Texas: all hat no cattle?

[doodle]

3tmo5ws621i61.png (175.65 KiB) Viewed 5190 times

[pp4me]

Where do you see a contradiction? If they seceded from the U.S. they wouldn't have to ask for Federal Aid. They would have their own emergency fund.

[Lonestar]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

[Hal]

We had a good laugh at ZeroHedge's reporting style
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/energy ... imits-grid

Still, $9 per Kw/Hr !!! Entrepreneurial types should get there with portable generators - you would make a fortune feeding into the grid

[D1984]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

[I Shrugged]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

$673 per person wouldn't be a very big hurdle. That's always an interesting set of numbers . It illustrates how much Wall Street, big corps and big banks make, and thus pay in taxes. But the rich aren't paying their share! Virginia also shows how much taxpayer money goes to feed the beast.

[doodle]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

So, in other words, Texas is currently a welfare queen?

[Lonestar]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

There is the distinct possibility that if Texas were not forced to adhere to certain federal laws, some expenditures just might be reduced significantly. This would remove the state from the "recipient" status. Interesting that the change to a "recipient" state occurred just four years ago.

[pp4me]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

There is the distinct possibility that if Texas were not forced to adhere to certain federal laws, some expenditures just might be reduced significantly. This would remove the state from the "recipient" status. Interesting that the change to a "recipient" state occurred just four years ago.

So they have smart people in Texas who know how to do accounting with the Federal government and come out on the plus side?

What's wrong that?

[D1984]

You do realize, if left alone, Texas would be the 10th largest economy in the world. If Texas were to secede, keep all of the taxes sent to Washington, you think federal aid would ever be needed?

Texas has been a "recipient" state rather than a "donor" state since maybe 2017 or so; if Texas seceded, kept all the taxes it currently sends to DC, and in return it received not a nickel from the Federal government (since at that point it would be its own independent nation) it would be in a less financially advantageous position than it is now; see https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal ... ts-portal/

There is the distinct possibility that if Texas were not forced to adhere to certain federal laws, some expenditures just might be reduced significantly. This would remove the state from the "recipient" status. Interesting that the change to a "recipient" state occurred just four years ago.

So they have smart people in Texas who know how to do accounting with the Federal government and come out on the plus side?

What's wrong that?

Absolutely nothing per se.....but it still doesn't change the fact that if Texas was an independent country (or several dependent countries......IIRC if Texas ever did secede it technically has the right to split into Texas proper and four other states if it so chose as per its 1845 annexation and as later reaffirmed by Congress in 1850....but that's a whole other can of worms since if this happened I can see the prosperous cities and their immediate suburbs/inner exurbs splitting off from rural Texas and the RGV) that neither sent nor received anything to Washington DC it would still likely be worse off in a purely financial sense. The rightness or wrongfulness of an action from a moral dessert standpoint or a "justifiable/not justifiable" paradigm doesn't change simple mathematical facts.

What I find interesting, though, is that Texas (and pretty much every other recipient state when it comes down to it) actually has done very little in any truly planned and deliberate fashion to maximize its take and come out on the plus side....even Kentucky (which gets almost $3 for every $1 it sends to the Feds). By way of example, merely manipulating a state's healthcare system, insurance laws/regulations, health insurance exchanges, and how it interacts with the ACA alone could net a state the size of Texas probably $45 to $50 billion more a year in Federal money with no true actual negative changes in any of its citizens' real cash incomes or standard of living.....and that's not even counting what could be done if it accepted Medicaid expansion and did so in a way designed to deliberately game the system to get as many Federal dollars as possible for as little state expenditure as possible.

[doodle]

I wonder how North and South Dakota are able to generate 30% of their power from wind...(double that of Texas) with some extremely harsh winter weather rather routinely.

[I Shrugged]

I wonder how North and South Dakota are able to generate 30% of their power from wind...(double that of Texas) with some extremely harsh winter weather rather routinely.

To start with, I bet they don’t heat with electricity.

i would also bet that they have a different system for backing up the subsidized environmental electric sources that are sporadic than Texas did, it sounds like Texas #ERCOT was making cuts due to competition from the subsidized sources..

Two problems in #Texas, one short-term and exacerbated by the long term issue, and one long term. The short term failure came at about 1 AM Monday when #ERCOT should have seen the loads soaring due to plummeting temperatures and arranged for more generation. Texas came very close to having a system-wide outage for the whole state (ERCOT area, about 85% of the state) due to not arranging for more generation. This tripped the grid, knocking some reliable thermal plants (gas and coal) offline.

This was a failure of the grid operator (ERCOT) not the power plants. In the last 4-5 years, Texas lost a net of 3,000 megawatts of thermal out of a total installed capacity 73,000 megawatts today. We lost the thermal power because operators couldn’t see a return on investment due to be undercut by wind and solar which is cheap for two reasons – it’s subsidized and it doesn’t have to pay for the costs of grid reliability by purchasing battery farms or contracting with gas peaker plants to produce power when needed, not when they can.

