climate and environment – Michmutters

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US

‘El Jefe’ the jaguar, famous in US, photographed in Mexico

'El Jefe' the jaguar, famous in US, photographed in Mexico

MEXICO CITY (AP) — They call him “El Jefe,” he is at least 12 years old and his crossing of the heavily guarded US-Mexico border has sparked celebrations on both sides.

“El Jefe” — or “The Boss” — is one of the oldest jaguars on record along the frontier, one of few known to have crossed a border partly lined by a wall and other infrastructure to stop drug traffickers and migrants, and the one believed to have traveled the farthest, say ecologists of the Borderlands Linkages Initiative, a binational collaboration of eight conservation groups.

That assessment is based on photographs taken over the years. Jaguars can be identified by their spots, which serve as a kind of unique fingerprint.

The rare northern jaguar’s ability to cross the border suggests that despite increased impediments, there are still open corridors and if they are kept open “it is feasible (to conserve) the jaguar population in the long term,” said Juan Carlos Bravo of the Wildlands Network, one of those groups in the initiative.

But some fear for the Jaguars’ future. Although it was the government of President Donald Trump that reinforced and expanded the border wall with Mexico, the Biden administration has announced plans for closing four gaps between the US state of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora — the two states the jaguars traverse.

Conservationists do not know how many jaguars there are in the Sierra Madre Occidental, but of the 176 that have been identified over two decades by the Northern Jaguar Project — another group in the initiative — only two others besides “El Jefe” are known to have crossed the border, Bravo said. In one case, conservationists are not sure if the jaguar crossed the border alive or dead since only its skin was found.

The first photograph of “El Jefe” was taken by a hunter southeast of Tucson, Arizona, in 2011, Bravo said. The jaguar became famous in Arizona and a local school named him “El Jefe.” Motion sensor cameras installed in transit areas photographed the jaguar in Arizona again in 2012 and in 2015.

Conservationists were stunned when they confirmed that a photograph taken by another member of the coalition, Profauna, last November in the center of Sonora was “El Jefe.” The discovery meant not only that jaguars could still cross the border but that other jaguars had lost track of could also still be alive, the initiative said in a statement.

Hunted in the southwestern United States for rewards offered by the government to promote cattle ranching, they were thought to have disappeared from the US by the end of the 20th century. Jaguar populations are currently concentrated on Mexico’s Pacific coast, southeastern Mexico, Central America and central South America.

A sighting of jaguars in the United States in 1996 prompted studies that found a reproductive point in the center of Sonora.

The NGOs banded together to operate on both sides of the border to track the cats, create sanctuaries, understand where they moved and seek the support of landowners in the US and Mexico to protect them, Bravo said.

Besides the difficulty of determining where to put cameras to record the animals and the subsequent analysis of the images, conservationists in Mexico face another problem: drug cartels.

“There is a presence of armed groups and drug traffickers” who pass through the same isolated areas as the jaguars, Bravo said by telephone from Sonora. “It is important to move carefully, work with the people in the communities that tell us where not to go. … All of this is making it very, very complicated.”

The border is the main challenge for hopes to repopulate the American Southwest with jaguars, with walls impeding movement by those animals as well as the American antelope, the black bear and the Mexican wolf, Bravo said. Light towers and the roads used by the Border Patrol are also a problem, I added.

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US

More human remains discovered as drought dries Lake Mead

University instructor charged in shooting death of student

LAS VEGAS — More human remains have been found at drought-stricken Lake Mead National Recreation Area east of Las Vegas, authorities said Sunday.

It’s the fourth time since May that remains have been uncovered as Western drought forces the shoreline to retreat at the shrinking Colorado River reservoir behind the Hoover Dam.

National Park Service officials said rangers were called to the reservoir between Nevada and Arizona around 11 am Saturday after skeletal remains were discovered at Swim Beach.

Rangers and a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police dive team went to retrieve the remains.

Park Service officials said the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office will try to determine when and how the person died as investigators review records of missing people.

On May 1, a barrel containing human remains was found near Hemenway Harbor. Police believe the remains were that of a man who died from a gunshot wound and the body was likely dumped in the mid-1970s to early 1980s.

Less than a week later, authorities say human skeletal remains were found at Calville Bay.

