct tape is useful to have year-round, but especially during an emergency, to patch a small leak or keep something together until the emergency is over and you can replace it. Link goes to 3M all-weather duct tape, which is better than the generic stuff for outside tasks, like sealing around the edge of a faucet cover.

    • Cold Weather

    Here are some specific prep items for cold weather:

  • Faucet Covers. If you’re a homeowner, you probably already have those, but if not, here they are, and they seem to work better than a rag or dripping the faucet, and neither of my faucets busted in the ice storm. That link goes to the cheap Styrofoam version, but these plastic ones look a bit bigger and stronger.
  • O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream: I walk my dogs 2-3 times a day pretty much every single day of the year, and I found my hands getting cracked and raw in the cold, even through gloves. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands fixed the problem. I frequently give this stuff out as Christmas gifts.
  • Carmex lip balm. A small, cheap jar that solves the chapped lips problem in winter. I know some people prefer Chapstick, but to me the main result of using Chapstick is that 30 minutes later you fell a need to use more Chapstick.
  • Eucerin Intensive Repair Foot Creme: For some reason, my feet were really hurting after a few days of walking around in the cold. This seems to have fixed the problem. A podiatrist had previously recommended Kerasal Intensive Foot Repair for the same problem, and I have some of that on order, but it’s considerably pricier per ounce, and I couldn’t find any locally.
  • De-icing spray. You can stand there for 15 minutes ineffectually scraping your frozen windows like William H. Macy in Fargo, or you can keep a bottle of this in your trunk.

    • I think I’ve covered the basics, and I’m not tackling things like food, clothing, generators, etc. Feel free to add anything I missed in the comments.

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    Posted in Texas | 24 Comments »

    Michael Malice On The Biden Chaos

    February 21st, 2021

    Michael Malice explains why the departure of Donald Trump from the White House will not result in less chaos, but in more:

    The reason: It’s now become clear that not only our elites are thieves, but that they’re stupid thieves, manifestly stupider than the ordinary Americans they intend to rule, and without Trump in the White House, ordinary Americans no longer have a meaningful voice in the ruling class. “They are so up their own ass, and so not use to think strategically, all they know how to do is repeat what they said before.”

    “I’m being told I’m a white supremacist, insurrectionist on a daily basis. If you regard me as a Nazi, if you’re going to read me out of the human race, then we can’t really go forward having a conversation.”

    They’re completely oblivious, they’re always telling themselves they’re on the right side of history. You know, if someone comes up to me with a knife, telling them I’m on the right side of history is really going to be a very weak tool. And if it is a war, just saying ‘I’m the good guys’ is really not going to gain you anything.

    I’m shocked by how quickly they’ve come to realize that “Wait a minute, we didn’t win!” Because they thought very sincerely “We got rid of Trump, everything can go back to normal. Unity!” And then it took a couple of weeks and they’re like, holy crap, none of these Trump people, who or who they described as Trump people like, they call Glenn Greenwald a Trump person, none of these people missed a beat. “They’re not going home they’re not going anywhere. They’ve become even more radicalized, they’ve become even more contemptuous of us, what do we do?”

    On trying to silence anyone pointing out the 2020 Presidential election was stolen: “This is not the approach of an elite that feels secure and in control.”

    Malice is an anarchist, and I believe his views on a complete flip in popular views on the police near the end are wrong. But there are some real disconnect between the systemic dishonesty of a corrupt elite that thinks it can continue to shove a radical leftwing agenda down the throats of the American people while expecting those same people to ignore their endemic incompetence and corruption are sadly mistaken.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 2 Comments »

    A Californian Moves To Texas…

    February 20th, 2021

    Hard left TV host and well-known all-around dick Cenk Uyger said Texas had the ice storm coming because…Joe Rogan moved here from California:

    Today the Texas grid is back up and running normally and it’s getting up into the 50s today as the once-a-century Texas winter storm recedes. But I bet that come summer, California has to close down parts of its grid yet again because high winds took out another power line.

    All that’s a handy hook to hang this amusing “Californian moves to Texas” video on:

    And yes, it mentions Joe Rogan…

    (Though if Calidude had moved to Austin rather than Houston, the homeless people would have been much easier to find…)

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    Posted in Media Watch, Texas, video | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for February 19, 2021

    February 19th, 2021

    It. Has. Been. A. Week!