Meanwhile, Texas has seen a growth of 20,000 megawatts of wind and solar over the same period to 34,000 megawatts of installed capacity (they rarely perform anywhere close to capacity). This subsidized (state and federal) wind and solar have pushed reliable thermal operators out of business or prevented new generation from being built as operators can’t make money off of the market. This reduced the capacity margin – grids must have excess capacity to ensure stability. Texas is experiencing what California has – with California affecting the entire Western Interconnection due to its policies. Blackouts are a feature of the push to have more unreliable renewables on the grid. Must pay $$ for reliable backup w/ renewables.

As a delicious irony, helicopters are being used to deice frozen wind turbine blades, using about 100 times as much energy to deice compared to energy saved from using the windmills for power. Not such a green new deal.

[doodle]

We should probably go back to coal or maybe texans could heat their homes with cattle dung? Fossil fuels most certainly represent the pinnacle of human power generation and there is certainly nothing to worry about with fracking, open pit mining, or a host of other environmental externalities that the fossil fuel industry conveniently is subsidized on by not having to pay for.

As a delicious irony, helicopters are being used to deice frozen wind turbine blades, using about 100 times as much energy to deice compared to energy saved from using the windmills for power. Not such a green new deal.

Can you expound on how that 100 times figure was arrived at?

[vnatale]

An analysis I yesterday read in a daily newsletter of the real causes of the Texas problem.

Vinny


The real cause of the disaster in Texas

If blaming Texans for their plight is obscene, so too is people on the right �� particularly Texas’ governor � disingenuously blaminng renewable energy and liberal boogeymen for this. Which, given that the actual agency which runs the electrical power grid in Texas blames frozen natural gas facilities as the problem you’d think wouldn’t even pass the laugh test, but then you remember what I wrote on Monday about the right wing disinformation machine and how it works and, welp, here you have it:


Andrew Lawrence @ndrew_lawrence

Texas Gov. Abbott blames solar and wind for the blackouts in his state and says "this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America"

February 17th 2021

779 Retweets4,938 Likes



You’re not gonna get Sean Hannity or Fox News to push back here. You’re not gonna get them to note that nearly 90% of power in Texas comes from fossil fuels and that it’s the fossil fuel infrastructure, not the wind structure, that has failed. Or that, to the extent there is a shortfall in wind power generation, it is only because Abbott and Texas officials have rejected regulation and oversight that would require winterization of turbines. I mean, such turbines work just fine in the North Sea for Pete’s sake.

This humanitarian disaster currently going on in Texas is a function of (a) frozen gas wells and gas/coal-fired power plants; (b) Texas’ insistence upon having an independent power grid which is specifically designed to avoid federal oversight as opposed to an integrated grid which would allow the importing of energy from other states; (c) deregulation and lack of enforcement of regulations within Texas which led to things like no one requiring power companies to winterize their facilities; and (d) an act of God or Mother Nature or climate change whatever you want to blame for dropping an arctic blast on the state. Most of that is a direct function of Republican officials’ refusal to run a government that actually helps people as opposed to a government which allows corporations and the wealthy to do whatever the hell they want, the consequences be damned.

Greg Abbott and Fox news nonetheless blame wind, solar, liberals, AOC, the Green New Deal, Californians, and any number of other lefty monsters for this. And, because of the epistemic closure that exists on the right, they will likely get away with such lies, at least among their core base of support, and they will likely escape any responsibility for their manifest failures and the suffering that failure has caused.

[GT]

You guys have it all wrong.

AOC has figured it out.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
@AOC
·
Feb 17
The infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you *don’t* pursue a Green New Deal.

[doodle]

For those who don't support greener energy tech, would you be okay with fracking operations under your source of drinking water? A coal ash slurry pit held back by an earthen damn above your neighborhood? Oil and gas refineries and drilling rigs on your waterways?

I'm not denying that fossil fuels are a tremendous source of energy and still have a place within our society, but let's not ignore the environmental side effects they produce. I'm clueless why cleaner energy is a political battle point.

[doodle]

i don't think anyone is against clean energy! the problem is clean energy sources are "not ready for prime time" and no government mandate/subsidy is fixing that.. in practice government mandates/subsidies tend to cause far more harm than letting the move to better energy develop on its natural time line...

Isnt externalizing the environmental and health costs from fossil fuels a form of subsidy?