More recently, partial human remains were found in the Boulder Beach area on July 25.

Police have speculated that more remains may be discovered as the water level at Lake Mead continues to recede.

The discoveries have prompted about long-unsolved missing person and murder cases dating back decades speculation — to organized crime and the early days of Las Vegas, which is just a 30-minute drive from the lake.

The lake surface has dropped more than 170 feet (52 meters) since the reservoir was full in 1983.

The drop in the lake level comes while a vast majority of peer-reviewed science says the world is warming, mainly because of rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Scientists say the US West, including the Colorado River basin, has become warmer and drier in the past 30 years.

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US

Tribe: California wildfire near Oregon causes fish deaths

Tribe: California wildfire near Oregon causes fish deaths

HAPPY CAMP, Calif. — A wildfire burning in a remote area just south of the Oregon border appears to have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Klamath River fish, the Karuk Tribe said Saturday.

The tribe said in a statement that the dead fish of all species were found Friday near Happy Camp, California, along the main stem of the Klamath River.

Tribal fisheries biologists believe a flash flood caused by heavy rains over the burn area caused a massive debris flow that entered the river at or near Humbug Creek and McKinney Creek, said Craig Tucker, a spokesman for the tribe.

The debris entering the river led to oxygen levels in the Klamath River dropping to zero on Wednesday and Thursday nights, according to readings from tribal monitors at a nearby water quality station.

A photo from the Karuk taken about 20 miles (32 kilometers) downstream from the flash flood in the tributary of Seiad Creek showed several dozen dead fish belly up amid sticks and other debris in thick, brown water along the river bank.

The full extent of the damage is still unclear but the tribe said late Saturday it appears the fish found dead 20 miles downstream were swept there after their deaths and that the fish kill isn’t impacting the entire river.

“We think the impact is limited to 10 or 20 miles of river in this reach and the fish we are seeing in Happy Camp and below are floating downstream from the ‘kill zone,’” the tribe said in an updated statement, adding it continues to monitor the situation.

The McKinney Fire, which has burned more than 90 square miles (233 square kilometers) in the Klamath National Forest, this week wiped out the scenic hamlet of Klamath River, where about 200 people lived. The flames killed four people in the tiny community and reduced most of the homes and businesses to ash.

Scientists have said climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. Across the American West, a 22-year megadrought deepened so much in 2021 that the region is now in the driest spell in at least 1,200 years.

When it began, the McKinney Fire burned just several hundred acres and firefighters thought they would quickly bring it under control. But thunderstorms came in with ferocious gusts that within hours had pushed it into an unstoppable conflagration.

The blaze was 30% contained on Saturday.

The fish kill was a blow for the Karuk and Yurok tribes, which have been fighting for years to protect fragile populations of salmon in the Klamath River. The salmon are revered by the Karuk Tribe and the Yurok Tribe, California’s second-largest Native American tribe.

The federally endangered fish species has suffered from low flows in the Klamath River in recent years and a parasite that’s deadly to salmon flourished in the warmer, slower-moving water last summer, killing fish in huge numbers.

After years of negotiations, four dams on the lower river that impede the migration of salmon are on track to be removed next year in what would be the largest dam demolition project in US history in an attempt to help the fish recover.

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Flaccus reported from Portland, Oregon.

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US

Senate parliamentarian OKs most of Dems’ drug price controls

Senate parliamentarian OKs most of Dems' drug price controls

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate parliamentarian narrowed Democrats’ plan for curbing drug prices but left it largely intact Saturday, Democrats said, as party leaders prepared to start moving their sprawling economic bill through the chamber.

Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s rules arbiter, also gave the green light to clean air provisions in the measure, including one limiting electric vehicle tax credits to those assembled in the US, Democrats said.

The nonpartisan official’s rulings came as Democrats planned to begin Senate votes Saturday on their wide-ranging package addressing climate change, energy, health care costs, taxes and even deficit reduction. Party leaders have said they believe they now have the unity they will need to move the legislation through the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

MacDonough said provisions must be removed that would force drugmakers to pay rebates if their prices rise above inflation for products they sell to private insurers. Pharmaceutical companies would have to pay those penalties, though, if their prices for drugs bought by Medicare rise too high.

