A perverse loophole allows owners of profitable teams — and their heirs — to lower their tax bills by claiming huge paper losses. Shutterstock graphic.
Remember the Everlasting Gobstopper from Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory? Designed for children “with very little pocket money,” it lasted forever, never got smaller, and was perpetually flavorful.
There’s a non-fiction equivalent, except it’s only for billionaires. We call it the Everlasting Tax Shelter, but it’s more commonly known as a sports team.
ProPublica recently reported how it works: A billionaire buys a sports team (or an interest in one) and is allowed to claim income tax deductions for about 90 percent of the cost over the subsequent 15 years.
Using what’s called an “amortization deduction,” these owners get tax breaks for intangible assets like “goodwill” — such as a loyal fan base, good employee relations, and strong brand recognition.
Our tax code assumes these intangible assets decline in value in the same way that factory equipment depreciates, so owners can claim deductions for them for years.
But this isn’t how sports teams work at all. In almost all cases, assets like the goodwill of fans get more valuable over time, not less, which drives the values of sports teams ever higher.
So, as teams are generating profits and growing more valuable, billionaire owners are claiming losses on their tax returns. This tax-dodging game works as long as they hold on to the investment, which most billionaire sports team owners do until death.
So it was with the late Save Mart Supermarkets mogul Robert Piccinini.
He was a member of a group that purchased the Golden State Warriors in 2010 for a reported $450 million. Over the following four years, ProPublica reports, he claimed losses of $16 million — despite the fact that the team’s total value ballooned to $1.3 billion during that period.
In 2015, Piccinini died, leaving his ownership interest to his children. Because he never sold his share in the team, Piccinini never had to pay income taxes on those paper losses.
His heirs didn’t have to either. Under a tax rule known as “stepped-up basis,” the heirs are treated as if they bought Piccinini’s interest in the limited liability company that owns the Warriors for its 2015 value, which had nearly tripled since Piccini bought his stake in 2010.
It’s highly likely these heirs have also been enjoying huge tax breaks by claiming paper losses on their Warriors investment, even though the team is now reported to be worth $4.7 billion — over 10 times the 2010 purchase price.
No wonder Robert Piccinini’s son Dominic was in a jubilant mood when ESPN cameras caught him sipping from a golden chalice at a Warriors game in 2019.
Contacted by ProPublica, Dominic Piccinini acknowledged that he and his siblings had inherited equal shares of his father’s stake in the team, but he said he’s left the tax details to the family’s lawyers .
“It’s just the darndest thing,” the younger Piccinini said in a phone call from a vacation in Mexico. “I’m a lucky son of a b—-, there’s no way around it.”
Hard to disagree there.
President Biden’s tax plan would close the “stepped-up basis” loophole that allows the wealthy and their children to escape taxes on their investment gains. Congress should pass the Biden plan — and also the amortization deduction loophole.
Demolish the Everlasting Tax Shelter.
Bob Lord, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, is tax counsel to Americans for Tax Fairness. Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits Inequality.org.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
President Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo, on the right, doing photo ops and announcements with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Irving, Texas. Photo by the Presidencia.
Business explorations, advances — and a Big Oil paramilitary import?
by Eric Jackson
Who has access, what quality of access is it, and what tough questions get avoided? These are major issues for Panamanian journalism during the Cortizo administration, the most insulated one since dictatorship times.
So, with the Panamanian economy in shards and no hiding that fact, we got economic policy statements from abroad, where the local reporters tend to know zip about Panama and the serious Panamanian reporters aren’t along for the ride. Just in time to avoid answering questions about a Venezuelan-owned and Florida-based mercenary firm hiring mostly Colombian paramilitary terrorists who assassinated the president of Haiti, and routed some of the apparent coordinators of the attack through Panama before the deed. Where was Migracion? How come the Vene and Colombian baiting legislators had nothing to say?
Ah, well. This was a five-day business trip to Dallas, Austin and Houston. If the speculation about a major purpose of it all was to attend Panama’s opening Gold Gup game against Qatar — in which the Marea Roja came from behind to rescue a 3-all tie — there were no photos or published reports of Panama’s president or members of his entourage attending, although they were in Houston for the storm-delayed event.