As far as ready for "prime time" I think Pointedstick made a pretty compelling argument that they in fact are and the evidence is pretty apparent by the many places both domestically and globally generating a large percentage of their electricity from clean renewable sources. This is a transitional process that will take time and continued research and development for sure but to pretend like the future of power generation lies in coal and oil is nonsense. If america takes on that backwards looking mindset we are going to lose out to countries like China that are making large investments in clean energy. China will become the global leader in designing, developing, and building these projects and technologies while the United States has its thumb up it's ass.

We're competing against countries that place national importance on investing in research and development. We are going to lose if we take on the mindset that our private sector is going to fund all of this and stay competitive.

[vnatale]

For those who don't support greener energy tech, would you be okay with fracking operations under your source of drinking water? A coal ash slurry pit held back by an earthen damn above your neighborhood? Oil and gas refineries and drilling rigs on your waterways?

I'm not denying that fossil fuels are a tremendous source of energy and still have a place within our society, but let's not ignore the environmental side effects they produce. I'm clueless why cleaner energy is a political battle point.

As I glance up and look through my bedroom window beyond some trees, I know that in the late 1970s less than 1/2 mile from my house there had been plans to build a nuclear power plant there!

[Tortoise]

i don't think anyone is against clean energy! the problem is clean energy sources are "not ready for prime time" and no government mandate/subsidy is fixing that.. in practice government mandates/subsidies tend to cause far more harm than letting the move to better energy develop on its natural time line...

[...]

We're competing against countries that place national importance on investing in research and development. We are going to lose if we take on the mindset that our private sector is going to fund all of this and stay competitive.

Researching and developing new green energy technologies is different from mandating or subsidizing their use within public power grids, isn't it?

I can understand support for government-funded research and development of new green technologies, but I'm less understanding of the mandates and subsidies to get power grids to adopt those new technologies faster than the market would otherwise.

[doodle]

i don't think anyone is against clean energy! the problem is clean energy sources are "not ready for prime time" and no government mandate/subsidy is fixing that.. in practice government mandates/subsidies tend to cause far more harm than letting the move to better energy develop on its natural time line...

[...]

We're competing against countries that place national importance on investing in research and development. We are going to lose if we take on the mindset that our private sector is going to fund all of this and stay competitive.

Researching and developing new green energy technologies is different from mandating or subsidizing their use within public power grids, isn't it?

I can understand support for government-funded research and development of new green technologies, but I'm less understanding of the mandates and subsidies to get power grids to adopt those new technologies faster than the market would otherwise.

I don't disagree, except that our market is not pricing in and instead externalizing the full cost of fossil fuels from an environmental standpoint. It isn't fair to have a non polluting technology compete dollar for dollar with a technology that pollutes significantly and has a high probability of exacerbating the speed at which our climate changes and human civilizations have to adapt.

[GT]

For those who don't support greener energy tech, would you be okay with fracking operations under your source of drinking water? A coal ash slurry pit held back by an earthen damn above your neighborhood? Oil and gas refineries and drilling rigs on your waterways?

I'm not denying that fossil fuels are a tremendous source of energy and still have a place within our society, but let's not ignore the environmental side effects they produce. I'm clueless why cleaner energy is a political battle point.

I am all for renewable energy - I want solar, thermal and wind power to work.

For my part:

I followed the construction of the Honda House in California
https://www.hondasmarthome.com/

I reviewed the solar roof
https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

I can tell you my home owners association vetoed solar panels and the other options were not ready in my area

I ended up with Cellulose insulation as my passive form of energy conservation

[vnatale]

AOC Raises $2 Million for Texas As Ted Cruz Asks Biden for Federal Aid After Cancun Fallout



https://www.newsweek.com/aoc-raises-2-m ... ut-1570696

[Lonestar]

I could be a lot more impressed by Ms. AOC's love for the state of Texas if she would perform her charitable acts without injecting politics into her effort.

It appears she saw a wonderful opportunity to belittle Mr. Cruz, and at the same time help in the disaster relief. As you know, Cruz was almost defeated by the liberal Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke in his last election. Ms. AOC and others are seeing many opportunities for turning Texas "blue" in future elections. Cruz appears to be doing his best to help her.

[ppnewbie]

As someone who works in infrastructure. This kind of thing happens. In my field its called "technical debt". There are so many things that happen on a day to day, year to year basis that black swan events always get ignored. The debt keeps growing and growing...until kaboom!

It's just the way it is. IMHO - It would be good to just calmly figure out how to patch things up in the most cost effective manner and prevent further events like this particular one (because you cannot predict the next different black swan).

[Cortopassi]

Hey, I know this is in the politics section -- I do lurk at times.

The Texas thing -- one specific aspect caught my eye. Everything I hear makes it sound like Texas disconnected itself at some point in the past from the more "national" interconnected grid.

Is this true, and if so, why? Doesn't make senseto unless it was crazy expensive or something? If you can still source your electricity from California or Illinois, for example, if you lost part of your generating capability, but the power lines were still intact.