Dropping penalties on drugmakers for increasing prices on private insurers was a clear setback for Democrats. The decision reduces incentives on pharmaceutical companies to restrain what they charge, increasing costs for patients.

Erasing that language will cut the $288 billion in 10-year savings that the Democrats’ overall drug curbs were estimated to generate — a reduction of perhaps tens of billions of dollars, analysts have said. But other restrictions on rising pharmaceutical costs survived, including letting Medicare negotiate costs for the drugs it buys, capping seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses and providing free vaccines.

The surviving pharmaceutical provisions left Democrats promoting the drug language as a boon to consumers at a time when voters are infuriated by the worst inflation in four decades.

“This is a major victory for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said in a statement. “While there was one unfortunate ruling in that the inflation rebate is more limited in scope, the overall program remains intact and we are one step closer to finally taking on Big Pharma and lowering Rx drug prices for millions of Americans.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that while he was “disappointed” the penalties for higher drug prices for privately insured consumers were dropped, “the legislation nevertheless puts a substantial check on Big Pharma’s ability to price gouge.”

The parliamentarian’s decision came after a 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda after they were seemingly dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators—first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginiathen Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a broad package that, while a fraction of earlier, larger versions that Manchin derailed, would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.

The parliamentarian signed off on a fee on excess emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas contributor, from oil and gas drilling. She also let stand environmental grants to minority communities and other initiatives for reducing carbon emissionssaid Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del.

She approved a provision requiring union-scale wages to be paid if energy efficiency projects are to qualify for tax credits, and another that would limit electric vehicle tax credits to those cars and trucks assembled in the United States.

The overall measure faces unanimous Republican opposition. But assuming Democrats fight off a nonstop “vote-a-rama” of amendments — many designed by Republicans to derail the measure — they should be able to muscle the measure through the Senate.

House passage could come when that chamber returns briefly from recess on Friday.

“What will vote-a-rama be like. It will be like hell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Friday of the approaching GOP amendments. He said that in supporting the Democratic bill, Manchin and Sinema “are empowering legislation that will make the average person’s life more difficult” by forcing up energy costs with tax increases and making it harder for companies to hire workers.

The bill offers spending and tax incentives for moving toward cleaner fuels and supporting coal with assistance for reducing carbon emissions. Expiring subsidies that help millions of people afford private insurance premiums would be extended for three years, and there is $4 billion to help Western states combat drought.

There would be a new 15% minimum tax on some corporations that earn over $1 billion annually but pay far less than the current 21% corporate tax. There would also be a 1% tax on companies that buy back their own stock, swapped in after Sinema refused to support higher taxes on private equity firm executives and hedge fund managers. The IRS budget would be pumped up to strengthen its tax collections.

While the bill’s final costs are still being determined, it overall would spend more than $300 billion over 10 years to slow climate change, which analysts say would be the country’s largest investment in that effort, and billions more on health care. It would raise more than $700 billion in taxes and from government drug cost savings, leaving about $300 billion for deficit reduction — a modest bite out of projected 10-year shortfalls of many trillions of dollars.

Democrats are using special procedures that would let them pass the measure without having to reach the 60-vote majority that legislation often needs in the Senate.

It is the parliamentarian’s job to decide whether parts of legislation must be dropped for violating those rules, which include a requirement that provisions be chiefly aimed at affecting the federal budget, not imposing new policy.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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US

Sinema gives her nod, and influence, to Democrats’ big bill

Sinema gives her nod, and influence, to Democrats' big bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Joe Manchin sealed the deal reviving President Joe Biden’s big economic, health care and climate bill. But it was another Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizonawho intently, quietly and deliberately shaped the final product.

Democrats pushed ahead Friday on an estimated $730 billion package that in many ways reflects Sinema’s priorities and handiwork more than the other political figures who have played a key role in delivering on Biden’s signature domestic policy agenda.

It was Sinema early on who rejected Biden’s plan to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, as she broke with the party’s primary goal of reversing the Trump-era tax break Republicans gave to corporate America.

Sinema also scaled back her party’s long-running plan to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies as a way to reduce overall costs to the government and consumers. She limited which drugs can be negotiated.

Her insistence on climate change provisions forced the coal-state Manchin to stay at the table to accept some $369 billion in renewable energy investments and tax breaks. She also is tucking in more money to fight Western droughts.

