Opinion

4 Antelope Valley Press, Saturday, February 27, 2021

VOICE YOUR THOUGHTS
To get your letter on this page:
Write: P.O. Box 4050, Palmdale, CA 93590-4050
E-mail: Editor@avpress.com

C4 Antelope Valley Press, Saturday, February 27, 2021

Two enormous stories about flight miracles

M
id-February 2021
should be marked on
everybody’s calendar
for its double celebratory achieve-
ments involving the vast universe
of flight history.
First came the fascinating story
that climaxed beautifully on the
surface of far-off Mars, a planet
that constantly teases NASA sci-
entists and engineers, eager to ex-
plore the big ball.
Perseverance, a sharply sophis-
ticated outer-space vehicle sent
home some pictures on Feb. 19,
showing the successful descent
and exploration beginnings on
the planet’s surface.
Traveling at speeds of 79,000
kilometers per hour across rough-
ly 174 million kilometers, it took
nearly eight months to reach its
destination.
The system was also used
during the landing of the Curios-
ity rover in 2012 and contributed
to the safe arrival of both robotic
explorers on the tricky terrain of
the fourth planet from the sun.
After the rover set down, the
sky crane flew away to a safe loca-
tion where its landing would not
cause any damage to the mission.
Engineers intend to warm up
Ingenuity, the experimental heli-
copter that could be first in con-
trolled flight on another planet.
The second extraordinary
FOCUS
Two flight incidents occurred this month
— a space exploration vehicle, the
Perseverance, landed on Mars after a
nearly eight-month flight from America,
and a commercial airliner with one en-
gine blown apart landed with no injuries
to those aboard
flight story occurred on the after-
noon of Feb. 20, when a United
commercial aircraft, with 241
people aboard, scattered dam-
aged debris across several neigh-
borhoods in Broomfield, Colo.,
before landing safely in Denver.
The Boeing 777-200 experi-
enced a “right-engine failure”
shortly after take-off and the pi-
lots were able to turn back and
land on the Denver airstrip.
No one was injured, thanks to
some excellent emergency flying.
A photo showed the engine burn-
ing.
The flight was headed from
Denver to Daniel K. Inouye In-
ternational Airport in Honolulu
when the serious incident oc-
curred.
The police in Broomfield,
which is about 15 miles southeast
of Boulder, said unspecified piec-
es of the plane fell across three
neighborhoods around 1:08 p.m.
local time.
Rebecca Schulte, a resident,
said she saw two pieces that fell
just a few houses away from hers.
She described hearing a “mild
sound” that she compared to an
empty dump truck going over a
pothole and then she heard sirens.
She said she found a “large
metal ring” that landed on the
front steps of a nearby home,
striking the handrail.
“How it missed the house is be-
yond me,” she said.
The metal ring was about 10-
feet across.
The plane was a different mod-
el from the Boeing 737 Max,
which was grounded in March
2019 after two fatal crashes.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sick buildings
W hen everyone enters a
building and experi-
ences, burning eyes, running
noses and skin irritations,
symptoms that clear up when
they leave, you have a sick
building syndrome.
Sick building syndromes
have many causes, but inad-
equate ventilation and chem-
ical contamination tops the
list.
When you live in the des-
ert, where low humidity, dust
and poor ventilation can exist,
expect the worst. Headaches,
nausea, drowsiness, dizziness
and fatigue can exist.
Chemicals are agents of
chaos, disinfectants included.
Benjamin Hawkins
Lancaster
Not-so-great
state of Texas
member of the Grand Old
Party.
Last week when Mother
Nature turned Texas into a
to deregulation the utilities
had been regulated by the
Texas Legislature. In the
1920s Texas lawmakers put
might think about it now.
Another issue with the
deregulation is thousands
of Texans are now receiving
save enough for a rainy day
or should I say in this case a
snowy frozen day.
George Jung
Letters from
readers
are always
welcome
• Please limit your
letters to 300 words and
to one per week.
• Write legibly.
• Make sure they
have a valid signature,
mailing address (not just
a street) and day and
evening phone number
where the writer may
be reached. Addresses
and phone numbers
are not published. Un-
signed letters or those
without names, city of
residence or contact in-
formation, will not be
published. Anonymous
letters are not printed.
Letters submitted on
another’s behalf will

O ver the years there
have been numerous
letters written by our local
extreme far right ultra-right-
wing conservatives praising
the state of Texas.
To listen to them, Tex-
as is the garden spot of the
United States and paradise
realized.
These people love dereg-
ulation and free markets.
They praise it. To them it
is the life blood of being a
frozen tundra of sorts, came
massive electrical power fail-
ures because their electrical
power grid failed.
Most experts agree this
was bound to happen since
it had already happened
about 10 years ago during
another similar cold spell.
Deregulation is not always a
good thing.
Texas politicians saw elec-
tricity deregulation as a bet-
ter future in the 1990s. Prior
on their 10 gallon hats and
created a single system for
generating and transmitting
power. Texans did not want
their power grid to be under
the oversight of the Federal
Energy Regulatory Com-
mission.
To compound the prob-
lem, Texas does not winter-
ize their wind turbines and
other generating infrastruc-
ture from extreme weather
conditions. My guess is they
catastrophic electric bills.
In Texas you can pick and
choose who you buy your
electrical power from. You
can sign up for wholesale
cheap electrical rates. How-
ever, the downside is when
there is a shortage of elec-
tricity your bill goes through
the roof and you could re-
ceive an invoice for thou-
sands of dollars.
As we all know Texans
like most Americans do not
Antelope Acres not be published.
• Do not attach let-
ters to the email, type
A Trump poem them in the body of the
T he election just didn’t
go
As well as Trump wanted
email, instead.
• Keep it civil. Call-
ing other letter writers
and so names will not be tol-
He cried “fraudulent erated.
crimes” • All submissions are
To courts 61 times subject to editing.
And lost 61 times in a row.
Marty Scepan
Palmdale

