“Major U.S. airlines on Friday said they would adopt a voluntary international contact tracing program, months after the White House under President Donald Trump blocked a mandatory effort.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and other major airlines said they had committed to collecting contact tracing data from passengers traveling into the United States and to relaying that data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if travelers provide information.
In August, Trump officials rejected an effort to require airlines to collect contact tracing information from U.S.-bound international passengers after some senior administration officials cited privacy concerns, Reuters reported.”
The New York Post story on Biden’s words on the Uyghurs seems to have taken his words out of context. Here is the transcript from the interview. (This part comes way down the page.)
“COOPER: What about the Uyghurs? What about human rights abuses in China?
BIDEN: The Uyghurs.
We must speak up for human rights. It’s who we are. We can’t — my comment to him was — and I know him well, and he knows me well. We’re — a two-hour conversation.
COOPER: You talked about this to him?
BIDEN: I talked about this too.
And that’s not so much refugee, but I talked about it. I said, look — Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time China when has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.
So, the central — to vastly overstate it, the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that. I point out to him, no American president can be sustained as a
president if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States. And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow. But my point was that, when I came back from meeting with him and traveling 17,000 miles with him when I was vice president and he was the vice president — and that’s how I got to know him so well, at the request of President Hu — not a joke — his predecessor, President Hu, and President Obama wanted us to get to know one another, because he was going to the president.
And I came back and said, they’re going to end their one-child policy, because they’re so xenophobic, they won’t let anybody else in. And more people are retired than working. How can they sustain economic growth when more people are retired?
COOPER: When you talk to him, though, about human rights abuses, is that just — is that as far as it goes in terms of the U.S.? Or is there any actual repercussions for China?
BIDEN: Well, there will be repercussions for China. And he knows that.
What I’m doing is making clear that we, in fact, are going to continue to reassert our role as spokespersons for human rights at the U.N. and other agencies that have an impact on their attitude. China is trying very hard to become the world leader and to get that moniker. And to be able to do that, they have to gain the confidence of other countries.
And as long as they’re engaged in activity that is contrary to basic human rights, it’s going to be hard for them to do that.
But it’s more much more complicated than that. I’m — I shouldn’t try to talk China policy in 10 minutes on television here.”
Now, before anyone thinks that I have joined Biden’s side and am defending him, let me say that I have often defended Trump when his words were taken out of context, as I did for Obama, and Bush before him. When a snippet of a quote is shared that gets people all riled up, it makes me suspicious, and often – but not all the time – it turns out that the quote has been cut short or twisted in some way. So I like to look at the context.
Janice thanks for sharing that post. It is good to read different perspectives and this one I appreciated. A friend shared a link with me of an article that was published in HuffPost…it was written by her cousin and I was so disheartened…as it was from the “victim” perspective although I didn’t read her situation as that at all. I kind of hope my friend doesn’t ask me for my take on the article as I am not seeing the legitimacy of her assertion of victim… 😞 I just may send her this link…
“BREAKING: YouTube censors new interview with Donald Trump
A brand-new interview from Wednesday of former president Donald Trump on Newsmax has been taken down from YouTube.”
“A brand-new interview from Wednesday of former president Donald Trump on Newsmax has been taken down from YouTube.
The reason stated was that the video violated what Google calls its “election integrity policy.” In short, the video was taken down because during the interview, the ex-President claimed that he had won the election, and that it was stolen.
A representative from YouTube emailed Newsmax to let them know that the video had been removed, according to the Epoch Times:
“In accordance with our presidential election integrity policy, we removed this video from the Newsmax TV channel.”
“We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints.”
Previous Trump interviews on outlets such as Fox News have remained up, despite the fact that in these interviews, the ex-President makes exactly the same claims.”
So what’s Biden gonna do about the Chinese, besides bow to them?
Nothing, as always. And even the hack Tapper knows it.
Biden can’t justify his inaction.
Our esteemed @POTUS@JoeBiden has assured us that the Chinese are just misunderstood. What you see as gang rape is merely a cultural difference. Certainly there’s no need for the US to intervene so long as Joe’s comfortable with it. Right Jake?
