At a press conference Saturday after the Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection, the House impeachment manager Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) was asked why the prosecution against Trump hadn’t fought harder to include witness testimony during the impeachment trial.
Running out the clock as POTUS with a compliant, subservient DOJ & GOPSCOTUS is one thing.
Running out the clock as a private citizen, with dwindling resources and blacklisted by reputable (?) attorneys is another.
His time is coming.
System Breakdown: How Trump Ran Out The Clock On His Legal Pursuers
Now there’s an evergreen article. I fully expect him to die of old age before the complaisant supreme court gets finished repeatedly punting his trials’ legal questions into their next year’s session. Ghoulsie won’t be so lucky, now that his horse is no longer hitched to Twin Peaches’ wagon.
Perhaps on Federal charges, but I’d like to think the state charges will zip right along. All while his creditors are breathing down his fat neck.
Welcome to the lawyerfication of American politics. As not what is the right thing to do - ask what is the questionably legal thing to do, and ask it over and over and over again.
Trump’s date with justice is coming and the cynic has far less to do with that than (1) competent and professional Law Enforcement and (2) a non-biased and honest legal system.
The president is a federal creature. His tax returns and other financial docs being handed over to Vance and James has already been delayed past the November 2020 election, by the supreme court.
I have an unreasonable yet irrepressible faith in justice – it may take a century, we may all be dead by then, but justice will eventually be served on their dead corpses. I might just be around by some miracle to see it, assuming I haven’t lost my eyesight by then.
Started by reagan administration, and I think the bush the lesser administration mainstreamed that. The nixon administration really didn’t think they’d get caught and didn’t have much of a plan beyond a retroactive claim of “it’s not illegal if the president does it”.
Trump: “I can outrun the clock on ANYTHING!”
Limbaugh (snorting a line from Baphomet’s crack): “You think so, do you…?”
The courts clearly could have and should have done a much better job of ensuring the President is not above the law. There’s no excusing SCOTUS, for example.
But so should have voters. They knowingly gave a scoundrel the immense power of the Presidency, a position that grants a person abilities that no law can fully constrain. The way to fix this is by fixing our corrupt and outdated voting system. From the electoral college to gerrymandering to voter suppression laws, it all has to go. And we need to seize that opportunity because a better voting system will result in better candidates, on both sides of the aisle, but especially that other side.
Congress should pass a law enabling either house to appoint a special prosecutor to sue to enforce Congressional subpoenas, and it should create a special court to hear those suits, with sole jurisdiction.
“Running out the Clock” looks to be Trump’s historical pattern for dodging lawsuits, ultimately to be followed by “settle out of court with a non-disclosure agreement” for civil suits. Whatever else (none of it good!) you can say about Trump, he is a master at dodging accountability for his bad acts.
Get ready for more Trump headlines:
Former President Donald Trump will reportedly make a barnstorming return to cable news on > Wednesday night in kind of pro-Trump network hat trick, appearing on Fox News, Newsmax, and One American News Network
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According to the Washington Post ‘s Josh Dawsey , Trump will make his first appearances on primetime TV since leaving the White House more than a month ago
Who?
The supreme irony of the “run out the clock” tactic for evading justce is this:
These people are using the protections of our legal system (presumption of innocence, right to appeal, etc.) to completely destroy the legal system itself…
Speaking of systemic (mental) breakdowns…
Time to re-aim those Jewish Space Lasers.
Pertinent but also O/T
Electric Reliability Council of Texas Press conference 11AM 02/17/01
ERCOT press conference Feb. 17, 2021 11:00 AM
ERCOT began the day’s press conference by reporting that there are currently 46,000 MW of generation out of service, adding that some has tripped more than once. Of that amount, 28,000 MW is thermal generation (gas, coal, nuclear) and 18,000 MW are renewable resources. ERCOT is still shedding 14,000 MW of customer load.
With regard to the causes of these outages, ERCOT reported that some reduction of solar generation was due to clouds and ice where the solar plants are. In addition, half of the wind turbine fleet is out due to icing on the blades.
There have also been outages of coal, nuclear and gas generation. ERCOT will know more about the details of these outages in the future but, for example, some instrument lines used for plant protection froze up, taking the plants out. Gas generation also experienced an issue with the natural gas system as a whole, including freeze-off at the wellheads, which has prevented the ability to get gas out of the ground.
