June 11, 2025 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
So Michael Very Show is on the air. So in city,
(00:39):
in Democrat city politics, over the last fifty years, there
have been power shifts in who the boss is, but
there has never been a boss in fifty years who
had the consolidated power that Rodney Ellis does not even close.
(01:08):
There's been, you know, a big donor over here, been
a former congressman or former state rep who had some
influence over here. You know, Ben Reyes had some influence
on the East End, but even that was always challenged.
You had Gene Green who kind of had you know,
(01:30):
labor and some Hispanic Ben Reyes who had kind of
the more activist Hispanic and Sheila was trying to create
a Black Brown coalition, and she had her folks, and
each of them could could gather together and help get
a candidate across the finish line. But they didn't stack
(01:52):
bureaucracies from top to bottom with their handpicked choices. They
didn't have outside plenty of attorneys from Beaumont and Port
Arthur that would come in and spend a fortune. They
didn't have the strategy and the constant consistency that Rodney does. Now.
(02:14):
Some of you folks struggle to understand this, So I'm
going to say it yet again. If I tell you,
for instance, that Simone Biles at her peak, was really
good in gymnastics, that does not mean that I think
that her comments about Riley Gaines were accurate. I think
they're despicable. What I don't do, which too many people
(02:36):
have done, is if I like someone tell you they're
great at everything else or that they're going to win,
and if I don't like someone tell you they're going
to lose and that they also can't be bench press
forty pounds, I don't do that. I'll just tell you
exactly what I think is going to happen, based on
what I believe and based on the body of information
and experience I have. So let's go back without judgment.
(03:00):
This is what happened. So Sheila dies. It was known
that she was ill for some time. In fact, it's
funny most people don't know what's going on in Democrat
politics because I was involved for years, so many years
in city politics and have so many folks as sources
(03:24):
and friends. A lot of times, when I say something
I know to be true, I can't tell it because
people will trace where I got it, and it would
surprise people and burn my source. But I said, Sheila
has a terminal illness. She's going to die. And I
had people who loved the show. You said she don't die.
She ain't died yet, Michael, you said she don't die.
(03:46):
You said she'll die. Three weeks ago, boom, she was gone.
The people in the inner circle knew that she was
about to die, so the plotting had already begun. So
when the news emerged Sheila died, Oh my goodness, we
had no idea. Yeah, they know, And the calls had
been made and the meetings had been held and everything
(04:08):
had been put into place, and Sylvester was going to
be the replacement. Enter Jolanda Jones. When I left city council,
Jolanda Jones replaced me in that seat. Jolanda is a
former UH athlete. She's tall, she's striking like Grace Jones.
(04:29):
She's smart, she's crazy, she will fist fight you and win.
She's tough. She's a I don't know if she was
an Olympian, but I know she was a collegiate national competitor.
She's tall and strong and smart and loud and fearless.
Now she's all so crazy, and you know that that
(04:51):
kind of makes her. She'll turn. She has that there's
a constantly changing allegiance.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It's Castlereagh and Metternick and the pieces on the chessboard.
But some people like her, and some people like her
that also like Sheila are also like Rodney. Here she's spunky.
So she was going to run in the congressional in
the eighteen congressional district seat for Sila's seat. Rodney cuts
a deal with her. Look, sylvester'z ill we all know it,
(05:20):
which they did. If you don't run against Sylvester, you
let him be the congressman. I'll support you to replace
him and it won't be long. She took the deal,
just like Amanda Edwards took the deal to step out
of the mayor's race against Sheila Jackson Lee and Rodney
and Sheila would support her in the congressional seat to
replace her in of course they didn't. These young politic,
(05:42):
young black politicians, take these people at their word and
they dupe them every time. Let's get you out of
this race. You got plenty of time, and we'll support
you in the next race. You don't do that anyway.
So Rodney was going to support her to replace Sylvester,
but he already had Christian Menefee because he can control
(06:03):
Christian Menefee, who is the who. He's gotten a county
post where he can control him there, so he slides
Christian Menefee over into that congressional seat and then he's
got his replacement to put in Christian Menefee seat. Rodney
is a boss the way I have never seen a
(06:23):
Republican or Democrat. And I've studied politics here for fifty years.
I know all the players. Rodney has complete and utter
control like I've never even seen anything in the realm
of this. A lot of Democrats have had enough. He's
the one who pushed kim On out. He's the one
who supported kim On. Then he's the one who pushed
(06:43):
her out. He's the one who puts Shawn Tier there.
And as long as Shawn Tier does exactly what he wants.
He pushed a lot of the old white judges, Democrat judges,
the white liberal judges out of their Harris County judicial
seats and replaced them with black women that he could control.
And in two election cycles in a row, he pushed
them all out. There was a lot of resentment. There's
(07:06):
a lot of old white money that were some of
it Jewish, some of it gay, some of it just
old white liberal money. And Rodney has overstepped with a
lot of those so that he could have complete and
utter control. So Grant Martin, his candidate was Jolanda. So
when Jolanda cut the deal, Grant probably told her not to.
(07:29):
I don't know that for sure. She cut the deal,
Rodney betrayed her. Grant's pissed off. So there is now
a split between Rodney, who controls the gay faction, and
the entirety of the Harris County Republican Party. A large
part of that the black community. They're the Black Democrat
power structure. And then you've got Grant Martin over here
(07:50):
and a niece, and they've got a lot of connections
with the business community. There will be a lot of
Republicans who will quietly support them, who would maybe prefer
a Republican County judge. But they figure and these can
push Lena out, and that's the devil. They know that's
what's going to be happening over the next year, and
it's gets your popcorn. It's going to be good.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
A lot of this introductions the love Budd Steenjel this
has been race driver Michael Berry Funny ramon the King
of Dean suggested for general audiences.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Energy the term you hear a lot in our community
because we're the energy capital of the country that is
in Houston, and a lot of jobs tied to the
energy industry, by which we mostly mean oil and gas
and natural gas, and much bigger component of that than
(08:52):
it would have been twenty five thirty years ago. And
then you've got the shellionaires, the folks in the Eagleford
share shell Shell. I never wondered why would eagle Ford
became Eagleford, but I like it. And you have folks
that were just sitting on ranching land. It wasn't that valuable,
(09:14):
and all of a sudden they're rich. Overnight it became
the Beverly Hill buildies all over again, lots of them.