    Regular readers know that Austin has been climbing out of a once in a century winter storm that froze our roads and wrecked our power grid. Right now it’s still 19°F, but it’s supposed to warm up to a balmy 39°F this afternoon…

  • Could be worse: ERCOT says that their quick thinking to impose rotating blackouts prevented the physical destruction of the Texas Interconnect Grid. That may even be true, but it’s sort of like a teenager saying “Thanks to my quick thinking, I only managed to burn down the garage and not the entire house!”
  • A list of every lie Joe Biden has told as President.
  • The Democrats’ minimum wage hike will help kill off the restaurant industry:

    Passage of this bill this year would lead to job losses and higher use of labor-reducing equipment and technology,” said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president for public affairs for the National Restaurant Association. “Nearly all restaurant operators say they will increase menu prices. But what is clear is that raising prices for consumers will not be enough for restaurants to absorb higher labor costs.”

  • The entire impeachment charade was a distraction from the Biden Administration’s hard left turn, including rejoining the Paris Climate agreement and stopping construction on the border wall. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • China is eating Biden’s lunch:

    But for the fact that he’s president — given his track record of having been wrong on every defense and foreign policy issue for almost five decades — it would be easy to ignore his assessment of China. This is a man who said in 2019, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.” He added, “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.” Despite the difficulty of being wrong on both occasions Biden managed it.

    Focus for a moment on what he said about the conversation with Xi. It is natural that China would be spending billions on transportation given the size of the country and the billions who inhabit it. Whether it is true that China is spending billions on climate change is another matter. It has, for decades, been spending billions on coal-fired electricity generation plants and has only recently made noises about reducing pollution.

    But “climate change” is probably the last priority for China while it is spending far greater sums on its military and cyberwar capabilities. Xi was clearly trying to gull Biden into some sort of race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that we could strangle our economy while China doesn’t do the same to its own. China may well be trying to reduce pollution — Beijing is infamous for its barely breathable brown air — but how much it is really doing remains to be seen.

    Biden apparently wants to be known as the “climate change president.” If Xi can increase Biden’s desire to make climate change his top priority for legislation and regulation (which seems altogether likely in any event) China will be greatly advantaged by Biden’s concomitant reductions in spending on the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

    To say that Biden is soft on China only proves the speaker’s command of the obvious.

  • All the lies of Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev:

    What Tenev did not say, or explain, is why his company – which is merely a client-facing front of Citadel, which buys the bulk of Robinhood’s orderflow to use it perfectly legally in any way it sees fit – was so massively undercapitalized that the DTCC required several billion more in collateral to protect Robinhood’s own investors against the company’s predatory ways of seeking to capitalize on the gamification of investing making it nothing more (or less) than a trivial pursuit to millions of GenZ and millennial investors, a point which Michael Burry made so vividly.

    The #mainstreetrevolution is a myth. Zero commissions and gamified apps were designed to feed flows to the two most influential WS trading houses. A few HFs got hurt, but if retail is moving toward more trading and away from fundamentals, WS owns that game. #Stonks by design. https://t.co/Y4raF0jiM3
    — Cassandra (@michaeljburry) February 9, 2021

    Incidentally we know why Tenev did not mention it: it’s because Robinhood’s back office is a shambles of a shoestring operation, one which never anticipated either such a surge in trading not a multi-billion collateral requirement; had Robinhood been a true brokerage instead of pretending to be one, and run merely to open as many retail accounts as it could in the shortest amount of time, thus generating the most profit in the quickest amount of time to allow its sponsors a quick and profitable exit, it would actually have been on top of this.

  • “Why Russia Is Terrified of SpaceX — and Starlink”:

    SpaceX wants to bring fast satellite broadband internet to the world — and in particular, to internet users in far-flung, rural locations, where download speeds are low and prices are high.

    One of the first places in America to get SpaceX Starlink service was Alaska, the state with the lowest population density in the country — just one person per square mile. The company next extended service into Canada (population density: three people per square mile), followed last month by service in the UK — a big jump in concentration, with 650 people per square mile. (Even in the UK, there are plenty of isolated locations where internet service is expensive, slow — or both).

    SpaceX’s globe-spanning satellite constellation should be capable of providing 100 megabit-per-second internet service to anywhere by the end of this year. You can expect that a lot of countries, no matter how urbanized they are (or not), will be lining up to sign up for Starlink service. And the more countries Starlink signs up as customers, the better the prospects for the SpaceX subsidiary’s promised IPO.

    One country that most definitely does not want Starlink, however, is Russia.

    Snip.