There have been a variety of causes behind the outages but all result from the extreme cold, including one generator who is out of service because it’s not able to get water into its plant due to icy roads.
There were many questions about when generators would be back in service. Dan Woodfin, ERCOT Director of System Operations, noted that an enormous amount of generation was taken out of service by the storm, by equipment freezing but also from freezing of natural gas supply. He noted that getting those resources back on the grid is the central solution, but added that having the system out of balance would cause cascading blackouts, which could affect the entire ERCOT system, resulting in an indeterminate end date for customer outages. Mr. Woodfin concluded that ERCOT is working to get the balance back to operate the system reliably going forward but, unfortunately, that has required maintaining the outages longer than anyone wanted, adding that “the horrible consequences are obvious.”
Mr. Woodfin noted that the other thing that will affect the timing of generation returning to service is the weather. As a weather warms it has several impacts: 1) thawing frozen resources, such as wind turbine blades, 2) the ability to transport fuel and personnel will be improved, and 3) natural gas transportation, which has been impacted, will improve. In addition, as it warms, demand will also go down and this will help balance supply and demand and avoid a catastrophic system-wide blackout.
Mr. Woodfin noted that at the time of ERCOT’s last briefing, it had restored 17,000 MW of generation and restored an additional 3,500 MW last night. However as load came up this morning, some of that had to be curtailed again and a 500 MW import from the east was also curtailed due to its own system emergency. Although some generation had been restored, there was a loss of generation overnight so ERCOT had the same amount of generation available this morning as last night.
Mr. Woodfin reported that ERCOT is currently down to 13,000 MW of customer outages. He noted that, as generation becomes available, ERCOT is restoring customers as soon as it can but may have to return some outages although that helps some because they at least had power for some amount of time.
With regard to why outages were not being rotated, Mr. Woodfin replied that ERCOT only determines the total amount of load needing to be shed to keep system reliability and it is up to the individual distribution systems to allocate that among their customers. He noted that some wires operators are beginning to do more rotations than they could before due to it being less cold than it was yesterday. He reiterated that, as temperatures moderate, each household that has power is using less, and this helps more customers to come back online.
Regarding the best-case and worst-case scenarios for full restoration, Mr. Woodfin reported that it just depends on how long it takes generators to become available to supply additional customer load, adding that as soon as a generator becomes operational and is stable, it is returned to service. He believed that the current best-case scenario is limiting outages to 30 minutes to an hour, which could be accomplished today or tomorrow, adding that it is not likely that everyone will have their service restored before Thursday morning.
ERCOT CEO, Bill Magness, added that reducing customer outages depends on the availability of generators. He noted that some generators are facing constraints in getting their plants back online but they’re all working towards that and if they can all come on very quickly, load can be restored very quickly.
Concerning accusations that ERCOT is not providing clear, transparent, timely information to officials, Mr. Magness replied that ERCOT has endeavored to do that, putting out a notice to the market on February 8 recognizing that we were going to see an extraordinary storm with record demand on the system. ERCOT put out further notices on February 10 and 11 and had a press conference with Gov. Abbott and other officials on Saturday February 13. Mr. Magness stated that he has tried to communicate what ERCOT knows in real-time and what changes are in store as he understood them.
Mr. Woodfin said there was no truth to the assertion that ERCOT had been selling power to other grids during this emergency, adding that ERCOT was actually importing power through its limited interconnections.
ERCOT was asked if some generators had gone off-line to avoid high fuel costs. Mr. Magness replied that there is no way ERCOT could know that, adding that ERCOT does not participate in the generation market and has no reason to believe that everyone is not trying to get the power back on.
ERCOT was asked whether the 46,000 MW of generation outage was the maximum or what is offline at this time.
Mr. Woodfin confirmed that this is the amount that’s out now. He noted that some were out initially and others had been forced out since the beginning of the event. Mr. Woodfin reported that, starting at 11 PM Sunday night, “ERCOT started seeing a massive amount of generators tripping off-line,” 10,000 within an hour or two. He noted that this is what caused the event to be much more severe than ERCOT had thought coming into it.