And it was Sinema who in one final stroke gave her blessing to the deal by extracting an ultimate demand — she forced Democrats to drop plans to close a tax loophole that benefits wealthy hedge fund managers and high-income earners, long a party priority. Instead, the final bill will keep the tax rate at 20% instead of hiking it to the typical 37%.

“Kyrsten Sinema’s proven herself to be a very effective legislator,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who has negotiated extensively with his colleague over the past year, including on the tax loophole.

In a 50-50 Senate where every vote matters, the often inscrutable and politically undefinable Sinema puts hers to use in powerful ways. Her negotiating at the highest levels of power — she appears to have equal access to Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — has infuriated some, wowed others and left no doubt she is a powerful new political figure.

While other lawmakers bristle at the influence a single senator can wield in Congress, where each member represents thousands if not millions of voters, Sinema’s nod of approval late Thursday was the last hurdle Democrats needed to push the Inflation Reduction Act forward. A final round of grueling votes on the package is expected to begin this weekend.

“We had no choice,” Schumer told reporters Friday at the Capitol.

Getting what you want in Congress does not come without political costs, and Sinema is amassing a balance due.

Progressives are outraged at their behavior, which they view as beyond the norms of sausage-making during the legislative process and verging on an unsettling restacking of party priorities to a more centrist, if not conservative, lane.

Progressive Rep. Ruben Gallego is openly musing about challenging Sinema in the 2024 primary in Arizona, and an independent expenditure group, Change for Arizona 2024, says it will support grassroots organizations committed to defeating her in a Democratic primary.

“The new reconciliation bill will lower the cost of prescription drugs,” Gallego wrote on Twitter last weekend. “@SenatorSinema is holding it up to try to protect ultra rich hedge fund managers so they can pay a lower tax.”

In fact, on the left and the right, commentators lambasted her final act—saving the tax breaks for the wealthy. Some pointed to past legislative luminaries—the late Sen. Robert Byrd, for example, used his clout to leave his name on roads, buildings and civic institutions across the West Virginia hillsides. They scoff at Sinema establishing her legacy of her in such a way.

“Astonishing,” wrote conservative Hugh Hewitt on Twitter. “@SenatorSinema could have demanded anything she wanted — anything that spent money or changed taxes — and with that leverage for Arizona she choose … to protect the carry interest exemption for investors. …Not the border. Not the country. A tax break. wow.”

Democratic former Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote, “The ‘carried interest’ loophole for billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity partners is now out of the Inflation Reduction Act, courtesy of Kyrsten Sinema.

“She’s up in 2024. Primary her and get her out of the Senate.”

But Sinema has never cared much about what others say about her, from the time she set foot in the Senate, breaking the rules with her whimsical fashion choices and her willingness to reach across the aisle to Republicans — literally joining them at times in the private Senate GOP cloakroom.

The Arizona senator seeks to emulate the maverick career of John McCain, drawing on his farewell address for her maiden Senate speech, and trying to adopt his renegade style alongside her own — a comparison that draws some eyerolls for its reach and scope.

Still, in her short time in the Senate, Sinema has come herself to be a serious study who understands intricacies of legislation and a hard-driving dealer who does not flinch. She has been instrumental in landmark legislation, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed into law last summer.

“There’s not been a bipartisan group that she’s not been a part of,” Warner said.

In the end, the final package is slimmer than Biden first envisioned with his lofty Build Back Better initiative, but still a monumental undertaking and a bookend to a surprisingly productive if messy legislative session.

The bill would make health care gains for many Americans, capping pharmacy costs for seniors at $2,000 out of pocket and providing subsidies to help millions of people who buy health insurance on the private market. It includes what the Biden administration calls the largest investment in climate change ever, with money for renewable energy and consumer rebates for new and used electric cars. It would mostly be paid for by higher corporate taxes, with some $300 billion going to deficit reductions.

On the climate provisions, a priority for Democrats, Sinema may have played a role in keeping the sweeping provisions in the bill, when Manchin was less inclined to do so.

Environmental leaders, who have been involved in talks on the bill since last year, said Sinema has helped shape the bill all along. She was especially helpful last year when she made it clear she supports the climate and energy provisions, and her commitment to climate issues has remained steadfast, environmentalists said.

