edbob
Joined 6 years ago
Karma
522
Submissions
259
Member since
Jul 29
Recent submissions
Comment · 5 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Property tax rates are higher on a percentage basis, but property values can be much lower, so you can still come out ahead on the property taxes.
larsiusprime had a good analysis [0] that gets into some of the details.
Comment · 5 years ago
It's not the best use of statistics that I've ever seen by a long shot, but I just wanted to point out that your claim that it was "bullshit madeup" was inaccurate flamebait.
He didn't say which subset of universities he saw that statistic for. The group of "most liberal universities in the country" includes what, all of the most wealthy and important ones? It's certainly a reasonable subset to consider. The 98% figure is pretty close here (for the group as a whole, not just one like you claim).
You need stronger evidence to attack someone like that, and you don't have it, partially because we don't even know what exactly the scope of the claim was. You could certainly criticize the vagueness of the statement without being toxic.
Comment · 5 years ago
Disclaimer: I got two shots of Moderna some time ago.
Your source shows just how strongly anti-vax Biden was, making the case that the vaccine can't be trusted because of political influence. Since Biden can't give us any credible assurances that politics aren't involved in FDA approval or CDC recommendations, nor can he address his own concerns about the vaccine's development being politicized, then, by his argument, the American people should not have confidence.
> The following week, Biden restated his concern about politics intervening in vaccine development:
> "Americans have had to endure President Trump’s incompetence and dishonesty, when it comes to testing and personal protective equipment. We can’t afford to repeat those fiascos when it comes to a vaccine. … Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump, and at this moment, the American people can’t either. Last week, Senator Harris and I laid out three questions this administration’s going to have to answer to assure the American people that politics will not play a role whatsoever in the vaccine process. If Donald Trump can’t give answers and the administration can’t give answers to these three questions, the American people should not have confidence."
PolitiFact is one of the most biased outlets I've seen.
Comment · 5 years ago
The statistic is on the high side of the range, but it is accurate.
> When exploring the makeup of Ivy League institutions and universities in New England, results, such as the case with Brown University, were as high as 60:1 in favor of registered Democrats among professors.
As chuckee linked a bit down the page:
[0] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/02/study_liberalto...
Comment · 5 years ago
I keep seeing this brought up on HN. Isn't it telling that you have to go back 70 years to find a good example? At that time, the Democratic Party was still in bed with the KKK. It's not relevant to today's politics.
Comment · 5 years ago
Here's hoping that D'Andrea was the biggest part of the leadership problem. He certainly represented himself as having too much power.
Comment · 5 years ago
This is substantially misleading. Due to the 2011 outage, the Texan regulations are stronger and more strictly enforced than the federal regulations. Additionally, the primary issue with natural gas was due to suppliers not being able to get gas to the generators. The natural gas suppliers are federally regulated.
Comment · 5 years ago
The ERCOT projections I've seen are short-term [0], which means that after the most dismal days, the slightly less dismal 15-30% days "exceeded expectations". The fact-checkers reported this supposedly great performance without mentioning a single one of these details. I don't think these short-term projections are very useful for our analysis. It's as if your team finished the season 6-6, and all anyone mentions is how they won six games in a row so they're actually the best team in the league.
If you want to know "normal" output, you'll find that wind is very inconsistent. (I probably did find the mean at some point, but I don't have it at hand, and honestly don't feel that it matters). Wind is not "supposed" to carry the winter load, but ERCOT's record day for wind generation was set in February. Investors don't want to build power plants that could serve the expected winter load but will bleed money when wind has a good winter. Texas has built nothing but wind and solar for years because that's where all the profit is. ("Nothing but wind and solar for years" is according to D'Andrea's leaked phone call that got him fired, but I don't doubt his account of his own crony capitalism).
Wind is not "supposed" to be at fault for outages because it's expected to drop to as little as 1% output for short periods, but the reality is that we have built a power grid that does rely on wind. Our population is increasing dramatically, but we are not building any more reliable capacity because it's unprofitable compared to its subsidized competitors.
I'm happy that Texas is a world leader in wind generation, but we need a reality check. We have to build reliable capacity too. Winterization will help, but it's not going to do a thing to fix our problems during the spring and summer. We actually need more than that, because we occasionally have winter demand that matches peak summer demand. If we keep building so much wind, that will never happen unless wind happens to have a record winter in just the right year.
Comment · 5 years ago
How would we fix it without building nuclear plants? I don't think building a bunch of fossil fuel plants is going to go over well. Even Texas hasn't built anything other than wind and solar in years.
Maybe we tolerate it because fixing it is politically impossible.
Comment · 5 years ago
Consumers were insulated from this because they only pay the price in their contract, not the wholesale price. There was one provider that offered lower rates in exchange for not giving that protection, which did not work out very well.
Comment · 5 years ago
Could this be due to France's high use of nuclear energy (~70%)? I wish we had that, but it's nearly impossible to build here.
Comment · 5 years ago
It's nearly all wind, whose output fell all the way to 12.5% of installed capacity over a three-day period when homes were freezing (February 15, 16, and 17). [0] Output consistently stayed in the 15-30% range while I was watching it in ERCOT's live stats. Solar plants are nearly a rounding error. Every other source maintained 60-75% of capacity even with insufficient winterization.
[0] http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel20...
Can you give a good source or two please?