Almost $40 BILLION more for the universities. Some of you remember when I dove into the CARES Act Relief for them, I can’t wait to see how preposterous the payouts to these billion dollar endowment adult day care centers are lol pic.twitter.com/tMkQ6ElNiB
Kizzie: Re. Biden and China, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that China has bought him, paid him (millions!), own him and installed him. Biden is totally compromised, which is terrible news for the USA.
“But it’s more much more complicated than that. I’m — I shouldn’t try to talk China policy in 10 minutes on television here.”….
He shouldn’t try to talk at all…it is dumbfounding that anyone would believe anything he stumbles around speaking. He winks, he blinks, he lies….and that ladies and gentlemen is who is running the great nation of the USA…well at least he is the Trojan horse they are pushing out there on stage….
AJ and Tychicus – My comment and what I shared had nothing to do with Biden’s policies or whether or not he is going to handle China well. It was merely pointing out that he was misquoted, and people have taken that misquote and run with it, claiming that he was dismissing what is happening to the Uyghurs.
He did say, “We must speak up for human rights. It’s who we are. . . And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.”
Your link shows exactly what The Post said, he was seeking to justify China’s violation as a cultural thing. It’s right there in what you quoted. He excused it. He promised repercussions, but didn’t mention any. Maybe a strongly worded letter is heading their way. He’s a joke.
———-
“And that’s not so much refugee, but I talked about it. I said, look — Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time China when has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.
So, the central — to vastly overstate it, the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that. I point out to him, no American president can be sustained as a
president if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States. And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”
———
Sorry, but your “fact check” fails, because we can read.
Yes, he mentioned about the “different norms”, but not necessarily in an accepting way. For instance, I might say that some of my relatives have different morals and views than myself, but that is not necessarily saying that that is okay, it is merely pointing out a fact. Biden also said that he was speaking up for human rights for the Uygurs as well as for others, not dismissing the situation as a “different norm”. The misquote comes in leaving out that part, making it seem that he was merely being dismissive of the Uygurs situation.
As I said, my pointing this out was not to defend how Biden will handle China, but to put into context the words he said.
Perhaps “technically” he wasn’t misquoted, but not including the rest of the quote is certainly misusing or misapplying or mis-something the quote. That was not okay when it was done to Trump, either.
I heard his talk on CNN and really don’t think it is taken out of context. Sometimes, Kizzie, you remind me of a parent who is a teacher to his own children. They bend so far backwards to be fair that they end up treating their own child unfairly. I couldn’t believe the words out of his mouth.
What I see, on both the right and the left, is that when someone greatly dislikes a politician or other public figure on the “other side”, it is too easy to give a negative motive or understanding to that person’s words. You all saw it all the time with how Trump’s words were often taken wrong (and as I said, I would defend him, too, when I learned that something had been taken out of context).
My point has been that I keep seeing posts about how Biden threw the Uyghurs under the bus, but he did say that he is going to “speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan. . .”
It remains to be seen how strongly he will or won’t do that, but those are his words in that particular interview. That is my only point.
Yes, it is human nature to do that, Kizzie and we all do it too easily not just in politics, but in life in general. Nevertheless, the casualness of speaking about human atrocities is disgusting whether from this president or the last one.
Biden was fairly nuanced and diplomat in his remarks — basically he told Xi he understood the Chinese position and the background to it but he represented American values and therefore would criticize China in the internaitional arena. Sure, in a world of 10 second clips, it may be editted in different directions but no this is how normal international leaders speak to each other.
As much as the left focus on the Trump-Russia connection; I see a similar narrative developing on the right with China-Biden. Similar to the election conspiracy stories, the right isn’t even bothering to come up with original narratives just recyle the left. Whether these narratives are valid, it seems both the right and left have admitted that US public officials and campaign funding can be hijacked by other countries. Despite this commonality, the Republicans have rejected election security legislation proposed by the Democrats and have also rejected any regulation of dark money.
