Sean Meriwether's Blog: The Green Economist, page 2

The Boy Who Cried COVID

NY Dispatch: A new theme has emerged at the president’s campaign rallies, including the one in Omaha where hundreds of his loyal redhatters were abandoned in the freezing cold miles from their cars. He whined that the media is only paying attention to COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. He cried that they are attacking him and will only stop talking about it after election day, admitting that he knows he may lose. His attacks on the media, which have given him trillions of dollars i...

Vote for their Future

NY Dispatch: One of the first acts of the current administration was to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. It is a multinational agreement to voluntarily reduce carbon emissions to prevent the global average temperature from increasing 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The Agreement was organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). President Barack Obama, in his last year of office, committed the US, however he bypassed Congressional approval to do ...

Saving SCOTUS

NY Dispatch: Yesterday in a 52-48 vote along party lines the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court. She is a young woman and respected teacher, but has limited judicial experience. She is one of the least experienced judges appointed to the highest court, which is a trend that Senator Mitch McConnell has set over the last four years in his judicial appointments. Barret was only appointed to the Seventh Circuit in 2017, but she wasn’t selected for her experience. She was selected...

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

NY Dispatch: I took the day off to run a gauntlet of errands but at the top of my to do list was early voting. I had to go back twice during the day, in the early morning the parking lot was so full I couldn’t find parking, later in the afternoon it was still as crowded and I parked a quarter of a mile away at the supermarket and walked over. I joined the snaking line in the Eastchester Library parking lot and queued up. It is the first time that New York state has allowed early voting and w...

The Lincoln Project

NY Dispatch: Hanging at the Crossroads of the World, also known as Times Square, are two new billboards funded by The Lincoln Project. They feature the president’s daughter and her husband, the power couple that have come to define nepotism for future generations. The daughter is presented in her Goya-promotion pose, one in a series of violations of the Hatch Act. The billboard presents statistics on the number of New Yorkers and Americans who have died, up until that moment, from COVID-19. Her ...

Part of the Family

NY Dispatch: This week Pope Francis made international headlines, not for the red carpet rollout of his documentary, Francesco, which celebrates the tradition-breaking pope, but for a scene in the film. In an interview that the Vatican had previously suppressed the pope endorsed same-sex civil unions. He said, “Homosexuals have a right to be part of the family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. What we have to create is a civil union low. That way they are legally covered.”

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“Character is on the ballot.”

NY Dispatch: One of the truest moments of the 2nd and final presidential debate came when Joe Biden said that the 2020 election was about character. With nearly 50 years in public service, eight of them as Vice President, we have come to know him. He is not without flaws, but has shown empathy, compassion, and the desire to represent all Americans regardless of race, creed, or political affiliation. Yes, he is verbally clumsy and will become a friendly target for comedians, but he learns from hi...

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”

NY Dispatch: The GOP has fast-tracked their Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barret. They had the votes to fill Justice Ginsberg’s seat even before a candidate was selected. They didn’t let their own hypocrisy prevent them from moving forward in the middle of an election; Mitch McConnel claimed four years ago that a nomination should not be considered in an election year. They need to rush to get her in before election day, when it is expected they will lose their majority in a “shellacking...

Rats, Ship, GOP, 45

NY Dispatch: With less than two weeks until November 3rd, the GOP has woken up with the smell of Sulphur in their nostrils, panicked that the deal they made with Mephistopheles is coming due. For the last four years they have joined arms and supported their clown king, drunk on power, steeped in corruption, and certain that things were always going to go their way. But like Faust, they sold their souls for bag of tricks.

On occasion the Grand Old Party objected to the president’s latest race-...

Nice Guys Finish First

NY Dispatch: People have been turning out in record numbers to vote early. More than 31 million people have already cast their ballots with 15 million of them in battleground states. Texas is leading the pack with close to 4 million votes despite the all of the obstacles the GOP has placed in front of voters. The early response has pulled in 67% of the total vote from 2016 and we still have two weeks before election day. Many people are voting early to avoid the crowds, or who want to cast their...