Mr. Woodfin discussed whether there were any regulations requiring plant operators to winterize their plants and what ERCOT has done to address winter weatherization. He noted that weatherization practices are voluntary and there is no regulation at this time. In February 2011, ERCOT’s last major loadshed event, there had been a lot of investigation of what had gone wrong at that time, causing generators to go off-line. Subsequent to these investigations, generators shared information with each other to develop best practices, not just in ERCOT but nationally, and these have been shared through North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) guidelines.
Mr. Woodfin noted that ERCOT voluntarily spot checks 100 out of approximately 600 generating units in ERCOT to help disseminate these best practices and make sure they are implemented. In 2018, with similar conditions, ERCOT had very few units trip off-line, suggesting that these practices were working. However, those practices were ultimately insufficient sufficient to address the more extreme weather event that occurred this week.
ERCOT acknowledged that its inspections were affected by Covid-19. ERCOT conducted 94 inspections virtually rather than in person, walking people through procedures to make sure they were doing the right thing.
When asked about the ERCOT Board’s Chair living in a different state, Mr. Magness replied “we need to focus on getting supply and demand in balance at this time and getting power back on and if folks want to look at how ERCOT is run and who runs it, that can be a part of a future investigation,” but added that “no one could impact the weather.”
Asked about Gov. Abbott’s comment that this is evidence for why the Green New Deal would be a disaster, Mr. Woodfin replied that the very cold weather impacted every type of generator.
Noting that ERCOT’s most recent Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy (SARA) report said there would be adequate generation for winter, ERCOT was asked what they think now.
Mr. Woodfin replied that the SARA report is based on different scenarios, including typical weather and extreme weather, like was experienced in 2011. He concluded that this situation was “well beyond even the 2011 extreme case.”
ERCOT explained how it is working with generators. Mr. Magness reported that ERCOT is in constant contact with generators, who have to notify ERCOT when they go on and off-line and ERCOT is doing everything it can to assist them in getting back online.
Mr. Woodfin added that generators are required to provide ERCOT with information on the amount of generation they expect to have online in the future, they are required to provide their best estimate but they don’t always know, relying on their “best guess estimate.”
Asked why ERCOT has not mandated more weatherization that would have prevented this, Mr. Woodfin replied that “ERCOT’s role is not to mandate those things,” although there was some discussion about that previously. He added that NERC is looking at weatherization standards, which incorporate best practices that generators are doing now, but it is not yet mandatory. Mr. Magness added that it would take regulatory agencies like NERC to implement enforceable standards.
Mr. Woodfin explained why rotating outages are not being shared equally. The challenge for transmission operators is that it’s difficult for them to move the outages around, due to the size of the outages that are required, because there are critical loads that can’t be curtailed so no customers to rotate to.
Regarding the magnitude of outages that were in effect before the emergency began, Mr. Magness replied that he did not know specifically but would obtain that information, adding there were only a small number of planned outages at the time and all that were voluntary came back online.
Mr. Woodfin explained why generators in much colder climates are able to operate while the ones in Texas were not. Generators in Texas don’t have the same level of cold-weather protection as those in northern parts of the U.S. There are things that can be bought for turbines to protect against colder weather but cold enough weather to justify them in Texas is so infrequent that they don’t buy them. In addition, thermal generating plants in northern climates are typically enclosed in buildings, which is very helpful, but in Texas most generation is designed to maximize summer output, due to peak demands. You can’t produce as much power from an enclosed generator in Texas, so they don’t build them that way.
Concerning when service to customers will be restored, Mr. Magness replied that customer outages are down from 18,000 MW to 13,000 MW and ERCOT hopes to at least reduce that enough to allow outages to be rotated.
Asked whether a capacity market would have helped the situation, Mr. Magness replied that a capacity market would not change the weather or reduce the extraordinary demand. He suggested there is sufficient generation in Texas to handle the highest summer peak so there is no capacity shortage, the problem is that capacity was knocked out by an extraordinary event, including the impact on gas supply.
Asked whether the generation outages were clustered or spread out, Mr. Woodfin confirmed that the outages are spread out all across the state.
When asked about a recent report that said ERCOT is the only state without a resource adequacy requirement, Mr. Magness stated that ERCOT’s priority right now is to get power back on and we can argue about those things later.
Very true. And their selection of ideological, barely competent or frankly incompetent judges to the federal bench and SCOTUS will potentially be problematic for decades to come.