The Mess in Texas: As Texas struggles to turn the heat and lights back on, another winter storm is on the way. A quarter of Texas residents are under a boil water order because the water systems are down. Some are using barbecue grills and generators to keep warm. Pipes are bursting.

 And now a new system of winter weather stretches all the way from the Rio Grande to New York.

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas natural gas producers to sell the fuel to in-state power generators. But the state is at the mercy of its independent power agency, ERCOT that is not required to share information. “It is kind of opaque,” he said. “The way that it runs is not transparent.”

  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is now acknowledging how wrong he was to mock California for its power problems last summer. “I got no defense,” he tweeted. “A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good.” 

Viral News: Federal agents yesterday seized one million counterfeit N95 medical masks as part of a continuing fraud investigation. That brings to 11 million the number of phony masks that have been taken out of circulation.

  The masks were marked as “Made in the USA” coming from the 3M company, a reliable supplier, but they were fake.

  In New York, Democratic leaders of the State Senate are gearing up to strip Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of emergency powers granted to him during the pandemic because he fudged the numbers of nursing home patients who died of Covid-19. It would be a stunning rebuke by the party of its own leader. Maybe Republicans could learn from that.

  As the federal government continues to push out more vaccine, The Centers for Disease Control report that about 40.3 million people have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, including about 15.5 million people who have been fully vaccinated.

  This morning, 490,717 Americans are dead of Covid-19. 

Bank Error: In a bizarre ruling this week, a federal judge ruled that a group of investors in the Revlon beauty company who were accidentally over-reimbursed hundreds of millions of dollars by Citibank, don’t have to re-pay the money.

  Citibank last year intended to make an interest payment on behalf of Revlon but instead wired $900 million. They realized their mistake within a day and asked for the money back.

  Recipients of accidental payments like that are usually required to give the money back. Only playing Monopoly can you keep it. But Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan wrote in his ruling, “To believe that Citibank, one of the most sophisticated financial institutions in the world, had made a mistake that had never happened before, to the tune of nearly $1 billion, would have been borderline irrational.” 

  Obviously, Citibank will appeal.

Buried Lede: In what is surely bad news for the newspaper business, the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, has reached an agreement to buy Tribune Publishing, which owns nine major daily newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Daily News in New York. Also in the deal is The Hartford Courant, the oldest continually-published paper in the country. 

  Alden, which owns 100 newspapers, already owned 32 percent of Tribune. Reporting the news is not their passion. Making money is. The company typically pays for its purchases by cutting costs and laying off staff in a business that’s already troubled.

  Happily, the Baltimore Sun, a great old newspaper, escaped the deal. It’s being taken in by a non-profit.

The Obit Page: Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, one of the loudest voices of right wing hatred, racism, and ignorance in the US, died of lung cancer at age 70. His wife, Kathryn, announced his death on his show yesterday.

  Limbaugh made his living bashing “feminazis,” “environmentalist wackos,” “commie libs,” and prominent Black people, in particular former President Barack Obama. He had the most popular radio show in America.

  Some quotes:

– Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” 

– “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”

– “When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it’s an invitation.”

  Limbaugh announced a year ago that he had late-stage lung cancer and a day later President Trump surprised him with the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom his State of the Union speech.

  Limbaugh titled himself the “Doctor of Democracy.” His notion of democracy; a day after the violent Capitol insurrection to void Joe Biden’s victory in the November election, Limbaugh compared the Capitol invaders to the Revolutionary War patriots.

  “There’s a lot of people calling for the end of violence,” Limbaugh said on his radio program. “There’s a lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable. Regardless of the circumstances. I’m glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual tea party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord didn’t feel that way.”

Bust: The dilapidated hulk of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City that opened to great fanfare in 1984 and was considered a jewel in the former president’s empire, was imploded and left in a heap of rubble yesterday.

  Only Donald Trump could go broke in a business in which the house always wins. But Trump told The NY Times in 2016, “Atlantic City fueled a lot of growth for me. The money I took out of there was incredible.”

  The paper reported that “He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.”

  The destruction of his casino yesterday was only the most recent occasion on which Trump left a smoking ruin in his path. 

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