    As Ars points out, “Russia is planning its own satellite Internet constellation, known as ‘Sphere.'” And in contrast to SpaceX’s Starlink, which is a privately funded and privately built communications system, the 600-satellite Sphere constellation will be a project built and run by the Russian state under the aegis of its Roscosmos space agency. And that could be a problem.

    Sphere, you see, is rumored to cost $20 billion to build, may not begin launching until 2024, and won’t be completed before 2030.

    Those numbers alone tell you Sphere will never be built, Starlink or no Starlink. Russia is a profoundly broke and profoundly broken country. Sphere is just the sort of prestige project Putin loves to announce to much fanfare, national greatness vaporware that either never gets built or else creeps out into the real world years (or even decades) late and in much-reduced form, like only ordering 100 T-14 Armata tanks.

  • Iranian fuel tanker convoy to Afghanistan goes boom.
  • After warning against “far right extremists” in the army, the FBI arrests…an ex-military left-wing radical.
  • Teacher’s unions have been letterbombing Virginia’s Democratic assembly delegates to keep schools closed.
  • Why does India have a so much lower rate of death from the Wuhan coronavirus?

  • Democrats are so focused on unity they introduced a bill to punish Donald Trump after he’s dead. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • The media want you to know that it’s Trump’s fault they couldn’t investigate such trivial scandals as Lincoln Project pedophiles, because how would they have time when Orange Man Bad?
  • Speaking of the Lincoln Project, founder Rick Wilson managed to pay off his mortgage early just as the John Weaver pedophilia scandal was breaking. How fortuitous!
  • Savage:

  • Back in The Before Time, The Long Long Ago, newspapers actually defended free speech.

    Back in 1977, the New York Times maintained that as long as Nazis did not engage in any illegality, they were “entitled” to the protection of the law, and then put the onus of maintaining peace on the Skokie residents:

    The argument that they will provoke violence simply by appearing on the streets of Skokie only emphasizes the obligation of the police to keep the peace—and gives an opportunity the people of Skokie to demonstrate their respect for the law.

    These days, the Times board will chase you out of the building for allowing anyone to voice an opinion that chafes against the brittle sensitivities of its writers. The paper employs full-time speech monitors to vet wrongthink.

  • The cancel mob comes for Baen Books. Book editors and writers kindly tell them to get stuffed.
  • Special for Black History Month:

  • Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg told employees they need to “inflict pain” on Apple because Apple won’t let Facebook steal every single bit of personal data from Apple devices.
  • “Bill Gates Bankrolling Educational Organization That Says Math is Racist.” “A conglomerate of 25 educational organizations called A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction asserts that asking students to find the correct answer is an ‘inherently racist practice.’ The organization’s website lists the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as its only donor.” How many fingers, Winston?
  • Who owns Jack Ryan?
  • “Sustainable”

  • If you have a warrant out for your arrest, maybe you shouldn’t apply for a gun carry permit. Especially not if you try to use the name “Barack Obama.”
  • “Secret Service Puts Finishing Touches On Biden’s Presidential Scooter, ‘Chair Force One.'”
  • “Democrats Vow To Follow The Science Of Whichever Union Donates The Most Money.”
  • “Journalists Cheer As Jen Psaki Announces The Gulags Will Be Run By A Woman Of Color.”
  • “Man Asks That You Respect His Preferred Adjectives.” “‘Here are the adjectives I identify with,’ Becker put on social media. ‘Cool, witty, handsome, innovative, fun.’ Please use one of these adjectives when describing me. It distresses me when people use adjectives I don’t identify as,’ Becker later explained. ‘Like “creepy,” “weird,” or “off-putting.” That’s basically denying my existence and trying to genocide me.'”
  • Dog on drums:

    (Hat tip: the Ace of Spades HQ pet thread.)

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions | 3 Comments »

    Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open?

    February 18th, 2021

    Update: I ventured out to the HEB at McNeil & 183 and the major roads are passable. HEB closes at 5, and the meat section was picked almost clean, but there was a lot of edible food available in various departments if you’re flexible.

    Things are slowly warming up, and the power situation seems to be improving:

    The Governor discussed the current power situation in Texas and what the state is doing to get more Texans back online. There still remains about 10,000 megawatts (MW) that are off the power grid in Texas. About 6,000 MW have been added to the Texas grid over the past day, which is equivalent to power for about 1.2 million households. In addition to the 6,000 MW restored to the grid, additional power generation from coal and other sources will continue to come online throughout tomorrow. Small natural gas generators should sporadically add megawatts over the next 24 hours to help bring electricity to thousands of Texans. There are still challenges with all sources of generation, resulting from mechanical difficulties, gas supply issues, and the effects of extreme winter weather conditions.