There were the usual mundane things. Cattleman Nito plugging Panamanian beef exports to the USA (in TEXAS?). Promotions for new airline routes — freight between Panama and Dallas and cheap passenger service by Southwest Airlines, which efforts seem to be undercut by the Biden State Department’s advice not to travel to Panama, due to a couple of places with a lot of drug smuggling and the ongoing COVID epidemic. Building shipping ties, at least symbolically, with a visit to the Port of Houston. Advocating for Panamanian farm produce in US grocery stores.
From Texas, there were two important business stories, plus while the president was away a couple more announcements here.
On the domestic front, there was the announcement of a 20-member squad that includes a couple of key PRD veterans of the negotiations for the Panama Canal Treaties — Adolfo Ahumada and Nils Castro — to renegotiate the copper mining concession with Canada-based multinational First Quantum. There was also a low key backtracking on plans to cut people off of food assistance. (There are still cuts in effect or about to come down, but not as drastic as those that were described earlier.)
From Texas, there was an announcement of a plan to invest $250 million in Millicom’s Tigo cellular communications network. Some remote areas, including in some of the indigenous comarcas, will get hooked up, it was announced. Which will and which won’t? That they don’t say. The plan is to create a “Hub Fintech” mainly oriented toward financial transactions on computer and cell phones, not only in Panama but throughout the region.
When the old state-owned INTEL phone company was privatized, one of the provisions in the cell phone concessions was for full national coverage. That has never happened and the Panamanian government has never insisted. Meanwhile those concessions were sold and resold several times. The breached full coverage promise caused significant damage to Panamanian tourism seven years back when two Dutchwomen, lost in a national park, tried to call for help and could not connect. Pieces of their remains — and their cell phones — were found sometime later.
Millicom, based in Luxembourg for tax avoidance purposes, concentrates on Latin American telecom markets. When it bought out Spanish-based Telefonica’s operations in Panama — you might more popularly state that as Tigo buying out Movistar — the press releases talked about plans to expand the network here. Thus we really don’t know how new the news announced in Texas actually was.
The Big Announcement — a memorandum of understanding with Energy Transfer for a “Trans-Panama Gateway Pipeline”
2016: Energy Transfer Partners’ hired paramilitary goons attack protesters against the Dakota Access pipeline with dogs and pepper spray.
The memorandum announced on the first day of Nito’s visit to Texas was to “study the viability of a joint Trans-Panama Gateway oil pipeline project.” The Presidencia described its partner in the “non-binding” transaction as “one of the largest and most diversified fuel transportation companies in the United States with more than 90,000 miles of pipelines and associated infrastructure in 38 states and Canada.” They didn’t mention that Energy Transfer Partners, a limited partnership whose members include Sunoco, is a company that hires its own private army and espionage apparatus, Nor that the company routinely evades providing information to government regulators, as recently shown by a lawsuit against the State of Pennsylvania alleging that providing details of the project would allow “criminals or terrorists” to rupture the pipe and cause spills. In their press releases and in reports obtained by anti-pipeline activists, Energy Transfer’s agents use words like “jihadists” to describe those opposed to their projects, and make spurious claims that they are dealing with the Black Panther Party, Black Lives Matter and other vilified groups. The company’s paramlitaries have infiltrated protester camps, churches, environmentalist groups and antiwar organizations.
Panama has a long, off-and-on and steadfastly denied relationship with paramilitary groups from other countries, particularly Colombia. It may be why the coordinators for the Colombian hit squad that killed Haitian president Jovenel Moïse had no problem passing through Panama en route to the assassination. So, with an Energy Transfer pipeline here, would be get the private army, too?
Those may be the more lurid but less fundamental questions.
First of all, what is the real long-term outlook for the use of petroleum as fuel? Its replacement by electric cars and renewable power generation would surely end neither oil nor fuel production, as those are raw materials for strong and light materials like graphite that would be come mainstays in such products as more energy efficient cars. But there would be little use for fuel pipelines for that. More likely, the places where manufacturing would move closer to where the raw materials are. The bottom line appears to be yet another Panamanian administration making plans based on the denial of climate change and the economic transformations that will come in its wake.