And then you've got guys like Jeffrey Hildebrand, and you've
got guys like Rich Kinder, and you've got folks that
have made billions of dollars with energy assets and building
energy companies, and who knows what any of them do.
(09:34):
I mean, I like to think I have something of
an understanding, but it's it's a fascinating, fascinating part of
our overall economy and of the of the spirit of
what our community and state looks like. I mean, who
can forget the Shamrock Hotel and the stars parading through
this little hotel and they're skiing in the swimming pool.
(09:58):
Glenn McCarthy giant, the Great Wildcatter, personalities of the Cockrels
and Robertson's and Cullens and through the years, which to
this day, to this day are still if you look
at the largest charities writing checks for most every weether
it's cancer, muscular dystrophy, the local Little League, those charities
(10:23):
are all not all, are largely the Quintanas and Cullens
and all those families that were oil and gas families
and then electric in one way or another becomes a
major part of our policy discussion. We had the grid
(10:43):
go down a few years ago, and all of a
sudden we looked like California with brown outs. That was serious.
We had the Valentine's Day freeze, which if you remember,
had folks screeching. You know who was going to make
it and who wasn't generators were running out of fuel.
You had local municipalities or the electric companies shutting off
(11:07):
generators because they were pulling too much gas. Oh, we
assume there might have been a spell. Well, that's why
I bought the damn generator. Idiot, stop it. You have
added to that. Now you've got when our oil, our
gasoline prices at the pump have relatively stabilized under Trump,
(11:31):
even despite the fact that Biden dumped so much of
our strategic reserves. Now you've got electric being a part
of the transportation component mix, and that all of a sudden,
the number of people I know who drive electric cars
today versus fifteen years ago, it's very surprising, and they
(11:56):
love them. I don't think electric cars will replace internal
combustion engine, but it raises to me the more important
the policy question. If our grid can't keep up with
just air conditioning our homes, and they're trying to get
us to live in a terrarium like lizards at seventy
eight degrees at home so we don't use too much
electric power, then what about that power grid that Elon
(12:19):
wants to put in your garage that can hold enough
power to run the whole house. What about people that
are running their electric car on that from home every day.
There's no way we keep up with that, not with
our current bandwidth on our grid. I find these to
be very interesting questions. I am not a renewable energy guy.
I'm not a solar guy. I'm not a wind guy.
(12:41):
I am a big nuclear guy. And I think that's
the answer to a lot of our questions, not all
of them, but it's part of the mix. But I
do think it's important to hear from folks with different perspectives,
lots of experience, who are well respected in their field.
John Berger is one of those folks. Came highly recommended
from a fore from a number of folks. He co
(13:05):
founded Conentango Capital Management, a venture fund which focused on
early stage energy technologies and everything John Berger has worked
on is things that I poo poo all day long.
And I think it's only fair to talk to folks
and ask why are you so high on soldar? Why
are you so high on renewables, and just to have
him share his perspective. John Burger is our guest. Welcome. Thanks,
(13:28):
Michael's great to be here. That was kind of a
backhanded introduction. I don't know if you caught all that.
I don't want to deny that. And the reason was
I didn't want you to get all I told you
this the first time I met you. I didn't want
you to get all fired up over soldar and me
sit here going mm hmm, and people at home go,
you hate Solder Michael, why are you lying? All right?
So you were recommended to me as a guy who
(13:50):
has forgotten more about energy overall than most people will
ever know. I mean, I suppose we could put mister
Simmons into that category, or rich Kinder. But let's start
with something that everyone cares about, and that is the grid.
You've been an advisor to FIRK, the Federal Energy Regulation
Regulatory Committee. You've been around this a long time. You've
looked at alternate ways to monetize alternate energy sources. Where
(14:13):
are we on the Texas grid right now? Because my
fear as a Republican is going this is going to
bite Republicans on the rear and lead to a switch
and power in the state. But where are we in
grid bandwidth now and where do we need to be?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, you know, we had a trying summer in twenty
twenty three and then last year and twenty twenty four
is actually pretty benign, really benign maybe from a power
plant producer's perspective, to benign in terms of the cash
flow that would go to these plants. And so why
is it that we've been able to dodge some of
these bullets as a demand from you know, data centers
(14:52):
and restoring and LG terminals and a bunch of you know,
just economic growth. Why have we been able to dodge
some of these bullets? And the answer is surprising, As
you know, solar in batteries, batteries in particular, I think
we're over to twelve gig a lot hours now in
climbing higher in storage, and that's been key and instrumental
between solar and storage to really solve problems, say for instance,
(15:15):
in last summer and as a great example of that
in August. So when you look at these technologies and
talk about them, look at them as technologies. You know,
I always say a solar panel never voted for either
a Democrat or a Republican, and it's just technology, and
that's what we need to be looking at, as well
as looking at and embracing our history with all the
(15:37):
fuels that I think are be needed for a long time,
specifically natural gas, and then looking ahead to new technologies,
Like you're a fan of Michael with nuclear, I'm less enthusiastic,
so I'll put that up there. Much less enthusiastic about nuclear.
I think it's fine to work ahead, but we've got
to understand that they're the problems of cost and planning
(15:58):
and getting these plants online and solved yet, and those
are really big problems.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So it's just as John Berger is our guest. You
might have known him from Sonova or a number of
other energy plays he's been the leader of over the years, coming.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Up the excitement of Oshan, the Michael Barry Show, Everything
You Need and most Everything you Want.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
John Berger is our guest. He is a committed energy
buff in the monetization and policy side of how we
power things, a subject I find of great interest because
you know, we can talk a lot about political issues,
but energy is probably the greatest issue we spend the
(16:45):
least amount of time on, and we think of it
only in terms of what we pay for gas at
the pump, But it's so much more than that. It's
so much more than just what we pay in our
electric bill. Now start adding what you pay for gas,
your electric your office, your company's electric bill, manufacturing, the
(17:05):
cost of airlines, the cost of a ticket to get
here and there, the cost of heating and cooling your home.