    Here’s the power outage map. Things seem to change very slowly on it…

    Those on City of Austin water are also on a boil notice, and some parts of the city evidently have no water.

    I thought I would focus on what’s open and what’s not:

  • First up HEB. There are reports of HEB shelves being picked clean, and the stores that are open are only open 12-5 PM. HEB will update the list of stores closed for the day at 10 AM.

    Update: Here’s the Austin-area HEB store closed list for today:

    #236 A7 – Wells Branch & 1825
    #045 A8 – Congress & Oltorf
    #225 A10 – Hwy 71 & 290
    #265 A14 – FM 1431 & 183
    #659 A16 – Hwy 183 & Lakeline
    #388 A20 – Parmer & McNeil
    #451 A24 – 620 & 2222
    #476 A25 – Parmer & I35
    #029 A29 – Bee Cave & 360
    #091 A12 – Riverside & S. Pleasant
    #183 A15 – Lamar & Rundberg
    Kyle
    Luling
    Leander
    Kingsland
    Elgin

    Very similar to yesterday’s list. Also, the Westgate Central Market is closed, but the North Lamar location is open from 10 AM to 6 PM.

  • Next up: Walmart. The situation here seems to have improved a bit. The Sam’s at 183 and Lakeline Mall Drive is open, as is the Walmart at Northcross, and the Sam’s at 290 West and Mopac, plus the Walmarts in Manor, Elgin and Buda. All other locations appear to be closed.(The Round Rock locations of both Walmart and Sam’s showed open yesterday, but closed today.)

    Update: The 183/Lakeline Mall and 290 West/Mopac Sam’s appears to be closed, but the ones at 183 at 360 and on South I-35 now appear to be open. The Palm Valley Walmart in Round Rock also appears to be open.

  • Supposedly Randall’s and Fiesta are open.
  • I heard reports that Dollar General is open, but can’t verify it.
  • A couple of lists of open Austin restaurants.
  • Update: A crowdsource list of what’s open or closed and what they have.
  • Update: The Big Lots at McNeil at 183 was open and had a pretty good selection of snacks, plus some staples and canned goods.

    • Friday it’s supposed to get into the 40s.

    Update: Good news!

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    Posted in Austin, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Rush Limbaugh, RIP

    February 17th, 2021

    Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has died of cancer at age 70.

    Rush Limbaugh died Wednesday after a year-long battle with cancer.

    Limbaugh’s death at age 70 was announced Wednesday on his influential conservative radio program, by his wife, Kathryn.

    Limbaugh announced last February that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

    Although the cancer was expected to quickly kill Limbaugh, he received treatment and continued to host his radio program over the year.

    Shortly after his diagnosis, then-President Donald Trump surprised Limbaugh at last year’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress by awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    Then-first lady Melania Trump put the medal around Limbaugh’s neck.

    “The Rush Limbaugh Show” premiered in 1988, airing for 33 years.

    Limbaugh’s program went on the air at a time when conservative media outlets were few and far between. Liberal opinion dominated all the broadcast networks, Time, Newsweek, NPR and most newspapers. He was a breath of fresh air, and became notably more conservative after Desert Storm. Straight from the git-go, liberals hated him for daring to bust up their media monopoly, and liberal Twitter is reacting to his death with exactly the sort of grace and tact you’d expect.

    (With a side helping of wishing Henry Kissinger dead as well.)

    Limbaugh always opened his show with the quote “…with talent on loan from God,” and now he gets to give it back.

    A few tributes:

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    Posted in Media Watch, Republicans | 2 Comments »

    Interview with TPPF’s Katie Tahuahua On The Texas Winter Storm Energy Crisis

    February 17th, 2021

    I reached out to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s energy expert Katie Tahuahua about the dire energy problems brought about by the huge winter storm, here are her answers:

    1. The Texas Interconnect Grid is a separate grid from the U.S. Eastern and Western Interconnect grids. What advantages and disadvantages does this provide for Texas energy consumers?

    KT: The advantage of Texas having its own electric grid is that our communities aren’t affected by poor policy choices in other states we have no control or accountability over. However, it also means we must bear the full costs of our choices and feel the full brunt of crises like the blackouts across the state this week.

