Last week there were two big scandals in politics.\u00a0\u00a0The first was about New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the early COVID crisis.\u00a0\u00a0As the pandemic raged through senior citizen homes, it seems that the state manipulated the death statistics to \u201clook better\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The original statistic was 8,000 deaths in the nursing homes. But we now know that 7,000 more who died were transported to hospitals and were considered hospital deaths rather than the \u201cnursing home\u201d deaths.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It seems like a \u201ccounting game\u201d, manipulating statistics to control the narrative. But it\u2019s the State of New York, where the Democratic Party is willing to eat its own.\u00a0\u00a0Democratic politics in New York are bad. For a time the Republicans controlled the legislature, because one group of Democrats hated another group so much, they aligned with the Republicans.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s other Democrats that are using the numbers to attack Cuomo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the other scandal?\u00a0\u00a0As the state of Texas froze, people were trapped in their unheated homes. Some even died of hypothermia or loss of power to drive lifesaving equipment.\u00a0\u00a0Others were forced to find water by breaking the ice on swimming pools to boil, as the water infrastructure froze.\u00a0\u00a0As the pipes burst, the system-wide water pressure dropped and failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That scandal has two parts.\u00a0\u00a0The state of Texas is an \u201c independent\u201d operator when it comes to utilities.\u00a0\u00a0They cut themselves out of the national power grid, so that their market was \u201cfree\u201d from Federal government regulation.\u00a0\u00a0Since the big power needs for Texas is in August air-conditioning season, some power generators actually go off-line for the winter.\u00a0\u00a0Others failed to \u201cwinterize\u201d their generating facilities, so that when this year\u2019s Arctic weather reached to the Gulf of Mexico coast, they were forced to shut down.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Texas can’t “borrow” energy from other states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Texas energy was cheap, and they got what they paid for in the past two weeks.\u00a0\u00a0And to add insult to energy, many Texans took advantage of the cheap energy with variable rate energy plans.\u00a0\u00a0As energy was generally plentiful, the prices were low.\u00a0\u00a0But since the energy is scarce right now, their variable rates are skyrocketing.\u00a0\u00a0Some are getting monthly electric bills in the tens of thousands \u2013 really.\u00a0\u00a0That for the electricity that left them frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And of course, there was the humorous side of the Texas disaster. Senator Ted Cruz hopped a plane to Cancun to dodge the weather.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Watching him fly down there, trying to ignore IPhone cameras along the way, then head back home the next day was almost as much fun as listening to his tortured explanations of what he was doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But before we go on with discussion of the issues, isn\u2019t this normal? We\u2019re not talking about \u201cthe other guy\u201d who used to be in the White House, about what craziness he said, or did, or failed to do. We are talking about \u201cnormal\u201d crises, and \u201cnormal\u201d politics, and the normal antics of America\u2019s politicians. What a relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both of these issues have real consequences for real people. If the people of New York were more fully aware of the early nursing home statistics, perhaps they would have demanded different choices from their government. Though, to be honest, as I remember at the time as the first major outbreak of COVID rocked the nation, we were all very aware of the toll taking place in nursing homes. Would 15,000 instead of 8,000 made a difference? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cuomo does have an awkward political moment.\u00a0\u00a0One excuse his Administration used was that in the rush to deal with the COVID crisis, they didn\u2019t realize the statistical \u201cerror\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0But later, when the pace slowed, it wasn\u2019t corrected.\u00a0\u00a0And in the meantime, the Governor had time to write a book,\u00a0 American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from\u00a0the COVID-19 Pandemic<\/em>. It ended up on the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0bestseller list.\u00a0\u00a0That certainly raises questions about his priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n