This is what drives me crazy about all of the hand-wringing about the weather disaster we had down here a few weeks ago: liberals keep insisting that we Texans deserved it because we voted regulation-averse politicians into office here, but it was actually the regulators themselves who turned it from an inconvenience into a humanitarian crisis.
He's not the governor, and I don't know anyone here (in Texas, not HN) that cares what he says.
However, you did not paraphrase him so much as lie about what he said. "you deserved it because you'd rather die than have the feds involved in your energy grid" is not at all what Rick Perry said. The actual quote is “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business. Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically.” [0]
> He's not the governor, and I don't know anyone here (in Texas, not HN) that cares what he says.
Rick Perry is the former governor of Texas, who was succeeded by the current governor. The seeds of this disaster were (intentionally) sown under his tenure. What he says is pertinent, IMO, since he had a hand in shaping the energy ecosystem in Texas and is likely to capture the Texan energy business/political zeitgeist.
I am similarly suspicious of the idea of collective guilt, but when we hire incompetents for a particular task we can't be surprised when that task is performed incompetently.
What a bizarre comment. Did you even read the comment you're responding to? It said "blaming the incident on deregulation is annoying because it was regulators' fault". Veracity of the claim aside, how on earth do you get "oh so we just shouldn't have regulations?!".
Believe it or not, there's no law that says you have to drop into simple-minded Manichaeism whenever a political topic comes up.
> liberals keep insisting that we Texans deserved it because we voted regulation-averse politicians into office
wow, that's quite a sweeping generalization right there. as a liberal, living in a very liberal part of the country, i can promise you that i never saw or heard anything but sympathy for all texans during that terrible time.
i'm truly sorry that you feel that this was not the case.
Sadly many people's world view seems entirely influenced buy social media jerks, and weird "news" sources.
Folks a few miles from me believe the city another few miles from me have Somali dominated 'no go zones' and folks in the city think everyone outside is a racist county bumpkin.
Fortunately they can agree they both dislike the suburbs, where I live.
I wonder how long before D'Andrea goes to work for an energy company?
Also, people on the right screaming about how gas prices have gone up "under Biden", wilfully ignoring that 30% of Texas refineries were shut down for 2+ weeks.
