Ineptitude, bigotry, and corruption. Disasters in their own right.

Rule of Claw of the Daily Kos community commented on the shoddy construction of many Texas homes. That included putting water pipes in exterior walls … where they can freeze. Then the advice is to open the wall and expose the pipes to the heat of the room. Except if the power is out and the room is cold. Even gas heat required electric starters. So … when you call the insurance company about the burst pipes and water damage, they’ll ask if you took “reasonable” efforts to maintain the temperature inside the house. Who gets to define “reasonable” … hmm? They’ll be searching for every loophole because they’re facing two million claims. A lot of homes in Texas may soon be worthless. Marissa Higgins of Kos gathered together tweets and videos of life in Texas. They show the damaged homes, people in huge lines at grocery stores, and complaints about the GOP controlled state government. That last category includes Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. She tweeted in response to Gov. Greg Abbott blaming the situation on the Green New Deal. That’s a strange comment because the GND is a proposal, not law.

The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you *don’t* pursue a Green New Deal.

K. Murray responded:

Remember when they said food lines and power outages would come because of "socialism"? It actually just took Republican leadership in Texas.

In another tweet AOC wrote:

Republicans could trip over their own shoelaces and they’d still find a way to blame me, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, the Green New Deal, BLM, anything but accept responsibility for their own actions and dealings. Ineptitude, bigotry, and corruption. Disasters in their own right.

Meteor Blades, in an Earth Matters column for Kos included an excerpt from a New York Times article:

As the deep freeze that has sparked rolling power blackouts to 4 million Texans continues, experts point out that the first to have their electricity cut off are marginalized communities.

They’ll also be the last to be reconnected. They don’t have the money to retreat to somewhere warm. The crazy way Texas charges for power means the poor will not be able to afford next month’s bill. Beto O’Rourke tweeted a thread, beginning with:

Texans are suffering without power because those in power have failed us. As with Covid, a natural disaster has become far deadlier due to the inaction & ineptitude of Abbott and Texas’ Republican leadership. This didn’t have to happen and doesn’t have to continue.

O’Rourke included a map from PowerOutage.US showing scattered places, a line from Louisiana to West Virginia (probably following a storm), an area in Virginia, another in Oregon, … and Texas. Pretty much all of it that is served by the state power grid shows significant power outages. I’ve read (though don’t have a link) that Texas has its own separate power grid because they didn’t want to play by national rules, those pesky things that protect the customer. I just looked at that Power Outage website specifically for Texas. It looks a lot better than the image in O’Rourke’s tweet. Mark Sumner of Kos reported Tim Boyd, GOP mayor of Colorado City, Texas, summarized the GOP position quite well in a Facebook post:

No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! … Only the strong will survive and the week [weak] will perish. ... I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out! If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal with out and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family. ... This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts.

Boyd was back with another post in which he resigned. I’ve posted about Leah McElrath in Houston and her dire situation without power. She reported yesterday evening her power came back on. In Germany they celebrate Carnival in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday (which was yesterday) and the start of Lent. In the two years I lived there this seemed to be a reason to drink a lot for several days, which didn’t appeal to me. However, I did attend the Carnival parade in Cologne one year and was a bit surprised at how rude the floats could be in skewering the politicians of the day. I heard the Dusseldorf floats tended to be even more rude. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a photo from this year’s Dusseldorf event. It wasn’t a parade, but there were a few floats. One of them shows the nasty guy has been skewered – and that’s definitely the right word. See here for the rest.