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To: scion who wrote (12610)	2/18/2021 9:32:12 AM
From: scion	Respond to of 12881

Texas Mayor Resigns After Telling Freezing Residents to ‘Sink or Swim’ and Get Off Their Asses: ‘No One Owes Your Family Anything … Only the Strong Will Survive’ FEBRUARY 17, 2021 BY ANDY TOWLE 58 towleroad.com Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado City, Texas, resigned after posting a message to Facebook amid massive power outages caused by the polar plunge and winter storm wreaking havoc on the state. Wrote Boyd on Facebook after receiving complaints from constituents: “No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out! If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal with out and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family. If you were sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your lazy is direct result of your raising! Only the strong will survive and the week will perish.” “Folks, God Has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this,” Boyd continued. “This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts. Am I sorry that you have been dealing without electricity and water; yes! But I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves! We have lost sight of those in need and those that take advantage of the system and mesh them into one group!! Bottom line, quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family! Bottom line – DON’T BE A PART OF A PROBLEM, BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION!” Michael Paulauski @mike10010100 This dude is the mayor of Colorado City, Texas. Good fucking god they're fucked. Following outrage over the post, Boyd resigned. In a second Facebook post, Boyd wrote: “All, I have set back and watched all this escalating and have tried to keep my mouth shut! I won’t deny for one minute what I said in my post this morning. Believe me when I say that many of the things I said were taken out of context and some of which were said without putting much thought in to it. I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help to be left to fend for themselves. I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout. I apologize for the wording and some of the phrases that were used! I had already turned in my resignation and had not signed up to run for mayor again on the deadline that was February 12th! I spoke some of this out of the anger that the city and county was catching for situations which were out of their control. Please understand if I had it to do over again I would have just kept my words to myself and if I did say them I would have used better wording and been more descriptive.” “The anger and harassment you have caused my wife and family is so undeserved….my wife was laid off of her job based off the association people gave to her and the business she worked for,” Boyd added. “She’s a very good person and was only defending me! But her to have to get fired from her job over things I said out of context is so horrible. I admit, there are things that are said all the time that I don’t agree with; but I would never harass you or your family to the point that they would lose there livelihood such as a form of income. I ask that you each understand I never meant to speak for the city of Colorado City or Mitchell county! I was speaking as a citizen as I am NOT THE MAYOR anymore. I apologize for the wording and ask that you please not harass myself or my family anymore!” ... MORE towleroad.com

To: scion who wrote (12610)	2/18/2021 10:01:50 AM
From: scion	Respond to of 12881

Winter storm pulls away from Texas, but millions still without power By Brad Brooks FEBRUARY 18, 202110:08 AM UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO 3 MIN READ reuters.com LUBBOCK, Texas (Reuters) - The winter storm that crippled the Texas electrical grid is moving out of the state, but freezing temperatures remain, hampering attempts to restore full power as residents struggle. With 2.7 million Texas households still without heat Thursday morning, leaders warned of the dangers with a domino effect on infrastructure. The lack of power has cut off water supplies for millions, further strained hospitals’ ability to treat patients amid a pandemic, and isolated vulnerable communities with frozen roads still impassable in parts of the state. “This is in many ways disasters within the disaster,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in Harris County, which encompasses Houston. “The cascading effects are not going to go away.” Residents in over 100 counties in Texas have been told to boil their drinking water as treatment plants continue to suffer from energy blackouts, officials said. Upward of 12 million people in the state -- the country’s second largest with a population of roughly 29 million -- either have no drinking water on tap in their homes or have drinking water available only intermittently. With freezing temperatures expected through the weekend, getting the lights back on will be a slow process, as Texas has lost 40% of its generating capacity, with natural gas wells and pipelines, along with wind turbines, frozen shut. Hospitals in Houston, the state’s largest city, and elsewhere in Texas have reported they have no water. Nearly two dozens deaths have been attributed to the cold snap. Officials say they suspect many more people have died - but their bodies have not been discovered yet. Dan Petersen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, said the storm was pulling out of Texas. “The worst is over and things will be getting better through the weekend,” he said. But freezing temperatures will remain for several more days, Petersen said, and that cold could complicate efforts to quickly get the Texas energy grid back to full capacity. Governor Greg Abbott told a news conference on Wednesday that he expected a nuclear plant in south Texas to come back online within hours, which along with coal-fired plants’ returning to operations should provide enough power for 400,000 homes. Abbott, a Republican, has demanded an investigation into the management of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), a cooperative responsible for 90% of the state’s electricity. Critics say ERCOT did not heed federal warnings after a similar cold-weather meltdown in 2011 to ensure that Texas’ energy infrastructure, which relies primarily on natural gas, was winterized. “Every source of power the state of Texas has access to has been compromised because of the cold temperature or because of equipment failures,” Abbott said. Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Leslie Adler reuters.com