All of these things affect your quality of life in
a massive, massive way. So, John, we were talking about
the electric grid. You've been very involved with renewables. I
am less bullish on renewables, but make the pitch. Give
(17:29):
me the two to three minutes on why you think
renewables are important and the sort of standard criticism you
get of prioritizing those, and how you would defend that certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
So I think, you know, first and foremost, let's set
aside the pricing of carbon.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know that is a you know, pollutant.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We can get into that argument about whether it is
or isn't, and whether you know we should or how
we should ration carbon or not.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And so let's set that aside.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Let's just look at these Uh Solar, by the way,
solar and wind have very little incommon. I just want
to make that point. One's rotating machinery, one solid state.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Uh No, they had a lot in common.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
All Right, you're all right, grant you that you grant you,
But I just want to make that point because that
that that that has the material difference. And let me
let me make this one you can put on your
office building or your home and one you can okay,
and that changes everything. And just like a battery, I'm
talking to you on a phone that has a lithium
(18:35):
ion battery, it's the same technology that Tesla puts you know,
Elon puts in the.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
In the power walls.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So this is solid state technology and it's again technology
that's getting cheaper and better, and we need to embrace it.
Just like electric vehicles I heard you talking about. You know,
will it replace the internal combustion engine or not?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I don't know. But what I do know is is.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
That the Tesla I drive is essentially a big iPhone
on the way to think about it, there's not much
to it in terms of cost structure. So we're seeing
this cost structure come down. And what we want to
do is and I want to take an issue with
something you said Houston being the energy capital of the country.
Now I'm going to say it's the energy capital of
(19:16):
the world. And to do that, we must embrace everything.
We must embrace oil. We must embrace natural gas. We
must embrace advancement in nuclear technology. We can get there.
But solar and software and storage batteries of all types,
we need to embrace all that because we're going to
need all of it. It's not just us, but it's
(19:36):
the entire world. And so when you look at solar
and storage, whether it's in front of the meter, which
means by the utilities and the big power lines, or
on your house, which we call behind the meter, it
is providing local power that a gas plant, a combined
cycle gas plant, one at scale, can't do. Now my
(19:56):
personal opinion, a combined cycle gas plant can do a
a whole lot better job, even at these prices where
gas plants have gone to over the last three years,
than a solar farm. Okay, And so I think that
the point here is is that all this has a
place in the mix. And what I've said over and
over for over a decade is if you had to
(20:17):
generalize it and say what does the future look like,
I think the future looks like centralized gas and decentralized
solar and batteries, because that makes the grid, whatever the
grid is in the local area. In this case Urkot
in Texas, we're talking about look more like the Internet,
where you have instead of just one way Soviet style
command control powers going down in place and you just
(20:38):
have loads at the endpoints of the system. Now you've
got all these small generators and big generators. You know,
think data centers and think the iPhone that I'm talking
to you on, and it's all going in two directions.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's a network.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And that's what's exciting about what we see as the future.
And so when you strip away the politics here and
just look at this, it's say this makes sense, makes
sense together, it's not one of the others together. And
I'll make this point about Texas in particular, Governor Abbott
and the governor's perform. Governor Perry and Governor Bush ought
(21:12):
to be very proud. Yet again Texas is showing not
just the country but the world and having leadership about
having capitalism in the power markets. And what I mean
by that is what we don't realize often as folks
from Houston and Dallas is is that we're unique in
the entire country. We're we're even unique to the folks
(21:32):
that live in Austin and sant Anton and that we
have steparated the customer facing so think you know, rely
on energy champions and so forth, from the actual polls
and wires, which is center point, from the actual generation,
which is you know, think NRG, Calpine and Constellation and
so forth. And that gives us a competitive marketplace that
(21:55):
embraces new technologies and lets them say, Okay, let consumers
choose what they want. If they want panels on their home,
they can get panels our home. They want to drive
an EV, they can drive an EV. If they don't,
that's fine too. We are leading the country on that.
And I really say that the biggest thing that we
have going for again Texas is leading, as Kevin Avas
be very proud, is is that we're showing the way
(22:17):
about how to solve the power problem that we are
now talking about with almost on a daily basis and
in common conversation. The only way forward is to open
it up, get consumer's choice, and embrace capitalism.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
John, you talked about the Texas approach and things we've
done well. I want to I want to get a
little more granular on what you said, because the devil's
in the details here. You said, if folks want to
drive an EV. Well, the Biden administration gave us seventy
five hundred dollars tax credit if you bought an EV.
That is an alter that's altering the marketplace. Secondly, if
(22:56):
you said if you want to if you want solar, okay, fine,
but there have been some very aggressive tax credits on solar.
And in fact, the solar folks who send out these
blast spam emails, the number one thing they push is
not great energy, stable energy, sustainable energy. It's tax credit,
tax credit, tax credit. So to me, when you are
(23:16):
leading with tax credit as your as what you're going with,
it looks like the Trump administration is going to pull
away out of the budget. This this the one big bill,
the EV tax credit. But you're not just saying everyone
can choose. You are attempting to guide the consumer's choice
with a subsidy.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Well that that's a fact. Now what's also a fact is,
again out of Houston, Dallas, the rest of the country
operates the power industry or power industry as a Soviet
style system, and so that is massively subsidized as well. Okay,
And so what my view is, drain this one. You know,
the regulations of you know, a four letter word. I
(23:58):
understand that, but you can call it consumer choice updating.
Regulate the regulatory landscape and rules that govern the US
power industry to make it look like more like Europe.
I mean, for God's sake, I hate to say this,
but you know, the French are more capitalistic in their
power industry than we are outside Houston, Dallas, and that's
got to change. And so when you embrace that and
you take out the subsidy that is the Soviet style
(24:21):
system in power, then I think we need to take
a harder look at all these credits and so forth
and just and get rid of them. And that seems
to me like a fair trade if we can get
everything on a level playing field to let the market work. Now,
the separate question is mentioned earlier, how do we price carbon?
If we want to ration it, we want to tax it, how.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Do we do that?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
I personally don't like the way that this country is
alighted on tax credits and subsidies to do that. I
like a cap and trade system and so forth, But
that's a secondary question.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Cod with and John Berger is our guest. More Community.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
To meet the Michael Barry's.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Energy policy in Policy and practice should not be run
by the government. It should be within constraints regulated by
the government. And there are some places where you need regulation.