Tychinus — international travel has no right to privacy every time you apporach a border post whether it be security, public health or customs. Contact tracing by airlines is fairly normal. As is airlines acting as passport secuirty for the border police.
AJ — As I’ve said before, youtube is private property and as corporate person they have complete control of the platform. If they don’t want you post on their site, you can’t. Now if you want to adovocate for gov’t intervention to prevent corporate censoship; I’m all ears. Perhaps something along the lines of the Fairness Doctrine. In the meantime, this is the free market at work — if you like capitalism, you have to support youtube property rights. The algorithm for youtube is extremely strict. WWII historians use all kinds of synonyms to refer to Nazi, Holocaust, ghetto, rape, etc.. Failure to do so results in demonetilization. From youtube’s presepective they can never be too cautious about brand identity. As for asserting the election was false, no one wants to be sued by DVS — they know the claims can’t be proven so they are deleting video after video. FOX like other major networks is too big of a player for youtube to control.
Opposition parties find criticizing the ruling party’s China policy an easy target. When they get in power, they don’t change a thing. Depending on whose power, the conservatives and liberals care about Chinese human rights violations. When you’re not in power, you care. When you’re in power, you don’t. Simply because well its China.
Verbatim reported speech never looks good as it capures every “umm’ “like” etc. Most legislatures allow politicians to go back to the official record to “correct” it. Usually delete awkward “umms” and grammar errors. A tv transcript is beyond their control though. The left wing blogs used to publish transcripts of Trump speechs just to mock them. Four-five years ago, it was fairly petty mistakes — grammar, off topic, etc. By last year, it was clear that Trump was suffering cognitive decline – it was no longer funny if it ever was.
Reports from Texas indicate people are getting massive power bills and left wing groups are advising peopel to stop auto pay, cancel credit cards, and withdraw money from bank account to prevent power companies from charging and collecting ridiculous amounts — bills that are nomall a few hundred are now four digits. From what I understand, the electricity rate floats according to supply and demand. And as there is a high demand but hardly any supply the price went up. Now a crucial basis to capitalism is price and price information. Consumers need to know full price in order to make rational decisions (or so the theory goes). This seems to go against it.
I’m used to stable electrical (and utility) rates — rate changes are usually once a year and its fixed by government, private and public power producers, and the distribution monopoly gov’t corporation coming together. Usually the rate of inflation — although there have been times it increased above the inflation rate due to increase power production costs. The rate never floats and would definietely not go up and down according to supply.
This seems to reward incompennce — if a corporation fails to maintain the infrastructure (including winterization) and rolling blackouts are needed, a floating rate would reward them.
Now I know Texas has its own grid. There are four grids in Canada-US — east, west, Texas and Quebec. Texas felt there was too much regulation so it left the grid. Quebec power is almost entirely gov’t produced and controlled so they probably thought there wasn’t enough regulation (they do well on their own — supplying all of New England with power). Is Texas the only grid that subjects its people to random rate changes or is this the norm in the US? The prince instablity and lack of price information doesn’t seem business friendly let alone consumer friendly.
And before anyone goes off on a tangent, windmills do work in cold weather — they work in Canada, Nordic countries, Russia and even Antarcitc. However, we have regulations that force power producers and distributors to make sure the entire grid is prepared for winter weather. Hence, the grid is working elsewhere in the US despite the cold weather.
Wandering Views 
Where have all the rational people gone?
https://www.theepochtimes.com/major-us-airlines-will-voluntarily-collect-international-contact-tracing-info_3703690.html
“Major U.S. airlines on Friday said they would adopt a voluntary international contact tracing program, months after the White House under President Donald Trump blocked a mandatory effort.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and other major airlines said they had committed to collecting contact tracing data from passengers traveling into the United States and to relaying that data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if travelers provide information.