Then we might ask about prior oil pipelines across Panama, and why those have become dead letters rather than critical and constantly used infrastructures. The old pipeline alongside the canal did give up the Pipeline Road that’s prized by birders, but for its intended purpose was expensive to maintain and a constant hazard to Gatun Lake, its wildlife and those who drink from it. The Chiriqui – Bocas pipeline exists and is 40 percent owned by the Panamanian government but as a practical matter was an ephemeral product of of US public policy and law, wherein Alaska oil was reserved for the United States instead being more cheaply exported to Asia. That US legislation was amended in 1996 and caused a seven-year shutdown of the pipeline here. It was revived and expanded, but because of maintenance and environmental problems — think of the road from Chiriqui to Chiriqui Grande and imagine it being a pipeline and you would not be very far off — it has never been a very important factor in international oil transportation. The bottom line there is that pipelines have not proven to be compellingly profitable businesses here.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
US forces have been there, done that, and resolved nothing. Many times, actually. Here the Americans were in control of the international airport at Port au Prince for “Operation Uphold Democracy” in 1994. A military junta from a 1991 US-backed coup against an elected president was removed and neither democracy nor stability came out of the intervention. US Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant James E. Lotz (USAF).
Ocasio-Cortez urges Biden not to send US troops to Haiti
by Jake Johnson — Common Dreams
US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday morning that the Biden administration should resist calls to deploy American troops to Haiti in the wake of the assassination of the Caribbean nation’s president last week, warning that such a move would risk deepening the country’s political crisis.
“I do not believe right now that the introduction of US troops, particularly without any sort of plan, sets any community — whether it’s the US or whether it’s Haitians — up for success,” the New York Democrat said in an appearance on Democracy Now! “Our role should be in supporting a peaceful transition and a peaceful democratic process for selecting a new leader and avoiding any sort of violence.”
Ocasio-Cortez went on to say that the Biden administration should support efforts to bring to justice “any actors that may have been complicit [in the assassination] on US soil.”
Watch:
The New York congresswoman’s remarks came hours after Haitian authorities announced the arrest of a Haitian-born, Florida-based doctor who allegedly helped mastermind the killing of President Jovenel Moïse in his home last week.
Christian Emmanuel Sanon — a 63-year-old man who has been living in Florida periodically for two decades and has more than a dozen businesses registered in the state — is the third Haitian-American who has been arrested in connection with the assassination. In total, more than two dozen people have been detained for taking part in the killing, including 11 former members of the US-backed Colombian military.
According to Haitian authorities, Sanon worked with a Miami-based private security firm to hire the mercenaries who gunned down Moïse in the dead of night. Video footage from the scene shows armed assailants posing as officials from the US Drug Enforcement Agency as they moved in on Moïse’s private residence in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Following the assassination, Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph asked the Biden administration to send US troops to Haiti with the ostensible goal of protecting the country’s key infrastructure, prompting outcry from Haitians and observers familiar with the bloody history of US intervention in the Caribbean nation.
While the Biden administration has yet to grant the troop request, the United States did send officials from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to Haiti over the weekend to — in the words of Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby — “see what we can do to help them in the investigative process.”
“I think that’s really where our energies are best applied right now in helping them get their arms around investigating this incident and figuring out who’s culpable, who’s responsible, and how best to hold them accountable going forward,” Kirby said in a Fox News appearance on Sunday. “That’s where our focus is right now.”
Kirby added that Joseph’s call for US troops is “going through a review.”
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
Almost certainly it was a ruse used in the assassination of Haitian strongman Jovenel Moïse. Almost. We should ask why this might have had any effect, and that gets into some ugly history that suggests things for the USA not to do. Such awful questions, however, do not spare Panama from scrutiny in the event.
An international terrorist operation used Panama as a transportation hub…
In a conflicted situation such as Haiti’s, with contending factions who have competing narratives, very little should be taken at face value. Declarations by local or international players that appear self-serving merit special scrutiny.
Be that as it may, we hear from multiple sources that Haitian-American plotters used a Venezuelan exile owned mercenary firm in Florida to hire Colombian soldiers of fortune and Haitian-American interpreters to kill the man who was acting as president of Haiti, whether legitimately so or not AND, that as part of this mission, officers recently separated from the Colombian Army flew through Panama en route to taking some operational coordination role in this attack.
