Dennis Prager Show - Everything is Bigger in Texas! Including the Government Incompetence
Aired: 2021-09-23
Duration: 04:33


=== Four Million Texans Without Power (02:22) ===

[00:00:00]  The Great Texas Freeze of 2021, given by Jason Isaac, a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
[00:00:10]  Let's hear a minute or so of the beginning.
[00:00:15]  The week of Valentine's Day, 2021, the temperature dropped below zero.
[00:00:19]  Nobody could remember it being this cold for this long.
[00:00:22]  This was Texas, not Siberia.
[00:00:25]  But Texas is the energy state.
[00:00:27]  There was nothing to fear.
[00:00:29]  Just go home, turn on the heat, and hunker down.
[00:00:31]  That's how it should have gone.
[00:00:33]  Instead, over five days, four million Texans lost power during what turned out to be the coldest winter storm in half a century.
[00:00:42]  Hundreds died, including an 11-year-old boy who froze to death in his sleep.
[00:00:47]  The state's electric grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, later reported the state was just four minutes away from total grid collapse.
[00:00:56]  The media was quick to blame the state government for not being fully prepared and not acting fast enough.
[00:01:02]  This may be true, but ERCOT's mistakes were symptoms, not the cause of the problem.
[00:01:07]  The real cause is decades of misguided policies that have left the Lone Star State with an unreliable energy infrastructure.
[00:01:14]  It's a cautionary tale that the rest of the country needs to learn from.
[00:01:19]  Alright, let's hold it there and go to my guest, Jason Isaac.
[00:01:25]  And thank you for coming on the show, Jason.
[00:01:29]  It's, listening to it again, I realize four million Texans did not have power, is that correct?
[00:01:39]  That's correct, for several days, mind you, several days.
[00:01:43]  With freezing temperatures?
[00:01:46]  Yeah, the coldest temperatures we'd seen for that long of a period for over 50 years.
[00:01:52]  Right.
[00:01:55]  Well, before you tell us why it happened, am I right in being somewhat puzzled by the lack of curiosity in America as to how that happened?

=== Market Distorting Policies Pushed (02:25) ===

[00:02:10]  Yeah, I think you are.
[00:02:12]  It's interesting, and I'm in the swamp right now in Washington, D.C., and I've had a lot of members of Congress come up and ask me still about the February freeze and what caused it.
[00:02:23]  And I let them know that the problem is rooted in market-distorting policies that started in Washington, D.C. And then Texas even passed more of its own to prop up these unreliable electric providers to say that we're number one.
[00:02:39]  And in Texas, we like to say we're number one.
[00:02:41]  Everything's bigger in Texas, and unfortunately, we are the number one state for wind-generated electricity.
[00:02:48]  It's a third of our grid now.
[00:02:50]  33% of our grid is unreliable, variable, renewable electric generation.
[00:02:57]  And we've suffered the cost of that in February.
[00:03:02]  And we found out what's going to happen.
[00:03:03]  And it's things that have been happening in Germany, things that have been happening in California.
[00:03:07]  And I think people in Texas woke up and realized that cold weather is much more dangerous than warm weather.
[00:03:15]  Yeah.
[00:03:16]  That's right.
[00:03:17]  Well, far more people continue to die of cold weather in the world than from warm weather.
[00:03:22]  So, if what you're saying is accurate, then should this happen again in three years, then the exact same thing will happen again in three years.
[00:03:36]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:03:37]  And what's being pushed in Washington, D.C. with this...
[00:03:40]  Build China Back Better program, the reconciliation package.
[00:03:43]  It's going to happen all across the grid if this package gets passed.
[00:03:48]  What has happened in Texas?
[00:03:50]  Now, I don't think it's going to happen in Texas again because the governor, we had some legislation that we supported and advocated for this past legislative session in Texas.
[00:03:58]  The governor followed through with a strong executive order telling the Public Utility Commission of Texas to direct...
[00:04:07]  The cost of unreliable electric generation on the generators themselves, not on the ratepayers.
[00:04:15]  And it's all pushed down to the ratepayers now.
[00:04:18]  And so it'll be nice that the generators are going to be the ones that have to pay for reliable electricity.
[00:04:23]  All right, hold it there for a moment.
[00:04:24]  This is an incredibly important subject.
[00:04:27]  ReliefFactor.com, 800-500-8384, my friends.