In August, Trump officials rejected an effort to require airlines to collect contact tracing information from U.S.-bound international passengers after some senior administration officials cited privacy concerns, Reuters reported.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
https://dailycitizen.focusonthefamily.com/dr-shelby-steele-and-jim-daly-discuss-racial-victimization-and-empowerment-on-focus-on-the-family/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1056404&refcd=1056404&utm_source=ENewsletter&seid=
LikeLiked by 2 people
The New York Post story on Biden’s words on the Uyghurs seems to have taken his words out of context. Here is the transcript from the interview. (This part comes way down the page.)
“COOPER: What about the Uyghurs? What about human rights abuses in China?
BIDEN: The Uyghurs.
We must speak up for human rights. It’s who we are. We can’t — my comment to him was — and I know him well, and he knows me well. We’re — a two-hour conversation.
COOPER: You talked about this to him?
BIDEN: I talked about this too.
And that’s not so much refugee, but I talked about it. I said, look — Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time China when has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.
So, the central — to vastly overstate it, the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that. I point out to him, no American president can be sustained as a
president if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States. And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow. But my point was that, when I came back from meeting with him and traveling 17,000 miles with him when I was vice president and he was the vice president — and that’s how I got to know him so well, at the request of President Hu — not a joke — his predecessor, President Hu, and President Obama wanted us to get to know one another, because he was going to the president.
And I came back and said, they’re going to end their one-child policy, because they’re so xenophobic, they won’t let anybody else in. And more people are retired than working. How can they sustain economic growth when more people are retired?
COOPER: When you talk to him, though, about human rights abuses, is that just — is that as far as it goes in terms of the U.S.? Or is there any actual repercussions for China?
BIDEN: Well, there will be repercussions for China. And he knows that.
What I’m doing is making clear that we, in fact, are going to continue to reassert our role as spokespersons for human rights at the U.N. and other agencies that have an impact on their attitude. China is trying very hard to become the world leader and to get that moniker. And to be able to do that, they have to gain the confidence of other countries.
And as long as they’re engaged in activity that is contrary to basic human rights, it’s going to be hard for them to do that.
But it’s more much more complicated than that. I’m — I shouldn’t try to talk China policy in 10 minutes on television here.”
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-cnn-town-hall-transcript-full-trump-vaccines-1569872
Now, before anyone thinks that I have joined Biden’s side and am defending him, let me say that I have often defended Trump when his words were taken out of context, as I did for Obama, and Bush before him. When a snippet of a quote is shared that gets people all riled up, it makes me suspicious, and often – but not all the time – it turns out that the quote has been cut short or twisted in some way. So I like to look at the context.
LikeLike
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/happening-today-supreme-court-set-consider-trump-voter-fraud-cases-pennsylvania-georgia-michigan/
LikeLike
Janice thanks for sharing that post. It is good to read different perspectives and this one I appreciated. A friend shared a link with me of an article that was published in HuffPost…it was written by her cousin and I was so disheartened…as it was from the “victim” perspective although I didn’t read her situation as that at all. I kind of hope my friend doesn’t ask me for my take on the article as I am not seeing the legitimacy of her assertion of victim… 😞 I just may send her this link…
LikeLike
Of course they did….
https://thepostmillennial.com/newsmax-trump-interview-censored-by-youtube
“BREAKING: YouTube censors new interview with Donald Trump
A brand-new interview from Wednesday of former president Donald Trump on Newsmax has been taken down from YouTube.”
“A brand-new interview from Wednesday of former president Donald Trump on Newsmax has been taken down from YouTube.
The reason stated was that the video violated what Google calls its “election integrity policy.” In short, the video was taken down because during the interview, the ex-President claimed that he had won the election, and that it was stolen.
A representative from YouTube emailed Newsmax to let them know that the video had been removed, according to the Epoch Times:
“In accordance with our presidential election integrity policy, we removed this video from the Newsmax TV channel.”
“We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints.”
Previous Trump interviews on outlets such as Fox News have remained up, despite the fact that in these interviews, the ex-President makes exactly the same claims.”
LikeLike
———-
LikeLike
Kizzie,
So what’s Biden gonna do about the Chinese, besides bow to them?
