All-Encompassing Texas Disaster Affected Everyone

    Ice Storm Bordered on “cataclysmic” Catastrophe Levels, Writer Says

February 28, 2021 – The Texas legislature is holding marathon sessions to adopt standards that would protect its citizens from deadly electric service outages that happened in a recent snow and ice storm.

Millions of Texans lost service in an unexpected blizzard that killed over 80 people and resulted in electric bills of over $10,000.

“It was the most snow in Austin since 1949,” Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Ken Herman of the Austin American-Statesman, told the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields on Sunday. “This impacted everyone in Texas in some way...It was an all-encompassing disaster you couldn’t escape.”

Herman discussed how the Texas decision in 1999 operated on its own independent grid – unconnected to regional or national grids – doomed Texas consumers. Herman said the state’s decision to deregulate the industry also caused lax oversight required in other states.

Herman also discussed Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s decision to run to a vacation spot in Cancun, Mexico, while his constituents suffered, noting that Cruz’s many detractors are pummeling him. Herman remembered a Cruz description from former Minnesota U.S. Senator Al Franken.

“I like Ted Cruz more than my fellow Senators like him,” Franken said. “And I hate him.”

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Listen to the Retail Politics Podcast with Gerry Shields at http://www.retailpoliticspodcast or on Apple or Spotify.