To: scion who wrote (12610)	2/18/2021 1:05:40 PM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12881

Texas Democrats call for Sen. Ted Cruz to resign after unverified photos purportedly show him traveling to Cancun By John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez Feb. 18, 2021 at 5:47 p.m. GMT washingtonpost.com The Texas Democratic Party is calling on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to resign after unverified photos surfaced on social media purportedly showing him traveling to Cancun, Mexico, as millions of Texas residents were without power amid blackouts from the freezing weather. Cruz’s office has not responded to questions about his whereabouts and whether such a trip took place. Several media outlets cited unidentified GOP officials Thursday morning as saying that Cruz had flown to Mexico. In a statement, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said Cruz “is proving to be an enemy to our state by abandoning us in our greatest time of need.” “Ted Cruz jetting off to Mexico while Texans remain dying in the cold isn’t surprising but it is deeply disturbing and disappointing,” Hinojosa said. “Cruz is emblematic of what the Texas Republican Party and its leaders have become: weak, corrupt, inept, and self-serving politicians who don’t give a damn about the people they were elected to represent. They were elected by the people but have no interest or intent of doing their jobs.” A Democratic super PAC, American Bridge, also called for Cruz’s resignation. “Senator Cruz should do his constituents a favor and stay on the beach instead of getting paid by taxpayers to do a job he clearly has no interest in doing,” the group’s president, Bradley Beychok, said in a statement. Cruz was first elected to the Senate in 2012, narrowly beat former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D) to win reelection in 2018 and is widely considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate. He ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and, after being among Donald Trump’s sharpest critics during the primaries, went on to become one of his staunchest defenders in Congress, helping to spearhead efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Photos that rapidly circulated on social media overnight showed a man who could be the senator at an airport and on an airplane. In some photos, a gray face mask was visible that appeared to be similar to one that Cruz was wearing at Biden’s inauguration. According to the social media postings, Cruz appeared to be in the Houston airport, preparing to board a United Airlines flight from Houston to Fort Lauderdale with continuing service to Cancun. In Texas, more than 3 million customers were still in the dark Wednesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. As of Thursday morning, that figure was about 500,000. While outrage at Cruz was mounting online, his former opponent, O’Rourke, highlighted his own efforts to assist Texans during the crisis. “We made over 151,000 calls to senior citizens in Texas tonight,” O’Rourke said in a Wednesday night tweet. “One of our [volunteers] talked to a man stranded at home w/out power in Killeen, hadn’t eaten in 2 days, got him a ride to a warming center and a hot meal. Help us reach more people, join us tomorrow.” In an interview Monday with San Antonio-based radio host Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo, Cruz said he was fortunate not to have lost power at his Houston home. He urged his fellow Texans to stay home because of the danger posed by the storms. “This storm is dangerous, and there’s a second storm expected to hit this week, which will make things even worse,” he said. “So if you can stay home, don’t go out on the roads. Don’t risk the ice.” Cruz added that he had spoken over the weekend with a meteorologist who said the combination of storms could lead up to 100 people in the state losing their lives this week alone. “So don’t risk it,” Cruz said. “Keep your family safe, and just stay home and hug your kids.” Cruz has also previously criticized Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D), who in November hosted a wedding and then traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, as coronavirus cases surged across Texas. “Hypocrites. Complete and utter hypocrites,” Cruz said in a December tweet, referring to Adler and other Democrats who had flouted guidelines on travel and large group gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic. washingtonpost.com