    2. What role does ERCOT serve in managing the Texas Interconnect grid?

    KT: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the Texas Interconnection Grid — although, unfortunately, the “Reliability” in its name has now been called into question.

    3. The current wave of extreme cold was forecast in advance. Why were so many electricity-producing entities caught off-guard?

    KT: There are two problems here. The first is that ERCOT waited too long to initiate conservation measures to meet increased demand as the weather turned colder. However, this delay wouldn’t have been a problem at all had Texas not put so many eggs in the renewable basket. Instead of adding more reliable fossil fuel generation to the grid over the last few years to keep up with our growing population and electricity demand, we’ve closed over 3,000MW in natural gas and clean coal and instead added 20,000MW of unreliable wind and solar to the grid. Unfortunately, all that wind and solar was barely generating when Texans needed it most. By Monday morning, half of Texas’ wind turbines were frozen solid and total wind generation bottomed out at 2% capacity by Monday night. Because of this massive gap in wind production and ERCOT’s delay, what should have been a series of brief rolling blackouts — inconvenient but manageable — instead turned into millions of Texans left in the cold and without answers.

    4. What, if any, role has ERCOT’s demand pricing policies played in helping create the current crisis?

    KT: ERCOT does not currently have demand pricing policies. While voluntary demand pricing programs could help prevent situations like this, any regulatory solution should place the cost of ensuring reliable electricity on the generators where it belongs, not on the customers.

    5. A great number of Austin households are without power right now. Has Austin energy performed notably worse than other government power entities, and what policies have contributed to making the situation worse?

    KT: Anecdotally, we know that there are communities in several areas of the state still without power. It does not appear that the blackouts are worse in Austin than anywhere else. However, Austin’s boisterous promotion of unreliable renewable energy — and their expensive failed efforts to use it — have reduced reliability for their customers and for the broader Texas grid. Unfortunately, San Antonio and CPS Energy are going down the same path that will put their ratepayers on the hook for $1 billion and further jeopardize the security of our grid.

    6. How much, if any, has the push for “renewable” energy courses like wind and solar contributed to the current energy difficulties in Texas?

    KT: It’s clear that policy decisions favoring unreliable wind and solar energy made blackouts such as this inevitable at some point. The severity of this blackout could have been reduced had ERCOT acted more swiftly — but it never would have been an issue had our grid not been so deeply penetrated by unreliable energy sources that contribute the least when they are needed the most, yet are propped up by billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies every year.

    The Texas Legislature should end these subsidies and require all electric generators to guarantee a certain amount of “dispatchable,” or readily available, power to the grid at all times. The Texas Public Policy Foundation and our Life:Powered initiative will be working closely with the legislature to preserve Texans’ access to affordable, reliable electricity no matter the weather.

    Thanks to Katie Tahuahua for taking the time to answer these questions.

    Today is the first time in almost a week that the temperature is going to get above freezing…

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    Posted in Austin, Regulation, Texas | 3 Comments »

    TPPF’s Chuck DeVore on Reasons Behind The Texas Blackouts

    February 16th, 2021

    Some brief background on why so many Texas households suddenly seem to be without power:

    Expect more on this subject in the near future.

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    Posted in Austin, Regulation, Texas | 9 Comments »

    Minneapolis Refunds The Police

    February 16th, 2021

    Remember when antifa and #BlackLivesMatter looted or burned more than 700 buildings in Minneapolis? And how the hard-left City Council’s first instinct was to call for defunding the police?

    Well, reality has a way of intruding, and now Minneapolis is going to spend $6.4M recruiting more officers following a sharp rise in crime and some 200 cops quitting after the riots and $8 million in budget cuts.

    Minneapolis is planning to spend $6.4million to hire dozens of police officers, at a time when some City Council members and activist groups have been advocating to replace the police department following the death of George Floyd.

    The City Council voted unanimously Friday to approve the additional funding that police requested.

    According to the Minneapolis Police Department, there are only 638 officers available to work, which is roughly 200 fewer than usual.

    An unprecedented number of officers quit or went on extended medical leave after Floyd’s death and the unrest that followed, which included the burning of a police precinct.

    Funny how that works.

    With new recruit classes, the city anticipates it will have 674 officers available at the end of the year, with another 28 in the hiring process, according to the Star Tribune.

    Now if only Austin’s foolish City Council would also reverse course on their asinine decision to cut the police budget…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 5 Comments »

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