How convenient for President Cortizo to fly off to Texas and delay or entirely avoid questions about this. Set aside the criminal nature of the enterprise and look at it as a national security issue. The Panama Canal’s main defense is Panamanian neutrality, a political restraint that avoids giving any foreign power or movement a good excuse to attack it. As Haitian factions take up arms, might some of them see Panama as, if not a sponsor, a willing enabler of terrorists who attacked their country? If the response to that is “we knew nothing about it,” doesn’t that belie at the very least a dangerous cluelessness that we have seen before with Colombian paramilitaries and US militia members coming in unchecked, and now with a Venezuelan exile mercenary firm running operations through here?
It’s all very unacceptable. For all the PRD rants against foreigners, this PRD administration is either not on guard against extraneous terrorists coming through here, or in one way or another has been convinced to allow this. History tells us that this party is not the only offender over the years, but there’s still no excuse. Nito needs to give the nation some answers and take some actions to prevent recurrences of this sort of thing.
A Cuban medical brigade that came to help Panama with a spike in COVID cases.
If Cuba is to have “regime change” it must be a strictly Cuban thing
Huge anti-communist demonstrations in Miami? Yes, and the Cuban exile movement and its friends there DID turn out the vote for Donald Trump. They also provided some of the thugs for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. It’s nothing that anyone in Latin America, nor in Cuba itself, is bound to respect.
Hungry and angry Cubans in the streets of Cuba making demands and opposing a one-party government that has been in office for more than 60 years? THAT’S important — most of all for Cubans. There have also been large pro-government demonstrations, surely populated by anyone who has and wants to keep a government job, but also likely representing a substantial part of the nation’s public opinion.
It’s legitimate for sister Latin American republics to offer mediation between polarized Cuban factions, if they both would accept that. It’s legitimate for other countries to call on both sides to refrain from violence, and for all political prisoners and hostages to be set free.
There are international norms about fundemental freedoms that Cuba does not always respect. The United States, however, doesn’t have a squeaky clean human rights record either. The indirect Cuban elections, with their rigged nominating system, make a mockery of democracy. But then, the USA has all these vote suppression laws and tactics, and twice this century the Americans have had presidents who lost the popular vote. And have Cubans taken to the streets because of an economy that doesn’t work? Decades of US economic warfare against the island give the United States no standing whatever to talk about this issue. The US embargo against Cuba is a violation of international law, one that less than a month ago was denounced by a 184-2 vote of the United Nations General Assembly.
Without glossing over the authoritarian nature of Cuba’s political system — nor of many of the exiles who dream to replace them — the best Latin American advice is for the United States to get out of Cuba’s affairs and stay out. For Cubans in Cuba, all the neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean should urge them to solve their problems without a bloodbath. It might be too much to ask. Those should be the guidelines by which Panama should offer a helping hand to our sister Latin American republic.
To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Bear in mind…
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
James Baldwin
The key to immortality is first to live a life worth remembering.
Bruce Lee
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
Para defendernos de los piratas informáticos, los trolls organizados y otros actos de vandalismo en línea, la función de comentarios de nuestro sitio web está desactivada. En cambio, ven a nuestra página de Facebook para unirte a la discusión.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Suffer with those who suffer: compassion in our times
by Leonardo Boff
A cloak of suffering and pain covers the whole of humanity, threatened by Covid-19. The culture of capital, in which we live, is characterized by individualism and a crying lack of cooperation. The Pope, on the Italian island of Lampeduza, seeing hundreds of Africans arriving by boat from Africa and being unwelcomed by the local population, said almost in tears: “Our modern culture has robbed us of compassion for our fellow human beings; we have become incapable of crying.
It seems that the inflation of instrumental and analytical rationality has caused us a kind of lobotomy: we have become insensitive to the suffering of others. The current president is the most tragic proof of this indifference. He has never visited a hospital overcrowded with people contaminated by Covid-19, many of them suffocating to death.
The pandemic made us discover our deep humanity: the centrality of life, the interdependence among all, the solidarity and the necessary care. It made us more sensitive. It brought back compassion.
Compassion is the ability to feel and share the passion of the other, to whisper words of hope into the ear, to offer a shoulder and say that you are there for them come and go, to be able to cry together but also to encourage each other.
Compassion is a transcultural human feeling. It can be found in all cultures: everyone bends over the fallen and bends down before the dignity of the suffering of the other.
