Let's be more particular about what he said:'Read the fine print': Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says Texans who 'gambled' deserve $17,000 power bills https://t.co/7V3sLxHEqS
— Raw Story (@RawStory) February 24, 2021
"I saw the story about the high bills," Patrick said. "Let me explain that. We have in Texas, you can choose your energy plan and most people have a fixed rate. If they had a fixed rate per kilowatt hour, their rates aren't going up.""But the people who are getting those big bills are people who gambled on a very, very low rate," he continued. "But I've told those folks, do not panic. We are going to figure that out."Patrick added: "But going forward, people need to read the fine print in those kinds of bills and we may even end that type of variable plan because people were surprised."
"Going forward" and reading "the fine print," (or between the lines), Patrick is promising nothing to those rate payers. The Lege may figure this out, but will they force wholesalers to cut rates for their customers? Will, in particular, Griddy clients get forced refunds from Griddy, via a retroactive state law? The State of Texas where Business is the most important business of the State, is going to do such a socialistic thing?
Yeah, right.
Patrick is telling rate payers to suck it up and quit whining. Same way he told old folks a year ago to drop dead for the sake of the economy, without volunteering to go first (he's my age, at least). "Figuring this out" means setting some kind of rate cap on Griddy and other wholesale brokers, but it doesn't mean fixing the "fine print." Enron was run into bankruptcy and some of its executives were incarcerated for their crimes, but were the people Enron screwed made whole for their losses? Not by the State of Texas (for those who forget, Enron was based in Houston).
History will repeat itself. And the Lite Guv. just said the quiet part out loud: "The market giveth. The market taketh away. Blessed be the name of the market."*
*let me just add stocks and securities are required to warn would-be purchasers that such investments involves "significant risk of loss" in their advertising. Prescription drugs detail all the possible side effects of their drug, to the extent I often joke "It'll probably kill ya, but what the heck, right?" I've seen a lot of Griddy ads; none ever said "buying electricity through Griddy involves significant risk of paying $17,000 for one week's worth of power." I'm willing to bet Patrick's "solution" won't involve even that much truth-in-advertising in Texas.
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