Tim Boyd was the mayor of Colorado City, Texas until today. He was forced to resign after one of the most tone deaf political statements that made Newt Gingrich’s victim blaming (“failure of citizenship”) look like a kind and tasteful gesture.
Ex Colorado City mayor catching heat for comments about citizens affected by cold
The now former mayor of Colorado City is catching some heat after a social media post berating citizens affected by the cold.
In a Facebook post made Tuesday morning, Tim Boyd wrote that it is “not the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice!”
Addressing power outages, Boyd writes, “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
“Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic),” Boyd continues.
He’s actually wishing and hoping for people to die of cold, as if the actions of republicans who caused the problem were blameless.
Texas deregulated the energy industry to maximize profit and to exempty large corporations (both energy consumers and producers) from accountability or acting in the common good. When energy shortages happen (such as during the winter storm), the energy companies increase prices to make a profit rather than produce more energy to prevent people from freezing to death.
This happened exactly the same way and for the same reasons as California’s energy crisis of 2001, driven by greed and deregulation pushed by corrupt republiclowns. They knew this was a potential disaster. They wanted it to happen.
As Chris Hayes reports, Fox Nuisance and rightwing politicians are trying to blame windmills and clean energy for the disaster, rather than the dependence on a poorly built and fossil fuel dependent infrastructure.
.
.
The republiclown governor Greg Abbott is attempting to blame those running the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). But it was he and previous governor Dan Patrick who created this system of disaster capitalism and cronyism.
.
.
Does this mean that, as with California 20 years ago, that Texas can now recall its governor and replace him with a liberal movie star? The ghost of Enron demands it.
How about a musician instead? Steve Earle comes to mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Earle
Predictably, the Rational National has a good take on the situation. He points out how wind turbines in Canada’s northern territories face weather around -30C yet don’t fail, while Texas’s turbines fail in negative single digits.
It was only -19C this morning here in sunny semi-tropical Southern Ontario but nobody mentioned any problem with the local wind farm.
From what I’ve read, it isn’t terribly difficult to keep windmills running during extremely cold weather with built-in heating elements and the like, but it is expensive. Why bother with that expense in Texas, when we know the climate isn’t subject to wild variations these days? /s
An article that I read yesterday suggested that wind turbine blades can be made with a carbon fiber layer. Pass some of the power from the mill through the carbon fiber and the ice falls off.
The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!
So wait, the government that people pay taxes to and the utility companies that they pay fees to don’t owe them any services in times of disaster? That’s quite an extraordinary statement even from someone who presumably believes in unregulated capitalism.
I can’t get over the bit where he says the power-outs and subsequently freezing to death are a personal choice.
Boy-oh-Boyd, your eugenics are dangling out, you cold-hearted bastard.
Dan Patrick is the current lieutenant governor of Texas, possibly a future governor there, not yet a “former governor”.
Much of Texas’s energy infrastructure failure does derive from actual former governor Rick Perry, who “failed upward” to spend four years as DJ Trump’s federal Secretary of Energy.
So far I haven’t seen any reportage specifically linking the current catastrophe to the former former governor – possibly that means George W. Bush never found out there is such a thing as “state energy infrastructure” to mismanage.
The Bush “deregulation” connection to the Texas energy system disaster emerges.