I mean, most everybody understands you want to give some
(25:33):
sort of guardrails. The questions where woul those guardrails be.
John Berger is our guest. He's been a policy advisor
to the FERK, but he's also been on the capitalist side,
the private sector side of how you make money. And
it's important to understand that it's the guys who are
trying to make money who are going to drive policy
(25:54):
and who are going to drive energy in practice, as
it should be in every industry. John Berger mentioned a
moment ago that deregulation is a four letter word. It's
a nasty thing, is a bad thing, it's a bad reputation.
And I will give you why. I think that is
being the headquartered town of Enron, and having had a
(26:16):
lot of friends that worked at Ron, and many of
you probably did as well, and friends that did nothing wrong.
They were part of a company that was doing some
things wrong and doing some things very right. Some really smart.
They really were the smartest guys in the room. I
do believe that they just had some ethical lapses. There
was a deregulation of the energy market in California, and
(26:37):
I think this is more than anything else, what makes
people hate deregulation. So as this fired, wildfire burned in California,
just as we saw recently in Palisades. There was audio
that later was turned over to regulators of energy traders,
and they say, burn, baby burn, that's a beautiful thing.
(26:59):
Listen to this under the carne if you're order to
forty five twenty one, how.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
To burn the baby burn, that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So this was reducing output, driving up prices, and Run
was getting rich off of it. So the audio files
that were handed over to regulators letter said he just
f's California. One in run employee says that he steals
money from California to the tune of about a million.
That's a million a day. Will you rephrase that? Asks
(27:35):
a second employee. Okay, he he arbitrages the California market
to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,
So it's pretty nasty. The inrun worker is heard in
the tape saying, if you took down the steamer, how
long would it take to get it back up?
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
It's not something you want to just be turning off
and on every hour. Let's put it that way. Well,
why don't you just go ahead shut her down? Well
this was later used as by utility regulators as they
were manipulating the market. It looks bad. And one of
the employees at Enron is caught on tape saying they're
(28:18):
effing taking all the money back from you guys, all
the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California. Response, Yeah,
Grandma Millie Man, Now she wants her f and money
back for all the power you've charged right up, Jimmed,
right up her ass for fing two hundred and fifty
dollars a megawatte hour. It's bad, It's very bad. In fact,
(28:41):
the Ron lawyer who made this submission made the statement
that this doesn't prove anything other than the fact that
quote people at Enron sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the
sailor what a line. John Berger is our guest. How
much did that particular incident that was seared into the
nation's mind because Enron became the picture of grotesque greed
(29:06):
affect our ability to have a deregulated within within reason
energy market.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Well, I think people think about that, Michael, you know,
quite a bit. But I'm going to take a different
tact on that completely and say that that's not the
reason deregulation failed. There was a big trend in deregulation
across the economy, trucking, airlines, gas, natural gas, a lot
of different areas started in the late seventies and really
(29:34):
took hold in the eighties and finished up in the nineties.
And power was a part of that deregulation movement. Okay,
The problem is unlike was take telecommunications, fantastic analogy and
example you had in the nineteen nineties. We you know,
I'm going to date myself here, but remember the formation
of the Internet and cellular technology was just coming to
(29:55):
the four for average person, and yet fiber optics. So
the point is you a lot of new technologies, distributed technologies.
When you look at the Internet and cellular capability to lepany,
and when.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You look at power, what did you have? Nothing?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There was no technology change. And so when you look
at the big failures in the case of the power industry,
it wasn't just in Ron. We had a lot of
other bankruptcies too. Around town it was. You look at
the telecom side, there were no you know, there were
scandals there remember WorldCom Well, molobile crossing again, I'm dating myself,
but why didn't that stop telecommunications deregulating? Why didn't it?
(30:34):
I mean those are certainly in some cases more manipulated
and so forth than in ron supposedly. So the reason
was the technology won and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Have technology changes in power.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
We just got ahead of ourselves. We got policy, got
ahead of the technology. Well, now we've got the other
the opposite situation. We've got solar that's cheap, we've got batteries,
we've got software, We've we've advanced solid state technolologies like
silicon based chips and software and batteries. Right, we didn't
even have lithium ion back then it was in very
(31:08):
small quantities.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
We had it very expensive. But now we have all this.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Now we're behind on the regulatory side. Now we need
to open up the market and allow these technologies to
do things that maybe the vast majority of us can't
think about doing, creating new business models at lower costs
for consumers.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
That we couldn't do.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
This is why capitalism works and government does not. You
don't turn an industry over to a gorament. I don't
care what industry it is. And power is not immune,
it's not different. It is an industry that ought to
be driven, as you said, by for profit companies with
rules with guardrails. So we got to update the regulations.
We got to make sure that people are protected with
(31:49):
distributed technologies like solar. Now you talked about going door
to door. We need to update these regular regulatory structures
so that consumers are protected. But we've got to do
the work. We got to get out of the way
and let the market do the work. And so when
you look at the difference here is public communications had
the technologies back in the nineties. Power didn't, and now
power has the technologies, and I think that would be
(32:11):
a world of difference. Imagine you have your own power
plant in your house, whether it's your car or a
solar or batteries or a generator on your home, and
now you can shut that power off from the grid
and just use your own so you don't.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Get jammed with bills.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
That's that is the beauty of the market that we
have here in Houston and Dallas and the rest of
the country. Out of tape note and do like what
Texas has done.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I do think there has been a great deal of
resentment at the consumer level that the ev folks, the
solar folks, and I know you don't want to be
lumped in with them, the wind folks, the alternative energy folks,
that when they came in and tried to penetrate the
market and first really got a lot of political influence.
(32:58):
Especially during the Obama administration. There was this idea that
you had to trash the carbon based technologies that had
been with us for a long time, and you know,
you sort of say down with coal and up with electric.
I don't think you can have one without the other.
And I think there were a lot of people who
(33:18):
resented that, whether that be the coal industry or coal miners,
or the consumer who had his car turned off during
the Obomba administration every time he stops at a red light.
I think those sorts of things really pissed people off
and affected how people think about these sorts of things.
