What is happening in Texas is a failure on a massive scale! 

To understand what is happening right now in Texas -- and who's to blame -- you have to go back to 1935, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which governed electricity sharing and sales between the states. Basically, it allowed the federal government to regulate states who brought power in from outside their state lines.

Texas, never a fan of federal intrusion, set up its own power grid system -- split between northern and southern Texas -- to avoid any federal involvement. That led eventually to the formation of ERCOT in 1970 and this strange fact: There are three power grids in the United States -- the eastern power grid, the western power grid and, well, Texas.

Yes, you read that right. Texas has its own power grid. Because it is Texas.

And while being independent from the yoke of federal regulation has always been a point of pride for Texas, the limits of that strategy are being realized now. See, because Texas -- or at least 90% of the state -- is controlled by ERCOT, they can't simply borrow power from either the eastern or western power grids. That's never been a problem before because Texas has always been able to generate more power than its citizens need. But the reality is that Texas is an electricity island, which isn't a problem until the lights go out, and you don't have enough power in the state to turn them back on.

Now, there's no question that ERCOT bears some blame here, too. When your only job is to manage a power grid and that power grid fails miserably, that's a big problem. And as the Houston Chronicle noted on Tuesday, the chair of ERCOT lives in Michigan and the vice chair lives in California -- so they are not exactly feeling the brunt of their bad strategy.