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Sean Casten

13 Feb, 11 tweets, 2 min read

I'm obviously disappointed today. Disappointed in 43 Senators who found it easier to do what they knew was wrong than to embrace what is right. But before you get too down about partisanship in America, a bit of history is in order: (thread)

1/ The Senate voted 57 - 43 to convict. That didn't meet the 2/3 bar our founders set. Our founders had good reasons for setting the bar that high, but keep in mind - political parties did not exist at the time our founders wrote the Constitution.

2/ Since the Constitution was drafted, there have been 4 Presidential impeachments. In every instance, it was exceptionally hard for the party of the President to vote in favor of impeachment.

3/ When Johnson was impeached, 0 members of his party in the Senate voted to convict. 10 members of the opposition party found him not-guilty.

4/ When Clinton was impeached, 0 members of his party in the Senate voted to convict. 10 members of the opposition party found him not guilty on the 1st charge, 5 on the 2nd.

5/ When Trump was impeached the first time, 1 member of his party in the Senate voted to convict on one of two counts. 0 members of the opposition party found him not guilty.

6/ When Trump was impeached the second time, 7 members of his party in the Senate voted to convict. 0 members of the opposition party found him not guilty.

@GOP

7/ That was not sufficient to convict. But it was still historically unprecedented. Praise the 7 members of the @GOP who found the courage to do the historically exceptional. Take sadness and pain from the circumstances that made that necessary.

8/ The 43 Senators who voted not guilty know they are wrong. They knew who Trump was. You need only listen to how Rubio, Trump, Graham and others described the risk he posed to our country before he became the leader of their party to know they know better.

@RepRaskin

9/ As @RepRaskin said today, quoting Ben Franklin, "wrong is always growing more wrong until there is no bearing it anymore, and right, however opposed, comes right at last." Right will come at last.

10/ But only if we collectively remain vigilant in defense of this 244 year experiment. /fin

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More from @SeanCasten

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

14 Feb

I've been having a lot of conversations about deficits, fiscal and monetary policy right now & frustrated with how many basic facts about our economy are misrepresented. So for Valentines Day, a #nerdthread on our national finances. Hope you enjoy:

1/ First, prior to COVID, the biggest ever emergency funding program in our history was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in response to the 2008 crisis. Just shy of $700B in emergency funding.

2/ (In 2008 $. I leave to other nerdier nerds to adjust these numbers for inflation.)

Read 20 tweets

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

10 Feb

@IDPH

Good data here from @IDPH on COVID vaccination rates by county. A few quick thoughts to share... dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccin…

1. As I noted at the DuPage fairgrounds yesterday, we have to play the cards we have, not the cards we wish we had. My height and vertical leap means I won't ever dunk a basketball. The process of vaccine rollout to date has created similar near-term challenges.

2. Among those issues is the lack of any federal coordination during the prior administration. From PPE to ventilators to testing to vaccines, states had to compete with each other rather than work collaboratively to crush the virus.

Read 12 tweets

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

5 Feb

@HouseGOP

MTG short take: values, morals, hopes and dreams that are universally shared by Americans across the political spectrum are only "partisan" in the sense that they are wholly rejected by majorities of the @HouseGOP.

That is cause for optimism insofar as the country is not nearly as polarized as it looks from within DC. But it's cause for great sadness for what it means about a once great political party.

@GOP

The @GOP - a party that emerged to stop the spread of slavery, that gave our country the great gift of Abraham Lincoln - still has registered voters who are pro-decency, pro-equality, pro-science, pro-market, pro-truth.

Read 8 tweets

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

2 Feb

This is worth the read. It is the natural result of the fact that a transition to clean energy is a huge labor productivity enhancer. (Eg, many more MWH per hour of labor.) That is good for the economy but will create temporary labor dislocations.

eenews.net/stories/106372…

To be clear, there is a lot more in this story as well, and I wish we'd stop talking about highly technical jobs as an alternative to being a barista. It's an extremely patronizing view of the American worker.

But the core issue here derives from the fact that old, dirty energy sources are really OPERATING labor intensive. New clean sources require a surge in construction jobs but much less operating labor.

Read 5 tweets

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

1 Feb

There are some really remarkable graphics in this article, but I have a pet peeve with this sentence: hcn.org/issues/53.2/in…

There is this narrative that coal is cheap, and would still be dominant but for falling natural gas prices and clean energy tax credits. That simply isn't true. Coal hasn't been cheap since the Clean Air Act was passed. It's been slowly dying for decades.

Coal is only cheap if we're willing to let it be dirty. Get rid of scrubbers, baghouses, stop caring about acid rain and asthma and you can build a cheap coal plant. We haven't tolerated that since the CAA. Thankfully.

Read 13 tweets

Sean Casten

@SeanCasten

29 Jan

This article is spot on. FERC has the potential to be one of the most impactful climate agencies in the Biden administration. Look forward to working with them. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@FERChatterjee

That's in part because so many of the barriers to deploying cleaner, cheaper energy sit at the nexus between state and federal policy. @FERChatterjee is exactly right that FERC uniquely has the ability to free up (some) of those barriers.

But it's also because historically, FERC has done more to green our electric grid than any other agency. Order 888 (coupled with the '92 EPACT) is the primary reason why our grid emits 900 lb CO2/MWh today instead of 1300 it did then.

Read 4 tweets

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