Denn

All right, well, I'm Turgs, Jake Ugrana, who's

wearing what you guys do. We have an excellent show prepared for you. Well, of course we do. Are we going to execute that show? Well, come on. Don't be ridiculous. Of course we are. All right. So one of the things I need to tell you today is to go to TYT.com. Why? There's stories there. Did you know that? We're going to quote one of them throughout the show today, especially on Texas. One of our reporters who you guys paid for, T. Y. Chang did an amazing job on the Texas D regulation story, which is up first. So make sure you're checking out

the stories tab on TYT.com. We've got a lot more where that came from. Including you're going to be able to actually summarize some of our, get some red versions of some of our videos. So I want to make sure you guys all were aware of that, especially the folks who are members and loyal viewers and readers of our work. All right. Lots of stories, including dunking on Ted Cruz and perhaps fascinating debate.

On Neera Tandon. I mean, it's going to be murder for you, but it's okay. It's okay. It'll be a fun debate. I'm looking forward to it. If it's murder, I feel bad. I feel bad when I do that to you, but it has to be done. I'm sorry, Jay.

Number one, I hear you. Number two, if it's murder, then I prefer that it's murder. She wrote.

Okay, good, good. I like that. Well, let's start off with a serious story involving what happened in Texas and its aftermath because of course people want answers. And the answer is you shouldn't privatize utility companies. So

Texans, Texans are now receiving exorbitant energy bills, adding insult to injury after essentially being victimized by rolling blackouts during a brutal winter storm.

Dozens of people have died as a result of this, including some children. I read a story today about a family of three children and a grandmother who died because they use their fireplace to stay warm.

And that started a fire while they were sleeping and they were unable to escape their home. It's just one unbelievably devastating story after the next. And now people are getting these exorbitant utility bills, including one person who received nearly $17,000 in their energy bill. Now governor Abbott from Texas convened that his office described convened what his office described, I should say as an emergency bill.

I should say as an emergency meeting Saturday with lawmakers to discuss the issue, the public utility commission on Sunday, met to sign two orders, including one that would direct energy providers to temporarily stop disconnecting customers from power or water because they have not paid.

The commission also signed an order to stop companies from sending invoices or bill estimates to customers until we work through issues of how we are going to financially manage the situation we are in. And that was a statement from commission chair, Diane Walker.

Now obviously if the power grid weren't privatized and deregulated to the extent that it has been in the state of Texas, they wouldn't find themselves in the situation that they're in right now. And that's really the heart of the story.

It's not this battle between fossil fuels and renewable energy, that's what the fossil fuel industry would have you believe, that's what the Republican party would have you believe. But this is really a story of what goes awry once you tie power electricity to the so-called free market.

And that's why I would like to say that the power grid is not the only way to supply and demand and essentially deregulate this to the point where companies don't weatherize their equipment to be able to withstand incredibly cold temperatures.

Although Governor Abbott blamed progressive energy policies for the devastating power outages that hit the state during freezing winter weather, experts have pointed to other factors including lacks regulations that let the energy industry cut corners on winterizing.

And that's from TYT Investigates Reporting, which I want to provide more details for a little later in the show. But Jank, why don't you jump in?

Yeah, so I want to explain very simple economics to Republicans who apparently know nothing about economics or business. So it's called supply and demand.

So when you put energy companies on variable pricing, depending on supply and demand, that guarantees that in times of disaster, you will have price gouging.

Why? Because the supply will be limited, in this case the pipes froze. But in other instances, there are other issues that come because of extreme weather events that shuts down energy sources.

In this case, almost all of it was oil and gas that was shut down, and that is the predominant energy source in Texas. So that created low supply of energy.

And it's at the same exact time that everybody needs that energy because it's so cold outside because of the same disaster. So you have high demand, econ 101. If you have high demand and low supply, you will have high prices.

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