“It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks.”
--Molly Ivins
 
1935 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Federal Power Act, directing the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities can ignore the federal law. Freedom from federal regulation was and is holy writ in Texas. For the next 40 years, the Texas electricity industry is completely unregulated.
 
Meanwhile – each of the lower 48 states are members of one of two electricity grids: the Eastern Interconnection or the Western Interconnection.

When one state or region suffers an electricity crisis, the Interconnection allows it to get electricity from other states that are members of its Interconnection. This is true for every state except Texas, with a few exceptions: El Paso and small portions of the Panhandle and East Texas are members of one of the Interconnections. They experienced no problems during the recent deep freeze that buried the 90 percent of the state reliant on ERCOT.
 
2011 – A severe winter storm blankets Texas, causing the state’s electricity grid to break down. The legislature orders a study of what went wrong. The study recommends weatherizing the vulnerable components of the system. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issue a report concluding that Texas power and natural gas companies are unprepared for cold weather and recommend installing extra insulation, heaters and wind breaks. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies do nothing.
 
2014 – Frigid temperatures cause Texas power plants to freeze up, bringing the state’s grid to the brink of collapse. The state utility commission urges energy companies to identify weak points and take action. They resist. The commission backs off. The feds revive their 2011 recommendations. Governor Rick Perry, the legislature and the oversight agencies again take no action.
 
2021 – History repeats itself the third time in a decade. A major storm bashes Texas, fuel sources buckle and the grid collapses, putting 9 million homes into a deep freeze, killing at least 80 people and leaving four million Texans without water.
 
Current Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Railroad Commission Chair George P. Bush, who oversees the oil and gas industry, have a consistent history of ignoring, dismissing and watering down every effort to tackle the state electric grid’s shortcomings. Taking his cue from his Republican cult leader, toasty warm in his Palm Beach citadel, Governor Abbott, a very vocal climate change denier, blamed the grid problems on renewable energy sources (wind and solar) that provide only 10 percent of the power that fuels ERCOT. It is no coincidence that Abbott, Bush and AWOL Senator Ted “La Cucaracha” Cruz (R-Cancun) are deeply embedded in the pockets of the Texas oil and gas industry.  
 
Former Governor Perry, most recently Trump’s Secretary of Energy (and by every expert assessment the worst Energy Secretary in the department’s 45-year history) said: "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business." In other words, freezing to death is a small price to pay for no federal regulation, which every other “red” state accepts as essential to keep its citizens warm and watered. Instead, Texans were left to burn their furniture and belongings for heat and melt snow to flush their toilets.
 
The nation should learn from Donald Trump’s politicization of a pandemic, resulting in hundreds of thousands of needless deaths, that Mother Nature does not care what your politics are or where you live. She will do what she does without any thought to how this will affect you.
 
Solutions--There are steps that need to be taken immediately to avoid a repeat when the next inevitable storm hits:
 

1. Sens. Cruz and Cornyn and their House counterparts from Texas should introduce legislation to hook ERCOT into the national grid Interconnections.
2. The Texas legislature should enact legislation and provide appropriations to weatherize the grid and its power suppliers.
3. The Texas debacle should also be a wake-up call for the nation to invest the necessary resources to modernize the national grid system, much of which is 70-plus years old, and turn it into the “smart grid” that energy experts have been advocating for years.

​Dick Hermann
February 26, 2021

​These are, in today's Republican Party, spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue. Without any level of human integrity, devoid of self-respect, self-reflection, without courage, and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence.
--David Jolly (R-FL), former member of the U.S. House of Representatives
 
It strains credulity that, following the events of the past several months and the masterful prosecution of the House Managers’ case against Donald Trump, any honest juror could have voted to acquit the Perpetrator-in-Chief. In stark contrast, the Trump defense team was bumbling and inept. Sadly, Trump could have sent stadium cardboard cutouts to represent him and the result would have been the same.
 
QOP (“QAnon Old Party”) cowardice and contempt for their country once again trumped decency and concern for constitutional democracy. The Reichstag rubber-stamp Republicans who were too terrified of their cult leader’s wrath to hold him accountable for attempting to overthrow the government and threatening their very lives, signified their complicity with Trump’s attempted coup in which five people died. In so doing, they abandoned any right to participate in governing.
 