John Berger's Our Guests coming Up
It's that time time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
So Michael Very Show is on the air. So in city,
(00:39):
in Democrat city politics, over the last fifty years, there
have been power shifts in who the boss is, but
there has never been a boss in fifty years who
had the consolidated power that Rodney Ellis does not even close.
(01:08):
There's been, you know, a big donor over here, been
a former congressman or former state rep who had some
influence over here. You know, Ben Reyes had some influence
on the East End, but even that was always challenged.
You had Gene Green who kind of had you know,
(01:30):
labor and some Hispanic Ben Reyes who had kind of
the more activist Hispanic and Sheila was trying to create
a Black Brown coalition, and she had her folks, and
each of them could could gather together and help get
a candidate across the finish line. But they didn't stack
(01:52):
bureaucracies from top to bottom with their handpicked choices. They
didn't have outside plenty of attorneys from Beaumont and Port
Arthur that would come in and spend a fortune. They
didn't have the strategy and the constant consistency that Rodney does. Now.
(02:14):
Some of you folks struggle to understand this, So I'm
going to say it yet again. If I tell you,
for instance, that Simone Biles at her peak, was really
good in gymnastics, that does not mean that I think
that her comments about Riley Gaines were accurate. I think
they're despicable. What I don't do, which too many people
(02:36):
have done, is if I like someone tell you they're
great at everything else or that they're going to win,
and if I don't like someone tell you they're going
to lose and that they also can't be bench press
forty pounds, I don't do that. I'll just tell you
exactly what I think is going to happen, based on
what I believe and based on the body of information
and experience I have. So let's go back without judgment.
(03:00):
This is what happened. So Sheila dies. It was known
that she was ill for some time. In fact, it's
funny most people don't know what's going on in Democrat
politics because I was involved for years, so many years
in city politics and have so many folks as sources
(03:24):
and friends. A lot of times, when I say something
I know to be true, I can't tell it because
people will trace where I got it, and it would
surprise people and burn my source. But I said, Sheila
has a terminal illness. She's going to die. And I
had people who loved the show. You said she don't die.
She ain't died yet, Michael, you said she don't die.
(03:46):
You said she'll die. Three weeks ago, boom, she was gone.
The people in the inner circle knew that she was
about to die, so the plotting had already begun. So
when the news emerged Sheila died, Oh my goodness, we
had no idea. Yeah, they know, And the calls had
been made and the meetings had been held and everything
(04:08):
had been put into place, and Sylvester was going to
be the replacement. Enter Jolanda Jones. When I left city council,
Jolanda Jones replaced me in that seat. Jolanda is a
former UH athlete. She's tall, she's striking like Grace Jones.
(04:29):
She's smart, she's crazy, she will fist fight you and win.
She's tough. She's a I don't know if she was
an Olympian, but I know she was a collegiate national competitor.
She's tall and strong and smart and loud and fearless.
Now she's all so crazy, and you know that that
(04:51):
kind of makes her. She'll turn. She has that there's
a constantly changing allegiance.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It's Castlereagh and Metternick and the pieces on the chessboard.
But some people like her, and some people like her
that also like Sheila are also like Rodney. Here she's spunky.
So she was going to run in the congressional in
the eighteen congressional district seat for Sila's seat. Rodney cuts
a deal with her. Look, sylvester'z ill we all know it,
(05:20):
which they did. If you don't run against Sylvester, you
let him be the congressman. I'll support you to replace
him and it won't be long. She took the deal,
just like Amanda Edwards took the deal to step out
of the mayor's race against Sheila Jackson Lee and Rodney
and Sheila would support her in the congressional seat to
replace her in of course they didn't. These young politic,
(05:42):
young black politicians, take these people at their word and
they dupe them every time. Let's get you out of
this race. You got plenty of time, and we'll support
you in the next race. You don't do that anyway.
So Rodney was going to support her to replace Sylvester,
but he already had Christian Menefee because he can control
(06:03):
Christian Menefee, who is the who. He's gotten a county
post where he can control him there, so he slides
Christian Menefee over into that congressional seat and then he's
got his replacement to put in Christian Menefee seat. Rodney
is a boss the way I have never seen a
(06:23):
Republican or Democrat. And I've studied politics here for fifty years.
I know all the players. Rodney has complete and utter
control like I've never even seen anything in the realm
of this. A lot of Democrats have had enough. He's
the one who pushed kim On out. He's the one
who supported kim On. Then he's the one who pushed
(06:43):
her out. He's the one who puts Shawn Tier there.
And as long as Shawn Tier does exactly what he wants.
He pushed a lot of the old white judges, Democrat judges,
the white liberal judges out of their Harris County judicial
seats and replaced them with black women that he could control.
And in two election cycles in a row, he pushed
them all out. There was a lot of resentment. There's
(07:06):
a lot of old white money that were some of
it Jewish, some of it gay, some of it just
old white liberal money. And Rodney has overstepped with a
lot of those so that he could have complete and
utter control. So Grant Martin, his candidate was Jolanda. So
when Jolanda cut the deal, Grant probably told her not to.
(07:29):
I don't know that for sure. She cut the deal,
Rodney betrayed her. Grant's pissed off. So there is now
a split between Rodney, who controls the gay faction, and
the entirety of the Harris County Republican Party. A large
part of that the black community. They're the Black Democrat
power structure. And then you've got Grant Martin over here
(07:50):
and a niece, and they've got a lot of connections
with the business community. There will be a lot of
Republicans who will quietly support them, who would maybe prefer
a Republican County judge. But they figure and these can
push Lena out, and that's the devil. They know that's
what's going to be happening over the next year, and
it's gets your popcorn. It's going to be good.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
A lot of this introductions the love Budd Steenjel this
has been race driver Michael Berry Funny ramon the King
of Dean suggested for general audiences.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Energy the term you hear a lot in our community
because we're the energy capital of the country that is
in Houston, and a lot of jobs tied to the
energy industry, by which we mostly mean oil and gas
and natural gas, and much bigger component of that than
(08:52):
it would have been twenty five thirty years ago. And
then you've got the shellionaires, the folks in the Eagleford
share shell Shell. I never wondered why would eagle Ford
became Eagleford, but I like it. And you have folks
that were just sitting on ranching land. It wasn't that valuable,
(09:14):
and all of a sudden they're rich. Overnight it became
the Beverly Hill buildies all over again, lots of them.