She tacked on her own priority, money to help Western states dealing with droughts, in the final push.

Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, an environmental group that has pushed for the climate bill, said: “Senator Sinema needed money for drought relief to help her constituents stave off the worst effects of climate change. If that’s what was needed to gain her support from her, then good on her.

At home in Arizona, business allies that have been crucial to Sinema’s efforts to build an independent image have cheered on her willingness to resist party pressure over the tax increases.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the National Association of Manufacturers ran ads against the deal, though they didn’t target Sinema by name, and bent her ear in a phone call this week.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and JJ Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this article.

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Australia

Australia to protect Barrier Reef by banning coal mine

Australia to protect Barrier Reef by banning coal mine

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s new government announced on Thursday it plans to prevent development of a coal mine due to the potential impact on the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said she intends to deny approval for the Central Queensland Coal Project to be excavated northwest of the Queensland state town of Rockhampton.

The minority Greens party has been pressing the center-left Labor Party government, which was elected in May, to refuse approvals of coal or gas projects, to help reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“Based on the information available to me at this stage, I believe that the project would be likely to have unacceptable impacts to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and the values ​​of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and National Heritage Place,” Plibersek said in a statement.

The marine park manages the network of more than 2,500 reefs that cover 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles) of seabed off the northeast Australian coast. The World Heritage Area, designated by the United Nations and Australia’s National Heritage List, includes natural, historic and Indigenous places of outstanding significance to the nation.

UNESCO, the UN cultural organization, is considering downgrading the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status mainly because rising ocean temperatures are killing coral.

The mine’s proponents have 10 business days to respond to the proposed refusal before the minister makes her final decision.

The Greens welcomed the news and urged the minister to reject another 26 planned coal mines.

“Now we need an across-the-board moratorium on all new coal and gas projects,” Greens leader Adam Bandt said in a statement.

The proposed decision was announced after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would enshrine in law the government’s ambition to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. The bill passed 89 votes to 55.

The previous government’s target had been a reduction of between 26%-28%, set at the Paris climate conference in 2015.

A proposed Greens’ amendment that would have acknowledged no new coal, oil or gas projects could be started if Australia were to achieve its net-zero emissions target by 2050 was defeated on Thursday.

The government is confident that the bill will be passed by the Senate next month with support from all 12 Greens senators, who would prefer a 2030 target of a 75% reduction.

The apparently doomed mine would have been an open-cut operation that extracted up to 10 million metric tons (11 million US tons) of coal a year.

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US

Democrats’ big package: What remains in and what’s out?

Democrats' big package: What remains in and what's out?

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s nowhere near the $4 trillion proposal President Joe Biden first launched to rebuild America’s public infrastructure and family support systems but the compromise package of inflation-fighting health care, climate change and deficit reduction strategies appears on track toward Senate votes this weekend.

The estimated $740 billion proposal, struck by two top negotiators, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and holdout Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative West Virginia Democrat, includes some hard-fought party priorities. But the final touches came this week from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who put her handiwork on the latest revisions.

What’s in, and out, of the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” as it stands now:

LOWER PRESCRIPTION DRUG COSTS

Launching a long-sought goal, the bill would allow the Medicare program to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, saving the federal government some $288 billion over the 10-year budget window.

Those new revenues would be put back into lower costs for seniors on medications, including a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap for older adults buying prescriptions from pharmacies.

The money would also be used to provide free vaccinations for seniors, who now are among the few not guaranteed free access, according to a summary document.

HELP PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE

The bill would extend the subsidies provided during the COVID-19 pandemic to help some Americans who buy health insurance on their own.

Under earlier pandemic relief, the extra help was set to expire this year. But the bill would allow the assistance to keep going for three more years, lowering insurance premiums for people who are purchasing their own health care policies.

‘SINGLE BIGGEST INVESTMENT IN CLIMATE CHANGE IN US HISTORY’

The bill would invest nearly $374 billion over the decade in climate change-fighting strategies including investments in renewable energy production and tax rebates for consumers to buy new or used electric vehicles.

It’s broken down to include $60 billion for a clean energy manufacturing tax credit and $30 billion for a production tax credit for wind and solar, seen as ways to boost and support the industries that can help curb the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. The bill also gives tax credits for nuclear power and carbon capture technology that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil have invested millions of dollars to advance.

