Comments on: Rolling power outages and the Super Bowl

By: Paul Revere

Paul Revere — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 06:59:47 +0000

BS The government lied to you! http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/108894/20110204/obama-trigers-blackouts-infowars-v-for-victory-conspiracy-theory-internet-kill-switch-egypt-super-bo.htm
After ‘V for Victory’, Infowars stirs up ‘Obama Triggers Blackouts’
By IB Times Staff Reporter | February 4, 2011 6:04 AM EST
After stirring up a storm with the ‘V for Victory, You are the Resistance’ campaign, Infowars has now accused the Obama administration of triggering blackouts.
Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars accused President Barack Obama of implementing rolling blackouts in Texas and across America as the direct consequence of his administration’s agenda to lay siege to the coal industry, launch a takeover of infrastructure under the contrived global warming scam, and help usher in the post-industrial collapse of America.
To substantiate the argument, Infowars quoted several media reports elucidating how the power issues have affected major hospitals in Texas, at Parkland, Baylor, Methodist and Presbyterian Dallas. While hospitals are ideally supposed to be exempt from blackouts, Infowars stressed on the fact that power supply to Cowboys Stadium and Super Bowl venues were not affected.
“Street lights and traffic lights have also been hit by the outages, causing traffic build-ups and other hazards more typically associated with a decrepit underdeveloped country, and not with the supposed leading light of the prosperous first world,” a post on Infowars.com said.
While countries like China and Mexico continue to build new power plants, United States is lagging behind, Infowars contended, “as the Environmental Protection Agency takes control of refineries and power plants under the completely fraudulent pretext of preventing global warming.”
Stating that Texas has turned into a target for the present government as it is the only state that has refused to implement a permit process, Infowars went on to accuse the Obama administration of conducting industrial warfare against the United States.
“Obama’s 2008 promise to “bankrupt” the coal industry by placing suffocating restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions even as China and other countries are given free reign to pollute at will is now coming to fruition. This is all part of the “post-industrial revolution” that the global elite have promised to enforce as a means of turning the United States into a decaying banana republic,” Jones and Watson argued on the post.
In another post, Watson also accused the government of giving “waivers to administration insiders like General Electric, as larger transnational oil companies create artificial scarcity to jack up prices and eliminate competition.”
The ‘Obama Triggers Blackouts’ accusation comes after Infowars launched the ‘V for Victory’ campaign on January 21 against the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ initiative of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The movement aimed at fighting back against the steps taken by the authorities to turn Americans against one and other, as Infowars viewed it.
“We are all in danger. A police state control grid is being established in the United States. Now is the time for all lovers of liberty to stand together and speak out against the growing tyranny destroying our republic. We WILL be victorious against the New World Order. Post this V for Victory flyer to warn others and show your peaceful resistance,” the earlier campaign said.
Infowars is currently celebrating the fact that the new conspiracy theory has attracted attention and is gaining popularity based on the fact that the keyword ‘Obama Triggers Blackouts’ topped Google search trends.
“Thanks for all our great listeners for their great effort in helping us get the word out on this vital issue,” the outlet said on its website.
“Blackout” also interpreted in connection with Internet “Kill Switch”
While Infowars is busy congratulating itself for inciting curiosity on Obama triggering blackouts, a few bloggers have interpreted the hot search term ‘blackout’ in connection with the recently proposed legislation, which would allow the President to shut down the Internet in the event of a national crisis or a cyber attack. The legislation evoked several questions and concerns in the wake of the internet and communications blockade in Egypt following the outbreak of anti-government protests.
The proposed legislation would grant the President of the United States a “kill switch” power to shut down the Internet. However, American senators sought to assert that the “kill switch” will be used only if the U.S. suffers a cyber attack and it will not be used to create blackouts like in Egypt

By: Russell Mitchell

Russell Mitchell — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:15:53 +0000

Please do your own research on sites that are neutral or take great pains to present facts, not charged statements that do nothing to elevate the discussion.

By: Russell Mitchell

Russell Mitchell — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:12:27 +0000

Hardy Haberman’s assessment is closer to the truth than the comments posted after the article was published. Please read the articles on why DART light rail service was suspended. Then read what other cities have done to decrease the chances of their light rail systems experiencing total operational failure. Moreover, please do a more comprehensive search on ERCOT, ONCOR, and which businesses, hotels, hospitals, apartment buildings, and neighborhoods were affected by the rolling blackouts. I think you would be surprised at what was stated by officials and what actually happened.

By: Russell Mitchell

Russell Mitchell — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:06:32 +0000

To J Robinson:
Bell South, Southwestern Bell, Bell Labs were all PRIVATE COMPANIES. The government never ran these entities.

Yes, the government heavily regulated the aforementioned companies, but Ma Bell, Bell South, AT&T, Verizon, MCI were or are private corporations owned by stockholders, subject to state and federal regulations.