Some time ago an ancient Egyptian tomb was discovered with this inscription, full of compassion: “I was someone who listened to the widow’s complaint; I was someone who wept for a misfortune and consoled the downcast; I was someone who heard the sobbing of the orphan girl and wiped her tears; I was someone who had compassion on a desperate woman.
Today the relatives of those killed and affected by Covid-19, which left in its victims severe sequelae, call us to live this better side of our humanity: compassion. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica that compassion is more excellent than love for one’s neighbor; the latter is directed toward the other; compassion is directed toward the other who suffers.
From quantum physics, contemporary cosmology, and bioanthropology we learn that the fundamental law of all things and of the entire universe is not competition and the triumph of the most capable of adaptation, but the cooperation and synergy of all with all. Even the smallest and weakest has the right to live, because it has its place among all beings and carries within it a message to be heard by all. In this field, compassion among all beings other than humans also applies.
The following legend is told about St. Francis, who was especially compassionate with lepers, with the worm that could not make a hole in the hard soil of the road and who was compassionate enough to remove it and bring it to the damp earth, or with the broken twig:
He found a boy who was carrying in a cage doves to be sold in the market. He begged him: “Good child, give me these humble and innocent little doves so that they will not be killed and eaten by men. The boy, touched by St. Francis’ innocent love, gave him the cage with the doves. Whispering, St. Francis said to them: “my dear little sisters, foolish and simple, why have you let yourselves be caught? Behold, I am coming to set you free. He opened the cage. Instead of flying out, they went lining up on his chest and in his hood and did not want to leave. St. Francis took them to the hermitage and told them, “multiply as your Creator wills. They had many chicks. They did not leave the company of St. Francis and the friars, as if they were domestic. They only took off and flew away when St. Francis blessed them and let them go.
As can be seen, compassion, along the lines of Buddhism and Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Fundamentals of Morals” (1840), all founded on unlimited compassion for all beings, is not only important for those who are currently suffering, but for all of creation.
Let’s conclude with the inspiring words of the Dalai Lama: “Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in Buddha or not Even if you can’t help them with money, it’s still always worthwhile to express moral support and empathy. This should be the basis of our action. Whether we call it religion or not is the least of our concerns” (Logic of Love, 1998).What matters is compassion.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
The Port of Balboa. Panama Maritime Authority photo.
Criminal complaint
by Miguel Antonio Bernal
On June 25, the Board of Directors Resolution No. 043-2021, of June 23, 2021, was published in the Gaceta Oficial, by means of which the administrator of the MARITIME AUTHORITY OF PANAMA is authorized to respond to the request extension for 25 years to the PANAMA PORTS COMPANY SA contract, by means of which the concession for the development, construction, operation, administration and management of the Ro-Ro container, passenger, bulk cargo and cargo terminals is granted. in general, and their respective infrastructures, at the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal.
Regardless of the serious economic damage that said extension entails for the interests of the Republic of Panama and its population, I rely on the fact that the President of the Republic, LAURENTINO CORTIZO COHEN, stated in a ceremony held on Tuesday, July 6, 2021, in the corregimiento of Juan Díaz, that the decision to extend the aforementioned contract was due to the fact that, if not, “the country would face a lawsuit.”
The fact that the representative of the executive branch publicly declared that the extension contract was signed in order not to face a lawsuit, suggests that the representatives of PANAMA PORTS COMPANY SA, warned the national government of such a possibility, forcing it to sign the extension. of the aforementioned contract.
That being the case, was there an open intimidation against the Republic of Panama in said decision that forced it to make a decision in favor of PANAMA PORTS COMPANY S.A.?
This conduct would be punished by Article 151 of the Penal Code:
“Whosoever through violence, intimidation or serious threat, to obtain an improper profit or any other benefit or to purcure such for a third party, forces another person to make a property disposition, to provide information or to tolerate, do or omit anything that harms or harms a third party, will be punished with a prison term of five to ten years.”
The reading of the aforementioned rule reveals, based on the statements of President Cortizo, that the offense was constituted when the Panamanian state received an intimidation or a threat on the part of PANAMA PORTS COMPANY SA, consisting of a lawsuit if the proprietary extension was not ordered in its favor.
