Global Flooding: What’s Happening and How You Can Help

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Move 1 foot higher in elevation. Take some prozac and relax

Don't be Rash! I haven't looked at the diaper situation going in over 20 years but apparently the situation is about the same; the technology hasn't advanced much. Do what's right for your family; review the pros and cons; there is no right choice. Not an issue one should preach about or stress over. Diapers & the Environment “This is not as clear cut as you might think for cloth diapers vs. disposable. Yes, disposables use resources like trees and plastics during manufacturing, then collect in landfills (most are 40 percent biodegradable). But, consider the process of washing cloth diapers—clean water and energy are used up, and nothing but dirty water is produced.” From Cloth vs. Disposable Baby Diapers: Pros & Cons https://www.thebump.com/a/cloth-diapers-vs-disposable See also Cloth vs. Disposable Baby Diapers: Pros & Cons https://www.whattoexpect.com/diapering-essentials/cloth-vs-disposables.aspx Bear in mind that there are multiple things to consider if one has the luxury to have a choice. Also, some factors lock one in. For example Where does the diaper pail go in a small apartment? No laundry machine in one's apartment. Complaints from super and neigbors or folks at the laundrymat about using shared laundry machines for poopy diapers.

Good points, all, Frank-001! I guess I, in my white privilege, did not stop to think about that reality. Right now, I live where water is plentiful and not worrying. Thank you for setting me straight. Shot that theory down, you did! Ha! Ha! We do need to come up with better products to recycle, though. That’s the real point to make.

You tell them, burrkitty! 😊❤️😊❤️. On some of the east coast they are ALREADY seeing the rise in water. Yet they continue to do nothing of substance to stem the tides. And then there’s the trash that is piling up every time floods and fires happen. Where are we going to put all the crap that accumulates every time a disaster happens? In some respects, we are digging our own graves. Yet we do nothing different. And what is this crying for diapers all about? We need to return to cloth diapers. We are filling up landfills with all that diaper waste. Yes, they are convenient, but how long can we continue to put the millions of diapers USED A DAY in garage dumps? An average baby uses 8 diapers a day and about 6000 diapers during the first 2 years of life! Disposable diapers add millions of TONS of waste to landfills each year, according to an EPA report. We need to stop this! Hopefully, the lack of this product on the shelves will cause more women to use cloth diapers again, using the others only occasionally. WE ALL MUST START THINKING ABOUT HOW WE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO A BETTER WORLD. Think about bottled water waste, too! We MUST work together. The affects of our ways of living will not differentiate between Democrats, Republicans or Independents or enemies and friends . Remember this.

Peter, Paul and Mary (I think): ‘When will they ever learn? When will they evvver learn.’ Conservatively protecting the ‘what was’ is becoming much less important than protecting us from ‘what is coming’. We are at the earliest stages of the Climate Crisis and the flooding you see now will only get worse, much worse. Buckle up, because protecting short term profits seems to be more important to our governance than preserving human life as we know it. … … … The overwhelming inertia of global processes cannot be readily overcome. It will take years of concerted effort to slow or stop the processes we have started by burning several millennias worth of carbon deposits in just two hundred years. Just because the full impact of climate change will not be fully ‘felt’ for a decade or two does not prevent it from happening. If the world can get to net zero CO2 emissions before the global average temperature increases by 1.2 degrees C, it will take a thousand years for natural processes to remove the excess CO2 from the atmosphere and the world will have to learn to live with the Climate - as bad as it will become by then. If the global average temperature increases more than 1.2 degrees C, climate change will rapidly accelerate due to runaway global chemistry which will release huge stores of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is at least 34 times a more potent green house gas than CO2 (some climate scientists quote a much larger number for methane potency). … … … We are running out of time and must begin to act now. Protecting the profitability of Congressional benefactors must cease. … … … In short, ‘The Status Quo has got to go’.

Between 1900 and 2017, the globally averaged sea level rose by 16–21 cm (6.3–8.3 in). Data gathered from satellite radar measurements reveal an accelerating rise of 7.5 cm (3.0 in) from 1993 to 2017, for an average rate of 31 mm (1.22 in) per DECADE. I would also like to remind people that sea level rise will not be equal across the world. Because although that’s the way it works in your coffee cup, that is not how it works at a global scale. This stuff is actually my professional expertise.

Climate change is increasing the intensity of these extreme weather weather events like flooding, hurricanes and tropical storms. Add the severe drought conditions & mega fires we now see, yes I am concerned. I am very concerned. I just pray that the World leaders attending the COP 26 Summit are too!

