Political Irony

There is an important side story about what just happened in Texas with their (not completely unpredictable) freezing weather, and the collapse of their electrical grid. The story we are being told is that Texas deregulated their energy system in 1999, using the promise that this would increase competition, provide consumer choice, and thus lower prices for electricity and other sources of energy. However, in this competitive “free” market, certain (shall we say) shortcuts were taken. In particular these companies didn’t bother to winterize their pipelines and other equipment, as is required in all other states through — you guessed it — pesky and “socialistic” regulations.

But ironically, some Wall Street Journal reporters looked into the Texas energy market, and found that (surprise, surprise) Texans with deregulated energy rates paid $28 billion more than those with traditional, regulated plans. They could do this because not all areas of Texas became deregulated, and what they found was that people who bought “free market” energy paid 13% more than the national average for their energy, compared to people who were still getting their energy from regulated suppliers, who paid 8% less than the national average. And the increased competition and choice that was promised through deregulation? Mergers left Texans with a duopoly of essentially two main retail electricity providers.

Bottom line? Deregulation was a total bust in this case. The resulting deregulated market cost consumers more, provided worse service, did not anticipate obvious problems, and when those problems occurred the lowered supply of energy and the increased demand naturally resulted in insanely high energy bills, as high as $17,000 for a single month’s electricity for a single house. That is, if their electricity wasn’t actually cut off, leaving them freezing cold (in some cases, to death).

Now, I am a capitalist. I believe in (actual) free markets. But what they had in Texas was not a free market in any sense. If people are freezing to death, they will pay any price necessary to stay alive. It isn’t freedom if there is a gun to your head. That’s why we have laws against monopolies, which the Republicans seem to ignore, while pretending to sing the praises of free markets.

Also, note that when the Texas energy market failed, the federal government had to declare an emergency and bail out the energy companies. If this were a truly free market, the energy companies are the ones that would suffer, not the consumers.

In the system championed by the Republicans, the corporations are the ones who are protected, and the consumers suffer. There is a name for this kind of system, where corporations are partners with the government, and individual rights (like for consumers) are suppressed. It is called national socialism (also known as Nazism). The Republicans paint the Democrats as socialists, and manage to scare people into voting against their own interests. How many times will we be fooled by this?

Vox has an interesting interactive infographic showing just who has died from Covid-19 in the US, broken down by age, race, and region (urban vs. rural).

We already understand that people of color are twice as likely to die from the pandemic than white people. But did you know that even though the elderly are more likely to die from Covid, that younger people are more likely to actually catch it (the speculation is that younger people are more careless about observing social distancing and mask rules).

In other news, a Nature survey of more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists found that nearly 90% “think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come. It will be like the flu. It will pop up every year, and some people will die from it, but we will have better vaccines and treatments for it.

Meanwhile, now that they are out of power, the Republicans don’t seem to want to do anything to combat the pandemic. It’s almost like they want more people to die so the Democrats won’t be winners.

This post probably isn’t about what you think it might be about from the title. It is about the curious fact that countries and US states with conservative leaders are doing a better job of getting people vaccinated than countries with progressive leaders.

This comes from an interesting article in (of all places) the NY Times, titled “The Left’s Vaccine Problem“. The problem seems to be that progressive governments are spending too much effort worrying about who should get the vaccine, instead of just focusing on getting shots into arms. In some cases, vaccine has been thrown away because they didn’t have enough of the “right people”, and there were penalties for giving it to the wrong people. Sheesh.

I’m fine that we got front-line healthcare workers vaccinated first. Not only do they need it more than anyone else, and it would be an even worse disaster if we lost doctors and nurses during a pandemic, and it was easy to identify these people and get them shots quickly (after all, most of them work in hospitals!)

But after that, it seems like the best way to fight the pandemic is to get it to everyone as quickly as possible. It really doesn’t matter who “deserves” it more. We need to get to herd immunity quickly, and that will benefit everyone.

Rather than spend our time deciding who can’t get the vaccine, let’s spend any extra time and effort identifying people who are having problems getting it (for example, older people in nursing homes) and get them some help.

This is no time to worry about being politically correct.

The Republican Party is destroying itself. Here are the results of a survey comparing the net favorability of several GOP congresspeople.

That’s right, Marjorie Taylor Green is the new congresscritter who is racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic, believes in QAnon and that the presidential election was stolen, blames the wildfires in California on Jewish laser satellites, and endangered and threatened other members of Congress. But her favorability is way higher than that of Liz Cheney, pretty much because Cheney voted to impeach Donald Trump.

And Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader of the House and a Trump supporter, is much more popular with Republicans than Mitch McConnell, who recently has been ambiguous about Trump’s impeachment.

The GOP is a sinking ship. Their leaders are now nut cases and liars.

[Side note — I love the use of Groucho in the second panel.]