And then you've got guys like Jeffrey Hildebrand, and you've
got guys like Rich Kinder, and you've got folks that
have made billions of dollars with energy assets and building
energy companies, and who knows what any of them do.
(09:34):
I mean, I like to think I have something of
an understanding, but it's it's a fascinating, fascinating part of
our overall economy and of the of the spirit of
what our community and state looks like. I mean, who
can forget the Shamrock Hotel and the stars parading through
this little hotel and they're skiing in the swimming pool.
(09:58):
Glenn McCarthy giant, the Great Wildcatter, personalities of the Cockrels
and Robertson's and Cullens and through the years, which to
this day, to this day are still if you look
at the largest charities writing checks for most every weether
it's cancer, muscular dystrophy, the local Little League, those charities
(10:23):
are all not all, are largely the Quintanas and Cullens
and all those families that were oil and gas families
and then electric in one way or another becomes a
major part of our policy discussion. We had the grid
(10:43):
go down a few years ago, and all of a
sudden we looked like California with brown outs. That was serious.
We had the Valentine's Day freeze, which if you remember,
had folks screeching. You know who was going to make
it and who wasn't generators were running out of fuel.
You had local municipalities or the electric companies shutting off
(11:07):
generators because they were pulling too much gas. Oh, we
assume there might have been a spell. Well, that's why
I bought the damn generator. Idiot, stop it. You have
added to that. Now you've got when our oil, our
gasoline prices at the pump have relatively stabilized under Trump,
(11:31):
even despite the fact that Biden dumped so much of
our strategic reserves. Now you've got electric being a part
of the transportation component mix, and that all of a sudden,
the number of people I know who drive electric cars
today versus fifteen years ago, it's very surprising, and they
(11:56):
love them. I don't think electric cars will replace internal
combustion engine, but it raises to me the more important
the policy question. If our grid can't keep up with
just air conditioning our homes, and they're trying to get
us to live in a terrarium like lizards at seventy
eight degrees at home so we don't use too much
electric power, then what about that power grid that Elon
(12:19):
wants to put in your garage that can hold enough
power to run the whole house. What about people that
are running their electric car on that from home every day.
There's no way we keep up with that, not with
our current bandwidth on our grid. I find these to
be very interesting questions. I am not a renewable energy guy.
I'm not a solar guy. I'm not a wind guy.
(12:41):
I am a big nuclear guy. And I think that's
the answer to a lot of our questions, not all
of them, but it's part of the mix. But I
do think it's important to hear from folks with different perspectives,
lots of experience, who are well respected in their field.
John Berger is one of those folks. Came highly recommended
from a fore from a number of folks. He co
(13:05):
founded Conentango Capital Management, a venture fund which focused on
early stage energy technologies and everything John Berger has worked
on is things that I poo poo all day long.
And I think it's only fair to talk to folks
and ask why are you so high on soldar? Why
are you so high on renewables, and just to have
him share his perspective. John Burger is our guest. Welcome. Thanks,
(13:28):
Michael's great to be here. That was kind of a
backhanded introduction. I don't know if you caught all that.
I don't want to deny that. And the reason was
I didn't want you to get all I told you
this the first time I met you. I didn't want
you to get all fired up over soldar and me
sit here going mm hmm, and people at home go,
you hate Solder Michael, why are you lying? All right?
So you were recommended to me as a guy who
(13:50):
has forgotten more about energy overall than most people will
ever know. I mean, I suppose we could put mister
Simmons into that category, or rich Kinder. But let's start
with something that everyone cares about, and that is the grid.
You've been an advisor to FIRK, the Federal Energy Regulation
Regulatory Committee. You've been around this a long time. You've
looked at alternate ways to monetize alternate energy sources. Where
(14:13):
are we on the Texas grid right now? Because my
fear as a Republican is going this is going to
bite Republicans on the rear and lead to a switch
and power in the state. But where are we in
grid bandwidth now and where do we need to be?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, you know, we had a trying summer in twenty
twenty three and then last year and twenty twenty four
is actually pretty benign, really benign maybe from a power
plant producer's perspective, to benign in terms of the cash
flow that would go to these plants. And so why
is it that we've been able to dodge some of
these bullets as a demand from you know, data centers
(14:52):
and restoring and LG terminals and a bunch of you know,
just economic growth. Why have we been able to dodge
some of these bullets? And the answer is surprising, As
you know, solar in batteries, batteries in particular, I think
we're over to twelve gig a lot hours now in
climbing higher in storage, and that's been key and instrumental
between solar and storage to really solve problems, say for instance,
(15:15):
in last summer and as a great example of that
in August. So when you look at these technologies and
talk about them, look at them as technologies. You know,
I always say a solar panel never voted for either
a Democrat or a Republican, and it's just technology, and
that's what we need to be looking at, as well
as looking at and embracing our history with all the
(15:37):
fuels that I think are be needed for a long time,
specifically natural gas, and then looking ahead to new technologies,
Like you're a fan of Michael with nuclear, I'm less enthusiastic,
so I'll put that up there. Much less enthusiastic about nuclear.
I think it's fine to work ahead, but we've got
to understand that they're the problems of cost and planning
(15:58):
and getting these plants online and solved yet, and those
are really big problems.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So it's just as John Berger is our guest. You
might have known him from Sonova or a number of
other energy plays he's been the leader of over the years, coming.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Up the excitement of Oshan, the Michael Barry Show, Everything
You Need and most Everything you Want.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
John Berger is our guest. He is a committed energy
buff in the monetization and policy side of how we
power things, a subject I find of great interest because
you know, we can talk a lot about political issues,
but energy is probably the greatest issue we spend the
(16:45):
least amount of time on, and we think of it
only in terms of what we pay for gas at
the pump, But it's so much more than that. It's
so much more than just what we pay in our
electric bill. Now start adding what you pay for gas,
your electric your office, your company's electric bill, manufacturing, the
(17:05):
cost of airlines, the cost of a ticket to get
here and there, the cost of heating and cooling your home.