With you all the way, Jim. 😊❤️😊❤️😊 We have kicked the bucket down the road too many times in the last 25 years. It is time to get big oil off the teat, as well as the others, whom we continue to subsidize!!! They have had enough time to prepare for this. WE SHOULD NOT SUBSIDIZE THEIR LOSSES EITHER. THEY HAVE MADE BILLIONS ON THE BACKS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. NOR SHOULD WE REWARD NUNES, TRUMP AND ALL OTHERS FOR PRETENDING TO BE FARMERS. AND WHY SHOULD WE PAY FARMERS NOT TO PRODUCE? ADDITIONALLY, WHAT IS THIS WITH THE TAX BREAKS PEOPLE WHO HAVE LLAMAS, GET? Whose grand idea was that one, anyway? We are subsidizing ourselves out of business. Stop these practices and raid the military budget, while you’re at it, too! Time to get things down for We the People. I am sooooooo fed up with this crap. You’re jeopardizing all our lives but, especially, our planet’s. Do something laudable for a change, will ya? Honestly, I don’t see anything changing...

I personally am not worried as my lot is somewhat elevated and my house is on blocks. But my neighbors across the street along the canal are screwed. My quick fix is to use politicians such as Manchin, Sinema and all other climate deniers as sandbags. Just pile them up against the back of the house and call it a day.

Here’s an analysis of the Build Back Better Plan (also known as the Reconciliation Bill) in the context of a shift in political philosophy among the Democrats. It’s an op-ed piece published on Politico. I put it here because Manchin has virtually on his own killed significant steps in the original bill that targeted climate change. Thanks, Joe. The Build Back Better legislation, which is tortuously winding its way toward a potential House vote this week does, however, reflect a clear change in the intellectual wind. Democrats are almost entirely united behind Biden's economic vision. Two of the final holdouts to this new consensus, of course, happen to be sitting U.S. senators who hold veto power in an evenly divided Senate. And as the disappointing results for Democrats in Tuesday's elections show, their party is paying a dear political price for their penchant for gridlock. But whatever injury Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) ultimately inflict on Biden's plan or his presidency, their effective ostracism by the party rank-and-file in an age of hyperpartisanship is telling. By repeatedly positioning themselves outside the Democratic mainstream, Manchin and Sinema have handed Biden a victory in the battle of ideas, even as they force him to scale back his policy ambitions. Indeed, the center of gravity in the party has fundamentally shifted. The establishment, led by Biden - no one's idea of a left-winger - is shrugging off the market-friendly mindset of the Clinton and Obama eras. A new gospel for Democrats has arrived, centered on aggressive federal intervention to improve people's lives, and it's unlikely to fade no matter what happens to Biden's agenda. The latest framework for talks - a messy floor fight is still likely before Biden actually signs something into law - has three core components. There's about half a trillion dollars for child care and working parents, half a trillion for green jobs and three quarters of a trillion in smaller projects, most of which could have found a place as an individual item in a typical annual appropriations bill. We can exclude this third category from any grand declarations about intellectual paradigms and schools of thought, since collections of small, useful projects can be found under any administration of almost any ideological tenor (itself one of the enduring legacies of the New Deal). Manchin and Sinema have done most of their damage by killing off revenue sources that could have been used to pay for more ambitious programs. Manchin wouldn't accept higher taxes on billionaires and Sinema has refused to countenance a major prescription drug price reform that would save money for both households and the government. And so a very good $327 billion plan to combat housing inflationhas transformed into a $150 billion boost to affordable housing. That's the story with just about everything in category three: Lots of good and useful initiatives, but not the stuff of enduring presidential legacies. Deficit doves have pinned some of the blame for these progressive disappointments on Biden. In this line of thought, if the president hadn't insisted that this package be paid for with new tax revenue or cuts to existing programs, Sinema and Manchin wouldn't have so easily constrained everything on the other side of the ledger. But this misreads the motivations in play. Neither Manchin nor Sinema is a hardcore deficit hawk - otherwise, they wouldn't have put their names on a separate bipartisan infrastructure deal that adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit. For whatever reasons, the two senators are looking for excuses to distance themselves from Biden, and the funding mechanism for Build Back Better just happened to be there. In other cases, the duo have been perfectly willing to say things that make no sense and do things that weird people out if it means giving Biden or the party a headache. They'd just be doing more of that - including screaming about the national debt - if Biden weren't insisting on keeping the bill deficit-neutral. If the Build Back Better commitments on child care and green energy were to be made permanent, both would qualify as the type of governing innovations worthy of the New Deal or the Great Society. Despite all the rhetoric from politicians in both parties about the dignity of working families, the United States has a very poor record supporting working parents, when measured against other prosperous nations. The U.S. government spends only about $500 a year per child on toddler care, with the vast majority of child care spending restricted to children living in poverty. The average for nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, by contrast, is more than $14,000 per year, per child - with benefits available to families firmly ensconced in the middle class. Even Viktor Orban's far-right Hungarian regime spends more than 14 times what the U.S. government spends on child care. Build Back Better is a very serious plan to fix that. Biden's plan would guarantee universal pre-Kindergarten for 3- and 4-year olds around the country and provide serious aid - typically about $100 per child per week – to 90 percent of all families with young children (only households making more than $300,000 a year would be wholly excluded from child care benefits). If Biden could give it a name and make it permanent, his child care program would be a Social Security-style achievement. But here again the revenue problem has quite literally taken a toll. Biden's child care funding only lasts six years. Three years in, state governments are required to foot 10 percent of the bill - meaning red states may choose to kill the program off early, much the way they rejected the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. The progressive hope of course is that these initiatives will prove popular and will be extended. But lawmakers have made extending those programs more difficult by setting hard expiration dates in order to cut costs. There's nothing that Congress can do today to thwart a future Congress from enacting repeals, of course, but today's lawmakers could at leastmake their future opponents actually pass a law to repeal it. That's a serious hurdle these days; Congress just doesn't pass much legislation anymore. Under the current language, everything Biden has proposed will die through inaction over the next few years unless Congress actively works to sustain it. Both FDR and LBJ were familiar with budget gimmicks, but their main work was designed to be permanent. Meanwhile, the messaging vacuum from the White House has allowed right wing narratives on the economy to set in, namely that Biden rather than the pandemic is most to blame for rising inflation and supply-chain woes. Though we are surrounded with evidence that the economy is much better for workers today than it was even at its pre-pandemic peak - wages are up, consumption is up and savings are up, particularly for workers with lower incomes - people also increasingly tell pollsters that they are unhappy with the state of the economy. The party's inability to execute on Biden's agenda has also left Democrats around the country with nothing to run on, and on Tuesday night, voters showed Biden they're willing to defect to Republicans if he can't get things done. Manchin's zeal for restricting aid to the poorest, for imposing work requirements on benefit recipients, and for otherwise injecting bureaucratic headaches between citizens and their government is very much a rejection of Biden's vision for government itself. "It's time we remembered that we the people are the government," Biden told Congress in April. "You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over." Where Biden sees government as an expression of democracy, Manchin views it as a form of tampering with the natural order of things. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/04/joe-manchin-revolution-cant-stop-519220

