The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature authorized $6.4 billion in bonds to pay for losses recorded by electricity & natural gas businesses during the 2021 winter storm. Our GOP Governor signed the bill into law.
Oddly, ordinary Texans weren't compensated for their losses during the storms, nor for the deaths resulting from the failure of the Texas power grid. Instead, consumers were stuck with a bill for $6.4 billion.
We may be paying off those bonds for 30 years. That means Texans who weren't even born when the storm hit will pay for those companies who failed to do their jobs.
Getting a straight answer about how much this will cost consumers has been impossible.
#VoteBlue2022

dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/…
"The (Public) Utility Commission previously approved the purchase of $3 billion in bonds for electricity providers. January marked the first time electricity companies began getting billed for the storm-related charges, which they are allowed to pass along to consumers ... ."
"For gas providers, the Texas Railroad Commission approved the purchase of $3.4 billion in bonds. In a statement released the other day, the commission promised to protect consumers. (Tee-hee.)
"The railroad commission regulates oil and gas in Texas. I call them 'the choo-choo people' for short.
"In their latest public statement, the choo-chooers bent over backward to promise that they are for the consumers, not just for the industry. They voted to spread out repayments of the billions of dollars over many monthly bills rather than sock you with one big hit up front.
"Can you imagine if we all received a one-time charge? Instead of your gas bill jumping a few dollars a month for decades, what if you got hit with a one-time $2,000+ storm charge?
"Customers would default and the companies would then default and there’d be no true corporate bailout. This would hurt their gas company pals. But let’s pretend this is, as they claim, a 'benefit for Texas consumers.'
"These 'customer rate-relief bonds' will be issued for Atmos Energy, CenterPoint and a few smaller gas utilities, the railroad commission said.
"The bonds will be issued by the Texas Public Finance Authority in six months. And the payback is not to exceed 30 years. Unfortunately, that’s all we know.
"Thirty years! As I previously reported, adults not even born by the 2021 storm will be paying back this debt on their power bills.
"The whole idea of borrowing this money, according to Gov. Greg Abbott and state leaders, was to stabilize the market. The Watchdog has called this Texas socialism."

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More from @HalMarshall2309

Aug 8
Abhorrent behavior from a top elected official in Ohio. Democracy is not a game.

"On Twitter, Bill Seitz, the majority leader of the Ohio House, jeered at his Democratic opponents: 'Too bad so sad. We win again.'
"He continued, 'Now I know it’s been a tough night for all you libs. Pour yourself a glass of warm milk and you will sleep better. The game is over and you lost.'
"Ohio Democrats, including David Pepper, are outraged. 'The most corrupt state in the country was told more than five times that it was violating the law, and then the federal court said it was O.K.,' he told me.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 8
"This past spring, an extraordinary series of legal fights were playing out. The Ohio Supreme Court struck down the map—and then struck down four more, ...
"after the Republican majority on the redistricting commission continued submitting maps that defied the spirit of the court’s orders. The chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court was herself a Republican.
"Russo told me, 'If norms were being obeyed, we would expect that there would have been an effort to follow the first Ohio Supreme Court decision. But that simply didn’t happen.'
Read 10 tweets
Aug 8
"The vast majority of Ohio residents clearly want legislative districts that are drawn more fairly. By 2015, the state’s gerrymandering problem had become so notorious that 71% of Ohioans voted to pass an amendment to the state constitution demanding reforms.
"As a result, the Ohio constitution now requires that districts be shaped so that the makeup of the General Assembly is proportional to the political makeup of the state.
"In 2018, an even larger bipartisan majority—75% of Ohio voters—passed a similar resolution for the state’s congressional districts.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 8
"In a phone interview, Baer told me that his mother and father, who divorced, were Jewish Democrats. But his father converted to Christianity, and became a Baptist pastor. After a rocky adolescence, Baer himself converted to a more conservative form of evangelical Christianity.
"He told me that the only 'real hope for our nation is in Jesus, but we need safeguards in the law.' He described gender-confirming health care for transgender patients as 'mutilation.'
"Baer believes that the Supreme Court should overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage, and he opposes the use of surrogate pregnancy, which he called 'renting a womb,' because it 'permanently separates the children from their biological mothers.'
Read 6 tweets
Aug 8
@wdlindsy

The Center for Christian Virtue "works in concert with about a hundred and thirty Catholic and evangelical schools, twenty-two hundred churches, and what it calls a Christian Chamber of Commerce of aligned businesses.
"In 2015 and 2016, the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center classified the organization as a hate group, citing homophobic statements on its Web site that described 'homosexual behavior' as 'unhealthy and destructive to the individual' and 'to society as a whole.'
"The group subsequently deleted the offending statements, and, according to the Columbus Dispatch, it has recently evolved into 'the state’s premier lobbying force on Christian conservative issues.'
Read 9 tweets
Aug 8
"Teresa Fedor, a Democratic state senator who has served in the General Assembly for twenty-two years, described Ohio’s new gun and abortion laws as the worst legislation that she has ever witnessed being passed.
" She told me, 'It feels like Gilead' —the fictional theocracy in Margaret Atwood’s novel 'The Handmaid’s Tale.' Fedor added, 'We’ve got state-mandated pregnancies, even of a ten-year-old.'
"The issue is personal to her. Fedor, a grandmother, is a former teacher; in her twenties, when she was serving in the military, she was raped. She had an abortion. Fedor was a divorced single mother at the time, trying to earn a teaching degree.
Read 7 tweets

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