It is mandatory for the Public Ministry to initiate, as a matter of urgency, an investigation that leads to determine whether such intimidation or threats really
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
La Fundación Danilo Pérez tiene una nueva sede. Se encuentra en la Urbanización Los Angeles, calle 63 oeste y estará abierta de lunes a viernes en horario de 9:00 a.m. a 5:00 pm y sábado de 8:00 a.m. a 1:00 p.m. Además de sus actividades educativas en el sitio y en línea, la nueva sede albergará sesiones de improvisación todos los martes por la noche. Para más información llame al 211-0272 o envíe un correo electrónico a info@fundaciondaniloperez.org. The Danilo Pérez Foundation has a new headquarters. It’s located in the Los Angeles Urbanization, Calle 63 Oeste and will be open from Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. at 5:00 pm and Saturday from 8:00 a.m. at 1:00 p.m. In addition to its educational activities on site and online, the new venue will host jam sessions every Tuesday night. For more information call 211-0272 or send an email to info@fundaciondaniloperez.org.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
Para defendernos de los piratas informáticos, los trolls organizados y otros actos de vandalismo en línea, la función de comentarios de nuestro sitio web está desactivada. En cambio, ven a nuestra página de Facebook para unirte a la discusión.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
“I have been told that combating climate change is expensive. Compared to what?” asked Senator Bernie Sanders. A New Yorker attempts to wade through a flooded subway station in Manhattan on July 8, 2021. Photo: @PaulleeWR/Twitter.
Flooded NYC subways exemplify why climate is key to infrastructure fight
Footage of New Yorkers struggling to wade through filthy, waist-deep water at a Manhattan subway station as heavy rainfall engulfed the city’s aging and long-neglected infrastructure on Thursday added fuel to progressive demands for a robust federal spending package that confronts the climate crisis — which is making such extreme weather more frequent and destructive.
“It’s been raining for two hours and our infrastructure is flooding and overwhelmed,” tweeted Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). “Our infrastructure package must address the climate change crisis with the urgency it deserves—with massive investments in decarbonization and clean energy.”
“The impacts of climate change are already here,” Bowman added. “It is urgent that our infrastructure package makes significant investments to prepare for and mitigate future emergency weather events.”
One New Yorker who witnessed the scene at Manhattan’s 157th Street Station told Gothamist that “people were pacing back and forth deliberating whether they were going to brave the waters or not.” The person described the water as “real disgusting.”
Other videos posted to social media on Thursday showed cars nearly halfway submerged in water as commuters attempted to navigate through the storm. One person was seen driving a jet ski on a badly flooded street.
“A ‘bipartisan’ infrastructure bill isn’t big enough to stop climate change,” said Representative Mondaire Jones (D-NY), referring to a $579 billion White House-endorsed package that includes hardly any climate funding — an omission progressives are attempting to remedy with a separate multitrillion-dollar bill that will move through the budget reconciliation process.
The fierce rainfall and heavy winds came as Tropical Storm Elsa made its way up the East Coast of the United States, sparking tornadoes in Georgia and North Carolina and prompting warnings of additional flooding in the Northeast on Friday.
“Flash flood watches were in effect for parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut until noon on Friday, as Elsa was expected to deliver heavy rain across the area,” the New York Times reported. “Transit officials, already girding for Elsa’s arrival, said they had crews out across the city addressing the flooding problems as quickly as possible and warned against entering stations that might still be inundated.”
The tropical storm hammered the Eastern United States as the Pacific Northwest grapples with a heatwave that experts have characterized as “the most extreme in world weather records.” The historic temperatures, which reached as high as 121°F in British Columbia, killed hundreds of people — and more than a billion intertidal animals — in the USA and Canada.
On Wednesday, officials in Multnomah County, Oregon deemed the devastating heatwave a “mass casualty event” as the death toll in the state rose to 107.
A rapid-response analysis published earlier this week by a group of more than two dozen scientists found that the heatwave “would have been virtually impossible” in the absence of the human-caused climate crisis, and warned that such extreme events will become increasingly common without a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
“Firenados in northern California. Ocean fires in the Gulf of Mexico. Subway waterfalls in New York City. A heat dome in the Northwest melting power cables, killing hundreds, and frying marine animals,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, tweeted Friday. “I have been told that combating climate change is expensive. Compared to what?”
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