Nothing, as always. And even the hack Tapper knows it.
Biden can’t justify his inaction.
———–
LikeLiked by 1 person
These people are insane, and this relief bill provides very little relief for US citizens.
——–
LikeLike
———
Read about the rest of the waste here.
https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/02/20/mega-thread-breaks-down-where-all-of-the-covid-19-relief-money-in-the-house-bill-is-going-hint-not-to-you/
LikeLike
Kizzie: Re. Biden and China, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that China has bought him, paid him (millions!), own him and installed him. Biden is totally compromised, which is terrible news for the USA.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“But it’s more much more complicated than that. I’m — I shouldn’t try to talk China policy in 10 minutes on television here.”….
He shouldn’t try to talk at all…it is dumbfounding that anyone would believe anything he stumbles around speaking. He winks, he blinks, he lies….and that ladies and gentlemen is who is running the great nation of the USA…well at least he is the Trojan horse they are pushing out there on stage….
LikeLiked by 1 person
AJ and Tychicus – My comment and what I shared had nothing to do with Biden’s policies or whether or not he is going to handle China well. It was merely pointing out that he was misquoted, and people have taken that misquote and run with it, claiming that he was dismissing what is happening to the Uyghurs.
He did say, “We must speak up for human rights. It’s who we are. . . And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.”
LikeLike
But he wasn’t misquoted.
Your link shows exactly what The Post said, he was seeking to justify China’s violation as a cultural thing. It’s right there in what you quoted. He excused it. He promised repercussions, but didn’t mention any. Maybe a strongly worded letter is heading their way. He’s a joke.
———-
“And that’s not so much refugee, but I talked about it. I said, look — Chinese leaders, if you know anything about Chinese history, it has always been the time China when has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.
So, the central — to vastly overstate it, the central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that. I point out to him, no American president can be sustained as a
president if he doesn’t reflect the values of the United States. And so the idea I’m not going to speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan, trying to end the One-China policy by making it forceful, I said — by the way, he said he gets it.
Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”
———
Sorry, but your “fact check” fails, because we can read.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes, he mentioned about the “different norms”, but not necessarily in an accepting way. For instance, I might say that some of my relatives have different morals and views than myself, but that is not necessarily saying that that is okay, it is merely pointing out a fact. Biden also said that he was speaking up for human rights for the Uygurs as well as for others, not dismissing the situation as a “different norm”. The misquote comes in leaving out that part, making it seem that he was merely being dismissive of the Uygurs situation.
As I said, my pointing this out was not to defend how Biden will handle China, but to put into context the words he said.
LikeLike
Perhaps “technically” he wasn’t misquoted, but not including the rest of the quote is certainly misusing or misapplying or mis-something the quote. That was not okay when it was done to Trump, either.
LikeLike
I understand your point. What I’m saying is that with regard to China, Biden’s actions have been far more damaging (and revealing) than his words.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I heard his talk on CNN and really don’t think it is taken out of context. Sometimes, Kizzie, you remind me of a parent who is a teacher to his own children. They bend so far backwards to be fair that they end up treating their own child unfairly. I couldn’t believe the words out of his mouth.
Oh, for a statesman again.
LikeLiked by 3 people
What I see, on both the right and the left, is that when someone greatly dislikes a politician or other public figure on the “other side”, it is too easy to give a negative motive or understanding to that person’s words. You all saw it all the time with how Trump’s words were often taken wrong (and as I said, I would defend him, too, when I learned that something had been taken out of context).
My point has been that I keep seeing posts about how Biden threw the Uyghurs under the bus, but he did say that he is going to “speak out against what he’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China, and Taiwan. . .”
It remains to be seen how strongly he will or won’t do that, but those are his words in that particular interview. That is my only point.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it is human nature to do that, Kizzie and we all do it too easily not just in politics, but in life in general. Nevertheless, the casualness of speaking about human atrocities is disgusting whether from this president or the last one.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Biden was fairly nuanced and diplomat in his remarks — basically he told Xi he understood the Chinese position and the background to it but he represented American values and therefore would criticize China in the internaitional arena. Sure, in a world of 10 second clips, it may be editted in different directions but no this is how normal international leaders speak to each other.