It is clear after that shameful Republican performance that Democrats must go it mostly alone in order to pull America out of the depths to which it was allowed to sink during the Trump travesty. That means, as step one, moving rapidly to enact the American Rescue Plan. Step two should be getting rid of the filibuster that gives Mitch McConnell’s malignant minority unwarranted power to stymie any legislation Democrats pursue to rehabilitate the nation.  Absent that, you can bet the mortgage that McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and their 242 colleagues whose votes against impeachment and conviction demonstrate that they have no intention of cooperating across the aisle. They have blood on their chicken feathers.
 
The QOP is now nothing more than a modern re-creation of twentieth century fascist parties. They embrace the same themes, the same beliefs, the same drive for domination, and the same blind and slavish devotion to a malevolent madman. Any urge on the part of President Biden, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer toward bipartisanship must be abandoned now if they want to get anything constructive done. At best there are only a handful of true Republicans worthy of their attention. For example, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), actually appears interested in being constructive. His proposed Family Security Act is something Democrats can enthusiastically endorse. But that is probably where any cooperation should end. Otherwise, Democrats will be whistling against the wind and become sorely frustrated in their sincere efforts to move the country forward.
 
The QOP’s latest display of gutless groveling is all Democrats need to realize that trying to make nice with these Quislings is a fool’s errand. Any lingering doubts about their sincerity and decency were blown up immediately after their latest shameful spectacle of spinelessness. The moment of awareness came when McConnell, the Janus-faced leader of the see-no-evil crowd, stood up in the well of the Senate and blasted Trump, expressing the hope that the criminal justice system will bring him to account. Has there ever been a greater demonstration of hypocrisy?
 
The proto-fascist wing of the Republican Party, led by “despicable he’s” such as “Cancun” Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham, prevailed. No publisher would take on a Profiles in Cowardice book because there are simply too many QOP candidates for its pages. It’s time to stop expecting “Republicans” to finally do the right thing despite all evidence to the contrary. No Democrat should succumb to the fantasy that these aiders and abettors of Trump’s criminality are people with whom they can do business. Go it alone, Democrats. Reserve bipartisanship for a future Congress peopled by individuals with integrity who value decency, honor and the preservation of the republic.
 
Dick Hermann
February 19, 2021

​The Biden administration’s attention to climate change and the technological revolution that boosts climate policy will have a tremendous side benefit: forcing one of our top-level enemies—Russia—to its knees.
 
Russia and Vladimir Putin are overly dependent on fossil fuels for economic and political survival to a greater extent than any other nation outside of the Middle East. Russians not only need oil, gas and coal to light and heat their homes and fuel factories and transportation; they also rely heavily on oil and gas exports for revenue. If these go south because the rest of the developed world is moving beyond fossil fuels, Russia will suffer greatly and may not survive in its present authoritarian guise.
 
Russia’s export revenues from fossil fuels account for half of its annual budget. As Europe, the U.S., China and rapidly expanding Asian economies such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan embrace climate change policies, this essential funding source will dry up. Plummeting demand during the pandemic has already devastated the country’s export revenues. It is unlikely that global demand for energy resources will return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon due to the large number of employees who will continue to work from home and a predicted decline in commuting and business travel, among other factors. Russian GDP will have a difficult struggle to move back into positive territory.
 
Oil and natural gas sales account for approximately two-thirds of Russia’s total export revenues. They contribute more than 30% to the country's gross domestic product (GDP). At the same time, the Russian ruble is falling in value, making it more expensive for Russians to buy the goods and services they need. The ruble is currently approaching a level at which Russia will experience the lowest purchasing power parity (PPP) relative to the U.S. of any country in the world. Declining PPP will lower living standards.
 
A falling ruble also means a sharp increase in import prices, which adds to inflation. To combat this, Russia must raise interest rates to levels that are going to precipitate an even deeper recession than Russians are currently experiencing.
 
Russia is already struggling. Low oil prices in effect since 2014 have set back the country’s economy and all attempts at achieving healthy economic growth. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark for Russia's main export, is now $15 below the level envisaged by Russia's current budget plan. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has driven Russian inflation to levels that would be unacceptable in the West. Inflation has more than doubled since the pandemic began.
 