The bill would impose a new fee on excess methane emissions from oil and gas drilling while giving fossil fuel companies access to more leases on federal lands and waters.

A late addition pushed by Sinema and other Democrats in Arizona, Nevada and Colorado would designate $4 billion to combat a mega-drought in the West, including conservation efforts in the Colorado River Basin, which nearly 40 million Americans rely on for drinking water.

For consumers, there are tax breaks as incentives to go green. One is a 10-year consumer tax credit for renewable energy investments in wind and solar. There are tax breaks for buying electric vehicles, including a $4,000 tax credit for purchase of used electric vehicles and $7,500 for new ones.

In all, Democrats believe the strategy could put the country on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030, and “would represent the single biggest climate investment in US history, by far.”

HOW TO PAY FOR ALL OF THIS?

The biggest revenue-raiser in the bill is a new 15% minimum tax on corporations that earn more than $1 billion in annual profits.

It’s a way to clamp down on some 200 US companies that avoid paying the standard 21% corporate tax rate, including some that end up paying no taxes at all.

The new corporate minimum tax would kick in after the 2022 tax year and raise some $258 billion over the decade.

The revenue would have been $313 billion, but Sinema insisted on one change to the 15% corporate minimum, allowing a depreciation deduction used by manufacturing industries. That shaves about $55 billion off the total revenue.

Money is also raised by boosting the IRS to go after tax cheats. The bill proposes an $80 billion investment in taxpayer services, enforcement and modernization, which is projected to raise $203 billion in new revenue — a net gain of $124 billion over the decade.

The bill sticks with Biden’s original pledge not to raise taxes on families or businesses making less than $400,000 a year.

The lower drug prices for seniors are paid for with savings from Medicare’s negotiations with the drug companies.

WHAT’S CHANGED IN RECENT DAYS?

To win over Sinema, Democrats dropped plans to close a tax loophole long enjoyed by wealthier Americans — the so-called “carried interest,” which under current law taxes wealthy hedge fund managers and others at a 20% rate.

The left has for years sought to increase the carried interest tax rate, hiked to 37% in the original bill, more in line with upper-income earners. Sinema wouldn’t allow it.

Keeping the tax break for the wealthy deprives the party of $14 billion in revenue they were counting on to help pay for the package.

In its place, Democrats, with Sinema’s nod, will impose a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks, raising some $74 billion over the decade.

EXTRA MONEY TO PAY DOWN DEFICITS

With some $740 billion in new revenue and around $433 billion in new investments, the bill promises to put the difference toward deficit reduction.

Federal deficits spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic when federal spending soared and tax revenues fell as the nation’s economy churned through shutdowns, closed offices and other massive changes.

The nation has seen deficits rise and fall in recent years. But overall federal budgeting is on an unsustainable path, according to the Congressional Budget Officewhich put out a new report this week on long-term projections.

WHAT’S LEFT BEHIND

This latest package after 18 months of start-stop negotiations leaves behind many of Biden’s more ambitious goals.

While Congress did pass a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill for highways, broadband and other investments that Biden signed into law last year, the president’s and the party’s other key priorities have slipped away.

Among them is a continuation of a $300 monthly child tax credit that was sending money directly to families during the pandemic and is believed to have widely reduced child poverty.

Also gone, for now, are plans for free pre-kindergarten and community college, as well as the nation’s first paid family leave program that would have provided up to $4,000 a month for births, deaths and other pivotal needs.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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Categories
US

Flash floods strand 1K people in Death Valley National Park

Flash floods strand 1K people in Death Valley National Park

DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Flash flooding at Death Valley National Park triggered by heavy rainfall on Friday buried cars, forced officials to close all roads in and out the park and stranded about 1,000 people, officials said

The park near the California-Nevada state line received at least 1.7 inches (4.3 centimeters) of rain at the Furnace Creek area, which park officials in a statement said represented “nearly an entire year’s worth of rain in one morning.” The park’s average annual rainfall is 1.9 inches (4.8 centimeters).

About 60 vehicles were buried in debris and about 500 visitors and 500 park workers were stranded, park officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and the California Department of Transportation estimated it would take four to six hours to open a road that would allow park visitors to leave.