Jim, how about “ We’re on the eve of destruction?” Seems just as relevant, eh?

Sharon, great comments. 😊❤️😊. I think a big part of our problem is that so few people have any common sense these days. They let others form their opinions for them! Alas!

Actually, it is 4 inch sense 1995! The warming of the earth is going to be a major problem as water will become worse or less, as seen in AZ. It will not be unusual for AZ to have triple digit for 6 months or more out of the year. The mid west May be a dust bow? Weather will be more Extreme. The electrical grid and power will become more of a problem.

Here’s Manchin pretending to be an honest broker: “I will not support a bill that is this consequential without thoroughly understanding the impact it will have on our national debt, our economy and the American people,” he said. “That is why we must allow time for complete transparency and analysis on the impact of changes to our tax code and energy and climate policies.” Impact of changes to our” “Tax Code”, to me, translates to “I don’t want billionaires and corporations to pay more in taxes” (even though some are paying nothing in taxes. Impact on our “national debt” is interesting, and deceptive (in my opinion) because Biden has insisted from the beginning that this plan have no impact on the on the national debt. It is the refusal of Manchin and Sinema to reverse to any degree the tax cuts of 2017 which permanently benefitted only the very wealthy and corporations that has endangered the debt neutral nature of this Bill. Their insistence has forced what Manchin calls a “Shell game” in order to maintain neutral impact whereby some of the programs are funded only for a set period after which the States must pick up the cost or Congress must extend them. Funny, Manchin doesn’t have a problem with the “shell game” otherwise known as tax deductions, waivers, and loopholes that allow wealthy people (like him and his family and his business) to lower their rightful share of funding our government and the social programs that help those who would otherwise be homeless, starving, medically untreated or dead for lack of life-saving medication because of circumstance or because they weren’t born into a family such as his that could give a comfortably privileged life an a college education. I wonder which shell games Manchin, his family, and his coal-industry company use - you bet they use everything that they can. Impact of changes to our “energy and climate policies” as I read it means: “Impact might reduce the profits of the fossil fuel industry and my company because the transition to clean fuels to address climate change might be forced from their current pace that looks like molasses in January to something that resembles movement and it might reduce my and my families income and, the cherry on top, might mean my fossil fuel industry campaign donations might lessen! Got to make sure those things doesn’t happen!” If those interpretations are not what he means, I feel forced to conclude that Manchin is stuck in the non-accurate Reagan economic model and Newt Gingrich has taken over his mind.