Taken together, a sustained period of anemic and even negative GDP combined with high inflation portends poorly for Russia’s political stability. Add in excessive dependence on fossil fuels, the absence of any climate change policy, and dwindling oil and gas export revenues, and the result will be a diminution of Russia’s ability to be a player, much less a mischief-maker, on the world stage. This is all good for the United States.
 
Vladimir Putin has been propped up by oil and gas export revenues for years. Without them, he will be in trouble. Popular unrest protesting the jailing of dissident leader, Alexei Navalny, and the severe economic disruptions caused by a declining standard of living, has erupted in more than 140 Russian cities. Expect civic discontent to escalate as oil and gas revenues continue to decline.
 
The opportunity to severely weaken one of the West’s principal enemies is an additional incentive for the U.S. and Europe to opt for robust climate policies already justified by science and reality.
 
Dick Hermann
February 12, 2021

​Democrats and the few Republicans still committed to preserving American democracy have proposed two solutions to the challenge posed by the millions of our countrymen and women who have succumbed to the grievances, hate, anger, fear and delusional fantasy world nurtured by the disgraced former president (DFP):

1. Get the congressional Republican leadership to “tell the truth,” i.e., that President Biden won the election fair and square. Good luck with that. With the dust barely settled from the January 6 assault on the Capitol, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the DFP’s “ring” and lick his “boots.” Mitch McConnell, who in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol insurrection, blamed the DFP for inciting it, has since retreated into the Republican fold and folderol that we have come to know so well over the last four years. Like McCarthy’s, his spine and other vital body parts are also in a lockbox. The “Party of Lincoln” has morphed into the “Party of a Different Lincoln”—George Lincoln Rockwell, the late Führer of the American Nazi Party.
2. Enact legislation that speaks to the discontents of the DFP’s base. The argument goes that if tangible benefits and opportunities flow to them from the federal government, they will change their tune and mend their ways. They won’t. To believe otherwise is optimistic, but naïve in the extreme.

 
Neither solution will work. Like the white supremacists that overwhelmed Germany and much of Europe in the interwar years, we cannot reason with our own domestic version of these hostiles. That makes them a lost cause. Aside from picking off a handful of these deluded folk, the vast majority will remain credulous and in thrall to their cult leader, the DFP. Once a fascist leader has been elevated to cult status, his worshippers will follow him through the gates of Hell.
 
Twentieth century history teaches us that constant vigilance and, when appropriate, swift recourse to the criminal code is the only way to keep these people from further assaults on the Constitution and renewed attempts to overthrow our democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule. The Weimar Republic governed Germany for 15 years following World War I, until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and quickly snuffed out the nation’s failing attempt at democracy. Weimar collapsed in large part because it allowed anti-democratic forces to run riot in the streets without fear of punishment for their violent acts. We cannot allow the same thing to happen. We must not falter in our monitoring of white supremacist groups and individuals. When they are identified, any indication that they intend to commit acts of violence must be addressed immediately.
 
The fact that so many of their conspiratorial plans are shared on social media puts them squarely within the language of the federal criminal code’s section on interstate communication of “a threat to injure the person of another” (18 U.S.C. §875). In addition, they would also be subject to punishment under 18 U.S.C. §2383, “Rebellion or Insurrection.” These tools must be applied vigorously. Appealing to their grievances won’t work. They are far past listening to or even understanding such appeals.
 
At the same time, we must address the decline and, in an increasing number of schools, the absence of both history and civics education. While the adults who have fallen for the hate-filled rhetoric and contempt for democratic values of the DFP are a lost cause, their children are not. There is still time to raise a generation of Americans who can comprehend and appreciate fact-based reality and the values that really make America great. A grounding in civics and history is the only path at our disposal if we want to counter the alternate universe in which their parents reside.
 
If we do not do this, they too will be fodder for the same perverted untruths that have consumed their parents and taken them to the dark realms of lies and fakery in which the DFP wallows, waiting in the wings to once again incite them to violent assaults on the fragile norms that successfully governed us and maintained order for almost two-and-a-half centuries.
 
Dick Hermann
February 5, 2021