Lots of “Happy Birthday Texas!” shit on the interwebs today. Indeed, this is Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1836.
And yet, less than ten years later, Texas was admitted as a US State, because it wasn’t able to go it alone.
And then, sixteen years later, Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy. And we know how well that went, as four years later, they were right back in the Union.
Texans pride themselves on their independence and so forth, and they continually assure us that they have some sort of “out” that would allow Texas to be independent again, but it’s all a bunch of malarkey. Their state government makes just as many stupid moves as any other state government, and they don’t have an independent economy, much as they’d like to pretend the opposite.
Speaking of Texas state blunders, ever hear of ERCOT? Yeah, Texas has its own independent energy grid that even a GOP governor couldn’t keep from letting too much green shit into. As was hammered home with a sledgehammer a couple of weeks ago when the grid went down during the worst winter storm Texas has seen in years. Make-up electricity from outside the grid soared to $6K-$9K per megawatt-hour on the spot market during the crisis. A lot of people in Texas who were signed up for alternative electric sources took a gigantic fucking as a result. In the resulting finger-pointing, ERCOT did not come out well; seems its board had a high percentage of out-of-state directors and was self-perpetuating in that regard, since nominations to put butts in empty seats on that board came from other board members. So now Texans are going to have to fix another failure born of “independence”.
They say everything is bigger in Texas. I’m sure Texans are aching at the moment from the rogering they got because of bad decisions at all levels prior to the recent storm. If they don’t get their electric generation options sorted and toss out the stuff that didn’t work, all Texans are going to be able to do if they get another storm like that is BOHICA.
So you’ll pardon me if I giggle when anyone talks about how wonderful and independent Texas is.
I know people in Texas and I’m sorry if this offends them…well, no, actually, I’m not; in the end, you did this to yourselves, whether or not you were aware of it. The fact that you are not in Austin actively hanging politicians from lampposts at this point suggests to me that you’re just like everybody else in this country, and really not independent at all.