So all week I've been reading about the bills for heating in Texas shooting through the roof even while the electricity was not working... We're talking like $8.5k electricity/heating bills for the surge in demand/dip in supply. And that was the last time they looked at it... It sounds like it's just one supplier so far with the crazy price gouging, but still. It's worse than fucking medical bills.

But these are people who pay like $350 per month for their heat/electricity. And supposedly part of the problem is that Texas is on its own grid so that it doesn't cost the users as much due to reduction in federal regulations.  But I mean, I JUST paid my electrical/heating bill and it's $137 for February -- which is actually $35 LESS than my January bill EVEN WITH the ridiculously stupidly cold Arctic blast during the February billing cycle. And I get upset when I have to turn the heat on and my bills go up over $100 (I don't use much air conditioning at all in the summertime -- only if it gets too ridiculously hot for the cat and then I never set it lower than 80F.)  Anyway. $140 or so is what I consider a stupidly pricey electrical/heat bill. AND for the last decade or so ever since it was made available, I choose to pay an extra .01 per kwh (a grand total of $8.47 this month) to pay extra for the green power tomorrow to make sure all my kwh come from solar/wind and to help MG&E phase out everything but renewable sources. Also, on EVERY bill there's a state low-income asst fee which is to help those below the poverty line pay their bills AND in WI it's illegal to shut off power/electrical service when temperatures are too low or too high for it to be unsafe if it was cancelled. It means that if someone loses a job and can't make all their bills, they can not only apply for state assistance for heat, but that the electrical/utility companies can't turn it off on them for non-payment if they need to prioritize other bills until they're back on their feet. AND, due to covid-19 relief laws, there are programs if covid related reasons are why you can't pay your electricity/heat (as well as the housing freeze.) 

Anyway. I just can't fucking imagine surge pricing taking my electrical/heat bill up to even $300, let alone $1k or $8.5k.... Tell me again how the fuck then their system reduces prices for consumers by not being connected to any major power grid because I don't understand. 

Because I mean, i can't blame Texans for not knowing how to deal with cold weather or shut their water off -- you don't know what you don't know. And I mean, southern transplants to WI have caused flooding issues in my own building in other units by not realizing that you can't just take off to disappear for the winter and turn your heat down all the way (I guess they didn't have pet or plants) because it causes pipes to burst. Happened a couple years ago in unit A, just happened in unit E (which is right above unit A) which damaged unit A yet again.... So anyway, not knowing how to turn off water mains and not realizing about burst pipes, I mean you don't know what you don't know. I mean, it's one thing to laugh at people who don't know how to drive on small amounts of snow, but something else to laugh at burst pipes and no heat -- that shit is life threatening. And there are reasons it's not allowed to happen in places that have real winters. Or that burst pipes can cause the water reserves to plummet so nobody has it. 

 But HOW do you never winterize your power grid enough to handle a freeze without surge pricing your customers over it.  The regulations exist to make sure that situations like this never fucking happen. And how do you not negotiate with the other grids, outside the state, and at least get power to your clients even if it requires paying fines/fees to regulations that the other electrical grids must follow. This is just insane to me that someone might end up owing massive debt over not having more than a handful of kwh of power to stay in a freezing home.... And to millions of people. 

People can't get food or even water. Hospitals can't function. Babies are dying because their mothers can't warm up a fucking bottle of formula for them. People can't get dialysis because you need water for dialysis machines to work. In San Antonio there's a fire blazing from an apartment building that the fire trucks can't bring enough water to put it out and last I checked it was several building and cars on the street and uncontained fire in the middle of their winter snow/ice storm deep freeze. People who don't know the first thing about carbon monoxide are going into hospitals for carbon monoxide poisoning because they didn't know they shouldn't run gas burning anything inside an enclosed space, even to stay warm, because they're desperate and didn't know better. (Again I consider this basic knowledge -- like creosote reducing logs for your chimney so you DON'T block the chimney and end up giving yourself carbon monoxide poisoning.) Over 500 admitted for CO poisoning, and who knows how many can't get in or don't know to call because CO poisoning just makes you very tired/flu like akin to anemia (and is also similar symptoms of hypothermia) since it binds to your hemoglobin tighter than O2 does. So if you don't know how it happens from burning things and accumulates without proper ventilation and you don't realize the symptoms of it are that close to anemia/hypothermia, how would you even know to call in for an emergency? You might just think it the cold....

And don't even get me started about the houses that are now going to need to be condemned and what this will due to home-owner's insurance and housing crises and property values and people having lost literally everything they ever owned and they probably didn't have a proper catalogue or riders or valuation for property loss in their insurance they bought to be able to assess replacing things...

It's just... Unfathomable to me that the people in charge of the electrical/heat grid in Texas allowed it to reach this point. This is just... Basic ass community survival shit in the north...and this is hardly a utopia, people do suffer and poverty is an actual thing....but still compared to Texas... how they have failed at this so terribly in a couple days to throw the entire state (and neighboring states) into a state of natural disaster emergency like a third world country.  This is fucking worse than the photos and stories that Jacob Riis collected and published about NYC slums of the 1800s to force changes and create early poverty safety networks and housing regulations in the city. (If you haven't read Jacob Riis, you should. It's hard reading/pictures, but it's important journalistic work. How The Other Half Lives was required reading in one of my American Lit courses because my professor thought it was important we know about early investigative journalism and the real America happening alongside the transcendentalist idealism. He was right about this..)  And what people are suffering in Texas right now are experiencing  is like the late 1800s tenements living for themselves...Not the luxe of Downton Abby side of the time period, but the squalor of most immigrants and working poor of the era.  And it's horrible. And completely unnecessary in the modern world.

And then to charge individuals $8.5k across a handful of days for heat/energy that you're not even getting them enough of for basic functionality. It's just... For fuck's sake... How the fuck do they fuck up basic governance THIS bad?!?!

All those poor hurting and dying humans and animals.... All the unnecessary suffering....  Death is a part of life, same as births -- but needless suffering should never be a part of it. Karmic suffering is one thing because it's experiencing the opposite side of the pain you have caused others, but needless suffering is just cruelty.  And as far as I can see, this is just needless suffering. Sure people need to learn and learn fast to make the systemic changes necessary -- but there's no way this many millions of people DESERVE this level of suffering to level out their own past karmic acts of cruelty.  This is just such fucking gross negligence and extortionate prices... And the people suffering for this negligience and racketeering aren't the wealthy entitled fuckers who are kool-aid drinking trumpie cult members...they're mostly not the ones suffering during this preventable tragedy, it's communities of color and paycheck to paycheck lower middle class who are suffering. And it's just insane. And heartbreaking.  And all of this suffering was so easily preventable. So easily preventable to provide a cheaper more reliable service easily winterized with backups to be certain this didn't fucking happen. 

I mean, it's just such a fucking shitshow of suffering.... And all of it unnecessary.