Food Shortages in our future? Texas is wrecked.

@TexChik I enjoy hearing some positive news. I would like to know why all the hype about Cruz and his gaff, and how do most Texans feel about it? I would also like to know how that $17,000 electric bill we are hearing about was achieved, if you know any of that stuff?

@4meAndyou I can tell you, it was a small electric company and the man had 3 meters, Maybe his house, a business and a rent house or something else. The smaller companies are scrambling to supply fuel and at the mercy of independent natural gas providers who can charge whatever they want for it. I think this mess needs to get worked out and whoever is gouging prices dealt with. We also need to go back to mining coal, that was another thing that got stopped with the flick of a pen in the past month. Coal can generate quite a bit of electricity to keep up with extra demands during a cold blast.

@4meAndyou And the screaming hasn’t started yet till everyone gets their bills, they say most won’t see them till April. Oh boy, that’ll be a collective loud scream.

@cherokeepatti Yes...Biden needs to wakey wakey. Of course, this is fabulous for the GOP, if all we cared about was politics...but that man with the $17,000 bill says he was shut off for non-payment and NOW is blackballed and can't even GET another electric provider.

@4meAndyou I don’t know how that company does business but here in Oklahoma smaller companies make people prepay, in an emergency like extreme freezing temps they might get an extension but as soon as it’s over they can shut them off. Imagine trying to heat a mobile home during such cold weather. It’s very expensive during a normal winter and poorer people who live in them.

@cherokeepatti The only problem I EVER had with electric bills was in a 2 bedroom apartment I had before moving here. My electric seemed very expensive, so I signed up for Niagara electric in New York. They had me sign a contract guaranteeing that I would always use them. After I moved out, I lived, temporarily, in two rooming houses, and then came here where the electric is included in the rent.

That Electric company HOUNDED me for years. They didn't want to believe that I had escaped...🤣

@4meAndyou How can they have a contract trying to force you to be loyal to them even if you move? That’s damn ludicrous. There is a rural electric company outside of my city and even in some suburb additions here that tells homeowners that they can’t switch electric companies. My neighbor when I lived in the country said “You watch” and he called the competing company and had them install a meter to his home and told the rural company to come and get their meter. The other company already had electric lines going past his home and it was easy to switch over but they lied and told everyone they couldn’t switch.

@cherokeepatti Out of state companies suck you in by guaranteeing lower prices than the going in-state rate. That is actually why I signed up, and my bill seemed to go up, if anything. I think the apartment upstairs was tapped in to my line somehow.

@4meAndyou My sister lived in a trailer home she bought from her daughter who had moved after getting remarried and her daughter also had a trailer home. Walmart bought up the land the trailer park was on and they had to relocate to a rural area and use that rural electric company. They couldn’t afford to shell out the money for a huge deposit so they had to prepay for their electricity and they could go online as often as they wanted to check to see how much $ was left on their account. Some months they had to go several times and deposit more money in their electric accounts depending on the weather. The lot rentals are not cheap either. It’s a shame these people can’t get tiny houses that are well-made and well-insulated and efficient to heat and a/c.

@4meAndyou well it could have been or maybe the meter was set to run fast. I had a neighbor who built a new home, it was all-electric and out in the country. He had that rural electric company and his bill was huge and about the same winter, summer, fall and spring no matter how mild the temperatures were. After about a year of this he had his wife do an experiment. Read the meter one day and didn’t use anything like hot water, the washer or dryer, dishwasher etc and kept the lights turned off all day and everything else they could. Totaled up at the end of the day how much electric they used in KW. The next day he told his wife to do laundry all day with hot water, all the linens, bedding, clothing, towels etc. and also used her oven and stove most of the day from the time they got up till evening. Used the dishwasher, took hot showers, turned up the a/c full-blast etc. He read the meter at the end of the day and it was the same as the previous day when they used nothing but the refrigerator. That’s when he switched over to the other electric company and it was the end of the sky-high bills. .........Then one time my daughter moved in an apartment and the roommate told her the electric bill was really low even with central heat and air conditioning running off it. Averaging $15 a month in the late 90’s. One day she used her oven all day long, had every light, the tv, and everything else going, the heater going too. Didn’t use but a little bit more of electric. Their highest bill for a 2-bedroom apartment was $19 a month.

@cherokeepatti Mobile homes are so tempting for most budgets, but so poorly insulated...the people who live in them almost live in a deep freeze in the winter. I have a friend who lives in a mobile home, and he has to wear his coat and hat indoors and cover his legs with a blanket just to survive. He says his heat is cranking all the time...but it comes up out of the bathroom floor...and that is the only warm room in the mobile home.

@4meAndyou What my sister was doing was sleeping in her recliner chair with an electric blanket and her little chihuahua was sleeping under it. She would turn the thermostat to 59F. And if it got colder than that the heat would come on and prevent the water from freezing the pipes. She also had a tiny little space heater next to her chair but those use quite a bit of electric but not nearly as much as a furnace. Chihuahuas get cold really easy as it it, that dog when the weather was mild would lay down in it’s bed and pull the blankie up over her and tuck herself in to stay warm. In the daytime if the sun was shining in the winter the living room windows would let the light in and it would help warm up the living area about 10-15 degrees if she pulled back the drapes.

@cherokeepatti My friend refuses to use modern helpful aids like electric blankets. It would spoil his martyrdom, and he might have to pay for the electricity from the electric blanket...🤣. I bought him one, once, and he made me take it back.

@4meAndyou my aunt bought one for my sister’s bed in the 70’s and while she was taking a bath she put the blanket on the bed & plugged it in to warm the bed. When she went to see if it was getting warm there was a huge circle of brown-scorched blanket in the middle. I’ve been wary of them ever since....not to mention the electrical field coming off them that can affect the body. Maybe good to warm the bed but i don’t want one on while I’m sleeping.

@cherokeepatti Could have started a fire! But you are right about the electrical field.