All of these things affect your quality of life in
a massive, massive way. So, John, we were talking about
the electric grid. You've been very involved with renewables. I
am less bullish on renewables, but make the pitch. Give
(17:29):
me the two to three minutes on why you think
renewables are important and the sort of standard criticism you
get of prioritizing those, and how you would defend that certainly.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
So I think, you know, first and foremost, let's set
aside the pricing of carbon.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You know that is a you know, pollutant.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We can get into that argument about whether it is
or isn't, and whether you know we should or how
we should ration carbon or not.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
And so let's set that aside.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Let's just look at these Uh Solar, by the way,
solar and wind have very little incommon. I just want
to make that point. One's rotating machinery, one solid state.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Uh No, they had a lot in common.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
All Right, you're all right, grant you that you grant you,
But I just want to make that point because that
that that that has the material difference. And let me
let me make this one you can put on your
office building or your home and one you can okay,
and that changes everything. And just like a battery, I'm
talking to you on a phone that has a lithium
(18:35):
ion battery, it's the same technology that Tesla puts you know,
Elon puts in the.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
In the power walls.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
So this is solid state technology and it's again technology
that's getting cheaper and better, and we need to embrace it.
Just like electric vehicles I heard you talking about. You know,
will it replace the internal combustion engine or not?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I don't know. But what I do know is is.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
That the Tesla I drive is essentially a big iPhone
on the way to think about it, there's not much
to it in terms of cost structure. So we're seeing
this cost structure come down. And what we want to
do is and I want to take an issue with
something you said Houston being the energy capital of the country.
Now I'm going to say it's the energy capital of
(19:16):
the world. And to do that, we must embrace everything.
We must embrace oil. We must embrace natural gas. We
must embrace advancement in nuclear technology. We can get there.
But solar and software and storage batteries of all types,
we need to embrace all that because we're going to
need all of it. It's not just us, but it's
(19:36):
the entire world. And so when you look at solar
and storage, whether it's in front of the meter, which
means by the utilities and the big power lines, or
on your house, which we call behind the meter, it
is providing local power that a gas plant, a combined
cycle gas plant, one at scale, can't do. Now my
(19:56):
personal opinion, a combined cycle gas plant can do a
a whole lot better job, even at these prices where
gas plants have gone to over the last three years,
than a solar farm. Okay, And so I think that
the point here is is that all this has a
place in the mix. And what I've said over and
over for over a decade is if you had to
(20:17):
generalize it and say what does the future look like,
I think the future looks like centralized gas and decentralized
solar and batteries, because that makes the grid, whatever the
grid is in the local area. In this case Urkot
in Texas, we're talking about look more like the Internet,
where you have instead of just one way Soviet style
command control powers going down in place and you just
(20:38):
have loads at the endpoints of the system. Now you've
got all these small generators and big generators. You know,
think data centers and think the iPhone that I'm talking
to you on, and it's all going in two directions.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
It's a network.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
And that's what's exciting about what we see as the future.
And so when you strip away the politics here and
just look at this, it's say this makes sense, makes
sense together, it's not one of the others together. And
I'll make this point about Texas in particular, Governor Abbott
and the governor's perform. Governor Perry and Governor Bush ought
(21:12):
to be very proud. Yet again Texas is showing not
just the country but the world and having leadership about
having capitalism in the power markets. And what I mean
by that is what we don't realize often as folks
from Houston and Dallas is is that we're unique in
the entire country. We're we're even unique to the folks
(21:32):
that live in Austin and sant Anton and that we
have steparated the customer facing so think you know, rely
on energy champions and so forth, from the actual polls
and wires, which is center point, from the actual generation,
which is you know, think NRG, Calpine and Constellation and
so forth. And that gives us a competitive marketplace that
(21:55):
embraces new technologies and lets them say, Okay, let consumers
choose what they want. If they want panels on their home,
they can get panels our home. They want to drive
an EV, they can drive an EV. If they don't,
that's fine too. We are leading the country on that.
And I really say that the biggest thing that we
have going for again Texas is leading, as Kevin Avas
be very proud, is is that we're showing the way
(22:17):
about how to solve the power problem that we are
now talking about with almost on a daily basis and
in common conversation. The only way forward is to open
it up, get consumer's choice, and embrace capitalism.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
John, you talked about the Texas approach and things we've
done well. I want to I want to get a
little more granular on what you said, because the devil's
in the details here. You said, if folks want to
drive an EV. Well, the Biden administration gave us seventy
five hundred dollars tax credit if you bought an EV.
That is an alter that's altering the marketplace. Secondly, if
(22:56):
you said if you want to if you want solar, okay, fine,
but there have been some very aggressive tax credits on solar.
And in fact, the solar folks who send out these
blast spam emails, the number one thing they push is
not great energy, stable energy, sustainable energy. It's tax credit,
tax credit, tax credit. So to me, when you are
(23:16):
leading with tax credit as your as what you're going with,
it looks like the Trump administration is going to pull
away out of the budget. This this the one big bill,
the EV tax credit. But you're not just saying everyone
can choose. You are attempting to guide the consumer's choice
with a subsidy.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Well that that's a fact. Now what's also a fact is,
again out of Houston, Dallas, the rest of the country
operates the power industry or power industry as a Soviet
style system, and so that is massively subsidized as well. Okay,
And so what my view is, drain this one. You know,
the regulations of you know, a four letter word. I
(23:58):
understand that, but you can call it consumer choice updating.
Regulate the regulatory landscape and rules that govern the US
power industry to make it look like more like Europe.
I mean, for God's sake, I hate to say this,
but you know, the French are more capitalistic in their
power industry than we are outside Houston, Dallas, and that's
got to change. And so when you embrace that and
you take out the subsidy that is the Soviet style
(24:21):
system in power, then I think we need to take
a harder look at all these credits and so forth
and just and get rid of them. And that seems
to me like a fair trade if we can get
everything on a level playing field to let the market work. Now,
the separate question is mentioned earlier, how do we price carbon?
If we want to ration it, we want to tax it, how.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Do we do that?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
I personally don't like the way that this country is
alighted on tax credits and subsidies to do that. I
like a cap and trade system and so forth, But
that's a secondary question.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Cod with and John Berger is our guest. More Community.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
To meet the Michael Barry's.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Energy policy in Policy and practice should not be run
by the government. It should be within constraints regulated by
the government. And there are some places where you need regulation.