Ever wondered what it means when politicians talk about “economic growth”? From Investopedia: Understanding Economic Growth In simplest terms, economic growth refers to an increase in aggregate production in an economy. Often, but not necessarily, aggregate gains in production correlate with increased average marginal productivity. That leads to an increase in incomes, inspiring consumers to open up their wallets and buy more, which means a higher material quality of life or standard of living. In economics, growth is commonly modeled as a function of physical capital, human capital, labor force, and technology. Simply put, increasing the quantity or quality of the working age population, the tools that they have to work with, and the recipes that they have available to combine labor, capital, and raw materials, will lead to increased economic output. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicgrowth.asp S, if “increasing the quantity or quality of the working age population” is part of economic growth, why isn’t helping people get some kind of education - trade or higher education like community college - so they can have money to spend (another contributor to the economy which some experts credit as a main driver of the economy) without yoking their income to loan payments for years a good idea?

It seems to me that the terminology tossed around by politicians often make concepts appear more complicated than they are at their foundations. So, from Incestopedia.com, here’s a simple explanation of terms our politicians often use to make themselves seem smarter than us and to scare us: Debt, Deficit, and Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”), “The national debt level of the United States is a measurement of how much the federal government owes its creditors. Specifically, the national debt is a term referring to the level of federal debt held by the public, as opposed to the debt held by the government itself. Since the U.S. government almost always spends more than it takes in, the national debt continues to rise. While the national debt can be measured in trillions of dollars, it is usually measured as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), the debt-to-GDP ratio. That's because as a country's economy grows, the amount of revenue a government can use to pay its debts grows as well. In addition, a larger economy generally means the country's capital markets will grow and the government can tap them to issue more debt. This means that a country's ability to pay off debt—and the effect that debt might have on the country's economy—is dependent on how large the debt is as a proportion of the overall economy, not on the dollar amount. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the federal debt held by the public will equal 102% of GDP by the end of 2021.9 As of Q2, 2021, it was 98.3%, with a peak at the end of Q2 2020 of 105%. That is the highest level since 1946.1011 Since 1970, when the national debt stood at about 26.7% of GDP, debt has gone through a few different periods, staying fairly steady through the 1970s, rising drastically through the 1980s and early 1990s under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies. It peaked in Q1 1994 at 48.3% of GDP, before falling again under the Clinton administration to a low of 30.9% in Q2 2001. It started climbing again under George W. Bush, slowly at first, and then sharply.12 As the financial crisis hit with the worst recession since the Great Depression, government revenues plummeted and stimulus spending surged to stabilize the economy from total ruin. This economic catastrophe, combined with an enormous reduction in revenue from the Bush tax cuts and the continued expenses of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, caused the debt to balloon. Under the two terms of the Obama administration, federal debt held by the public rose from 43.8% of GDP in Q4 2008 to 75.9% in Q4 2016, a 73.3% increase.12 Under President Trump, the national debt rose by 4% in his first three years in office.12 While Trump further slashed federal revenue with his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the national debt didn't expand sharply as the economy had largely recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. However, in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and spread unchecked, the U.S. economy was sent into recession.13 The virus forced widespread quarantines, shutdowns, enormous stimulus and relief expenditures, and drastically lowered government revenue. The level of federal debt held by the public grew by approximately 50% under Trump's four years in office peaking at 105% of GDP then dropping to 101% at the end of Q4 2020. President Biden's term began at that level and since then dropped to 98.3% by the end of June 2021.12 National Debt vs. Budget Deficit First, it's important to understand what the difference is between the federal government's annual budget deficit (also known as the fiscal deficit) and the outstanding federal debt, known in official accounting terminology as the national public debt. Simply explained, the federal government generates a budget deficit whenever it spends more money than it brings in through income-generating activities. These activities include individual, corporate, or excise taxes. To operate in this manner of spending more than it earns, the U.S. Treasury Department must issue Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. These Treasury products finance the deficit by borrowing from the investors, both domestic and foreign. These Treasury securities also sell to corporations, financial institutions, and other governments around the world.3 By issuing these types of securities, the federal government can acquire the cash that it needs to provide government services. The national debt is simply the net accumulation of the federal government's annual budget deficits. It is the total amount of money that the U.S. federal government owes to its creditors. To make an analogy, fiscal or budget deficits are the trees, and the national debt is the forest.” https://www.investopedia.com/updates/usa-national-debt/