Et Tu, Ted? Why deregulation in Texas failed

N
obody is ever fully pre-
pared for natural disaster.
When hurricanes, bliz-
zards or tsunamis strike they al-
ways reveal weaknesses — failure
to plan, failure to invest in precau-
tions.
The disaster in Texas, however,
was different. The collapse of the
Texas power grid didn’t just reveal
a few shortcomings. It showed that
the entire philosophy behind the
state’s energy policy is wrong. And
it also showed that the state is run
by people who will resort to blatant
lies rather than admit their mis-
takes.
Texas isn’t the only state with
a largely deregulated electricity
market. It has, however, pushed
deregulation further than anyone
else. There is an upper limit on
wholesale electricity prices, but it’s
stratospherically high. And there is
essentially no prudential regulation
— no requirements that utilities
maintain reserve capacity or invest
in things like insulation to limit the
effects of extreme weather.
The theory was that no such
regulation was necessary because
the magic of the market would
take care of everything. After all,
a surge in demand or a disruption
Paul
Krugman
Commentary
of supply — both of which hap-
pened in the deep freeze — will
lead to high prices and hence to
big profits for any power supplier
that manages to keep operating. So
there should be incentives to invest
in robust systems, precisely to take
advantage of events like those Tex-
as just experienced.
Texas energy policy was based
on the idea that you can treat elec-
tricity like avocados. Do people re-
member the great avocado short-
age of 2019? Surging demand
and a bad crop in California led to
spiking prices, but nobody called
for a special inquest and new regu-
lations on avocado producers.
In fact, some people see nothing
wrong with what happened in Tex-
as in the past week. William Ho-
gan, the Harvard professor wide-
ly considered the architect of the
Texas system, asserted that drastic
price increases, while “not conve-
nient,” were how the system was
supposed to work.
But kilowatt-hours aren’t avoca-
dos, and there are at least three big
reasons pretending that they are is
a recipe for disaster.
First, electricity is essential to
modern life in a way few other
commodities can match. Having
to go without avocado toast won’t
kill you; having to go without elec-
tricity, especially when your house
relies on it for heat, can.
And it’s extremely doubtful
whether even the prospect of sky-
high profits during a shortage
offers energy suppliers enough
incentive to take the huge human
and economic costs of a protracted
power outage into account.
Second, electricity is supplied
by a system — and precautionary
investment by one player in the
system does no good if the other
players fail to do the same. Even
if the owner of a gas-fired power
plant insulates and winterizes its
turbines, it can’t function if the gas
pipeline that supplies its fuel, or
the wellhead that provides the gas,
freeze up.
So does the free market ensure
that the whole system works under
stress? Probably not.
Last but not least, a system that
depends on the incentives offered
by extremely high prices in times
of crisis isn’t workable, practically
or politically.
At first, those Texans who didn’t
lose power in the big freeze consid-
ered themselves lucky. But then the
bills arrived — and some families
found themselves being charged
thousands of dollars for a few days
of electricity.
Many families probably can’t
afford to pay those bills, so we’re
potentially looking at a wave of
personal bankruptcies. And even
those who don’t face ruin are, pre-
dictably, outraged.
Possibly the most revealing re-
mark of the Texas crisis so far was
a tweet by, of all people, Sen. Ted
Cruz (R-Cancún), who fumed that
“no power company should get a
windfall because of a natural di-
saster” and called on “state and
local regulators” to “prevent this
injustice.”
The senator, not known for
self-awareness, may not realize
what he did there. But if even Ted
Cruz — Ted Cruz! — believes that
regulators should prevent power
companies from reaping windfall
profits in a disaster, that eliminates
any private-sector financial incen-
tive to prepare for such a disaster.
And that, in turn, destroys the en-
tire premise behind radical dereg-
ulation.
So will the Republicans who
hold all of Texas’ statewide offic-
es learn from this debacle and re-
think their whole approach to en-
ergy policy? Of course not. Their
immediate reaction was to falsely
blame the crisis on wind pow-
er and lash out at advocates of a
Green New Deal — even though
something like a Green New Deal,
that is, public investment in energy
infrastructure, is exactly what Tex-
as needs.
And one thing we’ve definitely
learned over the past few months is
that once politicians commit them-
selves to a Big Lie, whether it in-
volves epidemiology, economics or
election results, there’s no turning
back.
But while the right-wing politi-
cal-media complex can’t and won’t
learn anything from the Texas
power debacle, the rest of us can.
We’ve just been offered a clear
view of the dark (and cold) side of
free-market fundamentalism. And
that’s a lesson we shouldn’t forget.

PRICKLY CITY By Scott Stantis MALLARD FILLMORE By Bruce Tinsley