I have many friends in Austin, but I'd like to single out two.

My two friends in Austin represent the "two Austins" very well. One is a college professor who along with his wife, does well enough to live in a nice neighborhood. The other works in the food service industry and lives with many roommates in order to eke out a meager existence.

The two things these two friends have in common are as of late yesterday, and presumably today they are still without power (they sure were Tuesday evening when I wrote this). Imagine that, nine days without power. Don't forget, that means no hot water among other things.

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Again we are looking at a failure of our governor to look out for his own. A governor of a state should be the governor for the entire state but Greg Abbott locks horns with Austin officials whenever he can, so this ends up being a huge case of "not my problem".

Well, it is his problem when moms can't heat up baby bottles when Austinites dumpster dive for meat because the stores couldn't even open to selling it, and when people that require special electric/electronic medical equipment can't keep it powered up.

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It does not matter what Austin as a city can do, or what the energy company can do, the state should be jumping in to help. All of this happened because of storms, and not the grid. It doesn't matter. Texas and the governor should be leading an emergency response until every Texan has power. The governor knew that this type of thing was potentially a problem and yet people still sit in the dark, with some projected to not have power until February 13th. This is an embarrassment.

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