Here’s a second analysis of the Build Back Better Plan (the Reconciliation Bill) from the UK-based The Guardian. Summation of what was in the Bill as of 18 October. Factual content about the Bill’s content and others based in fact, is important in my thinking because most of what’s readily out there for consumption is talk about the bill rather than what’s actually in it. Of course, the Bill has changed in the last 3 weeks. Free community college is gone, for one. So, apparently, is coverage for seniors’ hearing and dental needs. Did you know that hearing loss contributes to mental decline and depression in seniors? According to medicalnewstoday.com, “Hearing aids vary in price. In the U.S., they can range from about $1,000 to more than $6,000, but the average cost is close to $2,500.” Then there the additional costs for exams, adjustments, etc. The US is one of only 6 countries in the world with no national paid leave. The Build Back Better Plan started with 12 weeks then dropped to 8, then 4 weeks of paid leave for any medical problem, which would make the US one of only 26 of the total 174 countries to offer 4 weeks of leave. Only Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, offers less than 4. So, a small, poverty-stricken country in Africa is taking better care of its citizens in this regard than the US. Of course no one at this point can be sure what will be in the Plan because Manchin and Sinema will have to vote for it to get it through the Senate, and they keep chipping away at provisions and the means to pay for it. “In much of the press coverage of the fight over Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, politicians, pundits and media talking heads often focus on its $3.5tn price tag. But all the attention to the top-line figure ignores the huge implications of what is actually in the legislation – and how it could transform millions of Americans’ lives. That seems to be doing the public a great disservice. A CBS poll found that only 10% of Americans knew “a lot of the specifics” about the Build Back Better plan (also known as the budget reconciliation bill), and 29% did not know what was in it at all. The bipartisan senate infrastructure bill proposes $66bn of new spending on passenger and freight rail projects over the next decade. But as negotiations over the bill drag on, Democrats are undertaking one of the most ambitious and transformative domestic policy agendas since the Great Society of the 1960s or the New Deal of the 1930s. So what is it? The Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill, is one of two huge pieces of legislation that form the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. While the other bill is focused on infrastructure, Build Back Better focuses on a long list of social policies and programs ranging from education to healthcare to housing to climate. With Republicans unified in opposition, Democrats are using a special budgetary process known as “reconciliation” to avoid the 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass the bill on a party-line vote. What’s in it? Universal preschool for children Biden’s 2020 presidential platform included a guarantee of preschool for all US children aged three and four. With the legislation, Biden hopes to make that plan a reality. Families can either choose to send their young children to a publicly funded preschool program or to any number of the privately run preschool programs already available. But those who do not choose to enroll in a public preschool would still have to pay the tuition or enrollment fees associated with that private institution. For the families that choose the public preschool route, the White House estimates it would save them $13,000 a year. Free community college Another life-altering education element of the Build Back Better proposal is two years of free community college, which could bridge a wide gap for those socioeconomically disadvantaged by giving them a path to an associate’s degree or to a four-year college. Several cities across the US, including Buffalo, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle have already implemented a version of free community college, but this plan would make it the nationwide standard. Expanded Medicare services and Medicaid Medicare is the government-run healthcare program for those ages 65 and over. The passage of Build Back Better would expand Medicare services to cover vision, hearing and dental health needs, which it currently does not. Medicaid is the government-run healthcare program for low-income families and disabled people who may be unable to get private insurance. This bill would remove certain income and health limitations to allow more people to qualify for the first time. Lower prescription drug costs Prescription drugs in the US are more than 2.5 times more expensive on average than prescriptions drugs in the rest in the world. The US ranks first in the cost of prescription drugs like insulin and epinephrine. The reason? Right now, pharmaceutical companies can determine the price of drugs because the US lacks price controls. In addition to expanding Medicare services, Build Back Better would give Medicare (AKA the government) bargaining power to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies for the first time to bring prices down. Tax cuts for families with children and childcare support Build Back Better would increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children ages six and older. The new tax credit for children under the age of six would be $3,600. The credit comes in the form of monthly checks, so that parents and caregivers do not have to front the cost of childcare. Poverty experts believe it would cut child poverty in half, lifting 5 million children out of poverty. The bill also offers additional childcare support based on state median income. 