It was the second major flooding event at the park this week. Some roads were closed Monday after they were inundated with mud and debris from flash floods that also hit western Nevada and northern Arizona hard.

The rain started around 2 am, said John Sirlin, a photographer for an Arizona-based adventure company who witnessed the flooding as he perched on a hillside boulder where he was trying to take pictures of lightning as the storm approached.

“It was more extreme than anything I’ve seen there,” said Sirlin, who lives in Chandler, Arizona, and has been visiting the park since 2016. He is the lead guide for Incredible Weather Adventures and said he started chasing storms in Minnesota and the high plains in the 1990s.

“I’ve never seen it to the point where entire trees and boulders were washing down. The noise from some of the rocks coming down the mountain was just incredible,” he said in a phone interview Friday afternoon.

“A lot of washes were flowing several feet deep. There are rocks probably 3 or 4 feet covering the road,” he said.

Sirlin said it took him about 6 hours to drive about 35 miles (56 kilometers) out of the park from near the Inn at Death Valley.

“There were at least two dozen cars that got smashed and stuck in there,” he said, adding that he didn’t see anyone injured “or any high water rescues.”

During Friday’s rainstorms, the “flood waters pushed dumpster containers into parked cars, which caused cars to collide into one another. Additionally, many facilities are flooded including hotel rooms and business offices,” the park statement said.

A water system that provides it for park residents and offices also failed after a line broke that was being repaired, the statement said.

A flash flood warning for the park and surrounding area expired at 12:45 pm, Friday but a flood advisory remained in effect into the evening, the National Weather Service said.

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US

2 found dead in charred car within California wildfire zone

2 found dead in charred car within California wildfire zone

YREKA, Calif. (AP) — At least two people have died from a raging California blaze that was among several threatening thousands of homes Monday in the Western US

Two bodies were found inside a charred vehicle Sunday in the driveway of a home near the remote community of Klamath River, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The names of the victims and other details weren’t immediately released.

The McKinney Fire in Northern California near the state line with Oregon exploded in size to nearly 87 square miles (225 square kilometers) after erupting Friday in the Klamath National Forest, firefighting officials said. It is California’s largest wildfire of the year so far and officials have not yet determined the cause.

Gusty winds from a thunderstorm powered the blaze of a few hundred acres into a massive conflagration while lightning caused a couple of smaller blazes nearby, including one near the community of Seiad Valley, fire officials said.

On Monday, heavy rain helped dampen the fire but it still threatened structures after torching more than 100, ranging from homes to greenhouses, fire and sheriff’s officials said.

About 2,500 people remained under evacuation orders.

“If you get an order, that means go. This fire behavior, as you’ll hear, is incredible. Don’t try to fight it. Don’t try to stick around,” Siskiyou County Office of Emergency Services Director Bryan Schenone said at a community meeting Monday evening.

Stormy and cloudy weather helped fire crews attack the blaze, and bulldozers had managed to ring the town of Yreka, fire officials said.

As of Monday, the blaze was about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) from the town of around 7,500 people.

Valerie Linfoot’s son, a fire dispatcher, called to tell her their family home of three decades in Klamath River had burned. Linfoot said her husband de ella worked as a US Forest Service firefighter for years and the family did everything they could to prepare their house for a wildfire — including installing a metal roof and trimming trees and tall grasses around the property.

“It was as safe as we could make it, and it was just so dry and so hot and the fire was going so fast,” Linfoot told the Bay Area News Group. She said her neighbors have also lost homes.

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“It’s a beautiful place. And from what I’ve seen, it’s just decimated. It’s absolutely destroyed,” she told the news group.

In northwestern Montana, winds picked up Monday afternoon on a fire burning in forested land west of Flathead Lake, forcing fire managers to ground all aircraft and leading the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to start evacuating residents on the northeastern corner of the fire.

The fire was putting up a lot of smoke, creating visibility problems for aircraft, said Sara Rouse, a spokesperson for the fire management team.

The fire, which started Friday afternoon near the town of Elmo on the Flathead Indian Reservation, measured 20 square miles (52 square kilometers), fire officials said.