As much as the left focus on the Trump-Russia connection; I see a similar narrative developing on the right with China-Biden. Similar to the election conspiracy stories, the right isn’t even bothering to come up with original narratives just recyle the left. Whether these narratives are valid, it seems both the right and left have admitted that US public officials and campaign funding can be hijacked by other countries. Despite this commonality, the Republicans have rejected election security legislation proposed by the Democrats and have also rejected any regulation of dark money.
Tychinus — international travel has no right to privacy every time you apporach a border post whether it be security, public health or customs. Contact tracing by airlines is fairly normal. As is airlines acting as passport secuirty for the border police.
AJ — As I’ve said before, youtube is private property and as corporate person they have complete control of the platform. If they don’t want you post on their site, you can’t. Now if you want to adovocate for gov’t intervention to prevent corporate censoship; I’m all ears. Perhaps something along the lines of the Fairness Doctrine. In the meantime, this is the free market at work — if you like capitalism, you have to support youtube property rights. The algorithm for youtube is extremely strict. WWII historians use all kinds of synonyms to refer to Nazi, Holocaust, ghetto, rape, etc.. Failure to do so results in demonetilization. From youtube’s presepective they can never be too cautious about brand identity. As for asserting the election was false, no one wants to be sued by DVS — they know the claims can’t be proven so they are deleting video after video. FOX like other major networks is too big of a player for youtube to control.
LikeLike
More on China
Opposition parties find criticizing the ruling party’s China policy an easy target. When they get in power, they don’t change a thing. Depending on whose power, the conservatives and liberals care about Chinese human rights violations. When you’re not in power, you care. When you’re in power, you don’t. Simply because well its China.
Verbatim reported speech never looks good as it capures every “umm’ “like” etc. Most legislatures allow politicians to go back to the official record to “correct” it. Usually delete awkward “umms” and grammar errors. A tv transcript is beyond their control though. The left wing blogs used to publish transcripts of Trump speechs just to mock them. Four-five years ago, it was fairly petty mistakes — grammar, off topic, etc. By last year, it was clear that Trump was suffering cognitive decline – it was no longer funny if it ever was.
LikeLike
Now for the real reason I came here.
Reports from Texas indicate people are getting massive power bills and left wing groups are advising peopel to stop auto pay, cancel credit cards, and withdraw money from bank account to prevent power companies from charging and collecting ridiculous amounts — bills that are nomall a few hundred are now four digits. From what I understand, the electricity rate floats according to supply and demand. And as there is a high demand but hardly any supply the price went up. Now a crucial basis to capitalism is price and price information. Consumers need to know full price in order to make rational decisions (or so the theory goes). This seems to go against it.
I’m used to stable electrical (and utility) rates — rate changes are usually once a year and its fixed by government, private and public power producers, and the distribution monopoly gov’t corporation coming together. Usually the rate of inflation — although there have been times it increased above the inflation rate due to increase power production costs. The rate never floats and would definietely not go up and down according to supply.
This seems to reward incompennce — if a corporation fails to maintain the infrastructure (including winterization) and rolling blackouts are needed, a floating rate would reward them.
Now I know Texas has its own grid. There are four grids in Canada-US — east, west, Texas and Quebec. Texas felt there was too much regulation so it left the grid. Quebec power is almost entirely gov’t produced and controlled so they probably thought there wasn’t enough regulation (they do well on their own — supplying all of New England with power). Is Texas the only grid that subjects its people to random rate changes or is this the norm in the US? The prince instablity and lack of price information doesn’t seem business friendly let alone consumer friendly.
And before anyone goes off on a tangent, windmills do work in cold weather — they work in Canada, Nordic countries, Russia and even Antarcitc. However, we have regulations that force power producers and distributors to make sure the entire grid is prepared for winter weather. Hence, the grid is working elsewhere in the US despite the cold weather.
LikeLike