12 weeks of paid family leave The US is the only industrialized country to not offer paid family leave, or paid time off after adopting, fostering or giving birth to a new child. While some private companies offer this as a perk to their employees, Build Back Better would ensure all new working parents and caregivers job security and almost three months of at least partial paid time off after these major life events. It would also guarantee all workers at least three days of bereavement leave in the event of a death in the family. Housing investments Build Back Better would invest in the production, preservation and retrofitting of more than a million affordable rental housing units and 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income aspiring homebuyers, as well as increase rental assistance agreements. Tax cuts for electric vehicles and other climate incentives A tax credit of at least $4,000 would be on offer for those buying an electric vehicle. If the car is bought before 2027, there would be an additional tax credit of $3,500. If the car was made in the US, there would be $4,500 added on top of that. In total, a taxpayer in the US could expect a maximum of $12,500 in tax credits for purchasing an electrical vehicle under these conditions – a weighty incentive to switch from a gas-fueled engine to one better for the planet. Biden’s bill also includes tax credits and grants for businesses and communities working towards clean energy initiatives. The Civilian Climate Corps, a government workforce dedicated to environment protection and conservation reminiscent of Franklin D Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, would be relaunched and funded with $10bn behind it. Additionally, utility companies would be subject to a system of payments and fines to clean up emissions from fossil fuels. Over time, these companies would be required to phase in renewable energy to replace fossil fuels. However, much of this plan is reportedly under threat as negotiations on the bill continue. But what’s not in it? A Green New Deal, for starters. Progressives and climate advocates had hoped for sweeping climate reforms that did not make it into Biden’s Build Back Better bill – and that omission continues to be a fight between the far-left and centrist Democrats. The Build Back Better plan aims to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, far short of the Green New Deal’s goal of 2035. To climate activists like Greta Thunberg, it may as well be “Build back better. Blah blah blah.” But if the other budget bill for infrastructure is passed, there may be hope yet for some form of climate reform, thought not nearly as robust as those outlined in the Green New Deal. While Medicare services could expand if this bill is passed, it still does not guarantee Medicare for all, meaning the US will still lag many other nations around the world in not offering some form of universal healthcare. This bill also does not include any provisions for student loan debt forgiveness. The average student loan debt owed in the US is $37,693. Finally, there are no additional increases in social security, the federal assistance for the poor, elderly and disabled. Who is paying for this? Build Back Better is being called a “once in a lifetime investment” and it includes new tax plans that will cover its cost. Some of the tax changes include repeals on Trump-era tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations, such as: restoring the estate tax and raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 26% (before Trump, the rate was 35%). Additionally, capital gains taxes will be raised from 20% to 25%. When is all of this happening? Democrats have set their own deadline of 31 October to vote on the bill to get it passed. Usually, a bill needs 60 votes to get passed but because this bill is related to the national budget, it can go through the process of reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority of votes to pass. The bill, which was introduced and passed in the House, is now in the Senate. The bill seems to have the support of all Democratic senators but two: Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Without the support of these two legislators, passing this bill will be difficult, if not impossible. If Democrats are able to push the bill through, the items outlined in the plan should fully come to fruition by the year 2030, or within the span of 10 years. What’s their problem with it? As initially proposed, the bill would cost $3.5tn over 10 years, or $350bn each year for a decade. But the final package will probably be smaller, a concession to centrist holdouts who balked at the initial price tag – and without whom the measure cannot pass. Manchin previously said he would support a $1.5tn bill, which would be $150bn each year for a decade. But he has not detailed what he wants to cut, or why. Though Sinema has also not yet explained publicly what provisions and policies she is and isn’t willing to support, she has said that she would not vote for a bill that costs $3.5tn. Now, the White House and Democratic leaders are racing to trim the package in order to forge a compromise between the party and their two rogue members before their new 31 October deadline. But emboldened progressives in the party are pushing back – arguing that this version of the bill already was the compromise from an even more ambitious original vision. … we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent. With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour. Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world's slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/18/what-is-build-back-better-crash-course

Best way to help……vote no on build back better bullying.

Maybe they shouldn’t rebuild in these flood zones over and over! Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!