I mean, most everybody understands you want to give some
(25:33):
sort of guardrails. The questions where woul those guardrails be.
John Berger is our guest. He's been a policy advisor
to the FERK, but he's also been on the capitalist side,
the private sector side of how you make money. And
it's important to understand that it's the guys who are
trying to make money who are going to drive policy
(25:54):
and who are going to drive energy in practice, as
it should be in every industry. John Berger mentioned a
moment ago that deregulation is a four letter word. It's
a nasty thing, is a bad thing, it's a bad reputation.
And I will give you why. I think that is
being the headquartered town of Enron, and having had a
(26:16):
lot of friends that worked at Ron, and many of
you probably did as well, and friends that did nothing wrong.
They were part of a company that was doing some
things wrong and doing some things very right. Some really smart.
They really were the smartest guys in the room. I
do believe that they just had some ethical lapses. There
was a deregulation of the energy market in California, and
(26:37):
I think this is more than anything else, what makes
people hate deregulation. So as this fired, wildfire burned in California,
just as we saw recently in Palisades. There was audio
that later was turned over to regulators of energy traders,
and they say, burn, baby burn, that's a beautiful thing.
(26:59):
Listen to this under the carne if you're order to
forty five twenty one, how.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
To burn the baby burn, that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So this was reducing output, driving up prices, and Run
was getting rich off of it. So the audio files
that were handed over to regulators letter said he just
f's California. One in run employee says that he steals
money from California to the tune of about a million.
That's a million a day. Will you rephrase that? Asks
(27:35):
a second employee. Okay, he he arbitrages the California market
to the tune of a million bucks or two a day,
So it's pretty nasty. The inrun worker is heard in
the tape saying, if you took down the steamer, how
long would it take to get it back up?
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
It's not something you want to just be turning off
and on every hour. Let's put it that way. Well,
why don't you just go ahead shut her down? Well
this was later used as by utility regulators as they
were manipulating the market. It looks bad. And one of
the employees at Enron is caught on tape saying they're
(28:18):
effing taking all the money back from you guys, all
the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California. Response, Yeah,
Grandma Millie Man, Now she wants her f and money
back for all the power you've charged right up, Jimmed,
right up her ass for fing two hundred and fifty
dollars a megawatte hour. It's bad, It's very bad. In fact,
(28:41):
the Ron lawyer who made this submission made the statement
that this doesn't prove anything other than the fact that
quote people at Enron sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the
sailor what a line. John Berger is our guest. How
much did that particular incident that was seared into the
nation's mind because Enron became the picture of grotesque greed
(29:06):
affect our ability to have a deregulated within within reason
energy market.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Well, I think people think about that, Michael, you know,
quite a bit. But I'm going to take a different
tact on that completely and say that that's not the
reason deregulation failed. There was a big trend in deregulation
across the economy, trucking, airlines, gas, natural gas, a lot
of different areas started in the late seventies and really
(29:34):
took hold in the eighties and finished up in the nineties.
And power was a part of that deregulation movement. Okay,
The problem is unlike was take telecommunications, fantastic analogy and
example you had in the nineteen nineties. We you know,
I'm going to date myself here, but remember the formation
of the Internet and cellular technology was just coming to
(29:55):
the four for average person, and yet fiber optics. So
the point is you a lot of new technologies, distributed technologies.
When you look at the Internet and cellular capability to lepany,
and when.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You look at power, what did you have? Nothing?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There was no technology change. And so when you look
at the big failures in the case of the power industry,
it wasn't just in Ron. We had a lot of
other bankruptcies too. Around town it was. You look at
the telecom side, there were no you know, there were
scandals there remember WorldCom Well, molobile crossing again, I'm dating myself,
but why didn't that stop telecommunications deregulating? Why didn't it?
(30:34):
I mean those are certainly in some cases more manipulated
and so forth than in ron supposedly. So the reason
was the technology won and we didn't.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Have technology changes in power.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
We just got ahead of ourselves. We got policy, got
ahead of the technology. Well, now we've got the other
the opposite situation. We've got solar that's cheap, we've got batteries,
we've got software, We've we've advanced solid state technolologies like
silicon based chips and software and batteries. Right, we didn't
even have lithium ion back then it was in very
(31:08):
small quantities.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
We had it very expensive. But now we have all this.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Now we're behind on the regulatory side. Now we need
to open up the market and allow these technologies to
do things that maybe the vast majority of us can't
think about doing, creating new business models at lower costs
for consumers.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
That we couldn't do.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
This is why capitalism works and government does not. You
don't turn an industry over to a gorament. I don't
care what industry it is. And power is not immune,
it's not different. It is an industry that ought to
be driven, as you said, by for profit companies with
rules with guardrails. So we got to update the regulations.
We got to make sure that people are protected with
(31:49):
distributed technologies like solar. Now you talked about going door
to door. We need to update these regular regulatory structures
so that consumers are protected. But we've got to do
the work. We got to get out of the way
and let the market do the work. And so when
you look at the difference here is public communications had
the technologies back in the nineties. Power didn't, and now
power has the technologies, and I think that would be
(32:11):
a world of difference. Imagine you have your own power
plant in your house, whether it's your car or a
solar or batteries or a generator on your home, and
now you can shut that power off from the grid
and just use your own so you don't.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Get jammed with bills.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
That's that is the beauty of the market that we
have here in Houston and Dallas and the rest of
the country. Out of tape note and do like what
Texas has done.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I do think there has been a great deal of
resentment at the consumer level that the ev folks, the
solar folks, and I know you don't want to be
lumped in with them, the wind folks, the alternative energy folks,
that when they came in and tried to penetrate the
market and first really got a lot of political influence.
(32:58):
Especially during the Obama administration. There was this idea that
you had to trash the carbon based technologies that had
been with us for a long time, and you know,
you sort of say down with coal and up with electric.
I don't think you can have one without the other.
And I think there were a lot of people who
(33:18):
resented that, whether that be the coal industry or coal miners,
or the consumer who had his car turned off during
the Obomba administration every time he stops at a red light.
I think those sorts of things really pissed people off
and affected how people think about these sorts of things.
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