In 2012, Gail Collins wrote a book titled As Texas Goes...How The Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. It was, in my opinion, a very well-written account of the changes sweeping America as influenced by its second-largest state. Events that have been trickling down to the rest of American politics ever since, In the book, one of the most explosive and timely political books in years, Collins declares that "what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas anymore."
Not until she visited Texas, that proud state of big oil and bigger ambitions, did Collins, the best-selling author and columnist for New York Times, realize that she had missed the one place that mattered most in America’s political landscape. Raised in Ohio, Collins had previously seen the American fundamental divide as a war between the Republican heartland and its two liberal coasts. But the real story, she came to see, was in Texas, where Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Perry had created a conservative political agenda that is now sweeping the country and defining our national identity. Through its vigorous support of banking deregulation, lax environmental standards, and draconian tax cuts, through its fierce championing of states' rights, gun ownership, and, of course, sexual abstinence, Texas, with Governor Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences for us all. Like it or not, as Texas goes, so goes the nation.
That all came to the forefront recently in the wake of a massive winter storm that blanketed most of the state with something rarely seen - piles of snow and sweeping power outages. Leave it to a blackout to shine a big, bright spotlight on the problems lying deep in the heart of Texas, which has now cancelled all Covid-19 restrictions in the midst of rising numbers of new variant cases.
I lived for a few years as a young adult in Lubbock and, for a few years recently just outside Tyler, so I can hardly consider myself a native Texan, but in those years, I learned a lot about Texas exceptionalism. The question of whether the Lone Star State should secede from the union was a yearly issue. Many people I knew argued absolutely yes. “We are fine on our own! We have our own power grid!”
Well, they were wrong.
Recently, wrapped in multiple blankets and layers, many Texans could only laugh at their past faith in the state's supposedly mighty grid. A winter storm might have been the precipitating event that left millions of Texans struggling without power in record-low temperatures. But what really brought the state to its knees was a chilling mix of unfettered deregulation, partisan gaslighting and leadership failure.
Was anyone prepared? Though utilities knew Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state-energy regulator known as ERCOT, planned possible outages, residents did not get advance warning. Many in Dallas scrambled to try to find shelter and warmth, only to run into hotels that were full or also without power. Snow and ice on the roads caused fatal car accidents. In Fort Worth, residents were advised to boil water, because power had been shut off to treatment facilities.
Texans caring for newborns, the elderly or sick family members - Covid-19 takes no time off for bad weather, after all - tweeted in anger and desperation. Hospitals faced an influx of hypothermia cases. A woman and young girl in Houston died after being poisoned by carbon monoxide from a car being run in an effort to generate heat.
And underneath it all was this shocking question: How could this happen in America’s largest energy-producing state?
Deregulation is clearly a central part of the answer. In the 2000s, Texas leaders opted to deregulate the independent power grid, leaving providers with no incentive to prepare for infrequent risks.
After a 2011 cold spell produced a crisis, federal regulators warned that the state needed to invest in winterizing the energy supply infrastructure. That advice went unheeded. You can draw a direct line from there to market absurdities such as those seen recently, when the wholesale price of electricity in Houston spiked from $22 a megawatt-hour to about $9,000, while 4 million Texas homes had no power.
Deeper is the failure of leadership, which the crisis placed on full display, as a number of state politicians were busily employing shameless gaslighting and partisan scapegoating to keep their partisan bases warm and toasty.
The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, a day before he gave a formal address to Texans on the disaster on his watch, appeared on Fox News to assert that the blackouts were somehow evidence that Democrats’ Green New Deal would not work. He joined a chorus on the right blaming frozen wind turbines for the shambolic power situation - though wind accounts for only about 10 percent of the state’s winter power supply.
But, former governor and United States Energy Secretary Rick Perry, boiled it all down to that Texas mythos, saying, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Talk about a Texas-size delusion. The suffering of Texans is worth it, so long as they can stick it to the feds!
Texas' culture of rugged individualism puts the burden on vulnerable Texans to survive together, as best they can, overlaying crises caused by systemic failures of leadership. They were already struggling with Covid-19, having to cope with reduced incomes and job loss, and having to keep up with distance learning. Given these interlocking challenges, real leadership should have meant acting with foresight, and sparing no expense, to ensure that Texans could access power and heat through the winter.
Instead, the suffering is compounded by Republican leaders who would rather serve up stale, partisan talking points than do what is best for Texans who deserve so much better.
Texan exceptionalism? I love my family and my mother's home state, but it is time for that myth to come to a cold, dead end.
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