By: jrobinson

jrobinson — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 19:13:21 +0000

Hey, for all you Lefties with a “de-regulation is the problem” fetish, you should read this:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/obamas-blocking-of-new-power-plants-triggers-nationwide-blackouts.html

By: jrobinson

jrobinson — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 01:19:11 +0000

@DBETUSTAK: Please don’t misunderstand. I am certainly not defending the service. And I’m not defending the decision to keep certain customers supplied and others not. I’m simply saying deregulation had zero to do with it.

I’m old enough to remember when the govt ran the phone company (good ol Ma Bell)… and it literally took weeks to get someone to your house to fix a simple broken connection. (You thought the cable company’s “sometime between noon and 6pm was bad”! We were lucky to get the right day.) I remember this clearly because once when I was twelve, I got sick of my mother waiting for the repair guy to show, so I re-stripped and re-connected the phone wires myself. And when she called Bell to cancel the appointment and told them why, they threatened to call the police for “tampering with a federal communication outlet” or some such nonsense. My parents didn’t know what to do – they thought I was being clever. Do you find that kind of situation preferable?

The problem is, many of you seem to have the assumption that the govt taking charge – either through outright ownership or heavy regulation – is the answer; when, historically, the track record of govt on these things is dismal. If the govt owned the power stations, I’m willing to wager the blackouts would be more extensive, commonplace, they would continue for weeks, and the rates would be almost twice as high. And the argument we would be having would be over which politician or bureaucrat should be held responsible. And all our complaints would be totally ignored. (I know you think they’re being ignored now, but I guarantee you there’s plenty of screaming behind closed doors going on.) As it is now, you can “punish” whoever you feel is responsible by switching providers… you have choice and freedom – which is generally a good thing in my book.

By: T harmon

T harmon — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:10:35 +0000

First let me explain about what I know of home heating and cooling. Depending on when the home was built and the amount of insulation in the home would determine weather it is more efficient to adjust the thermostat or turn it off. Homes that retain the heat or cool inside are more efficient to leave the thermostat on and allow it to cycle on and off as needed. If you turn it off and then later turn it on it could cause the system to run longer and use electricity to reach the desired temperature inside the home.
It is possible that during the recent power outages when the electricity was restored it would cause more usage then if it had been left on. Because the system would have to run longer to reach the desired temp then if it had been left on. Therefore Oncor could have caused more electricity to be consumed by turning off the power then if they had left it on.

By: dbetustak

dbetustak — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:19:20 +0000

Well i just want to say to jrobinson, you must have the most stable power in texas .I for one do not .and i do pay for services that are at best sporadic. and i live in Garland . not some rural area. regulation ,dergulation what a pile of crap both you and the other guy spew.It is greed! but the fun part of all this is when you call and report an outage,the finge rpointing by the power company the company who supposed to maintain the lines and the call center that handles the calls.Run around after run around. iI tell you i feel the same screw Jerry and the stadium,when did football overtake human dignity,or human needs.For all you lame asses that paid the tousands of dollars to be at the game . power loss would be a god send , to wake you up to the real world going on around you. we will not even begin to talk about the inconvience that this so called Super BOWL IS CAUSING EVERDAY CITIZENS.Get to work NAW,we have to have these lanes for football parking! Electricity,NAW we need to make sure that the million dollar babies are taken care of so they can play a kids game ,! ENOUGH

By: jrobinson

jrobinson — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:52:27 +0000

Okay, first of all, I’m not sure how de-regulation enters into any of it. None of the officials mentioned it, no regulations were violated, and there weren’t any regulations that used to be in place that would’ve made a difference. I have no idea how you got from point A to B on that one. In fact, if the state was running the power, more plants probably would’ve failed, but we’d be blaming the govt and… asking for more regulations?

To be fair, you also have to understand that many of the federal regulations (EPA in particular) that are in place now that cover power generation do not allow for modernization or upgrades or any modification to the plants without an extensive – and often denied – approval process. Most of our coal plants, for example, cannot be modified or upgraded because Progressives seemingly have a fetishistic hate about them. So, old plants are grandfathered into the current system and can’t be upgraded (or even repaired in some cases). That’s why our power-generating structure seems stuck in the 60s – there weren’t many coal plants that were built after 1970. In contrast, China is building next-generation coal plants that are incredibly clean and efficient, and they feel confident that they will be able to reach “clean coal” generation – something that I am assured by many Leftists, is impossible. Good thing no one told the Chinese.

And let me head you off at the path: when the Suez Canal closes and oil jumps to $300/barrel and we don’t have any domestic capacity because all the oil rigs have left the gulf… that won’t be because of de-regulation, either. That’s all Obama, baby.

(And by the way, windmills won’t work in cold like this.)