The Moose Fire in Idaho has burned more than 85 square miles (220 square kilometers) in the Salmon-Challis National Forest while threatening homes, mining operations and fisheries near the town of Salmon. It was 23% contained Monday.

And a wildfire raging in northwestern Nebraska led to evacuations and destroyed or damaged several homes near the small city of Gering. The Carter Canyon Fire began Saturday as two separate fires that merged. It was about 30% contained by early Monday.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday, allowing him more flexibility to make emergency response and recovery effort decisions and to tap federal aid.

Scientists have said climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

The US Forest service shut down a 110-mile (177-kilometer) section of the famed Pacific Crest Trail in Northern California and southern Oregon. Sixty hikers in that area were helped to evacuate on Saturday, according to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, which aided in the effort.

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Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press reporters Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; and Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.

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2 bodies found in burned vehicle in California wildfire zone

2 bodies found in burned vehicle in California wildfire zone

YREKA, Calif. (AP) — Two bodies were found inside a charred vehicle in a driveway in the wildfire zone of a raging California blaze that was among several threatening thousands of homes Monday in the western US, officials said. Hot and gusty weather and lightning storms threatened to increase the danger that the fires will keep growing,

The McKinney Fire in Northern California near the state line with Oregon exploded in size to nearly 87 square miles (225 square km) after erupting Friday in the Klamath National Forest, firefighting officials said. It is California’s largest wildfire of the year so far and officials have not determined the cause.

The vehicle and the bodies were found Sunday morning in the driveway of a residence near the remote community of Klamath River, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Nearly 5,000 Northern California homes and other structures were threatened and an unknown number of buildings have burned, said Adrienne Freeman, a spokesperson for the US Forest Service.

The smoky blaze cast an eerie, orange-brown hue in one neighborhood where a brick chimney stood surrounded by rubble and scorched vehicles on Sunday. Flames torched trees along State Route 96 and raced through hillsides in sight of homes.

Valerie Linfoot’s son, a fire dispatcher, called to tell her their family home of three decades in Klamath River had burned. Linfoot said her husband de ella worked as a US Forest Service firefighter for years and the family did everything they could to prepare their house for a wildfire — including installing a metal roof and trimming trees and tall grasses around the property.

“It was as safe as we could make it, and it was just so dry and so hot and the fire was going so fast,” Linfoot told the Bay Area News Group. She said her neighbors have also lost homes.

“It’s a beautiful place. And from what I’ve seen, it’s just decimated. It’s absolutely destroyed,” she told the news group.

Firefighting crews on the ground were trying to prevent the blaze from moving closer to the town of Yreka, population about 7,500. The blaze was about four miles (6.4 kilometers) away as of Monday.

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A second, smaller fire in the region that was sparked by dry lightning Saturday threatened the tiny California community of Seiad.

Freeman said “there has been significant damage and loss along the Highway 96 corridor” that runs parallel to the Klamath River and is one of the few roads in and out of the region.

She added: “But just how much damage is still being assessed.”

Erratic storms were expected to move through Northern California again on Monday with lightning that threatened to spark new fires in bone dry vegetation, forecasters said. A day earlier, thunderstorms caused flash flooding that damaged roads in Death Valley National Park and in mountains east of Los Angeles.

In northwestern Montana, a fire on the Flathead Indian Reservation that started in grasslands near the town of Elmo on Friday and moved into forested areas had grown to 20 square miles (52 square km) by Monday, fire officials said. Residents of about 20 homes were told to be prepared to evacuate.

The Moose Fire in Idaho has burned more than 85 square miles (220 square kilometers) in the Salmon-Challis National Forest while threatening homes, mining operations and fisheries near the town of Salmon. It was 23% contained Monday.

And a wildfire raging in northwestern Nebraska led to evacuations and destroyed or damaged several homes near the small city of Gering. The Carter Canyon Fire began Saturday as two separate fires that merged. It was about 30% contained by early Monday.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday, allowing him more flexibility to make emergency response and recovery effort decisions and to tap federal aid.

Scientists have said climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

The US Forest service shut down a 110-mile (177 km) section of the famed Pacific Crest Trail in Northern California and southern Oregon and dozens of hikers in that area were urged to abandon their treks and head to the nearest towns.

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Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press reporters Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; and Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho contributed to this report.

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